yekaterinburg, russia <u+2014> not long ago, i was invited to a sauna in yekaterinburg, the fourth-largest city in russia, just on the asian side of the urals. going to the sauna is a full-day event in russia, and i was not alone. the owner of the sauna had also invited his burly, self-assured, middle-aged friends. after a particularly hot steaming, we left the sauna <u+2014> so new that some of the boards still wept sap <u+2014> and went to a porch to cool down. still glowing from the heat, i heard the same questions i had gotten over my year of living and teaching in the urals: what is an american doing in yekaterinburg? do i like it here? do i miss america? then i got the question i dreaded: what do i think of donald trump? most of the russians i have met follow the news about the american election, and everyone from my students to taxi drivers has asked me about it. having been through enough frustrating conversations, i did my best to avoid answering. but the most intimidating of the group, a thick-chested man with a graying-cactus hairstyle, cornered me. i told him that mr. trump seemed like a fool to me, that i doubted he could lead a country. the conversation soured. the man countered that mr. trump was a good businessman, and a good businessman couldn<u+2019>t be a fool. i noted that mr. trump had gone through several bankruptcies. he finally said what was most important to him about the candidate: <u+201c>trump likes russia.<u+201d> since the united states and the european union imposed economic sanctions in 2014 for russia<u+2019>s annexation of crimea, russians have been hurting. two years ago, the ruble was worth about twice what it is today, and the effects of the currency<u+2019>s loss in value can be seen everywhere. for example, if one of the men in the sauna with me wanted to buy a decent, non-designer pair of shoes, he would have to spend an entire average weekly paycheck. further, my companions knew that russia<u+2019>s president, vladimir v. putin, would never do anything to get the sanctions lifted. when mr. trump said during one of the republican presidential debates that he would get along well with mr. putin, the message was spread through the state-controlled media. some russians, the prickly-haired man included, saw mr. trump as an american presidential candidate who could help. they believe they need a pro-russian president of the united states. maybe this outsider would make life easier for them, since change on the domestic level seems so unlikely. for them, mr. trump represents hope for de-escalation. by contrast, hillary clinton likened mr. putin to hitler , which is something you do not do. the history is far too strong. no country lost more lives in world war ii than the soviet union. mrs. clinton, the saunagoers felt, wasn<u+2019>t a candidate they could look to with hope. the state-controlled media doesn<u+2019>t make an effort to curtail this distaste. reports about the second presidential debate focused on mrs. clinton<u+2019>s inaccuracies with little mention of mr. trump<u+2019>s. likewise, mr. trump<u+2019>s repellent 2005 comments about assaulting women, while reported, were overshadowed by mr. trump<u+2019>s pre-debate news conference featuring women accusing bill clinton of sexual misconduct. not all russians are pro-trump. most of my students were alarmed by the idea of his even being nominated. during my last lesson with one of my students, she and i talked about mr. trump and about the word <u+201c>clown,<u+201d> which sounds the same in russian as in english and has the same derisive meaning. most of my russian friends also called mr. trump a clown when i asked them what they thought of his suggestion that russia should hack mrs. clinton<u+2019>s emails. don<u+2019>t get me wrong: russians are used to overbearing political figures. mr. putin once led cranes on their migration route on a hang glider. there are many obvious differences between mr. putin and mr. trump, but one of the most significant involves choice. when mr. putin was re-elected in 2012, many russians did vote against him, his policies and his institutionalized homophobia. most of the people i<u+2019>ve met did not want him to be president again. but, as one man at the sauna told me, most russians believe they don<u+2019>t have any real say in their government and that elections don<u+2019>t matter. so there is a degree of deniability for russians in terms of what mr. putin does because they did not choose him. for these russians, their government is by the people in the way mr. trump<u+2019>s books are by mr. trump. in the united states, however, republican voters chose mr. trump to be their nominee for president. that<u+2019>s what<u+2019>s hardest to explain. russians were resigned to the inevitability of mr. putin, but republican voters picked their candidate. ordinary russians may not be entirely to blame for mr. putin, but republicans are entirely to blame for mr. trump. for an expat, an unwitting cultural ambassador, there are two battles to fight. the first, mostly fought with men like the cactus-haired one from the sauna, is convincing pro-trump russians that mr. trump is not pro-russia, he is merely pro-trump. the second battle, the harder one, was fought in my classes. my students chose to study with an american because they liked american music, films and books <u+2014> and the american dream. so when they asked me about mr. trump, what they really wanted to know was if all their hopeful ideas were wrong, if america was actually a bleak and violent place where bigotry and nativism could really fuel a candidate. the second battle was against the death of an international idealization of my home country. i<u+2019>m not sure i won. thomas carey frazier is a private english teacher in yekaterinburg, russia. follow the new york times opinion section on facebook and twitter , and sign up for the opinion today newsletter . a version of this op-ed appears in print on october 28, 2016, on page a15 of the new york edition with the headline: explaining trump in russia. today's paper | subscribe
how do you explain trump in russia?
thomas carey frazier