The night of Russia’s famous victory over Spain, the permissive society broke out on to the streets. Moscow was free, happy, joyous. People danced on top of cars outside GUM, the department store alongside the Bolshoi Theatre. At 4am, with the sun already high in the sky, fans covered one of the main roads around Moscow, shutting it off for a street party, waving the Russian flag. Here was Russian pride stripped of militarism, removed of toxicity, brought to light by football, by the flick of Igor Akinfeev’s boot, by the sort of moments only World Cups can bring. It was unique, historic, brilliant, baffling and unlikely ever to be repeated, unless Russia win the whole thing.

Before the World Cup, there was some trepidation. Russians worried that visiting fans would arrive with pre-conceived, loaded perceptions of their country. They were unsure how conversations would go, how they would field questions about President Vladimir Putin, Crimea, racism and homophobia. Visitors, too, were hesitant. They read the newspapers, watched television bulletins. The little they knew about Russia wasn’t positive. They set off, from England, from Denmark, from Peru, from Senegal, with some doubts.

World Cup The Hod Complex: England and the 1998 World Cup 30/06/2020 AT 07:16

When visiting fans arrived, things began to change. In the first few days before the opening game, the atmosphere built slowly. Peru fans were the first to arrive in big numbers, visible all over Moscow in their iconic jerseys. Then came the rest of South America, then Mexico and then Iran. Officially, they were directed to the Fifa Fan Fest, located just south of the Luzhniki Stadium, but the party erupted onto Nikolskaya Ulitsa, a long, pedestrianised street that runs off Red Square. Up and down the street, different sections belonged to different fans. Iranians brandished a banner of Carlos Quieroz in the middle of a group of their most famous footballers. Argentinians trotted out flags adorned with the faces of Lionel Messi and Paulo Dybala. Mexicans wore their famous wrestling masks and sombreros.

Mexico's fans walk past the Bolshoi theatre in central Moscow Image credit: Getty Images

Everywhere in Moscow, and in the central areas of the other World Cup cities, there was a riot of colour and noise. As the days went on, a few Russia flags popped up in the middle of the party. After the 5-0 win over Saudi Arabia, the World Cup began to capture local consciousness. Russians danced with Argentinians, sang with Mexicans and took pictures with Iranians. If the World Cup was supposed to push politics aside, if football was meant to bring people together, it was working. Friends in Moscow told me that they had never witnessed anything like it. Visiting fans were buoyant. They spoke with surprise and incredulity about the country they were visiting. It’s nothing like we thought” was a common refrain. In Nizhny Novgorod, ahead of the Panama game, England fans told me that a lot more fans would have visited, if they knew what Russia was really like.

The first couple of weeks of Russia’s World Cup were special. People came for a party and they got one. Russians were determined to enjoy every minute, to savour every interaction, to cherish every memory. Nothing like this will ever happen again, they thought. Never again will a plane from Moscow to Samara be filled with singing Uruguayans, or a trip to Saransk be lit up by chanting Peruvians.

But the experience of this sort of freedom, of liberating public space in this way, gave Russians some pause. For locals, after the group stages, some of the amazement gave way to dismay. They began to wonder why this had to be a once in a lifetime opportunity, why the sight of people partying around Red Square was so novel, and why their everyday experience was not filled with such colour and noise.

In the weekend of the first knock-out games, a video of a Russian fan speaking to a police officer emerged on social media. The fan asked if, when the World Cup is finished, he would be able to walk on the street with a beer, like the visiting fans do. The police officer, answered, Are you a Russian guy? Then for you it won’t be allowed”. And if I’m not a Russian?”, the fan asked. Then you can”, the police officer replied, for them [foreign visitors] everything is permitted”.

The video encapsulated a developing mood in Russia. Locals, especially in Moscow, begun to wonder why the privileges extended to visiting fans are not available to them every week of the year. They saw the banners pinned up on Nikolskaya Ulitsa as a metaphor for the temporary permissiveness of the World Cup. Usually, on a regular weekend, if a group of Spartak or CSKA Moscow fans were to walk along the streets with a few cans, pinning up banners close to Red Square, they would be reprimanded. The beers and banners would be confiscated and the fans may be escorted to a police station to explain themselves. But during the first few weeks of the World Cup, police officers watched on idly, with no threat of punishment for visiting fans. This dichotomy between the World Cup and the everyday provoked some deep thinking in Russia. If Russian public space can be like this in June and July, many wonder, why not in August, in September, in 2019 and beyond?

But the temporary permissiveness also brought about a moral panic in some sections of Russian society. Social conservatives objected to Russian women engaging in sexual relations with visiting fans. Several groups popped up on VKontakte, a Russian social media site, shaming” women who chose to engage with foreigners. At the official level, Tamara Pletnyova, a Duma deputy who heads the Family, Women and Children Affairs committee, warned Russian women about foreign men. There will be girls who meet men, and then they will give birth,” she told a Russian radio station. Maybe they will get married, maybe they won’t. But the kids will suffer. It is one thing if the parents are of the same race; quite another if they are of different races. We should give birth to our own children.”

After her comments, social liberals dismissed Pletnyova as a racist. Yuri Dud, a prominent interviewer and chief editor of Russian website sports.ru, published an enraged editorial in which he said that Russian women can have sex with anyone they want. He attacked Russian men for their hypocrisy, their conservative attitude and their inadequate grooming habits. He urged them to respect Russian women.

As the World Cup moved towards the quarter-finals, Russian society’s divides were exposed. For some, conservatives, fear and worry blinded their enjoyment. But for most, the first few weeks of the tournament were defining moments in their lives. They got to see Cristiano Ronaldo in Sochi, Lionel Messi in Nizhny Novgorod. They danced with Moroccans, walked arm-in-arm with new friends from Senegal. They now wonder why this atmosphere cannot remain, why Russia cannot always be like this, why public space is regularly not given over to colour and noise. When the World Cup party finally moves on, many Russians hope that the country will be permanently altered.

World Cup Qatar World Cup could be expanded and shared between other nations 31/10/2018 AT 04:42