Acclaimed Second Life Creator Alina Lyvette Describes Her First Life in Putin's Russia

When she's not updating her popular Lumiya Second Life viewer for mobile, or enjoying life below the virtual sea as a mermaid avatar, Alina Lyvette contends with a fairly grim real life lived as an LGBT person in Putin's Russia. She recently shared her experiences there with me, and with Russia so much in the news of late, it's important I share her insights here too:

"How does it feel here?" Alina begins. "Guess it's telling enough to say that every morning I'm scanning the local news to find out whether Mr. Putin has started the war or not... yet. Maybe the best word to describe the overall feeling there is 'uncertainty'. Things are unraveling at a frightening pace. Now, it's year 2014 and we have the new legislation (passed unanimously, of course) which introduces jail terms for publicly expressing discontent with Putin's policies, and the ban on food imports... in a country which imports approximately half of its food products, and on, and on. Politically, the local opposition is generally silent - which is not really surprising, given the fact that opposition leaders are either behind the bars or has fled the country. We had one relatively independent news channel (the Rain TV) which is now banned from broadcasting over cable or satellites.. and of course, they were never allowed to broadcast over the air - which is how the absolute majority of population receives the signal.

"Putin's brainwashing machine is going full steam ahead - with all the usual tools which would make Dr. Goebbels happy, like using fake imagery and staged video in the news, thoroughly mixed with outright lies and hysteria - unsurprisingly, leading to the skyrocketing figures of Mr. Putin's ratings (86% last time if I'm not mistaken, and I'm rather surprised that it's not 99%. From these figures, one can easily derive that 14% of the local population doesn't watch TV).

"One good side-effect of this, though," she continues. "is that LGBT bashing is not the mainstream topic anymore (and, unsurprisingly again, as soon as the propaganda machine has stopped to stir up the topic, the general public entirely stopped being concerned about it. My favorite local club is open again.

"Interestingly, speaking about economics, things are not too bad, compared to what could be expected. Obviously food prices are on the rise as well as unemployment, but nothing overly dramatic so far. Local news say that the market for luxury cars has fell down 22% from the previous year... who cares?  As long as milk goes for about $1 per liter, life is good. Of course it was half that only a year ago, but... it's still cheap.

"In the other developments... hm, our authorities (should I put this word in quotes?) recently decided to ban public Wi-Fi. Well, not exactly... they've introduced a requirement of establishing user's identity when providing public Wi-Fi services, which in practice means a ban. Well, ok, 3G works just as well for me.

"And oh, something that didn't make the news... a few days ago, there was an announcement of upcoming 'emergency' President's address to the nation, which magically disappeared from the news after a couple of hours, and on the next day, we've been enlightened to learn that Mr. Putin has quietly fired top 18 officers of what is our local counterpart of FBI - obviously sparking rumors about a failed coup attempt. One goes figuring...

"So, life is interesting, and I sincerely hope that this insanity will come to an end before something dreadful happens. Of course, me being a mere mortal, but I sincerely agree with Angela Merkel's assessment of Mr. Putin when, after a round of talks, she has been quoted as saying that 'he appears to live in his own imaginary world.'

In this climate it might seem strange to spend so much time working on a Second Life viewer for Android devices, but for Alina, doing so is a kind of sanctuary:

"Back to the ground, of course, these developments are less than motivating, but I'm still finding a sort of refuge in working on Lumiya, and if everything goes well, another update will be pushed out in about two weeks, or so I hope. Not a lot of new features, mostly small improvements here and there, smoother frame rate and better stability, but no breakthroughs so far. Initially, I was going to introduce build tools in this update, but... guess it will have to wait until things quiet down a little bit." She smiles emoticonly at that.

"As for being LGBT here... well, it's 'mostly OK'. Some things one won't do, of course, like walking around holding hands together (but then, it will rarely cause anything other than an occasional angry look). There's more danger around the clubs... local chavs are always happy to jump in gangs on those walking out of the club (and the police will look the other way, of course). The answer is to have a taxi waiting at the club doors, of course.

"In everyday life.. when a woman is living together with another woman, the neighbors will obviously know. The rest depends on the neighborhood. In my particular case, nobody seems to care except for one elderly woman which hisses every time she sees me... and I couldn't care less. However, when I've been living in a less friendly place, we've took a great deal of care to hide our relationship... like never leaving home together and the like - and still, eventually it became known and then we've been welcomed with a flurry of petty vandalism acts like setting our front door on fire, smashed car windows and so on. Had to move elsewhere, obviously. Is there a threat of rape? Not much, it is a rare event here (statistically speaking, five times less common than in United States).

"Of course, there are no such things as LGBT-friendly places to work (other than those within LGBT community itself). But then, again... only a few years ago, before the hysterical propaganda has started, everyone on my job knew everything about me and - well yeah, my sexual preferences were a source of jokes, but then we laughed at these jokes together and that was it. Now, I'm being careful to keep it to myself (although I'm pretty sure that my coworkers don't care, but... I don't want to stir up the pot).

"So, overall... life here ain't horrible, but it also tells us about how much the general attitude depends on what is being said on the media. It is so easy for the madman at the top to point his finger at LGBT people, or at the Jews for that matter, or at anything else... and the general public will be all too happy to see gas chambers running again, as it has been proven already many times over in the past. The solution, of course, is not to let insane people rule the countries, but - somehow, psychiatric assessment is required for obtaining a driver license, but not for the president seat."

Does she think about migrating from Russia? "It's a difficult question," she answers. "I've been thinking about it many times over and couldn't decide. There are my friends, there is my elderly mother to care for... Maybe I should attempt to migrate, though. I can't decide, honestly. Things are not going well here, that's certain. But, then," she adds grinning, "they were much worse at times."

So when she is not in Russia, you will often find her drifting, mermaid-like, beneath the Second Life sea, where life is more peaceful:

"Yes," Alina says smiling, "I'm often playing as a mermaid.. the underwater world of SL is an interesting place to explore... hidden from public eyes."

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Comments

[jay]

Sad, insightful and courageous

[iisingh]

Best article on this blog for about 5 years. Thanks this was really interesting. I wish I could say that about the rest of the articles. I would like to hear more. This is at least relevant.

[Orca Flotta]

So Alina wishes to return to the safety, peace and quiet of communism?

I guess Vladimir Putin is the best president that coud ever happen to Russia (which doesn't make Russia his, as the title so recklessly propagandistic suggests). I the face of ongoing provocation and threats from the West he remains adorably calm and level-headed. Should a war start you can't blame it on Russia. And make no mistake; if Russia really wanted the Ukraine they would have it in one afternoon. But as the last thousand years have already showed us, Russia is the least aggressive country on earth and never showed any interest in a westward expansion, other than what was necessary. For example after WW2, when bullied so badly by the western powers.

The quote by Angie Merkel was for the western media, in reality she and Putin are on good terms, phoning every couple days (he speaks German very well and I guess she can do a little Russian as well) and planning future cooperation and business. She knows quite well that Russia and China are our most important markets and always reliable and true to their words. And contrary to the US they aren't broke =^.^=

[Laetizia Coronet (@tishcoronet)]

"petty vandalism acts like setting our front door on fire, smashed car windows"

Petty? here in southern Italy that's considered Mafia intimidation. "Shut up (in your case "leave") or else..." Not at all petty.

[Anonymous]

Putin is a monster. He wants to created a cold war with the West again. Russia is not a benign country. Right now Russia is planning to rebuild it's missiles and set up another base in Cuba.

[Issa Heckroth]

Putin is a Snake, but we in the west are hardly a bunch of rosy-cheeked cherubs either.

[Iggy]

Seems to support some points made by NWN readers that VR will provide an escape to those of us in desperate RL situations. I just wish her the best: the thug Putin will not "go down" easily or peacefully.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Putin! KGB! Gulag! Tekki-wiki commie FIC!

Just had a "You Know Who" moment there.

More seriously Russia sounds like a place GLBT-me would not want to be in. Personally, I'd bug out for somewhere else.