MOSCOW, April 14, 2004 -- Sasha dropped in last night, and described the first car bombing he’s ever witnessed. It occurred evening before last near his National Academy of Science Laboratory at Academicheskaya Metro Station south of Oktyabrskaya Station.
He watched as a dude on a motorcycle rode up beside a black Volvo with tinted windows and laid a suitcase on the top of the car. The next second, an explosion rocked the whole area and Sasha watched the motorcyclist’s arm go flying through the air. The rest of his lifeless body lay bleeding nearby.
“Did you talk to the police as a witness?”
“No I just got out of there as quick as I could.”
In today’s Moscow Times the target is identified as the 49-year-old president of one of Moscow’s biggest advertising firms, who had survived another car-bombing attempt back in October, which, according to the Times, the police had discounted as a self-staged farce. Golly, maybe they were wrong. Or maybe he staged this one himself too?
After the last attempt, he bought a Volvo that was completely armored – except for the roof. He, his body guard, and his driver were all dead at the scene. A few yards away lay the bike and the armless body of the 24-year-old bomber.
It’s obviously a mafia hit, but the motive hasn’t been determined. Some TV and newspaper reports, which the police are denying, said four suspects had been arrested with a portable two-way radio tuned to the same frequency as one found on the bomber. They speculated that accomplices detonated the bomb as soon as it was planted so that the bomber would get it too. Dead bombers don’t talk.
They also don’t get paid.
Dead stool pigeons don’t get paid either. British news agencies have reported that, in an equally lawless assault, the relative who ratted on Saddam Hussein -- for which America had publicly offered 25 million bucksi – was ‘off’ed soon after he talked, thereby keeping the $ 25 million safe in the U.S. treasury. Maybe Dubya will use it to buy another country.
Sasha usually comes on Friday evening, spends the night with me, and goes the next day to his family’s dacha for the rest of the weekend. But I asked him not to come this Friday. Alyosha, the St. Peterburg boyfriend of Harry, my Univ. of Hong Kong pal, is flying to Hong Kong to visit Harry again on Saturday, and will arrive here by train early Saturday to await his flight that afternoon.
When Harry and Alyosha were here in Moscow a few weeks ago, they suggested that Yegor and I meet them for supper at a nearby Georgian restaurant. I also invited Serge – Seryozh No. 2 – to join us.
To distinguish Seryozh No. 2 from the now-defunct Seryozh No. 1 – short Seryozh – Anton started calling him “Dlinniy Seryozh.” In Russian the word “dlinniy” can be translated as both long and tall. So since Seryozh No. 2 is both tall (6 ft. +) and long (20 cm), “long Seryozh” has become his nickname. It gives me a little tingle every time I say it. Lo-o-o-ng Seryozh.
Anyway, he and Alyosha hit if off, and he found Alyosha sexually interesting. So I have invited Lo-o-o-ng Seryozh to sleep with me Friday night and then spend some time with Alyosha on Saturday.
To get her Russian citizenship, Yegor’s friend Lena is getting married to one Dima, a Russian lad from near Yegor’s aunt’s home in rural Sandova, in the Tver region. Lena is paying him $ 100. After a few months of living apart together – he in Sandova and she in Moscow – she will be entitled to apply for Russian citizenship as the wife of a Russian citizen. It’s what Yegor was planning to do except in reverse.
Her life is hopelessly entangled. Though Yegor says she’s gay and is in love with a lesbian here, she thinks she’s pregnant by a friend from Tajikistan who is not a lesbian. In the meantime, she’s about to enter into a sham marriage. To complicate things a little more, cops came to her apartment earlier this week to check everybody’s internal passports. They were all defective – they lacked some sort of stamp from some bureaucracy somewhere – so the cops confiscated their passports and gave them three days to scrounge up money for bribes of varying amounts. Lena’s was 500 rubles – about $ 15. She had no money, so I loaned her what she needed. Last night the cops came back. Lena was the only one who had been able to pull together the bribe money. The others will all be deported.
Vanya wrote a long reply to my e-mail yesterday and it seems he didn’t squander the $ 600 after all, which I had accused him of doing and for which I was mightily pissed – unjustifiably, Vanya says. He had told me he was going to buy his computer on credit and use the money I gave him to buy contracts on the currency exchange. But in his letter he said he had instead paid cash for the computer and bought some other things he needed, and only had $ 150 left to put on the market, which he immediately lost.
“I didn’t waste a kopek,” he declared defiantly.
He said he could find work easily enough – but it would only pay $ 100 - $ 150 a month. He had borrowed some money to pay this month’s rent. “I won’t ask for your help,” he declared. “I can only count on myself.”
I clearly hurt his feelings and he probably thinks I insulted him. So I wrote back and reminded him that he had said he was going to buy the computer on credit, and that therefore, if he no longer had the $ 600, I could only conclude he had done stupid things with it. I told him I agreed with his decisions, that I thought he had acted quite responsibly, that I wanted him to succeed, and that I would lend him money if he needed it. We’ll see what happens.
Since April 1, young men and boys have been walking the streets of Russia with fear and trepidation. That was the date the 2004 annual spring draft began, and it has become customary for squads of police to roam the streets, descending on metro stations, cafes, and discos to round up draft-eligible young men between 18 and 27. Often they are hauled in and turned over to the army without even being allowed to call their families.
The smart and the rich avoid the Army. You’re exempted as long as you’re pursuing higher education, so many young men pursue useless higher degrees just to avoid the unspeakably vile Army. Many others bribe doctors to assign them serious illnesses. I paid $ 400 for Misha to be declared psychologically unfit, which he probably actually was. And once shortly after I came to Russia I gave a friend $ 600 to bribe his doctor to say that his eyes were bad.
If you don’t have money, often even legitimately disqualifying illnesses are ignored by the Military Commission, the bureaucracy which rules on all requests for exemption. And lists of exactly what illnesses are considered grounds for exemption are not available.
Both Sasha and Basil have been caught up in the police sweeps, and both narrowly escaped being sent off summarily despite the fact that they were both university students at the time. Basil is one of those who is pursuing a worthless master’s to stay in the university until he’s 27, which will be this year. The bureaucracy made a mistake on Sasha’s internal passport and gave him a birth date a year earlier than it actually was, so, though he’s only 26, his passport says he’s 27, and he’ll be free when he finishes this year.
Military service is universally feared as a fate worse than death, and death is exactly what hundreds of harassed young men opt for every year by turning their guns on themselves or on those who have been tormenting them. It’s a national disgrace ignored by authorities, from Putin on down.
Beginning this year, alternative service is being offered, but according to “Soldiers’ Mothers,” a group organized to try to help young men avoid military conscription, relatively few draftees are seeking it because the law that provides for it is so repressive.
In St. Peterburg, Soldiers’ Mothers holds seminars twice a week to explain to young men and their parents and grandparents their civil rights with regard to military service.
Today’s Moscow Times described one such seminar, in which a St. Peterburg lawyer described the alternative service law as “initially designed so that people couldn’t use it.
“No list of jobs and locations is available at military commissions,” she said. “The law is so loose that someone could end up working as a cleaner on a military base, or on a construction site in the north.”
She said the process of applying is not only humiliating, but is itself illegal. In the first place, you have to prove you are a conscientious objector. “How can you prove that? What papers can you bring if your parents raised you to be religious or a pacifist? The military commissions request a certificate from a religious community saying your are a member of that community, as if that is the only way you can have a conscience.”
Soldiers’ Mothers urged draft-eligible young men to actually sew up their pockets if they think they might be caught up in a police sweep. “The police can plant drugs or bullets in your pockets and then offer you a choice of prison or the army.”
Also, since sweep victims are typically not allowed to call home, potential conscripts should “prepare a note with your home number or name on it, and try to slip it to passers-by so that they can tell your family.”
If they are so unfortunate as to get drafted, they can look forward to two years of hazing, inedible food, and sub-poverty wages; and maybe a death sentence to Chechnya. The lucky ones get stationed in Moscow and become prostitutes.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #54 - Should have read that detour sign
Chapt. #52 - Easter in Russia – sans bunny
