MOSCOW, August 6, 2005 -- Regime change is coming to Russia, warns Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his first political assault on Putin since he was put in cold storage for having the audacity to say bad things about his Dear Leader a couple of years ago (Chapt. 133).
If Putin steps back and lets a fair and open election take place, the regime change will occur peacefully, Khodorkovsky says. But if Putin tries to manipulate the election and install his own choice through force or intimidation, he will still lose his throne, but not peacefully.
Social unrest is growing, Khodorkovsky declared. The gap between expectation and reality has “come into the open” with the protests earlier this year against the loss of financial benefits for pensioners, veterans, and invalids.
“The will of the people toward justice and change has become stronger and more demonstrative,” he asserted, adding that Putin is tightening his stranglehold on potential opposition and the free press with good reason: “He knows he cannot hold onto power in a free and fair election.”
The only way Putin can prevent revolution is to step aside and “let the will of the people be expressed.” Even if a hand-picked Putin successor takes control in 2008, he would have to adopt pro-property rights and re-institute some paternalistic programs to keep the state from imploding, Khodorkovsky said.
That Putin is aware – and afraid -- of the danger is clear from the paranoia that rules the Kremlin these days. But he has also made it clear he has no intention of permitting a free election. Instead, he is shoring up his defenses in every nook and cranny. A couple of weeks ago, a top church official told a mass gathering of his “Ours” youth supporters – “kommisars” they’re called -- that a revolution would be very dangerous for Russia and must be prevented at all costs.
In fact, liberal politician and 2004 Putin election opponent Irina Khakamada dismisses the idea of a near-term revolution because Putin has already amassed so much power that it would quickly be put down – I would imagine with much bloodshed and a further sharp turn to the right.
But Alexei Kondaurov, a Former KGB general and ex-chief of Yukos’ analytical department, told the Moscow Times that he agreed with Khodorkovsky that “If there is not a systemic change in the direction of policy, and if the government continues to work in the same way it has been, sooner or later it will all end up in tears.”
How long will the Kremlin continue to let Khodorkovsky’s verbal attacks and criticisms emanate from Federal Detention Facility 91?
What are they going to do to stop it, arrest him?
Of course not. But one Kremlin insider said it would be easy for the Kremlin to discredit him by airing propaganda films against him on state-controlled TV; for instance, by tying him to the murders in the ’90s allegedly carried out by former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin.
Observers are offering different assessments of Khodorkovsky’s potential political role and its effectiveness. Khakamada expessed doubt that any oligarch – even a martyred Khodorkovsky – could gain a wide enough following among the Russian people quickly enough to be considered a de facto anti-Putin rallying force in 1908, although he might evolve into “the spiritual leader of the opposition.”
But if my 20-year-old student Kostya, a legal assistant in Masha’s law firm, is any litmus test, Khodorkovsky’s got a long way to go before the rank-and-file Russian would get behind him. Kostya comes from a well-do-do capitalist family – his father had the Moscow Jeep dealership until faltering sales and profits forced him to sell it – and expresses strong feelings about personal freedom and human rights.
But he still scorns Khodorkovsky as only a self-centered oligarch who sought only profits. Kostya dismissed Khodorkovsky’s charitable organizations and attempts to foster democracy and an open society in Russia.
“He was just trying to buy political power,” he snorted.
My Zhorik campaign is not following the script. Our relationship is not getting any more intimate. He’s not snuggling eagerly into my waiting arms at night. He’s registered his own e-mail address on my computer and instead of bedding down with me in his sexy shorts at 11:30, he’s spending the night chasing poumintang all over Russia via the Internet. He’s ready to go to bed about the time I get up.
We’ve never had our intimate conversation, and now never will; though this morning as we were chatting and I was lasciviously massaging – at his request -- his stomach, nipples, and navel, I said, “can I suck your dick sometime?”
“Dane,” he chided. “It doesn’t interest me. I only like girls.”
“But orgasms are fun,” I replied.
“Only with girls.”
So it looks like any orgasms induced by my loving fingers in his presence will be my own – while he sleeps.
Although he’s a sound sleeper, he still stirs when I start fondling his pretty little piska, and turns over on his stomach. The only exception is when he’s drunk. Of course, I can wait for that – and won’t even have to be too patient -- but it’s not really the loving, intimate, mutually affectionate relationship I had fashioned for us.
Still we are very close, and chat like a couple of little kids in quiet moments together. He doesn’t treat me like his “dedushka,” or grandfather. He loves for me to massage his stomach and back before he finally nods off to sleep. Yesterday after the sandman finally struck, I managed to wangle his dick out of his shorts and caress it with my eyes long enough to fill my fist with gism – my own, unfortunately.
But what the hell? It’s not the first time in my life I’ve made love alone together.
Yesterday he finally managed to get out of bed while it was still morning and go to the University of Humanities and Economics at Octyaberskaya Metro Station, where he’s decided he wants to study this fall. He has to take an entrance exam tomorrow. If he passes, he will need to pay his USD600 tuition next week.
Frankly, unless the test is rigged, I don’t see how he can pass it. When he was filling out the Internet application for his “mail.ru” e-mail address, he was having as much trouble reading three-syllable Russian words as I was. He’s clearly no intellectual giant. I’m certain he bribed – with my money – his way through the lyceum in Peter.
“So what happens if you don’t pass it?” I asked him today. “Maybe pay a bribe?” I suggested in the time-honored Russian tradition. He shrugged his shoulders.
But that would be even worse. We don’t even have the basic USD600. I sent Andrei and Sergei an SMS today telling them that unless they send money, there’s nothing for Zhorik’s tuition.
“What if we don’t have the money?” I asked Zhorik. “Will you have to go to the Army?”
No, he said, because he’s registered in Stavropol region. “But I’ll have to wait another year before I can register in the university,” he said. “I’ll get a job.”
In his phone call Tuesday, Sergei said he was coming next week.
“Don’t fly,” I instructed in my SMS. “It’s too expensive.” The more than USD350 the plane tickets would cost would more than pay the USD300 interest we Owe Rod and Nadya.
I have paid them USD2,000 of the USD3,000. I have about USD800 left in the bank and I’ll get another USD850 in my pension account a week from today. With some help from my students, I should have enough to pay my USD700 rent and the final USD1,000 to Rod and Nadya. But nothing more – no repayment for Bill Skyrme, no USD300 interest for EE, and no USD600 for Zhorik’s tuition -- unless Sergei comes through.
However, Zhorik said this morning in one of our deliciously intimate -- almost --conversations that maybe he could borrow USD600 from his lawyer friend Valera and repay it in December.
But I’ve finally run out of money – temporarily, I hope, barring some catastrophe. The good news: It makes it lot easier to say no.
Igor yesterday asked me to loan him about USD350 till Friday. “No.”
It’s a skill I want to hone.
My lot will improve the first week in September, but not until October will I be really well.
My long-awaited “John Smith” fantasies materialized Sunday evening. Ivan Petrovich called again about 9 p.m., asked where the twins were, and again said he had “a couple of young boys” he wanted me to meet.
All atwitter, I arrived at 10 p.m. in front of Rostik’s, Russia’s McDonald’s, across the street from the Bellarusskaya Metro Station. Sure enough, Ivan pranced in on cue – close to 50, front teeth missing, and quite limp-wristed. “And here are the boys,” he beamed, “Zhenya and Edik.”
Ugh-oh.
Clearly, I was spared the dilemma I had feared: that they would be such drop-dead beautiful 18-year-olds and so adorable that I wouldn’t be able to resist kicking Zhorik out of bed to make a place for them.
Okay, so they had no redeeming physical features -- not cute, not handsome, not young, not irresistible.
I grasped for a straw: Maybe they’re at least nice.
We sat down on a bench in the courtyard in front of my apartment to drink the two beers I had brought. That turned out to be enough – Edik and Zhenya announced they didn’t drink (another strike against them).
Two or three locals were standing nearby. “Ooh,” said Ivan, “they look like mafia. Could we go someplace else?”
“Well, we could go to my apartment.”
We bumped into Zhorik in the entryway, and I introduced them. Zhorik immediately retreated to our room to watch TV while the three hustlers and I gathered in the kitchen “to get acquainted.”
“Have you got anything to eat?” demanded Edik, a skinny, dark, bespectacled dude who claimed to be Hungarian, but was probably Romanian gypsy. “I’m hungry.”
So I pulled out the left-over potatoes and salad Zhorik had fixed for supper. While he was gobbling them down, I asked Ivan:
“How did you know about me?”
“Through Shurik,” he said, adding, “What did you think of Shurik?” I gave him the so-so signal. They all three giggled.
“How do you know Andrei and Sergei?” I continued.
“We met at Kitai Gorod about a year ago.”
Alarm bells.
“Can I smoke?” asked Edik, pushing away the emptied plate.
“No,” I snapped. “You’ll be going soon. You can wait.”
We chatted a little longer.
I heard “sleep here” from Zhenya.
“You slept here?” I asked incredulously.
“No, he wants to sleep here tonight,” rejoined Ivan.
“Out of the question,” I said.
“Why?” Zhenya asked.
“Because there are already two other people living here,” I said, which was kinder than “I’m not about to let an ugly, dirty, homeless hustler like you sleep in my bed!”
Even so, my sweet christian tolerance was reaching its limit.
“Well, I have some work to do tonight,” I said, pushing away from the table.
“That’s okay, we’re going to the night club -- Chance.”
They stood up to go. As I walked with them to the door, Ivan whispered, “could we have a little money – you know, for the road?”
I looked at him in shock! “Absolutely not.”
I was seething as I almost shoved them out the door. Who the hell did they think they were? Who the hell did they think I was? The answer was clear: A rich American patsy whose home was open to any street hustler who likes to have his dick sucked. So I know now what kind of stories Shurik spread about me. They knew I had taken him to Prague. They must have thought they had struck gold!
Oh, well, that’s two fantasies up, two down, in less than a week.
The twins’ Uncle Sasha said god loves things in threes. Let’s hope she forgets this time.
Or is Zhorik the third?
“A gay parade permit was requested for Moscow, but Mayor Luzhkov turned it down,” my student Anton informed me today. “I heard about it on the radio. And I think they’re right.”
“You think the parade is right, or turning it down is right?”
“Turning it down.”
Well, that answered a question I’ve had for some time: Anton hasn’t guessed that I’m gay – despite the fact that he brought me two pair of shorts from Italy!
“It’s very bad for our country. It will destroy us,” he continued.
“How will it destroy us?”
Young people drinking and smoking cigarettes on the streets.
“What does that have to do with gays?” I asked Anton, whose synapses, I’ve noticed, don’t always come together just right at the junctions.
“It would just corrupt our youth more. It would spoil our society. We’re not ready. Maybe in 20-30 years.”
“It hasn’t spoiled American society, or Dutch society, or Spanish society.”
“They’re ahead of us.”
“Do you think there aren’t any gays in Moscow?”
“Sure. But let them go to their clubs, maybe in the suburbs. But not in the Moscow center. If you give them one day (for a parade), they’ll want 3, or 4 or more.”
“Every city in America has a gay parade every year. And they don’t ask for three or four.”
“I still agree that it should be prohibited.”
The parade, I presume, and not homosexuality, since he thinks “To be or not to be gay. That’s your own business. It shouldn’t be illegal.”
But apparently you also shouldn’t be proud. And you shouldn’t let anybody know.
Sounds suspiciously like “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Maybe Clinton made too many trips to Russia before coming up with his military gay policy.
I had an SMS from Vanya in Nizhny Novgorod saying he’d changed his mind and was going to the Crimea after all and would come here afterwards. “I’ll be glad to see you,” I replied, “but please don’t ask for money. I don’t have any.”
And a phone call from Sasha in Hoboken Monday night. He’s at last found friends – Italians -- and is happy and having a good time. My dear old House-of-Beatrice buddy Sydny Brown has contacted him and they’re going to get together after Syd finishes the film he’s working on.
Sasha asked me to send him a couple more chapters of my memoirs and the link to The Red Queen. I told him to look for his pseudonym in the cast of characters. I think he’ll recognize himself immediately.
After all, how many “loyal and devoted friends” do I have?
Hmmm, let me think….well, quite a few, actually: Sasha, Basil, Boris, Slava, Marco, Syd, Bruce, Dave Gremmels…, Hey, am I a lucky son-of-a-bitch or what? But I still think Sasha will recognize himself.
Chapt. 153 – 2511 words
Columns :: Fantasies suffer bad run: Regime change coming?
MOSCOW, August 5, 2005 -- Comments: Ratings: 
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