MOSCOW, May 16, 2004 – Two days after the election, everybody’s had time to weigh in on what Putin’s 70% electoral victory means to the future of Russia.
“Where do we go from here?” editorialized the Moscow Times “How long will it be before Russia breaks with tsarist and Soviet traditions that leave the country’s fate hanging on the whims of one man?”
All they needed to do was glance at the adjoining op-ed piece by Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. He had it right: The answer is “never.” Russia’s future is its past. They’ve just re-invented the tsar to prove it.
As Stalin quite correctly snarled, “The Russians need a tsar.” Tsar Putin also recognized this early on when he smirked, “It’s in their DNA.”
So Russia is quite content with its strong, steady, sometimes stern “little father,” who -- by commandeering uncountable hours of TV air time for himself while virtually blacking out coverage of the lightweight candidates who opposed him skewed the election process so distortedly that it is being universally recognized as an embarrassing charade -- immediately declared his unwavering commitment to freedom of the press.
It’s as if he was trying to out-Bush Bush: “Let’s see who’s the biggest liar.” But the Tsar of the Evil Empire should give up before he starts. He isn’t even in the same league.
It’s true Putin probably master-minded the bombing of apartment buildings in Russia in 1999 as the excuse for re-igniting the wildly popular Chechen War. And it’s true that he’s declared the Chechen War over, although there are nearly as many daily casualties as there were before he announced that peace had arrived.
But that’s small-time when measured against the Bushmaster, who got a majority of the nation to back a war to steal Iraq’s oil by flatly warning about weapons of mass destruction which never existed.
And now the real depth of the Bush Administration’s evil duplicity has come to light. Our esteemed Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made much of the fact in a TV appearance last year that a “deadly terrorist network” headed by a Jordanian named Zarquari was being harbored in Iraq. It was another reason, he warned ominously, why we must invade the country.
But now it’s come to light that at that very moment, U.S. intelligence had Zarquari and his Iranian camp in its gun sights and was begging for permission to off him. But Bush repeatedly vetoed the move because, according to NBC news, “the Administration feared destroying the terrorist camp could undercut its case for war against Saddam.”
So where is Zarquari now? Directing terrorist operations against American soldiers occupying the self-same Iraq, sent to their death by the same Bush who ordered Zarquari’s life spared so he could send the self-same troops to…. You get the idea.
But you see, we need the oil.
It makes Putin sound almost saintly when, in response to Powell’s criticism of the mock electoral process here, he declared, “cast the moat out of thine own eye before casting the beam out of thy neighbor’s.”
Anyway, my money says George has got Vladimir beat hands-down.
Yesterday’s Moscow Times also reported the warning by the leader of Arab fighters in Chechnya that they may be about to launch a new wave of terrorist attacks in Russia.
A pre-election Reuter’s dispatch from the United Arab Emirates said that a guy named Abu al-Walid, whom the Kremlin is accusing of master-minding the metro bombing last month that killed somewhere around 100 Muscovites, warned -- in an obvious allusion to Putin -- that “‘if they elect someone who declares war on Chechnya, then the Russians are declaring war against the Chechens; and by God, we will send them [mines.]’ Holding up a landmine, he continued, ‘not only these, but things that have not crossed their minds.’”
An uncomfortable bit of news for an ex-pat making Moscow his home. Do I really want to stay here? On the other hand, if Bush is re-elected, what can we expect from Arab terrorists in America after what Bush has done to Iraq? Do I really want to return to America?
I think I’ll take my chances in Moscow.
Well, I finally got my letter sent to Vanya. I toned it down a lot. “How’s the trading going?” I began. “I hope you’re doing well. I think about you a lot.
“….As we talked about, currency trading is very risky. You have to have an absolutely clear mind all the time. You can’t afford to make decisions when you have a hangover or are drunk. Furthermore, people who aren’t sure they’re going to be able to pay next month’s rent or buy food for next week don’t have the money to buy alcohol.
“Your behavior Sunday night on the train and Monday night when you didn’t get back to the apartment till an hour and 15 minutes after you said you would, force me to make the observation I have made before: You have a serious problem with alcohol.”
I cited all the warning signs: Repeated blackouts, repeated fist fights and beatings when he’s drunk, repeated loss and theft of valuables, repeated loss of friends.
“These are the unmistakable signs of alcoholism, Vanya. You are the only one of my many friends that things like this repeatedly happen to.
“It’s clear that you no longer control alcohol, it controls you.
“So you have to make up your mind. Do you want to have an 80% chance of being a success or a 100% chance of being a failure, because if you don’t stop now, you’ll fail.
“….I hope you make the right choice. Love, Dane”
Yegor helped me translate it into colloquial Russian, noting in the process that “You’re wasting your time,” an evaluation echoed by Anton.
Still, the missionary in me says I’ve got to try to save my friend, though I know it won’t change anything. I also needed to make it clear that I will have no more money for him. If he goes down the drain on this, I’ll be very sorry, but I can’t bail him out again.
I hope he makes it.
By coincidence, as I was working on the letter, Max called from Nizhny Novgorod. Max was my 18-year-old boyfriend when he first introduced me to Vanya, and was the “young guy” I was traveling with in Turkey when Volodya and I first eyed each other.
Max is an inane little twit. The last time he visited here he was working as a minor bureaucrat in some sort of city housing agency in Nizhny. The thing he was most proud of was that the Nizhny region has the biggest nuclear bomb plant in Russia.
So he’s not exactly a humanitarian genius. And now, at the ripe old age of 23, he’s had his first plastic surgery. “I look like a 17-year-old again,” he proudly informed me. I didn’t tell him, but as a 17-year-old, which he was when I first met him in a gay bar, he wasn’t that good-looking. But he was a 17-year-old, which apparently is what he’s trying to perpetuate.
My god, he’s starting even younger than Michael Jackson. What will he look like when he’s 70? On second thought, as a chain smoker, he’ll probably never get there anyway. His 50-some-year-old father, a chronic smoker, recently died of lung cancer.
So anyway, Max invited me and my boyfriend to Nizhny to visit him and his boyfriend. Maybe we’ll go for laughs. Where will Vanya be by then?
Just as I was getting uncomfortable with the complications it was creating, my relationship with [Seryozh] is over. He arrived Sunday evening to announce that it was our last night together. I would probably never see him again. He knew that I loved Yegor, and he didn’t want to continue to be in the position of the boyfriend always in cold storage. I tried to look sad, and in a way I was, because we had loving, affectionate sex together. He’s also a thoroughly good, honest, and kind young man.
But as a Jew, even an orphan Jew, he’s imbued with a lot of Jewish traditions, one of which is not being gay. He has decided he will turn straight again and get married and have children. If he weren’t so sincere and earnest, I would be amused. I wish him the very best at whatever he does. I will miss him.
So where does that leave me with Serge, “the long Seryozh,” as Anton calls him. This past weekend I didn’t feel the warmth and love I had felt from him the weekend before. And Yegor told me that Anton told him that Long Seryozh had told him that he (Long Seryozh) had asked little Seryozh (are you following all this?), “why are you wasting your time with a 70-year-old man?” However, that very night Long Seryozh and I slept together and I deep-throated his mammoth dork.
So where is he coming from? Either he’s being phony to Seryozh or to me. In either case, I don’t like that kind of game, and will ease him out of my life as well, leaving Yegor and Sasha and maybe Vanya as my only sex partners -- unless Volodya’s 20-cm trophy should somehow get erected as an unscheduled intrusion into my life. Oh, darn!
Today I made Harvard beets following a recipe out of the America Cooks cookbook I brought with me from the U.S. But here, they’re “Garvard” beets. Russian turns all ‘h’s into hard ‘g’s. So World War II was against Adolph Gitler. Garry Potter is wildly popular here, as Robin Good has been for years. And this morning we studied gypochondria in class.
Even though Russia is probably the beet capital of the world, Garvard beets are unknown here. Seems a little strange, since the Russians love both beets and sugar, so this dish which so deftly combines both should be a big hit. But I can’t get my household to even try them.
This morning I wore my Seattle Mariners baseball cap and – and what? What the hell are they called now? When I was a kid they were sneakers, but now are they? tennis shoes? training shoes? trainers? track shoes? running shoes? walking shoes? tennie pumps? Keds? Adidas? Pumas? Nikes? Reebooks?
Anyway, I wore them this morning for the first time in six months. Felt good. The ice is all gone from the streets. Great mountains of dirty snow still glower from the sides of the streets and alleys, but they’re melting slowly enough so the streets aren’t flooding, so my whatever-they-ares don’t get inundated.
It’s springy enough so that soon I’ll be walking in them to my classes at Novoslobodskaya and Mayakovskaya Stations. Maybe it will help me lose the 20 lb. I regained after my last bout with a diet.
Hong Kong Harry, the American professor of Russian History at University of Hong Kong, who is here for a few days on business, is warning me that at age 70, being 25 lb. overweight is flirting with the grim reaper. I should also have a check-up, he insists, which I haven’t had for five years.
He’s right. But how I hate diets and doctors. But I do want to continue Peter Panning it up in the Evil Empire for a few more years, so maybe I’ll bite the bullet.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #49 - When the Titanic sinks, we need to be healthy
