MOSCOW, April 30, 2007 --Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, is dead. And buried. The eulogies have poured in, the newspapers have opined. Private anger and grief have been expressed.
The Western voices, while lamenting his many failings, have generally praised him for initiating “free speech, free association and free elections” (Wash. Post) in Russia, for giving Russia its first taste of freedom (Wall Street Journal), and for being “a towering force for good” (The Times of London).
This was also echoed by some Russian voices. Sharp Putin critic Yulia Latynina in a Moscow Times op-ed piece observed that “Under Yeltsin, Russia experienced a free society for the first time in the 20th century,” a freedom that even Putin hasn’t been able to take away “despite the television station closures, the redistribution of major industries and the presence of former secret service personnel in the corridors of power.”
But my student Alexei, a lawyer for a publishing company and serious student of current events, says that it was Gorbachev that gave Russia free speech and free association in the Perestroika years. Yeltsin just left them intact. Other than that, his record was one of repeated mistakes and failures.
The harshest judgment of all comes from Russian Alexei Pankin, editor of something called Mediaprofi. Yeltsin, he said, was calculating and petty and powered solely by revenge and a thirst for power which “knew no bounds.” Echoing my student Alexei, he said that Yeltsin didn’t change anything that hadn’t already been changed by Gorbachev.
In fact, Pankin contends, it wasn’t to bury totalitarianism and give birth to freedom that Yeltsin broke up the Soviet Union, but as a simple act of revenge against Gorbachev for humiliating him before a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1987.
What better way to get revenge “than to yank a president’s country out from under him?”
“From that moment on,” Pankin contends, “revenge became the animating force in Yeltsin’s life.”
Sympathetic or critical, most observers agree that Yeltsin’s biggest mistake was picking Putin as his successor, a choice we now know was made solely because Yeltsin was convinced that Putin could be trusted not to prosecute him and his family for their numerous crimes and foreign bank accounts.
As for me, it’s hard to seriously think of Boris Yeltsin as a world leader. I will never forgive him, not for being the bumbling alcoholic clown that he was, but for squandering the absolutely unique historic moment that was handed him to install a true democracy in Russia.
He failed Russia and the world.
He had the charisma to capture power, but not the good sense and the imagination to know what to do with it. He literally gave away all Russia’s natural resources to high-placed pals – now known as oligarchs -- in return for a big cut of the heist. His manipulation of the 1996 election was so egregious it undercut all his pretensions of democracy. Worst of all, he was never sober long enough to get the help he needed to establish a democracy, if that’s truly what he wanted to do.
But unfortunately, “democracy” is nevertheless what he insisted on calling his chaotic and mismanaged rule, and its abysmal failure has scuttled – perhaps forever -- any chance that Russia might evolve into a truly democratic society.
After the disorder and mayhem over which he presided, it is with open arms that 70% of the Russian people today welcome the dictatorial -- but orderly, mind you – dictatorship of the former KGB spy.
They prefer Putin’s orderly dictatorship to Yeltsin’s unpredictable chaos.
So if you today mention democracy to most Russians, they’ll tell you, “No, thanks; been there, did that.” But they haven’t been there. They haven’t done that. And now, thanks to Yeltsin, they probably never will.
And in the process of enshrining Yeltsin comes a bit of classic Orwellian doublespeak from Russia’s Great Leader himself:
“A man has died, thanks to whom a whole new era began. A new democratic Russia was born: a free state open to the world in which power really does belong to the people.”
Anybody recognize what country he’s talking about? It ain’t Russia.
But now for a bit of stupidspeak from your own Great Leader, for which I’m indebted to a contributor to the energy resources site:
A Lancet journal study published in 2005 looked at the casualty figures the American invasion had inflicted on Iraq and concluded that "…comparable casualties in our country would mean that every person in Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia would be dead. Every. Single. Person.
"Besides that unimaginable death toll, every person in Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina, and Colorado would be wounded. Every. Single. Person."
A few days later, your Great Leader appeared on “60 minutes” and proclaimed: "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude."
If you’ve seen one Great Leader you’ve seen them all.
From a biographer of Stalin and Andrei Sakharov comes the best explanation I’ve found yet of why an administration “with a 70% approval rating” would resort to “rubber truncheons to quash small, marginal political demonstrations,” as Putin did at the “dissidents’ march” two weeks ago (Chapt. 244, 245).
You can chalk it up to “the traumatic collapse of the Soviet Union,” and the personal sense of “loss, regret, and acrimony” with which it left him, says writer Richard Lourie.
Putin’s generation may never recover from the shock that “something as mighty and gigantic as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could vanish so suddenly and so easily. The Titanic of empires, it was the biggest ship of state that ever sank.
“…For people like Putin who were on board…when it began sinking, the one lasting lesson is that if something so seemingly invincible as the Soviet Union can go down so swiftly, there’s no reason the same thing can’t happen with the new Russia, which is smaller and less fearsome.”
This, he insists, goes far to explain “…the brutality in Chechnya, the fear of a Ukraine-style revolution and non-governmental organizations, the centralization of authority, the control of the media, and the beating of demonstrators….”
He points to Putin’s own rationale in his biography First Person: “My…historical mission…consisted of resolving the situation in the Northern Caucasus…and Chechnya [which is] a continuation of the collapse of the Soviet Union….
“If we don’t put an inmmediate end to this, Russia will cease to exist.”
Thus while his administration enjoys unprecedented popular support, Lourie says, the Putin Kremlin lives in constant fear of “how fast it might fade.”
Though the collapse of the Soviet Union may explain Putin’s excesses of power, it does not excuse them, Lourie stresses, “any more than the wound of Sept. 11 excuses Abu Ghraib.”
Putin’s State of the Union address last Wednesday will be his last, he insisted, and many people believe him – including my lawyer student Alexei.
Furthermore, Alexei believes the election of a successor may actually reverse the current de-democratization trend. As we have noted several times (Chapt. 243, e.g.), the competition among Putin’s wannabe successors is so intense that it will continue – perhaps even intensify – once the new dude is elected; so the various political figures may even have to begin justifying their actions to the electorate in order to stay in power.
Alexei doesn’t spout conjecture thoughtlessly. He carefully ponders and weighs his observations and opinions. And the fact that he thinks this is even a possibility is enormously reassuring.
He also thinks that the grinning puppet and former defense minister Sergei Ivanov (Chapt. 236) is Putin’s most likely choice, with Medvedev, whom he is also carefully grooming (same chapter), as a likely prime minister.
Putin again made it clear that he will stay active on the political scene. Alexei thinks it would make sense for him to head one of the political parties – maybe “A Just Russia,” which he just recently created (Chapt. 239). That way he could stay politically active and enormously influential without violating or changing the constitution.
The sudden realization that my grandfather’s railroad watch has gone missing again has put me in a blue funk. After Sergei unexpectedly found it a few months ago (Chapt. 233), I started carrying it with me in the pocket watch of my black jeans, figuring that was the safest place for it.
But when my watch chain broke, I started leaving it on the desk in Igor’s and my room.
And suddenly, earlier this week, I realized it’s not there – or anywhere else. Igor, Sergei, and Denis say they also haven’t seen it recently.
I also found out just today that Ksenia, the schlukha that Denis and Igor have been spending time with and presumably fucking (though Igor denied she was his girlfriend) until Sergei threw her out last week, was a drug user – if not an addict.
Sergei says he threw her out when he found out.
Another development occurred that makes no sense whatsoever. I discovered Friday that the huge one-volume Oxford English Dictionary that I brought with me from the States is also missing.
It’s of no use to anyone but an English scholar. A drug addict couldn’t sell it – there’s no market for it. The magnifying glass without which it is impossible to read it is still here. And it’s so gigantic and heavy that nobody could carry it out of the apartment unnoticed.
So what the fuck has happened to it? Apparently they have parallel planets in Russia too.
Adding to my funk, I met my downstairs neighbor on the stairs on Wednesday. “Your apartment is so noisy at night, I can’t sleep,” she said. “There’s loud music, television, people walking, people fighting and shouting.
“I haven’t been able to sell it, because when people come to look at it they hear the noise upstairs and they don’t want to buy it.”
She said the neighbors were talking about writing a letter of complaint to the police. That would result in a demand on my landlady to throw me out or be sued by the neighbors.
I was angry, humiliated, and embarrassed – especially so because I hate the kind of neighbor that she was describing. And it was my apartment!
I went back to the apartment, where Igor and Sergei were still sleeping at 2 p.m. because they had watched television and played computer games all night.
I woke them up and laid down the law. I told them about the conversation with the neighbor. “Starting tonight, there’s no television, no computer, no talking, no stalking the apartment , no nothing, after 12:00. Everybody will go to bed at midnight. If you can’t sleep, that’s too bad. At least go to bed so you’re not up walking the halls, talking in the kitchen, and making noise.
“And if you can’t live with that you can move. I mean everybody.”
Sergei and Denis’s immediate response was, “well they make noise upstairs too.”
“I don’t give a shit about the apartment upstairs. I’m talking about this apartment. I can’t afford to move to a new apartment right now, and I don’t want to. If you can’t live here quietly and follow my rules you can find someplace else to live.”
Everything was fine until about 11:40 that evening, when I warned Sergei and others watching TV in his room that everything would be turned off at midnight.
At 12:00 I went to the TV set, where they were watching “incredible accidents.”
“Please Dane, just 15 more minutes. I’ll be very quiet.”
“I said today everything goes off at midnight, and I meant it.” I turned it off. Tanya was sitting at the computer keyboard. “Turn it off,” I said.
Sergei threw a fit and started shouting and slammed the remote control to the floor so hard he broke it, then picked up the TV and took it to the hallway and stalked into the kitchen.
Okay, Pal, that’s it, I said to myself.
Igor was already waiting for me in bed. “Honey, I’m going to move to another apartment. Do you want to move with me?”
“Yes.”
I have very few students now who still come to the apartment for lessons, and all those who do, have cars. They could as easily come to an apartment two or three metro stations out from the city center. I could find an apartment for about $ 500 a month and save a bundle of money. Just Igor and I would move there and I would get rid of all the excess baggage and expensive hangers-on. If this is how Sergei is going to act, he can go fuck himself and find a new apartment.
I was still seething, but smug in my decision when the door opened and in came Sergei, very penitent.
“I’m sorry, Dane, I know you told us this afternoon. I just wanted to watch for a few more minutes.”
“I said midnight, and I meant midnight.”
“I won’t do that again. I’ll be quiet. We’ll all be quiet. I’m sorry.”
What could I say?
“Okay.”
In the three nights since then they’ve been quiet as churchmice. We’ve put the TV in my room where I control the programs and the volume. I think Sergei still sometimes plays computer games all night, but at least he’s quiet.
Igor and I continue to grow closer. Our affection is very real and very deep. He still annoys me sometimes because, like a lot of young Russians, time seems to have no meaning for him. When I ask him to do something, he typically replies “in a minute.” An hour or two or three later he still hasn’t done it. It’s annoying and exasperating, but not fatal, and I can live with it while I try to inculcate in him some notion of the value of time.
He’s been wanting to get a bicycle so we could ride places together. He said last week he knew a guy with an 18-speed mountain bike who was going to sell if for 6,000 rubles – 230 bucksi, but would sell it to Igor for 5,000 – about $ 190. Could I buy it for him?
Yegor owed me nearly 4,000 rubles, which was already overdue. And Sergei borrowed 2,000 almost two weeks ago which he solemnly promised to repay this week. If they paid me, I said, we could afford it.
He was overjoyed. But he had to buy it no later than Thursday, or his friend would sell it to somebody else for 6,000.
But by Wednesday my debtors still hadn’t forked it up. To make matters worse, when I had given Zhorik the money to take to his father (Chapt. 245), I had left my Raiffeisen Bank card in the machine and couldn’t get a new one till Thursday or Friday, so I couldn’t get any money out of that account. And I didn’t have 5,000 rubles in my pension account.
To top if off, all of my Information Plus classes were canceled last week because of illness, conferences, and vacation, meaning 6,000 rubles -- $ 230 -- less than I had been counting on to buy groceries and live on.
So the prospects were not bright.
Igor was visibly disappointed. I started figuring. On Thursday Yegor gave me 1500 rubles, and Denis gave me 500 of the 2,000 Sergei owed me; I had 1500 in my wallet. I got 500 from my student Lena Wed. morning and another 1,000 from student Gerd on Thursday. That’s 5,000.
But we had to buy groceries, which took 1500 of my stash.
I went to my branch of Raiffeisen bank. The card had been issued but it was at the Tverskoi Branch – a 10-min. bike ride.
So I got the money out of the bank and Igor tore off to get his new bike. He returned proud and happy.
That night, we celebrated with two bottles of a new cheap vodka cocktail. When he came to bed I asked him when we could play.
“Tonight if you want to.”
The problem was that we were both too drunk to come.
So Friday night we both went to bed about midnight, and he found a porn channel. “It’s a pretty good film,” he said. “It’s sort of an erotic film. Do you want to watch it?”
“Sure.”
He was lying on his back, expectantly. I immediately started stroking his stomach and very quickly dropped to his shorts, where I could feel his stiffening cock.
I pulled the cover down and he lifted his ass and helped me pull his shorts down.
It took a long time, but at last I could feel his rod stiffening to the strength of steel and I felt a shot of gism on my cheek before I dropped down to take the rest of it in my throat. He shot again and again.
But what was nice was a) I didn’t even have to ask; b) he was perfectly comfortable; and c) he kissed me goodnight afterwards. It’s becoming more routine for him, and he’s becoming more relaxed about it.
Before he turned the porn film on, he asked if we could go to St. Peterburg for white nights. Then he said he’d like to go back to Moldova in June.
“But white nights are in June,” I reminded him.
“Then after white nights – maybe in July.”
“It depends on the money,” I said, “but we’ll try to go.”
Zhorik is safely back in his army unit in Novosibirsk, and he didn’t suffer any ill consequences by being late returning, he said when we reached him by telephone on Saturday.
He asked if I was still planning to come visit him.
“Do you mean at New Year’s?” I asked.
“Or sooner if you can.”
“But you won’t be free until New Year’s, will you?” I SMS’d.
“I’m always free,” he replied rather surprisingly. “Decide yourself when you can come.”
“You mean you would have a week free to stay with me in a hotel anytime I wanted to come?”
“I think I can get a week free to spend with you sometime toward the end of August or the first of September.”
That poses some new problems: I doubt that that’s going to be possible because of the money situation, if nothing else. I’ve promised to send his father $ 750 on May 6, and if Igor and I go to St. Pete and on to Moldova, that would cost another $ 800 or so.
If fantasy Peter is really able to take a trip with me to Europe in August, I wouldn’t have the money to do anything else; so which will it be: Zhorik, Igor, or Peter – or none of the above?
And finally, if I have to move to a new apartment, I will need about $ 1500 for that, so all bets – and all travel -- would be off.
I replied to Zhorik that it would depend on the money situation, and my income will be down in the summer because a lot of my students go on vacation.
“What I meant was,” he replied, “I can get a week off anytime you want to come. Whenever it’s comfortable for you, you can come.”
That’s a new factor to put into the equation.
Con-man Tioufline called one night last week – drunk of course – to tell me he was back from the Ukraine and that we should get together to discuss things.
On Wednesday we met in the nearby Chocoladnitsa to talk about how he could make restitution. He said he had bought a condo in Thailand with another guy and wanted to sell it, but his partner didn’t think this is a good time for real estate there.
In the meantime, he has put $ 1500 down on a five-bedroom brick shell in the distant suburbs – an hour from Moscow center – and needs to come up with $ 20,000 by the middle of May. If I’d pay the $ 20,000, he’d pay the rest and finish off the interior and put it in my name.
I didn’t have to weigh the probabilities of his keeping his promise because I don’t have $ 20,000. I don’t even have $ 2,000 right now.
So we parted on good terms, and he acknowledged that he owes me the money. But whether that means I’ll ever get any of it or not remains to be seen. Knowing Tioufline, probably not.
Russian men’s 58-year life expectancy could be stretched to 64 if they’d scuttle their vodka, cigarettes, and fat-rich diets, says a prominent British physician who is set to launch an extensive project in Russia to educate Russians on how to adopt a more healthy lifestyle.
Premature deaths are costing the Russian economy about $ 11 billion a year, or about 1% of the gross domestic product (GDP), says Dr. Harald M. Lipman, former senior medical advisor to Britain’s state department bureaucracy and former medical advisor to the British Embassy in Moscow.
“In the absence of adequate measures to reverse this situation,” he warns in an op-ed article for the Moscow Times. “this could rise to an annual loss of $ 66 billion a year,” or 5% of the GDP.
To try to counter this, a team of British medical, public health, and health education experts are launching a project to give post-graduate training to Russian polyclinic physicians and other healthcare workers in recognizing and treating heart and circulatory disease.
Alongside this project will be an intensive long-term program to educate families, schools, factories, and workplaces about cardiovascular disease and its causes, prevention, and treatment.
The broad aim of the project is to bring a 20% reduction in heart and cardiovascular deaths by 2025 while increasing male life expectancy to 64 and restoring the projected 5% projected reduction in GDP.
A three-year pilot program in a region yet to be determined will be funded by non-Russian sources, Lipman said, with the expectation that the results will justify implementing it on a national scale.
The hitch is that the national effort will have to be funded by Russian federal and regional governments, but not to worry: “Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities,” Lipman wrote.
That, of course, remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that such an effort is needed to bring Russian male life expectancy up nearer to the 74 years of France and Germany or 77 of Great Britain.
Even so, I am extremely dubious that they will ever be able to pry the ubiquitous bottle of vodka or the dangling cigarette from the lips of the average Russian “manly man” in exchange for the mere promise of a few more years of life.
Russian alcoholics are, after all, no different from alcoholics in any other country. There are just more of them.
And they reason as did my friend Mal in Wash., D.C., 35 years ago: “I’d rather die young than live without alcohol.” And so he did – just a few months later.
So Dr. Lipman et al have an uphill battle.
The average income of the top 10% of the Russian population is nearly 50 times greater than the average income of the lowest 10%, according to a poll conducted by the Moscow City Statistics Service.
As average monthly earnings increase, so does the gap between the richest and the poorest, the survey noted.
While the top 10% now earn an average of about $ 5,000 a month, more than 17% of the city’s population still subsist below the monthly poverty level of about 5,000 rubles – a little under $ 200 a month in what is repeatedly hailed – or decried – as one of the most expensive cities of the world.
The Moscow Times, quoting Kommersant newspaper, said the statistics also show that “a fledgling middle class is taking shape in the city with at least 30% of Muscovites, numbering around 3 million, now earning more than $ 1,000 per month.”
Exactly what earnings elevate a Russian to the middle class is a figure that is bandied about. Other sources have said that a middle class Russian is one with a car, a nice apartment – either owned or rented – who lives well and takes vacations abroad. I have my doubts that $ 1,000 a month would fund that kind of a lifestyle.
But it does demonstrate that income is rising very rapidly in Moscow. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the country still wallows in poverty.
If Moscow incomes are going up, so are prices. Food rose by 8.5% last year, and the cost of a square meter of living space in Moscow went up a shocking 74.5%. And it’s in this milieu that I might have to find a new apartment?
Highest incomes in Moscow were reported by those in the finance sector, who earned 45,000 rubles -- a little less than $ 1,400 a month; while the lowest paid workers continue to include teachers, at 13,700 (about $ 500) and health care workers, at 17,200 rubles ($ 700).
The libel lawsuit against Moscow Mayor Luzhkov brought by two gay rights activists here for labeling gay parades “satanic” (Chapt. 238) has been summarily dismissed.
Complained Nikolai Alexeyev after the dismissal: “It was a joke of a hearing with violations of all the legal procedures of a civil case.” He told the Moscow Times that the judge had not examined their arguments, made no comment on the tone of Luzhkov’s remark, and was overly casual.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he complained.
In Luzhkov City you get Luzhkov justice.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #247 - Russian bear roars again on Victory Day
Chapt. #245 - Zhorik exits; and so do human rights
Chapt. #244 - Zhorik interlude proves frustrating
Chapt. #243 - Missy “resurrection” inspires Easter celebration
Chapt. #239 - Anti-Putin demonstration kept under wraps
Chapt. #236 - Prostitution supplements Russian soldiers’ $ 10 wage!
Chapt. #233 - Mogadan prison may shed light on mystery killers
