MOSCOW, October 25, 2004 – There was actually an angry anti-war protest on Saturday.
According to the Moscow Times, between 2,000 and 3,500 people gathered to protest the war, with “no to war” balloons and slogans like “Peace in Chechnya” and “Down With Putin’s Politics.”
But what reportedly really dismayed authorities was the straying of some of the activists into general anti-government and anti-Putin rhetoric.
What isn’t explained is why the authorities allowed the demonstration in the first place.
To my knowledge, there has been no TV coverage of the protest, so it’s very likely that most people still don’t know it even occurred.
Across town in my Institute of Diplomacy class, a student named Kostya, a minion of some sort in a local TV music channel, was predicting that at some point the Russians will get fed up and there will be another mass uprising.
The discussion grew out of a textbook exercise that posed the question: What person or event are you reminded of by….1917?
The Russian revolution, of course.
What sort of event would strike a tinder box, I asked Kostya.
For instance, would the continuing loss of freedom – both personal freedoms and freedom of expression and mass media – do the trick? Would the increasing control of the Kremlin over the duma and the courts be the triggering event?
No, scoffed Kostya. Russians have had centuries of tsars and commissars; this is an Ameican fantasy.
What would do it?
“It’s a class thing,” he said. “When enough people get hungry enough….”
“Bread and peace” was the slogan that brought on the real 1917 revolution sans Lenin. Lenin had little to do with the revolution other than stealing it once it was over.”
So it’s still bread and peace? While the ranks of the middle class are constantly expanding, so are the ranks of the hungry. And the terrorism growing out of the Chechen War has inflicted war casualties upon Moscow and other parts of Russia.
But have enough people been affected by hunger and war to bring an uprising? I don’t think so. Not for a long time.
But it’s encouraging to know that protest is at least occurring publicly. How did the Kremlin let this happen?
Vanya blew his big chance! Hong Kong Harry is here for a few days, and didn’t tell his St. Peterburg boyfriend Alyosha that he was even coming because a) he was suspicious of Alyosha over the inconsistencies of the accident that allegedly put his mother in the hospital and his brother in the cemetery. We still don’t know if he was jiving or if it was just a ruse to pry some more money out of Harry – and me.
But another reason Harry didn’t advertise his trip to Moscow was fantasies over a new romance with Vanya. So Vanya had a lot riding on his performance.
“It was a test,” Harry confided later. And Vanya flunked it big-time.
Harry had suggested having dinner together after his arrival Friday night. When I mentioned it to the twins, they suggested fixing dinner here. They spent several hundred rubles – probably or – on food and worked their gorgeous little butts off getting it ready.
“You bring the wine,” I instructed Harry in the e-mail relating our plans; “— three or four bottles.”
So in his usual miserly fashion, Harry showed up with alcoholic Vanya in one hand and two bottles of cheap wine, one red and one white, in the other -- for five people.
And then had the gall to ask in naïve wonder when the bottle of merlot was emptied 10 minutes later: “Is that all the red?”
I had sensed trouble brewing when Vanya had arrived with a can of “Hooch” vodka cocktail in his hand. Then with the can still half full, he had hurried to fill his class with wine – the alcoholic’s ‘just in case’ maneuver; still, he was civil and everything was pleasant at the dinner.
But between my IB classes at School No. 69 the next day, Vanya called me to tell me that he had kicked Vanya out and told him not to come back.
“What happened?” I asked.
It seems Vanya had bought a bottle of vodka as well as some beer on the way back to Harry’s apartment, then had gotten so drunk he couldn’t get a hard on, and had kept Mike awake all night long accusing Harry of lying to him and not really loving him at all.
Harry said he was actually afraid of Vanya and had finally broken out crying at about 4 a.m. after two nights with little or no sleep.
I didn’t hear from Vanya until late Saturday night, though I had had an SMS from him about 6:30 p.m. asking if he could spend the night at my apartment. I had at first replied “okay,” but later discovered that Anton, Yegor, and Sasha were all going to be here – in addition to me and the twins.
“There’s no place for you to stay,” I SMS’ed.
But as it turns out, he got neither message. When he called at 10:30 or 11 to repeat his request, I told him again that there was no space. When he said he had no other place to stay, I said, “well, maybe you can sleep in the kitchen.”
My next communication was an SMS message at 2:00 Sunday morning saying he had caught the train to Nizhny Novgorod.
Harry told me later that when he complained to Vanya Saturday morning about his behavior the night before, Vanya remembered nothing of it. Another blackout! But he said he had lots of problems, that I wasn’t continuing to pay his tuition because I was paying for Yegor’s tuition. It wasn’t until I told Harry that he realized that Vanya had already graduated and was now in grad school.
Anyway, Vanya left without hitting me up for money, and Harry actually remembered to repay the 0 I had loaned Alyosha.
I may be facing my own crisis! My luck with my schedule may have run out! When I went to get my Language Link pay on Friday, Rob nailed me. “Could I speak to you a minute?”
I had been shocked two weeks earlier when, before receiving our pay, all teachers were required to read and acknowledge an announcement that Julia and Olga, who had been the financial and schedule managers for LL teachers, had been siphoning off both students and money and putting it in a bank account of a company they had set up for themselves. It was an unthinkable act of treachery and deceit.
I was aggrieved not only for Language Link’s sake, but for my own. Julia and I had had a good rapport and had reached a tacit understanding that she would schedule LL classes around my personal schedule.
Her replacement, a woman named Elyena, has been as hard as nails.
Rob and I stepped into an empty office. “Lena tells me you refused to take a student because it would interfere with a private client.”
I stammered, trying to recall just what he was talking about. “I don’t think I refused,” I replied. “I think I asked her if it would be possible to re-schedule the Thursday lesson because it was a conflict with a private client.”
“Was this private client perhaps “Russian Snack Company?”
“No,” I replied. “It was a school.”
“I used to teach Russian Snack,” I continued; “but they went on vacation, and were going to call when they all got back, but I haven’t heard any more from them.”
Rob explained that Russian Snack Co. was one of the firms Julia and Olga had diverted to their own account. “Anyway, we’ll iron it all out later,” he said, and we parted.
It seems to me in retrospect that he suspects me of connivance with them, a suspicion that Elyena is apparently feeding. So I decided to nip it in the bud today by going to see Rob and explaining to him the full details. Instead, I was met by Natasha, his former -- maybe current -- sex partner and a major shareholder in the company – as well as an old friend of mine. She was very helpful to me in my lawsuit against Andrei Tioufline.
She said Rob was in Paris for a week and would return this weekend. My only compensation was that she seemed normally friendly and kind.
In a related development, Ruslan, the personal aide to oligarch Vladimir Deripaska, had not called me since his return from vacation back in August. But two weeks ago Elyena told me that things had been worked out between Basic Aluminum, his company, and Language Link, and I was to start teaching him last week.
This poses another problem: His lessons were scheduled for 3 p.m. Mon., Wed., and Fri. Mon. and Wed. are no problem, but Friday would be impossible, since my IB classes don’t end until 3:30. But I figure I can work out something with him when we finally get together.
When I called him last week to arrange our first meeting, he said we couldn’t meet till this week; so when I had not been able to get hold of him all morning, I called Elyena and asked her what to do. She finally reached his office and he’s unavailable again this week. He’ll start next week, I was told.
In the conversation Elyena said the student in question hadn’t been able to switch his schedule. So I asked her if I should meet with him tomorrow anyway.
“No,” she replied. “He actually wanted to meet three teachers and make a choice.”
“So I should not meet with him tomorrow?”
She mumbled something.
“So I should not meet with him tomorrow?” I repeated.
“No.”
So that takes some of the onus off of me. I offered to meet with him and she declined. I will talk with Rob when he gets back and lay it all out for him, and hope he will work with me.
The worst thing that could happen would be he could fire me and cancel my visa support, meaning I would have to leave the country. The worst disaster I can imagine. I think he will help me. I hope so.
