Model Minority

ULAN-UDE, Russia — Pity the indigenous Siberian.

Ruled by a government five time zones distant, the native population has had its religion muzzled, culture destroyed and witnessed mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

It's hardly unique to the people in Siberia. Native Americans, Outback Aboriginals, and the Incas didn't have so easy, either. But here in the capital of Buryata, one of Siberia's largest ethnic minorities, the population is a taking an interesting turn from the type indigenous tale of woe and mistreatment. I don't want to say this to loudly, but the natives here appear to be doing just fine.

I saw my first Buryat on the Moscow Metro, a young woman with long, skinny legs and a slender frame. Her face was a revelation – a completely new type of visage. She had a long, very flat forehead, a broad nose and very small eyelids. She looked almost Korean, but her skin tone was much lighter, just a shade darker than a pale Russians. At first it seemed to be an impossible look, and I thought that this person must be an Kazakh Albino or just exceptionally light-skinned. But every day I would pass a couple people with the same features, and I realized there wasn't anything unusual about her look, just that there are very few Buryats found outside of Russia.

In Moscow that distinctive face can be dangerous. Right-wing, nationalist street gangs prowl the night, taunting, beating, and sometimes permanently disabling Asian faces in the city. The primary target is illegal migrants from Central Asia, Uzebks and Tajiks who come to Moscow to escape dire living conditions at home – conditions exacerbated by Russia's stranglehold on these countries' economies. There's a jingoistic undercurrent to this violence, and anyone who doesn't look Russian is a possible target.

A Moscow Times story describes what happened to a young Buryat, Yury, coming home to apartment one evening:

"About six teenagers, smaller guys, jumped me on the metro. I managed to throw them off me and it wasn't that serious at first," he recollected during an interview in his dorm room. "Then one of them yelled 'What are you waiting for?' and another stabbed me as they ran out of the car," he said, displaying a three-inch scar near his left kidney. As Yury, who declined to give his last name for this story, staggered around the metro station looking for help and bleeding profusely, the police stopped him for a document check. They helped themselves to all his cash and then decided to call the paramedics.

There are only 5,000 Buryats in a Moscow over 10 million. Here things are different. Buryats make up more than a third of the population, with more than a quarter-million in the Republic. That proportion seems low in the capital, Ulan-Ude, where most people have the distinctive face.

I spent most of the day passing those faces, walking the streets of the city. Ulan-Ude is in the middle of a cold snap, which in the middle of Siberia means it's really, really cold. Temperatures were more than a dozen degrees below zero during the day, and quickly plunge to -40 once the sun is down. There is no humidity in the dry, crisp air, so everyone must cover up to avoid the cold. This makes Buryat spotting quite difficult, as there is little difference in the way the two groups dress outside. Everyone wears a long fur coat, men in dark brown or black, women often in a cream. On the head women wear more fur, usually a peaked hat. Men sport something resembling a thick wool beret, which seems to keep the head warm but I'm not sure offers the ears any protection. Shoes and pants are muted colors, and draw the eye up to the dead animal warming the person above.

Fancy wool coats are a mark of luxury in America, and while they are less expensive and more of an essential here, hopelessly broke people don't own them. And the coats look rather new and well put together.

At the post office, mailing some postcards that say "Moscow" and "Warsaw," I wait in line behind several, uncovered women. The one in front of me is especially attractive, hair recently curved and her pale face covered with a layer of cover up. She wears a fire-engine red shade of lipsticks, and carries a fashionable black handbag. She appears to be off to a party after dropping some bills in the mail.

My winter stroll left me hungry, so I stopped into several restaurants looking for food. I found the offerings too upscale for my taste, including a sushi restaurant in a hotel lobby; a Russian restaurant, located underground and down a steep, winding staircase; and a tapa bar that also served sushi. At each place a dinner would be over $20, but the restaurants were all mostly full, primarily with Buryat customers. These middle-class patrons are served by an almost exclusively Russian wait staff.

Buryats run the convenience stores, the hair salons and the travel agencies. On the pedestrian shopping street, Buryats mingle with rusting Socialist statues celebrating the Double Helix and scientific progress, carrying bags of new clothes from the post-holiday sales. I go to a music store to find cheap, bootleg Siberian music and instead find fancy cell phones and iPod Nanos at nearly double their American price. There is a line at the register.

A consistent theme of Russia journalism in the Western Media is the presence of "Two Russias," Moscow and the poor countryside. Here in Siberia the capital's wealth appears to be spreading, impacting people in provincial cities and historically-repressed minorities. It's amazing and completely unexpected. I wish I had the services of a Russian guide, and could look up at academic at the local Buddhist university. I want to know why things seem O.K. here, and if this model could help the fractious relations in the multi-ethnic republic to the south.

I'm not naive enough to believe things are fine here; life for the Buryats is not easy. The countryside is still very poor, the birthrate is not high, corruption is widespread, costs are increasing for everyday items with the surplus of foreign currency. But these are problems of the entire Russia, not just the minority populations. In this world, that's a real sign of progress.