Lost Cosmonaut
434 words, 1 image 
Debbie bought me the book Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder for Christmas. It appears to available in three editions already, despite being first published in 2006…
Daniel Kalder is a Scotsman living in Moscow, and in this book he decides to become an “anti-tourist”, deliberately visiting mundane places for their authenticity (no doubt he would object to this simplification — read the book if you care).
He observes that the Russian Federation is chock full of disappearing ethnic cultures other than the dominant Russians, and visits states nominally inhabited by such groups, such as the Tartars of Tartarstan, the Kalmyks of Kalmykia, the Maris of Mari El, and the Udmurt of Udmurtia.
Mostly it’s a readable stream about the exotica of post-Soviet dinginess, with some casual swearing, misanthropy and made up bits thrown in to spice it up.
Towards the end though, Kalder begins to muse upon the assimilation of these cultures. Their history is largely unrecorded. Their traditions were swept away by the Soviet state; modern culture promises to finish the job. Kalder admits that his Scottish heritage is one reason he dwells on this.
I was educated in a Welsh speaking school, where a great many of the staff, and a reasonable number of pupils were very preoccupied with the preservation of the Welsh language and culture. I remember in one classroom debate, wondering out loud whether a “forced” preservation was worthwhile. If you speak the language, perform clog dancing, sing folk songs, and so on, out of a sense of duty to keep something living, aren’t you merely preserving a fake, Disneyfied version of that culture?
(In fact, Welsh language culture is doing very well now: there’s probably clog dancing on a metaphorical respirator, but people are living their lives in Welsh and doing living, modern things in Welsh, which build upon traditions rather than just preserve them.)
Kalder, I think, agrees with me — or I agree with him — he’s interested in observing these cultures before they are wholly subsumed, but he doesn’t rail against their death. We speak of “living cultures”, but everything has its time. We can mourn a set of traditions as we might mourn the death of a cherished relative, but we must understand that nobody and nothing lasts forever. Remember that these traditions were once new born: they replaced older traditions. Maybe at the time people objected to the loss of those.
Who are we, he asks, to demand that an ethnic Mari stays in his village indulging in animal sacrifices, rather than go to the city in pursuit of wealth? Despite his hatred of wise men, it seems he is one.