THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 29, 1995 TAG: 9507290270
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Applebee's, Darryl's, Chili's, not to mention McDonald's. Masha Rodionova is amazed at the American restaurant menu. ``You have so much choice,'' she says.
In her hometown of Irkutsk, a scientific and cultural center in Siberia, population 600,000 plus, there are only six restaurants, maybe seven, she says. (That's one per 100,000 people. Must be some long lines.)
And the menus, she won't even talk about. Worse, the restaurants are likely to close for the evening, no explanation. Imagine, IHOP or Morrison's CLOSED after church on Sunday.
At 21, Rodionova has eyes that are are brown and ever-alert in a round, fresh face that looks like it still belongs to a teenager. She has a patriotic passion about her that I admire.
I met the young Russian this week as she toured Portsmouth General Hospital, one of many stops during her two-week visit to Hampton Roads. She wore smart cuffed shorts, a braided leather belt and a lace-collar blouse, purchased at American malls.
Her work here at Evans Inc., a heating and air conditioning firm in Portsmouth, is part of a business internship she must complete to earn a business degree from the University of Maryland.
The University of Siberia, Rodionova's home school, offers the program under Maryland's sponsorship and direction.
She is bedazzled by the array of small businesses here, and equally so by Portsmouth's ``short buildings.'' ``We see only tall buildings in the big cities on Russian TV.''
And she wants Americans to chill out on calling Siberia cold. ``It gets warm, up to 25 celsius (about 77 degrees),'' she says, then adds quickly, ``But not this warm. There is no such humidity.''
Rodionova was only 15 when the walls of communism came tumbling down under former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. She is a child of glasnost, the new openness, and a child of perestroika, the restructuring from socialism to a more democratic state.
Russia's struggle from a collective to a free-market economy, has filled Rodionova with a sense of mission and drive that seems to contrast sharply with the ambitions of her American cohorts known as Generation X.
She can imagine herself a restaurant owner. It will be something trendy and chic that Russian people can rely on. ``Where you can go to have a good time,'' she says.
Her parents, a physicist and sales representative, never thought of owning private property or starting their own business because the government took care of them. But Rodionova is free to dream beyond her parents' dreams.
Meanwhile in America, politicians and economists have warned Generation Xers that they shouldn't count on attaining the material prosperity that their parents achieved.
And the 18- to 29-year-old crowd seems to be feeling increasingly awed by too many options, or not so sure that there really are so many choices after all.
Are we spoiled? The question must be asked. Poor Rodionova tries to answer tactfully in her most poised, fluent English.
``In Russia, we have to be more creative, we have to make everything, cooking, everything. But in America everything is already there for you.''
Soon, Rodionova will return to Russia with love. With her will go her steady resolve to develop her country.
And who would have thought that an overprivileged American like me would envy a supposedly deprived Russian? by CNB