Hugh Andrew: Russian pub's lesson in how to celebrate Scottish heritage

A FEW weeks ago I was having a glass of Bruichladdich in The McHighlander. Nothing too strange in that, one might think. However, this Scottish pub was in Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan in the Urals. Its owner, inspired by a reading of Scott's Ivanhoe, had created the leading nightspot in the town. But the oddest thing of all was how true it was to Scott: the claymores, the Declaration of Arbroath in Russian, the mournful Russians in kilts. Kitsch, yes, but respectful, well-intentioned kitsch

It was a part of a trip in which I saw the house of Karamzin, the Father of Russian history, the house where Marina Tsvetaeva killed herself, the desk where Pasternak wrote Dr Zhivago, the room where Shostakovich finished the Leningrad Symphony. From restoring churches to running tiny museums, everywhere there were individuals recovering their past: who they had been, where their roots were, and what had made them individuals in this vast country.

As I returned to Scotland one of my compatriots on the flight remarked: "At last, a return to a true Soviet state." It did not take long to get a sense of Brezhnevite torpor compared with the buzz and capitalist dynamism I had witnessed in Russia. Uncut grass, litter drifting across the roads, graffiti, vandalism. "Welcome Home to the Best Small Country in the World."

But something deeper struck me on a recent sales trip. Where are our memorials? I went through Argyll - home of one of our greatest writers of the 20th century, Robin Jenkins. What was there? Nothing, precisely nothing. Back in Edinburgh I went into Milne's Bar, the legendary poets' pub once full of the portraits of those who had drunk there - MacCaig, Mac- Diarmid, Garioch, Goodsir Smith, Maclean - to discover the photographs have been flogged off to create yet another theme pub.

Of course it is true we do preserve our heritage - with greater resources than Russia - but it is often a sanitised and centralised heritage: dead buildings displaced from the people who built them in the name of a "heritage industry" and "tourist destinations". There is something diseased in our pawky complacency and neglect of the past. We toast Burns yet do not read him; we are children of Scott yet do not understand him. We turn historical events from Bannockburn to the Clearances into two-dimensional caricatures.

What is created is a false sense of identity - a bland, one-size-fits-all Scotland that never existed - when in fact there is a multiplicity of geographical, linguistic, occupational, political and religious identities which have shaped and continue to shape the country we live in. If these elements are allowed to wither then so do the community and the diversity that make up the rich tapestry of our country. In Russia, with 70 years of history and culture being controlled and rewritten according to the ideological diktats of the Politburo, they know the significance of memory and identity. In Scotland, one of the most centralised states in Europe, the dreary grey shroud of conformity and ideological correctness seeps like haar through the streets.

If where you come from is not truly felt, understood and lived, then how can you know where you are going? And if you do not know where you are going then there are forces only too willing to take you to an unpleasant surprise destination and only too happy to give you an identity that suits their interests .

In the meantime I raise a glass of Bruichladdich to Mr Igor Baranov, owner of the McHighlander Scottish pub, a Russian who knew how important it was to be a Scot.

l Hugh Andrew is managing director of Birlinn and Polygon