Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 286 – 3,085 wordsbeen spending every
Columns :: Corruption victims: Keep what we’ve got

MOSCOW, June 22, 2008 -- Comments:   Ratings:
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Zhorik's evasive answers raise suspicions
Despite costs, Russians prefer existing corruption
Yeltsin era photographer's videos confiscated
Dire warnings of "peak food," famines
Russia’s ag potential greater, but great obstacles
The eXile dies



MOSCOW, June 22, 2008-- I’m still waiting for Zhorik. He at first said he’d come as soon as he replaced the domestic passport he lost on a drunken spree before he went to the army (Chapt. 199).

Then he announced he would wait until he had gotten all of his documents, which he said in an SMS from Novosibirsk several weeks ago would cost about $ 800.

He said he wanted to finish everything now because he didn’t want to have to go back to Stavropol after he comes to Moscow.

On Friday, he SMS’d me to send him the $ 800.

Ugh-oh! This is exactly what I didn’t want: being maneuvered into sending him a bunch of dough, having him spend a month or two there with his girlfriends and pals, then joining me in Moscow only for me to find out he has changed so much I don’t want to live with him. But by that time I’ve already thrown away $ 800!

That’s why I had wanted him to come straight here from the army, so we could figure out what our relationship is going to be and discuss our future. But his CO put the kibosh on that when he bought Zhorik’s ticket and personally put him on the train to Stavropol (Chapt. 284).

“Exactly what documents do you need to get?” I SMS’d.

He listed them: A driver’s license, an international passport, and “references and documents” for the university.

I was in a lesson when I received his message Friday afternoon, so couldn’t respond immediately. After the lesson at the Voikovskaya Metro Station I headed straight to English Exchange at Novoslobodskaya, where my old boss and American pal Rod Janson let me use the EE phone to make a collect call to Bank of America to try to unblock my debit card (Chapt. 285). I couldn’t call from home because my home phone is still cut off.

As usual with the Bank of America bureaucracy, I got switched to at least three phones and talked to half a dozen stooges before we finally left an hour and a half later, my account resurrected. Then I took Rod to dinner as a thank-you gesture, and by the time I got home it was 11:00.

At dinner, Rod and I had discussed Zhorik’s request, and he agreed with me that no way should I send him the bucksi till after we’ve had a chance to spend some time together and talk about our future. Furthermore, what does he need a driver’s license for? He doesn’t have a car; I don’t have a car; he couldn’t get a job as a driver in Moscow with no experience and without knowing the streets of the city.

And international passport? Maybe after we’ve lived together for six months and are sure that we have a solid relationship. He’s sure as hell not going anyplace for the first six months.

The restaurant was noisy enough that I hadn’t heard the signal of an SMS message from Zhorik asking again for an answer to the $ 800 question.

I discovered it when I got home.

“I just got home,” I wrote. “I’ll write tomorrow.”

That would give me time to compose an inoffensive but firm rejection.


So on Saturday afternoon, I finally sent my answer:

“You’ve been gone two years. We used to deeply love each other, but maybe you’ve changed. Maybe I’ve changed. We have to spend some time together in order to find out. The last time we spent together was when you were home on leave last April. I wasn’t very happy with our relationship at that time. (Chapt. 244, 245) So I need to know which relationship we have now: the relationship of last April or the relationship of two years ago.

“Even then there were problems. You got drunk a lot and lost several mobile phones, your passport, etc., while you were drunk. Every night you spent at the computer or TV and kept me from sleeping. You several times threw away money gambling in the casino. There were other problems.

“So I need to get to know you again, and you need to get to know me again. I won’t send you any more money until you’ve come home and we’ve had a chance to seriously discuss these things face to face as well as our future together and our relationship – now and in the future.”

There! I’ve said it. Now I’ll wait for the reply.

No reply.

“Zhorik, why don’t you answer?”

No answer.

Finally, about 9 p.m. Saturday, an answer: “Dane, I’m out of money on my telephone.”

“Why?” I responded. “You haven’t sent me any messages today. Who have you been corresponding with?”

In the meantime, I put another $ 4 on his phone in a nearby phone payment terminal.

He replied: “I sent you a lot of messages yesterday, and they cost a ruble and a half each” – about 6 cents.

“Even if you sent me 10, that’s only 60 cents out of $ 4 I put on your phone yesterday,” I said.

“There were at least 18 messages,” he insisted.

So then we got in an argument over whether he was complaining that communicating with me was too expensive when I was the one paying for it. “I’m not complaining,” he insisted. “And don’t ever think I don’t want to get messages from you.

“What’s wrong with you, Dane?” he continued. “You’ve got some kind of bee in your bonnet and for that you’re mad at me!”

“Don’t be mad at me because I don’t understand the Russian language,” I countered.

“Okay,” he replied. “Let’s move on: Do you know that in 15 minutes there will be a football match on TV?”

It was the match between Holland and Russia that would take the winner to the quarter finals of the European championship. Russia had beaten Sweden a few nights before, but the smart money was saying they couldn’t beat Holland, even though their new coach used to be Holland’s coach.

So we sat apart together and watched Russian pull a 3-1 upset. It was 1 a.m. by the time the game was over, but you could hear the horns blowing all over the city of Moscow as the Russians celebrated their astounding victory.

“I wish we could watch it together,” I SMS’d as the game was getting underway. “Me too,” he wrote. So it all wound up warm and fuzzy.


But when is he coming to Moscow?

I asked him today.

He said he’d try to find out tomorrow.

In the meantime, I realized that he would probably need to enroll in the university, assuming I can afford it, soon after he gets here. So I wrote and told him to bring the references and documents he would need for the university.

“I don’t have the money for the references and the documents for the university,” he replied.

“How much money do you need for them?”

“I’ve already told you,” he replied.

“You said you’d need $ 800 for a driver’s license, international passport, and references and documents for the university. How much do you need only for the references and documents for the university?” I persisted.

“12,000 rubles would be for the driver’s license. The rest would go for documents.”

“What documents exactly do you need to get into the university?” I asked.

“Dane,” he replied, “if the money isn’t there, don’t bother. We’ll figure out something.”

“Okay. In the meantime, come as soon as you can.”

“As soon as my passport is ready, I will come immediately.”

I was – and am -- bothered by his evasiveness about the precise documents he would need to get into the university and how much it would cost to get them.

So I posed the question to Basil, the Red Queen administrator.

The only documents you need is your passport and transcripts from your high school, which they usually furnish free of charge.

Ugh-oh! Red Alert! What’s going on here? Is he trying to scam me? This sure as hell doesn’t inspire confidence.

In the meantime, Igor has been spending every afternoon and evening with his nympho, getting home at 12:30 or 1 a.m., completely fucked out and inaccessible. I haven’t prevented a case of prostate cancer since before Sasha exited (Chapt. 284).

What happened to my stable of young studs – Sasha, Igor, Zhorik?

I think I need to keep my escape route to Spain open.


Every Russian pays $ 2,250 a year in bribes, reports tine Moscow Times, citing the Moscow research center Indem. The bulk of it is to law enforcement and education.

Education?

Yes, education. I’ve already related many times how Zhorik and ex-boyfriend Yegor passed their university courses by paying bribes to their teachers -- $ 400 for Zhorik and $ 100 per course for Yegor. A lot of rich and upper middle class Russian students don’t take a test the whole time they’re in the university. They simply pay the requisite bribe.

I think Potemkin U., the American university where I teach, is an exception. I have never been offered a bribe, and I have never heard any hints that greased palms change grades. Most professors are natives of America, where such practices are abhorrent. I know several of them well enough to believe they would never allow themselves to be part of such a system.

But generally it’s rampant, and immediately renders suspect any diploma from any Russian educational institute.

But the biggest problems are encountered by businesses making payoffs to city and federal regulators: the fire inspectors, the health inspectors, and other bureaucrats who sign off on their license to operate.

The MT article cited some interesting case studies:

“The Moscow police officers checked Viktor’s office and declared that he as in big trouble. The Windows software installed on his computers was not licensed, and the officers said they would be forced to open a criminal case unless Viktor showed his ‘generosity.’

“Viktor slapped $ 6,000 into the hand of one of the officers and the pirated software was forgotten.

“Across the city Igor is proud of his brand new Ford Focus, but he parked it several hundred meters away from the institute where he studies medicine. If his professors were to see it, he would be charged more money to pass his exams.

“In a small shop on Prospect Mira, Yekaterina regularly pays tax officials ($ 800 a month) to turn a blind eye to irregularities in her accounting records and fire inspectors to ignore fire safety violations.”


This is how the average $ 2,250 that corruption costs each Russian per year gets tallied up.

And this is what new president Dmitriy Medvedev has publicly vowed to end.

But surprisingly enough, reports the MT, most Russians who are affected by it say they don’t want it changed. They’ve mastered the intricacies of the present corruption scheme and are afraid changes won’t end it, but will simply make it more complicated and more expensive.

For example, Viktor in the example above, when told of pending government plans to fight corruption screamed “don’t touch anything. Let things stay the way they are.”

Although bribes to police and regulators to leave him alone cost him an average of $ 1,000 a month, he simply considers it an extra inconvenient but manageable tax, and “strongly” opposes any plans to change it. “….Every time authorities decide to tackle a problem, things only get worse.”

Likewise Yekaterina: “It is better to leave things the way they are. If they touch anything, it would be the end for small business,” because a government crackdown would only lead to higher bribes. “It would become riskier for bureaucrats to take the money, so they would ask for more.”

Both Viktor and Yekaterina report good relationships with their corrupt officials, “and a change would mean building new relations with new people who might want more money.”

“It took me so long to establish my contacts, and I don’t want to lose them,” Viktor told the MT. “The old ones already have cars and apartments.”

Med student Igor, on the other hand, supports any efforts to end corruption. In his institute, he said, only poor students pass exams without paying bribes. Professors demand money from rich and middle class kids.

“I like studying, but I sometimes lose motivation because I know that I can pay and the exam is done,” he told the newspaper. “Who studies under such circumstances? People get degrees without even opening a book.”

So how will it all end? The Moscow Times quoted a police officer from the anti-organized crime division of the city police force: “It is just a publicity stunt to promote the new president….The only way to fight this problem is to replace everyone from the top to the bottom with new people.”

And that, of course, is not going to happen.

So we can safely assume that Russia’s strangling bureaucratic corruption at every level of government will outlive not only Medvedev’s presidency, but most -- if not all – Russians who are victims of it today.


The video archive of Yeltsin’s personal photographer has been confiscated by Moscow police under the pretext that they might be pirated copies, the newspaper Kommersant has reported.

The cameraman, Alexander Kuznetsov, attributed the seizure to his plans to use the films in a documentary about the state of democracy in Russia.

The videotapes were recorded from 1988 to the end of Yeltsin’s presidency in 2000. Kuznetsov was the only operator filming the White House, the seat of Russia’s government, during the August 1991 attempted coup.


If you think peak oil is bad, take a look at “peak food.” Dire warnings of pending global food shortages, and famine, including in America, are being hinted at from an increasing number of sources worldwide.

Probably the newest and the most dire comes in a newsletter from the “Culture Change” organization, whose head, Jan Lundberg, used to honcho an oil industry newsletter until he saw the light and became an ardent spokesman for alternative energy and conservation and a Jeremiah of the emerging peak-oil energy crisis.

“You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.” he warns in his current newsletter. “The empire of cheap food is crumbling” with the inexorable onslaught of peak oil, soil depletion, global warming, and destructive weather patterns like the current devastating floods in my native state of Iowa.

”It is time to consider that the stage has been set for
petroleum-induced famine.” (To read his full newsletter, go to http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php).

America’s agricultural miracle is based solely upon an unending stream of cheap and abundant fossil fuels at every stage: state-of-the-art farm machinery to plant and harvest foods, natural gas-based fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, controlled storage, transportation (the average food product travels 1500 miles to the supermarket), and cooling and lighting of the retail outlets where the American public buys its products. And 75 years of this intensive cycle has completely depleted the topsoil, leaving it incapable of sustaining agricultural growth without its fossil fuel fix.

With oil already approaching $ 140 a barrel and predictions as high as $ 250 (from Russian Gazprom head Alexey Miller) for the near future, America’s farmers can no longer afford to produce it and consumers can no longer afford to pay for it.

Americans will go hungry, say Lundberg and others.

The only question is how soon? This year? Next year? Five years?

Ah, but there’s the tricky question. My fellow author and I predicted today’s peak oil crisis in a book published by Doubleday in 1974, and urged a turn to conservation and alternative energies to ease the crash.

But we frankly didn’t think we’d have to wait 30 years to see our predictions come true.

And so it is with the food crisis. It will come. The question is how soon.


Unfortunately, Russia’s not much better off than America, despite its estimated 18 million acres of uncultivated rich black soil and its relatively low cost of producing food.

While Russian farmers dream of feeding the world in five years, right now they can’t even feed themselves.

The country imports 46 per cent – nearly half -- of its food. Nearly everything I buy is imported: cooking oils, mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, meats, sausages, and of course all canned foods -- corn, peas, spinach, all kinds of beans, tomatoes, pickles, fruit, and even beets, the national symbol of Russia!

Part of the problem is that for the most part the Russian ag business is run by old collective farm managers who often don’t know about or are suspicious of Western farm equipment, couldn’t afford to buy it if even if they wanted to, and wouldn’t know how to operate it if they did.

The problem of processing and distributing the food once the farmer produces it is also a major problem.

Farmers see the neglect of the federal government as a big obstacle. They need money to buy efficient Western equipment and to plant and harvest crops. There is an agricultural loan fund, but it is woefully inadequate. Farmers have asked to borrow 81.3 billion rubles (about $ 3.5 billion) from it this year, but it has only a little more than half of that – 46 billion rubles ($ 2 billion) – to lend.

However, with the appointment of former Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, a one-time collective farm manager, to oversee the agricultural sector, farmers see a new ray of hope. But with him comes the corollary problem pointed out in the article above:

“….Every time authorities decide to tackle a problem, things only get worse.”

The bottom line is that Russia has the major resource for preventing famine that America does not: Unused, undepleted, rich black topsoil. Whether it can organize this resource to even feed Russia, much less the world, is quite another matter.

Perhaps we will soon have the misfortune of finding out.

But Russians are much more resilient than Americans in the face of hardship. They have after all faced famine before. Americans have not.


Alas, the “eXile,” the defiant, irrepressible ex-pat tabloid (Chapt. 284), has been repressed – not actually by the government, but by its investors’ pulling the plug in fear of what the government might do.

There’s more than one way to kill a newspaper.


See also related pages:
Chapt. #287 - Zhorik here to celebrate my 75th
Chapt. #285 - Plans for Spain threatened in quadruple whammy
Chapt. #284 - Apprehensions mount as reunion with Zhorik nears
Chapt. #244 - Zhorik interlude proves frustrating