Bear's hook in taste!

column from A&B 04 | 2022 issue

We can invent any kind of architecture, claiming, or really believing, that we will change the world with it. We can sell our designs and build them for Russian rubles, but let's not deceive ourselves and others that architecture is neutral. It isn't. Designing buildings and getting them built is part of the local and global money cycle. Are you building in Russia and have a registered branch of your company there? Well, willy-nilly, you pay taxes locally, and those taxes go into the budget of a state that is not only a kleptocracy, but on top of that lives on imperial sentiments, drowning in a toxic mix of megalomania and a sense of inferiority. And when war breaks out, informed, educated, humanistic architects and architects, your tax money goes... to war.

Two weeks ago, during a jury session of an international student competition, one of the judges, a Dutchman from a large design firm, expressed sadness over the "situation in Ukraine," while stating that it was very unfortunate, because the realization of their buildings in both Russia and Ukraine had been stopped. He added that their not inconsiderable team includes many representatives of both nations, and that there is now "a lot of confusion" because two female employees from Russia, who are really capable, are afraid to come to the office, cry into the phone and feel that no one will like them. Well, one would like to respond: yes, war does that - it creates chaos, sometimes forever, except that I am somehow more appalled by the amputated limbs of child victims of rocket fire in a Krakow hospital than by the drama of the suddenly disliked Russian female architects.

In the early 2000s Polish business, including some architectural studios, began to take advantage of the opportunity to export literally anything they could find to Russia. At the time, I was part of a young group of enthusiasts called Centrala. One day, I think during lunch, one of us threw in: "How about we would like to design in Russia?". I don't know if there was a real possibility of exporting our brilliant thoughts at the time, but we immediately began to consider whether there was any point at all in cooperating with a mafia-like state with little civilized relations. These concerns did not come from nowhere: that year we designed an apartment for the offspring of a businessman who sold feed to Russia. The man did not live to see the completion of the construction, because, as a descendant put it, "Dad didn't come back." We, though very open to adventure, nevertheless preferred to return from our sojourns, preferably in one piece. When I told my mother, who was raised during the Soviet era in Minsk-Belarus, a passionate reader of Turgenev and Ilyf and Petrov, about our parabusiness dilemmas, she accused me of Russophobia. Somewhat jokingly, I asked if she could name even one Russian who had been sent to Poland, if only to our city, by the Russian government and acted in its favor. To my surprise, she answered without prompting: Starynkiewicz. To readers unfamiliar with this figure, I will hint without elaborating that Warsaw indeed owes a lot to him. I praise his name (Socrates) every time I go to a secluded place, for it was he who brought the Lindleys, father and son, to us, and they designed and "hired" us to build a water system, sewage system, water intake and water filtration. In a word, the tsarist official, paradoxically, made us (somewhat) more modern Europeans. Dear Jol, point for you!

My presumed or actual Russophobia made itself known a dozen years later, when I got a call from a friend who owned a company building wooden prefabricated houses. I not only did projects for her, but also advised her, in virtually every way possible, from art direction to finding new target groups. The issue was advice: whether to enter into connivance with Russia? Well, my acquaintance received a call from a gentleman, supposedly our native professor, who was in charge of finding certain goods and services in the Polish market for, attention Mesdames et Messieurs, Putin's foundation. In a telephone conversation, he explained that the mayor of St. Petersburg is looking for cheap prefabricated houses, he wants to build thousands of them in the suburbs, and maybe this one, piniondz is doable. The gentlemen agreed on a date and time, I agreed to take part in the meeting, and so one fine morning we drove through the slowly opening gate into what is known as Spy. I will explain to those unfamiliar with the term that this is one of the seven properties that the fraternal USSR received in the capital in exchange for properties in Moscow that were never actually handed over. The defining feature of Spygov, as Varsovians called it, is a stepped-terrace, fancy-windowed building from the 1970s, probably unoccupied since the late 1990s.

Black-clad teddy bear-like security guards roamed the grounds, with the appearance of a locally hired firm rather than a riebiata from the Spetsnaz. We were invited into the first floor of the building's former, one would think, canteen, which must once have served the building's residents, including employees of the embassy of a known country and their families kept here behind a high wall to keep them from infecting the outside world. The smell of dust, the faint light, as in the hollow of the known services. We sat at a thick, lacquer-lit table, above us a large oil painting with a group of cheerful Krasovites with a harmonica by the fire. Around the table gentlemen - an attaché, a professor and an engineer from Petrograd, seemingly Polish, but theirs. I with cordiality hiding my irritation, my acquaintance matter-of-fact and relevant questions asking. And maybe there would have been the aforementioned piniondz out of it, had we not asked about the nature of Putin's foundation. With disarming candor, the attaché recounted the achievements of this noble entity, which dedicatedly assists the Russian public sector by providing the goods they need from jewropa and charging only a 7 percent markup. Here my friend and I got wrinkles on our faces, because how can you imagine that the president or prime minister of your country has a parallel foundation of some kind, which he coffers 7 percent on everything he pulls into that country? I know what you're going to say: after the news about our prime minister's accomplishments in the real estate trade and his still being prime minister (in such a Denmark he wouldn't be one the next day), nothing will surprise us anymore. Only that we were still in Poland anno Domini 2013, not even suspecting how far east our standards of civilization would be shifted.

Here my friend poked me, we politely said goodbye and trotted to the car and started talking. He asked what I thought. I said that the 7 percent killed me. He nodded his head and said: "We won't let the chu...i earnit." That's the kind of attitude I appreciate. And not the tales of greedy Dutchmen turning a blind eye to the deaths of their own fellow countrymen hit by hail in an airplane in 2014, when Putin's "green men" began to "liberate" the coalfields in eastern Ukraine. Perhaps, by the way, behind this is not greed but a belief, analogous to the one that helped Western businesses create modern China, that by cooperating with the land of the white bears, one will lead to its Europeanization. This thinking is wrong: Russia is not and will not be part of Europe, even if the surveyors and mapmakers working for Tsarina Catherine have moved the continent's borders all the way to the Urals. Nor is Russia Asia. It is a separate civilizational entity in which Enlightenment norms, such as Human Rights or respect for truth, are in no way respected at the state level. However, we have nothing to wallow in complacency - a large part of right-wing politicians in Poland who are enthusiastic about Russia have an identical attitude towards them.

I have no special illusions that Russia will change in any positive way yet in my lifetime. Even more so if it is cut short by the dropping of Iskander missiles on important targets (including Warsaw) within Poland. The people of this country have always been brainwashed, regardless of the prevailing system and its accompanying measures. In school, by the way, just like the Chinese and Americans, they learn that they belong to the greatest society in the world, and they are reminded of this greatness every day by television, local of course, because only 10 percent of the country's population speaks any other language, so there is no way to verify political information. Neither probably has the desire, because why bother to make an effort when someone concretely and convincingly, as on TVP, explains the world to us in one possible way every day on the program "Vremya" or on the "TV Diary." What can I do today as a little man somewhere in Eastern Europe who aspires to have his piece of territory pushed back with a stick further somewhere to the west? Well, contrary to appearances, I can, like you, do more than Vlad Putin and his henchmen think.

Here my private, short working list of ways to przyp....enie Putin NOW(note: the opinions I express in this column are not necessarily those of the medium in the form of A&B)*:

1. Do NEVER do business with a country whose majority of the population thinks it is perfectly normal to invade neighboring countries or support dictators like Maduro, Assad and the like.
2. Don't store or buy products from brands that, despite the sanctions imposed on the country due to the initiation of the bloody war in Ukraine, have decided to stay in Russia and pay taxes to co-finance the actions of the invaders, from NESTLE and Leroy Merlin starting with Decathlon and Renault. Shame on you, France.
3. Support the civilian victims directly in the form of refugees and indirectly by funding aid organizations. In doing so, remember that some of the refugees (especially) will stay here and that we will come out of it to increase the population of a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. Anyway, most of us are helping, except maybe the freaks fixated on the Past Wrongs of Our Nation (UPA, Bandera, Volhynia, etc.) and some of the CatholicChurchhierarchy**, but since the burning of a copy of "Harry Potter" at the stake, nothing surprises me anymore....
4. Write text messages to anonymous Russians about the war through the hacking service https://1920.in. More than seven million people from all over the world have already done this, some perhaps to those who are not quite steeped in Putin's propaganda.
5. Report every troll encountered on the web to the administrator, and make it clear to those who unwittingly duplicate theses prepared in the St. Petersburg "troll factory" that they have become "useful idiots" of a cynical murderer.
6. Not to use the Russian-owned OLX website, through which the Russian Defense Ministry (it should be called the Ministry of Attack) is trying to hoodwink contract soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
7. Don't watch Russian news services, oh no, instead read OKO press, Guardian, El Pais or Politico (recommended!).
8. Unplug from the news every now and then, so as not to go crazy, and take to reading nst. item: "Europeans. The origins of cosmopolitan culture" by Orlando Figes; "Europe" by Norman Davies. Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" will also come in handy, to fantasize that it's not editor Berlioz's head that's rolling down the streetcar tracks on Patriarche Prudy, but you know who....

And probably the list could be further extended with various points like "Prepare plans B, C and D," "Diversify funds," or "Open an account in another European country," but let's not get into that anymore. Instead, let's think, perhaps wishfully, that if it goes well, this Ukraine will have to be rebuilt, and then there will be someone to do business with without resistance. Let's also think that the misfortune of our neighbors may open the eyes of part of the Polish ruling camp and their voters to the mysterious affinity of visions linking Nowogrodzka and the decorative wooden complex of buildings covered with such quasi-celebrities a few thousand kilometers away. For now, let's enjoy the spring and be as uncommonly noble to each other as (for now) we are to refugees from a country that aspires to become part of a dreamed-up Europe, with all its faults, including French selfishness and Polish foaming at the mouth.

Jakub Szczęsny

* The opinions contained in the column are the same as those of the A&B medium - editor's note.

** NOTE: the entry in the printed version of the text (04/2022) was generalizing and outdated - it was written on March 13, 2022, so more than two weeks after the outbreak of the war in view of the release of the article on www.architekturaibiznes.pl on 28.04.2022, and therefore required clarification. I was not referring to the large-scale activities of Caritas (otherwise helping mainly with funds from our taxes and European grants), separate parish initiatives, or assistance provided by religious congregations in Poland. What I was referring to was the direct physical and financial involvement of those in charge of the Catholic Church in Poland, that is, the highest-ranking hierarchs. Their activities in this regard were, to put it mildly, not very visible, at least according to the information available on March 13, i.e. two days before the Polish Bishops' Conference, which summarized the involvement of individual church organizations as of 28.02.2022, i.e. the day the war broke out in Ukraine.

Those affected by the generalizing meaning of this entry apologize.