Main Page

From Why Dont Russians Smile The definitive guide to the differences between Russians and Americans
Jump to: navigation, search
Peaches and coconuts with flags.jpg
Why Don't Russians Smile?
The definitive guide to the differences between Russians and Americans.

'

Why dont russians smile.png
Travis Lee Bailey, Esq.
American Lawyer and Think Tank Consultant in Moscow, Russia
Трэвис Ли Бейли - Американский юрист: Аналитический центр Консультант в Москве, Россия
Email: MoscowAmerican at Gmail Com
Skype: TravBailey
Facebook: Moscowamerican3
LinkedIn: MoscowAmerican
Instagram: MoscowAmerican

Published in July 2021. (1st edition) - Amazon.com.

Please write a review!

UPDATE: FEBRUARY 2024: Earlier draft and NEWER information not included in the first edition is found below. Best viewed on a home PC using Google Chrome.

Authors: Travis Lee Bailey, Michael Murrie, Olga Diamant, Akhauri Nitish Kumar.

Contents

Why Don't Russians Smile

Prologue: Violently beaten by a Muscovite in 2021

Travis Lee Bailey was violently assaulted and is now physically handicapped, for 2 long years he has tried to get the American www.Gofundme.com a US based charity site, to help him. www.Gofundme.com will NOT support anyone living in Russia or Syria. If you want to help him, please contact him at MoscowAmerican @ Gmail . com.

Mug shot Stanislav Igorevich Zaluzhsky Stan Станислав Игоревич Зальужский.png

Stanislav Igorevich Zaluzhsky, Станислав Игоревич Зальужский (04.09.1981). Moscow Address: Донская улица, 6c2, kb 140 подъезд 7, на 6 этаже Metro Station Oktyabrskaya

Title Page

e

Travis Lee Bailey

Anna Merkulova

Akhauri Nitish Kumar

Olga Diamant

Irina Manakina

Mike Murrie

Why Don’t Russians Smile?

The definitive guide to the differences between Russians and Americans


Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

— Winston Churchill, October 1939.

I have never met anyone who understood Russians.

—Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich Romanov (1866–1933)[1]



Introduction - “I have never met anyone who understood Russians.” - Collectivism versus Individualism.

e

“Don't bring your own rules into a strange monastery” (В чужой монастырь со своим уставом не ходят)[2]

MANY AMERICANS have returned from a first visit to Russia exclaiming, "I don’t understand why we have had such difficulties with the Russians. They are just like us." Subsequent visits, and a closer look, will reveal that Russians and Americans do indeed have stark differences. This book will seek to explain those differences and to help Americans understand why Russians behave like Russians. In the process, American readers may also learn why they behave like Americans. After all, as one sociologist explained, “To know one country is to know none”.[3]

The Surface similarities between Russians and Americans

The surface similarities between Russians and Americans are readily apparent:

The majority of Russians are white
The most obvious is Russian appearances. Like America, the majority of Russians are white (called Caucasian in America, called Slavs or a Slavic person in Russia). If you took the average white Russian, fattened him or her up by 50 pounds, and then had them shop for grotesque clothes at a local Wal-Mart, they would look like an average American.
Russians feel a common identity with Americans as citizens of multiethnic, continental great powers.
In history, both nations have been expansionist. Americans moved west from the Atlantic coast across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Russians expanded mostly east across the Ural Mountains and the vast stretches of Siberia to the Pacific shores, and beyond to Alaska in 1741.
Both Russians and Americans tamed a wilderness - a frontier spirit with a messianic mission
As Russian and American historians have noted there is a frontier spirit shared by Siberia and the American West. Both Russians and Americans regard themselves as chosen nations with a messianic mission, destined to bring their own versions of enlightenment to a less fortunate people. America and Russia today are also nuclear powers with the capacity to destroy each other and the rest of the world as well.
Americans and Russians also think big. They are energetic and inventive
Russians appreciate the casual, direct, and often blunt American way of speaking, which they liken to their own — without pretense and different from the West European manner, which they find too formal, indirect, and less sincere. Yet Russians, despite their traditional suspicion of foreigners, show heartfelt hospitality to visitors from abroad, a trait they share with Americans.[4]
The deeper differences between Russians and Americans

In Russia there is the desire “to find the balance between the conflicting outlooks of Europe and Asia, between Western claims to personal freedom and Oriental insistence on the integration of the individual into the community.” --Nicolas Zernov (1898-1980), Russian Orthodox theologian.[5]

Americans are rated as the most individualistic country in the world at 91% Whereas Russians are rated as 39%. The Chinese are rated 20%.[6][7][8]


Many Americans ask, what is the difference between Americans and Russians? The fastest answer is “collectivism”. In contrast to Americans, who are rated the most individualistic country in the world (91%), Russia (39%), straddling Europe and Asia, has a unique mindset which is both East and West.

The topic of collectivism will be discussed in a later chapter.

The cultural map 71vvRtZy+RL.jpg

Cultural differences matter

One reader commented, “Speaking of cultural differences leads us to stereotype and therefore put individuals in boxes with ‘general traits.’ Instead of talking about culture, it is important to judge people as individuals, not just products of their environment.”

At first, this argument sounds valid, even enlightened. Of course individuals, no matter their cultural origins, have varied personality traits. So why not just approach all people with an interest in getting to know them personally, and proceed from there? Unfortunately, this point of view has kept thousands of people from learning what they need to know to meet their objectives. If you go into every interaction assuming that culture doesn’t matter, your default mechanism will be to view others through your own cultural lens and to judge or misjudge them accordingly. Ignore culture, and you can’t help but conclude, “Chen doesn’t speak up—obviously he doesn’t have anything to say! His lack of preparation is ruining this training program!” Or perhaps, “Jake told me everything was great in our performance review, when really he was unhappy with my work—he is a sneaky, dishonest, incompetent boss!”

Yes, every individual is different. And yes, when you work with people from other cultures, you shouldn’t make assumptions about individual traits based on where a person comes from. But this doesn’t mean learning about cultural contexts is unnecessary. If your business success relies on your ability to work successfully with people from around the world, you need to have an appreciation for cultural differences as well as respect for individual differences. Both are essential.

As if this complexity weren’t enough, cultural and individual differences are often wrapped up with differences among organizations, industries, professions, and other groups. But even in the most complex situations, understanding how cultural differences affect the mix may help you discover a new approach. Cultural patterns of behavior and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do). The goal of this book is to help you improve your ability to decode these three facets of culture and to enhance your effectiveness in dealing with them.[9]


Chapter 1: Russian Coconuts & American Peaches - Why don’t Russians Smile?

Why are Americans like peaches and Russians are like Coconuts?

e
Laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity (Смех без причины - признак дурачины) – Common Russian proverb.[10]
If you are a peach person traveling in a coconut culture, be aware of the Russian saying, “If we pass a stranger on the street who is smiling, we know with certainty that that person is crazy . . . or else American.”[9]
Peaches and coconuts with flags.jpg

The best and most memorable way to think of the differences between Russian and America is that America is a “peach” culture and Russia is a “coconut” one. This analogy was created by two culture experts.[11] In peach cultures like the United States or Brazil people tend to be friendly (“soft”) with new acquaintances and strangers. They smile frequently at strangers, move quickly to first-name usage, share information about themselves, and ask personal questions of those they hardly know. Americans tend to be specific and emotional, which translates as enjoying other people, whereas Russians are diffuse and neutral, which translates into respect (esteem) of other people. Culturally speaking, America is like a peach with lots of easily accessible flesh or “public domain” on the outside but a tough, almost impenetrable stone at the core. In contrast, Russians are difficult to penetrate at first but all yours if and when you manage to drill your way through to their core. By the way, a little alcohol helps to lubricate the drill.[12] For a Russian, after a little friendly interaction with a peach, they may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self and the relationship suddenly stops.

In coconut cultures such as Russia and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they do not have friendships with. They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately. But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier. And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer.[13]

Coconuts may react to peaches in a couple of ways. Some interpret the friendliness as an offer of friendship and when people don’t follow through on the unintended offer, they conclude that the peaches are disingenuous or hypocritical. Many Russians see the American Smile as disingenuous and fake.

As an American, what should you do if you’re a peach fallen amongst coconuts?
  1. Be authentic; if you try to be someone you are not, it won’t work.
  2. Smile as much as you want and share as much information about your family as you wish.
  3. Just don’t ask personal questions of your counterparts until they bring up the subject themselves.
Advice for Russian coconuts

1. If an American:

a. asks you how you are doing,
b. shows you photos of their family or
c. even invites you over for a barbecue

2. Do not interpret American friendliness as an:

a. overture to develop a deep friendship or a
b. cloak for some hidden agenda,

3. American friendliness is a different cultural norm expression which you need to adjust to.[13]





Cultures such as America, Brazil and Japan[13][14] Cultures such as Russia, Germany, Poland and France[15]

1. They smile frequently at strangers,

2. move quickly to first-name usage,

3. openly share information about themselves,

4. ask personal questions of those they hardly know.

5. After a little friendly interaction with a peach person, you may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self.

1. Are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with.

2. They rarely smile at strangers,

3. rarely ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or

4. do not offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately.

5. Over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier.

6. While relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer...[9]




Beyond Fruit - Why don’t Russians smile?

e
Guess which astronaut is Russian?

Russians don’t smile much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you. In preparation for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Russian workers were taught how to properly smile at the foreign soccer fans who would soon be visiting their country. In 1990, when McDonalds opened its first franchise in Moscow, workers had to be trained to be polite and smile. Russians will be quick to tell you that in Russia, randomly smiling at strangers is often viewed as a sign of mental illness or inferior intellect. To Americans, it might be easy to assume that this says something about Russians — that they are an unfriendly, callous people. But that’s not true at all. Instead, it may be worth looking at why certain expressions, such as smiling, become a key part of social exchanges in some cultures and not others.[16][17][18]

Some authors have quipped that Russia is a "Bitchy Resting Face Nation". Resting bitch face is a facial expression that makes a person unintentionally appear to be angry, annoyed, irritated, or feeling contempt, especially when the individual is relaxed.[19]

So why are Russians like “coconuts” and Americans like “peaches”? Why do Russians often think Americans are either idiots and insincere? Why do Americans feel that Russians are unfriendly and cold? Thankfully there are many social science theories that have explored this topic. These include immigration and collectivism vs. individualism.


Immigration

e 

Studies have shown that countries such as America with high levels of immigration historically are forced to learn to rely more on nonverbal cues. Thus, you might have to smile more to build trust and cooperation, since you don’t all speak the same language.

First, picture an American cowboy out on the range coming across a lonely Indian. At the beginning of their encounter he may wave and then smile as he cautiously approaches to show that he has no ill intention. Or one can imagine an immigrant with limited English arriving and desperately looking for work. They quickly come to realize the value of smiling to show their alacrity to work and their new patrons smile to show they approve of their services.

In contrast, in historical homogenous Russian villages (mir), Russians knew the same people and lived among the same people for generations. The village was similar to one big family. A Russian did not have to hide their feelings among the large village family members.[20]



America is the most individualistic nation in the world, whereas Russia has no word for privacy

e 

American culture tends to be more extraverted. Americans are more likely to seek contact with strangers and outsiders as a way of building success. They are more extraverted and adventurous as a nation. Americans, especially in the western states, tend to embrace their connection to their frontier past and idealize the individual exploring their limits and seeking their own fortune. There is a sense that one can rise and fall on their own merits. In a culture that prizes individualism so highly, there are no predetermined social links. In addition 24 percent of Americans move every 5 years, making it one of the most geographically mobile countries.[21] Americans must always be ready to invest in new social ties.

In contrast, Russians have a tendency to function in tight social units. Think of a large family living in close quarters and working together. There is a close association with the welfare of the group and individual well-being. Ethics are largely seen as expressions of loyalty to your family and social network and not to individual ideals (For example, Russians are more likely to cheat or lie for a friend). In close living and cooperation the sense of privacy disappears. In fact, a word for privacy doesn’t even exist in Russian "Untranslatable ideas" section. There is a sense of a shared existence and no need to emphasize a positive attitude or ornament your facial expressions and interactions because much is taken to be understood. There is less of a sense that a smile is needed. However, that does not mean that Russians don’t have a need for individual privacy or protection from unwanted scrutiny. Given that Russians have no expectation of privacy in their homes, apartments, workplace, or in public spaces, their sense of privacy lies closer to their own skin. They feel less obligated to share their personal feelings and may have seemingly impenetrable expressions on their faces.

A century before the virus Covid-19 made the term “social distance” popular, sociologists used the term in a completely different way. Sociologists call a county’s individualist versus collective characteristics as “social distance”.[22][23] Social distance is measured by the expectation of privacy in a country. The lower the social distance, the less privacy in a country. Studies have found that in Russia, social distance is lower relative to the U.S. Russians rely on more mutual understanding and longer shared national history to a much greater extent than Americans. Thus, there’s less pressure to display a positive emotion like smiling to signal friendliness or openness, because it’s generally assumed a fellow Russian is already on the same wavelength.[24][25]

Social Distance
Not to be confused by the Covid-19 term.
United States Us.png Russia Russia.png
High Social Distance <<< >>> Low Social Distance
More privacy <<< >>> Less privacy
Less shared history because a younger country and more immigrants with their own different histories. <<< >>> Longer shared history that creates more mutual understanding between more homogenous (similar) Slavs
Immigrants have different values and views of the world. <<< >>> On the same wavelength with fellow Russians (Slavs)

When there’s greater social distance there is a greater sense that it is up to the individual to seek their own fortune as opposed to the collective group in a nation. There’s more of a live and let live mentality. Americans expect a certain amount of privacy, even in public places; “one needs to mind their own business”. This can also lead to a sense of social anxiety and isolation and strangers can seem more strange or foreign than they are in reality. There may be more wiggle room to get into trouble during a chance new encounter with a stranger. When it does happen, it can be anxiety-inducing. Therefore, the common wisdom when approaching strangers is to smile and express warmth in a way that can help the other person feel at ease.[26]

The American smile is habitual. Americans are commonly required to smile at work. More smiles means more comfortable transactions and happier customers, which translates to more money for the owner.

Nonetheless, when interacting with other cultures, your American smile may be misinterpreted as arrogance. In countries with greater cultural uniformity, people sometimes smile, not to show cooperation, but that they don’t take the other person seriously or that they are superior. If you live in Russia very long you start hearing that American smiles are “fake”. Russians may wonder what is hidden behind a smile. But for the average American, there is nothing behind the American smile. It is a habitual form of communication. However, even in America there are some regional differences in regards to the smile. People from “American heartland” may see a smile differently than a big city urban smile.[27] Americans have a term called "PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE" Пассивно-агрессивное поведение – people from the capital of America – where one of the authors worked for 8 years – are very Пассивно-агрессивное. They will smile as they stab you in the back.

Russians and Americans: A smile on being introduced signals the following:
Americans Us.png Russians Russia.png
1. Pleasure at making a new acquaintance 1. Not serious about the upcoming talk, or
2. Willingness to engage in conversation 2. smiler has a hidden agenda under a superficial and hypocritical smile
3. Have deadpan or frozen expressions on their faces because:
...Use an unsmiling face is a barrier between themselves and the outside world
Russians lack personal space at:
  1. home in their apartments,
  2. on public transportation or
  3. on the job

...this causes them to erect their personal space boundaries.


When Carol, an American, first introduced her Russian husband Pasha to scientists who could be professionally helpful, his face was locked in a scowl. Carol explained to Pasha that his refusal to smile made colleagues think he was being cold and unfriendly.

"Why should I smile at someone I don't know? I'm not a clown. If I'm ready for a serious conversation I have to look serious."[28]



Soviet Propaganda - Americans’ smile hides deceit

e 

In general, the American smile has a terrible reputation in Russia. This campaign started in the early Soviet era. There were sinister smiles on old agitprop (political communist art and literature propaganda) posters of caricature "U.S. imperialists" wearing trademark cylinder hats, smoking cigars, salivating and smiling as they relished their piles of money and power over the world’s exploited classes.

Later, starting from the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras and continuing until the late 1980s, the Soviet print and television media carried regular reports called “Their Customs,” explaining that Americans, a power-hungry people, smiled to deceive others. Soviets were told that behind the superficial American smile is an “imperialist wolf revealing its ferocious teeth.” The seemingly friendly American smile, Soviets were told, is really a trick used to entice trusting Soviet politicians to let their guard down, allowing Americans to deceive them both in business deals and in foreign policy.

An example that Russian conservatives love to quote is when then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in February 1990 reportedly used his “charming, cunning Texas smile” to trick then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev into agreeing to a unified Germany as long as the United States pledged verbally that NATO would not extend “an inch further” to the east.

The image of an insincere, insidious American smile was used in Soviet propaganda mainly to depict U.S. politicians, “warmongers” from the military-industrial complex and other “bourgeois capitalists,” but it also applied to normal Americans, who, Soviets were told, use smiles to betray one another in business and personal relations. The message was clear: Feel fortunate you live in the Soviet Union, which has an honest moral code of conduct, where people trust one another and where there is complete harmony at work and among different nationalities.

Unlike the American smile, the Soviet smile was sincere, according to the official propaganda, because Soviets had so much to be happy about — guaranteed jobs and housing, free education, inexpensive sausage, a nuclear war chest to protect the empire, and Yury Gagarin, who beat the Americans to space.

During the perestroika era of the 1980s, the American smile was a common reference point when the topic of rude Soviet service was discussed. In post-Soviet Russia, business motivational speakers often preach the value of implanting U.S. know-how — the “technique of smiling” — among employees in stores, restaurants and other service-oriented companies. In this spirit, McDonald’s restaurants in the 1990s even included a “smile” on its Russian menu together with the price: “free.”[29][30]


Your American smile may be misinterpreted as arrogance

e 

When interacting with other cultures, your American smile may be misinterpreted as arrogance. In countries with greater cultural uniformity, people sometimes smile, not to show cooperation, but that they don’t take the other person seriously or that they are superior.


Chapter 2: Russians and Americans

Westernizers and Slavophiles

e 

To Russia, in its hunger for civilization, the West seemed “the land of miracles.…”

—Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia. (1919)

Russia’s love-hate relationship with the United States and the West has given rise to two schools of thought: Westernizers (зáпадничество) and Slavophiles (Славянофильство). Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, both can be regarded as Russian patriots, although they have historically held opposing views on Russia’s position in the world. Both groups, recognizing Russia’s backwardness, sought to borrow from the West in order to modernize.

Historically Russian Westernizers sought to borrow from the West to modernize. They felt Russia would benefit from Western enlightenment, rationalism, rule of law, technology, manufacturing, and the growth of a middle class. Among the Westernizers were political reformers, liberals, and socialists.

Slavophiles also sought to borrow from the West, but they were determined to protect and preserve Russia’s unique cultural values and traditions. A more collective group, they rejected individualism and regarded the Church, rather than the state, as Russia’s leading historical and moral force. Slavophiles were admirers of agricultural life and were critical of urban development and industrialization. Slavophiles sought to preserve the mir (Agricultural village communes, see Chapter 3, Collective vs. Individualist) in order to prevent the growth of a Russian working class (proletariat). They opposed socialism as alien to Russia and preferred Russian mysticism to Western rationalism. Among the Slavophiles were philosophical conservatives, nationalists, and the orthodox church.

The controversy between Westernizers and Slavophiles has flared up throughout Russian history. These two schools of thought divided Russian socialism between Marxists and Populists, Russian Marxists between Mensheviks (1903-1921) and Bolsheviks, and Bolsheviks between opponents and followers of Stalin. The controversy has been between those who believed in Europe and those who believed in Russia.[31][32]

Today the conflict continues between supporters and opponents of reform, modernizers and traditionalists, internationalists and nationalists. Today’s conservative Russians who seek to preserve Russia’s faith and harmony are ideological descendants of the Slavophiles. For them, the moral basis of society takes priority over individual rights and material progress, a view held today by many Russians, non-communist as well as communist. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) said from his self-imposed seclusion in Vermont, 15 years after his forced exile from the Soviet Union:

There is technical progress [in the west], but this is not the same thing as the progress of humanity as such. In every civilization this process is very complex. In Western civilizations -- which used to be called Western-Christian but now might better be called Western-Pagan -- along with the development of intellectual life and science, there has been a loss of the serious moral basis of society. During these 300 years of Western civilization, there has been a sweeping away of duties and an expansion of rights. But we have two lungs. You can't breathe with just one lung and not with the other. We must avail ourselves of rights and duties in equal measure. And if this is not established by the law, if the law does not oblige us to do that, then we have to control ourselves. When Western society was established, it was based on the idea that each individual limited his own behavior. Everyone understood what he could do and what he could not do. The law itself did not restrain people. Since then, the only thing we have been developing is rights, rights, rights, at the expense of duty.[33]

This school of thought has given Russia a superiority complex toward the West in things ethereal and an inferiority complex in matters material. The West is seen as spiritually impoverished and decadent, and Russia as morally rich and virtuous.


Chapter 3: Russians’ Unique Culture and Character (Social Etiquette and Expectations)

The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly and extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next. — Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Was. (1900).

The Russian Soul

e 

The famous “Russian soul” was to no small extent the product of this agonizing uncertainty regarding Russia’s proper geographical, social, and spiritual position in the world, the awareness of a national personality that was split between East and West. —Tibor Szamuely, The Russian Tradition (1974).

Just because Russians “don't smile” does not mean that inwardly they are soulless drones or secretly conniving. Russians smile when they have a genuine reason. Russian smiles are authentic. Furthermore, although they deeply value intellectualism and education (erudition), they are leery of (antithetical towards) being ruled by logic. In fact, Russians value the ability to fully experience and act on their passions and emotions.

The Russkaya dusha (Russian soul) is well known in the arts, where it manifests itself as emotion, sentimentality, exuberance, energy, the theatre and flamboyant skill. But Russian soul is much more than just the arts. It is the very essence of Russian behavior. The Russian soul can turn up suddenly in the most unexpected places—and just as suddenly disappear. Just when foreigners believe that Russians are about to get down to serious business, they can become decidedly emotional and unbusinesslike.

The Russian soul is a romantic ethos which:

1. appeals to feeling rather than fact,
2. sentiment over certainty,
3. suffering instead of satisfaction, and
4. nostalgia for the past as opposed to the reality of the present.

In a broader sense the Russian Soul is how Russians reaffirm to themselves the purity of proud traditional Russian values against the encroachment of Western enlightenment, nationalism, and secularism, especially in cultural things.

Today, the Russian soul is still deeply felt. Old traditional positive virtues still endure:

1. the importance of hospitality,
2. the importance of true friendship,
3. being more emotional and open with ones true friends,
4. helping other people when they need it,
5. taking hardship and suffering with a pinch of salt,
6. respect for parents,
7. deference to elderly, and
8. regard for learning.

A belief in village virtues is also still strong:

1. self-sacrifice,
2. a sense of duty,
3. compassion,
4. importance of family,
5. a love of nature.

These aspects of the Russian soul are again the themes of “village writers,” as they are known, who glorify peasant life and encourage a renaissance of traditional Russian values.

1. Students hang on the words of their professors.
2. Grateful audiences present flowers to musical and theatrical performers.
3. Before vacating a home where they have lived for some time, Russians will sit quietly for a minute or two, reflecting on the events they have experienced there.

The Russian soul is often derided in the West as a fantasy of artists, composers, and writers. If the Russian soul ever really existed, this argument goes, it was the product of a traditional agricultural society that had very little in material goods to offer. In a modern industrial society the Russian soul is quickly forgotten and Russians become as realistic, practical, materialistic, and unromantic as Westerners.[34][35]

As in many aspects of Russia, the truth is more complex and lies somewhere in between. Russians do have a rich spirituality that does indeed contrast with Western rationalism, materialism, and pragmatism. Russians suffer but based on the amount their popular literature discusses suffering, Russians seem to enjoy this suffering. Obsessed with ideas, their conversations are weighty and lengthy. Russians often reject the American’s rational and pragmatic approach. Instead personal relations, feelings, and traditional values determine their course of action. In contrast, Westerners tend to view themselves as pragmatic, relying on the cold facts.[36][37]

That Slavic soul has many aspects that Westerners can respect and admire. As Northwestern University professor Irwin Weil explains:

Russians maintain their integrity in a way that conforms to their inner notion of what a human being should be, in a manner they consider proper, and with an honesty and decency that I have seldom seen anywhere else in the world. Above all, they have an appreciation for tselnost (wholeness, complete commitment) and faith, no matter what that faith may be related to. To be a real human being, one must maintain that full commitment, and respect it in other people as well.[38]


Tatyana Tolstaya, one of Russia’s leading contemporary writers, says:

Russian writers and thinkers have often called the "Russian soul" female, contrasting it to the rational, clear, dry, active, well-defined soul of the Western man….Logic [is] inapplicable to the soul. But Russian sensitivity, permeating the whole culture, doesn’t want to use logic—logic is seen as dry and evil, logic comes from the devil— the most important thing is sensation, smell, emotion, tears, mist, dreams, and enigma. In Russian culture, emotion is assigned an entirely positive value. The more a person expresses his emotions, the better, more sincere, and more ‘open’ he is. The Russian mentality has penetrated to some degree all corners of the country - often not for the best.

Tolstaya continues that the Russian soul is described as:

sensitivity, reverie, imagination, an inclination to tears, compassion, submission mingled with stubbornness, patience that permits survival in what would seem to be unbearable circumstances, poetry, mysticism, fatalism, a penchant for walking the dark, humid back streets of consciousness, introspection, sudden, unmotivated cruelty, mistrust of rational thought, fascination with the word—the list could go on and on—all these qualities that have frequently been attributed to the “Slavic soul.”[39]


Americans are more depressed than Russians, even though Russians are more self-reflective.

Two University of Michigan psychological scientists found that:

1. Russians were much more likely to be self-reflective: they think more about their fundamental nature and essence than Americans. But this Russian character trait was not linked to depression.

2. Less analytical Americans had more symptoms of depression than Russians,

3. Russians are more detached than while recalling a bad experience.

a. Russians thought about the bad event in a healthier way:
i. keeping more psychological distance from the emotional details.
ii. analyzed their feelings, but with detachment, and this detachment buffered Russians from depression.

4. Like Eastern cultures, Russians embrace sadness and pity instead of trying to block it like Americans tend to do.

5. Russians tend to be more communal, more focused on interpersonal harmony

a. This allows them to see their own personal needs in larger context, from an outsider perspective.

6. Americans come from a tradition of rugged individualism, and tend to focus on the personal.

a. With less of a community perspective, they immerse themselves in the emotional details of negative events, and this self focus leads to distress and depression.

The lesson is clear: If you're going to brood, then brood like a Russian. Just remember to go easy on the vodka.[40][41][42][43][44][45]

Even today emotions and personal feelings still matter to Russians. The future of the Russian soul brother Russians. It has survived centuries of church and state domination and 70 years of communism. Will it also survive, they wonder, the transition to the free market and democracy, and the call of Western culture?[46]

The Russian soul is a way to glorifying an aspect of one's culture that is otherwise actually quite negative[47][48]


Obviously there’s nothing magical about the Russian soul. However, all nationalities do have specific characteristics that set them apart from all other nationalities. The term “Russian soul” is just a way of expressing how very different Russians are from other Europeans.

The Russian Soul is a concept similar in function as British 'Stiff Upper Lip' or 'The American Dream' (to a lesser extent).

The stiff upper lift - is a quality of remaining calm and not letting other people see what they are really feeling in a difficult or unpleasant situation

The Russian soul is a way Russians glorify an aspect of their culture that is otherwise actually quite negative.


The British are incredibly reserved, and have difficulty expressing themselves emotionally. They have the emotional range of a shoe. Rather than look at this emotional reservation as bad, they explain that it helped to build a massive Empire.


The 'American Dream' is a wonderful thing. It propagates the idea that you could overcome the massive social inequality, bigotry, racism and failings if you dream and work hard enough. If you don't make it, it's because you didn't work hard enough or dream hard enough, it has nothing to do with the system being massively unequal and favouring only the very few. The American system is like a casino. The house always wins, but it gives the normal person just enough chance to make them think they might succeed.

And then we come to the 'Russian Soul'.


Dostoyevsky explained, "the most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything"


And he is right, Russians are addicted to suffering. Why? Russians spend most of their life getting f****d in some way. Rather than see it as a bad thing, they, like the British and Americans, glorify it. This suffering makes them better than anyone else!


As Li Mu explains:

Many, many times, I've heard Russians have 'suffering competitions'. They'll brag about how they've suffered more than anyone else. Have a look for the Monty Python 'Yorkshireman Sketch' to get an idea. I once mentioned a time when I had a bad birthday. My two Russian colleagues just couldn't let it lie. They had to beat me and proceeded to explain the myriad of ways that their birthdays were worse than anything I had ever experienced.


In all cases, the glorification of one's inadequacies and failings is a coping mechanism.


Brits: I don't know how to show my emotions. But it's OK because it's the British Stiff Upper Lip.

Americans: I work my ass off with two jobs and still can't afford rent. But it's OK because if I suffer and work even harder I can live the American Dream.

Russians: My life is a tragic mess and I've somehow found myself living in Norlisk (an industrial city located above the Arctic Circle). But it's OK. I have a Russian soul and I eat suffering for breakfast.

There is definitely a set of characteristics, often referred to as “the Russian soul”, that make Russians unique. Expats who say there isn’t, as well as Russians who say foreigners will never be able to understand it (умом Россию не понять), are both wrong.[49]

The mind cannot understand Russia

(умом Россию не понять)

The Great russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev (Фёдор Иванович Тютчев) wrote a beautiful poem, which is very popular in Russia:

You will not grasp her with your mind

Or cover with a common label,

For Russia is one of a kind -

Believe in her, if you are able...

Fyodor Tyutchev.jpg

Collective vs. Individualist

e 

[For Russians] the striving for [group] activity has always prevailed over individualism.

— Russian President Vladimir Putin, First Person (2000).

[Russia has always valued the] communal way of life over the merely individual. Community was seen so near to the ideal of brotherly love, which forms the essence of Christianity and thus represents the higher mission of the people. In this “higher mission” a commune—a triumph of human spirit—was understood as opposing law, formal organizations, and personal interests.

— Nina Khrushcheva, a great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev.[50]

Sobornost (communal spirit, togetherness) distinguishes Russians from Westerners in which individualism and competitiveness are more common characteristics.

American’s frontier spirit vs Russia’s agricultural commune

The contrast between Russian communalism and American individualism can best be seen in the historical differences between Russian peasants (serfs) and American farmers.

America’s settlers were independent farmers and ranchers who owned their own land and lived on it, self-sufficient and distant from their neighbors. In contrast to the Russian peasants of the mir (a medieval agricultural village commune), American farmers lived behind fences that marked the limits of their property. The Americans were entrepreneurs in the sense that they managed their property individually, taking economic risks and self-regulating their own lives, independent of the state and without being dependent on the community. Although the United States also has had its own communes, these communes have existed on the fringes of society rather than at its center. In the United States, the commune is considered alien (except for Native Americans, who also lived a communal lifestyle).

To Russians, the commune is a deep part of their psyche. Individualism is esteemed in the West, but in Russian the word has a negative (pejorative) meaning. Steeped in the heritage of the communal village, Russians think of themselves as members of a community rather than as individuals. Individualism is equated with selfishness or lack of regard for the community.

Russians’ behavior in crowds

Communal culture helps explain many of Russian’s characteristics, for example their behavior in crowds. Physical contact with complete strangers—repellent to Americans and West Europeans— does not bother Russians. When getting onto the subway complete strangers may touch, push, shove, and jostle about like siblings competing for the last morsel of chicken. They may elbow you without serious reflection or fear of resentment.

A crowd of passengers attempting to board a ship in Odessa in the early 1960s caught the attention of South African author Laurens van der Post. The crowd pushed and jostled in a way that would appear uncivil to the traveler, but the ship’s officer collecting tickets seemed completely unbothered by it. Even when passengers shouted at the officer and elbowed him out of the way, he did not appear irritated, nor did yell for them to calm down. A group of French tourists became annoyed by the crowd’s persistent jostling and, taking personal offense, lashed out angrily at everyone within their vicinity. “The Russians were horrified at such lack of traveling manners presumably because it was personal retaliation and not the collective, impersonal pressure they were all applying to get through a bottleneck.”[51]

Foreign visitors who are averse to close contact should avoid the Moscow Metro (subway) especially during rush hours, when trains run every 90 seconds but the metro is generally still crowded the rest of the day.

Americans have a distinct line between work and personal relationships. In contrast, after working together all day, Russian factory and office employees will spend evenings in group excursions to theaters and other cultural events organized by their supervisors or groups, such as in the artel (workers’ cooperatives).

Russians seem compelled to intrude into the private affairs of others. Older Russians admonish young men and women—complete strangers—for perceived wrongdoings, using the term of address molodoy chelovek (young man) or dyevushka (girl). On the streets, older women volunteer advice to young mothers on the care of their children. In a collective society, everybody’s business is also everyone else’s.


Russian History: The Great Russian Plain

Russian communalism was not an invention of communists, although its traditions were utilized under the Soviets. The fondness (affinity) for the group has deep roots in Russian culture, and its origins can be traced to the vastness of the great Russian plain.

In prehistoric times Russians banded together to fell the forest, till the soil, harvest the crops, and protect themselves from invaders and marauders. Tools and weapons were primitive and life was harsh, but those handicaps could be overcome and survival ensured—although just barely—by the collective effort of living and working together.

The zadruga, a clan or greater family commune, served as the nucleus of a tribal society. In time, it evolved into the larger mir, an agricultural village commune (also known as obshchina) based on territory and mutual interests. Member families lived in small hamlets, in huts side by side. The surrounding land was held in common by this commune and was unfenced. Each family, however, had its own hut, maintained a small plot of land for a family garden, and ate their meals at home.

Land cultivation was the mir’s primary purpose and the basis for its survival. The mir determined how much of the common land each family would work, depending on its size and needs. It decided which crops would be grown and when they would be planted and harvested. It collected taxes and settled local disputes. The mir’s authority extended beyond land matters: It also disciplined members, intervened in family disputes, settled issues that affected the community as a whole, and otherwise regulated the affairs of its self-contained and isolated agricultural world.

The word mir, in fact, has three meanings in Russian—village commune, world, and peace—and for its members it symbolized all three. That little world of the Russian peasant—the bulk of the populace—was a world apart from, and at least a century behind, the lifestyles of landowners and city dwellers.

Decisions of the mir were made in a village assembly of heads of households. All members could speak and discussions were lively, but no vote was taken. The objective was to determine the collective will, and after an issue had been thoroughly discussed and opposition to it had ceased, a consensus evolved that became binding on all households. Richard Stites describes the mir meetings as marked by "seemingly immense disorder and chaos, interruptions, and shouting; in fact it achieved business-like results."[52]

When peasants moved to cities as workers and craftsmen, they brought with them their communal way of life and formed workers' cooperatives called artels. Modeled on the mir, artel members hired themselves out for jobs as a group and shared the payments for their work. Some artels rented communal apartments where they would share the rent, buy the food, dine together, and even attend leisure events as a group. Hundreds of thousands of workers lived in this way in the generation or so before the Bolshevik Revolution. In the city, as in the village, security and survival were ensured by a collective effort.[53]

That communal way of life persisted well into the twentieth century, lasting longer in Russia than elsewhere in Europe. Tsarist Russia encouraged the mir because it served as a form of state control over the peasants and facilitated tax collection and military conscription. Because the mir affected so many people, and for such a long time, it played a major role in forming the Russian character. In the late 1950s, for example, when Soviet students began to come to the United States and were assigned in groups to American universities, they would often pool their stipends, live off a small part of their pooled funds, and save as much as they could for later purchases.[54]

As Lev Tikhomirov wrote in 1888, "The Great Russian cannot imagine a life outside his society, outside the mir....The Great Russian says: 'The mir is a fine fellow, I will not desert the mir. Even death is beautiful in common.'"[55]

Serfdom (personal bondage) was imposed on most Russian peasants in the late sixteenth century and lasted for three hundred years before being abolished in 1861 (the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in the United States in 1863). The emancipation of serfs was accompanied by a land redistribution that enabled serfs, in principle, to purchase land outside the commune. However, land distributed under the reform was actually given to the mir, which held it in common until its members could make redemption payments.

That freed the serfs but preserved the mir, and peasants once more found themselves bound to the land they worked, since most of them were financially unable to leave the commune. The reform thus continued the mir's power over peasants and their submission to a higher authority that regulated the social order.


The mir endured in various forms until the early 1930s, when it was replaced by the Soviet collective farm. A modern-day effort by the state to tie peasants to the land, the brutally enforced collectivization was strongly opposed by the peasants, especially in Ukraine. The objective was to ensure an adequate supply of food for the cities, which were to grow under the industrialization of the Five-Year Plans. The immediate result, however, was famine and the death of millions in the countryside.[56]

Russian pessimism - A pessimist is an informed optimist

e 

We did the best we could, but it turned out as usual. (Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда.)

— Viktor Chernomyrdin, former Russian prime minister (1992–1998)

Russian pessimism is the source of many Russian jokes (anekdoti). According to one, pessimists say, “Things can’t be worse than they are now.” Optimists say, “Yes they can.” Another antidote describes a pessimist as an informed optimist.

It is no secret, of course, that Americans love happy endings -- to the point of childishness, many Russians say. Russian pessimism contrasts with American innocence, naivety, and optimism. Americans expect things to go well, and they become annoyed when they do not. Russians expect things to go poorly and are prepared for disappointments. This can be seen in Russian horoscopes which unlike their American counterparts seem full of gloom and doom. To American astrologers, a dangerous alignment of the planets offers an obstacle to overcome - another opportunity for personal growth. Contrast this with a typical horoscope in the 1994 Kommersant newspaper:

"Today is a largely dangerous day. You may end up broke....This day is entirely unsuitable for undertakings of any sort....The risk of accidents is high....You should not expect anything good from your family life today...It is better not to gamble. On a day like this, whole fortunes are lost."[57]

Similarly, like the ancient Greeks Russian's literature is full of tragedy. Russian history shows that life has indeed been difficult for Russians. Weather, wars, violence, cataclysmic changes, and oppressive rule over centuries have made pessimists out of Russians. Richard Lourie explains that:

"[Russians have a] gloom-and-doom mentality. Both at the kitchen table and in print, they indulge in apocalyptic prophecies.”[58]

Fear is a major element of the Russian psyche, and will be encountered in many places in Russia, especially at the highest levels of government, where there is often fear of an outside enemy determined to destroy Russia. Americans should not be put off by this gloom and doom, nor should they attempt to make optimists of Russians. The best response is to express understanding and sympathy.

Less in control of their lives than other Europeans and Americans, Russians feel caught up in the big sweeps of history where the individual is insignificant and does not count. Translators Richard Lourie and Aleksei Mikhalev explain:

"The difference between Russia and America is simple and dramatic. For [Russians], history is a subject, a black-and-white newsreel; for them it is a tank on their street, a search of their apartment by strangers with power. In the Soviet Union nearly every life has been touched directly, branded, by the great historical spasms of revolution, war and terror. For a Russian, repression always comes from the outside world."[59]

Glasnost and perestroika were exciting for foreigners to observe from a distance, but to Russians they were yet another historical spasm with uncertainties about the future in which outsiders, this time America, betrayed many promises.

The best and brightest Russians have traditionally been banished. In old Russia independent thinkers were exiled to Siberia. Hollywood was created by Jews escaping Russia. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the cream of Russia’s elite was liquidated. Stalin’s purges of the 1930s further decimated the intelligentsia, and today many of Russia’s best and brightest have been lost through brain drain emigration.

One of those who emigrated was Vladimir Voinovich, a human rights advocate who was forced to leave for the West in 1975 after the KGB threatened that his future in the Soviet Union would be “unbearable.” Voinovich wrote:

“Russians and American read my books in very different ways. Americans usually say they are funny. Russians say....they are very gloomy, dark.”[60]

This gloomy and dark side of the Russian character explains the bittersweet humor that is native to Russia and the “good news, bad news” jokes. Russian pessimism can also be infectious, and Americans who have worked with them for many years are vulnerable to the virus. Llewellyn Thompson, twice American ambassador to Moscow, was asked on his retirement in 1968 to name his greatest accomplishment, “That I didn’t make things any worse.” [61]

Despite their pessimism and complaining, there is an admirable durability about Russians, a hardy people who have more than proven their ability to endure severe deprivation and suffer lengthy hardships. Tibor Szamuely wrote of “the astonishing durability of certain key social and political institutions, traditions, habits, and attitudes, their staying power, their essential stability amidst the turbulent currents of violent change, chaotic upheaval, and sudden innovation.”[62]

Russians Lie

e 
Among our Russian intellectual classes the very existence of a non-liar is an impossibility, the reason being that in Russia even honest men can lie.[63]
Yes, the Russian is incapable of telling downright lies; but seems equally incapable of telling the truth. The intermediate phenomenon for which he feels the utmost love and tenderness resembles neither truth nor lozh [lie]. It is vranyo. Like our native aspen, it pops up uninvited everywhere, choking other varieties; like the aspen it is no use for firewood or carpentry; and, again like the aspen, it is sometimes beautiful.
— Leonid Andreyev.[64]
[Russians] lie out of necessity. We lie when it’s convenient. And we lie just to keep in shape.
- Vadim Medish.[65]
This is a sentiment I have heard expressed by some Russians and actually some foreigners living in Russia who said it would be easier to understand Russians if they were just purple, because it was in fact confusing to Westerns, to Europeans and to Americans, to deal with Russians who look European, who look white, and you expect them to act like Westerners, like white Western Europeans, when in fact they are quite different and wired quite differently and have quite different cultural expectations and wiring, and that...that created quite a few misunderstandings.
I lived in Russia at the time, and what I could never get across to Russians was that Americans really are that idealistic, and they really believe what they’re saying about democracy, about freedom, about human rights; that this isn’t just cynical lying; that this isn’t just a cynical fig leaf in trying to take over oil wells in the Middle East.
And Russians, even the most liberal Russians, often wouldn’t believe me. They would think—they would equate idealism with stupidity, and this would fit their stereotype of Americans as stupid.
And then I would come back to the U.S., and Americans couldn’t understand how cynical Russians were; that they really didn’t believe pretty much anything they said; that there was always a lot of machinations going on and that there was just—that they really were that comfortable lying to you, to your face.
And no matter how long these parties dealt with each other—in government, through diplomacy — they still never understood this fundamental thing about each other. The Russians thought the Americans were as cynical as they are, and the Americans couldn’t understand that the Russians were always lying.[66]

Russians lie, a national characteristic called "vranyo". Dictionaries translate vranyo as “lies, fibs, nonsense, idle talk,” but like many Russian terms, it is really untranslatable. Americans might call it “tall talk” or “white lies,” but “fib” perhaps comes closest because vranyo. To these words may be added the Irish "blarney", which comes nearer than any of the others, but still falls pretty wide of the mark. As Russian writer Leonid Andreyev noted, is somewhere between the truth and a lie. Vranyo is indeed an art form, beautiful perhaps to Russians but annoying to Westerners and others who value the unvarnished truth.[67]

In its most common form today, vranyo is an inability to face the facts, particularly when the facts do not reflect favorably on Russia. Tourist guides are masters of vranyo, as are Russians who represent their country abroad. When ideology or politics dictate a particular position, they are likely to evade, twist, or misstate facts in order to put the best possible spin on a potentially embarrassing situation. As Boris Fyodorov, the 1998 deputy prime minister of Russia explained, "There are several layers of truth in Russia. Nothing is black or white, fortunately or unfortunately."[68]

Russians, however, do not consider vranyo to be dishonest, nor should foreign visitors. As the famous Fyodor Dostoyevsky explained:

"Not long ago I was suddenly struck by the thought that among our Russian intellectual classes the existence of, the reason being that in Russia even honest men can lie...I am convinced that in other nations, for the great majority, it is only scoundrels who lie; they lie for practical advantage, that is, with directly criminal aims."[69]

When using vranyo, Russians know that they are fibbing and expect that their listeners will also know. But it is considered bad manners to directly challenge the fibber. As one Russian specialist suggest advises, the victim of vranyo should "convey subtly, almost telepathically, that he is aware of what is going on, that he appreciates the performance and does not despise his...host simply because the conditions of the latter’s office obliged him to put it on."[70][71]


Verification - Trust but Verify

e 

Trust, but verify. (Доверяй, но проверяй).

—US President Ronald Reagan (after an old Russian proverb)

Can Russians be trusted to honor commitments? The prudent response to this question is “Yes, but. …”

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, US Former National Security Advisor, Anglo-Saxons and Russians have different concepts of trust:

"The Anglo-Saxons approach...issues like negotiated, legal agreements. It might be called a litigational approach. To the Russians, a commitment is binding as long as it is historically valid, so to speak. And its historical validity depends on the degree to which that commitment is either self-enforcing or still mutually advantageous. If it ceases to be self-enforcing or mutually advantageous, it obviously has lapsed."[72]

Related to verification are accountability and reporting, particularly where the expenditure of funds is involved. Russians can be notoriously lax about accounting for expended funds and using them effectively, a problem recognized by Mikhail Gorbachev.

A problem is accountability of funds. American donors to Russian philanthropic institutions have reported difficulties in obtaining prompt and detailed reporting on how their funds are being expended. Some new Russian foundations have scoffed at the standard regulatory and accounting procedures required by American donors. As one Russian foundation official put it, "We are all fine Christian men, and our [Russian] donors don’t question what we do with their money."[73]

Such a response should not be seen as an intent to deceive but rather as an intercultural difference. Americans understand the need for accountability, annual financial reports, and audits by certified public accountants. But requesting such procedures from Russians may be seen as questioning their good faith and honesty. When encountering indignation over reporting requirements, Americans may wish to emulate Ronald Reagan by responding, “Trust, but verify.”


Cheating in Universities

e 

“First whip to the informer” (Доносчику первый кнут.)

- Russian Proverb (In Russian)

Any teacher who has taught in Moscow knows that if the teacher is giving an exam the teacher cannot walk out of the room for even one minute because all of the kids will cheat; whether they're elementary school students or university students.

Tolerance of dishonesty is high in the University system. With few exceptions, Russian universities do not address the issues of academic cheating (plagiarism, falsification of term papers or even various forms of gratification in return for the good grade) at institutional level. As a result, cheating is blossoming both among students and faculty and reinforcing corruption practices outside academia.


1 in 7 Russian students readily admits to cheating in university exams.

1 in 25 students admits to having paid for someone else to write at least one mid-term or final-year paper.

50% of students in economics and management, state that cheaters should receive no more than a warning if caught.

Possible explanations of cheating:

  • Cheating has become a response to boring and meaninglessly redundant education: “students cheat when they feel cheated”.
  • The vast Russian students hate informers. There is a common Russian saying: “First whip to the informer” appears to prevail.
  • Collective and individualistic values differ between countries. In the United States and Russia, two cultural differences appear to relate directly to cheating.

In the United States, in contrast to Russia, competition among students is seen as an important intrinsic value of the educational system, a value that affects interaction between students. Thus, cheating is condemned because it is considered an unfair instrument of competition.

In Contrast in Russia, the attitude to the law and to officials differ between the two countries. In the former USSR, the judicial system served as an instrument of the party, and a common view was that officials are enemies. This attitude existed toward policemen, civil servants, train conductors, and also toward teachers, and may explain the strong negative attitude toward informers among Russian students.

The larger the number of students in a collective that is cheating and tolerant toward cheating, the more often the students will cheat, the more tolerant they are, and the less costly it is for every student to cheat and to be tolerant toward cheating. This is the coordination effect: the more consistently a behavioral norm is observed by members of society, the greater the costs to an individual who don’t follow this behavior.

Since cheating is widespread and group loyalty a deeply held value, informants and those seeking reform can be seen in a negative light. As an old Russian proverb goes, “First whip to the informer.” In addition, there remains a lot of social pressure to be a team player, even in a corrupt environment.


Friends - the key to getting anything done in Russia

e 

Better to have one hundred friends than one hundred rubles (Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей).

— русская поговорка

The value of the Russian ruble may increase or decrease but not the value of Russian friends. Friends and familiar faces are the key to getting things done in Russia, and foreigners who cultivate close relationships will have a big advantage in doing business there.

Sol Hurok, the legendary American impresario who pioneered North American tours by Soviet dance and music groups, would visit the Soviet Union periodically to audition performing artists and to select those he would sign for performances abroad. Traveling alone, Hurok would negotiate and sign contracts for extensive U.S. coast-to-coast tours by such large ensembles as the Bolshoi Ballet and the Moscow Philharmonic.

In Moscow in 1969 author Yale Richmond asked Hurok how he could sign contracts for such large and costly undertakings without lawyers and others to advise him. “I have been coming here for many years and doing business with the Russians. I simply write out a contract by hand on a piece of paper, and we both sign it. They know and trust me.”[74]

William McCulloch is an American whose business activities in Russia include housing construction and telecommunications. The key to doing business in Russia, says McCulloch, is finding the right partner—one with whom a basis of trust is established over time. “You cannot bring in an army of New York lawyers and have an ironclad deal. You have to have a clear understanding with the right partner about what you are doing.” Such an understanding, he adds, makes it possible to negotiate one’s way through the Russian political, economic, and banking systems.[75]

Russians rely on a close network of family, friends, and coworkers as protection against the risks and unpredictability of daily life. In the village commune, Russians felt safe and secure in the company of family and neighbors. Today, in the city, they continue to value familiar faces and mistrust those they do not know.

Visitors who know a Russian from a previous encounter will have a big advantage. First-time travelers to Russia are advised to ask friends who already know the people they will be meeting to put in a good word for them in advance of their visits. And ideally the same traveler should return for subsequent visits and not be replaced by someone else from the firm or organization whose turn has come for a trip to Russia.

Despite its vast size, or perhaps because of it, Russia is run on the basis of personal connections. In both the workplace and in private life, Russians depend on those they know—friends who owe them favors, former classmates, fellow military veterans, and others whom they trust. The bureaucracy is not expected to respond equitably to a citizen’s request. Instead, Russians will call friends and ask for their help.

The friendship network also extends to the business world. Business managers, short of essential parts or materials, will use their personal contacts to obtain the necessary items. Provide a spare part or commodity for someone, and receive something in return. Without such contacts, production would grind to a halt.

Westerners who want something from their government will approach the responsible official, state their case, and assume that law and logic will prevail. Russians in the same situation, mistrustful of the state and its laws, will approach friends and acquaintances and ask them to put in a good word with the official who will decide. The process is reciprocal: those who do favors for Russians can expect favors in return.

The word Friend

The word friend, however, must be used carefully in Russia. An American can become acquainted with a complete stranger and in the next breath will describe that person as a friend. American friendships, however, are compartmentalized, often centering around colleagues in an office, neighbors in a residential community, or participants in recreational activities. This reflects the American reluctance to get too deeply involved with the personal problems of others. An American is more likely to refer a needy friend to a professional for help rather than become involved in the friend’s personal troubles.

Not so with Russians, for whom friendship is all encompassing and connotes a special relationship. Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, when asked about the difference between Russian and American friendships, replied:

"In Russia, because the society has been so closed, you’re sharing your inside with your friends. Your views on society. Political points of view. It’s a small circle of people whom you trust. And you get so attached. Talking with friends becomes your second nature. A need. Like at 4 o’clock in the morning, without a phone call, your friend can come to your house, and you’re up and putting the teapot on. That kind of friendship."[76]

The Russian language has different words for friend (drug, pronounced “droog”) and acquaintance (znakomy), and these words should not be misused. A drug is more like a “bosom buddy,” someone to trust, confide in, and treat like a member of the family. Such friendships are not made easily or quickly. They take time to develop, but when they are made and nurtured, a Russian friendship will embrace the entire person. Russians will ask friends for time and favors that most Americans would regard as impositions.

Friendship with a Russian is not to be treated lightly. One American describes it as smothering, and some will find that it is more than they can handle. As one Russian explained, “Between Russian friends, what’s theirs is yours and what’s yours is theirs, especially if it’s in the refrigerator.”

Americans tend to be informal in their speech—candid, direct, and without the rituals, polite forms, and indirect language common to many other cultures. Russians welcome and appreciate such informal talk, but usually only after a certain stage in the relationship has been reached.

The preferred form of address among Russians and the one most likely to be used in the initial stage of a relationship, is the first name and patronymic (father’s name plus an affix).

For example:

a man named Boris, whose father was Nikolai, is addressed as: Boris Nikolayevich (Boris, son of Nicholas).
a woman named Mariya whose father was Fyodor (Theodore), would be Mariya Fyodorovna (with the feminine ending -a).

With the friendship stage comes the use of the first name by itself, or a nickname. But first-name usage with a foreigner does not necessarily indicate that the friendship stage has been reached, as it would with another Russian. It does signify, however, the next stage in a developing relationship.

Like most European languages, Russian has two forms of you. The more formal vi is used between strangers, acquaintances, and in addressing people of higher position. The informal ti, akin to the old English thou and the French tu or German du, is reserved for friends, family members, and children; it is also used in talking down to someone and addressing animals. Readers will surely appreciate the need for care in using the familiar form.[77]


The importance of trust in Russia

Excerpt from The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer:

The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer figure 6 point 1 trusting.png

As you look at the Trusting scale you see the United States positioned far to the left while all BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) fall far to the right. When it comes to building trust, the center of gravity in the global business world has fundamentally shifted over the past fifteen years. Previously, managers working in global business may have felt themselves pulled toward working in a more American manner, because the United States dominated most world markets. Building trust in a task-based fashion was therefore one of the keys to international success. But in today’s business environment, the BRIC cultures are rising and expanding their reach. At the same time, countries in the southern hemisphere such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are growing in global weight. All of these countries lie markedly toward the relationship-based end of the Trusting scale.

Today if you are a manager aiming for success at an international level and your work brings you to the BRIC cultures or really anywhere in the southern hemisphere, you must learn how to build relationship-based trust with your clients and colleagues in order to be successful.

On the other hand, for those who work frequently in North America, you may be skeptical about the accuracy of the United States on the left-hand side of the Trusting scale. Are Americans really so task-based? What about the client breakfasts, the golf outings, and the team-building activities and icebreaker exercises featured at so many American-style training programs or conferences? Don’t these suggest that Americans are just as relationship-based as the Brazilians or the Chinese?

Not really. Think back to those icebreaker activities—those two-to-three-minute exchanges designed to “build a relationship” between complete strangers. What happens when the exercise is completed? Once the relationship is built, the participants check it off the list and get down to business—and at the end of the program, the relationships that were so quickly built are usually just as quickly dropped.

What’s true in the training or conference center is true outside of it. In task-based societies like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, relationships are defined by functionality and practicality. It is relatively easy to move in and out of networks, and if a business relationship proves to be unsatisfactory to either party, it’s a simple matter to close the door on that relationship and move into another.

By contrast, icebreaker exercises in relationship-based societies are rare. Relationships are built up slowly, founded not just on professional credibility but also on deeper emotional connections—and after the relationship is built, it is not dropped easily.

As an example, consider what happens when the boss fires someone on your team. Will you continue your relationship with the person who has been fired even though he is no longer part of your company? Responses to this question vary dramatically from one culture to another. A Spanish executive working in an American firm stated:

"I couldn’t believe the way my American colleagues reacted when one of our team members lost his job. That guy was our friend one day and out of our lives the next. I asked my teammates—all of whom I respect deeply—“When are we going to have a party for him, meet him for drinks, tell him he is on our minds?” They looked at me as if I was a little crazy. They seemed to feel, since he was underperforming, we could just push him off the boat and pretend we never cared about him. For a Spaniard, this is not an easy thing to accept."

But in America, coworkers aare often quickly forgotten. There is a clear difference between work friends and personal friends, whereas in Russia these two spheres are less distinct.[9]

The Importance of Equality

e 

The interests of distribution and egalitarianism always predominated over those of production and creativity in the minds and emotions of the Russian intelligentsia.

— Nikolai Berdiaev. 1909. Vekhi

Americans are raised on the success ethic: work hard, get ahead, be successful in whatever you do. The success ethic, however, is alien to many Russians, who believe that it may be morally wrong to get ahead, particularly at the expense of others. Russians will not mind if their American acquaintances are successful, but they are likely to resent fellow Russians who “succeed.” Belief in communism has eroded, but the egalitarian ethic still survives.

Nina Khrushcheva wrote: "In Russia equality of outcomes,” a belief that material conditions in society should not vary too greatly among individual and classes, wins out over Western "equality of opportunities," which tends to tolerate and even encourage the open flourishing of class distinctions. Therefore, working for money, for example, a virtue so respected in the West, was not a “good way” in Russia. Russians can be great workers, as long as labor is done not for profit but for some spiritual or personal reason or is done as a heroic deed, performing wonders, knowing no limits.[78]

Equality is a social philosophy that advocates the removal of inequities among persons and a more equal distribution of benefits. In its Russian form egalitarianism is not an invention of communists but has its roots in the culture of the mir which, as we have seen, represented village democracy, Russian-style.

The mir’s governing body was an assembly composed of heads of households, including widowed women, and presided over by a starosta (elder). Before the introduction of currency, mir members were economically equal, and equality for members was considered more important than personal freedom. Those agricultural communes, with their egalitarian lifestyle and distribution of material benefits, were seen by Russian intellectuals as necessary to protect the peasants from the harsh competition of Western individualism. Individual rights, it was feared, would enable the strong to prosper but cause the weak to suffer. Others saw the mir as a form of agrarian socialism, the answer to Russia’s striving for egalitarianism.

For much of Russian history, peasants numbered close to 90 percent of the population. By 1990, however, due to industrialization, the figure had dropped to about 30 percent. But while the other 70 percent of the population live in urban areas, most of today’s city dwellers are only one, two, or three generations removed from their ancestral villages. Despite their urbanization and education, the peasant past is still very much with them, and many of them still think in the egalitarian terms of the mir.

The Soviet Union also thought in egalitarian terms. Communism aimed to make a complete break with the past and create a new society, but its leaders could not escape the heritage of the past, and their leveling of society revived the communal ethic of the mir on a national scale. As British scholar Geoffrey Hosking observed:

In some ways....the Soviet state has perpetuated the attitudes of the pre-1930 Russian village community. The expectation is still prevalent that the community will guarantee essentials in a context of comradely indigence just above the poverty line.[79]

Many aspects of Russian communism may indeed be traced to the mir. The meetings of the village assembly were lively, but decisions were usually unanimous and binding on all members. This provided a precedent for the communism’s “democratic centralism,” under which issues were debated, decisions were made that all Party members were obliged to support, and opposition was prohibited.

Peasants could not leave the mir without an internal passport issued only with permission of their household head. This requirement was a precursor not only of Soviet (and tsarist) regulations denying citizens freedom of movement and resettlement within the country, but also of the practice of denying emigration to those who did not have parental permission. Under communism, the tapping of telephones and the perusal of private mail by the KGB must have seemed natural to leaders whose ancestors lived in a mir where the community was privy to the personal affairs of its members. And in a society where the bulk of the population was tied to the land and restricted in movement, defections by Soviet citizens abroad were seen as treasonous.

Despite its egalitarian ethic, old Russia also had an entrepreneurial tradition based in a small merchant class called kupyechestvo. Russian merchants established medieval trading centers, such as the city-state of Novgorod, which were independent and self-governing until absorbed by Muscovy in the late fifteenth century. Merchants explored and developed Siberia and played a key role in Russia’s industrialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Merchants were also Westernizers in the years between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, endorsing social and legal reform, the rule of law, civil liberties, and broader educational opportunities. However, they rejected economic liberalism, with its emphasis on free trade in international exchange and free competition in the domestic economy, and advocated instead state planning. And as an additional link in the chain of continuity between the old and new Russia, as Ruth Roosa has pointed out, merchants in the years prior to 1917 called for state plans of 5, 10, and even 15 years’ duration that would embrace all aspects of economic life.[80]

Agriculture in old Russia also had its entrepreneurs. Most of the land was held in large estates by the crown, aristocracy, and landed gentry, but after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, a small class of independent farmers emerged. By 1917, on the eve of the Revolution, some 10 percent of the peasants were independent farmers. The more enterprising and prosperous among them were called kulaks (fists) by their less successful and envious brethren who had remained in the mir. But the kulaks were ruthlessly exterminated and their land forcibly collectivized by the communists in the early 1930s. Millions of peasants left the land they had farmed, production was disrupted, and more than five million died in the resulting famine. The forced collectivization contributed to the eventual failure of Soviet agriculture.

Private farming returned to Russia in the late 1980s and grew steadily over the following years, encouraged by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, legislation passed by the Russian parliament, and decrees issued by Boris Yeltsin. The legal underpinning for agricultural reform was provided by Article 36 of the new Russian constitution, approved by the electorate in December 1993, which affirmed that “Citizens and their associations shall be entitled to have land in private ownership.” Parliament, however, reflecting historic attitudes on communal ownership of land, balked at passing legislation that would have put that article into effect. The opposition in parliament was led by the Communist and Agrarian Parties, and most land remained government property, as it was during Soviet times when Communist ideology required that the state own the means of production.[81]

That changed on October 26, 2001, when Vladimir Putin, drawing to close a decade of efforts by Russia’s leadership to ease Soviet-era land sale restrictions, put his pen to legislation giving Russians the right to purchase land. However, the new land code affected only some 2 percent of Russian land, and it covered purchases only for industrial, urban housing, and recreational purposes, but not for farmland. Another law, passed in 2003, finally granted rights to private ownership of land and the possibility for sale and purchase of agricultural land.

However, opposition to private land ownership is still strong. Opponents of farmland sales, in addition to their ideological misgivings, believe that such sales will open the way for wealthy Russians and foreign investors to buy up large tracts of land. Foreigners have the right to buy commercial and residential land but not farmland, although long-term leases by foreigners are permitted. Supporters of farmland sales believe this will further Russia’s transition to a market economy, encourage foreign investment, improve agricultural productivity, promote growth of a property-owning class, provide revenue by taxing privately owned land, and curb the corruption that has facilitated illegal land transactions.

Despite all the supportive legislation and decrees, private agriculture is still not widely accepted by Russian peasants, most of whom oppose reform and are reluctant to leave the security of the former collective and state farms for the risks of the free market. Impediments to private farming include difficulties in acquiring enough land and equipment to start a farm, a general lack of credit, the reluctance of peasants to give up the broad range of social services provided by the collective and state farms, and a fear that if land reform is reversed they will once more be branded as kulaks and will lose their land.[82]

Despite its large size, Russia has relatively little area suited for agriculture because of its arid climate and inconsistent rainfall. Northern areas concentrate mainly on livestock, and southern parts and western Siberia produce grain. Restructuring of former state farms has been a slow process. Nevertheless, private farms and individual garden plots account for over one-half of all agricultural production.[83]

Economic reforms have also been slow to gain support among the general public, particularly with the older generation. While there is a streak of individualism in many Russians, the entrepreneurial spirit of the businessperson and independent farmer runs counter to Russian egalitarianism. For many Russians, selling goods for profit is regarded as dishonest and is called spekulatsiya (speculation).

Russians, it has been said, would rather bring other people down to their level than try to rise higher, a mentality known as uravnilovka (leveling). As Vladimir Shlapentokh, a professor at Michigan State University, points out:

...the traditional political culture and Orthodox religion were always hostile toward rich people. Ever since the time of Alexander Radishchev, one would be hard pressed to find a single Russian writer who imparted sentiments with even an inkling of admiration for wealth and the privileged lifestyle. It suffices to mention the giants of the Russian literary tradition, such as Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and, of course, Maxim Gorky.[84][85]


Russia’s “American Dream”

e 

Russia has a less known "American dream" themselves, referred to as the "Russian idea". Russian government officials have made repeated appeals for a renewal of moral values and the search for a new “Russian idea” to embody them. President Vladimir Putin repeatedly stated that Russia’s renewal depends not only on economic success or correct state policies but on a revival of moral values and national spirit, and he has called for a new "Russian idea" that emphasizes patriotism, social protections, a strong state, and great-power status. As Georgy Poltavchenko, governor of Saint Petersburg from 2011-2018 explained:

The country must have a Russian ideology! Since the Lord ordained our special path, we must also have our own ideology. The most important thing is to primarily instill patriotism and love for the motherland. Then it is the business and right of each person to have their own political views, but you must be a patriot of your own state.[86]

That idea presumes a unique Russian way, with values superior to those of the materialist, individualistic, and decadent West, an idea that has also been embraced by various nationalist and communist political parties.

Among those taking up the "Russian idea" are the neo-Eurasianists (неоевразийство), who trace their roots to a movement that originated among Russian exiles in Western Europe in the early 1920s. Economic geographer Pyotr Savitsky, wrote in 1925:

The idea of a Europe that combines Western and Eastern Europe is absurd. [Eurasia] is a world apart, distinct from the countries situated on the West and on those situated on the South and the South-East. Russia occupies the greatest part of the Eurasian landmass; it is not divided between two continents but forms a third, independent geographic entity.[87]

Today’s Eurasianists also reject the West and see Russia’s future in the East. They advocate a union of the three Slavic peoples—Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians—and a federation of the Slavic peoples with their Turkic neighbors to the south and east in a political union that looks strikingly similar to the former Soviet Union—and with the Russians in charge. Among the more prominent Eurasianists are Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the Russian Communist Party, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party.

The main components of the Russian idea are:

1. Unity and liberty through love for others. ("sobornost")
2. The best features of the Russian national character, which is the essence of the Russian nation ("narodnost")

The “American Dream” roots are:

  • In its democratic constitution

The “Russian idea” roots are:

  • Monarchy history and socialist ideals.

Russians are cautious and deeply conservative

e 

The slower you go, the further you’ll get.

— Russian proverb


During the socialist Soviet Union, Russians were assumed by the West to be radicals and to challenge the established order. In reality, Russians are more likely to be cautious and conservative defenders of the status quo — and for good reason. Their cruel climate, harsh history, and skeptical outlook on life have caused Russians to value stability, security, social order, and predictability and to avoid risk. Big changes are feared, and the tried and tested is preferred over the new and unknown.

Caution and conservatism are also legacies of the peasant past. Barely eking out a living in small isolated villages, peasants had to contend not only with the vagaries of nature but also with the strictures of communal life, authoritarian fathers, all-powerful officials, and reproachful religious leaders. In a traditional agricultural society, stability was valued and change came slowly. As Marshall Shulman of Columbia University once put it, "Russians feel obliged to defend their traditional values against the onslaught of the modern world."[88]

The experience of the twentieth century has given Russians no cause to discard their caution:

The entire Soviet historical experience with its particular combination of majestic achievements and mountainous misfortunes. Man-made catastrophes have repeatedly victimized millions of ordinary citizens and officials alike—the first European war, revolution, civil war, two great famines, forcible collectivization, Stalin's terror, World War II, [Gorbachev failed market reforms and Yeltsin’s chaos in the 1990s]. Out of that experience, which for many people is still...deeply felt, have come the joint pillars of today's Soviet conservatism: a towering pride in the nation's modernizing, war-time, and great-power achievements, together with an abiding anxiety that another disaster forever looms and that any significant change is therefore "some sinister Beethoven knock of fate at the door."' Such a conservatism is at once prideful and fearful and thus doubly powerful. It influences most segments of the Soviet populace, even many dissidents. It is a real bond between state and society—and thus the main obstacle to change.

Caution and conservatism can also be seen at the highest levels of government, where most of the leadership has been of peasant origin. Reflecting their peasant past, Russia’s leaders will take advantage of every opportunity to advance their cause but will be careful to avoid undue risk.

The cautious approach was recommended by Mikhail Gorbachev in a talk in Washington during his June 1990 summit meeting with President George H.W. Bush. Noting that he preferred not to act precipitously in resolving international differences, Gorbachev advocated an approach that "is more humane. That is, to be very cautious, to consider a matter seven times, or even 100 times before one makes a decision."[89]

Boris Yeltsin was also overly cautious when it was in his interest and Russia’s to be bold and daring. In June 1991, when he enjoyed high prestige and popularity after his election as president, and in August of that year after he foiled an attempted coup, Yeltsin’s caution prevented him from instituting the broad reforms that Russia required. As for Putin, if there is one word to describe him it is cautious. Andrew Jack, former Moscow bureau chief of London’s Financial Times, describes Putin as a cautious president who is very hard to categorize:

A Teflon personality designed to draw out his interlocutors without revealing much about himself, saying what they wanted to hear and promising what they sought, while not necessarily believing or planning to implement it.[90]

Some speak of a hereditary Russian inertia. As an old Russian proverb puts it, “The Russian won’t budge until the roasted rooster pecks him in the rear.”

Americans will have their patience tested by Russian caution. A nation of risk takers, most Americans are descendants of immigrants who dared to leave the known of the Old World for the unknown of the New. In the United States, risk takers have had the opportunity to succeed or to fail in the attempt. Indeed, risk is the quintessence of a market economy. The opportunities of the New World, with its social mobility and stability, have helped Americans to accentuate the positive. For Russians, geography and history have caused them to anticipate the negative.[91]

Russians Extremes and Contradictions

e 

The American mind will not apprehend Russia until it is prepared philosophically to accept the validity of contradiction. Soberly viewed, there is little possibility that enough Americans will ever accomplish...philosophical evolutions to permit...any general understanding of Russia on the part of our Government or our people. It would imply a measure of intellectual humility and a readiness to reserve judgment about ourselves and our institutions, of which few of us would be capable. For the foreseeable future the American, individually and collectively, will continue to wander about in the maze of contradiction and the confusion which is Russia, with feelings not dissimilar to those of Alice in Wonderland, and with scarcely greater effectiveness. He will be alternately repelled or attracted by one astonishing phenomenon after another, until he finally succumbs to one or the other of the forces involved or until, dimly apprehending the depth of his confusion, he flees the field in horror. Distance, necessity, self-interest, and common-sense may enable us, thank God, to continue that precarious and troubled but peaceful co-existence which we have managed to lead with the Russians up to this time. But if so, it will not be due to any understanding on our part.

"West and East, Pacific and Atlantic, Arctic and tropics, extreme cold and extreme heat, prolonged sloth and sudden feats of energy, exaggerated cruelty and exaggerated kindness, ostentatious wealth and dismal squalor, violent xenophobia and uncontrollable yearning for contact with the foreign world, vast power and the most abject slavery, simultaneous love and hate for the same objects...the Russian does not reject these contradictions. He has learned to live with them, and in them. To him, they are the spice of life."

— George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950.

President Harry Truman once quipped that he was looking for a one-armed economist because all his economic advisers concluded their advice by saying, “But, on the other hand...” Americans, with their proclivity for rational consistency seek clear and precise responses, but they usually end up by falling back to a middle position that avoids contradictions and extremes.

Russians, by contrast, have a well-deserved reputation for extremes. When emotions are displayed, they are spontaneous and strong. Russian hospitality can be overwhelming, friendship all encompassing, compassion deep, loyalty long lasting, drinking heavy, celebrations boisterous, obsession with security paranoid, and violence vicious. With Russians, it is often all or nothing. Halfway measures simply do not suffice.

George F. Kennan, the U.S. diplomat and the "Father of Russian Containment" wrote:

"We are incapable...of understanding the role of contradiction in Russian life. The Anglo-Saxon instinct is to attempt to smooth away contradictions, to reconcile opposing elements, to achieve something in the nature of an acceptable middle-ground as a basis for life. The Russian tends to deal only in extremes, and he is not particularly concerned to reconcile them. To [Russians], contradiction is a familiar thing. It is the essence of Russia:

1. west and east,

2. Pacific and Atlantic,

3. arctic and tropics,

4. extreme cold and extreme heat,

5. pro-longed sloth and sudden feats of energy,

6. exaggerated cruelty and exaggerated kindness,

7. ostentatious wealth and dismal squalor,

8. violent xenophobia and uncontrollable yearning for contact with the foreign world,

9. vast power and the most abject slavery,

10: simultaneous love and hate for the same objects: ...these are only some of the contradictions which dominate the life of the Russian people. The Russian does not reject these contradictions. He has learned to live with them, and in them. To him, they are the spice of life. He likes to dangle them before him, to play with them philosophically...for the moment, he is content to move in them with that same sense of adventure and experience which supports a young person in the first contradictions of love. The American mind will not apprehend Russia until it is prepared philosophically to accept the validity of contradiction. It must accept the possibility that just because a proposition is true, the opposite of that proposition is not false....It must learn to understand that Russian life at any given moment is not the common expression of harmonious, integrated elements, but a, precarious and ever shifting equilibrium between numbers of conflicting forces.

Russian extremes and contradictions have also been described by poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko:

I am thus and not thus, I am industrious and lazy, determined and shiftless. I am … shy and impudent, wicked and good; in me is a mixture of everything from the west to the east, from enthusiasm to envy...[92]

Human feelings count for much in Russia, and those who do not share the depth of those feelings will be considered cold and distant. When Russians open their souls to someone, it is a sign of acceptance and sharing. Westerners will have to learn to drop their stiff upper lips and also open their souls.[93]

11 Time Zones - The largest country on Earth

e 

In its grandiose schemes, which were always on a worldwide scale, communism makes use of the Russian disposition for making plans and castle-building, which had hitherto no scope for practical application.

— Nikolai Berdiaev, The Origin of Russian Communism

"Sire, everything is done on a large scale in this country — everything is colossal."[94] Said the Marquis de Custine, addressing Tsar Nicholas in St. Petersburg in 1839 at the start of his travels through Russia. The French aristocrat was moved by the grand scale of “this colossal empire,” as he described it in his four-volume Russia in 1839.

Modern-day travelers to Russia will also encounter colossal sights. In Moscow’s Kremlin, tour guides point with pride to the Tsar Cannon—cast in 1586, with a bore of 36 inches and weight of 44 tons. Nearby is the Tsar Bell—20 feet high and, at 200 tons, the heaviest bell in the world.

Soviet leaders continued that “colossalism.” When they industrialized, centralizing production to achieve economies of scale, they built gigantic industrial complexes employing up to 100,000 workers. Gigantomania is the term used by Western economists to describe that phenomenon. The Palace of Soviets, a Stalin project of the 1930s, was to have been the tallest building in the world, dwarfing the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower, and be topped by a 230-foot statue of Lenin. The Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses, the huge hall known to Western TV viewers as the site of mass meetings, seats 6,000 and is one of the world’s largest conference halls. Its snack bar can feed 3,000 people in 10 minutes.

In Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), the site of a decisive battle with Germany in World War II, a victorious Mother Russia, the largest full-figure statue in the world, towers 282 feet over the battlefield. And Russia’s victory monument to World War II, completed in 1995, is 465 feet high and topped by a 27-ton Nike, the goddess of victory.

Aeroflot was by far the world’s largest airlines, flying abroad as well as to the far corners of the Soviet Union. Its supersonic transport (SST), the world’s first, was considerably larger than the Anglo-French Concorde.

Russians are impressed with size and numbers, and much that they do is on a grandiose scale. That is not unusual for a vast country. Russians think and act big, and they do not do things in a half-hearted way. Nor are these traits uniquely Russian. Americans, accustomed to wide open spaces and with an expansive outlook on life, also are known to think big.

Big also describes the Russian military. Even after large reductions, the Russian military in 2008 had more than one million personnel under arms. It also had the biggest missiles, submarines, and aircraft.

Russia’s grandiose plans have at times been realized but at other times not. The Tsar Bell was too heavy and was neither hung nor rung. The Tsar Cannon was too big to fire. The Palace of Soviets was abandoned after the foundation proved incapable of supporting the huge structure, and the site was used for an outdoor swimming pool—one of the largest in Europe, of course. The Soviet SST had major design problems and was shelved after several crashes, including one at the prestigious Paris Air Show. Aeroflot’s extensive domestic network was broken up into nearly 400 separate companies, with a drastic decline in safety standards. Russia’s huge industrial plants have proven to be highly inefficient and noncompetitive, and the large state subsidies they require to avoid bankruptcy are an obstacle to their privatization. The Russian army’s combat capabilities, as confirmed in the Chechnya war, have dramatically declined. And the Kursk, pride of the Russian navy and one of the largest submarines ever built, suffered an unexplained explosion in August 2000, and sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea with the loss of its entire crew of 118.

Russians still have grand designs. In April 2007, Russia announced the revival of an old plan from its tsarist years to build a tunnel under the Bering Sea that would link Siberia with Alaska. And what should be said of Moscow’s current politics, the most recent of many attempts to reform Russia? The objective this time is to modernize Russia, to make it more competitive with the West, and to regain its superpower status.

Will the sweeping reforms succeed or are they merely the latest example of Russians thinking too big? History tells us to believe the latter. As Anton Chekhov put it over 100 years ago, “A Russian is particularly given to exalted ideas, but why is it he always falls so short in life? Why?”[95]

Russians superiority complex (Messianism)

e 

All Russians have a superiority complex, that we're still equal to the United States.

- Elena Petrova. How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.[96]

The [Westerners] disappear, everything collapses….the papacy of Rome and all the kingdoms of the West, Catholicism and Protestantism, faith long lost and reason reduced to absurdity. Order becomes henceforth impossible, freedom becomes henceforth impossible, and [Westernern] civilization commits suicide on top of all the ruins accumulated by it. … And when we see rise above this immense wreck this even more immense Eastern Empire like the Ark of the Covenant, who could doubt its mission...

— Fyodor Tyutchev, The Rock of Refuge

Fyodor Tyutchev, a Russian diplomat and poet, wrote those words in 1848 in response to the liberal revolutions sweeping Western Europe in that year. He saw Western civilization as disintegrating while Russian civilization, morally and spiritually superior, was rising.

Russian Orthodox Christianity with its mystical and otherworldly perspective is believed to have imparted on Russian politics a grand image of Russia's spiritual destiny to guide mankind.[97]

Messianism is still alive in Russia today particularly among intellectuals on the left as well as the right, who share a belief and pride in Russia as a great power with a special mission in the world. Economist Mikhail F. Antonov, for example, in an interview with The New York Times Magazine, stated:

"Let other countries surpass us in the technology of computer production, but only we can provide an answer to the question: Why? For whose sake? We are the only legitimate heirs to the great, spiritual Russian culture. The saving of the world will come from Soviet Russia."[98]

Russian thinkers past and present seek to excuse Russia's material backwardness by acclaiming her correctness of cause, spiritual superiority, and messianic mission.

Serge Schmemann of The New York Times writes:

"The notion of ‘Holy Russia’ runs deep of a people lacking the German’s industriousness or the American’s entrepreneurship, but endowed with unique spirituality and mission."[99]

A similar view was espoused by a contemporary Russian philosopher when author Yale Richardson asked him about Russia’s role in the world. “Russia is European on the surface, but deep inside it is Asian, and our link between Europe and Asia is the Russian soul. Russia’s mission is to unite Europe and Asia.”[100]

Such messianic missions are common throughout the history of America, who have always believed that they have something special to bring to the less fortunate — Christianity to heathens, democracy to dictatorships, and the free market to state-run economies.

Americans who believe in their own mission should be sensitive to Russian messianism and fears for the future. Without great-power status, Russians fear that other countries will no longer give them the respect they are due and Russia will lose its influence in the world.

Along with messianism, there is also a Russian tendency to blame others for their misfortunes, which has a certain logic. If Russians are indeed the chosen people and have a monopoly on truth, then others must be the cause of their misfortunes. Freemasons and Jews, among others, have often been blamed in the past for Russia’s troubles.


Russians’ rebellious spirit

e 

Не приведи Бог видеть русский бунт, бессмысленный и беспощадный!

— А.С. Пушкин, "Капитанская Дочка"

The Russians’ patience sometimes wears thin and they rebel. History is replete with rebellions of serfs against masters, peasants against gentry, Cossacks against lords, nobles against princes, and communists against commissars — usually with mindless destruction and wanton cruelty. There is also a record of revolt from within — palace revolutions — in the time of general secretaries and presidents as well as tsars, as Mikhail Gorbachev learned in August 1991 when a junta attempted to seize power in Moscow, and as Boris Yeltsin learned in 1993 when a similar attempt was made by hard-liners in the Russian parliament.

Conspiracies, coups, insurrections, ethnic warfare, and national independence movements all reflect the instabilities and inequities of Russian society and its resistance to change. When peaceful evolution is not viable, revolution becomes inevitable.

Russians have long been seen as submissive to authority, politically passive, and unswerving in policy. But when the breaking point is reached, the submissive citizen spurns authority, the docile worker strikes, the passive person becomes politically active, and rigid policies are reversed almost overnight.

Such a point was reached in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union experienced food shortages, crippling strikes, a deteriorating economy, nationality unrest, ethnic warfare, movements for sovereignty or independence by the republics, inept government responses to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and Armenian earthquake, and revelations of widespread environmental devastation.

In reaction to these events, voters of the Russian Federation rebelled in June 1991. Given a choice, they rejected the candidates of communism and chose as their president Boris Yeltsin and his program of decentralization, democracy, and economic reform. Yeltsin thus became the first freely elected leader in Russian history.

In August 1991, Russians rebelled again, taking to the streets of Moscow in a massive protest that helped bring down the old guard junta that had attempted to seize power. And in December 1995, disillusioned with reform, corruption, and a deep decline in their standard of living, Russians repudiated the Yeltsin administration by electing a parliament that was deeply divided between opponents and supporters of democratic and economic reforms, and between Westernizers and Slavophiles (Russians determined to protect and preserve Russia’s unique cultural values and traditions).[101]


Alcoholism - Russia’s Scourge

e 

More people are drowned in a glass than in the ocean. (В стакане тонет больше людей, чем в море.)

— русская поговорка

To all the other “-isms” that help one to understand Russians, alcoholism must unfortunately be added.

For Karl Marx, religion was the opiate of the people. For Russians, the opiate has been alcohol.

The Russian affinity for alcohol was described by the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine in 1839:

"The greatest pleasure of these people is drunkenness; in other words, forgetfulness. Unfortunate beings! they must dream, if they would be happy. As proof of the good temper of the Russians, when the Muzhiks [peasants] get tipsy, these men, brutalized as they are, become softened, instead of infuriated. Unlike the drunkards of our country, who quarrel and fight, they weep and embrace each other. Curious and interesting nation!"[102]

In 1965, the distinguished Russian novelist Andrei Sinyavsky has described drunkenness as:

"The Russian people drink not from need and not from grief, but from an age-old requirement for the miraculous and the extraordinary—drink, if you will mystically, striving to transport the soul beyond earth’s gravity and return it to its sacred noncorporeal state. Vodka is the Russian muzhik’s [peasant’s] White Magic; he decidedly prefers it to Black Magic— the female."[103]

Per capita consumption of alcohol in Russia and the United States is not very different. Americans, however, drink more wine and beer, Russians more hard liquor, mainly vodka. And like their North European neighbors from Ireland to Finland, Russians drink their distilled spirits “neat,” without a mixer, and in one gulp.

Vodka is described by Hedrick Smith as "one of the indispensable lubricants and escape mechanisms of Russian life. … Russians drink to blot out the tedium of life, to warm themselves from the chilling winters, and they eagerly embrace the escapism it offers."[104]

To take the measure of a man, Russians will want to drink with him, and the drinking will be serious. Americans should not attempt to match their hosts in drinking. This is one competition Russians should be allowed to win, as they surely will.

Vodka is also a prelude to business transactions. As one Western financier explains:

"Business is done differently everywhere. In Russia … any negotiation is preceded by an arranged dinner that is extremely boozy. … You can’t expect to go in there with a stiff upper lip and a pressed suit. It’s a test. The trick is to play the game, but not get distracted by it."[105]

Vodka is drunk straight, ice-cold in small glasses in one “bottoms-up” gulp.

What should a visitor do when confronted with vodka and the obligatory toasts at a dinner where the visitor is guest of honor? If the guest knows when to stop, then by all means drink and enjoy it. Guests who fear they will not know their limit can abstain, pleading doctor’s orders or religious reasons. Or they can down their first drink and slowly nurse subsequent rounds through the evening.

Russians prefer to drink while seated, and the stand-up cocktail party, a Western innovation, is consequently alien. Anyone invited to a Russian home should expect to be seated, fed a substantial repast, and drink during the meal. When invited to an American home, Russians will expect more than chips or cheese and crackers.

A night on the town usually consists of an evening with friends at a restaurant—eating, drinking, and dancing for several hours to very loud music. The eating will also be serious. Older Russians recall the difficult days when food was scarce, and they relish a good meal with many courses that can last several hours. Toward the end of the evening there may be a bloody brawl among the more serious drinkers, which ends only when the police arrives.

“Demon vodka,” as the Russians call it, is the national vice. Excessive vodka consumption is a major cause of absenteeism, low productivity, industrial accidents, wife beating, divorce and other family problems, birth defects, and a declining longevity. Tens of thousands of Russians die each year of alcohol poisoning from bootleg alcohol or alcohol-based substitutes. Alcohol also plays a major role in road accidents, homicides, suicides, and violent crime. It is also a contributing factor to Russia’s very high rate of deaths from fires — more than 17,000 deaths in 2006, more than 10 times rates typical of Western Europe and the United States — because intoxicated people inadvertently set or are unable to escape fires.[106]

With the economic, social, and physical ills that alcohol causes, it was not surprising that the first published decree after Gorbachev took office in 1985 signaled a state campaign against it. The intent was to limit consumption, but the immediate result was a sugar shortage because Russians purchased more sugar to increase their production of samogon (home brew). Consumption of products with alcoholic content also increased—industrial alcohol, jet fuel, insecticide, perfume, shoe polish, and toothpaste—thus creating additional shortages. Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign also resulted in a 10 to 20 percent reduction in tax revenues.[107] A complete failure, the program was scrapped after three years. The anti-alcohol campaign, however, did have one virtue. At the peak of the campaign, violent crime dropped and life expectancy for men immediately increased, but these trends reversed when the campaign ended.

Alcohol continues to take its toll, contributing heavily to the mortality rate for Russian males who imbibe toxic samogon and other alcohol-based substances, although the number of such deaths has been declining due to the imposition of taxes on industrial alcohols. Particularly alarming has been the spread of alcoholism among teenagers and children, which often leads to suicide.[108] [109]

Of the alcohol consumed in Russia, one bottle in every three is believed to be made clandestinely.[110]

Vodka is a basic ingredient of Russian life and will not be easily eliminated. During the height of the anti-alcohol campaign, author Yale Richmond attended several official lunches in Moscow where wine was the strongest drink served. But as a reminder of our own Prohibition days, bottles of vodka were passed under the table.

Vodka does have one virtue. While it can produce a hangover when drunk to excess, it seldom causes a headache or nausea. And with zakuski, in moderation, it is the ideal drink.[111]


Russian’s Deep Distrust of Government

e 

Who serves the Tsar cannot serve the people.

— Russian proverb

Russians have a deep and abiding suspicion of government. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Russians are convinced that most of their leaders hold public office only for personal gain and do not care about the concerns of the common person. This government mistrust is very high and is based, in part, on past experience.

In the past, Russian governments have served rulers rather than the ruled, so why should the populace believe things will be different now? Until Russia’s free elections of 1991, democratic governance was experienced only once, in 1917, during the brief period between the democratic February revolution and the Bolshevik October Revolution. With those exceptions, authoritarianism has been the rule in Russian governance.

American journalist Robert G. Kaiser explains, “There is little in the country’s past that has prepared it to become a modern, tolerant, and efficient democracy. Russians have no real experience with independent civic institutions, checks and balances, or even the restrained use of power. Russian citizens have been estranged from the state for many centuries....”[112]

For centuries, Russia was an absolute monarchy, ruled as a paramilitary garrison state to guard against threats both internal and external. George Vernadsky, Yale University professor of Russian history explained:

"In the Tsardom of Moscow of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we find an entirely new concept of society and its relation to the state. All the classes of the nation, from top to bottom, except the slaves, were bound to the service of the state..."[113]

That state was ruled by hereditary tsars who held absolute power, issuing decrees that had the force of law. The Russian ukaz (decree) has come into English as ukase, a decree having force of law. In the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin also ruled by decree, as tsars and commissars had done before him; Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin’s successor, also had extraordinary powers, even under the Constitution of 1993. As Yuri Afanasyev, a leading reformer in the 1980s, explained:

It was characteristic of Russia to have the people at the “bottom” harshly subordinated to the people at the “top,” and for people generally to be subordinated to the state; such relations were formed back in the twelfth century. The eternal oppression in Russia created a reaction against it of intolerance, aggression, and hostility; and it is this oppression and the reaction to it that create cruelty and mass violence.[114]

Russia’s rulers, perceiving domestic unrest and political dissent as threats to their ability to govern a vast empire, have not hesitated to use force to maintain their authority. They saw Russia surrounded by hostile or unstable powers, and they took advantage of any weakness or instability along their state’s periphery to secure its borders and extend its territorial reach.

With power concentrated at the center, the influence of the state on Russian society has been pervasive. In old Russia, the largest landholders were the crown, the church, and the aristocracy. Many sectors of the economy were controlled or subsidized by the state. For both rulers and the ruled, service to the state was the primary duty.

In the Soviet era, the state played an even larger role. Moscow’s heavy hand was found in the economy, culture, education, the media, religion, and citizens’ private lives—planning, directing, instructing, and stifling initiative in the process. Big Brother—or rather Big Daddy, in a paternalistic society—was everywhere.

Paradoxically, Russians have often idolized their leaders. The tsar was seen as the tsar-batyushka (tsar-father). Stalin was similarly adored as a father figure. And Putin, unknown prior to being named by Yeltsin as his successor, has regularly received approval ratings of more than 70 percent. Many Americans wonder if these approval ratings are real and not fudged. These opinion polls are often conducted by legitimate Western organizations and are legitimate.

Commenting on Russian governance, American diplomat George F. Kennan wrote:

"Forms of government and the habits of governments tend over the long run to reflect the understandings and expectations of their peoples. The Russian people...have never known democracy as we understand it. They have experienced next to nothing of the centuries-long development of the discipline of self-government out of which our own political culture has evolved."[115]

The result has been a submissive citizenry, accustomed to—indeed expecting— direction from above, being told what to do and what to think. As an example of this passivity, in 2000 a fire broke out in the iconic landmark Ostankino television and radio tower in Moscow. The fire trucks arrived at the scene and waited for hours at the base for directions from the newly installed President Putin on what to do next, causing untold damage and potentially more loss of life.

A Russian psychologist explained to the author Yale Richmond: "It is difficult for us to make decisions. We are so used to being told what to do that we cannot take the initiative and decide for ourselves." Such an attitude helps to explain the reluctance of individual Russians to become involved in issues that they believe are the responsibility of government and where the role of the individual citizen seems insignificant.

Another centuries-old tradition is a state-sanctioned ideology that serves as a moral guide, determining what is right and wrong. In the tsarist era, the ideology was Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion. In the Soviet period, the Communist Party imposed its own standards of cultural, moral, and political behavior. Today, Russia is searching for a new ideology—a “Russian idea” to serve as a moral guide.

The contrasts between Russia and the United States are again apparent. In the United States, state power has been limited and diffused, both within the federal government and between federal and state authorities. Free elections and a multiparty system have ensured representation of the popular will. A government role in culture and the media has been avoided. Church and state have been separate and the rights of religious minorities protected. The development of moral and cultural values has been left to private institutions independent of government—the churches, the media, universities, and that typically American institution, the private voluntary organization. An economy based on private property and the free market, although at times assisted and regulated by the government, has remained free from state control.[116]

Time and Patience

e 

Punctuality has been exceedingly difficult to instill into a population unused to regular hours.

— Margaret Mead, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority (1951)

Time is money to Americans, and punctuality is a virtue. Meetings are expected to start on time, and work under pressure of the clock is a challenge routinely accepted. To Russians, however, with their agricultural heritage, time is like the seasons—a time to reap and a time to sow, and a time for doing little in between.

Seychas budyit (it will be done right away) is an expression heard often in Russia, from waiters in restaurants, clerks in stores, and officials in offices. Be assured, however, that whatever has been promised will not be done right away but will more likely take some time. Being late seems to be part of the Russian makeup. The anthropologist Edward Hall has described two types of time, monochronous and polychronous, each true for one culture but not for another. The United States goes by monochronous time, meaning that an American gives his undivided attention to one event before proceeding to the next. He takes deadlines seriously, values promptness, and attaches importance to short-term relationships. Russians basically live in polychronous time, in which a person deals simultaneously with multiple events and is very flexible about appointments. He is always ready to change his schedule at a moment's notice to accommodate a friend or relative, since he attaches more importance to long-term relationships than to short-term ones.

Muriel would make lunch appointments with magazine editors three weeks ahead. Sergei would call up a busy executive in the morning hoping to see him that afternoon. Who knew what might happen three weeks hence? Fyodor thought it was ridiculous for Carol to invite guests to dinner two weeks in advance; Carol found it odd when his Russian friends called up late Friday night to invite them to dinner the next evening. As Ronald Hingley observed, "To the excessively time-geared Westerner, Russia still seems to operate in an atmosphere relatively emancipated from the clock."' Fyodor hardly ever wore a watch unless Carol reminded him that he had a very important appointment. He canceled a promising job interview because his best friend from Russia, whom he had been seeing almost every day during the man's month-long visit to America, called up that morning and said he needed to talk. If a friend or family member needs something, appointments and business commitments go by the board. Such an attitude does not go over well in American offices. Fyodor's boss threatened to fire him because of his chronic tardiness, and only an alarm clock set forty-five minutes ahead forced him to change his behavior.

Americans naturally quantify time. They will meet a friend in ten minutes, finish a project in five months, and apologize if they are more than five minutes late." The Russian concept of time is porous. Joyce finally figured out that when Pyotr said "I'll be ready in an hour" he meant two hours; "in twenty minutes" translated into forty-five; "right away" or "immediately" meant in fifteen minutes. The vagueness of Russian time expressions can drive American spouses crazy. "He'll come during the second half of the day" means anytime between 1 P.M. and 6 P.M., while "around seven o'clock" covers the period from 6:10 to 7:50.[117]

Communism reinforced the native Russian disrespect for time, since workers could not be fired and there was no incentive to do things on time. Moreover, in a country where time is not a vital commodity, people become more sanguine about accepting delays. When something very important must be done, it will be done, and time and cost will not be obstacles. But time for Russians is not yet an economic commodity to be measured in rubles or dollars.

Being on time is consequently alien. Russians are notoriously late, and they think nothing of arriving long after the appointed hour, which is not considered as being late. (Concerts and theater performances, however, do start on time, and latecomers will not be seated until the first intermission.)

When Russians do arrive, there are a number of rituals that must be played out before the business part of a meeting can start. First, the small talk, a necessary part of all personal encounters; then, the customary tea or other drink, followed perhaps by talk about family and personal problems; and finally, the business of the day. All this takes time and usually does not start before ten o’clock in the morning.

The business part of the talk will also be lengthy, because important issues are approached in a roundabout rather than in a direct manner. Impatient foreign business people will wonder when the key issues of the meeting will be discussed. And after the meeting has concluded and the visitor believes he has agreement to proceed, nothing may happen for weeks, or months, or ever.

For Russians, time is not measured in minutes or hours but more likely in days, weeks, and months. The venerated virtue is not punctuality but patience. As a student from India who had spent four years in Moscow advised me, “Be patient, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Everything here takes time, and sometimes never gets done.”

Americans and many other nationalities are oriented toward doing; Russians, toward contemplating. As a Russian psychiatrist explained to Yale Richmond, "Russians can look at an object all day and reflect on it but take no action." When faced with an issue to be resolved, they will first think through the historical, philosophical, and ideological considerations as well as the consequences of whatever is to be decided. In contrast, Americans and other “doers” will first consider the practical points, the obstacles to be overcome, the details, and how to get from here to there.

A Russian conference interpreter, recalling her experience with Russians and Americans in the evenings after their formal meetings had adjourned, told Yale Richmond, “The Russians would sit all night drinking tea, discussing and reflecting, while the Americans would be thinking about what they had to do the next day and preparing to do it.”

Such divergent views of time can create difficulties in cooperative efforts and joint ventures. Americans will want to negotiate an agreement expeditiously, schedule an early start on the venture, begin on time, meet production deadlines, complete the work as promptly as possible, and show early results or profit. Russians will need more time to get organized, and there will be frequent delays and postponements. They will be less concerned with immediate results, and profit is a concept that they are just now beginning to understand. The job may be completed, but only after considerable prodding from the American side.

What to do? Persist patiently, and speak softly but carry a big prod. Once prodded and made to understand that a deadline must be met, Russians can show prodigious bursts of energy and will work around the clock to complete the job.[118]



Communication Differences

Russians interpret the question of “How are you?” and strangers asking personal questions very differently than Americans

e 

Americans are:

1. more likely than those from many cultures to smile at strangers,

2. to ask “how are you?” (which is a form of “hello” to Americans)

3. to ask several personal discussions with people they hardly know.

Kak dela?

Russians like to ask about your mood: How do you feel today? How is everything? In American culture, however, it is not accepted to respond to these questions in detail. In contrast, when a Russian asks about your mood, he’s ready to hear the full story.

If you know the Russian who asked you “How are you?” well they may consider an answer such as “fine” as insincere, or think that you’re hiding something. When they ask what exactly is “fine,” you should add something. You don't need to make a full confession; you can just say, “fine, I feel cold today,” or add an emotion.

Russians are a rather emotional people, and they always share their feelings with everyone. An answer such as: “Fine” plus an emotion will be the same short polite answer that you can use in order to respond to “How are you?” In Russia, it’s normal to share private emotions with friends and to find a way to solve the problem together.

Sometimes, even strangers in Russia can act like Americans and ask personal questions, especially if they will be spending a long time together. For example, absolutely unknown people on an overnight train may share their food and ask why a person is not married or have no kids.[119]

Russians who know each other well may answer the questions “how are you” i.e. kak dela with humorous answers that might make no sense to foreign friends. Russians don’t use these informal phrases with people who they don’t know very well.

“Poka ne rodila” (“I have not given birth yet”) – a woman may jokingly respond this way, meaning that everything is ok (this rhymes with the word “dela” in Russian).

“Kak sazha bela” (“Things are all right as soot is white”) – also a joking rhyme used mostly by seniors.

“Vsyo v shokolade” (“Everything is in chocolate”) – everything is super and you want to show it.

“Vsyo puchkom” (“Everything is in the form of a bunch”) – means you’re fine and feel like a bunch of dill; Russians love dill and it’s good when your things are like a bunch.

“Ne dozhdyotes” (“Don’t expect”) – meaning "If you think things will go bad for me, don't hold your breath".[119]


Americans Ask Strangers Personal Questions

Russians may interpret personal questions from a stranger as “friendliness” and as an offer of friendship. Later, when the Americans don’t follow through on their unintended offer, Russians often accuse them of being “fake” or “hypocritical.”

Igor Agapova...tells this story about his first trip to the United States:

I sat down next to a stranger on the airplane for a nine-hour flight to New York. This American began asking me very personal questions: did I have any children, was it my first trip to the U.S., what was I leaving behind in Russia? And he began to also share very personal information about himself. He showed me pictures of his children, told me he was a bass player, and talked about how difficult his frequent traveling was for his wife, who was with his newborn child right now in Florida.
In response, Agapova started to do something that was unnatural for him and unusual in Russian culture—he shared his personal story quite openly with this friendly stranger, thinking they had built an unusually deep friendship in a short period of time. The sequel was quite disappointing:
I thought that after this type of connection, we would be friends for a very long time. When the airplane landed, imagine my surprise when, as I reached for a piece of paper in order to write down my phone number, my new friend stood up and with a friendly wave of his hand said, “Nice to meet you! Have a great trip!” And that was it. I never saw him again. I felt he had purposely tricked me into opening up when he had no intention of following through on the relationship he had instigated.[120]

Language - different shades of meaning

e 

The Russian language surpasses all European languages, since it has the magnificence of Spanish, the liveliness of French, the strength of German, the delicacy of Italian, as well as the richness and conciseness of Greek and Latin.

— M. V. Lomonosov

Foreigners most successful in understanding the Russians, as readers will have noted by now, are those who speak some Russian. Speakers of Russian—be they businesspeople, journalists, scholars and scientists, professional or citizen diplomats—have a significant advantage. Communication may be possible with smiles, hand signals, body language, and interpreters, but the ability to carry on a conversation in Russian raises the relationship to a more meaningful level.

Those who are put off by the challenge of studying Russian should know that it is far easier to learn than many other languages such as Chinese, Arabic, or Finnish. Russians, moreover, are not offended by foreigners with an inadequate command of Russian. Many of their own citizens also speak Russian poorly.

Russian is a Slavic language, as are Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, and several other related tongues. They are all Indo-European languages, a group that includes, among others, the Germanic, Romance, and English languages, all of which have common roots.

It takes about 10 to 15 percent longer to say something in Russian than in English, and experienced translators say that they will often need three or more Russian words for one English word. Add to this the Russian tendency to be long-winded—a characteristic of agricultural societies, the old American South included—and you have another reason for Russian verbosity.

Another difficulty with Russian results from the shifting accentuation of words. There is no general rule on where the stress falls in a word or sentence, as there is in most European languages, but a Russian word placed at the beginning of a sentence will have more importance than when placed at the end.

The Cyrillic alphabet, named after St. Cyril, the apostle to the Slavs who devised the Glagolithic alphabet on which Cyrillic is based, may also faze some students. Russian, however, is mostly pronounced as it is written. If you can read Cyrillic, you can pronounce it. This makes Russian pronunciation easier than English, where words are seldom pronounced as they are written.

Russian has acquired numerous words from Western languages. Many mechanical, medical, and technical terms are from German; artistic and cultural words from French; and business and modern scientific terms from English. More recently, many English words previously unknown in Russia have also come into common usage—kserokopiya (Xerox copy), faks (fax), mikser (mixer), forvardy (forward), optsiony (options), dzhinsy (jeans), and biznesmeni (businessmen)—although they are given a Russian pronunciation and often a Slavic ending.

Words are inflected, as in Latin and German, to denote such distinctions as case, gender, number, tense, person, and mood. And Russian verbs have two aspects—the imperfective for repeated actions and the perfective for completed actions. The grammar sounds complex, and it is, but there are a few rules that explain it all.

Although Russian can be learned cold, it helps to know another inflected European language.

Russian is also replete with negatives, and positive ideas are often expressed negatively. An object will be “not big” rather than “small.” A Russian will describe his or her feelings as “not bad” rather than “good.” And a double negative in Russian does not make an affirmative as in English; instead, it emphasizes the negative. The more negatives in a sentence, the more negative the meaning.

Younger Russians with access to computers are starting to use the universal Internet language. This is a development that bothers the “purists,” much as the introduction of Anglicism in France bothered the French Academy in the years following World War II. To protect against what they see as an assault on the Russian language, the government declared 2007 as the “Year of the Russian Language in Russia and the World,” and it has taken steps to promote the study of Russian abroad.

While Russian has its share of earthy and vulgar expressions, they are not used in polite society.[121]


Untranslatable ideas

e 
There are two ways you can tell when a man is lying. One is when he says he can drink champagne all night and not get drunk. The other is when he says he understands Russians.
— Charles E. Bohlen, former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, 1953 to 1957.[122]

Russian is a very rich language. In English one word may suffice to convey an idea, while Russian will have several words to choose from, each with a slightly different shade of meaning. This presents problems for interpreters and translators, as well as possibilities for misunderstandings.

Many words and expressions in one language simply do not exist in the other. Aleksei Mikhalev, a Russian translator of American literature, said that differences in language and literature — two significant products of a nation’s thought and psychology—demonstrate that English speakers and Russians are not very much alike. He cites the impossibility of finding precise Russian equivalents for the simple English word privacy, a concept that does not exist in Russian (nor in many other languages as well). Other untranslatables from English to Russian listed include "take care", "have fun", "make love", "efficiency", and "challenge".[123]

Russians are long winded

e 

Russia has an oral rather than a written tradition—understandable in a country where most of the people were illiterate until less than a century ago—and talking comes naturally to its people. Every Russian seems to be a born orator. Conversations begin easily between complete strangers as well as between men and women. The complexities of the language notwithstanding, it can be a pleasure to listen to Russian speech. Delivery is unhurried, often eloquent, and without pretense. But Russians can also talk around a difficult issue without addressing it directly. Listeners should pay close attention to what is left unsaid in addition to what is said. As Lyudmila Putin, ex-wife of the president, once told a German friend, “You must always listen between the words and read between the lines.”170

Don’t expect short responses to simple questions. The question-and-answer approach simply will not do. Rather than respond with a brief yes or no, Russians are more likely to give a lengthy explanation that will leave the listener wondering whether the answer is indeed yes or no. Former Washington Post correspondent David Remnick recalls how, in an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, “I asked a question, and he finished his answer forty minutes later. …”171

Then there are differences in conversational style. Russians tend to talk in lengthy, uninterrupted monologues, and find the American style of short answers and repartee brusque and rude. Americans normally talk about their activities and experiences what they have done, where they have gone, whom they have seen. For Russians, anything and everything is grist for the mill: people, ideas, politics, books, movies. "They can even analyze a borshch," American Muriel commented, "as though it were a theoretical problem, like the existence of God."

When answering a question, Americans get straight to the point. Russians tend to go back to the beginning of time. "Every time someone asks Fyodor how he likes America, all he has to do is say 'fine,"' American wife Carol sighed. "Instead out comes a doctoral thesis on the history of the United States and what's wrong with the country." "When my aunt asked Russian husband Pyotr how his mother was, he gave her the woman's entire medical history," American wife Joyce said. The Russian feels it is discourteous to give a short answer. The American resents being held captive to a long monologue. Americans feel that simplicity and brevity are the soul of wit and wisdom. For Russians, a valuable idea is a complex idea. Muriel phoned a friend for some information and spent only a minute or two on pleasantries before getting down to business. In Moscow there would first have been a long conversation about the family, the weather, and so on. Starting off with a request, or responding with "What can I do for you?" would be rude.

To American spouses and friends, the endless Russian stories that are a staple of Russian get togethers can be boring and pompous. Americans like to save time and get to the point. The Russian prefers to go around in circles, lacing his speech with literary, mythological or historical allusions. As the cultural anthropologist Edward Hall noted,

"Americans are often uncomfortable with indirectness . . . Most Americans keep their social conversations light, rather than engaging in serious, intellectual or philosophical discussions, a trait which especially bothers Europeans."

"I'm wasting my time with your friends," Sergei grumbled at Muriel. "I keep trying to tell them something interesting, and they sit there fidgeting and interrupting."

Years of living in fear of the secret police make Russians hesitant to state their ideas explicitly Years of living in fear of the secret police make Russians hesitant to state their ideas explicitly, and they often seek a veiled or subtle way of conveying a thought. If the listener is intelligent, he should understand what is meant, and it is insulting to spoonfeed him. For the American, speaking intelligently means speaking directly and clearly. "I feel like they're talking in code," Joyce complained of Pyotr and his friends. "Why can't they just say what they mean?" Many Russians see their [American] mates as childish and unsophisticated.' "I can see my American friends' eyes glaze over when Sergei gets going on one of his half-hour philosophical diatribes," Muriel said. "That just convinces him even more of how superior he and his friends are to all of us."

Straight Talk

Straight talk is appreciated, even when it leads to disagreement. But when disagreement does occur, Russians appreciate honesty rather than attempts to paper over differences. It is far better to level with them and to be certain that they fully understand your position. They respect adversaries who are straightforward and sincere in expressing views that diverge from their own.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, en route to a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, recalled his long record of interactions with Russian leaders over the years as national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the first Bush administration. “If one speaks openly and candidly,” said Powell, “you can make progress as long as you don’t shy away from the tough issues and as long as you don’t forget that there are many areas of interest that we have in common.”174

But confrontations over differences of views can often be avoided by letting Russians talk themselves out. After they have expressed their righteousness and indignation and have unburdened themselves, their opposition may moderate and the differences may turn out to be less than originally believed. In fact, after talking themselves out, Russians and Americans may even find that they have a unanimity of views.

No (Nyet) Nyet is a simple Russian word that is often misunderstood, and it seems to be an almost automatic response by Russians when asked if something can be done. Clerks, doormen, officials, and others seem to prefer the easy response, “Nyet.”

There can be several reasons for the automatic nyet. One common explanation is “We don’t do it that way here.” Or the item requested in a store or restaurant may not be available. Or the clerk may not care whether it is available, or may not be at all interested in helping the customer. In any event, Russians do not routinely accept a nyet, and neither should you. Continue talking, keep your cool, don’t raise your voice, smile, and keep repeating your request. As noted before, a good interpersonal relationship can often overcome the obstacle, whatever it may be, and beat the system.

A nyet, however, when expressed in a manner indicating that the real response is “perhaps,” may indicate that a little incentive is needed. In such cases, a few dollars discreetly brought into view may produce the desired effect.


Intimate touch between friends

e 

Physical contact by Russians—touching another person — is a sign that things are going well and that a degree of rapport has been reached. The degree of physical contact will indicate how well things are going. Placing a hand on another person's arm, for example, or embracing, are good signs. Closeness and physical contact with other persons are much more common in Russia than in the West, a heritage of the village past when people lived in close proximity in small huts. Russians also stand very close when conversing, often less than twelve inches, which is closer than most Americans will find comfortable. They do not hesitate to make physical contact and invade the other person’s space.

American Muriel had to explain to her girlfriends that when Russian Sergei moved very close to them during a conversation, he was not making passes. He would stand eight inches away, much closer than the distance at which Americans feel comfortable: it's the Russian way. Nor was he trying to look soulfully and romantically into their eyes.

Russians are in the habit of looking directly and unblinkingly at the person they are addressing. Fred had to tell Irina not to "stare" at his American friends, who were uncomfortable when she concentrated her gaze on them.

Body language situations are particularly tricky because the problem remains unstated; the American does not say "You're standing so close I feel uncomfortable," and a Russian does not ask "Why are you looking away from me?"

On meeting and parting there is far more embracing, kissing and holding hands among Russians than among Americans. Carol explained to her girlfriend that Fyodor was not trying to flirt when he took her arm while escorting her to a cab after dinner; he was being a gentleman.

She, in turn, could not get used to the way the Russian wives of her American friends took her arm in the street.

Accustomed to close physical contact, Russian men, as well as women, touch when talking. Women dance with other women if there are not enough men to go around or if not asked by a man for a dance.

Russian men embrace and kiss each other, on the lips as well as cheeks. As author Yale Richmond recounted, he once had a male kiss planted on my lips, much to his surprise, at the end of a long and festive evening.

Americans are advised, however, not to initiate such spontaneous displays of affection, as President Jimmy Carter learned when he kissed Leonid Brezhnev (on the cheek) at their Vienna summit meeting, much to Brezhnev’s surprise and embarrassment.

School discipline

An American teacher of Russian recalls how, while studying at Moscow State University, a Russian instructor playfully rapped the knuckles of some Americans in his class as a sign of displeasure over their inadequate preparation for the day’s lesson:

The American men, in an uproar at both the teacher’s invasion of their space and his use of body contact to enforce his wishes, went immediately after class to the director to complain about the instructor’s behavior. … As a result, the instructor was reprimanded and told to maintain “a proper distance” from his students and to refrain from all physical contact with Americans, “who do not understand these things.”[124]

There are times, however, when Russian knuckles should be rapped. George F. Kennan wrote:

"The Russian is never more agreeable than after his knuckles have been sharply rapped...The Russian governing class respects only the strong. To them, shyness in dispute is a form of weakness."[125][126][127]



American’s infatuation with mental health

e 

The American infatuation with "professional help" and "mental health" puts most Russians off. Russians do not like to engage in detailed analysis of their feelings towards each other with their spouse or lover. Russians believe that people should solve problems and conflicts on their own, or with help from friends. A Russian journalist was surprised by the widespread role of therapists in the United States:

"And I want to emphasize a specific trait-the aspiration of Americans to total candor. To unveil everything secret, to talk through everything."

For Russians, true intimacy lies in the silence of a couple who understand each other by a look or a gesture. Victor Ripp wrote: "The American habit of parading personal detail startles Russians. Our fascination with intimacies is more than bad taste; it suggests an utterly alien way of looking at life."[128]

American's habit of self-analysis and "letting it all hang out" strikes Russians as mostly superficial: when it comes to a real opening up, Russians find Americans quite closed.[129]

As one Russian argued, Russians feel that admitting depression, and other mental health problems is a sign of weakness. So even if a Russian feels emotionally unhealthy, they don't say admit it. It's okay to get drunk, it's okay to commit suicide, but it's not okay to say "I feel depressed", which is only permissible through art.


Americans find Russian rude because they hardly ever say please or thank you

e 

In Russian, polite requests are expressed primarily through a rise and fall in intonation, or through expressions such as "be so kind." This can cause cultural misunderstandings. In one example, American friends of an American wives found their Russian husbands rude because they hardly ever said "please" and "thank you." The Russian was very polite, but "Give me this" or "Pass the bread" sounded extremely rude to the American wife's American friends.

Nor do Russians write thank you notes. One Russian bride had to be pushed by her American mother-in-law to write thank you notes for the wedding gifts. "Russians don't write them," she said in exasperation.

This Russian husband was offended when people he had just met addressed him by his first name. So were his Russian friends when his American wife addressed them by their first names instead of by the first name and patronymic. "I can't remember everybody's father's name!" she wailed. "It's hard enough remembering all the first names in this impossible language!"

Body Language: Russians tend to gesture more

e 

Body language is important. Russians use hands and facial expressions to express ideas and emotions, in contrast to Anglo-Saxons who consider such demeanor distracting if not unmannerly. Through body language, a person’s intent can be determined without even understanding the words. Facial expressions are also clues to behavior. Americans are taught to open conversations with a smile and to keep smiling. Russians tend to start out with grim faces, but when they do smile, it reflects relaxation and progress in developing a good relationship. Winks and nods are also good signs, but if a stony look continues, you are not getting through and are in trouble.

Russians tend to gesture far more than Americans. American wife Muriel thought her Russian husband Sergei was upset when he waved his arm or hammered his fist on the table, but this was merely nonverbal punctuation. Russian husband Pyotr's habit of shaking his index finger at her, as though scolding a naughty child, infuriated American wife Joyce. "Cut it out and stop lecturing me!" she snapped. "I'm not lecturing you. I'm just saying be sure you lock the door when you leave."

Chapter 4 - Visiting a Russian’s home

Visiting a Russian’s home

e 

At home do as you wish, but in public as you are told.

— Russian proverb

Russians live two separate and distinct lives—one at work and the other at home. At work they can be brusque and discourteous but will watch what they say. At home, within the intimate circle of family and friends, they feel secure and are relaxed, warm, and hospitable, are sharing and caring, and speak their own minds.

As Morath and Miller describe it:

There is still a homeliness about many Russians that has the scent of the country in it, a capacity for welcoming strangers with open, unabashed curiosity, a willingness to show feeling, and above all a carelessness about the passing of time.[130]

When asked what Russians were thinking during the many decades of political repression, legal scholar Nina Belyaeva explained:

People did not connect themselves with the power of the state. On the one hand, they seemed from outside not to care, so they seemed submissive. But inside, they said, “Inside, I am me. They can’t touch me. When I’m in my kitchen with my friends, I am free.”[131]

The kitchen is indeed the center of social life, and visitors should not pass up opportunities to get into those kitchens and see Russians at home. There is no better way to get to know Russians than over food and drink or merely sitting around a kitchen table sipping tea. And when hosting Russians in your own home, bear in mind that Russians will appreciate dining in the kitchen, which gives them the feeling they are being treated as “family” rather than as guests in a formal dining room.

Richard Stites, states that, "The secret of social life in Russia is conviviality around a table, drinking, telling jokes, laughing. When you get to that point, the battle is half won."[132]

Describing conversations with Russians, Geoffrey Hosking writes, “the exchange and exploration of ideas proceeds [sic] with utter spontaneity and at the same time concentration. In my experience, the art of conversation is pursued in Moscow at a higher level than anywhere else in the world.”[133]

How visitors live is also of great interest to Russians. Bring photos of family, home, and recreational activities, which will all be of interest. Russians are curious about the lifestyles of others in professions and occupations similar to their own, and they will not hesitate to inquire about a visitor’s salary or the cost of a home and how many rooms it has. When a celebrated Soviet writer visited AUTHORS home in the United States, he expected the conversation to be about life and literature. Instead, the world-renowned author requested a tour of the house and had a series of questions about the heating, air conditioning, and insulation, how much everything cost, and whether the house was my year-round home or my weekend dacha.

Russians welcome inquiries about family and children, and they will be interested in learning about a visitor’s family. Such interest is genuine and should not be seen as merely making small talk. The fastest way to a Russian host’s heart is to speak frankly about personal matters—joys and sorrows, successes and failures—which show that you are a warm human being and not just another cold Westerner.

Family and children are important in Russian life, although society’s current ills—housing, high prices, lack of privacy, crime, alcoholism, and divorce—have taken their toll. In cities, families with one child are the norm.

Visiting a Russians Home

Russians do not hesitate to visit a friend’s home without advance notice, even dropping in unexpectedly late at night as long as a light can be seen in a window. They routinely offer overnight accommodations to friends who are visiting their cities, a gesture based not only on their tradition of hospitality to travelers but also on the shortage of affordable hotel accommodations. Americans who are accepted as friends by Russians will find that they too may receive unexpected visits and requests for lodging from their new friends.

Due to the rising incidence of crime in the 1990s, Russians triple- and quadruple-locking their apartment doors, and they are reluctant to open them without knowing who is standing outside. To be sure they know who you are, call beforehand and tell them you will be there shortly. Guests to a Russian home should observe an old custom and bring a gift.

Handshaking is required practice in Russia, both on arrival and taking leave, with eye contact maintained during the handshake. Men do not shake hands with a woman unless she extends hers first, and women should not be surprised if their hands are kissed rather than shaken. Shaking hands in a doorway is an omen of bad luck and should never be done. If you are a man, physical signs of affection toward your host (embracing or touching) are good, but show reserve toward his wife. She will not appreciate hugs and kisses but will welcome flowers—in odd numbers only, though, but not thirteen. Old superstitions survive, and an even number of flowers is considered unlucky.

Remove your shoes. The host will likely offer slippers.

Be cautious about expressing admiration for an object in a Russian home. In a spontaneous gesture of hospitality, the host may present the admired object to the guest, and the offer will be difficult to refuse.

Hospitality is spontaneous and intrinsic to the culture. Russians will share what they have and make their guests feel at home. Dinner may be served in the kitchen or in a parlor that doubles as a bedroom. The dishes may not match and the table service will be informal, but the visitor will be made to feel welcome. Food will be tasty, and guests will wonder how the hosts could afford the many delicacies. Friends and relatives may drop in unexpectedly and join the table. Spirits will flow, and the talk will be lively and natural. Conversation is a very important part of social life, and over food and drink Russians open up and reveal their innermost thoughts.

Tea is the favorite nonalcoholic drink of Russians. On a per capita basis, Russia is second only to Great Britain in tea consumption, and half of all Russians are believed to drink at least five cups a day. Traditionally, tea is brewed in a samovar (self-boiler), where the water is heated in a metal vessel with an inner cylinder filled with burning coals. Another novelty for foreign visitors may be the podstakannik (literally, an “under-glass”), a metal glass holder with a handle on one side.

Russian ice cream is very good, and the favorite flavor, as in the United States, is vanilla.

Table manners

At dinner the Russians did not wait for the hostess to start eating before starting to eat.

Russia summer cottages

A dacha, literally a summer cottage, is something every Russian, reflecting their attachment to the land, seems to have or want, and where they spend weekends, weather permitting. Dachas used to be little more than a small shack without electricity or running water but with a garden plot for growing vegetables, which sustained entire families when food was scarce. But they have gradually grown in size, depending on the resources of the owner and the availability of transport from the city. Today, for Russia’s privileged a dacha may also be a substantial brick or masonry home with all the “conveniences” in a gated community surrounded by a fence and protected by armed guards.


The Toast

e 

Za vashe zdorovye (To your health).

— A short Russian toast

Visitors should be prepared to raise their glasses in a toast, as toasting in Russia is serious business.

Toasts are usually made at the beginning of a meal when vodka is consumed with the first course, or at the end of the meal after the sweet wine or champagne that is served with dessert, and often throughout the meal as well. Hosts toast first, and the ranking guest is expected to follow with a return toast. With each toast, glasses are clinked with those of other guests while looking at each guest directly and making eye contact. The person being toasted also drinks.

In contrast to the laconic American or British “cheers” or “bottoms up,” a toast in Russia is a short speech. For starters, there are the obligatory thanks to the hosts for their hospitality. This may be followed by references to the purpose of the visit, to international cooperation, peace and friendship, and the better world we hope to leave to our children as a result of our cooperation. Be poetic and dramatic when making a toast, and let your “soul” show. Russians appreciate a show of emotion and imagination. Make the most of your toast and don’t hesitate to exaggerate. Humor may be used, but the substance of the toast should be serious. Russians will judge a toast as an indication of the seriousness of a visitor’s purpose. Prudent travelers will have a few toasts prepared in advance; they will surely be needed.

Women, by tradition, do not toast in Russia, but more and more Russian women are now doing so, and Russians will not be surprised if a foreign woman raises her glass and gives a toast. And if a hostess is present, she gets a separate toast, complimenting her on her home, food, and hospitality, but never on her looks, as pretty as she may be.[134]


Chapter 5 - Sex and dating

e 

Russian people marry early -- by the age of 22 more than 50% of people are already married. By the age of 25 about 80% of people are married. Since there are less men than women in Russia (10 million more women of marriageable ages than men, according to the latest census), and even less men who are worthy, the competition for eligible men is extremely harsh. As a result, the men become spoiled and promiscuous.[135]

Attractive women in Russia do get many dating offers from Russian men. But those men are seeking only casual sex. They are either already married, unwilling to commit, or they are not worthy of marriage because they cannot provide for a family. A normal man who has a stable job (being able to solely provide for his family), is career and health conscious, and willing to commit are rare. Guys like this are scarce in Russia and not available for long.

In contrast, good-looking women are in abundance in Russia, since the tough competition drives women to perfect their looks.

Historically, during the 20th century, Russia has had many wars, with World War II alone taking 20 million lives, along with another 20 million people dying in Stalin's concentration camps. Nearly 90% of those victims were men. After the war, simply having a man was a blessing. Then there was the 14-year Afghani conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of young Russian men died. Throughout the entire 20th century Russian women had to compete to ensure they had a husband. Now they've got Chechnya - since 1993, just a few years after Russian troops left Afghanistan.

It is scientifically proven that where there are many more women in society than men, men tend to pursue short-term sexual strategies and are unwilling to commit.[136][137]

Generally, most women prefer their husbands to be 5 to 10 years older than themselves, but the younger the woman is, the less of an issue a wider age difference will matter to her.

Many Russian women seeking marriage abroad have advanced careers and live well even according to western standards. The conditions of life in a major Russian city such as Moscow or St. Petersburg are comparable to any European capital. The pace of life in Moscow is similar to the one of New York City.[138]

Dating rules

The man is in charge

e 

The man may ask a date suggestions, but only in the way, "I know there is this attraction, would you like to see it? Or would you like to go somewhere else?"

The man should be the leader. Once you accept this assertive position, your personal communications will go much more smoothly with her. This might be not the style you are accustomed to, but this is the style that works with Russian women.

If the suiter is in the Russian woman's home city, the woman will be looking after them, after all, he is her guest. She will look after the suitor, even if she does not like the suitor, just because he is a guest. In Russia, every guest is precious and will be treated with the utmost respect. From the suitor's side, they will be expected to agree to her suggestions, even if he is e not very excited about them.[139]

Gift giving

e 

A man must always bring gifts when visiting their girlfriend for the first time, and not just for her but for her family as well. Gifts are very important in Russian courting etiquette. Gifts show that the man is "generous". It is not only about spending money on a girl. Gift giving shows the quality of the soul. It shows a person who is not selfish, a man who enjoys giving and receiving.

Giving generously, without expecting anything in return, was the traditional quality that was the pride of Russian character. Historically, Russians were always proud of their non-materialistic nature, and this included giving generously (if you had something to share). Since the man is financially secure, it would be perceived as stinginess, if they did not make occasional gifts when dating a woman. It would mean that the man is not generous and is selfish.[140]

Talking about money

e 

The biggest turn off for Russian women is when men talk about money. Money talks are a big "no-no" in Russian courting etiquette.

Talking about money in the Russian courting stage is as bad as chewing with your mouth open. She just cannot help feeling disgusted. Being frugal when a man is dating equals being cheap. The man might accidentally say, "Wow, that's expensive!" the man will be labeled as stingy and greedy.

According to Russian courting etiquette, men should pay for everything on a date - and do it with a smile. Even if this means he must spend to his last ruble.

If you say that something is expensive, what your woman hears is that the suitor doesn't think she is worth this money! For example, if the suitor say, "Wow, $5 for a glass of Coke, that's expensive!"; what she hears is that the suitor doesn't consider her worthy of those $5.

In Russian, the meaning of the word expensive is rather absolute, it means "I cannot afford to buy this item", as opposed to the relative meaning, "this item is overpriced".

Sometimes, men erroneously start explaining the details of their travel arrangements to their woman. An example would be that they need to book tickets at least two months in advance because it is 10% less. For Russian women, this sounds cheap. Of course, one would assume that if she is making $100 a month, for her saving 10% from $1,000 ticket would be equivalent to her monthly salary, which is a lot of money. But women don't think that way.

Put it simpler, remember as the rule of thumb: mentioning money matters is taboo in the Russian courting etiquette. The suitor pays or doesn't pay, and that's it. The suitor should NEVER tell her that they are not buying something because it is "expensive".

A suitor should Never, EVER tell the woman how much money they have spent on her.[141]

Sex

e 

Russians have a glaring contrast between a kind of puritanism that avoids the slightest mention of sex and a tolerance for obscene jokes and language that shocks even sophisticated Westerners.

A recent survey of sexual activity in fifteen countries shows Americans as the most active nationality, engaging in sex 135 times per year, with Russians in second place with 133 acts annually.

When Joyce told Pyotr that she was getting up from bed to insert her diaphragm he was shocked. "That female stuff-go do it and don't talk about it!" he snapped. He insisted that she always jump up and "wash" immediately after sex since, like many Russian men, he was convinced that "washing" was an effective means of contraception-and besides, he felt that after sex a woman was "dirty." Joyce would have much preferred to fall asleep in his arms, but he saw her reluctance as yet another proof of her poor hygiene.

Russian mothers rarely talk about sex or contraception to their daughters, and, even though most Russian doctors are women, many young women are too embarrassed to speak to them.

Seventy percent of Soviet women say they have never experienced orgasm. This is partly because many Russian men don't know, or don't care, what satisfies a woman, but another common reason is the fear of pregnancy and a widespread belief that female orgasm increases chances of conception.

In Russia talking about sex - which many Americans take for granted - was for perverts and prostitutes. Russian women’s silence appears to have been a blessing for many American men, tired of being told what to do during every minute of lovemaking. Unless he were hurting her, a Russian would be horrified by his wife's telling him she did not like what he was doing, and would be even more shocked were she to tell him what he should do. One Muscovite whose marriage ended in divorce was repelled by his American wife's behavior. "She was unbelievably aggressive in bed," he recalled. "Always telling me what she liked and what she didn't, put my hand here and my tongue there, trying to program me as though I were a computer. And she never shut up. It was like being at a horizontal seminar, not like making love."

In Russia, a woman who initiates sex is considered extremely forward. It is the man who calls the shots. Even though Muriel had to get up early, Sergei insisted on having sex whenever he wanted, even at five in the morning after an all-night drinking bout. A man does not expect his initiatives to be rejected. "

Despite this "chauvinist" attitude, Russians can seem very romantic to American women who have talked themselves hoarse about sex inside and outside the bedroom. apart from vulgar "men's language" there is no "erotic language" in Russian, and that the language barely has the linguistic tools with which to talk about sex. "Even married couples," writes Kon, "find themselves in terrible straits because they have no acceptable words to express their specific desires or explain their problems, even to each other."

Since Russian women have been brought up to think that displaying an interest in sex is indecent, many never dared say anything if a man ignored foreplay.[142]

Promiscuity is common but exists side by side with extreme modesty. While the 1980s glasnost lowered official barriers to nudity and sexually explicit scenes in films, television, and theater, most Russians of the older generations feel uncomfortable with those new liberties, and sex is not a subject for public discussion. Prudery also prevails.

A Russian woman will never ask a man for directions to the ladies’ room; if this happened the man would be even more embarrassed than the woman.

Chapter 6 - Marrying and Divorcing a Russian – Why do Russians cheat on their spouses so much?

A warning

e 


Americans considering marriage to a Russian should heed this advice:

While Americans are attracted by the emotional intensity, close relationships, and cultural richness of Russian life, Russians are captivated by free and easy Americans and the wide range of opportunities held out by the United States. Where Russian women look for strong, caring, and sober American husbands, American women seek romantic, passionate Russian spouses. And while American men are attracted to feminine, “old-fashioned” Russian women, Russians are intrigued by the energetic and independent American working wives. … For better or worse, in the years to come, more and more Russians and Americans are likely to become involved in the most exciting and permanent of bilateral exchanges—marriage. The risks are great, and the losses can be enormous. So can the rewards.[143]

Psychotherapist and sexologist professor Aleksandr Poleyev states:

“The Russian woman—and this is proven by research—is more capable of love than Europeans and Americans. Passions of Russian women last longer, and dependence on love is a characteristic of Russian women.” But he adds that patriarchal prejudice and taboo affect the sex life of Russian women. 33 percent of women report that they are not satisfied with their sex life.[144]

Both male and female foreign visitors may find that they are objects of considerable interest from the opposite sex, especially outside of cosmopolitan Moscow. Before a westerner becomes romantically involved they should understand that it may be their passport rather than their person that is the principal attraction. There is a Russian joke that a foreigner is not just a future spouse but also a means of transportation (from Russia).

Oh, Russian women, draft horses of the nation!
— Andrei Sinyavsky, Goodnight! (1989)

There is a reason why older women are called the "workhorses" of Russia. As one person quipped, "If you were to put to have a Russian woman and an American woman fight in a boxing ring, I would put money down on the Russian, every time. Russian women are strong willed, compared to prudish Americans and they have sex like wild horses. Adultery in Russia is extremely more socially acceptable then in America. Old wives have turned nagging their husband into an artform."

Women—the Stronger Sex

e 

Oh, Russian women, draft horses of the nation!

— Andrei Sinyavsky, Goodnight! (1989)

Some countries are called a fatherland, others a motherland. Russia is clearly a motherland. Rodina, the Russian word for “homeland,” is feminine, and Mother Russia is the symbol of the nation. In this motherland, women are strong, hardworking, nurturing, long suffering, and the true heroes of Russia. They hold the country together.

There is a paradox with Russian women, that of the beautiful, feminine creature who turns out to be psychologically stronger than her husband. Once her man is hooked, a sweet young thing begins to show her claws, and an American husband may only then realize what a strong woman he has acquired. The stereotype of the feminine, romantic Russian girl makes the strong, dominant nature of so many of these women come as a shock to a foreign husband. The Russian femininity which so captivates American men is coupled with a toughness American feminists could envy.

Although Russian culture is very male-chauvinistic, usually the women of the society are the responsible ones. Research done by Co-Mission in 1994 indicated that there was a tendency for Russian men to feel an inner guilt for being irresponsible, in both family and social roles. Russian women contribute to the situation by be excellent naggers. Rather than working through the problems, men often retreat to hanging around together smoking and drinking vodka late into the night, perpetuating the irresponsibility. Women are forced to take hold of the responsibilities, but not given the authority in family or society.

Russian women have been obliged for so long to cope on all fronts that they have become rather cynical about Russian men, who, in turn, resent these domineering but capable females. This is because in Russia there is the cult of the mother who does everything for her son, attends to his every need and passes him on to a wife from whom he expects the same attention.

This developed because nearly an entire postwar generation was raised without a man in the house. The demographic imbalance created in Russia by 70 years of purges, famines and war produced strong women used to fending for themselves at home and at work. Yet these same women were expected to retain their femininity and looks or have their spouse wander off to one of the many single women who would be only too happy to have him, even on a part-time basis.

As the British scholar Ronald Hingley (1920-2010) observed, "The modern Russian woman seems both morally and physically equipped to stand up for herself. She often looks well capable of husband-beating if necessary; and, even if physically weaker than the male, is likely to possess greater stamina and force of character...Russia [has] evolved a corps of formidable...matrons. [Women] now constitute a bulwark of a system which might conceivably fall apart were it left in the exclusive custodianship of the relatively easy-going Russian male." Russian women can tolerate extremely difficult conditions, and empathize with and understand suffering.[145]

Russian women simply assume that men are generally incompetent, and that when the chips are down they can only rely on other women. As two Swedish women journalists who interviewed a wide range of Russian women concluded, they "yearn for men who are strong, protective, and good fathers, and find instead men who drink heavily, refuse to share housework, and have limited interest in children."[146]

Leningrad - Not a Paris - https://youtu.be/b2RHgyH-Nxo The long suffering patience of the Russian woman is comedically portrayed in this music video. The wife is a superhero, at the end of the video the bumbling husband, says "I did the dishes" and the wife responds, "Your my hero!".



Marriage

e 

"The biggest fear of a Russian girl is not to be married by the age of 30."

-- Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.[147]

Ninety percent of women are married by the time they are 30, and few had children after that age.[148]

With Russians suddenly free to emigrate after the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign men offered another route to prosperity. Love was optional. An American who taught English in Moscow tells me that during a class presentation a young woman recounted how her friend Maria married an American man, had a child with him, then turned around and divorced him. In the class discussion that followed, the storyteller’s classmates praised Maria for her “cleverness” and castigated the American husband for allowing himself to be duped.[149]

Since it is a part of Russian culture, all Russian women want children in their marriages. So, Russian women seek men who will be able to support their family while they are unable to work during the child caring years. Most women in Russia will take full care of their children through age three. This tradition was inherited from the Soviet times when their work position was preserved for 3 years after childbirth, with fully paid maternity leave for 18 months and unpaid leave for an additional 18 months. Nowadays, maternity leave is not paid, but women believe it is proper to stay home with their baby while it is small, and seek men who are able to provide for their families.[150]

In 1992, there were 20 percent to 30 percent fewer new marriages concluded in Russia than in 1990. In the same period, the number of divorces has risen by 15 percent.[151][152]

Fidelity and Adultery - Russians cheat A LOT whereas Americans act like Puritans

e 

The shortage of men in Russia provides considerable opportunities for short and long-term adulterous affairs. Since the 1980s the average life expectancy for Russian men has fallen from 65 to 58. They die of alcoholism, cigarettes, job injuries, and car accidents. By the time men and women reach sixty-five there are just 46 Russian men left for every 100 women (compared with 72 men for every 100 women of that age in the United States).

These skewed demographics infect romance. For Russian men infidelity is the rule rather than the exception.

In Moscow, women in their forties told a New York Times author that, by necessity, they only date married men. It is clear that Russian men flaunted this demographic advantage. With the exception of a pastor (who was sitting with his wife at the time), Pamela Druckerman didn't meet a single married man in Russia who admitted to being monogamous. A family psychologist whom Druckerman had intended to interview as an "expert" boasted about her own extramarital relationships and insisted that given Russia's endemic alcoholism, violent crime, and tiny apartments, affairs are "obligatory.

Journalist Pamela Druckerman had lunch with a well-off single woman in her forties who tells her that if she didn’t go out with married men she would have almost no one to date. In fact this woman doesn’t know any single women who don’t date married men. And none of them try to hide this. For Russian women in their thirties and forties, let alone older ones, a man who is not married or an alcoholic is as rare as a Faberge egg.

Druckerman explains if there’s a 50 percent affair rate for men, then presumably the other half of men don’t cheat. So where are these missing men? Druckerman couldn't find them. The whole time she was in Moscow, she didn’t meet a single person who admits to being monogamous.

Since men are at a premium, a wife may have to put up with her husband's having a permanent mistress and even an out-of-wedlock child. Such a "second family" is quite common, and a man is not criticized for it; in fact, he may be praised for keeping both women happy by not abandoning either of them. A man is expected to be discrete, and to spare his wife's feelings by keeping his dalliances from her. The ideal of total honesty that is professed in many American marriages is alien to the Russian mentality.[153]

A Russian woman will not be criticized for leaving a husband who beats her or who is an habitual drunkard, but unlike America, male adultery is not assumed to be automatic grounds for the wife walking out and filing for divorce.[154]

Extramarital sex, both casual and long-term, is quite common:

  • More than three quarters of the people surveyed had extramarital contacts in 1989,
  • in 1969, the figure was less than half.

But public opinion is critical of extramarital sex.

  • In a 1992 survey 23 percent agreed that it is okay to have a lover as well as a husband or wife
  • 50 percent disagreed that it is okay to have a lover as well as a husband or wife

Extramarital affairs seem to be morally more acceptable for men than for women.[155]

Artyom Troitsky, editor of Playboy's Russian edition, explains that during the Soviet Union, “Sex was the last thing they couldn’t take away from us, and that’s why we did it so much. Everyone had affairs with everyone. Moscow was the most erotic city in the world.”[156]

Women "need to accept [men cheating], because he feeds her, her children, everybody. She needs a strong man, but a strong man can leave for one or two nights.”[157][158]

Eighteen year old Katya is tall and skinny, with a strong command of English. She describes what she wants in a husband: someone who doesn’t drink or beat her. She says she will be lucky if she finds someone like this. She is just a few years shy of marrying age. Though she has the occasional fling, there are no significant prospects on the horizon. Boys her age are "very cruel, and they drink." The few serious ones are more focused on their careers than on relationships, and there’s a lot of competition for them.

“For me, of course I would like my husband to be faithful, and I will do the same, but I don’t know, it depends on the situation. But if we have a good relationship as family partners, we have children, then if he has someone on the side, I have someone on the side, it’s okay, so that the child will grow up in a family with both parents.”

In the Russian edition of Cosmopolitan, Russia’s best selling magazine, is running a primer for women on how to hide their lovers from their husbands.

Outside Russia’s big cities some husbands don’t even bother hiding their affairs.[159][160]

Soviet policies which encouraged adultery

e 

After the Soviet Revolution, the Bolsheviks intervened more directly in domestic life. The new Code on Marriage and the Family (1918) established a legislative framework that clearly aimed to breakdown the traditional family. It removed the influence of the Church from marriage and divorce, making both a process of simple registration with the state. It granted the same legal rights to de facto marriages (couples living together) as it gave to legal marriages. The Code turned divorce from a luxury for the rich to something that was easy and affordable for all. The result was a huge increase in casual marriages and the highest rate of divorce in the world – three times higher than in France or Germany and twenty-six times higher than in England by 1926 – as the collapse of the Christian patriarchal order and the chaos of the revolutionary years loosened sexual morals along with family and communal ties.[161][162]

In the early years of Soviet power, family breakdown was so common among revolutionary activists that it almost constituted an occupational hazard. Casual relationships were practically the norm in Bolshevik circles during the Civil War, when any comrade could be sent at a moment’s notice to some distant sector of the front. Such relaxed attitudes remained common throughout the 1920s, as Party activists and their young emulators in the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) were taught to put their commitment to the proletariat before romantic love or family. Sexual promiscuity was more pronounced in the Party’s youthful ranks than among Soviet youth in general. Many Bolsheviks regarded sexual license as a form of liberation from bourgeois moral conventions and as a sign of ‘Soviet modernity’. Some even advocated promiscuity as a way to counteract the formation of coupling relationships that separated lovers from the collective and detracted from their loyalty to the Party.[163]

It was a commonplace that the Bolshevik made a bad husband and father because the demands of the Party took him away from the home. ‘We Communists don’t know our own families,’ remarked one Moscow Bolshevik. ‘You leave early and come home late. You seldom see your wife and almost never see your children.’ At Party congresses, where the issue was discussed throughout the 1920s, it was recognized that Bolsheviks were far more likely than non-Party husbands to abandon wives and families, and that this had much to do with the primacy of Party loyalties over sexual fidelity. But in fact the problem of absent wives and mothers was almost as acute in Party circles, as indeed it was in the broader circles of the Soviet intelligentsia, where most women were involved in the public sphere.15[164][165][166]

Soviet Khrushchev administration policies encourages infidelity

e 

For decades in the Soviet Union had been trying, and failing, to recover from the catastrophic population loss caused by the Second World War and the Gulag extermination system. The thrust of the population policies initiated by Khrushchev was to get as many women as possible to have children by the comparatively few surviving men. The policies dictated that men who fathered children out of wedlock would not be held responsible for child support but the state would help the single mother both with financial subsidies and with childcare: she could even leave the child at an orphanage for any length of time, as many times as she needed, without forfeiting her parental rights. The state endeavored to remove any stigma associated with resorting to the help of orphanages, or with single motherhood and having children out of wedlock. Women could put down a fictitious man as the father on the child’s birth certificate—or even name the actual father, without his having to fear being burdened with responsibility. “The new project was designed to encourage both men and women to have non-conjugal sexual relationships that would result in procreation,” writes historian Mie Nakachi.[167]

Russians are willing to cheat on there spouses more than 24 other countries

e 

In 1998, a study showed that Russian men and women led their peers in 24 other countries in their willingness to engage in and approve of extramarital affairs. Faithfulness in marriage is seen as something that is nice but unrealistic. If women don't really expect it of their husbands, they can pre-empt feelings of shock and betrayal.[168]

Americans expect total honesty in marriage

e 

The ideal of total honesty that is professed in many American marriages is alien to the Russian mentality. Muriel and Joyce were surprised that their Russian husbands did not tell them about their former girlfriends, and did not want to hear about their wives' previous experiences. "Those things are private," Sergei explained. "If you're married and you're attracted to someone else, you keep it to yourself. Otherwise you only hurt your spouse's feelings." Muriel's arguments about honesty got nowhere. "I'm not going to tell you what I do outside the house," Sergei retorted. "All this blathering Americans think is honesty only winds up offending everyone."[169]

Abortion

e 

Attitudes on birth control stem from traditional Russian conservatism as well as the views of a male-dominated leadership, which has sought to stabilize the family and increase the birthrate. Most families, however, avoid having a second child due to limited housing (especially in the cities), a decline in state-subsidized day care, the collapse of the state welfare system, and the deterioration of health care, as well as the increased cost of living. The use of contraceptives, now more available, has been rising slowly, but they are still not widely used, and family planning information is not readily available.

Abortion, legal and free in Russia since 1920, is still the common form of birth control, as it was in the Soviet period. Although the rate has been declining in recent years, more than two million abortions are registered each year (not including unreported ones), and 10 percent of women who undergo the procedure are left sterile. According to U.S. demographer Murray Feshbach, two of every three pregnancies in Russia end in abortion, and women, on average, have six to eight abortions during their lifetime; at least 80 percent of all women have a pathology (abnormality) during pregnancy; and only 30 percent of all children are born healthy.[170][171]

  • Women have, on average, four abortions in their lifetime.[172][173]
  • Lifetime abortions per woman: Average number of abortions a Russian woman has during her reproductive years.
    • 1990: 3.0,
    • 2006: 1.2,
    • 2010: 1.0.[174]
  • In 1920....the Soviet Union became the first state in the world to legalize abortion... (it was banned once before — for a 20-year period beginning with Josef Stalin in 1936)...official figures show almost 930,000 women terminate a pregnancy each year. That number is half of what it was in 1995, and one seventh what it was for the Soviet Union in 1965, when abortions nearly tripled the number of births.[175]


Divorce

e 

In the 1990s, approximately one marriage in three ended in divorce, with the rate increasing 20 percent in the early 1990s after the break up of the Soviet Union. About 60 percent of Russian marriages now end in divorce.[176]

Forty million Soviet men died in the three cataclysmic events of the USSR — the collectivization of agriculture, the political purges, and World War II. This created a severe shortage of men for two generations of women. Moreover, the mortality rate for Russian men today is four times that of women in all age groups over twenty due to alcoholism and related accidents and illnesses, and women outlive men, on average, by thirteen years. This explains why there are so many babushki (grandmothers) in Russia and so few dyedushki (grandfathers).[177]

A few more facts helps explain women's status in Russia. One of every two marriages ends in divorce, and the number of single mothers and single women continues to rise. Nearly one-third of all babies born in Russia in the year 2000 were born to unwed mothers, double the percentage of a decade earlier, and 40 percent of those babies were born to teenagers.[178]

Like many other movements originating in the West, feminism has been late in reaching Russia. Grassroots women’s groups are springing up around the country, but feminism is not yet a mass movement. The equality that Russian women want differs from that of Western women. Russian women see themselves as far more traditional in their dealings with men and their views on domestic life. In dress and style, for example, they prefer glamor to comfort, femininity to practicality. Russian women are duly recognized on March 8 Women’s Day, a Russian version of Valentine’s Day. In communist years the festival was used to emphasize the equality of sexes lacking in the capitalist West, but it remains popular today.[179]

To cope with their hardships, women depend on and support each other to a remarkable degree. Through networks of trusted and lifelong friends, they help one another with the daily hassles of life and provide moral support in times of crisis.[180]

Chapter 7 - Living with a Russian – Russian Home life

Housework

e 

Women actually work two shifts—one at the workplace and the other at home, where they put in another full workweek performing the duties of wife, mother, and homemaker. Most wives in Russia wind up doing all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Even if a Russian wife works, the man looks on himself as the breadwinner and on her as responsible for the housework and child care. Russian men...are thrown off by the unwillingness of "liberated" American women to take on the role of homemaker. Moreover, as Russian society becomes more consumer-oriented, men work longer hours to earn more and now do an even smaller share of the household tasks than before.[181]

Domestic Abuse

e 

Wife beating at home is common in Russia. According to official statistics, 14,000 Russian women are killed each year by their husbands and boyfriends, and 38,000 are beaten daily. Police generally take a hands-off attitude, and women do not know their rights in a country that still seems to believe a popular Russian adage, “If he beats you, it means that he loves you.”[182][183]

Lee Harvey Oswald household's first house in America was shabbily furnished and decrepit, but Marina was enchanted by the privacy and space.' Even a woman as sophisticated as Raissa Gorbachev was amazed by the spaciousness of the home of the American family with whom she had tea during her visit to the United States, and by the fact that each of the four children had his own bedroom.'

When everything is available, Russians can become incredibly demanding. Nothing but the best will do. A new house or apartment is treated as a home for life, for in Russia if you were lucky enough to find a nice place to live, moving again was furthest from your thoughts.

When married couple Carol and Fyodor wanted to buy an apartment they saw at least eighty places before Fyodor was satisfied. The rooms were too small or the lobby was unattractive, or there was no view. When it comes to wallpaper, furniture, and china, the Russian spouse is likely to opt for the most colorful, extravagant, and expensive items.

The memory of hundreds of virtually identical Soviet interiors is engraved on Russians' minds. The standard set of glossy dark wood furniture, a couch doubling as a bed, a rug hanging on the wall, glass-enclosed bookcases, a large television set and a sideboard with china and crystal-all this is transferred like a decal to the new American home. Svetlana could not imagine doing without a hall with a large mirror for the ritual hair-combing that takes place the minute a Russian enters, or a rack for the boots and shoes that are exchanged for slippers when coming in from snowy streets.

"Mary keeps saying Russian furniture is gloomy," husband Boris complained about his American wife. "But I don't really like that rug that looks as if it's from the Museum of Modern Art." "I didn't want the place to look like a Russian souvenir store," Mary recalled. "Boris had all these clumsy wooden figures and nesting dolls, and cheap reproductions of Impressionist landscapes.[184]

Clothing and public appearance

e 

Carol could not make Fyodor wear a tie-which, like so many Russian men, he detested-to anything other than a wedding or a funeral. In Russia men often wear boxer shorts and tank top undershirts at home, but Carol could not stand Fyodor sitting around the house in his underwear. Many American wives were surprised to discover that undershirts and boxer shorts doubled for their husbands as night clothes, since men's pajamas are virtually nonexistent in Russia.

Nor do most Russian men use deodorant or change their underwear. Several Russian women commented that they had originally been attracted to their American spouses because they were so incredibly "clean" compared to Russians.

Russian women spend hours primping in front of the mirror, styling their hair and freshening their makeup.

Today much has changed, but high prices mean that many Russians still have relatively few clothes. Laundry and dry cleaning facilities are still poor, expensive and inconveniently located, and Americans are often surprised to see their Russian business associates wearing the same clothes day after day.

When the laundry lost an old and ragged undershirt, Pyotr was convinced that this cherished piece of clothing had been deliberately stolen. Russians often find American women badly dressed. "With all the stores bursting with clothes, they run around in torn jeans and T-shirts with those silly advertisements on them!" Svetlana exclaimed. "I don't understand them."

Regardless of the pressures of housework, jobs and standing in line, Russian men expect their wives to be well groomed, their hair perfectly set, their nails manicured and polished.

“All you American females yapping about liberation, always in a rush-you look as if you came off the garbage heap! No wonder you couldn't find an American husband!"

Fyodor could not understand why Carol refused to paint her toenails bright red the way many Russian women do. "It makes me look like a whore," she said.[185]

Walking barefoot and sitting on the floor

e 

Sergei and Pyotr disliked their wives' habits of kicking off their shoes, walking around barefoot, and sitting on the floor. Aside from being "unaesthetic," walking barefoot meant catching cold, and sitting on the floor was guaranteed to produce all kinds of feminine pelvic problems alluded to in somber whispers.[186]

Chapter 8 - Russians in business

Women in the workforce

e 
Women in Soviet History

The Bolsheviks professed to liberate women and give them full equality with men, and in the 1920s Soviet women enjoyed an equality under law unequaled anywhere else in the world. On this point Soviet law was explicit. As Article 35 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution declared:

Women and men have equal rights in the USSR … ensured by according women equal access with men to education and vocational and professional training, equal opportunities in employment, remuneration and promotion, and in social and political and cultural activity.[187]

In practice, however, women were recognized but unrewarded. A state that claimed to have given all power to the people did in fact give power to only a few, and almost all of them were men. During the entire Soviet era, only three women were named to the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party, and almost none were appointed to high positions in the military and diplomatic corps. To be sure, the first woman ambassador of any country was an early Bolshevik, Aleksandra Kollontai, who was named Soviet Minister to Norway in 1923—but only after her ardent feminism and advocacy of free love put her on a collision course with Party leaders at home.

Women worked in factories and on farms to help build the Soviet economy, and they fought in World War II. The Soviet air force had three air groups “manned” entirely by women, flying bombers by night, dive bombers by day, and even fighter planes. Together, they flew more than 30,000 combat missions during World War II.

Today in the new Russia, equal rights for women and men have been reaffirmed by Article 19 of the Constitution of 1993, which asserts, “The state shall guarantee equal human and civil rights and freedoms without regard to sex. … Men and women shall have equal rights and freedoms and equal opportunities to exercise them.” In practice, however, the results differ.

Some 62 percent of Russian women are college graduates, compared to 50 percent of men, but the average woman’s salary is one-third smaller than that of men.[188] The majority of middle and high-ranking professionals are women, and Russia has one of the highest rates of women bosses. But while more than 80 percent of school principals are women, they comprise only 6 percent of rectors (presidents) of universities and other higher schools, and women make up only 8 percent of high-ranking officials. In cutbacks, women are the first to be fired, but they are quick learners of new professions and bolder in business, and they head about 30 percent of medium-sized businesses and 10 percent of big businesses.

Women, who outnumber men by 10 million, are active today in all professions and occupations, but they are especially strong in medicine where, reflecting an old Russian tradition, three-fourths of all medical doctors are women. They also predominate in teaching and in the textile, food, and social service industries. But while few women occupy high government positions, they have been active in recent years in establishing a broad range of public and political organizations in the new civil society of Russia. Women are also becoming more active in business, founding and directing their own firms, and in journalism.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is common.

Unemployment is much higher for women. During Yeltin’s destabilizing tenure as president many of them looked for marriage abroad. Others, mostly young women, turned to prostitution; literally thousands of them could be found on the main streets and in hotels, clubs, and casinos in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Others were lured abroad by promises of employment but then find themselves prisoners in foreign bordellos.

Western women

Western women warn that Russian men will turn on the charm, but their basic attitude toward a female visitor will be patronizing. Her professional qualifications will be regarded initially with some skepticism, and the Western woman will have to prove herself before she will be taken seriously. But as one Russian advised, “We judge women as we judge everyone else, according to their poise, personal strength of character, and whether they demonstrate an air of authority.” Indeed, Western women, as well as men, will be judged by their professional expertise, seriousness of purpose, cultural level, and knowledge of Russia and its history.[189]

Negotiating with a Russian

NEW!

e 

Business Negotiations Between Americans and Russians

Louneva, Tanya, "Business Negotiations Between Americans and Russians" (2010). Wharton Research Scholars. 57. https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=wharton_research_scholars

Both Americans and Russians value:

  1. Negotiation goals
  2. time sensitivity
  3. agreement building,
  4. agreement form,
  5. communications and
  6. personal styles.

There are some differences between the negotiating styles of Russians and Americans. For instance, Russians may rely more on interpersonal relationships and indirect communications. Russians are emotionally-driven in negotiations.

Russia has a low-trust environment, because it is a high context culture. This could be due to a weak regulatory environment, historical constraints, and rising disposable income levels. Therefore, the key in negotiations in Russia is to built trust. After this is done, a competitive advantage is gained since it will take a long time to build a level of trust with another partner.

Americans have a high-trust environment, because it is a low-context culture, as there is a strong regulatory framework and a history of law enforcement. Therefore, building trust is easier, and it is not viewed as a competitive advantage; instead, counterparties often rely more on the signed contracts than on mutual trust.

In Russia, the establishment of trust is exhibited through five behaviors:

(1) putting the relationship first,
(2) having a low sensitivity to time so that trust can be patiently established,
(3) forming relationships “outside the boardroom”,
(4) focusing on top-down decision making while disregarding the details, and
(5) employing high emotions.[190]

Focus on building a relationship first

As a general rule of thumb, investing extra time developing a relationship-based approach will pay dividends when working with Russians. This is true even if you both come from task-based cultures, such as the United States and Germany. Once an affective relationship is established, the forgiveness for any cultural missteps you make comes a lot easier. So when you work internationally, no matter who you are working with, investing more time in building affective trust is a good idea. But knowing exactly how to build affective trust may not always be so obvious.

One productive way to start putting trust deposits in the bank is by building on common interests.

An Austrian used this simple way of connecting with people to great success during two decades of work in Russia.

“When I retired and left Moscow. I was replaced by a younger Austrian colleague, who had an extraordinary track record in Austria but knew nothing about how people outside of Austria work. His task-based approach was effective for Austria, but not at all suited for Russia.”

The younger man worked diligently for months to close an attractive deal with a potential client. He invested countless hours in making his presentation outstanding, his brochures polished, and his offer generous and transparent. Yet the client dragged his feet, and, six months into the process, his interest seemed to be dwindling. At this point, the younger man called the elder Austrian up and asked for advice, given the latter’s success during all those years in Russia.

The Austiran came to Moscow and met directly with the client:

The first thing I noticed when I saw him was that he was about my age—we both have white hair. So I spoke of my family, and we spent the first half hour talking about our grandchildren. Then I noticed he had a model of a fighter plane on his desk. I also flew planes in the military, and I saw this as an incredible opportunity. We spent the next hour talking about the differences between various military planes.
At this point, the Russian client signaled that he had to leave. But he invited me to go with him to the ballet that evening. Now, in truth, I dislike the ballet. But I’m not stupid. When an opportunity this good comes along, I jump on it. The evening went beautifully and ended in a drink with the client and his wife.

At 10:00 a.m. the next day, the elder Austrian met again with the client, who said, “I’ve looked through your proposal, I understand your situation, and I agree with your terms. I have to get someone else to sign the contract, but if you would like to take the plane back to Austria today I will fax you the signed contract this afternoon.” When the elder Austrian arrived at his office in Austria the next Monday morning, the €2 million down payment was already in his account. He was able to accomplish more in twenty-four hours with a relationship-based approach than his task-based colleague was able to accomplish in six months.

You might protest that this Austrian was remarkably lucky. Just by chance, he happened to have several things in common with his Russian client, from grandchildren to fighter planes, and in fact, The older Austrian did end his account by exclaiming, “It was my white hair that saved me!” But he found these similarities because he was looking for them.

If you are working with someone from a relationship-based culture and opportunities for a personal connection don’t jump out at you, it is worth the investment to look a little harder.[9]

Russian Business Meeting Characteristics

Russian Business Meeting Characteristics

There are a few ground rules you should be aware of about a Russian business meeting:

1. Timeliness: While Russians are not as prompt as Germans, Russians are rather prompt. So being 5 minutes late is ok, anything later needs an excuse. Preferably by calling ahead. For example, "We are stuck in traffic". Being 30-40 or more minutes late without a very good reason, such as the Italians or Spaniards tend to do, is considered very bad manners.

Note: If during the meeting you agree to set due dates or deadlines, be sure to accomplish them by the agreed upon date. Everything during the meeting will be set down in writing in the Minutes of Meeting and not meeting due dates is a major blow to one's credibility and reliability in Russia.

2. Inclusiveness

It is considered very rude to turn your back on someone while continuing your conversation with another person in the group...one to remember for non-Russians who have no such issues. This additionally means, turning to your co-workers, and beginning a conversation in a separate language not understood by everyone. This is also considered very rude. If the need arises to have such a discussion, request some time alone, a break from the meeting and maybe a separate room to do so in.

3. Emotions:

While getting into an emotionally "hot" discussion can happen, never over do it. Never get personal and never ever ever throw a temper tantrum and walk out. The author had an Engineering - Procurement - Construction (EPC) project manager who would do this. He had zero respect from the other side who had to beg him to return. This is viewed as unmanly and childish.

4. Shaking Hands:

Shake hands with everyone and anyone who enters the room after the start and before you hand out or receive business cards individually. When leaving also shake everyone's hand. Walking by some person who stops to talk to someone in your party? Shake his hand. And make it a firm hand shake. Additionally, women shake hands also, so not to shake the hand of a woman is a grave insult.

5. If a woman enters the room to join the meeting?

Get up and show respect, as if it was a senior person, and since 42% of Russian executives are women (twice that of the "progressive" West) it just may be. Additionally, if there are no more seats, surrender yours to the woman.

6. Bargain Hard

Russian price negotiations used to be described as something between a mugging and a bar fight. Its gotten a bit more civilized but....The author recalls remembering fighting a supplier over each 0.01$ of a price on forgings. The 2 groupsfinally agreed to limit it to just full round dollars or they would never get it done. This resulted in a 15% savings from already low prices which saved the author's company several million dollars.

7. Never take an initial response of "NO IT CANT BE DONE" as the final answer.

If the junior or secondary management says no, go straight to the senior leadership. If they say yes it will be yes. Equally, since Russian culture is conservative, use your persuasion skills to sell the idea, either by its merits or by its profitability.

8. Figure out who the trusted lieutenant of the general director is.

Russian chain of commands are linier except for that special lieutenant who has the ear of the boss.

9. Meetings must come to some decisions...

....why else are you in a meeting (except if its just an introductory meeting). People around the equator like to have meetings for the sake of meetings and no decisions are reached, this is very infuriating to Russians. Most meetings usually have a set agenda and the agenda is set to come to a decision.

10. All meetings will end in a Minutes of the Meeting (MoM) with all parties involved signing. Sometimes getting the MoM done takes longer than the whole meeting and all parties most definitely must sign it, so be careful what actually goes in to it, as this is a legal document.


Working in a Russian company

NEW!

Russia among the worst countries for expats

In 2021, Russia received some of the worst results for expats. Out of 59 countries in the "Expat Insider 2021" survey, Russia (56th) lands in the bottom 5 — only ahead of South Africa (57th), Italy (58th), and Kuwait (59th). It performs worst in the Working Abroad Index (52nd), with 24% of expats rating the state of the local economy negatively (vs. 19% globally). A quarter of respondents (25%) are also unhappy with their job security in Russia (vs. 20% globally), and just 63% are satisfied with their job in general (vs. 68% globally). A large share of working expats in Russia do so in the fields of education (20% vs. 12% globally) and construction (12% vs. 3% globally).

On average, expats with full-time employment in Russia work 43.0 hours per week, just about the same as the global average (43.2 hours per week). However, one in five respondents in Russia (20%) still rates their working hours negatively (vs. 16% globally). Additionally, more than a quarter (26%) are unsatisfied with their work-life balance (vs. 17% globally).

A Low Quality of Life

Narrowly escaping the bottom 10 in the Quality of Life Index (49th), Russia performs especially poorly in the Quality of the Environment subcategory (49th). Many expats are unhappy with the air quality (31% vs. 20% globally), the water and sanitation infrastructure (21% vs. 12% globally), and the natural environment (14% vs. 8% globally). “I do not like the lack of any meaningful efforts or policies to reduce environmental pollution and to support basic recycling,” shares a US American expat.

Another factor that lowers the quality of life for expats in Russia is the climate and weather (53rd), which 40% of expats rate negatively, compared to just 17% globally.

Challenging Culture

With Russia coming in 48th place in the "Ease of Settling In Index", 29% of respondents find it difficult to settle down in this country (vs. 22% globally). Just 57% feel at home in the local culture (vs. 63% globally), and 22% describe the population as generally unfriendly (vs. 16% globally). What is more, Russia ends up in the bottom 3 of the Language subcategory (58th), only ahead of Japan (59th). Nearly half the expats (48%) find it difficult to live in Russia’s cities without speaking the local language (vs. 29% globally), and two-thirds (67%) find it difficult to learn Russian (vs. 42% globally).

Low Income, Mediocre Cost of Living

The country also does poorly in the "Personal Finance Index" (47th), with 27% of expats dissatisfied with their financial situation (vs. 19% globally). Indeed, 34% of expats in Russia have a yearly income of less than 12,000 USD — more than twice the global average (15%). And just 21% earn between 25,000 and 75,000 USD a year (vs. 37% globally). More than a quarter of respondents (27%) say their disposable household income is not enough to cover expenses (vs. 23% globally). A Canadian expat shares, “I do not like the income discrepancies.” Nonetheless, Russia receives its best result in the Cost of Living Index (25th): 49% of expats rate the cost of living positively, which is, however, still just one percentage point above the global average (48%).[191]


Working with a Russian coworker

Excerpts from "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer:

The French, Spanish, and Russians are generally stereotyped as being indirect communicators because of their high-context, implicit communication style, despite the fact that they give negative feedback more directly. In fact, most European countries are direct, with Russians, Dutch, and Germans as particularly prone to offering frank criticism.

Americans are stereotyped as direct by most of the world, yet when they give negative feedback they are less direct than many European cultures.

Russia is a puzzlingly complex culture that have finessed the ability to speak and listen between the lines yet give negative feedback that is sharp and direct. Russians often pass messages between the lines, but when it comes to criticism they have a directness that can startle their international colleagues.

If you are walking through the street without a jacket, little old Russian ladies may stop and chastise you for poor judgment. . . . In Russia there is no reservations about expressing your negative criticism openly. For instance, if you are displeased with the service in a shop or restaurant you can tell the shop assistant or waiter exactly what you think of him, his relatives, his in-laws, his habits, and his sexual bias.[192]

Erin Meyer thought about this observation a few weeks later when she received a call from a British colleague. She explained to Meyer that a young Russian woman named Anna Golov had recently joined her team and was upsetting a lot of people whose help she needed to get her job done.

"I’m calling you, Erin," Golov said, "because I wondered if the problem might be cultural. This is the fourth Russian coordinator we have had in the group, and with three of them there were similar types of complaints about harsh criticism or what has been perceived as speaking to others inconsiderately."

A few days later, Meyer had the opportunity to witness the problem in action. While Meyer prepared to teach one morning, Golov herself was in the room with Meyer setting up the classroom. Meyer was going through stacks of handouts, counting pages to make sure they had enough photocopies, while Golov was carefully checking the IT equipment, which, to their annoyance, was not working properly. Meyer appreciated the fact that Golov was handling the problem with such tenacity and that Meyer did not have to get involved.

But then Meyer heard Golov on the phone with someone in the IT department. "I’ve called IT three times this week, and every time you are slow to get here and the solution doesn’t last," she complained. "The solutions you have given me are entirely unacceptable." Golov went on scolding the IT manager, each sentence a bit harsher than the one before. Meyer held her breath.

Later, the British colleague asked Meyer, as the cross-cultural specialist, whether Meyer would accompany her when she spoke with Golov about the problem. Meyer was not thrilled at the request. She certainly did not look forward to witnessing Golov learn what her new colleagues were saying about her behind her back. But at Carlson’s insistence, Meyer agreed.

They met in the British colleague’s office, and the British woman person tried to explain the reputation that Golov had unknowingly developed across the campus, citing specific complaints not just from the IT department but also from the photocopying staff. Golov shifted uncomfortably in her chair while the British woman explained that she had wondered whether the problem was cultural.

At first Golov did not really understand the feedback. She protested, "But we Russians are very subtle communicators. We use irony and subtext. You British and Americans speak so transparently."

“Yes,” Meyer interjected. "But if a Russian has negative feedback to give, it seems that often that feedback is perceived to be harsh or direct to people from other cultures. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, well...that depends who we are speaking with, of course. One point is that we tend to be a very hierarchical culture. If you are a boss speaking to your subordinate, you may be very frank. And if you are a subordinate speaking to your boss, you had better be very diplomatic with criticism." The British woman smiled, perhaps realizing why she had never personally experienced any of Golov’s frankness.

Golov went on:

"If we are speaking with strangers, we often speak very forcefully. This is true. These IT guys, I don’t know them. They are the voices of strangers on the other end of the phone. Under Communism, the stranger was the enemy. We didn’t know who we could trust, who would turn us in to the authorities, who would betray us. So we kept strangers at a forceful distance. Maybe I brought a little too much of my Russian-ness into the job without realizing it."

Meyer noticed that Golov was now beginning to laugh a little as she continued to consider the situation. “We are also very direct with people we are close to. My British friends here complain that I voice my opinions so strongly, while I feel like I never know how they really feel about the situation. I am always saying: 'But how do you feel about it?' And they are always responding: 'Why are you always judging everything?'!"

“Now that I’m aware of this,” Golov concluded, “I’ll be more careful when I communicate dissatisfaction.”

The French have a saying, “Quand on connait sa maladie, on est à moitié guéri” — “When you know your sickness, you are halfway cured.” It applies to most cross-cultural confusions. Just building your own awareness and the awareness of your team goes a long way to improving collaboration. Now that British colleague is aware of the cultural tendencies impacting the situation, she can talk to Golov and her team about it, and Golov can take steps to give less direct criticism.

An explicit, low-context communication style gives Americans the reputation of lacking subtlety. Leave it to the Americans to point out the elephant in the room when the rest of us were working through our interpersonal issues nicely without calling attention to it. But foreigners are often surprised to find Americans softening negative criticism with positive messages.

Before moving to France, Meyer, having been raised, educated, and employed in the United States, believed that giving three positives for every negative and beginning a feedback session with the words of explicit appreciation before discussing what needs to be improved were universally effective techniques. If they worked well in America, then surely they should work just as well in France, Brazil, China and, well, everywhere.

But after living in Europe for a while Meyer learned to see this style from a completely different perspective. To the French, Spanish, Russians, Dutch, and Germans, the American mode of giving feedback comes across as false and confusing. Meyer's friend, who works frequently with Americans, said:

To a Dutchman, it is all a lot of hogwash. All that positive feedback just strikes us as fake and not in the least bit motivating. I was on a conference call with an American group yesterday, and the organizer began, “I am absolutely thrilled to be with you this morning.” Only an American would begin a meeting like this. Let’s face it, everyone in the room knows that she is not truly, honestly thrilled. Thrilled to win the lottery—yes. Thrilled to find out that you have won a free trip to the Caribbean—yes. Thrilled to be the leader of a conference call — highly doubtful. When my American colleagues begin a communication with all of their “excellents” and “greats,” it feels so exaggerated that I find it demeaning. We are adults, here to do our jobs and to do them well. We don’t need our colleagues to be cheerleaders.
The problem is that we can’t tell when the feedback is supposed to register to us as excellent, okay, or really poor. For a Dutchman, the word “excellent” is saved for a rare occasion and “okay” is . . . well, neutral. But with the Americans, the grid is different. “Excellent” is used all the time. “Okay” seems to mean “not okay.” “Good” is only a mild compliment. And when the message was intended to be bad, you can pretty much assume that, if an American is speaking and the listener is Dutch, the real meaning of the message will be lost all together.

Going to school or college in Russia

Meyer explains:

The same difference is reflected in the ways children are treated in schools. My children are in the French school system during the academic year and spend the summer in American academic programs in the Minneapolis area. In the United States, my eight-year-old son, Ethan, gets his homework assignments back covered with gold stars and comments like “Keep it up!” “Excellent work!” and, at worst, “Almost there...give it another try!”
But studying in Madame Durand’s class requires thicker skin. After a recent Monday morning spelling test, Ethan’s notebook page was covered sorrowfully in red lines and fat Xs, along with seven simple words from Madame Durand: “8 errors. Skills not acquired. Apply yourself!”

Working as an English teacher in Russia

In Russia, learning starts with understanding the grammatical principles underpinning the language structure. Once a person has a solid initial grasp of the grammar and vocabulary, you begin to practice using the language. Ironically, Russians knowledge of English grammar is far superior to that of many Americans. The disadvantage is that students spend less time practicing the language, which may mean they write it better than they speak it. As a result, potential teachers are often judged solely on their ability to understand grammar.

In principles-first cultures such as Russia, France and Belgium, people want to understand the why behind their boss’s request before they move to action. Meanwhile, applications-first learners tend to focus less on the why and more on the how.

One of the most common frustrations among Russian employees with American bosses, and students of American teachers' is that the American tells them what to do without explaining why they need to do it. From the Russian perspective, this can feel demotivating, even disrespectful. By contrast, American bosses may feel that Russian workers are uncooperative because, instead of acting quickly, they always ask “Why?” and are not ready to act until they have received a suitable response.


Why do so few Russians speak good English?
Few Russians travel abroad.
Living in Russia without knowing English isn’t much of a problem. All foreign films shown in the country are dubbed, and most books are translated. For most Russians, the matter of speaking English only comes up if they travel abroad. But this doesn't even apply to many people since 72 percent of Russians don't even have a passport for foreign travel, and 59 percent of them have never traveled beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.
Soviet school.
Historical reasons.
Difficult and terrifying language.
Domestic market.[193]

Supervising Russians

Meyer explains, the fifth promotion put Jepsen in charge of the company’s recently acquired Russian operation, his first international leadership position.

Relocated to a small town outside of Saint Petersburg, Jepsen was surprised by the difficulties he encountered in managing his team. After four months in his new job, he e-mailed me this list of complaints about his Russian staff:

  1. They call me Mr. President
  2. They defer to my opinions
  3. They are reluctant to take initiative
  4. They ask for my constant approval
  5. They treat me like I am king

Jepsen explained:

“Week two into the job, our IT director e-mailed me to outline in detail a problem we were having with the e-mail process and describing various solutions. He ended his e-mail, ‘Mr. President, kindly explain how you would like me to handle this.’ This was the first of many such e-mails from various directors to fill my inbox. All problems are pushed up, up, up, and I do my best to nudge them way back down.” After all, as Jepsen told the IT manager, “You know the situation better than I do. You are the expert, not me.”

Meanwhile, the members of Jepsen’s Russian management team were equally annoyed at Jepsen’s apparent lack of competence as a leader. Here are some of the complaints they offered during focus group interviews:

  1. He is a weak, ineffective leader
  2. He doesn’t know how to manage
  3. He gave up his corner office on the top floor, suggesting to the company that our team is of no importance
  4. He is incompetent

While Jepsen was groaning that his team members took no initiative, they were wringing their hands about Jepsen’s lack of leadership: “We are just waiting for a little bit of direction!”

How about you? Do you prefer an egalitarian or a hierarchical management approach? No matter what your nationality, the answer is probably the same. Most people throughout the world claim to prefer an egalitarian style, and a large majority of managers say that they use an egalitarian approach

themselves.

But evidence from the cross-cultural trenches shows another story. When people begin managing internationally, their day-to-day work reveals quite different preferences—and these unexpected, unconscious differences can make leading across cultures surprisingly difficult.


Chapter 9: Muscovites are Shit

e 
"Muscovites are shit....They are mean, arrogant and proud....the capital is inhabited by rather unpleasant people who are ready sell you, their friends and their mother if they see something to gain in it."
-- A Russian, in the article "Why People Hate Muscovites"[194]

America is unique in that it has 3 Moscows: New York City, Hollywood, and Washington DC. The vast majority of countries, especially in the third world, have one central hub in which all business, politics, and soft power (the film industry) is located. Moscow is no different. If a Russian wants to be the best of the best in movies, politics, business, or crime in Russia, they move or have a base of operations in Moscow.

During the Soviet Union moving to another city was extremely restricted within the vast country. Every citizen had one passport, which was a central passport for travel inside the Soviet Union (Российский паспорт). International passports (Загранпаспорт) were rare and prized. Only the very best, brightest, ambitious, and in some cases, ruthless, would be allowed the opportunity to live in Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, the entire country was besieged by what Naomi Klien calls "The Shock Doctrine".[195] Naïve isolated Russians believed the sophisticated American "soft power" propaganda (still today 20 years ahead of any other country) and promises of America: No expansion of NATO on a handshake deal, etc. (see the Russian business section) This planned shock destroyed the country and laid Russia to waste with the help of powerful corrupt Russian oligarchs. Drunkard former President Yeltsin was kept in power as an American puppet.

When President Putin came to power in 1999, 2/3rds of the country was in poverty and many cities were controlled by mafia factions. In 1999 President Putin created a level of stability and began to rebuild Russia. Today, 80% of the economy flows through Moscow. This means the most ambitious and greedy people move to Moscow, competing for scarce resources against hardened Muscovites who survived the purges of Stalin and the Moscow crime spree of the 1990s.

Today Moscow is a beautiful façade with a very dark underbelly. As a tourist you will love Moscow. People are friendly, the tourist police are helpful, and the city is much much safer than any American city. But try and stay and make a life in this breathtaking dystopia, you will inevitably see the deeper darker side.




Chapter 10: Soviet Mentality and Russian Leadership Today

e 

Dust pan why dont russians smile.png

"Suvok" is translated as "dustpan" (dustbin) in Russian.


In its simplest form, "Suvok" means to be a Soviet Citizen. The Soviet Union "Советский Союз" is "Советский Grajidin (?)" is what dedicated Soviets used to say, and a lot of old Russians took pride in that.

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "old mentality" Russians today say:

"Look what is going on, everyone is at everyone's throats, the Ukrainians, the Kazakhs, the Russians. In the former Soviet Union we were all together, we were all in one boat, maybe it wasn't all that rich, but we were all in one boat."

This is a classic line by the elderly.

Origin of the Russian word "dust bin"

There were two concepts that emerged from Советский Grajidin (Soviet Citizen).

One is the intelligentsia. This is the somewhat contentious book "Homo Sovieticus", written by dissident author Aleksandr Zinovyev. Homo Sovieticus is an effort to define a certain type of person. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Stalin said he was going to be the "engineer of human souls" to justify the deaths of millions. In large part he was successful. Stalin created a certain type of man.

Later on with a touch of bitter humor, Homo Sovieticus came to be known in a wider circle outside of the intelligentsia as "Subor" - which is a potter.

Subor was a group of people united with one goal, a collective mentality wrapped around a particular idea of a Soviet citizen. Troskti said "we will all be in the dustbin of history"

The most obvious and simple historical reason behind the Suvok mentality is this:

This suspicious mentality is understandable because most of the Soviet period everyone was against everyone. A Soviet citizen couldn't say anything in front of your children because they would blurt it out in school and that would be at best 25 years in the Gulag.
Dust pan leadership personalities today

Although currently not used by the general Russian population, "Suvok" can explain heartless Muscovites today, the majority of those who have economic (oligarchs) and political power.

These "Suvok" will never say:

  • I am sorry,
  • they will never admit they are wrong.
...They can't because it is a sign of weakness.
  • They don't smile. Because there is nothing to smile about.
  • There is Endless suspicion. To a Suvok there is the sense that nothing is what it seems. You have to keep digging until you find out where the person's real interest is.

This Moscow attitude has infected (permeated) international relations. This attitude is small part of the reason that the West is so hostile to Russia today.

*****

The average American reading the above description of Russia, probably feels a deep habitual pride about America's system of government. What social scientist call "American Civil Religion". In addition, they probably feel sorry for the Russian government, dominated by Russia's oligarchs....

American "Democracy" is a hoax, according to social scientists.
Social scientist have determined that the United States is not a democracy, but it is an oligarchy. As the BBC quoted an academic study:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.[196]

Chapter 11 - Conclusion

e


Much of the popular Russian literature and many Russian movies today end in a rather depressing tone, which is alien to Americans. In that spirit, we will end this guide on Russia with the famous George F. Kennan:


There is little possibility that enough Americans will ever accomplish...any general understanding of Russia.. It would imply a measure of intellectual humility and a readiness to reserve judgment about ourselves and our institutions, of which few of us would be capable.🙷

For the foreseeable future the American, individually and collectively, will continue to wander about in the maze of contradiction and the confusion which is Russia, with feelings not dissimilar to those of Alice in Wonderland, and with scarcely greater effectiveness. He will be alternately repelled or attracted by one astonishing phenomenon after another, until he finally succumbs to one or the other of the forces involved or until, dimly apprehending the depth of his confusion, he flees the field in horror.....

Distance, necessity, self-interest, and common-sense....may enable us [Americans], thank God, to continue that precarious and troubled but peaceful co-existence which we have managed to lead with the Russians up to this time. But if so, it will not be due to any understanding on our part.

-- Memorandum by the Counselor of Embassy in the Soviet Union (George F. Kennan), September 1944

Chapter 12 - The Values Americans Live By

THE VALUES AMERICANS LIVE BY

BY L. ROBERT KOHLS

_Shared by Olga Diamant & Russian values were summarized by Oleg Bogomolov._

American flag american values 21cowie-articleLarge.jpg

Introduction

Most Americans would have a difficult time telling you, specifically, what the values are which Americans live by. They have never given the matter any thought.

Even if Americans had considered this question, they would probably, in the end, decide not to answer in terms of a definitive list of values. The reason for this decision is itself one very American value -- their belief that every individual is so unique that the same list of values could never be applied to all, or even most, of their fellow citizens.

Although Americans may think of themselves as being more varied and unpredictable than they actually are, it is significant that they think they are. Americans tend to think they have been only slightly influenced by family, church or schools. In the end, each believes, “I personally chose which values I want to live my own life by.”

Despite this self-evaluation, a foreign anthropologist could observe Americans and produce a list of common values which would fit most Americans. The list of typically American values would stand in sharp contrast to the values commonly held by the people of many other countries.

We, the staff of the Washington International Center, have been introducing thousands of international visitors to life in the United States for more than a third of a century. This has caused us to try to look at Americans through the eyes of our visitors. We feel confident that the values listed in this booklet describe most (but not all) Americans.

Furthermore, we can say that if the foreign visitor really understood how deeply ingrained these 13 values are in Americans, he or she would then be able to understand 95% of American actions -- actions which might otherwise appear strange, confusing, or unbelievable when evaluated from the perspective of the foreigner’s own society and its values.

The different behaviors of a people or a culture make sense only when seen through the basic beliefs, assumptions and values of that particular group. When you encounter an action, or hear a statement in the United States which surprises you, try to see it as an expression of one or more of the values listed in this booklet. For example, when you ask Americans for directions to get to a particular address in their own city, they may explain, in great detail, how you can get there on your own, but may never even consider walking two city blocks with you to lead you to the place. Some foreign visitors have interpreted this sort of action as showing Americans ’“unfriendliness”. We would suggest, instead, that the self-help concept (value number 6 on our list), is so strong in Americans that they firmly believe that no adult would ever want, even temporarily, to be dependent on another. Also, their future orientation (value 8) makes Americans think it is better to prepare you to find other addresses on your own in the future.

Before proceeding to the list itself, we should also point out that Americans see all of these values as very positive ones. They are not aware, for example, that the people of many Third World countries view change (value 2) negative or threatening. In fact, all of these American values are judged by many of the world’s citizens as negative and undesirable. Therefore, it is not enough simply to familiarize yourself with these values. You must also, so far as possible, consider them without the negative or derogatory connotation which they might have for you, based on your own experience and cultural identity.

It is important to state emphatically that our purpose in providing you with this list of the most important American values is not to convert you, the foreign visitor, to our values. We couldn’t achieve that goal even if we wanted to, and we don’t want to. We simply want to help you understand the Americans with whom you will be relating -- from their own value system rather than from yours.[197]

THE VALUES AMERICANS LIVE BY

American Civil Religion is the theory developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in the article, "Civil Religion in America". According to Bellah, Americans embrace a common civil religion with certain fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals in parallel to, or independent of, their chosen religion.[198] This belief includes Manifest destiny, which was a cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that White American settlers were destined to expand across North America, which, since the 1898 Spanish–American War, expanded internationally and still continues presently in the minds of most Americans.

1. Personal Control over the Environment

Americans no longer believe in the power of Fate, and they have come to look at people who do as being backward, primitive, or hopelessly naive.To be called“fatalistic” is one of the worst criticisms one can receive in the American context; to an American, it means one is superstitious and lazy, unwilling to take any initiative in bringing about improvements.

In the United States people consider it normal and right that Man should control Nature, rather than the other way around. More Americans find it impossible to accept that there are some things which lie beyond the power of humans to achieve. And Americans have literally gone to the moon, because they refused to accept earthly limitations.

Americans seem to be challenged, even compelled, to do, by one means or another (and often at great cost) what seven-eighths of the world is certain cannot be done.

2. Change Seen as Natural and Positive

In the American mind, change is seen as an indisputably good condition. Change is strongly linked to development, improvement, progress, and growth.

Many older, more traditional cultures consider change as a disruptive, destructive force, to be avoided if at all possible. Instead of change, such societies value stability, continuity, tradition, and a rich and ancient heritage -- none of which are valued very much in the United States.

These first two values -- the belief that we can do anything and the belief that any change is good -- together with an American belief in the virtue of hard work and the belief that each individual has a responsibility to do the best he or she can do have helped Americans achieve some great accomplishments. So whether these beliefs are “true” is really irrelevant; what is important is that Americans have considered them to be true and have acted as if they were, thus, in effect, causing them to happen.

3. Time and Its Control

Time is, for the average American, of utmost importance. To the foreign visitor, Americans seem to be more concerned with getting things accomplished on time (according to a predetermined schedule) than they are with developing deep interpersonal relations. Schedules, for the American, are meant to be planned and then followed in the smallest detail.

It may seem to you that most Americans are completely controlled by the little machines they wear on their wrists, cutting their discussions off abruptly to make it to their next appointment on time.

Americans’ language is filled with references to time, giving a clear indication of how much it is valued. Time is something to be “on,” to be “kept,” “filled,” “saved,” “used,” “spent,” “wasted,” “lost,” “gained,” “planned,” “given,” “made the most of,” even “killed.”

The international visitor soon learns that it is considered very rude to be late -- even by 10 minutes -- for an appointment in the United States. (Whenever it is absolutely impossible to be on time, you should phone ahead and tell the person you have been unavoidably detained and will be a half hour -- or whatever -- late.) Time is so valued in America, because by considering time to be important one can clearly accomplish more than if one “wastes” time and does not keep busy.This philosophy has proven its worth. It has enabled Americans to be extremely productive, and productivity itself is highly valued in the United States. Many American proverbs stress the value in guarding our time, using it wisely, setting and working toward specific goals, and even expending our time and energy today so that the fruits of our labor may be enjoyed at a later time.(This latter concept is called “delayed gratification.”)

4. Equality and Fairness

Equality is, for Americans, one of their most cherished values. This concept is so important for Americans that they have even given it a religious basis. They say all people have been “created equal.” Most Americans believe that God views all humans alike without regard to intelligence, physical condition or economic status. In secular terms this belief is translated into the assertion that all people have an equal opportunity to succeed in life. Americans differ in opinion about how to make this ideal into a reality. Yet virtually all agree that equality is an important civic and social goal.

The equality concept often makes Americans seem strange to foreign visitors. Seven-eighths of the world feels quite differently. To them, rank and status and authority are seen as much more desirable considerations -- even if they personally happen to find themselves near the bottom of the social order. Class and authority seem to give people in those other societies a sense of security and certainty. People outside the United States consider it reassuring to know, from birth, who they are and where they fit into the complex system called “society.”

Many highly-placed foreign visitors to the United States are insulted by the way they are treated by service personnel (such as waiters in restaurants, clerks in stores, taxi drivers, etc.) Americans have an aversion to treating people of high position in a deferential manner, and conversely, often treat lower class people as if they were very important. Newcomers to the United States should realize that no insult or personal indignity is intended by this lack of deference to rank or position in society. A foreigner should be prepared to be considered “just like anybody else” while in the country.

5. Individualism and Privacy

The individualism that has been developed in the Western world since the Renaissance, beginning in the late 15th century, has taken its most exaggerated form in 20th century United States. Here, each individual is seen as completely and marvelously unique, that is, totally different from all other individuals and, therefore, particularly precious and wonderful.

Americans think they are more individualist in their thoughts and actions than, in fact, they are. They resist being thought of as representatives of a homogenous group, whatever the group. They may, and do, join groups—in fact many groups—but somehow believe they’re just a little different, just a little unique, just a little special, from other members of the same group. And they tend to leave groups as easily as they enter them.

Privacy, the ultimate result of individualism is perhaps even more difficult for the foreigner to comprehend. The word "privacy" does not even exist in many languages. If it does, it is likely to have a strongly negative connotation, suggesting loneliness or isolation from the group. In the United States, privacy is not only seen as a very positive condition, but it is also viewed as a requirement that all humans would find equally necessary, desirable and satisfying. It is not uncommon for Americans to say—and believe—such statements as "If I don’t have at least half an hour a day to myself, I will go stark raving mad."

Individualism, as it exists in the United States, does mean that you will find a much greater variety of opinions (along with the absolute freedom to express them anywhere and anytime) here. Yet, in spite of this wide range of personal opinion, almost all Americans will ultimately vote for one of the two major political parties. That is what was meant by the statement made earlier that Americans take pride in crediting themselves with claiming more individualism than, in fact, they really have.

6. Self-Help/Initiative

In the United States, a person can take credit only for what he or she has accomplished by himself or herself. Americans get no credit whatsoever for having been born into a rich family. (In the United States, that would be considered "an accident of birth.") Americans pride themselves in having been born poor and, through their own sacrifice and hard work, having climbed the difficult ladder of success to whatever level they have achieved—all by themselves. The American social system has, of course, made it possible for Americans to move, relatively easily, up the social ladder.

Take a look in an English-language dictionary at the composite words that have "self" as a prefix. In the average desk dictionary, there will be more than 100 such words, words like self-confidence, self-conscious, self-control, self-criticism, self-deception, self-defeating, self-denial, self-discipline, self-esteem, self-expression, self-importance, self-improvement, self-interest, self-reliance, self-respect, self-restraint, self-sacrifice—the list goes on and on. The equivalent of these words cannot be found in most other languages. The list is perhaps the best indication of how seriously Americans take doing things for one’s self. The "self-made man or women" is still very much the ideal in 20th-century America.

7. Competition and Free Enterprise

Americans believe that competition brings out the best in any individual. They assert that it challenges or forces each person to produce the very best that is humanly possible. Consequently, the foreign visitor will see competition being fostered in the American home and in the American classroom, even on the youngest age level. Very young children, for instance, are encouraged to answer questions for which their classmates do not know the answer.

You may find the competitive value disagreeable, especially if you come from a society that promotes cooperation rather than competition. But many U.S. Peace Corps volunteers teaching in Third World countries found the lack of competitiveness in a classroom situation equally distressing. They soon learned that what they thought to be one of the universal human characteristics represented only a peculiarly American (or Western) value.

Americans, valuing competition, have devised an economic system to go with it—free enterprise. Americans feel strongly that a highly competitive economy will bring out the best in its people and, ultimately, that the society that fosters competition will progress most rapidly. If you look for it, you will see evidence in all areas—even in fields as diverse as medicine, the arts, education, and sports—that free enterprise is the approach most often preferred in America.

8. Future Orientation

Valuing the future and the improvements Americans are sure the future will bring means that they devalue that past and are, to a large extent, unconscious of the present. Even a happy present goes largely unnoticed because, happy as it may be, Americans have traditionally been hopeful that the future would bring even greater happiness. Almost all energy is directed toward realizing that better future. At best, the present condition is seen as preparatory to a latter and greater event, which will eventually culminate in something even more worthwhile.

Since Americans have been taught (in value 1) to believe that Man, and not Fate, can and should be the one who controls the environment, this has made them very good at planning and executing short-term projects. This ability, in turn, has caused Americans to be invited to all corners of the earth to plan and achieve the miracles that their goal-setting can produce.

If you come from a culture such as those in the traditional Moslem world, where talking about or actively planning the future is felt to be a futile, even sinful, activity, you will have not only philosophical problems with this very American characteristic but religious objections as well. Yet it is something you will have to learn to live with, for all around you Americans will be looking toward the future and what it will bring.

9. Action/Work Orientation

"Don’t just stand there," goes a typical bit of American advice, "do something!" This expression is normally used in a crisis situation, yet, in a sense, it describes most American’s entire waking life, where action—any action—is seen to be superior to inaction.

Americans routinely plan and schedule an extremely active day. Any relaxation must be limited in time, pre-planned, and aimed at "recreating" their ability to work harder and more productively once the recreation is over. Americans believe leisure activities should assume a relatively small portion of one’s total life. People think that it is "sinful" to "waste one’s time," "to sit around doing nothing," or just to "daydream."

Such a "no nonsense" attitude toward life has created many people who have come to be known as "workaholics," or people who are addicted to their work, who think constantly about their jobs and who are frustrated if they are kept away from them, even during their evening hours and weekends.

The workaholic syndrome, in turn, causes Americans to identify themselves wholly with their professions. The first question one American will ask another American when meeting for the first time is related to his or her work: "Where do you work?," or "Who (what company) are you with?"

And when such a person finally goes on vacation, even the vacation will be carefully planned, very busy and active.

America may be one of the few countries in the world where it seems reasonable to speak about the "dignity of human labor," meaning by that, hard, physical labor. In America, even corporation presidents will engage in physical labor from time to time and gain, rather than lose, respect from others for such action.

10. Informality

If you come from a more formal society, you will likely find Americans to be extremely informal, and will probably feel that they are even disrespectful of those in authority. Americans are one of the most informal and casual people in the world, even when compared to their near relative—the Western European.

As one example of this informality, American bosses often urge their employees to call them by their first names and even feel uncomfortable if they are called by the title "Mr." or "Mrs."


Dress is another area where American informality will be most noticeable, perhaps even shocking. One can go to a symphony performance, for example, in any large American city nowadays and find some people in the audience dressed in blue jeans and tieless, short-sleeved shirts.

Informality is also apparent in American’s greetings. The more formal "How are you?" has largely been replaced with an informal "Hi." This is as likely to be used to one’s superior as to one’s best friend.

If you are a highly placed official in your own country, you will probably, at first, find such informality to be very unsettling. American, on the other hand, would consider such informality as a compliment! Certainly it is not intended as an insult and should not be taken as such.

11. Directness/Openness/Honesty

Many other countries have developed subtle, sometimes highly ritualistic, ways of informing other people of unpleasant information. Americans, however, have always preferred the first approach. They are likely to be completely honest in delivering their negative evaluations. If you come from a society that uses the indirect manner of conveying bad news or uncomplimentary evaluations, you will be shocked at Americans’ bluntness.

If you come from a country where saving face is important, be assured that Americans are not trying to make you lose face with their directness. It is important to realize that an American would not, in such case, lose face. The burden of adjustment, in all cases while you are in this country, will be on you. There is no way to soften the blow of such directness and openness if you are not used to it except to tell you that the rules have changed while you are here. Indeed, Americans are trying to urge their fellow countrymen to become even more open and direct. The large number of "assertiveness" training courses that appeared in the United States in the late 1970s reflects such a commitment.

Americans consider anything other than the most direct and open approach to be dishonest and insincere and will quickly lose confidence in and distrust anyone who hints at what is intended rather than saying it outright. Anyone who, in the United States, chooses to use an intermediary to deliver that message will also be considered manipulative and untrustworthy.

12. Practicality/Efficiency

Americans have a reputation of being an extremely realistic, practical and efficient people. The practical consideration is likely to be given highest priority in making any important decision in the United States. Americans pride themselves in not being very philosophically or theoretically oriented. If Americans would even admit to having a philosophy, it would probably be that of pragmatism.

Will it make any money? Will it "pay its own way?" What can I gain from this activity? These are the kinds of questions that Americans are likely to ask in their practical pursuit, not such questions as: Is it aesthetically pleasing? Will it be enjoyable?, or Will it advance the cause of knowledge?

This practical, pragmatic orientation has caused Americans to contribute more inventions to the world than any other country in human history. The love of "practicality" has also caused Americans to view some professions more favorably than others. Management and economics, for example, are much more popular in the United States than philosophy or anthropology, law and medicine more valued than the arts.

Another way in which this favoring of the practical makes itself felt in the United States, is a belittling of "emotional" and "subjective" evaluations in favor of "rational" and "objective" assessments. Americans try to avoid being too sentimental in making their decisions. They judge every situation "on its merits." The popular American "trial-and-error" approach to problem solving also reflects the practical. The approach suggests listing several possible solutions to any given problem, then trying them out, one-by-one, to see which is most effective.

13. Materialism/Acquisitiveness

Foreigners generally consider Americans much more materialistic than Americans are likely to consider themselves. Americans would like to think that their material objects are just the natural benefits that always result from hard work and serious intent—a reward, they think, that all people could enjoy were they as industrious and hard-working as Americans.

But by any standard, Americans are materialistic. This means that they value and collect more material objects than most people would ever dream of owning. It also means they give higher priority to obtaining, maintaining and protecting their material objects than they do in developing and enjoying interpersonal relationships.

The modern American typically owns:

1. one or more color television sets,

2. an electric hair dryer,

3. an electronic calculator,

4. a tape recorder and a record player,

5. a clothes-washer and dryer,

6. a vacuum cleaner,

7. a powered lawn mower (for cutting grass),

8. a refrigerator, a stove, and a dishwasher,

9. one or more automobiles,

10. and a telephone.

11. Many also own a personal computer.

Since Americans value newness and innovation, they sell or throw away their possessions frequently and replace them with newer ones. A car may be kept for only two or three years, a house for five or six before trading it in for another one.

Summary

Now that we have discussed each of these 13 values separately, if all too briefly, let us look at them in list form (on the left) and then consider them paired with the counterpart values from a more traditional country (on the right):


U.S. Values Some Other Country’s Values
1 Personal Control over the Environment Fate
2 Change Tradition
3 Time & Its Control Human Interaction
4 Equality Hierarchy/Rank/Status
5 Individualism/Privacy Group’s Welfare
6 Self-Help Birthright Inheritance
7 Competition Cooperation
8 Future Orientation Past Orientation
9 Action/Work Orientation "Being" Orientation
10 Informality Formality
11 Directness / Openness / Honesty Indirectness/Ritual/"Face"
12 Practicality/Efficiency Idealism
12 Materialism/Acquisitiveness Spiritualism/Detachment

Which list more nearly represents the values of your native country?

Application

Before leaving this discussion of the values Americans live by, consider how knowledge of these values explains many things about Americans.

One can, for example, see America’s impressive record of scientific and technological achievement as a natural result of these 13 values.

First of all, it was necessary to believe:

(1) these things could be achieved, that Man does not have to simply sit and wait for Fate to bestow them or not to bestow them, and that Man does have control over his own environment, if he is willing to take it. Other values that have contributed to this record of achievement include

(2) an expectation of positive results to come from change (and the acceptance of an ever-faster rate of change as "normal");

(3) the necessity to schedule and plan ones’ time;

(6) the self-help concept;

(7) competition;

(8) future orientation;

(9) action work orientation;

(12) practicality; and

(13) materialism.

You can do the same sort of exercise as you consider other aspects of American society and analyze them to see which of the 13 values described here apply. By using this approach you will soon begin to understand Americans and their actions. And as you come to understand them, they will seem less "strange" than they did at first.

PDF

<pdf>File:THE VALUES AMERICANS LIVE BY L. Robert Kohls AmericanValues.pdf</pdf>

Further Reading and Links

e 


Russian English Vocabulary

Chapter one

- Stark differences – жесткие разграничения …stark discipline…stark realities of life

- Enlightenment – просвещение

- Blunt American way of speaking – грубоватый, резкий, тупой…blunt angle – тупой угол, scissors with blunt ends – ножницы с тупыми

- Callous – грубый, бессердечный, нечувственный, мозолистый, огрубевший (о коже)

- концами, a blunt answer – прямой ответ, the blunt facts – упрямые фактб rude and blunt people – грубые и резкие люди

- A trait Russians share with Americans – характерная черта, особенность. The chief traits of a person’s character – главные черты характера

- Life is compartmentalized – жизнь делится на отсеки/ячейки

- Impenetrable – непробиваемый. Impenetrable armor. Cloth impenetrable to water - не пропускающая воду.

- Impenetrable jungle – непроходимые джунгли.

- Russians are difficult to penetrate at first – просочиться, прорываться, постигать-понимать.

- To penetrate into secrets of nature – постигать тайны природы.

- American smile is disingenuous – неискренняя

- A counterpart – двойник (a double, a twin). She is a counterpart of her twin sister.

- To quip – саркастически подмечать

- Alacrity – готовность. He accepted an invitation with alacrity.

- Willingness- готовность

- Scowl (аu) – to look at somebody with a scowl – грозно посмотреть на кого-то, to scowl at somebody – грозно смотреть на кого-то

- Sinister – дурной, мрачный, темный. Sinister face, sinister influence, intentions

- Agitrop – пропаганда, агитация

Appendices

#Appendices

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9

Appendix 1 - LONDONGRAD FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH THE INSIDE STORY OF THE OLIGARCHS

e

#Appendices

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9


This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley

‘There are no barriers to a rich man’ - Russian proverb

CHAPTER 1

The Man Who Knew Too Much

‘I have dug myself into a hole and I am in too deep. I am not sure that I can dig myself out’ - STEPHEN CURTIS, January 2004

6.56 P.M., WEDNESDAY, 3 MARCH 2004. A brand-new white six-seater £.5-million Agusta A109E helicopter lands under an overcast sky at Battersea heliport in south-west London. Waiting impatiently on the tarmac and clutching his two unregistered mobile phones is a broad-shouldered 45-year-old British lawyer named Stephen Curtis. He is not in the best of moods. Three minutes earlier he had called Nigel Brown, Managing Director of ISC Global Ltd, which provided security for him, regarding disputed invoices sent to a Russian client. ‘This is causing problems!’ he shouted and then paused. ‘Look, I have to go now. The helicopter is here.’

Curtis climbs aboard the helicopter and maneuvers his bulky frame into the passenger cabin’s left rear seat. A member of the ground staff places his three pieces of hand luggage on the seat in front of him and the pilot is given departure clearance. At 6.59 p.m. the chopper lifts off into the gloomy London sky. It is cold and misty with broken cloud at 3,800 feet, but conditions are reasonable for flying with visibility of 7 kilometers.

The lawyer turns off his mobile phones and sits back. After a day of endless and stressful phone calls from his £4 million luxury penthouse apartment at Waterside Point in nearby Battersea, he is looking forward to a relaxing evening at home at Pennsylvania Castle, his eighteenth- century retreat on the island of Portland off the Dorset coast. By the time the helicopter approaches Bournemouth Airport, after a flight of less than one hour, it is raining lightly and the runway is obscured by cloud. The Agusta is cleared to land and descends via Stoney Cross to the north- east where, despite the gloom, the lights of the cars on the A27 are now visible in the early evening darkness. The pilot, Captain Max Radford, an experienced 34-year-old local man who regularly flies Curtis to and from London, radios air traffic control for permission to land on runway twenty-six. ‘Echo Romeo,’ replies Kirsty Holtan, the air traffic controller. ‘Just check that you are visual with the field.’ ‘Er, negative. Not this time. Echo Romeo.’ The air traffic controller can only see the helicopter on her remote radar monitor. Concerned, she increases the runway lighting to maximum intensity. This has the required effect and a mile from the airport the pilot radios: ‘Just becoming visual this time.’ ‘Golf Echo Romeo. Do you require radar?’ asks Holtan. ‘Yes, yes,’ replies Radford, his voice now strained; he repeats the word no less than eleven times in quick succession. Suddenly, the chopper descends sharply to the left. It then swings around almost out of control. Within seconds it has fallen 400 feet. ‘Golf Echo Romeo. Is everything O.K.?’ asks a concerned Holtan. ‘Negative, negative,’ replies Radford.

They are just 1.5 kilometres east of the threshold of runway twenty-six when the height readout is lost on the radar. For the next fifty-six seconds the pilot confirms that he has power but then suddenly, frantically, radios: ‘We have a problem, we have a problem.’ As the chopper loses power, at 7.41 p.m. Radford shouts down the open mike: ‘O.K., I need a climb, I need a climb.’ Radford hears a low horn, warning that the speed of the main rotor blades has dropped. He keeps his finger on the radio button and can be heard struggling to turn out of a dive, but he has lost control. ‘No. No!’ he shouts in a panic. They are his last words. The helicopter, now in free fall, nose dives into a field at high speed and explodes on impact, sending a fireball 30 feet into the air. The aircraft is engulfed in flames, with the debris of the wreckage strewn across a quarter of a mile. ‘I heard a massive bang and rushed up to the window and just saw this big firewall in front of me,’ recalled Sarah Price, who lives beneath the flight path. ‘The whole field appeared to be on fire. It was horrific.’ Some thirty-five firefighters rush to the scene, but the two men aboard – Stephen Curtis and Max Radford – die instantly. Later that night their charred bodies are taken to the mortuary at Boscombe, Dorset, where an autopsy is performed the following day. Their corpses are so badly burnt that they can only be identified using DNA samples taken by Wing Commander Maidment at the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine at Henlow in Bedfordshire.


The news of Curtis’s dramatic death was not only deeply traumatic to his wife and daughter, it also sent shock waves through the sinister world of the Russian oligarchs, the Kremlin, and a group of bankers and accountants working in the murky offshore world where billions of pounds are

regularly moved and hidden across multiple continents. That was not all. Alarm bells were also ringing in the offices of Britain’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, for Stephen Curtis was no ordinary lawyer. Since the 1990s he had been the covert custodian of some of the vast personal fortunes made from the controversial privatization of the country’s giant state enterprises. Two of his billionaire clients – Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky – had entrusted Curtis to protect and firewall their wealth from scrutiny by the Russian authorities. The Russians liked and trusted the highly intelligent, gregarious Curtis. Generous, a heavy drinker, loyal, amusing, and extravagant, he slipped naturally into their world. Also impatient, ruthless, and aggressive when required, he restructured their companies, moved their funds between a bewildering series of bank accounts lodged in obscure island tax havens, established complex trusts, and set up an elaborate offshore ownership of their assets. On their arrival in London he found them properties, introduced them to the most powerful bankers, entertained them late into the night, and recommended private schools for their children and even Savile Row tailors for their suits. By early 2004, Curtis had not only introduced his wealthy new Russian clients to many aspects of British life, but he was also the guardian of many of their secrets. He was the only person who could identify and unravel the opaque ownership of their assets – property, yachts, art, cars, jewellery, and private jets as well as their bank accounts, shareholdings, companies, and trusts. ‘Stephen knew everything because he set up their whole infrastructure,’ said a close friend. He salted away billions of pounds in an intricate, sophisticated financial maze, which the Russian government later tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to unravel.

Operating from his office in a narrow, four-storey Mayfair house at 94 Park Lane, Curtis found that working for oligarchs was also lucrative. The product of a relatively modest upbringing himself, Curtis amassed a sizeable personal fortune from his new clients, enough to enable him to acquire his own helicopter, a private aircraft, and a penthouse apartment in London, as well as Pennsylvania Castle. He donated substantial sums to charity, entertained his friends at the castle, and hosted expensive holidays in the Caribbean. But Stephen Curtis was a lawyer who knew too much. Although he loved flirting with risk and thrived on the pressure and excitement of working with the Russians, he also became increasingly nervous about his own vulnerability and the safety of his family. At the time of his death he was caught in the middle of an epic power struggle, one of the highest-stakes contests between state and business ascendancy in the world – between the most powerful man in Russia, President Vladimir Putin, and its wealthiest businessman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. By October 2003, Curtis had been working for Khodorkovsky for six years when his billionaire client was arrested at gunpoint in central Siberia for alleged massive tax evasion and fraud. A month later the Mayfair lawyer found himself further embroiled in the conflict when he was appointed chairman of the Gibraltar-based Menatep, the bank that controlled Yukos, Khodorkovsky’s $15 billion oil company. Russian newspapers suddenly began referring to a ‘mystery man’ in Gibraltar who controlled Russia’s second-biggest oil producer. Billions of pounds were at stake, the political survival of Putin was in the balance, and Curtis was billed to play a pivotal role in the forthcoming court drama. In March 2004 the trial of Khodorkovsky was imminent and the pressure on Curtis was intense. On the morning after his death on 3 March, the offices of two Swiss

companies connected to Yukos were raided by Swiss police at the request of the Russian prosecutors. Documents were seized, suspects were interviewed in Geneva, Zurich, and Freiberg, and Swiss bank accounts containing $5 billion were frozen. Moreover, just a few weeks earlier Curtis had taken another critical and high-risk decision: to cooperate covertly with British police officials. Until only recently a back-room lawyer (secretive, low profile, discreet), he found himself suddenly thrust into the spotlight as chairman of a highly controversial Russian company. Sensitive and highly strung at the best of times, he felt increasingly exposed in this new role. Sooner or later he feared the Russian authorities would come knocking on his door asking questions about his own role in alleged tax avoidance and the filtering of cash out of the country. As he was legally obliged, Curtis had been scrupulous in reporting ‘suspicious transactions’, or the merest hint of criminal activity, to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) at Scotland Yard, which investigates money laundering and organized crime. In May 2003, for example, he had filed a suspicious transaction report about one of his Russian clients. Now he needed protection for another reason: he feared that he might become the target of commercial enemies – rival oil companies and minority investors of Yukos who claimed that they were being defrauded. He also knew that contract killings in Russia were commonplace. ‘I have dug myself into a hole and I am in too deep,’ he told a colleague. ‘I am not sure that I can dig myself out.’ In the last few weeks of his life Curtis was under constant surveillance by commercial and Russian state investigators and was considering moving offices. His telephones were tapped and in early 2004 his security consultants discovered a small magnet used to secure a listening device at his country home in Dorset. According to

Eric Jenkins, an uncle who often visited him in Gibraltar, where his nephew lived for most of the year, Curtis received numerous anonymous threats and intimidating phone calls. He took them seriously enough to hire a bodyguard. ‘There certainly were death threats against Stephen,’ confirmed Nigel Brown, whose company also provided security for Curtis’s clients Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky. ‘The timing of his death was very suspicious and there were people out there who had a motive to kill him. He just knew too much.’ At first Curtis dismissed the threats, but when one phone call mentioned his wife and 13-year-old daughter, he decided to act. In mid-February 2004, deeply worried, he approached the Foreign Office and NCIS and offered full but covert cooperation. He would provide information about Russian commercial activities in Britain and the oligarchs’ assets, in return for protection for himself and his family. Up to that point his relationship with NCIS had been a limited, almost standard form of cooperation, a role many solicitors play. For NCIS Curtis was a potentially prized informant with insider knowledge of controversial Russian business activity in London. He was immediately assigned a controller, but after only two meetings the NCIS officer was transferred to another operation. Curtis asked to be assigned another controller but before this was done, he was dead. A week before the fatal crash Curtis had told a close friend at his apartment at Waterside Point, ‘If anything happens to me in the next few weeks, it will not be an accident.’ He had laughed nervously but he was not joking. He had played the messages left on his mobile phone to colleagues at his law firm. ‘Curtis, where are you?’ asked a voice with a Russian accent. ‘We are here. We are behind you. We follow you.’ At the inquest his uncle, Eric Jenkins, testified that his nephew had repeated the same words of warning to him.

The frequent threats convinced some of Curtis’s colleagues and relations that he was murdered. ‘Definitely’, one former employee of his law firm claimed. ‘It was done by remote control. They knew about his flight plans in advance because they were tapping his phones.’ Dennis Radford, the father of the pilot, told the subsequent inquest that he did not think that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) had properly investigated the possibility of foul play. ‘The lack of security at Bournemouth Airport is such that, had anybody wished to sabotage the aircraft, they would have unchallenged and unrestricted access for that purpose,’ he said. Witnesses say that they heard an unexplained and incredibly loud bang just before the crash. ‘I heard a kind of thump noise and the dog started barking, so I came outside and I heard another couple of bangs. It made a particularly harsh noise, as if the engine was malfunctioning,’ Jack Malt, who lives near the crash site, testified at the inquest. ‘There was a period of silence in the moments before the explosion so I guess the engines must have cut out,’ said Sarah Price, who lives 300 yards from the site of the crash. She also heard a massive bang just before the explosion. And Gavin Foxwell, another local resident, told the inquest that the helicopter made ‘a stuttering, unusual sound, as if it was struggling to stay aloft’. The death of Stephen Curtis remains a mystery to this day. However, no credible evidence of sabotage or murder has ever been discovered. The investigation by the AAIB concluded: The possibilities of unauthorised interference were considered. An improvised explosive device could have been positioned in the cabin or the baggage hold. All cabin doors at the undamaged skin of the baggage door were, however, recovered from the accident site. No

evidence of damage other than consistent with ground impact was found on any of them. In particular no high velocity particle impacts were noted in any of these door components. At the inquest Paul Hannant, the Senior Inspector of the AAIB, said, ‘If you are going to bring an aircraft like this down, you have either got to destroy the main rotor system or interfere with the main gearbox. The only other real way is to interfere with the controls. If you disconnect the controls, that would be immediately apparent to the pilot… Any attempt to use a corrosive device or a remote control device would also have been apparent to Captain Radford.’ Ultimately, deteriorating weather conditions and pilot inexperience were blamed for the crash. According to the AAIB inspector, ‘The most likely cause of the accident was that Captain Radford became disorientated during the final stages of the approach to Bournemouth Airport.’ Yet, while the weather on the fateful night of 3 March 2004 was poor – light drizzle, broken cloud, and overcast sky – flying conditions were not especially hazardous. As his father Dennis later claimed, ‘Max had flown many, many times in considerably worse conditions than that. And if he became disorientated, why was he on the radio describing the runway and talking to the control tower twenty-nine seconds before the crash?’ At the inquest assessments of Radford’s experience and competence were mixed. He had been a pilot since 1993, had recorded 3,500 flying hours, and had been flying Curtis regularly. During his operational training for flying the new, upgraded Agusta A109E, Radford consulted two flight instructors. ‘I felt his confidence exceeded his competence,’ testified Alan Davis, but Richard Poppy concluded that Radford was ‘competent’ to fly the Agusta A109E. While the AAIB found that he had not used instrument flying since 2000, they accepted that he was very familiar with

the route and had ‘already achieved seventy-eight hours’ over the previous two months. The inquest jury at Bournemouth Town Hall took just over one hour to reach a verdict of ‘accidental death’. Despite the verdict, however, some close relations remain sceptical to this day. They point out that Radford was a responsible, cautious pilot who had refused to fly Curtis in the past when the weather was poor, notably for a New Year’s Eve party at Pennsylvania Castle. Curtis’s former security advisers remain suspicious, too. Nigel Brown is adamant that it was an assassination and is highly critical of the police. ‘What I cannot understand is why there has never been a proper murder investigation’, he has said. ‘There was a just cause of suspicion because Stephen had received death threats, there was a motive because of what he knew, and there were suspicious circumstances. But the police did not interview me or my colleagues or Stephen’s clients or his employees. Usually, the police would interview the last person to speak to him and I was that person. We may not know for sure what happened to Stephen but I think there could have been a more thorough inquiry.’ While Curtis’s wife Sarah has never believed that her husband was murdered, she has reflected on why it was a Russian businessman who first informed her about the death of her husband. ‘I am sorry that Stephen is dead,’ he told her. The police did not telephone until an hour later to say that ‘there has been an accident’. It is a measure of the accuracy of the premonitions Curtis had about a premature death that he left detailed instructions for his funeral. This was partly influenced by his superstitious, almost fatalistic nature. He believed in ghosts and in the afterlife and always thought that he would die young. ‘I will never make old bones’, he once said, well before he met the Russians.

But Curtis had also been diagnosed with leukemia and a rare blood disease. This manifested itself in bizarre ways. During a sailing trip he once hit his head heavily on the boom of the boat and a friend was stunned to see his bloody flesh wound apparently heal before his very eyes. Curtis needed regular blood transfusions to stabilize him and took Warfarin to thin his blood and prevent clotting. He also wore surgical stockings to inhibit deep-vein thrombosis. After two operations at a private clinic, he was told that he could no longer travel by airplane because this would worsen his condition. But he could fly by helicopter, which was why, just three months before his death, he upgraded to the Agusta A109E. Typical of his flamboyant and irreverent personality, he requested that his funeral should not be a mournful event but a ‘celebration of his life’ and that mourners were ‘not obliged to wear traditional black’. On Wednesday, 7 April 2004 some 350 relations, friends, and business associates gathered inside All Saints Church in Easton on the Isle of Portland near the Curtis family home at Pennsylvania Castle. Such was the lawyer’s popularity that a further 100 stood outside and loudspeakers were installed to broadcast the proceedings. At 1.50 p.m. a glass carriage bearing Curtis’s coffin arrived, drawn by two blackplumed horses and adorned with flowers that spelt the word ‘Daddy’. The carriage was followed by a Rolls-Royce Phantom, carrying his widow Sarah and his daughter Louise, and two Bentleys and a Ferrari, ferrying other relations and close friends. Preceded by a Scottish piper who played the ‘Skye Boat Song’, the coffin was carried by six bearers into the church, followed by a tearful Sarah and Louise, both wearing pink coats and dresses. As they slowly walked down the aisle, Sarah noticed the intense, brooding figure of Boris Berezovsky, dressed in black, in the congregation with his girlfriend, two bodyguards, and a Russian entourage. Most of Curtis’s clients attended. Notable absentees were

representatives of his clients IKEA, which did not want to be associated with his controversial Russian clients, as well as most Yukos executives. Indeed, the only Yukos executive to attend was Vasily Alexanyan, a close friend of Curtis and the oil company’s former legal director. Alexanyan was furious that his colleagues had boycotted the funeral despite the risky operations Curtis had conducted for their company. At 2.00 p.m. the service began with traditional hymns, followed by a piano solo by Louise. It was evident that Curtis was well loved. One speaker described him as epitomizing a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If, which reads: ‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue/or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch’. His closest friend, Rod Davidson, told the congregation, ‘In business he was in a league of his own. He would start off with an earthquake, build it up to a crescendo and [was] always setting his sights beyond the stars… He was the most generous of men and I think of him now at the pearly gates giving St Peter a red Ferrari and providing Playstations for the cherubs.’ But there was also palpable tension in the air because of the conspicuous and, to some, menacing presence of the Russian contingent, who attracted frequent nervous glances. When Berezovsky and his colleagues left their seats at the end of the service, the remainder of the congregation moved out of the way to let them pass first. The local mourners and Sarah’s friends were mostly conventional, middle-class English people who lived quiet, rural lives in the pristine Dorset village of Easton. They were hardly used to the hard Russian faces or the battery of television cameras, photographers, and police that greeted them as they left the church that bright spring afternoon. To the local villagers it must have looked like the cast of The Godfather or The Sopranos had arrived.

Sarah was devastated by her husband’s death, but she was also confused by and concerned about the media attention. ‘Why are there so many cameras here?’ she asked outside the church. ‘I don’t understand.’ A former secretary, Sarah’s life was family, music, friends, the castle, and the English countryside. Stephen had told her nothing about his secret life in London, Gibraltar, and Russia. A lover of James Bond films, Curtis revelled in this covert existence. He compartmentalized his life, mainly to protect Sarah. ‘I don’t want to know,’ she once remarked and would have recoiled from the dark, cut-throat world of the Russian super-rich. Sarah recognized none of the Russian mourners.‘Who’s this? Who’s that?’ she asked one of Stephen’s colleagues in a state of increasing bewilderment. ‘What on earth was my husband doing with those Russians?’ she asked another friend. Not wanting to worry her, they declined to answer. After the service the procession escorting Curtis’s body was accompanied by the song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, with Sarah’s soprano voice ringing out the final words as she followed her husband’s coffin. The burial took place in the gardens of Pennsylvania Castle, attended only by family and close friends. Curtis was laid to rest to the strains of the bagpipe melody ‘Highland Cathedral’. As the guests mingled in the marquee after the burial the atmosphere was tense and apprehensive. Many former clients were anxious to know the identities of the other guests and whom they worked for. ‘It was a weird situation for a wake,’ said a former employee of Curtis’s law firm. ‘People were looking over their shoulders to see who was talking to who. The strange thing was that I knew some of our clients knew each other, but they would not acknowledge each other at the funeral in case they were photographed or associated with other clients. It was very bizarre, almost comical.’ At 9.45 p.m. a spectacular fireworks display erupted over the English Channel.


The funeral of Stephen Langford Curtis brought together an uneasy, unsettling gathering of two cultures: the conventional, light-hearted, understated English middle class and the dark, intense, stern-faced, focused Russian business elite. Little more than a decade earlier the Russian presence in Britain had been barely noticeable. It would have been rare to hear a Russian accent in a Knightsbridge boutique, a Mayfair restaurant, or even on the London underground, let alone at the funeral of a mysterious, even obscure, British lawyer. There was no sign then of what was to come: the arrival in Britain of a wave of middle-class, affluent Russians. The influx that followed the collapse of communism in 1991 started slowly but by the end of that decade the Russian desire to move to London had reached what one insider has described as ‘fever pitch’. Although there are no official figures for the size of the London-based Russian and former-Soviet community, it is widely accepted that by 2008 it numbered well in excess of 300,000. This was large enough to spawn four Russian- language newspapers, the glossy magazine New Style, a plethora of Russian networking clubs and internet sites, and a host of Russian social events. Although by then the Russian community was diverse, most of its members were ordinary professionals who had chosen to live, work, and settle in London. Many had British husbands or wives. It is this group, rather than the oligarchs, who jokingly referred to London as ‘Moscow-on- Thames’. Some worked for international organizations or Russian companies based in London while others had set up their own businesses. Some found jobs as estate agents, in the City, and in retail to target or cater for Russian clients. They mostly came to Britain to escape the crime, political uncertainty, and economic turbulence and were a

very select middle-class group compared with the wider Russian population. Some still commuted back and forth from Moscow, by commercial rather than by private jet. Flight SU247 from Moscow touched down at Heathrow on Friday evenings, carrying what its Aeroflot crew called ‘voskresnuy muzh’, which translates as ‘Sunday husbands’. These were transcontinental commuters, a mix of oil executives, bankers, and importers and exporters who had homes and families in London but who worked in Moscow. For them it was a weekly ritual: Friday and Sunday nights on a four- hour flight, weekends in London, and the week in their Moscow office. Dominating this steady stream of migrants was a tiny but much more high-profile group – the oligarchs, a tiny cadre of privileged insiders who had acquired Russia’s state-owned natural resources and, by the end of the 1990s, had come from nowhere to join the ranks of the world’s super-rich. While some of Russia’s nouveaux riches – billionaires and multi-million-aires – have remained in Russia, most have moved or built a base abroad, shifting their mountain of assets with them. While a few have selected Israel, New York, or Switzerland, most have chosen London. From the millennium, this group scattered its new-found wealth like confetti, helping to transform London into the world’s leading playground of the super- rich, contributing to runaway property prices, soaring profits for luxury goods retailers, and bringing displays of opulence not seen since the 1920s. Some of the Russian ultra-rich were, through fear of arrest, driven out of Russia and took up residence in London. Others became international super-nomads, living partly in London, partly in Russia, while travelling the globe in their private jets and luxury yachts. Many kept a discreet foot in both camps. Along with the next tier of the Russian rich, the oligarchs were lured by London’s

accommodating tax laws, compliant banking system, relaxed lifestyle, unobtrusive City regulations, elite schools, and independent judicial system.


This book tells the story of four Russian oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky, the intense, extrovert fugitive who has plotted against Putin’s Russia from his gilded London base; Roman Abramovich, the wily, reserved owner of Chelsea Football Club whose multi-billion-pound oil fortune came from outmanoeuvring his former friend and now bitter enemy Berezovsky; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the intellectual who naively believed that he was more powerful than the state and ended up in a Siberian jail; and Oleg Deripaska, the ruthless young pretender and aluminium magnate who rose to become the richest of all of them, helped along by his cosy relationship with Vladimir Putin. During the course of the 1990s these four men built huge fortunes at electric speed by exploiting the flawed post-Soviet scramble to build a Western-style market economy. Though it was Russia itself that was the source of their personal wealth, it was London that provided the backdrop to the next phase in their meteoric climb up the global rich lists. For Abramovich, London has helped to satisfy his apparently insatiable appetite for conspicuous consumption. For Deripaska, banned from entering the United States, the capital has been a crucial base for building his diverse and colossal global business empire. Before his incarceration, Khodorkovsky used London to woo the British political and business establishment in his international campaign to transform his tarnished global reputation. For Berezovsky, who has been fighting extradition since 2001, London has provided a refuge from

Russian prosecutors who have accused him of alleged tax evasion and fraud, charges that he has strenuously denied. In contrast to the corrupt, politicized judiciary in Russia, London has also offered legal sanctuary and a fair due process of law. While indicted Russian businessmen have been arrested and detained in Spain, France, Italy, and the United States, Britain has refused to accept any of the dozens of extradition attempts by the Russian authorities, souring diplomatic relations in the process. ‘I think they [Russians] feel that this is a country of law,’ said Berezovsky. ‘They feel that they are well protected here.’[1] London has long attracted the extravagantly rich, but the post-millennium wave of foreign wealth was unprecedented. In the decade up to 2008, trillions of pounds of foreign capital settled in the UK. For those who make money out of money, it was a golden decade for tax lawyers, accountants, and bankers. ‘The British have found a new vocation,’ said William Cash, the well-connected publisher who founded Spear’s Wealth Management Survey, the glossy quarterly that chronicles the activities of the super-rich. ‘That is being the financial bag-carriers of the world. Britain’s ruling classes used to own the wealth. Now they’ve become the fee-earning servants, servicing the global financial elite.’[2] By 2007, before the devastating impact of the global economic meltdown of the following year, London had displaced New York as the financial capital of the world. It did so by providing an unrivalled tax avoidance industry and a much lighter regulatory touch. After 9/11 and a series of highprofile financial scandals on Wall Street, the US Government passed a new law – the Sarbanes-Oxley Act – which imposed much tougher corporate requirements on the disclosure of information, accountancy procedures, and the process of listing on the New York Stock Exchange. This made New York less attractive to the world’s business

rich and London seized its chance. The United States also introduced much tighter visa restrictions for foreign businessmen, which did not compare favourably with the more open UK border controls. For moneyed Russians London also provides logistical advantages: the flight from Moscow is just four hours, while south-east England enjoys a ring of airports with facilities for private jets. According to James Harding, editor of The Times, ‘From London it is possible to work a normal day and talk to Tokyo in the morning and Los Angeles in the afternoon. A businessman can get on a plane from Moscow and be in central London in five hours, from Bombay in seven, even from Beijing in nine. This is one of the reasons why over the past twenty-five years London has turned itself into an international marketplace while New York has remained essentially a domestic financial capital.’[3] However, tax remains the primary factor. ‘New York is obviously very stable, but most of the other big centres of wealth management would have questions over them’, said David Harvey of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners whose members unashamedly help wealthy families pay as little tax as is legally possible.‘Tokyo’s gone through a period of depression, Singapore is relatively new, and Germany was until recently a tax-heavy jurisdiction. If you’re looking to avoid tax legally, you’re as well going to London as anywhere else.’[4] The UK boasts an unrivalled tax-avoidance industry – and an abundance of highly paid accountants able to devise complex ways of hiding an individual’s wealth. In 2007 the International Monetary Fund ranked London alongside Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands as ‘an offshore financial centre’. Most countries have required their residents – including wealthy foreigners – to pay domestic taxes on their

worldwide income and capital gains. In the UK foreigners can claim they are ‘domiciled’ abroad even though they may have lived in Britain for years and have British passports. Under this rule, ‘non-domiciles’ would only pay tax on their UK income and not on overseas income, usually the bulk of their earnings. Furthermore, by purchasing property through offshore trusts, foreign buyers could avoid both capital gains tax when they sell and most of the stamp duty usually paid at the initial purchase. For a Russian billionaire living in London, his earnings from his homeland have been tax-free in the UK.‘There is one reason above all why these people are coming to London and that is the tax law,’ said Natasha Chouvaeva, a London-based Russian journalist. Although this advantage was partially reduced in 2008 when, following a mounting media and public outcry, the government introduced a £30,000 annual levy on non-domi-ciled residents, it was an inconsequential sum for the superrich. The origins of the oligarchical influx lie in the privatization of Russia’s vast and valuable state assets in the 1990s, an explosive process that enriched the few, opened up a huge gulf between rich and poor, and enraged the Russian people. A World Bank report in 2004 showed that, in effect, thirty individuals controlled 40 per cent of the $225 billion output of the Russian economy in its most important sectors, notably in natural resources and automotives. The study concluded: ‘Ownership concentration in modern Russia is much higher than in any country in continental Europe and higher than any country for which data is available.’[5] Little of this unprecedented accumulation of wealth has been invested in Russia in business or charity. Rather, most of the money has been secreted abroad, with billions of dollars hidden in a labyrinth of offshore bank accounts in an array of tax havens, from Switzerland and Jersey to the

British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar. Much has ended up being deposited in and managed by British banks. Stashed away, it has been almost impossible to trace. Despite attempts by Russian and British law enforcement agencies, little of it has been recovered and requisitioned back to Russia. Russia is where the money originated, but it has not been a comfortable place to spend it – too many people pointing fingers in Moscow restaurants, too much scrutiny by the tax police, and the constant fear of assassination. The Russian rich cannot go anywhere without bodyguards and bullet- and bomb-proof cars. Even wearing bespoke suits attracts attention. But in the UK or Europe they have been able to go mostly unrecognized and can relax, spending their gains without fear of censure or of being called to account. After buying their multi-million pound town houses and country estates, they have indulged their sybaritic lifestyles, cruising in St Barts, skiing in Gstaad, and shopping in Knightsbridge. For their wives it has been heaven. ‘London is a metropolis,’ said Olga Sirenko, who edits a website for Russian expatriates. ‘It is fashionable. It has all the boutiques and the culture. Moscow doesn’t have that kind of chic.’ Aliona Muchinskaya, who has lived in Britain since 1991 and runs her own PR company, says that Russians now dismiss Paris as being ‘too dowdy and villagey’. London, by contrast, is ‘bustling and busy with its restaurants and nightclubs. Russians can hire Rolls-Royces and private jets more easily here.’ On arrival in London the first port of call for the affluent, socially aspiring Russian was to the estate agent, notably Savills, Knight Frank, or Aylesford. Deals were cut at high speed: no mortgages, just cash. In 2006 one-fifth of all houses sold for over £8 million went to Russians. For properties over £12 million, the figure was higher still. But Russians have been extremely selective in location, not

merely restricting themselves to the golden postcodes – SW1, SW3, W1, and W8 – but only to certain streets and squares within them. Owning a British country property is also prestigious. Again, their choice of location has been very specific: St George’s Hill and Weybridge and Wentworth Park, both in Surrey. The next decision for the oligarch seeking to emulate the British aristocracy was which top boarding school to send their offspring to, for a British education is another motivating factor for moving to the UK. Public schools generally offer high academic standards and a secure, friendly environment. In Moscow, by contrast, kidnapping is a constant and real fear. While London’s elite estate agents set up offices in Moscow and St Petersburg to woo ultra-rich buyers, British public schools, colleges, and universities have also sent their senior teaching staff to Russia on recruitment drives. By 2008, it was no longer surprising to find Russian students at British schools and top universities, whether it was Abramovich’s teenage daughter at an independent all- girls’ school in London or foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s daughter at the London School of Economics. School numbers soared from 2000 and some Russian parents started to seek schools where there were no other Russians. The fees – up to £30,000 a year – may not have been a problem, but old habits died hard. A headmistress of one top girls’ public school told the story of a Russian whose daughter had failed the entrance exam and who offered her a suitcase full of cash. He promised to pay for anything – a new gym, classrooms, a swimming pool. ‘Things don’t work like that over here,’ said the bemused headmistress. At another top school a parent asked permission to land his helicopter on the cricket field when visiting his child. While most Russian children eventually return home, an English education is regarded as a commercial benefit. ‘I

know that some oligarchs only hire students with a Western education,’ said Boris Yarishevsky, president of the Russian Society at the London School of Economics.[6] This also extends to politicians. ‘I know people whose fathers occupy really high positions in the Russian government and I know they study in London,’ he added. ‘I don’t think that they would want me to give out their names, though.’[7] It is quite possible that one day Russia – like many African and Middle Eastern states – will elect a President who has been educated at a British private school.


The UK has long been a haven for Russian exiles and dissidents. Anti-tsarist radicals flocked to London in the early twentieth century and Revolutionary Congresses were held here every two years. At the 1907 Social Democratic Congress the New York Times reported that an arrest warrant had been issued for one notable attendant, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: ‘A Famous Rebel in London. Lenin Will Be Arrested if he Returns to Russia – Real Name Ulianoff ’ ran its headline. Lenin was not a permanent exile but visited the city six times between 1902 and 1911. At Seven Sisters Church in Holloway, north London, he met workers whom he described as ‘bursting with socialism’, while the area around Whitechapel and other parts of the East End swarmed with radicals. During one of his trips Lenin saw Hamlet at the Old Vic and visited Speaker’s Corner and the National Gallery. It was at the British Museum in 1902 that he first met Leon Trotsky, who had just escaped from Siberia. After the 1917 Revolution, relatively few affluent Russians fled to London – only 15,000 by 1919. Far more moved to the Slavic states, to Berlin, and to a lesser extent to France and China, particularly Shanghai. Those who did arrive in Britain were a mix of aristocrats and middle-class

liberal intellectuals, notably the family of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who arrived in 1919 and settled in the Surrey town of Surbiton. ‘I am an Anglophile, I love England,’ Berlin once reflected. ‘I have been very well treated in this country, but I remain a Russian Jew.’[8] Other descendants of this first wave of Russian immigration include the actress Dame Helen Mirren (born Ileyna Vasilievna Mironov), winner of an Oscar for The Queen, and the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. During the Cold War there was always a sprinkling of new Russians coming to London. Some were dissidents fleeing the gulags; others were high-level KGB defectors who ended up rubbing shoulders in London with White Russians – mostly the offspring of those who had fled Russia after 1917. The latter lived mostly quiet lives, spoke good English, and were largely Anglicized. The 1991 Census recorded 27,011 residents living in the UK while claiming the former Soviet Union as their place of birth. Most of them would have been Russian. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s had a dramatic impact on the pace of Russian arrivals, unleashing a new and unprecedented wave of migration from Russia and former Soviet and East European states. In 1991 the British Embassy in Moscow issued barely 100 visas – to a mixture of those working for Russian companies, students, and Russians who had married Britons – while only one Russian living in the UK was granted citizenship. Even by the mid-1990s, Londoners would have started to become aware of the occasional unrecognizable foreign accent in a shop or in the street – those Russians who did come congregated in a few favourite restaurants and nightclubs – but otherwise the early arrivals remained largely anonymous. Gradually that trickle turned into a flood. By 2006, the number of Russian visas issued had soared to 250,000, while the number granted citizenship in that same

year had risen to 1,830. Berezovsky has likened the twenty- first-century Russian wave to the influx of nineteenth- century Russians to Paris. ‘It used to be that Russian aristocrats spoke French and went to France,’ he said. ‘The modern Russian speaks English and feels more comfortable in England.’[9] The early Russian migrants – mostly professional middle class but by no means wealthy – were joined within two or three years by a quite different stratum of Russian society. These were what their countrymen dubbed ‘the new Russians’, and they started to arrive between 1993 and 1994. This is the group that was beginning to make money, though not on the same subsequent scale, out of Boris Yeltsin’s economic reforms, the easing of restrictions on private enterprise, and the first wave of privatization. They were a mix of state bureaucrats, entrepreneurial hustlers, Kremlin insiders, and former KGB officials; others were members of emerging Russian-based criminal gangs. This group of ‘new Russians’, who were always outnumbered by ‘ordinary’ Russian migrants, were by and large not coming to London to settle down. They came on short-term tourist or business visas, to attend a conference or a business meeting, or on shopping and spending trips. As one Russian already living here who knew some of them put it, ‘At this time there was no real dream to come and settle in London. It was difficult to get a permanent visa except illegally, work permits were scarce, and most of this group could make much more money in Moscow than in London. They had money and came here for a week or two at a time to burn it.’ During the 1990s, Britain gradually eased its entry regulations. Tourist and business visas became easier to acquire. Especially welcomed by the authorities were those with money. Anxious to encourage investment from abroad, the government bent the rules to encourage the arrival of

the super-rich. ‘Essentially, if you are coming to the country with money to spend, you’re very much welcomed with open arms,’ said John Tincey, Vice-Chairman of the Immigration Service Union, in 2007.[10]

In 1996 the Conservative government of John Major introduced a new ‘investor visa’ for those wanting to make the UK their main home and able to invest at least £1 million in the country. Of this at least £750,000 had to be invested in either government bonds or UK-registered companies. Those investing in this way were, after five years, allowed to apply for permanent residency and eventually UK citizenship. Only one other country in the world – the United States – operated such a scheme (though with a much lower entry fee) and a number of wealthy Russians took advantage of the rule. All they needed to do was meet the investment cash criterion. The process of seduction worked. The Russians, along with the super-rich of other nations, poured into Britain. As Forbes magazine described it in 2006: ‘London attracts the elite of the world’s rich and successful. It can lay claim unchallenged to one title: it is the magnet for the world’s billionaires.’[11] Once here, the newly enriched Russians were not shy about spending their way through the capital. They quickly became addicted to high living the British way. In London, history, culture, and the attractions of consumer spending often come together in classic British brands that seem to have a special appeal. The more traditional, the more alluring: shopping at Fortnum & Mason and Burberry, buying a £900 bottle of port at the St James’s wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, tea at Claridge’s, and dinner at Rules. The Russians also took to two other British institutions, London’s leading auctioneers Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Here, at the height of the art boom of the mid- noughties, they could be found outbidding other collectors and leading international dealers for the works of French Impressionists and contemporary British artists. But the staggering spending of Russians is not based just on a crude materialistic desire for luxury goods; it also

stems from a fatalistic mindset and generally pessimistic approach to life. For centuries the Russian people have suffered enormous hardship, poverty, starvation, and brutal repression: an estimated 20 million died during Stalin’s regime, and another 1.1 million perished during the siege of Stalingrad alone during 1942-3. Even after the collapse of the Soviet empire, millions continued to live in a state of permanent insecurity and anxiety exacerbated by a harsh winter climate, economic instability, and a corrupt rule of law. Even the new billionaires and their families believe that they could lose everything tomorrow. A favourite Russian saying goes: ‘Never say never to poverty or prison. Both could happen tomorrow.’ This is why they spend. And they also believe in another Russian adage: ‘That which does not grow and expand will expire and will then die.’ For the Russian male the addiction to spending has manifested itself in the acquisition of yachts, jets, and cars. ‘We have a positive attitude towards the English car culture,’ said Alexander Pikulenko, motoring correspondent for the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy.[12] In 2007 an estimated 40 per cent of Mercedes-Benz sold at their central London showroom went to Russians. The Russians also brought the good times to the UK’s fledgling private aviation industry and helped turn scores of Britain’s own home-grown entrepreneurs, such as the young property tycoons Candy and Candy, into multi-millionaires almost overnight. For Russian women London’s luxury shops became the magnet for this ‘rouble revolution’, with Harrods the favourite. Many Russian wives – and probably their daughters as well – would no doubt love their husbands to buy it. There is a joke that Russian émigrés like to tell. On his deathbed a wealthy Russian summons his wife to his side. ‘Olga, when I die, will you promise that you will do something for me? Promise that you will bury me in

Harrods.’ Shocked, his tearful wife begs him to reconsider, telling him that he is rich enough to build his own mausoleum in Moscow. ‘No, no, no,’ he interrupts. ‘Don’t you see, if I am buried in Harrods, at least I know you will visit me at least once a week.’ A close second to Harrods is Harvey Nichols, just up the road, where, at the height of the London boom, they employed six Russian-speaking assistants on its five shop floors. For specialized jewellery the oligarchs’ wives and mistresses would move closer to the West End. Almost every shop in Old Bond Street started to employ a Russian speaker, while top jewellers like Asprey and Theo Fennell attributed their increase in profits from the late 1990s to their expanding Russian client base and their taste for expensive one-off designer pieces. Russian wives would think nothing of buying a £5,000 alligatorskin bag and a £90,000 diamond ring. ‘They are like children in a sweet shop,’ observed one employee. After a morning being chauffeured around their favourite fashion stores, the wives and daughters would retreat for lunch to Roka in Charlotte Street, the Russian- style tearoom and restaurant, Troika, in Primrose Hill, or Harvey Nichols’ Fifth Floor Restaurant. Their husbands preferred the bars at the Dorchester and Lanesborough hotels for early evening drinks. Then it was dinner at the most expensive, exclusive restaurants, notably Le Gavroche and Cipriani in Mayfair. Even being halfway across the world was not a problem. Late one afternoon Roman Abramovich was in Baku in Azerbaijan and told his aide that he wanted sushi for dinner. The aide ordered £1,200 worth of sushi from Ubon in Canary Wharf, the sister restaurant of Nobu, the fashionable Japanese Park Lane restaurant. It was then collected by limousine, driven to Luton Airport, and flown 3,000 miles by private jet to Abramovich in Azerbaijan.[13] At an estimated total cost of

£40,000, it must rank as the most expensive takeaway in history. Behind the glitz, the glamour, and the wealth lies another side of the Russian invasion. Their arrival may have transformed London financially, but it has also turned Britain’s capital into a murky outpost of Moscow. While the tycoons have been applauded by the City, luxury goods manufacturers, and property magnates, they hardly represent a harmonious community. Behind the mass spending sprees lies a much more sinister world of bitter personal feuds. Many of the Russians are at war with each other as well as with the Russian state. As a result, former friends and business partners have become sworn public enemies. At issue is the ownership of billions of pounds’ worth of assets.‘They are ruthless,’ said one who has had regular business dealings with the wealthiest Russians. ‘Their word means nothing. They will shaft you if they are given half a chance. It is the law of the jungle. Many of them owe huge sums of money to others.’ Their presence, then, has also introduced to Britain some of the uglier elements of the Russian state. ‘As soon as the oligarchs arrived, so the politics followed them. That is why they all take such elaborate and expensive security precautions,’ another businessman explained. The cut-throat political and business battles being fought for control of the nation’s vast oil, gas, and mineral resources were once confined to Russia itself. Gradually, however, those bitter corporate and personal wars spilt over into Britain. For a while they went unnoticed, at least by the press and the public, if not by the security services. It was only in December 2006, after the former Russian state security officer turned dissident, Alexander Litvinenko, died a long, painful, and public death in a London hospital as a result of polonium-210 poisoning that the implications of Britain’s wooing of Russian billionaires

and dissidents became fully apparent. The British government wanted their money but only if they kept their acrimonious internal battles at the border. Litvinenko’s murder exposed the frailty of this strategy of benign tolerance. As one Russian who personally knows several oligarchs put it, ‘The UK government may not care how these guys made their money or what they get up to as long as they don’t bring their dubious activities into Britain. But we can’t have it both ways. We can’t let them in and expect the seedy elements to stop short of the English Channel.’ The country’s leading expert on Russian history, Professor Robert Service of St Antony’s College, Oxford, agrees: ‘The British government has collaborated with the City of London in offering a haven for businessmen from Russia who need to expatriate their money. More circumspect, New York and Stuttgart have failed to compete in pursuit of Russian capital. Britain asks few questions about the provenance of new Russian wealth. Hence the hitmen who keep on arriving on our shores to settle accounts by violent means.’[14]


CHAPTER 2

The Russian Billionaires’ Club

‘What is hard to dispute is that, while hundreds of people became seriously rich, 150 million Russians now live in a country which sold its mineral wealth for a mess of pottage’[1] - DOMINIC MIDGLEY and CHRIS HUTCHINS, 2005

IN 2002 THE RUSSIAN FILM Oligarkh was released. Its main character, Platon Makovsky (Platon is the Russian name for Plato), was a young, idealistic academic who abandoned his studies for the shady world of post-Soviet- era business. Platon devised a series of questionable deals by which he outfoxed his opponents: the Russian secret service. First, he rapidly became the richest man in Russia with financial and political power equal to the state. Then he ended up as the government’s rival and sworn enemy.

Set during the economic convulsions that followed the collapse of communism, Oligarkh was a graphic, if fictional, account of a small group of businessmen who acquired the nation’s wealth. But the film also presented the characters as visionaries who provided the lifeblood of a country paralyzed by fear of change. As the New Yorker noted: Once a freedom-loving idealist, Platon used his genius to become a monster, unhesitatingly sacrificing his ideals

and his closest friends. This is the tragedy of this super- talented individual who embodies all that is most creative in the new Russia and, at the same time, all which is worst for the country that he privatised for his own profit. [2]

Based on the novel Bolshaya Paika (The Lion’s Share) written by Yuli Dubov, who went on to work for Berezovsky, the film broke Russian box-office records and drew gasps from the audience at the scenes of obscene private opulence. It has been broadly compared to the early years of one of the country’s most notorious oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky. Played by Russian sex symbol Vladimir Mashkov, the leading character was portrayed sympathetically as a freedom-loving patriot who proclaimed at one point that he would rather go to jail than leave Russia. Although there were scenes of armed standoffs, the plot mostly glossed over the methods by which such a small clique made such huge fortunes so quickly. Berezovsky accepted that the film was based – if somewhat loosely – on his own early life. He invited the director to his London home for a viewing of the film and told the BBC, ‘As a work of art I think it is primitive. But I appreciate the effort to understand people like me. It is the first attempt in recent Russian cinema to understand the motivations of those at the peak of power, who drive reforms and make changes rather than cope with them.’[3] As they started to beat a path to London, and as their reputations grew, so the new breed of super-rich Russians began to intrigue the British public: ‘We like to follow them because we are astonished at how people who not that long ago were queuing for bread are now able to outbid the rest of the world’s super-rich for Britain’s finest houses,’ one Mayfair property agent told us.

In his early sixties, Berezovsky is old enough to remember the bread queues in his own country, but such a modest lifestyle did not extend into his adult years. The man once known as the ‘Grey Cardinal’ because of his dominating influence at the Kremlin was not shy when it came to spending his fortune. In 1995 he bought himself a palatial residence outside Moscow, complete with servants, and accumulated a fleet of sports cars. He acquired an interest in fine wine and smoked only the best cigars. His brazen lifestyle soon became the stuff of legend. Here was a man with a way of life that had once been the province only of the Russian aristocracy before the Revolution. With an estimated fortune of £1.5 billion at the time, he epitomized the term ‘Russian oligarch’. His power was such that by the autumn of 1996 he could boast that he and six other individuals controlled 50 per cent of the Russian economy.[4] Berezovsky was exaggerating, but from the early 1990s Russia was quickly transformed from a highly centralized economy to one in which some thirty or so individuals owned and controlled the commanding heights: its vast natural resources and manufacturing. Russia moved at high speed from being a political dictatorship to a society not just heavily owned by a tiny, super-wealthy elite, but one wielding, for a while, enormous political power.

The word ‘oligarch’ was first used in Russia on 13 October 1992, when Khodorkovsky’s Bank Menatep announced plans to provide banking services for what it called ‘the financial and industrial oligarchy’. This was for clients with private means of at least $10 million. By the mid-1990s, the word was common parlance across Russia. The origins of the word lie in Classical Greek political philosophy. Both Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics describe rule by an elite rather than by the democratic will of the people. Historically, ‘oligarch’ was a word used to describe active opponents of Athenian democracy during

the fifth century bc, when Greece was ruled on several occasions by brutal oligarch regimes that butchered their democratic opponents. Like their ancient Greek counterparts, few of the modern Russian oligarchs became mega-rich by creating new wealth but rather by insider political intrigue and by exploiting the weakness of the rule of law. Driven by a lust for money and power, they secured much of the country’s natural and historic wealth through the manipulation of the post-Soviet-era process of privatization. When Boris Yeltsin succeeded Mikhail Gorbachev as President in 1991, Russia had reached another precarious stage in its complex history. It had difficulty trading its vast resources and was short of food, while its banking system suffered from a severe lack of liquidity. Its former foe the United States – in Russia referred to as glavni vrag (the main enemy) – was watching events eagerly. Within weeks, advisers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank teamed up with powerful Russian reformist economists close to the Kremlin to persuade Yeltsin to introduce an unbridled free-market economy involving the mass privatization of state assets. It was a dramatic process of ‘reverse Marxism’ implemented at speed.

This was to become Russia’s second full-scale revolution – though this time from communism to capitalism – in three generations. ‘Russia was broke. There was grave doubt in late 1991 that they could feed their population in the coming year,’ explained James Collins, former US Ambassador to Russia.’The government had lost control over its currency because people were printing it in other republics. The policy of what became known as “shock therapy” was discussed internally [in the US government] and nobody stood up and said “no, don’t do that”. The whole system was falling apart and was best summed up by my predecessor Ambassador Robert Strauss who said, “It’s

like two pissants on a big log in a middle of a river going downstream and arguing about who was steering”.’ The first wave of privatization came in the form of a mass voucher scheme launched in late 1992 – just nine months after Yeltsin assumed the presidency. All Russians were to be offered vouchers to the value of 10,000 roubles (then worth about $30, the equivalent of the average monthly wage). These could, over time, be exchanged for shares either in companies that employed them or in any other state enterprise that was being privatized. To acquire the vouchers, citizens had to pay a mere 25 roubles per voucher, at the time the equivalent of about 7 pence. In the four months from October 1992, a remarkable 144 million vouchers were bought, mainly in agricultural and service firms. The Kremlin presented this ambitious scheme as offering everyone a share in the nation’s wealth. Yeltsin promised it would produce ‘millions of owners rather than a handful of millionaires’. It may have been a great vision but it never materialized. Russia’s citizens were poor, often unpaid, and many had lost their savings as inflation soared and the rouble collapsed. Moreover, after seventy years of communism, most Russians had no concept of the idea of share ownership. There wasn’t even a Russian word for privatization. There were, however, plenty of people who understood only too well what privatization meant and the value of the vouchers. They started buying them up in blocks from workers. Among those cashing in was Mikhail Khodorkovsky – who would later become the richest man in Russia. Street kiosks selling vodka and cigarettes began doing a brisk trade in vouchers. Stalls began to appear outside farms and factories offering to buy them from workers. Hustlers started going from door to door. Even though holders were being offered far less than the vouchers were worth, most exchanged them for cash to pay for immediate necessities. Russia became a giant

unregulated stock exchange as purchasers were persuaded to trade their vouchers for prices that were nearly always well below their true value. They would exchange them for a bottle of vodka, a handful of US dollars, or a few more roubles than they had paid for them. It proved a mass bonanza for those prepared to prey on a country suffering from mass deprivation. Hundreds of thousands also lost their vouchers in ‘voucher saving funds’. Some funds were little more than covert attempts by companies to buy up their own shares for a song. Members of the old KGB power elite often laid claim to mines and enterprises in what became known as ‘smash-and-grab’ operations. For a nation ignorant of the concept of shares and unable to appreciate the potential value of their vouchers, people were easily encouraged to part with their stakes. For the winners it was easy and big money. Instead of a share-owning democracy, a newspaper poll in July 1994 revealed that only 8 per cent of Russians had exchanged their vouchers for shares in enterprises in which they worked. Moreover, because the assets being sold were massively undervalued, the successful purchasers obtained the companies for well below their real value. Indeed, the 144 million vouchers issued have been estimated to have valued the assets at a mere $12 billion. In other words, much of the country’s industrial and agricultural wealth was being sold for a sum equivalent to the value of a single British company such as Marks & Spencer. In just two years, by the beginning of 1995, around half the economy, mostly in the shape of small- and medium- sized businesses, had been privatized. The next crucial issue in the ‘second Russian Revolution’ was how to privatize the remaining giant state-owned oil, metallurgical, and telecommunications industries that were still operated by former Soviet managers – the ‘red

directors’, the Soviet-era bosses renowned for their corruption and incompetence who had managed the state firms – many of whom were laundering money and stashing away revenue abroad. Russia was still mired in a severe economic crisis with plunging share prices and rampant inflation. The indecisive and capricious Yeltsin was ill, often drunk and rarely in control, while the state was running out of money to pay pensions and salaries. Taking advantage of the growing crisis, a handful of businessmen dreamed up a clever ruse that appeared to offer a solution. This was a group that had already become rich by taking advantage of the early days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring), which, for the first time in the Soviet Union, allowed small private enterprises to operate. Led by a leading insider, Vladimir Potanin, the cabal offered Yeltsin a backroom deal known in the West as ‘loans for shares’. This was an arrangement (coming at the end of the voucher privatization scheme) whereby they would lend the government the cash it so desperately needed in return for the right to buy shares in the remaining state enterprises. In effect, Yeltsin was auctioning off the state’s most desirable assets. If the government subsequently defaulted on repaying the loans – which the scheme’s architects knew was inevitable – the lenders would keep the shares by way of compensation. For Yeltsin, the plan provided much needed cash while on paper it did not look like the mass giveaway it turned out to be. Between 1995 and 1997, more than twenty giant state-owned enterprises, accounting for a huge share of the country’s national wealth, were offloaded in this way. In return, the government received a total of some 9.1 trillion roubles, about £1.2 billion at the time. One of the main beneficiaries of this deal was Boris Berezovsky. Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in Moscow in January 1946 to a Jewish family. An only child, his father was a construction engineer and his mother a paediatric

nurse. Berezovsky’s family were not members of the Communist Party and his upbringing was modest and for a time – when his father was unemployed for two years – he experienced poverty. ‘I wasn’t a member of the political elite,’ he later said. ‘I am a Jew. There were massive limitations. I understand that perfectly well,’ he told an audience of journalists at London’s Frontline Club in London in June 2007. A mathematics whizz kid, Berezovsky graduated with honours from Moscow State University. In early 1969 he joined the Institute of Control Sciences, where he gained a PhD and worked for more than twenty years. Intelligent, precocious, and energetic, he is also remembered for being intensely ambitious. ‘He always raised the bar to the highest notch and went for it,’ a close colleague recalled. ‘He was always in motion, always racing towards the goal, never knowing or fearing obstacles… His mind was always restless, his emotions ever changing, and he often lost interest in what he had started.’ Another friend from this period said, ‘He has this attitude which he has maintained all his life – never stop attacking.’ This was corroborated by a fellow student, ‘He was a compressed ball of energy… Constantly in motion, he was burning with plans and ideas and impatient to make them happen. He had an insistent charm and a fierce burning desire and he usually got what he wanted.’ As a scientist, Berezovsky wrote more than a hundred research papers on such subjects as optimization theory and decision-making. He was a director of a laboratory that researched automation and computer systems for industry. The young mathematician craved prestige and focused his energy on winning prizes to get it. He was awarded the prestigious Lenin Komsomol Prize (an annual Soviet award for the best works by young writers in science, engineering, literature, and the arts) and then tried but failed to win the even more illustrious State Prize.

According to Leonid Boguslavsky, a former colleague at the Institute, his dream was to win the Nobel Prize. In 1991 Berezovsky left academia and was appointed a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an achievement he remains proud of to this day. He later boasted that there were only eight hundred members of the Russian Academy of Sciences and that even Leonid Brezhnev had wanted to be among that number. Berezovsky married Nina Vassilievna when he was twenty-three. Within three years the couple had two daughters – Elizaveta and Ekaterina, both now in their thirties. Despite his academic achievements, Berezovsky initially had to scrimp to buy winter tights and school exercise books for his children. Perestroika offered him escape from his straitened circumstances. His first scheme involved selling software he had developed to the State Committee on Science and Technology. ‘We convinced them that it was a good product, and we sold tens of thousands of copies of this software. And those were the first millions of roubles that we earned, and a million roubles was a whole lot,’ he told his audience at the Frontline Club. In 1989 Berezovsky turned to the automobile industry. ‘They stopped paying my salary, so I started a business,’ he recalled. ‘Every Russian had two wishes – for an apartment and a car. The women generally had the last say on the apartment; so I went into cars.’[5] Initially, this involved selling second-hand Mercedes imported from East Germany. Then, taking advantage of the new freedom to travel, he went to West Germany. There he bought a used Mercedes, drove it back through almost non-existent customs, and sold it for three times what he had paid for it. But the real source of Berezovsky’s early wealth came from exploiting his connections, gained through his academic work, with the Soviet Union’s largest car manufacturer and producer of the Lada, the AvtoVaz

factory based in the industrial city of Togliatti. Off the back of his friendship with the factory’s Director, Vladimir Kadannikov, Berezovsky founded a company called LogoVaz, which took over responsibility for selling the Ladas. The effect was to separate production from sales in a way that maximized the profits from the business for Berezovsky and his partners. It was perfectly legal and it was a strategy widely deployed by directors of state companies and the new entrepreneurs at the time. Berezovsky also went on to establish the country’s first chain of dealerships for Mercedes, Fiat, and Volvo, which he later referred to as ‘a complete service, with workshops, showrooms, and credit facilities. Really, we created the country’s car market. There was no market then; people won cars in lotteries or for being “best worker” or they applied and stayed on a waiting list for years.’[6] In relation to that waiting list, Russians have a joke about the long delays of the period. Vladimir has been waiting for six years to buy his own car, when he is suddenly summoned to the local ministry office. ‘I have good news for you,’ says the clerk. ‘Your car will be delivered to you in five years from today.’ ‘Wonderful,’ says Vladimir. ‘Will it come in the morning or the afternoon?’ ‘Why, what difference does it make?’ responds the perplexed clerk. ‘Well,’ answers Vladimir, ‘I have already arranged for a plumber to come that morning.’ The dealership chain was created at a time when the automobile industry was rife with organized crime and protection rackets. Berezovsky’s Moscow dealership was targeted by Chechen gangs, which also controlled the production lines at AvtoVaz. Berezovsky, at times personally a target of the gangs, has always denied any mafia connection. In September 1993 his LogoVaz car parks were

attacked three times and his showrooms bombed with grenades. When his Mercedes 600 sedan was blown up nine months later, with Berezovsky in the back and his chauffeur killed, LogoVaz issued a statement blaming ‘forces in society that are actively trying, by barbarically criminal means, to keep civilian entrepreneurship from developing in this country.’ I can tell you right here and now that not a single oligarch has bowed to the Mafia. Oligarchs themselves are stronger than any mafia, and stronger than the government, to which they have also refused to bow. If we are talking of the visible tip of the iceberg, not the part of the iceberg concealed behind the surface or in the dark, I haven’t bowed to the government either.[7] By 1993 Berezovsky had already built an extensive business empire. One of his new enterprises was the All- Russian Automobile Alliance. Owned by various companies but headed by Berezovsky, ARAA promised the production of a ‘people’s car’, to be produced by AvtoVaz in collaboration with General Motors in the United States. On the back of a huge advertising campaign, it offered bonds in the scheme and the promise of cheaper cars, cash redemption, and a free lottery once the new production line was up and running. Wooed by the ‘get-rich-quick’ promise, more than 100,000 Russians bought $50 million of shares in the project. But when General Motors backed out of the scheme and it collapsed, thousands lost their money. By now Berezovsky had acquired a younger, second wife, Galina Becharova. They lived together for several years before being married at a civil ceremony in Russia in 1991. They had a son, Artem, and a daughter, Anastasia. Although they separated three years later, they never divorced. Berezovsky sent his two daughters from his first marriage – Elizaveta and Ekaterina – to Cambridge University.

By 1995 AvtoVaz had terminated the LogoVaz contract. The ambitious oligarch turned his attention from cars to planes, lobbying to install his business associates in key managerial positions in the state-owned airline, Aeroflot. Thanks to his growing influence at the Kremlin, he ensured that two of his intermediary companies based in Switzerland – Andava and Forus – provided Aeroflot with financial services. This gave Berezovsky huge influence over the company. Much of Berezovsky’s business ascendancy was based on his Kremlin connections and personal friendship with President Yeltsin. Since coming to power as Russia’s first democratically elected leader following his resistance against the hardliners’ putsch of 1991 (it had toppled Gorbachev and was bent on restoring a Soviet-style dictatorship), Yeltsin seemed to relax. But gradually he became increasingly impatient, drank more, and appeared ever vulnerable to the solicitations of sycophants and businessmen, especially as he distrusted the old KGB machine. Berezovsky’s relationship with Yeltsin was cemented by his shrewd offer to finance the publication of the President’s second volume of memoirs, Notes of a President, in 1994, arranging for royalties to be paid into a Barclays bank account in London. According to one account, before long, the President was complaining that the royalties were too low. ‘They [the ghostwriter, Valentin Yumashev, and Berezovsky] understood that they had to fix their mistake,’ claimed General Aleksandr Korzhakov, former KGB officer and Yeltsin’s closest friend and one-time bodyguard. ‘They started filling Yeltsin’s personal bank account in London, explaining that this was income from the book. By the end of 1994, Yeltsin’s account already had a balance of about $3 million.’[8]

A grateful Yeltsin ensured that Berezovsky became part of the Kremlin inner circle. Already a multi-millionaire, he was now well placed to benefit from the next wave of state sell-offs. In December 1994 Yeltsin signed a decree that handed over a 49 per cent stake in ORT, the main state- owned television station and broadcaster of Channel One, primarily to Berezovsky, without the auction required by law. The remaining 51 per cent remained in state hands. Berezovsky paid a mere $320,000 for the station. As most Russians get their news from the television, this also provided Berezovsky with a vital propaganda base for dealing with the Kremlin. But perhaps Berezovsky’s biggest prize was in oil. In December 1995 he acquired a claim, via the ‘loans for shares’ scheme, to the state-owned oil conglomerate Sibneft (Siberian Oil) – then Russia’s sixth-largest oil company – for a cut price of $100 million, a tiny fraction of its true value. The deal was done with two associates. One was his closest business partner, the ruthlessly sharp Arkady ‘Badri’ Patarkatsishvili, the other was the then unknown Roman Abramovich, twenty years younger than Berezovsky but canny enough to find $50 million for a 50 per cent stake. It was from this moment that Abramovich, at first under his mentor’s tutelage but then through his own business acumen, manipulated his way to a billion dollar fortune founded on cunning negotiating skills and political patronage. It was a relationship that Berezovsky would later bitterly regret.


If there is a key to Abramovich’s relentless drive, it is the orphan in him. He was born in 1966 to Irena and Arkady, Jewish Ukrainians living in Syktyvkar, the forbidding capital of the Komi republic in northern Siberia. He lost both parents before the age of three: his mother

died of blood poisoning following an abortion and his father was felled by an errant crane on a building site. Roman was adopted by his Uncle Leib and his wife Ludmilla, a former beauty queen. The family lived in the industrial city of Ukhta, where Leib was responsible for the supply of essentials to the state-owned timber business. Roman enjoyed a relatively comfortable upbringing and was, it is said, the first boy in his area to have a modern cassette player. In 1974 Roman moved to Moscow and lived with his uncle Abram, a construction boss, who would become his surrogate father. Although they lived in a tiny two-room apartment, it lay in the heart of the capital on Tsvetnoi Boulevard, just across from the Central Market and the Moscow Circus. The young Roman did not excel at school and in 1983 was called up for national service in the Red Army and posted to an artillery unit in Kirzach, 50 miles north-east of Moscow. On his return to the big city, Abramovich was guided and protected by his uncle in the ways of the grey market economy of perestroika. It was not unusual for ordinary Russians to indulge in smuggling and black marketeering and, despite his shyness, the young Abramovich did not hold back. He had honed his skill in the army. ‘Roman was head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to entrepreneurship,’ recalled Nikolai Panteleimonov, a former army friend. ‘He could make money out of thin air.’ When Abramovich was discharged from the army, he studied highway engineering and then returned to the secondary economy: transporting luxury consumer goods like Marlboro cigarettes, Chanel perfume, and Levi and Wrangler jeans from Moscow back to Ukhta. In 1987 the budding entrepreneur met his first wife, Olga Lysova, the daughter of a high-ranking government diplomat. The couple married that December in a Moscow registry office in the presence of fifteen family and friends.

The following year Abramovich established a company that made toys – including plastic ducks – and sold them in the Moscow markets. He also bought and sold retreaded tyres. An intuitive negotiator, he was able to put customers at ease. He was soon earning three to four thousand roubles a month – more than twenty times the salary of a state worker – and could afford to buy a Lada. In 1989 Abramovich and his first wife divorced. Olga says her husband persuaded her that they should divorce so that they could emigrate to Canada together, claiming that the immigration laws made it easier for him to go there if he was not married. Once he was a Canadian citizen, he would come back for Olga and her daughter from a previous relationship. Instead, Abramovich left Olga and gave her enough money to live on for two years, although she later claimed that all she got was the ‘crummy flat’.[9] A year later Abramovich married Irina Malandina, an air hostess with Aeroflot. They met on one of his business flights and in 1992 their first child, Anna, was born. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Abramovich, who had attended the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow, established an oil-trading firm called ABK, based in Omsk, the centre of the Siberian oil business. In post-communist Russia it was possible to make enormous profits by buying oil at controlled domestic prices and selling it on in the unregulated international market. All that was needed was an export licence, which Abramovich acquired through his connection with a customs official. It was his friendship with Boris Berezovsky that transformed Abramovich from a hustler and mid-level oil trader into a billionaire. The two men first met at a New Year’s Eve party in 1994 on board the luxury yacht belonging to Petr Aven, a wealthy banker and former state minister. The select gathering of guests had been invited on

a cruise to the Caribbean island of St Barts. Berezovsky was impressed by Abramovich’s technical know-how and his unassuming manner that belied a calculating intelligence. Casually dressed and often with a few days’ growth of beard, his understated, gentle demeanour and apparently unthreatening manner often resulted in fellow businessmen underestimating him. In stark contrast to his mentor, with his hyperactive, restless personality, Abramovich comes across as a chess player, thinking deeply through all the possible permutations on the board. Berezovsky later acknowledged that, of all the businessmen he had met, Abramovich was the best at ‘person-to-person relations’.[10] Spotting the young oil trader’s commercial nous, Berezovsky recruited him as a key partner in the Sibneft deal. This conglomerate had been created from four state- owned enterprises: an oil and gas production plant, Noyabrskneftegas; an oil exploration arm, Noyabrskneftegas Geophysica; a marketing company called Omsknefteproduckt; and, most important of all, Russia’s largest and most modern oil refinery at Omsk. The three partners responsible for the acquisition of Sibneft all played different but key roles. Abramovich assessed Sibneft’s business potential, Berezovsky smoothed the privatization with the Yeltsin administration, and Badri Patarkatsishvili organized half the financing. In late 1995, 49 per cent of the company was sold at auction to the three men through their Petroleum Financial Company, known as NFK. The majority 51 per cent stake was to be held by the state for three years while the lenders were allowed to manage the assets. Under the plan, if the loan was not repaid within three years, legal ownership would transfer to the lenders. In the event, most of the remaining 49 per cent was auctioned a short while later, in January 1996, with control going to Berezovsky and his associates.

When ownership of Sibneft was secured, Berezovsky was already consumed by Kremlin politics and Patarkatsishvili was running ORT. It was thus agreed that Abramovich would manage the new company. According to Berezovsky Abramovich was in essence holding their shares in trust for both the other partners. October of 1998 saw the deadline for the state’s repayment of the loan; as expected, it was not met. Ownership of Sibneft therefore passed to NFK. By now, Abramovich held, on paper, the lion’s share of the oil giant through various companies. At thirty-two, he was well on his way to becoming one of Russia’s richest men. All decisions during the process of acquisition by the three partners in the deal – Abramovich, Berezovsky, and Patarkatsishvili – were made mostly at meetings at which only the three men were present and no minutes were taken. Nothing was ever formally put in writing and there was little or no documentation. The absence of a paper trail was deliberate – as was so often the way with many of the power-broking deals of the period – and it was partly for this reason that who actually owned what was later to become the subject of a bitter feud between Berezovsky and Abramovich. Many of the deals that forged the transfer of Russia’s wealth were concluded in this way – in shady rooms with no independent witnesses, tape recorders, or documentation, all done on the basis of a handshake. Unsurprisingly, many of these remarkable agreements started to unravel, as the former business allies later became bitter rivals and enemies.


Meanwhile, one of Berezovsky’s oligarchic rivals was an earnest, geeky former mathematician named Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As early as 1989, he was wealthy enough to found his own bank and would also become a billionaire

through the privatization of state assets. Mikhail (’Misha’) Borisovich Khodorkovsky, an only child, was born in Moscow in June 1963 to a lower-middle-class family with a Jewish father and a Christian mother. In his early years the family lived in cramped communal housing, though circumstances later improved when his father was promoted. Khodorkovsky’s nursery school was next door to the factory where his father worked and he remembers climbing the fence with his friends to steal pieces of metal. It was Misha’s dream from an early age to become a director of a factory and the other children at his nursery school accordingly nicknamed him ‘Director’. Khodorkovsky left school in 1981 and read chemistry at the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology in Moscow, specializing in the study of rocket fuel. He supported his studies by working as a carpenter in a housing cooperative and it was at university that he met his first wife Elena, a fellow student. Their first son, Pavlik, was born in 1985 and the young scientist grimly recalls going out at six o’clock every morning with ration coupons to buy baby food. Khodorkovsky graduated from the Mendeleev Institute at the top of his year in 1996. Although his earliest ambitions to work in defence were thwarted by the fact that he was a Jew, he became the Deputy Secretary of Moscow’s Frunze district Komsomol – the Young Communist League. Like many Komsomol leaders, he used the organization’s real- estate holdings and political connections to profit from perestroika. In 1986 Khodorkovsky met his second wife Inna and set up the Centre for Scientific and Technical Youth. Purportedly a youth group, the Centre was merely a front for their commercial activities. ‘He dealt in everything: blue jeans, brandy, and computers – whatever could make

money,’ recalled a former senior Yukos executive.[11] Khodorkovsky and his colleagues peddled new technologies to Soviet factories, imported personal computers, and sold French brandy. Leonid Nevzlin, who became his closest business associate, recalls that all this was done with the backing of the Communist Party: ‘To a certain extent, Khodorkovsky was sent by the Komsomol and the party [into the private sector].’[12] By 1987 Khodorkovsky’s enterprises boasted many Soviet ministries as clients, employed 5,000 people, and enjoyed annual revenue of eighty million roubles. Later that year the Komsomol’s central committee gave its organizations the authority to set up bank accounts and raise and spend their own money. Pouncing on this opportunity, the perspicacious Khodorkovsky set up Bank Menatep. The bank soon expanded and by 1990, a year before the fall of communism, it was even setting up offshore accounts, seven years before he hired the lawyer Stephen Curtis. After Yeltsin came to power, Khodorkovsky soon came to appreciate the value of connections. He started courting senior bureaucrats and politicians, holding lavish receptions for high-level guests at top clubs in Moscow as well as at smart dachas owned by Menatep on the Rublevskoye Highway, the exclusive residential area to the west of the capital. By 1991, he was an adviser to the Russian Prime Minister Ivan Silaev. For a brief spell, he was a deputy fuel and energy minister. One of Yeltsin’s early market reforms was to end the Central Bank’s monopoly of banking for government institutions. Those entrepreneurs who had already set up banks were well placed to take advantage of this relaxation of the rules. Russia then, as now, was a country where little happened unless a bribe was paid – vzyat or kapusta as it is called in Russian. In the case of the transfer of deposits, it

was widely alleged that the banks that paid the biggest bribes to high-level politicians and state officials would receive the wealthiest new clients. And the payments were often deposited offshore. According to Bill Browder, an American banker who set up Hermitage Capital Management, one of the largest funds investing in Russia, ‘These entrepreneurs would set up banks and in many cases would go to government ministers and say, you put the ministries on deposit in my bank and I’ll put five or ten million bucks in a Swiss bank account with your name on it.’[13] The paybacks offered entry into the highly lucrative business of handling state money. By 1994, Menatep was responsible for funds collected for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 as well as the finances of Moscow’s city government and the Ministry of Finance itself. At thirty-one and by now a multi-national tycoon, Khodorkovsky hired the accountancy firm Arthur Andersen to audit his books and spent $1 million on advertisements in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His office was an imposing Victorianstyle castle in central Moscow with huge bronze letters announcing its presence and surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence with sharp spikes. The grounds swarmed with armed security guards, some in well-tailored suits, others in black uniforms and boots. Flush with cash, Khodorkovsky was now able to target the industrial enterprises next in line to be sold off. It was the sale of the vast Siberian oil company Yukos, in what was a remarkably profitable deal that was to turn Khodorkovsky into a super-rich international tycoon. The process of transfer of vast state industries via the ‘loans for shares’ scheme was supposed to be handled by open auctions. In reality they were nothing of the sort. Only select bidders were invited to tender, and in many cases

the auctions were actually controlled by the very people making the bids – sometimes using companies to disguise their identity. In the case of Yukos, it was Khodorkovsky’s Menatep that was in charge of processing the bids in the auction. In a hotly contested auction, higher bids were disqualified on ‘technical grounds’ and Khodorkovsky won the auction. In this way he and his partners acquired a 78 per cent stake in Yukos and 2 per cent of the world’s oil reserves for a mere $309 million. When the shares began trading two years later in 1997, Yukos’s market capitalization was worth thirty times that figure. One by one, the state’s industrial conglomerates were being sold off at ‘liquidation- sale prices’ according to Strobe Talbott, former US Assistant Secretary of State.[14] It was a pattern repeated in the other auctions. The Sibneft auction for example, was managed by NFK. In most cases there was ultimately only one bidder. In some instances the auction was not even won by the highest bidder. The ‘loans for shares’ scheme turned many of the buyers from rouble multi-millionaires into dollar billionaires almost overnight. Initially, the lenders acquired only a proportion of the assets, but over the next couple of years the government also sold off the remaining tranches of shares in a series of lots, again without the competitive bids and auctions promised, and with the original lenders securing the remaining shares for themselves. By now ordinary Russians had lost patience with the process of privatization. The economy was in tatters, few had benefited from the voucher fiasco, while many had ploughed their savings into schemes that had simply swallowed up their money. There was widespread disbelief that a few dozen political and business insiders were walking off with Russia’s industrial and mineral wealth at

cut prices. Disillusioned with the President and his policies, ordinary Russians began to exhibit a yearning for what they saw as the security and stability of communism. There was suddenly a real prospect that the shambolic, drunken Yeltsin would lose the forthcoming election in 1996 to the revitalized Communist Party candidate Gennady Zyuganov. Opinion polls recorded Yeltsin’s popularity at a derisory 6 per cent. ‘It’s all over,’ said one American diplomat in Moscow. ‘I’m getting ready for Yeltsin to go.’[15] Promising to stop the auctions for the remaining shares, Zyuganov fully intended to pursue the oligarchs. At the time the international investor and philanthropist George Soros, now one of the oligarchs’ greatest critics, warned Berezovsky somewhat acidly that if the communists were to win, ‘you are going to hang from a lamppost’.[16] Berezovsky was only too aware that he had enemies among the communists. At a secret meeting in Davos in the Swiss Alps during the World Economic Forum in February 1996, he galvanized the wealthiest businessmen known in Russia as ‘the Group of Seven’. They agreed to bankroll Yeltsin’s election campaign in return for the offer of shares and management positions in the state industries yet to be privatized. The seven parties privy to the ‘Davos Pact’ were mainly bankers – Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin, Alexander Smolensky, and Petr Aven, as well as media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, industrialist Mikhail Fridman, and, of course, Berezovsky himself. Television was the key to the election campaign. The campaign was bankrolled through a secret fund known as the Black Treasury. Money was spent cultivating journalists and local political bosses. But most was used to pay for flattering documentaries of Yeltsin shown on private TV stations, billboards put up by local mayors, and even on pro-Yeltsin rock concerts. And Berezovsky brazenly used

his ownership of Channel One, Russia’s most powerful television network, to lionize Yeltsin and attack his communist opponent. Central to the campaign were Western spin doctors. Tim (now Lord) Bell, the media guru who had helped Margaret Thatcher win three elections in Great Britain between 1979 and 1990, was hired. Bell had also worked closely with the campaign team responsible for California Governor Pete Wilson’s remarkable comeback election victory in 1994, just two years earlier. In conditions of secrecy likened to protecting nuclear secrets, the American image consultants Dresner-Wickers moved into Suite 120 of the President Hotel in Moscow. ‘Secrecy was paramount,’ recalled Felix Braynin, a Yeltsin aide. ‘Everyone realized that if the Communists knew about this before the election, they would attack Yeltsin as an American tool. We badly needed the team, but having them was a big risk.’[17] Working closely with Yeltsin’s influential daughter Tatyana (Tanya) Dyachenko, who was based next door in Room 119, the Americans were treated like royalty. They were paid $250,000 plus expenses and enjoyed an unlimited budget for polling, focus groups, and research. They were told that their rooms and phones were bugged and that they should leave the hotel as infrequently as possible. The Americans suggested employing dirty tricks such as trailing Zyuganov with ‘truth squads’, which would heckle him and provoke him into losing his temper, but mostly they campaigned in a politically orthodox style. Photo opportunities and TV appearances were organized so as to appear spontaneous. Focus groups, direct mailing, and opinion polls were also widely employed, and the election message was hammered home repeatedly: ‘Whatever it is that we are going to say and do, we have to repeat it

between eight and twelve times,’ said one of the American political consultants.[18] Yeltsin proved to be an adept, populist campaigner. He smiled more and was even inspired to get on stage at a rock concert and do a few moves. From facing the political abyss, Yeltsin was re-elected with a 13 per cent lead. It was a staggering result and with it the newly enriched oligarchs had protected their fortunes and their power base. ‘It was a battle for our blood interests,’ acknowledged Berezovsky. [19] The now all-powerful Berezovsky had proved a master manipulator. When asked about his influences, he rejected Machiavelli in preference to Lenin. ‘Not as an ideologue,’ he remarked, ‘but as a tactician in political struggle. Nobody had better perception of what was possible… Lenin understood the psychology of society.’[20] It was now payback time and Yeltsin kept his part of the deal: some oligarchs received huge new government accounts, bought more state assets on the cheap, and paid only minimal taxes. In his memoirs, Strobe Talbott described the deal in the run-up to the presidential elections as a ‘Faustian bargain in which Yeltsin sold the soul of reform’. But the Russians replied that the favour they were doing the oligarchs was nowhere near as bad as the communist victory it helped to avert. As they saw it, unlike Dr Faustus who made a pact with the Devil that guaranteed his damnation, Yeltsin had made an accommodation with what he was convinced was the lesser of two evils – a deal that would help Russia avoid the real damnation of a return to power by the communists.’[21] Some of the oligarchs, notably Abramovich and Berezovsky, formed a coterie around Yeltsin that became known as the ‘family’. The leading member of the ‘family’ – and the gatekeeper to the President – was Yeltsin’s youngest and much loved daughter, Tatyana. Despite

having no knowledge of business or political affairs, she was his most influential adviser, could secure special favours from the state, and became very rich in her own right. The friendship between the two oligarchs and the President’s daughter blossomed. According to Aleksandr Korzhakov, Berezovsky lavished Tatyana with presents of jewellery and cars, notably a Niva (a Russian version of a Jeep). ‘The vehicle was customized to include a special stereo system, air-conditioning and alarm system, and luxury interior. When the Niva broke down, Berezovsky immediately gave her a Chevrolet Blazer [a sports utility vehicle then worth $50,000].’[22]

According to Strobe Talbott, ‘Berezovsky’s close ties to Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana earned him a reputation as a modern-day Rasputin… At the height of Berezovsky’s influence, when his name came up in people’s offices in Moscow – including near the Kremlin – my hosts would sometimes point to the walls and start whispering or even, in a couple of cases, scribble notes to me. This was a practice I had not seen since the Brezhnev era in furtive encounters with dissident intellectuals.’[23] If Berezovsky was the dominant uncle of the ‘family’, Abramovich was the quiet but precocious nephew who had a talent for charming the most important member – Tatyana. One TV executive, Igor Malashenko, was stunned by the young oil trader’s access: ‘I arrived one night at Tanya’s dacha and here was this young guy, unshaven and in jeans, unloading French wine, very good wine, from his car, stocking the fridge, making shashlik. I thought to myself, “They’ve got a new cook”. But when I asked Yumashev [Tanya’s husband], he laughed and said, “Oh no, that’s Roman”. He’s living with us while his dacha is being renovated.’[24] In October 1996 Berezovsky was at the height of his power and was made Deputy Secretary of the country’s National Security Council – with responsibility for resolving the Chechnya conflict. (The first Chechen war began in 1994 when Chechnya tried to break away from the Russian Federation. Yeltsin’s government argued forcibly that Chechnya had never been an independent entity within the Soviet Union. The ensuing bitter struggle was disastrous for both sides.) A whirlwind of energy, Berezovsky was a frequent visitor to the cabinet offices of the Kremlin, clutching a worn leather briefcase in one hand and a new huge grey Motorola mobile phone in the other. While he waited to see Yeltsin, his phone would constantly ring. ‘Cannot talk. In Kremlin’, he would respond in his rapid-fire

speech. Berezovsky wore officials down with his ceaseless networking and lobbying. When government ATS hotlines were installed in the guesthouse of his office at LogoVaz and his dacha at Alexandrovka, the telephone calls became even more frenzied. In many ways such crony capitalism had much in common with the worst features of the Soviet era. For a while Berezovsky and his colleagues functioned like a politburo: conducting backroom deals behind the scenes, secretly conspiring with and against each other, just as the senior apparatchiks had done under communism. As one prime minister was replaced with another, Berezovsky would hand the incoming leader pieces of paper bearing the names of the ministers he wanted in the new government. The oligarchs now viewed the world through the prism of their personal interests. ‘It is my fundamental belief that, leaving aside the abstract concept of the interests of the people, government should represent the interests of business,’ he admitted.[25] Nevertheless, Yeltsin’s circle was not immune from outside pressure. At one point the independent prosecutor- general, Yuri Skuratov, started an investigation within the Kremlin itself. Yeltsin promptly sacked him, but Skuratov refused to quit and the Russian Federation Council twice refused to ratify his dismissal. Some years later, in 1999, the FSB was tasked with discrediting him. In a classic KGB- style entrapment, ORT broadcast a short, grainy video of ‘a man resembling’ Skuratov apparently romping with two prostitutes. It was never clear if it was Skuratov or not but, nonetheless, that was the end of him.[26] By 1998, Russia was bankrupt. Shares nose dived, interest rates had reached 150 per cent, and bankruptcies soared. By August of that year, one analyst noted: ‘Russia’s credit rating is below Indonesia’s. The size of its economy

is smaller than Switzerland’s. And its stock market is worth less than the UK water industry.’[27] Throughout this turmoil, the genuine political influence of the business elite was forever being exaggerated, not least by themselves. They had become so rich so quickly that they were suffering from what Stalin used to call ‘dizziness with success’. Their influence quickly began to wane after 1997.[28] Berezovsky was dismissed from the Security Council, although a few months later he returned as the Executive Secretary of the Confederation of Independent States, which involved coordinating the individual parts of the Russian Federation. None of this either undermined his personal fortune or prevented him from continuing to plot the future of Russia. The oligarchs and their associates were not the only Russians making a killing out of the transition from communism to capitalism and who later started showering London with money. Among the other winners were the ‘red directors’. The property agent who ran the Russian desk at the London estate agents Savills, remembers an older Russian client, aged about sixty-five, who owned a chemicals factory. One of the ‘red directors’, he was looking to spend several million pounds on a property in London in 2002. Despite his wealth, he was still nostalgic for the communist system that had once served people like him so well. Having been shown around an apartment, he asked, quite out of the blue, where Karl Marx was buried. A short time later he visited Highgate Cemetery. He clearly had much to thank the intellectual father of the Soviet state for. During the 1990s, Russia was a place where shrewd business operators played fast and loose with the country’s fledgling market economy. With no regulatory infrastructure to ensure a smooth, efficient – and legal – transition, it was a goldmine for clever, aggressive operators.

Nothing illustrates the forces at work more graphically than the case of aluminium. The control for this lucrative mineral became the subject of a seven-year long bitter and deadly struggle that became known as the aluminium wars. It left a trail of bloodshed that gave Siberia its reputation as the ‘Wild East’. One of those to emerge triumphant in the battle for aluminium was Oleg Deripaska, although his route to wealth differed from that of the other oligarchs. He was a 23-year-old student when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but by 1994 had made big money from trading in metal. Unlike the other oligarchs, Deripaska did not acquire his fortune through the privatization auctions or via political connections. His control of the aluminium industry was largely due to the way in which he outmuscled and outwitted his competitors and his prowess with the hostile takeover. Deripaska was a post-Soviet corporate raider, borrowing from techniques pioneered by American and British tycoons, notably Sir James Goldsmith. In person, Deripaska, tall with cropped blond hair and deep blue eyes, is deceptive, a man of few words. Negotiations were more like poker or chess than orthodox business deals. He shared many of the characteristics of his friend Roman Abramovich – externally reserved and even more boyish-looking. Despite appearances, however, Deripaska was a serious operator with nerves of steel. The editor of Russia’s Finans business magazine once described him as ‘A very harsh person. Without that quality it would have been impossible to build up so much wealth.’[29] Like Abramovich, Deripaska also became a member of the Yeltsin ‘family’ – but more directly. In 2001 he married Polina Yumashev, daughter of Yeltsin’s chief of staff, who was himself married to Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana. Deripaska first met Polina at Abramovich’s house. Their wedding was the social event of the year in Russia and they

soon had two children. Like Abramovich, Deripaska arranged for one of the children to be born in London and employed a British nanny. It was a smart, some say strategic, marriage because, after Yeltsin left office in 2000, President Putin’s first Presidential Decree granted immunity from criminal prosecution to Yeltsin and all his relatives, a move seen by many as a quid pro quo for his backing.


Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska was born on 2 January 1968 in Dzerzhinsk, 400 kilometres east of Moscow and at the heart of the Russian chemicals industry (the city was named in honour of the first head of the Soviet secret police). His father died when he was only four and he was brought up by his grandparents on a traditional Cossack family farm in Krasnodar, south-western Russia. Although Deripaska’s parents were Jewish, he was more conscious of his Cossack heritage. ‘We are Cossacks of the Russian Federation,’ he later said. ‘We are always prepared for war. This is a question of being able to deal with problems and any situation. It is the case that difficulties are not a catastrophe.’[30] A serious and studious teenager, he was accepted, despite his humble origins, into Moscow State University to study quantum physics. However, before he started his course, he was called up to serve in the army and was stationed on a barren steppe on the border with China. Despite his raw intelligence, times were hard for the young student. Following national service, he returned home to find the country on the brink of collapse and he worked on building sites across Russia. There seemed to be little future in quantum physics and so he abandoned his studies. His first job was in 1992 as a director of a company that sold military hardware following the withdrawal of

Russian forces from East Germany. He then worked as a metals trader in Moscow, before deciding to concentrate on the aluminium industry. At the time the industry was dominated by the brothers Mikhail and Lev Cherney. Born in Tashkent, the brothers grew up in Uzbekistan and, through exploiting the opportunities created by the introduction of a free market, had, by the early 1990s, already built up a substantial business manufacturing and exporting coal and metal. By late 1993, the businessmen held majority stakes in Russia’s largest aluminium smelters, but then Mikhail Cherney’s name was tarnished by allegations in the Russian press of controversial business methods, claims that he strongly denied as smears peddled by his business and political enemies. Despite a series of allegations by international law enforcement agencies, Mikhail Cherney has never been convicted of any crime. By 1994, he had settled in Israel and ran his business empire from there. That year Mikhail Cherney – now calling himself Michael – gave the then 26-year-old Deripaska his first big break, hiring him to run one of his giant smelters – the Sayanogorsky aluminium plant, the largest in the republic of Khakassia. Dedicated and technically brilliant, Deripaska increased production and somehow persuaded the impoverished workforce not to strike. But he was also a neurotic, paranoid manager and trusted no one. He suffered from hypertension and his brain rarely switched off. He hardly slept and, when he did, would wake in the early hours and visit factories and work on some new technology or other. He loved concentrating on the tiny, often petty, technical details of the business and on commercial contracts. In the endless political and business power struggles of the time, Deripaska soon came into conflict with the local mafia. The Sayanogorsky plant was threatened by raids by armed gangs determined to seize control, and he received

constant death threats, on more than one occasion coming within a whisker of being a victim of the bloodshed himself. Sometimes he even slept by his furnaces on the factory floor to protect them from being taken over by mobsters. He survived, and saw off the criminal syndicates at work within the industry. During this period, Deripaska showed remarkable acumen, some say genius, in wresting control from the gangs of mercenary local officials and brutal competitors. This earned him a certain legitimacy and respect among his peers. By 1999 – in less than five years – he had risen from being one of Cherney’s lowly subordinates to being his business equal. Over the next three years, Deripaska bought out all his remaining rivals, including Cherney himself, to emerge as the sole owner of Rusal, the giant aluminium corporation. In less than a decade, Deripaska, the student of quantum physics and former manager of a smelting works, had risen to control the entire aluminium industry. Even by the standards of 1990s Russia, his was a meteoric rise, but one dogged by bitter division and dispute.


Russia in the 1990s witnessed a transfer of wealth of epic proportions. What happened there could be seen as the equivalent of Margaret Thatcher deciding to sell all Britain’s nationalized industries, from British Gas to British Telecom, for a fraction of their real value to a handful of her favourite tycoons who had donated money to the Conservative Party. Some of the beneficiaries liked to defend their activities by comparing themselves to the nineteenth-century industrial and financial tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built massive fortunes out of oil, finance, and the railroads in the United

States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rockefeller, Morgan, and Vanderbilt were dubbed the ‘robber barons’ for their ruthless and exploitative tactics. Khodorkovsky once described his hero, ‘if he had one’, as John D. Rockefeller, the founding father of the American oil industry and the world’s first billionaire. But Rockefeller’s business methods also became so unpopular that towards the end of his life he was known by his staff as the ‘most hated man in America’. Many of the oligarchs evoked similar reactions among the Russian people. Whatever their business records, the American robber barons devoted their lives to building their giant monopolies in oil, railroads, and steel from scratch. The modern Russian oligarchs have no such defence. Few of them laid the pipelines, built the factories, assembled the rigs, or even took the necessary financial and commercial risks. Few created new wealth. Few of them knew much about the industries that landed in their laps. When Khodorkovsky acquired Yukos and went to visit one of its main sites, his host was astonished to discover that he had never seen an oil field before. The oligarchs acquired their fortunes by manipulating the system with a mixture of bare-knuckle tactics and political patronage. While the robber barons reinvested their money at home, the oligarchs moved much of their acquired wealth out of the country. Successive studies have confirmed the impact of the scale of personal enrichment on the concentration of economic ownership in Russia. One found that in 2001 Russia’s top-twelve privatized companies had revenues that were the equivalent of the entire federal budget. Of Russia’s sixty-four largest private companies, just eight oligarch groups controlled 85 per cent of their revenues.[31] There were alternatives. It was Western leaders and financial institutions that rejected a Marshall Plan for

Russia, such as the one for a social cushion advocated by George Soros. Jeffrey Sachs, the influential American economist and one of the key architects of the push for the ‘big bang’ approach – the privatization of the economy at speed – later admitted that when he suggested such a plan to the White House, ‘there was absolutely no interest at all. None, and the IMF just stared me down like I was crazy.’[32] Instead, the Yeltsin government was pressed to move forward with ‘big bang’ regardless of its economic and human consequences. Those in power at the time argue that all the options for political and economic transition from communism carried high risks. But then the West’s top priority was to create a malleable and compliant country offering cheap oil and no return to its past Soviet system. Other considerations were secondary. The Western advisers knew that such a long-standing form of government based on corruption and authoritarianism could not be reformed overnight, not least in a country where the ownership of private property had been a crime for the past seventy-five years. But as Professor Michael Hudson, a Wall Street financial economist, observed: ‘Was there really not a middle ground? Did Russia have no choice between “wild capitalism” at one extreme and the old Soviet bureaucracy at the other? Both systems were beginning to look suspiciously similar. Both had their black-market economies and respective dynamics of economic polarization.’[33] Some commentators argue that the emergence of an oligarchic class was inevitable, others that the creation of an economic elite was necessary for a quick transition to capitalism. Yet others claim that in replacing the old corrupt and incompetent command and control system it was even desirable. Berezovsky later defended his own activities as the inevitable result of capitalism. ‘I don’t know any example where property is split in a fair way,’ he

said. ‘It doesn’t matter how property is split. Everyone will not be happy.’ But he also admitted making ‘billions’ out of privatization and that Yeltsin ‘gave us the chance to be rich’.[34] Inevitable or desirable, the social cost to Russia was immense. The broad consensus is that the privatization process was one of the most flawed economic reforms in modern history. Industrial production declined by some 60 per cent during the 1990s, vast swathes of the economy were wiped out, and much of the population was plunged into poverty. The vast amount of money that poured out of Russia to be hidden away in offshore bank accounts accentuated the dramatic economic crisis of 1998. During the 1990s, what was known as ‘capital flight’ became one of the country’s most debilitating economic problems. According to economists at Florida International University, ‘It erodes the country’s tax base, increases the public deficit, reduces domestic investment and destabilises financial markets.’[35] The investment fund Hermitage Capital has estimated that between 1998 and 2004, £56 billion in capital flowed out of Russia, most ending up offshore. Although some of this was legitimate, with investors looking for a safer home than a Russian bank, most was not. Russia’s Economic Development and Trade Ministry says that between $210 and $230 billion left Russia during the reforms, approximately half of which was ‘dirty’ money, linked to money laundering or organized crime. The IMF’s estimate is that $170 billion escaped the country in the seven years leading up to 2001. Other sources suggest that around $300 billion of assets in the West belong to Russian citizens, almost half from ‘uncertain’ sources.[36] This was money that could have been used to rebuild factories, start new businesses at home, and invest in infrastructure. In effect, Russia lost the equivalent of one-

third of its gross foreign debt in this way. Although there was legislation designed to prevent such capital flight, it was largely ignored. By 2000, privatization had rendered a once mighty country, which spans eleven time zones, rotten to the core, according to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: ‘At every level, different ministries, department heads, agencies and mayoralties have gone into partnership with private businesses, local oligarchs or criminal elements, creating a kind of 21st-century Russian feudalism.’ Friedman quoted the Russian political analyst Sergei Markov: ‘The Russian state looks like a big Charles Atlas, full of muscles. But as you get closer you realize that this Atlas is actually dead. Inside, this huge body is full of worms who are eating the body and feeding off it.’[37] As well as the oligarchs and the ‘red directors’, others were moving their money abroad during the 1990s. Though some of them were small players who simply didn’t trust the banks, most were wealthy, criminal, or members of the KBG – renamed the FSB (the Federal Security Service) in 1992. Some of the proceeds of crime were laundered through purchasing buildings, bars, and restaurants in Eastern Europe, but much of it ended up swirling around London’s nightclubs and casinos. Some passed through British banks.[38] The money often arrived in the form of hard cash, and stories of recent émigrés turning up with suitcases full of banknotes in the 1990s are legion within the Russian community in London. One small-time British property agent who used to socialize in a nightclub frequented by the Russians told of how he had been introduced to a young woman who happened to be the daughter of a senior FSB official. When she discovered he dealt in property, she asked if she could come and see him the next day. When she arrived at his office, he noticed that the woman was carrying a revolver in her coat pocket. When he asked how

she would be paying, she explained that it would be by cash, literally. She opened up a large case stuffed with banknotes. The agent thanked her and politely asked her to take her business elsewhere. Whether they were buying property, jewellery, or cars, payment was often by cash. Mikhail Ignatief, who arrived in London in 1991 at the age of twenty-one with his English fiancée, set up a successful travel business and used to help and advise Russians on shopping or business trips. He remembered one client asking his help to buy a Range Rover and arranged for one of his team to take him to the nearest showrooms. The client was shown around and said he wanted three cars, all to be shipped back to Russia. He then opened up a large leather bag stuffed with banknotes. A somewhat concerned manager called the police and the matter was only settled when the man was persuaded to go to a bank, deposit the money, and then pay by cheque.


The privatization process of the 1990s that led to London being awash with Russian money had no shortage of critics in and outside of Russia. Chrystia Freeland, the former Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times, described the events as ‘a cynical manipulation of a weakened state… Yet as I watched them plot and profit, I couldn’t help asking myself how different the Russians really were from our own hero-entrepreneurs… our society so fawningly lauds for producing an era of unprecedented prosperity… The future oligarchs did what any red-blooded businessman would do. The real problem was that the state allowed them to get away with it.’[39] In his influential book, Failed Crusade, Stephen F. Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies at New York University, called US policy towards Russia in the 1990s ‘the worst American foreign policy disaster since Vietnam’.[40]

One of the architects of privatization, Vladimir Potanin, later accepted its flawed nature: ‘Although I do not deny I was the author, I would like to point out that the concept was changed to a great extent as a result of political pressure on government from the red directors… The government allowed no access to foreign investors and other measures. This was later criticised and rightly so.’[41] In October 1993 a reflective Khodorkovsky told Frontline, the American news programme: ‘Russian law allowed us to do things that were unthinkable in the Western business world.’ Even at the time advocates of privatization accepted that huge mistakes were made. In 1998 Boris Nemtsov, one of the young reformers who was once seen as a potential successor to Yeltsin, said, ‘The country is built as a freakish, oligarchic capitalist state. Its characteristics are the concentration of property in the hands of a narrow group of financiers, the oligarchs. Many of them operate inefficiently, having a parasitic relationship to the industries they control.’[42] By 1999, the oligarchs’ priority was to protect their power and wealth and to ensure a successor to Yeltsin who would be as compliant as he had been. ‘The problem was that a lot of the people who had the potential to lead Russia were themselves up to their necks in relationships with these people,’ observed William Wechsler, a US National Security Council and Treasury official. ‘The fear was that Russia would become like a nuclear-armed Colombia. That prospect was terrifying but to me it was real… Then along comes Putin from the KGB, which was obviously not clean. In the subsequent fight between Putin and the oligarchs, everyone was saying it was a good-guy-bad-guy situation. To me, this was a bad-guy-bad-guy situation.’


CHAPTER 3

... IN 1722, IN ORDER to transform the country from a disparate medieval society into a centralized autocratic state, Peter the Great set about purging the corruption that was endemic in Russian society. This included the elimination of everyone who took bribes. One of those targeted was Aleksandr Menshikov, his most successful general and the most powerful man after the Tsar himself. Menshikov was horrified. ‘If you do, Your Majesty, you risk not having a single subject left’, he told his monarch.[2]

When Vladimir Putin became President in 2000, he had less latitude than Peter the Great, who simply executed his more recalcitrant subjects. Even modern Russia’s arbitrary judicial system would not sanction summary executions of avaricious businessmen. Putin, who knew his history, would therefore have to come up with a different strategy to deal with a group he viewed as a major obstacle to his ambitions for the reshaping of Russia.

While there were whispers of a clampdown, the oligarchs believed they would retain their power and luxurious lifestyles and remain a protected species. After all, theirs was a cabal of the business elite who had engineered the new President’s ascendancy. Just as the oligarchs had connived and conspired to re-elect Yeltsin in 1996, so a group of them manipulated Putin into the Kremlin. In return for their backing, they expected Putin to be as malleable as his predecessor, allowing them to continue to exert influence, accumulate wealth, and be immune from prosecution. They badly misjudged him.

While Putin was Acting President and Prime Minister in 1999, there were signs of trouble to come, when the Prosecutor-General reviewed the way in which Vladimir Potanin, one of the architects of privatization, had acquired Norilsk Nickel, the giant state-owned mining group. ‘They were certainly feeling uncomfortable,’ said one government official. And with good reason. Within two months of becoming President, on the baking hot day of 28 July 2000, Putin summoned twenty-one oligarchs to the Kremlin. ‘It was more like a gathering ordered by Don Corleone than a meeting summoned by a leader of the Western world,’ noted one who was present.[3]

Khodorkovsky and Deripaska were both at the gathering but Berezovsky, now himself under investigation by the prosecutors, was not invited.

Before those assembled in the cabinet room, Putin effectively read Russia’s richest and most powerful business clique the riot act. He would not review the privatizations but they would no longer enjoy special privileges inside the Kremlin. During the meeting, Putin insisted that Potanin pay the $140 million he was alleged to owe on the purchase of Norilsk Nickel. At times the meeting became heated and at one stage the President pointed at a well-known tycoon and accused him of being guilty of ‘oligophrenia’ (which means ‘mental retardation’). The plutocrats were stunned. It was not the script they had been expecting.

The new confrontational President concluded the meeting – which lasted two hours and forty minutes – by setting up a permanent mechanism for consultations between businessmen and the state. The days of cliques and coteries were gone, he warned. Now the relationship was to be institutionalized. Access to Putin would be restricted through quarterly meetings with the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs – in effect, the oligarchs’ trade union.

Putin’s message to the shocked gathering was simple: they could keep their ill-gotten gains provided they kept out of politics and paid their taxes. The details of the meeting were promptly leaked so that in a poll a week later 57 per cent of Russians said they already knew about it. Berezovsky, omitted from the gathering, accused those present of being cowardly. ‘They are as timid as rabbits,’ he sniffed after the meeting.[4]

This was a watershed moment in the story of the oligarchs and an event that was to prompt the steady exodus to London of one wave of super-rich Russians after another. Those present knew only too well that the tide had turned. In case they were in any doubt, Putin used his State of the Nation address on July 8 to condemn the ambitious tycoons and especially the way they controlled the media. ‘They want to influence the masses and show the political leadership that we need them, that they have us hooked, that we should be afraid of them,’ he declared. ‘Russia can no longer tolerate shadowy groups that divert money abroad and hire their own dubious security services.’ He later added, ‘We have a category of people who have become billionaires overnight. The state appointed them as billionaires. It simply gave out a huge amount of property, practically for free. They said it themselves: “I was appointed a billionaire.” They get the impression that the gods themselves slept on their heads, that everything is permitted to them.’[5]

The oligarchs, blinded by their own power and influence, had greatly underestimated the sardonic but humorless Putin. In public the new President was a cold, unsmiling bureaucrat. Apart from periodic outbursts of aggression, he rarely displayed emotion. Russian journalist Elena Tregubova says that when she first interviewed Putin in May 1997, she found him a ‘barely noticeable, boring little grey man… who seemed to disappear, artfully merging with the colors of his office’.[6] As is so often the case with autocrats, people seemed to be preoccupied with his eyes, ‘No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin’s,’ reported Time magazine. ‘The Russian President’s pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an effect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs…’[7]

In private his aides say that the intense and brooding Putin is intelligent, honest, intensely loyal, and patriotic. ‘He smiled a lot, his body language was relaxed and informal, his eyes were soft, and his speech quiet,’ reflected British author John Laugh-land.[8] In stark contrast to his predecessor, he drinks Diet Coke and works out regularly. He is also able to relax, notably by listening to classical composers such as Brahms, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. His favourite Beatles song is Yesterday. He has never sent an e-mail in his life, and, while he grew up in an officially atheist country, he believes in God.

When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in 1952, his 41-year-old mother Maria, a devout Orthodox Christian, defied the official state atheism and had him baptized. She had little education and did menial jobs – from a night- security guard to a glass washer in a laboratory. His father Vladimir fought in the Second World War and was badly wounded in one leg. After the war, he worked as a lathe operator in a car factory and was ferociously strict with his son. Putin’s only forebear of any note was his paternal grandfather, who had served as a cook to both Lenin and Stalin. The family lived in a fifth-floor communal apartment at 15 Baskov Lane in central St Petersburg, where the young Putin had to step over the rats in the entrance to the apartment block on his way to school. Universally known as ‘Volodya’, he was a serious, hard-working, but often angry child. His former school friends and teachers describe him as a frail but temperamental boy who never hesitated to challenge stronger kids. He has described himself as having been a poor student and a hooligan. ‘I was educated on the street,’ he told a biographer. ‘To live and be educated on the street is just like living in the jungle. I was disobedient and didn’t follow school rules.’[9]

Putin found discipline by learning ‘sambo’, a Soviet-era combination of judo and wrestling, at the age of twelve. It places a premium on quick moves, a calm demeanor, and an ability to not show any emotion or make a sound. A black belt, he won several inter-city competitions. Initially, he practiced the sport so as to build up his slender physique and to be able to stand up for himself in fights, but his developing obsession with the sport not only kept him out of trouble, it also made him somewhat reclusive.

Meanwhile, the teenage Putin dreamed of becoming a KGB spy like the Soviet heroes portrayed in books and films. His favorite television program was Seventeen Moments of Spring, a series about a Soviet spy operating in Nazi Germany. In his ninth year at school he visited the KGB headquarters in Leningrad. Told that the best way to get into the service was to obtain a law degree, in 1970 the aspiring agent enrolled at Leningrad State University, where he studied law and German and practiced judo.

In 1975, his final year at university, he was recruited by the KGB. Posted to Leningrad, he spent seven uneventful years in counter-intelligence. At the age of thirty, he married Lyudmila Aleksandrovna, then twenty-two, an outspoken, energetic air stewardess, and the couple had two daughters. He was next posted to Dresden in East Germany, where he worked closely with the Stasi, the secret police, in political intelligence and counter- espionage. It was an isolated life and not a prestigious posting. More favoured agents worked in Western capitals, or at least in East Berlin. But his perseverance brought him the nickname ‘Nachalnik’ (Russian for boss or chief). When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Putin and his KGB colleagues destroyed files in the KGB’s Dresden HQ. He remembers calling Moscow for orders. ‘Moscow kept silent,’ he said later. ‘It was as if the country no longer existed.’ In 1990 Lieutenant Colonel Putin retired from active KGB service and became Assistant Rector in charge of foreign relations at Leningrad State University, a significant reduction in status. ‘It was even less important than working for Intourist,’ said Oleg Kalugin, a former official in the Leningrad KGB. ‘This was a KGB cover rather than a career move. Putin was demobilized into the KGB reserve.’[10]

By this time, his former judo tutor Anatoly Sobchak had become the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg and he immediately recruited Putin as Chairman of the City Council’s International Relations Committee. By 1994, a year after his wife suffered a serious spinal injury in a car crash, Putin became First Deputy Mayor, gaining a reputation for probity and an ascetic lifestyle. Even his bitter enemy Berezovsky admits that his future nemesis was not corrupt: ‘He was the first bureaucrat that I met who did not ask for some money and he was absolutely professional.’[11]

In June 1996 Mayor Sobchak, having failed to address the economic crisis and rising levels of crime, lost his bid for reelection. His successor offered to keep Putin on but he declined and resigned out of loyalty to his former boss. Now unemployed in St Petersberg, he moved to Moscow where he became Deputy Chief of the presidential staff, overseeing the work of the provincial governments. Tough, aloof, and relentlessly focused, he was renowned for his industriousness and severity. In contrast to the wild, erratic Yeltsin, Putin was the solid, reliable apparatchik. Impressed by his honesty, diligence, and loyalty, by June 1998 Yeltsin was beginning to see him as a potential FSB Director. The following month the current incumbent Nikolai Kovalev was forced to resign over an internal scandal, whereupon Putin received a sudden summons to meet Prime Minister Kirienko at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. After they shook hands, Kirienko offered Putin his congratulations. When Putin asked why, he replied, ‘The decree is signed. You have been appointed director of the FSB.’[12]

Within days, Putin had purged the FSB of potential enemies, firing nearly a dozen senior officials and replacing them with loyal subordinates. Many of these came from the ‘Chekists’, the clan of agents based in St Petersburg when Putin was the director there, and named after the brutal early Soviet-era ‘Cheka’, or secret police. One man who welcomed his appointment was Berezovsky. At this point their interests coincided: Putin needed political allies and the oligarch was rid of at least one enemy, the spymaster Kovalev, who had been leaking damaging stories about his business methods. By 1998, Berezovsky had lost his post at the National Security Council and much of his former influence at the centre of power and saw the security apparatus – which mostly resented the rise of the oligarchs – as a real threat. To survive in the feral atmosphere of Russian politics, Berezovsky needed new, powerful allies and was delighted when Putin was appointed over more senior KGB figures. ‘I support him 100 per cent,’ he said. [13]

But within a few months, another cloud appeared on Berezovsky’s horizon: the appointment of a new hardline Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, former head of foreign intelligence. The timing was especially bad for Berezovsky. Ordinary citizens blamed the oligarchs for bankrupting the economy, Yeltsin was mentally and physically in decline, and, amid the tensions and continuing jockeying for position that dominated Yeltsin’s second term, Berezovsky’s power base was slipping further away. When the calculating but now vulnerable Berezovsky realized that the Yeltsin ‘family’ was warming to Putin, he swung his own media empire behind the new FSB boss, later leading the cabal that backed him as Prime Minister. In return, he expected Putin to be both compliant and loyal.

Berezovsky now began courting Putin, once even inviting him on a five-day skiing holiday in Switzerland. The two became friends. On one occasion Putin called Berezovsky ‘the brother he never had’. On 22 February 1999 – by which point state investigations into his business empire had already been launched – Berezovsky threw a birthday party for his new partner, Yelena Gorbunova. The party was intended to be a small, private gathering, but Putin turned up uninvited with a huge bouquet of roses. This appeared to be a genuine act of solidarity towards Berezovsky because they shared a common enemy in the form of Prime Minister Primakov, a man who disliked Putin because he had been chosen to head the FSB over the Prime Minister’s far more senior colleagues.

In July 1999 Berezovsky flew to France, where Putin was staying in Biarritz with his wife and daughters. By this time, Primakov himself had been dismissed by Yeltsin and replaced with an interim Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin. The two men met for lunch and Berezovsky, now sidelined but still well informed about Kremlin politicking, told Putin that Yeltsin was about to appoint him Prime Minister. The following month, as predicted, Yeltsin dismissed Stepashin and appointed Putin. He was Yeltsin’s fifth Prime Minister in seventeen months.

At first Putin was deeply unpopular, with an approval rating of only 5 per cent, mainly because of his association with the despised figures of Yeltsin and Berezovsky. What turned his fortunes was a series of devastating Moscow apartment bombings in September that led to 246 deaths...Putin responded aggressively, first bombing Chechnya and then initiating a land invasion. Militarism played well with the Russian people and the Prime Minister’s popularity soared.

Putin’s newly formed Unity Party took 23 per cent of the vote in the Duma elections in December 1999, compared with 13 per cent by Primakov’s Fatherland All-Russia Party. Yeltsin, now close to the end of his presidency, capitalized on the new popularity and offered the top post to Putin. When asked to take the reins, Putin initially declined, but Yeltsin was persistent. ‘Don’t say no,’ he pressed. Berezovsky also urged him to accept. In his New Year’s Eve address in 1999 Yeltsin famously announced his resignation and Putin’s appointment as interim President. This gave him the advantage of being able to campaign as an incumbent President. Three months later, in the 2000 presidential election, Putin took a remarkable 53 per cent of the vote. Kremlin watchers satirized his success, comparing it to Chauncey Gardiner’s unwitting rise to power as President of the United States in Jerzy Kosinski’s 1971 novel Being There. Berezovsky, who had continued to use the media to publicly declare his support for the way that he believed Putin would run Russia, expressed delight.

Putin’s dramatic decision to take on the oligarchs within weeks of coming to power had been carefully planned. He knew he had to stem the disastrous outflow of capital and quickly encouraged the authorities to toughen up on the collection of taxes. He had come to two conclusions about the oligarchs.

First, as Yeltsin had also discovered, the oligarchs had the potential to be as – if not more – powerful than the President himself.

Second, because the vast majority of ordinary Russians loathed them, Putin knew there would be a beneficial political dividend in being seen to take them on.

Some oligarchs certainly had no shortage of enemies, among them the senior ranks of the security apparatus whose power had ebbed away during the Yeltsin years. They resented the way that these tycoons had sapped their own political strength and reaped a vast financial windfall. They saw them as upstarts. Few of them had served as senior officials during the Soviet era and they were viewed as outsiders. When Putin, so recently the head of the FSB, came to power, the security and intelligence apparatchiks, especially the ‘Chekists’, returned to favor. Of the President’s first twenty-four high-level appointments, ten were drawn from the ranks of the old KGB. This group, known as the siloviki – individuals with backgrounds in the security and military services – now saw their chance for revenge. ‘A group of FSB operatives, dispatched undercover to work in the Russian government, is successfully fulfilling its task,’ said the new President. He was only half joking.[14]

Putin also had a powerful collective ally in the Russian people. While the oligarchs enriched themselves, by the end of the 1990s the government could claim that as many as 35 per cent of Russians lived below the official poverty line.[15] Many felt that the nation’s resources had been sucked dry by what Karl Marx had referred to as ‘Vampire Capitalism’, whereby ‘the vampire will not let go while there remains a single muscle, sinew, or drop of blood to be exploited’.


To show how they feel, Russians love to tell popular jokes to foreign visitors.

‘A group of “new Russian” businessmen were meeting in a posh Moscow restaurant where the décor was of a very high standard. A waiter showed them to their tables and pointed out that the table was made of very expensive marble and that they should put nothing heavy on it, such as a briefcase. He went away to get vodkas and when he returned he was horrified to see a bulging briefcase lying on the table. ‘I thought I told you not to put briefcases on the table,’ he said. The man replied, ‘That’s not my briefcase. It’s my wallet.’

The oligarchs were only too aware of the widespread resentment. As Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin’s Privatization Minister and chief political architect of the giant giveaways in the mid-1990s, acknowledged, ‘Forty million Russians are convinced that I am a scoundrel, a thief, a criminal, or a CIA agent, who deserves to be shot, hanged, or drawn and quartered’.[16]

CHAPTER 4

Hiding the Money

‘It’s like the Wild West out there [in Russia]. A few businessmen own everything. It’s amazing’ - STEPHEN CURTIS

...

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Matthew Brzezinski, Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism’s Wildest Frontier (New York: Free Press, 2001)

Zita Dabars and Lilia Vokhmina, The Russian Way: Aspects of Behavior, Attitudes, and Customs of the Russians (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002)

Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution (London: Little, Brown, 2000)

David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003)

Ian Jeffries, The New Russia: A Handbook of Economic and Political Development (London: Curzon Books, 2002)

Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia (New York: Harcourt, 2000)

Nick Kochan, The Washing Machine (London: Duckworth, 2005)

David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State (London: Yale University Press, 2003)

Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2007)

Elinor Slater and Robert Slater, Great Jewish Men (New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1996)

Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents (London: Penguin Books, 2002)

Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (London: Random House, 2003)

INDEX

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created.

NOTES

Chapter 1

1 Michael Freedman, Forbes, 23 May 2005.

2 Guy Adams, Independent on Sunday, 17 December 2006.


3 James Harding, The Times, 13 March 2007.

4 James Meek, Guardian, 17 April 2006.

5 Sergei Guriev and Andrei Rachinsky, Ownership Concentration in Russian Industry, mimeo, October 2004.

6 Moscow Times, 30 January 2008.

7 Ibid.

8 Elinor Slater and Robert Slater, Great Jewish Men, Jonathan David Publishers, 1996, p. 60.

9 The Times, 7 September 2002.

10 Jonathan Dee, New York Times, 9 September 2007.

11 Forbes, 16 November 2006.

12 Mark Milner and Luke Harding, Guardian, 1 May 2008.

13 Dominic Midgley, Spectator, 8 October 2005.

14 Robert Service, Observer, 22 July 2007.

Chapter 2

1 D. Midgeley and C. Hutchins, Abramovich: The Billionaire From Nowhere, HarperCollins, 2005, p. 55.

2 From www.newyorkerfilms.com, October 2002.

3 BBC News Online, October 2002.

4 Financial Times, 1 November 1996.

5 Speech to the Frontline Club, June 2007.

6 Ibid.

7 7WPS Monitoring Agency, July 2002.

8 Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, Harcourt, 2000, p. 118.

9 Oliver Harvey and Nick Parker, Sun, 16 March 2007.

10 Dominic Midgley, Management Today, 28 October 2004.

11 P. Gumbel, Time, 2 November 2003.

12 Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century, Little Brown, 2000, p. 117.

13 Michael Gillard, ‘From the Kremlin to Knightsbridge’, BBC Radio 4, November 2006.

14 Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand, Random House, 2003, p. 207.

15 M. Kramer, ‘Rescuing Boris’ Time, 15 July 1996.

16 A. Cowell, The Terminal Spy, Doubleday, 2008, p. 56.

17 Kramer, op. cit.

18 Ibid.

19 Klebnikov, op. cit., p. 218.

20 Financial Times, 26 April 2003.

21 Talbot, op. cit., p. 207.

22 Klebnikov, op. cit., p. 201.

23 Talbot, op. cit., p. 207.

24

D. Midgley and C. Hutchins, Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 56.

25 Kommersant, 16 November 1995.

26

Andrew Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia, Granta, 2005, p. 83.

27 John Thornhill, Financial Times, 28 August 1998.

28 See, for example O. Kryshtanovskaya and S. White, ‘The Rise of the Russian Business Elite’, Communist and Post- Communist Studies, 38 (2005), p. 298.

29 Quoted in A. Osborn, ‘The World’s Richest Russian Is Sued for $3 billion in London’, Independent on Sunday, 25 February 2007.

30 Interview with Financial Times, 13 July 2007.

31 P. Boone and D. Rodionov, ‘Rent Seeking in Russia and the CIS’, Brunswick UBS, Warburg, Moscow, 2002.

32 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane, 2007, p. 249.

33 Interviewed in Counterpunch, 27 February 2004.

34 ‘Question Time’, BBC Television, 7 June 2007.

35 M. E. de Boyrie, S. J. Pak and J. S. Zdanowicz, ‘Estimating the Magnitude of Capital Flight Due to Abnormal Pricing in International Trade. The Russia-US Case’, CIBER Working Paper, Florida International University, 2004.

36 Michael Freedman, ‘Welcome to Londongrad’, Forbes Global, 23 May 2005; see R. Skidelsky, St Petersburg Times, 4 January 2003; David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 55.


37 Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 19 April 2000.

38 Nick Kochan, The Washing Machine, Duckworth, 2005, p. 17.


39 C. Freeland, Sale of the Century, Abacus, 2005, p. 180.

40 S. F. Cohen, Failed Crusade, Norton, 2000, p. 122.

41 ‘Why I Became a Russian Oligarch’, Financial Times, 29 June 2000.


42 Quoted in Observer, 30 August 1998.

Chapter 3

1 A. Goldfarb with M. Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident, Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 206.

2

Vladimir Voinovich, ‘Russia’s Blank Slate’, New York Times, 30 March 2000.


3 D. Midgley and C. Hutchins, Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 114.

4 East Constitutional Review, vol. 19, no. 4, Fall 2000.

5 Moscow Times, 7 October 2003.

6 Goldfarb with Litvinenko, op. cit., p. 183.

7 Adi Ignattius, ‘A Tsar is Born’, Time, vol. 170, no. 27, 31 December 2007.

8 J. Laughland, ‘Putin Has Been Vilified by the West – but He is Still a Great Leader’, Daily Mail, 22 September 2007.

9 Vladimir Isachenkov, ‘New Putin Biography on Shelves’, Associated Press, 17 January 2002.

10 R. Polonsky, ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’, New Statesman, 15 March 2004.

11 Speaking to the Frontline Club, 6 June 2007.

12 Ignattius, op. cit.

13 Goldfarb with Litvinenko, op. cit., p. 135.

14 ‘Leaders: Putin’s People, Russia’s Government’, The Economist, 25 August 2007.

15 Labour Minister Sergey Kalashnikov, news conference, 27 October 1999.

16 Interview with Anatoly Chubais, Der Spiegel, 25 September 2007.

17 Speaking on ‘Rich in Russia’, Frontline, PBS, October 2003.

18 ‘Aeroflot, an Oligarch and a Complex Business Deal’, Financial Times, 28 July 2000.

19 P. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, Harcourt, 2000, pp. 286-7.

20 Goldfarb with Litvinenko, op. cit., p. 181.

21 Ibid., p. 182.

22 David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs, Public Affairs, 2002, p. 487.

23 Goldfarb with Litvinenko, op. cit., p. 206.

24 Klebnikov, op. cit., p. 16.

25 Simon Bell, ‘Russian Billionaires Beware’, Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2003.

26 ‘Particulars of Claim: Boris Berezovsky v Roman Abramovich’, Commercial Court, High Court, 8 January 2008.


27 G. York, ‘Kremlin Tightens Muzzle on Media’, Toronto Globe & Mail, 21 November 2000.

28 Vanity Fair, July 2000.

Chapter

1

Jamestown news service, Eurasian Monitor, vol. 6, issue 214, 15 November 2000.


2 A. Goldfarb with M. Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident, Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 237.

3 R. Kay, Daily Mail, 4 September 2008.

4 Patrick E. Tyler, ‘Russian Says Kremlin Faked “Terror Attacks”’, New York Times, 1 February 2002.

5

Ibid.

1 Keith Dovkants, Evening Standard, 3 March 2008.

2 G. Tett, ‘Russian Money Aids a Bear Market’, Financial Times, 7 February 1994.


3 C. Freeland, Sale of the Century, Abacus, 2005, p. 158.

4 Quoted in P. Lashmar, et al., ‘Russians in London’, Independent on Sunday, 12 September 1999.

5 Evening Standard, 11 March 2002.

6 Blavatnik was born in Russia but is now an American citizen.


7

Knight Frank and Citi Bank, Annual Wealth Report, 2007; the rise in the relative prices in London compared to New York partly reflects the heavy depreciation in the dollar in the last three years. Had the dollar remained stable, New York would now be worth around a quarter more in pounds per square foot.

8 Knight Frank, Country Review, 2007.

1 Quoted in Sun, 6 August 2007.

2 Quoted in Financial Times, 27 November 2004.

3 D. Midgley and C. Hutchins, Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 13.

4 Quoted in G. Rayner and O. Koster, ‘Putin “Told Roman to Clean Up His Act”’, Daily Mail, 15 March 2007.

5 Dominic Midgley, Spectator, 8 October 2005.

6 Observer, 24 December 2006.

7 T. Walker and R. Eden, ‘Roman’s Candle’, Sunday Telegraph, 29 October 2006.


8 Quoted in A. Blundy, ‘Cash and Caviar’, Guardian, 8 September 1994.


9 Quoted in L. Thomas, ‘Rich Russians Go on London Spending Spree’, Sunday Times, 13 February 1994.

10 Quoted in C. Toomey, ‘The Tsars Come Out to Play’, Sunday Times, 23 April 2006.

11 Quoted in Stefanie Marsh, The Times, 13 July 2006.

12 Quoted in K. Murphy, ‘Ruble Rousers’, New Republic, 4 February 2007.


13 A. Akbar and A. Osborne, ‘Harvey Nichols Goes East, Independent, 16 April 2005.

14 Quoted in Thomas, op. cit.

15

Ibid.

16

Quoted in V. Groskop, ‘Tsar Attractions’, Guardian, 19 August 2005.


17

Vogue, November 2006.

18

Financial Times, 8 October 2005.

1 International Herald Tribune, 10 March 2007.

2 Quoted in M. Taylor, ‘Salesroom Records Tumbled in a Frenetic Week’, Guardian, 23 June 2007.

3 G. Barker, ‘Party Could Run and Run’, Evening Standard, 9 February 2007.


4 Abigail Asher, Spear’s Wealth Management Survey, Art and Collecting Special, Spring 2007.

5 The Times, 22 August 2006.

6 Asher, op. cit.

7

Express on Sunday, 24 June 2007.

8 Quoted in The Times, 9 June 2007.

9

Ibid.

10

William Hazlitt, Political Essays, 1819.

11 Mike Von Joel, ‘After the Second Home, Mistress and Boat – an Art Collection, That’s the Thing’, State of Art, Spring 2007.


12

Ibid.

13

‘The Great Russian Art Boom’, Channel 4, 28 September 2008.


14 Ibid.

15

The Times, 22 August 2006.

16 Ian Cobain, ‘Usmanov’s responses to Guardian questions’, www.guardian.co.uk, 19 November 2007.

17

See note 1.

18

Andrew Osborn, Independent on Sunday, 11 June 2006.

19 Vogue, November 2006.

20

Stefanie Marsh, The Times, 13 July 2006.

21 Mail on Sunday, 18 March 2007.

22 Quoted in Sunday Times, 13 July 2008.

23 Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary, Harvill Secker, 2007, p. 43.


24 Guardian, 27 February 2003.

25 Mineweb, 15 January 2007.

1 Michael Gillard, ‘From the Kremlin to Knightsbridge’, BBC Radio 4, November 2006.

2 Alan Cowell, The Terminal Spy, Doubleday, 2008, p. 174.

3 Russian money-laundering: hearings before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, US House of Representatives, 21-22 September 1999, p. 191.

4 Khodorkovsky owned 28 per cent of Menatep, which, in turn, owned most of Yukos.


5 Thomas Catan, Financial Times, 16 May 2004.

6 Lucy Komisar, ‘Yukos Kingpin on Trial’, CorpWatch, 10 May 2005.

7 Gillard, op. cit.

8

Quoted in Mail on Sunday, 23 November 2003.

9

Gillard, op. cit.

10

Trade was another widely used means of siphoning off large volumes of money and defrauding Russia. Exporters would report selling at a price well below the actual price received and the difference would be stashed away in foreign bank accounts. Maria E. de Boyrie, Simon J. Pak and John S. Zdanowicz, ‘Estimating the Magnitude of Capital Flight due to Abnormal Pricing in International Trade: the Russia-USA Case’, Center for International Business and Educational Research Working Paper, Florida University, 2004.


11 Lucy Komisar, ‘While Washington Denies Any Problem, Swiss Probe “Missing” $4.8 Billion Loan to Russia’, Pacific News Service, 16 October 2000.

12 Simon Pirani, ‘Oligarch? No, I’m Just an Oil Magnate’, Observer, 4 June 2000.


13 Guardian, 15 December 2001.

14 ‘The Tycoon and the President’, The Economist, 21 May 2005.


15 Valentine Low, ‘Russian Oil Baron Builds £10m Bridge with West’, Evening Standard, 11 December 2001.

16 Guardian, 15 December 2001.

17 Lucy Komisar, ‘Yukos Kingpin on Trial’, CorpWatch, 10 May 2005.

18 Rachel Campbell-Johnston, ‘Walpole’s Coming Home’, The Times, 2 October 2002.

19 Rob Blackhurst, New Statesman, 31 January 2005.

20 Andrew Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia, Granta, 2005, p. 213.


21 Jack, op. cit., p. 310.

22

Quoted in Financial Times, 13 November 2003.

23 Quoted in Marshall Goldman, ‘The Rule of Outlaws Is Over’, Transition Newsletter, Vol. 14/15, 2004.

24

Kim Sengupta, Independent, 20 July 2004.

25 Spectator, 8 October 2005.

26

Sengupta, op. cit.

27

Quoted in A. Higgins and S. Liesman, ‘Markets Under Siege’, Wall Street Journal Europe, 24 September 1998.

28 Quoted in Nick Kochan, ‘Mammon: Russia’s Unorthodox Exile’, Observer, 26 March 2006.

29 Standard Schaefer, ‘Russia: Reforming the Reformers,’ Counterpunch, 27 February 2004.

30

Pirani, op. cit.

31 Schaefer, op. cit.

32

Paul Starobin, ‘A Russian’s Plea to Back America’, BusinessWeek, 14 March 2003.

33 Quoted in Independent, 12 January 2007.

34 Paul Klebnikov, Wall Street Journal, 17 November 2003.

35

See note 1.

36

Quoted in Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, ‘How Democracy Was Rolled Back in Russia’, Wall Street Journal, 8 June 2005.


37

‘Key Shareholder in YUKOS Granted Israeli Citizenship’, Haaretz, 5 November 2003.


1 Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand, Random House, 2003, p. 207.


2 Quoted in ‘Worldbeaters’, New Internationalist, December 2003.


3 The Russian Godfathers: The Fugitive, Oxford Productions, BBC2, 8 December 2005.

4 David Charter and Philip Webster, ‘Groucho Trips up the G8 Spin Doctors’, The Times, 13 July 2006.

5 New Perspective Quarterly, September 2004.

6

Russian Godfathers, op. cit.

7 Dow Jones International News, 17 November 2003.

8 Tony Halpin, ‘Putin Critic Charged with Stealing $13 million from Bank’, The Times, 31 July 2003.

9 ‘There Is Nothing to Take Away from There’, Kommersant, 13 May 2005.

10 Quoted in Mark Franchetti, ‘Russian Threat to Reveal Putin’s Corrupt Aides’, Sunday Times, 24 April 2005.

11 Nick Paton Walsh, ‘Moscow Diary: Crime Pays’, Guardian, 2 April 2005.


12

Gordon Hahn, ‘Managed Democracy? Building Stealth Authoritarianism in St Petersburg’, Demoktratizatsiya, 12, no. 2, Spring 2004, pp. 195-231.

13 Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, Harcourt, 2000.


14 Russia’s GDP in 2004 was $458 billion.

15 Y. Osetinskaya, ‘Thirty-Six Billionaires’, Vedomosti, 13 May 2004.


16 Ibid.

17

Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘Putin’s Militocracy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, 19, no. 4, (October- December 2003), pp. 289-306.

18

A. Cowell, The Terminal Spy, Doubleday, 2008, p. 48.

19 New York Review of Books, 13 April 2000.

20 Sunday Times, 23 December 2007.

21 Guardian, 13 April 2007.

22 Russian Interior Ministry News Bulletin, 11 December 2001.


23 ‘Worldbeaters’, op. cit.

24

Quoted in Michael Freedman. ‘Dark Force’, Forbes, 21 May 2007.

25 Minutes of Evidence Before the Foreign Affairs Committee, HC 495-iii, 18 July 2007.

1 According to some accounts, there were more than three Russians at the meeting, at least initially. See Alan Cowell, The Terminal Spy, Doubleday, 2008, p. 8.

2

Ibid., p. 22.

3

Viv Groskop, interview with Marina Litvinenko, Observer, 3 June 2007.


4 Ibid.

5

Sunday AM, BBC1, 10 December 2006.

6 Thomas de Waal, ‘Murder Most Foul’, Washington Post, 27 July 2008.


7 Gary Busch, a London-based transportation consultant, quoted in Bryan Burroughs, ‘The Kremlin’s Long Shadow’, Vanity Fair, 1 April 2007.


8 Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File, Macmillan, 2007, p. 168.


9 Tom Mangold, ‘The Litvinenko Mystery’, BBC Radio 4, 16 December 2006.


10 Ibid.

11

Sixsmith, op. cit., p. 305.

12 Ibid., pp. 244-5.

13

Moscow Times, 24 April 2007.

14 Newsnight, BBC2, 7 July 2008.

15 The group of three was joined by another man, but only as Litvinenko was leaving. The man’s role remains unclear but he was not contaminated with polonium and is not believed to be a suspect.


16 A. Goldfarb with M. Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident, Simon & Schuster, 2007, Part V: The Return of the KGB.

17 Bryan Burroughs, ‘The Kremlin’s Long Shadow’, Vanity Fair, 1 April 2007.

18 Quoted in C. Shulgan, ‘I, Spy – Russia’s Most Wanted’, Toronto Globe & Mail, 31 March 2007.

19 ‘Litvinenko Poisoning: An Interview with Yevgeny Limarov’, Kommersant-Vlast, 25 June 2007.

20 Sixsmith, op. cit., p. 281.

21 Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘Putin’s Militocracy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 19, no. 4, 2003.

22 Sharon Werning Rivera and David Rivera, ‘The Russian Elite Under Putin: Militocratic or Bourgeois?’, Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 22, no. 2, 2006, pp. 125-44.

23 Arkady Ostrovsky, ‘Yukos Crisis: Putin Oversees Big Rise in Influence of Security Apparatus’, Financial Times, 1 November 2003.

24 Ibid.

1

Quoted in Catherine Belton, Financial Times, 13 July 2007.


2 Keith Dovkants, ‘Abramovich Accused of £5 bn Shares Blackmail’, Evening Standard, 11 October 2007.

3 This account is as reported by Berezovsky. Abramovich and his representatives refused to comment.

4 Kevin Dowling, Sunday Times, 7 October 2007.

5 ‘Berezovsky v Abramovich’, [2008] EWHC 1138 (Comm) (22 May 2008) paras 4(e) and 2; ‘Particulars of Claim’, Berezovsky v Abramovich, High Court, 8 January, 2008, p. 17.

6 Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins, Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 239.

7 Eric Reguly, Toronto Globe & Mail, 12 November 2007.

8 Luke Harding, Guardian, 24 July 2007.

9

Belton, op. cit.

10 Ibid.

11

Andrew Kramer, New York Times, 20 August 2006.

12

Ruling by Justice Clarke, ‘Cherney v Deripaska’ – 2008 EWHC 1530 (Comm), Queen’s Bench Division, High Court, 3 July 2008, para. 58.


13 Belton, op. cit.

14

Quoted in ruling by Justice Clarke, para. 9.

15

Ibid., para. 9.

16 Ibid., para. 166.

17

Sabrina Tavernise, ‘Handful of Corporate Raiders Transform Russia’s Economy’, New York Times, 13 August 2002.


18

Rusal always claimed that the dispute between Cherney and Deripaska was a matter for them and not the company, making the company’s main owner the sole defendant.

19 Ruling by Justice Langley, ‘Cherney v Deripaska’ – 2007 EWHC 965 (Comm) – Case No. 2006 Folio 1218, Queen’s Bench High Court, 3 May 2007, para. 39.

20

Ibid., para. 45.

21

Ruling by Justice Clarke, op. cit., para. 264.

22

Ibid., para. 47.

23 Ibid., para. 10.

24

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Guardian Blog, Guardian, 23 October 2008.


25 Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Nicola Smith, ‘The Secret World of Lord Freebie’, Sunday Times, 10 October 2008.

26 Washington Post, 25 January 2008.

27 John Helmer, ‘Deripaska Settles Big London Claim to Speed Aluminium IPO’, www.johnhelmer.net, May 2007.

28 Quoted in Toronto Star, 13 November 2007.

29 ‘Jim Pettit: Immigration from Russia to the US Seems to Have Peaked and Is Now Falling’, Interfax, 2007.

30

Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File, Macmillan, 2007, p. 135.


31 Belton, op. cit., 13 July 2007.

32 Nicolas van Praet, ‘Magna’s Man in Moscow Remains a Mystery’, Financial Post, 25 August 2007.

33 Financial Times, 19 July 2005.

34 Mail on Sunday, 30 April 2006.

35 St Petersburg Times, 2 May 2006.

36 Terry Macalister. ‘City Are Worried by the Rush to Float’, Guardian, 1 November 2006.

27 Independent, 27 June 2006.

38 Edward Lucas, ‘We Must Be Tough with the Despot’, Daily Mail, 13 July 2007.


39 John Helmer, ‘Cherney and Putin to the Rescue of Russian Aluminium’, Standart News Agency, 4 September 2007.


40 Belton, op. cit.

1

D. Robertson, The Times, 11 October 2008.

2 Geordie Greig, ‘Capital Gains’, Tatler, June 2007.

3

Independent, 17 December 2006.

4 Chris Blackhurst, Evening Standard, 30 April 2007.

5

Daily Mail, 1 May 2007.

6

Quoted in J. Sherman, ‘Super-Rich Barred as Kensington Keeps it in Family’, The Times, 14 November 2005.

7 Helen Davies, Sunday Times, 12 November 2006.

8 Sunday Times, 4 July 2004.

9 Quoted in K. Sekules, ‘The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff’, New York Times, 7 February 2007.

10 Editorial, Spear’s Wealth Management Survey, Winter 2006/7.


11 Rosie Cox, The Servant Problem, Tauris, 2006.

12 Financial Times, 27 October 2007.

13 See, for example, Doreen Massey, World City, Polity, 2007, chapter 2; Chris Hamnett, Unequal City: London in the Global Arena, Routledge, 2003; Greater London Authority, London Divided: Income Inequality and Poverty in the Capital, London, 2003.

14 Evening Standard, 6 July 2007.

15 Simon Parker and David Goodhart, ‘A City of Capital’, Prospect, April 2007.

16 Ajay Kapur et al., ‘The Global Investigator. Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances’, Citigroup Equity Research, 14 October 2005.

17 Luke Harding, Guardian, 14 October 2008.

18

See note 1.

19

Guardian, 25 October 2008.

20 Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 18 October 2008.

Ibid., para. 9.

16 Ibid., para. 166.

17

Sabrina Tavernise, ‘Handful of Corporate Raiders Transform Russia’s Economy’, New York Times, 13 August 2002.


18

Rusal always claimed that the dispute between Cherney and Deripaska was a matter for them and not the company, making the company’s main owner the sole defendant.

19 Ruling by Justice Langley, ‘Cherney v Deripaska’ – 2007 EWHC 965 (Comm) – Case No. 2006 Folio 1218, Queen’s Bench High Court, 3 May 2007, para. 39.

20

Ibid., para. 45.

21

Ruling by Justice Clarke, op. cit., para. 264.

22

Ibid., para. 47.

23 Ibid., para. 10.

24

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Guardian Blog, Guardian, 23 October 2008.


25 Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Nicola Smith, ‘The Secret World of Lord Freebie’, Sunday Times, 10 October 2008.

26 Washington Post, 25 January 2008.

27 John Helmer, ‘Deripaska Settles Big London Claim to Speed Aluminium IPO’, www.johnhelmer.net, May 2007.

28 Quoted in Toronto Star, 13 November 2007.

29 ‘Jim Pettit: Immigration from Russia to the US Seems to Have Peaked and Is Now Falling’, Interfax, 2007.

30

Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File, Macmillan, 2007, p. 135.


31 Belton, op. cit., 13 July 2007.

32 Nicolas van Praet, ‘Magna’s Man in Moscow Remains a Mystery’, Financial Post, 25 August 2007.

33 Financial Times, 19 July 2005.

34 Mail on Sunday, 30 April 2006.

35 St Petersburg Times, 2 May 2006.

36 Terry Macalister. ‘City Are Worried by the Rush to Float’, Guardian, 1 November 2006.

27 Independent, 27 June 2006.

38 Edward Lucas, ‘We Must Be Tough with the Despot’, Daily Mail, 13 July 2007.


39 John Helmer, ‘Cherney and Putin to the Rescue of Russian Aluminium’, Standart News Agency, 4 September 2007.


40 Belton, op. cit.

1

D. Robertson, The Times, 11 October 2008.

2 Geordie Greig, ‘Capital Gains’, Tatler, June 2007.

3

Independent, 17 December 2006.

4 Chris Blackhurst, Evening Standard, 30 April 2007.

5

Daily Mail, 1 May 2007.

6

Quoted in J. Sherman, ‘Super-Rich Barred as Kensington Keeps it in Family’, The Times, 14 November 2005.

7 Helen Davies, Sunday Times, 12 November 2006.

8 Sunday Times, 4 July 2004.

9 Quoted in K. Sekules, ‘The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff’, New York Times, 7 February 2007.

10 Editorial, Spear’s Wealth Management Survey, Winter 2006/7.


11 Rosie Cox, The Servant Problem, Tauris, 2006.

12 Financial Times, 27 October 2007.

13 See, for example, Doreen Massey, World City, Polity, 2007, chapter 2; Chris Hamnett, Unequal City: London in the Global Arena, Routledge, 2003; Greater London Authority, London Divided: Income Inequality and Poverty in the Capital, London, 2003.

14 Evening Standard, 6 July 2007.

15 Simon Parker and David Goodhart, ‘A City of Capital’, Prospect, April 2007.

16 Ajay Kapur et al., ‘The Global Investigator. Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances’, Citigroup Equity Research, 14 October 2005.

17 Luke Harding, Guardian, 14 October 2008.

18

See note 1.

19

Guardian, 25 October 2008.

20 Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 18 October 2008.


FOOTNOTES 1 Mandelson wrote to The Times on 25 October 2008, ‘The Director-General for Trade in the European Commission, David O’Sullivan, confirmed… that I made no personal intervention to support the commercial interests of Mr Deripaska. Mr O’Sullivan explained… that in respect to both the nine-year debate in the EU over tariffs on raw aluminium and to anti-dumping duties on Russian aluminium, the decisions were made ‘after the usual consultation procedures had taken place, including with industry and all 27 European member states, and were based on sound facts.’

Appendix 2 - Fucking Moscow! Sex, Drugs & Vodka

e

#Appendices

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9


This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Note, German CHRIS HELMBRECHT's account of moving to Russia, is right after September 11, 2001. In which he was in NEW YORK CITY when the World Trade Center fell. The original 2013 book is in German and is still available to purchase today on Amazon.com.

Cover

Copyright

© PaulEng.com

CHRIS HELMBRECHT, born in 1971, has been living in Moscow for ten years after working in New York and Tenerife. After a career as a [German] federal police officer and as one of the best extreme snowboarders in Germany, he now runs a creative agency and is one of the best-known party makers and DJs in the city. His blog on stern.de about the wild life in the Russian metropolis caused a sensation. He also writes for various magazines and is the initiator of the English language moscowblog.com. In 2012 he played the leading role in the Russian short film Ya Vernus (Eng. "I'll be back").

More about the author, the clubs and (night) life in Moscow:chrishelmbrecht.com moscow-blog.com

www.weparties.com

Chris Helmbrecht

Fucking Moscow!

Sex, Drugs & Vodka

WILHELM HEYNE VERLAG MUNICH

Preliminary remark

The following descriptions do not claim to be factual. They deal with typified people who could exist in one way or another. These archetypes become part of a work of art through the artistic design of the material and its classification and subordination in the overall organism and become so independent compared to the images described in the text that the individual, personal-intimate is objectified in favor of the general, symbolic of the figures. The text is recognizable for the reader, so the text is not exhausted in a reportage-like description of real people and events, but has a second level behind the realistic level, since the author plays with the entanglement of truth and fiction, which deliberately blurs borders .

Original edition 08/2013

© Chris Helmbrecht. This work was mediated by the literary agency Gaeb

© 2013 by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, in the Random House GmbH publishing group Editor: Elly Bosl Cover design: Stefanie Freischem, yellowfarm gmbh using fotolia.com/tribalium81;istockphoto/fatmayilmaz; shutterstock/FashionB; shutterstock/Alex Moe

Set: Buch-Werkstatt GmbH, Bad Aibling

ISBN: 978-3-641-08381-6

www.heyne.de

Departure

Victor picks me up from the airport. It's gray and cloudy outside at minus 15 degrees. "Welcome to Moscow, the city of sin," he greets me.

Then we are chauffeured in his black Gelandewagen for two hours through the suburbs to the city center, past countless prefabricated buildings and tenements. The closer we get to downtown, the better the houses look. There is snow on the road, but the many dirty Ladas and Volgas drive as if it were summer and the roads were dry. In between there is always a luxury car, often with blue lights and security guards. There is jostling and printing, a miracle that there are no accidents. At some point we get stuck in traffic. The driver turns and looks at Victor without a word. He just nods. Then the chauffeur pulls the car to the right and drives onto the sidewalk. For the next few kilometers we roll past the traffic jam. Every now and then we have to stop at a traffic light, drive around a lamppost or pedestrians. Our driver honks and curses even as he shoos a woman with a stroller in front of him. I'm shocked. Victor just says, »Time is money. I have to get back to the office. If they catch us, we'll just pay a little bribe and then we'll be on our way."

Finally we arrive at Victor's house. He lives in one of the Seven Sisters, one of the Stalin skyscrapers from the 1950s. Victor shows me the apartment and immediately sets off again. "I'll pick you up after work," he says. "Make yourself at home."

When he's gone, I look out the window. The apartment is on the ninth floor and below me lies the city, shrouded in a gray veil of smog and cold. "What a shithole," I think. "This is by far the most terrifying city I've ever seen."

At the moment, however, I prefer this Odnis to Tenerife. Anything is better than the sunny pensioners' paradise where I was still working as Marketing Director a few weeks ago. Actually, everything was relaxed, but then one day one of my two bosses got in touch. "Would you come to my office, please?" he asked. I already suspected nothing good. A little later he actually said, 'I'm sorry, boy. You did a good job, but we didn't get the next round of funding. we have to let you go You are just too expensive. Please hand over your projects to the others. After that you can go.« Then I found out that I was getting paid for the next three months. I just nodded and walked out. Outside, on the office's huge terrace, it was sunny and beautiful. It was February, there was snow everywhere in Europe, but here the thermometer showed 20 degrees plus. I've been out here a lot lately, fleeing the cold and dark office for five minutes, soaking up the sun and looking out to sea. "What the hell," I just thought. It was actually clear that things would not go well with this company for much longer. Somehow I didn't want to give up hope: after almost six years of working in New York and a terrible end, 9/11, the job in Tenerife was a welcome change. BloB wasn't a job anymore. What to do? I still had enough savings to last a few months. And the three paid months, including car and apartment. So look for a job again and then see where to go My phone rang. On the display was a funny number "007... Ah, James Bond," I thought, trying to guess what country code that was.

'Hello Chris, how are you? This is Victor, remember?” Of course, I remembered! Victor is an investment banker originally from Lithuania and one of my New York friends. We met two years ago on a ski trip in Vermont. In New York, Victor, who likes Italian girls, liked to come to the pasta dinners of my Italian girlfriend at the time. I hadn't heard from him since then, other than a few irrelevant emails. "Well, just lost my job," was my slightly depressed reply. 'Come to Moscow,' Victor said spontaneously, 'here the Russian bar is dancing and the ruble is rolling. In earnest. The economy is booming, the party life is amazing and I'm sure you'll find a job here. Actually, I'm calling because I wanted to come visit you. But for now it's best if you come to me first."

That's probably the famous hint, I thought as I sat down at the computer and looked up flights ten minutes later. A week later I was on the plane. Tenerife - Berlin - Moscow. And now I'm here. The first time Victor is trying his best. He takes as much time as he can. While he's working, his driver drives me around town and I go sightseeing. Or I visit strangers with whom Victor made appointments for me. I should get to know the city and make as many contacts as possible. Some of the meetings are already real interviews. But in the end it's always the same:

"Do you speak Russian?"

"No, a week ago I didn't even know I was going to Russia."

"Pity. Your CV is very good, but we can't use you if you don't speak Russian."

I'm not so sure anymore if I want to move here at all. The people on the street scowl. You never smile. It's the same in the offices. Except that the managers still have a considerable portion of arrogance.

"And how was your day?" Victor asks thoughtfully in the evening.

"Not so good. I don't think the city is for me. Neither do the people. Somehow I don't get along with the Russians."

“Bullshit!” replies Victor. “You just have to see behind the hard shell. There is a soft core there. And the women! Yes, they are very special. Come on, let's go to a bar for dinner and then for a drink."

It's been like this every night since I've been in Moscow. Victor takes me to one of the best restaurants in town. We eat and talk. At some point he flirts with the ladies at the next table, and then we go to a bar with the girls. Strangely enough, there are always a lot of girls sitting in the restaurants, usually in pairs in front of a pot of tea. Victor is practiced. He gets the girls ready within a few minutes and brings them to our table. I'm speechless. feel naive I don't know what to do with my interlocutor, because most of them don't speak English, and Victor soon loses interest in translating. In between he says things like: "Man, they're both really hot for you. I told them that you are a DJ living in Spain. On an island.” In fact, that's true. Except I'm not a pro DJ but the former manager of an Internet booth, and that the island is not called "Ibiza" and is not exciting, but that it is a matter of the pensioners' paradise of Tenerife. But how is Victor supposed to know that?

"Which one do you want?"

That's Victor's standard question, and my answer is pretty much always the same: "None." I don't mean to be bitchy, but somehow the girls don't turn me on. I have a communication problem and I'm slowly getting enough of the city.

"OK, OK. Let's go to a club today." Finally, something different. Our driver takes us there. When we arrive there are already Bentleys, big dark SUVs and big Mercedes limousines on the sidewalk.

"What's going on here?" I ask, excited like a little kid in front of a toy store.

"This is Shambala, Moscow's best place, and there's a private party going on at the moment."

"Do we have an invitation?"

"We don't have to," Victor replies a little arrogantly. We pushed past the crowd towards Tur. Victor greets friendly. The guy at the door shakes his head and says something like "Sorry, we're having a private party today" in Russian. Victor reaches into his coat pocket and shakes the doorman's hand. He now nods in a friendly manner and pushes the grid away. Victor pulls me by my jacket into a dark, run-down courtyard. On the left is a door, and from there you can hear the pounding of the bass. Yes, that sounds like a good party. Inside we hand in our jackets. I'm surprised that neither the club nor the cloakroom cost anything.

"How did you get us in anyway?" I ask Victor. He grins and pulls a 1,000-ruble note out of his jacket pocket before handing it over.

'It was even cheaper than I thought. I was counting on 2,000 rubles.' That's about fifty euros. "But then he let us both go for a thousand."

That's how I know Victor, the little rascal.

We go down the stairs. The club is not big but there are two dance floors. One is directly above the other and has a glass bottom. It appears to be closed today. There are a lot of teenagers downstairs. In the whole club, it seems, no one is older than 19, apart from the waitresses and a couple of bodyguards. Otherwise, Victor and I are already the oldest here at over thirty.

"Rich kids," Victor says. “I have no idea what the reason for the celebration is. Maybe it's a birthday, maybe a student party.«

“And the luxury cars out there? Whose are they?”

'The kids, of course. Man, you're in Moscow. Come on, let's go get a drink. They're free today. The children of the rich pay too. Enjoy it.«

Victor pursues his favorite pastime and hits on women. Or should I rather say "little girls"? I'm a little bored, but only briefly, because then I notice that two girls are dancing on the glass dance floor above us. Both are stark naked. After a while you probably can't call it "dancing" anymore, because they play, caress and kiss each other. And again and again they do the splits and press their vagina against the glass. I must have been staring quite a bit, because after a while Victor comes up to me and asks, "Why are you looking so stupid? It's normal here. Come on, let's go over to the stairs, we can see the spectacle better from the side."

"Are the girls here all clean-shaven?" I ask as I watch them chupa chup each other.

"Yes, that's usual," replies Victor confidently. One of the dancers is flirting with me, but I'm not sure if she's serious or if it's part of her show.

When I turn around, Victor has already chatted up two women.

"Hey, this is Chris from the Canary Islands," he introduces me. "He's a pro surfer and DJ." Well, this time he almost got it right. After all, I used to be a professional snowboarder, so the sports equipment looks similar to a surfboard.

"This is Nastia and Sveta," he says. Both are barely older than 18, but look very elegant. They're not the typical suburban girls that Victor usually picks up. Lo and behold, both speak English. After a while I find out that Nastia's father is in the oil business and Sveta's father is a construction worker. I like the girls and I'm waiting for Victor's "Which one do you want?" question. But then someone pushes me from behind. I turn around, a girl is standing behind me. She is beautiful with blonde medium length hair and blue eyes. She must be in her early twenties. Somehow she doesn't fit into this society, her charisma is rather rural and naive. She has a cigarette in her hand and clearly asks for a light, although once again I don't understand anything.

"Sorry, I don't smoke," I reply, she turns away. Somehow the girl looks familiar to me. When I try to get a closer look, she grins at me and pops a chupa chups in her mouth. I have to laugh and go over to her. We try to exchange a few words, but she doesn't speak a word of English. We can't get any further with hands and feet either. I turn to Viktor, but he's gone.

"Sorry, I have to look for my friend," I say. She smiles shamefacedly. "Do not run away."

Victor is standing at the bar talking to another woman. "What about Nastia and Sveta?" I ask. “They both left pretty quickly when you went to see the blonde. They were only interested in you. But don't worry, I have a date for agreed on Sunday. Then it's R 'n' B Night at the Garage Club. It's a good club too. What was that blond angel?'

“That was one of the strippers. Come on! Come along. you have to translate We'll make it clear! And she also had a partner.«

"Hm, that costs money," says Victor.

"Really? Do you think? I have the feeling that this can also be done without.«

"Let's see," says Victor. But by the time we get to the corner where I left her, she's gone.

»Well!«, says Victor, »Someone else was probably faster. Come on, let's go home. I have to work tomorrow.' I'm disappointed, but raved about the 'chupa chups woman' on the way home. Today I liked Moscow for the first time.

Victor and Victoria

The next day Victor comes home earlier. We go to the supermarket around the corner to buy some food. The prices are steep, sometimes even higher than in the Big Apple.

"Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world," says Victor. He explains to me that Russia has a centralized structure and that Moscow is at the center. If you want to do business, you have to go to Moscow, whether you're selling timber from the tropical rainforest or diamonds from the Far East. So a lot of rich businessmen come to the city regularly. Many now even have their own apartments and offices here. Out in the open country there is nothing. If people find work there at all, they don't earn more than 200 euros a month, while here in the city they can get between 1000 and 3000 euros. And there is also the opportunity to make a career here. Young and pretty girls in particular are looking for a rich man who will marry them or keep them as mistresses and pay for them. You can shop cheaply in the markets and on the outskirts of the city, but the center is mostly populated by the rich and the middle class. Life here is correspondingly expensive.

Muscovites call everything up to the third ring road the center, although Europeans tend to think of the area inside the first ring, the so-called Garden Ring, as the center. In the largest country on earth, the dimensions are just different. Officially, Moscow now has around 11 million inhabitants, making it the largest city in Europe. However, Viktor tells me, there are still a few million illegal immigrants and Russians from other regions who mostly live in the suburbs and try their luck as taxi drivers, workers or even as criminals.

When we get home, Victor and I make tea. "Russians don't like coffee," says Victor in a slightly derogatory tone. That's actually always the case when he talks about Russians. Up until now, Victor has always been in my Russian drawer, because I met him through a group of Russians in New York. He is also fluent in Russian and looks typically Russian with his Slavic face and expensive designer clothes. If you ask him about it, Victor gets angry and quickly makes it clear: he is first and foremost a Jew, and Jews didn't have it easy under communism. After perestroika, the young among them could not wait to emigrate, and many took the opportunity to go to Israel. Victor originally comes from Lithuania, then moved to Israel and only studied there, then in the US. Today he has a Lithuanian and an Israeli passport. After his studies he was allowed to stay in the States and started his career as a banker. "Just as I was starting to make some money, the crisis started," he tells me. "That's why I quickly accepted an invitation from a Moscow investment bank." "And? Are you making good money now?' I ask. Victor doesn't like these direct questions. He looks embarrassed, but chance comes to his aid. The doorbell rings.

"Ah, these are the girls."

"What girls?" I ask.

'I forgot to tell you. My girlfriend is coming over and she's bringing a friend for you." "You have a girlfriend?"

I didn't expect that after Victor hasn't missed an opportunity to collect phone numbers from complete strangers over the past few days.

Victor doesn't answer and opens up to the women. The usual procedure takes place in the corridor: the girls take off their heavy fur coats and take off their scarves, hats and gloves. Then they both go to the bathroom to get ready. In the meantime, Victor comes back into the kitchen and is grinning from ear to ear.

"You were lucky. Her friend is better looking than her,' he says. I just nod. The way Victor talks about women always leaves me speechless. Actually, I am not a child of sadness and have already experienced a lot. But somehow I can't get going in Moscow. I don't know if it's the stranger, or the cheap come-on, or the fact that the girls get into it.

»Today it will be something. You lay them down!” orders Victor. "You've been here five days and you still haven't made any clear." Something is happening outside. The girls come out of the bathroom. Both wear fashionable clothes, as for the club or a fine restaurant, not for home. I can see part of the hallway from the kitchen. I'm surprised when I see the two of them opening their large handbags, pulling out a pair of heels each, and putting them on.

"The women here are always very fashionable," says Victor. They also have to look good at home, especially when it comes to a date with an investment banker and his boyfriend. After a style check in the mirror, the girls enter the kitchen and are introduced to me. I feel kind of sloppy and underdressed, because I'm sitting at the table in loose jeans and a casual t-shirt. Worst of all are Victor's Gaste slippers. My grandfather could have owned it too.

"This is Victoria, my friend," Victor says. "And this is her friend, Marina."

I quickly discover that Victoria does not speak English. Marina knows a few words and we can at least talk a little. Victoria, I learn, is in her mid-twenties and comes from a town 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow. She studied business administration and now works for an insurance company. There she earns around 1000 euros. That's not much if you're not from Moscow and have to pay the exorbitant rents. That's where an investment banker like Victor comes in handy. He gives lavish gifts, pays for going out and goes shopping with her. If she's lucky, he'll even invite her on vacation. All this is not uncommon in Moscow. It is part of Russian culture for men to give expensive gifts to women. The more expensive the gift, the greater the love and the greater the affection of the woman. Victoria has brown eyes and brown curly hair. She's actually pretty. Her dress is an expensive original or a good copy of Dolce & Gabbana with a plunging neckline. She has lovely long legs and is wearing stockings, the lace trimmed end of which flashes briefly as she crosses her legs. At the end of the endless legs are fashionable high heels with the longest heels I have ever seen.

Victoria catches me eyeing her and grins cheekily. The face is friendly, but also has something wicked. She wears a lot of makeup, but that's also normal in Russia. whose lace-trimmed end flashes briefly as she crosses her legs. At the end of the endless legs are fashionable high heels with the longest heels I have ever seen. Victoria catches me eyeing her and grins cheekily. The face is friendly, but also has something wicked. She wears a lot of makeup, but that's also normal in Russia. whose lace-trimmed end flashes briefly as she crosses her legs. At the end of the endless legs are fashionable high heels with the longest heels I have ever seen. Victoria catches me eyeing her and grins cheekily. The face is friendly, but also has something wicked. She wears a lot of makeup, but that's also normal in Russia.

"Oh man, those Russian women," I think. “These are particularly pretty creatures. Or maybe rather sexy? A little bit useful too. No, not the vulgar form. More like a first-class call girl.” Marina excuses herself and goes to the toilet for a moment. "Actually, I don't think they're that great," says Victor. "Who?" I ask.

"These," says Victor, nodding at Victoria with a false grin. 'But she's good in bed and I should have a girlfriend to help around the house and give me some stability. Otherwise I'd just be fucking around.” I'm shocked by Victor's openness to Victoria.

"Don't worry," he says. “She doesn't understand anything. She can't speak English."

I am silent and nod. "Maybe that's what you get from consuming one woman at a time," I think.

"Women are a dime a dozen here," says Victor. "It's crazy. As soon as you send one home, the next one is already in front of the door. There are always new ones coming. You're getting younger and younger. All are pretty and know what to do. They come from the suburbs or from the regions. There's a constant flow of supplies."

"Madness," I think. This is no longer real.

Marina is back. I haven't really warmed to her yet. She has long blonde hair and wears a dress in the same style as Victoria. I catch myself wondering if she's also wearing stockings. "So, we'll leave you alone now," says Victor and goes into the bedroom with his girlfriend. "Shall we go to the living room?" I ask Marina. 'It's more comfortable there. do you want a drink Anything other than tea?”

"No thanks, I don't drink," she replies.

I take her by the hand and lead her into the living room. There we sit on the couch and talk. Marina is 27 and works as a doctor in a women's clinic. As a gynecologist, she earns 200 euros a month there. A six-year-old son is waiting for her at home.

“How do you manage in Moscow with so little money? And where's the father?' I ask. “We have an apartment on the outskirts. My family owns it, so we don't have to pay rent. The father is long gone. He was a loser and I left him." "Will he pay for the little one?"

"No. I don't even know where he is. Haven't heard from him in years. I'm making just enough to keep us both going. I also do abortions at the clinic. This is often used here. Especially in the suburbs.'

Suddenly we hear loud moans coming from the bedroom next door. It's getting louder and louder. No, it's not Victoria moaning, it's Victor. I'm a little under pressure, put my hand on Marina's knee and caress it. I slowly run my hand up her leg. She looks at me waiting. The moaning in the next room gets even louder and you can now hear the bed banging against the wall. We look at each other and suddenly have to laugh. Somehow I like Marina, but there is no erotic tension between the two of us. I realize my hand is out of place on her thigh and this woman deserves more respect. A single mother, she makes ends meet with a lion's will to fight. I could probably even sleep with her but that just doesn't feel right. I slowly take my hand off her thigh. She thanks me with an open and nice smile. "Would you like some more tea?" I ask.

'No, I think I'm going home now. My little one is waiting for me. He is alone and it is getting late.”

Marina changes shoes and packs up for the winter. I'll take her down to the street, get her a cab and pay for the ride out to the suburbs. Before she gets in, she kisses me tenderly on the cheek.

"You're a good one. I'm not sure if this city is for you. farewell I hope we'll see each other again,' she whispers in my ear.

When I come back to the apartment, it's quiet. I drink a beer, look out the window and let my mind wander. Russia is a tough country. Not only because of the weather, but also because of the living conditions. no Moscow is not a city for me. Apart from the different culture and the shameless consumption, you have to earn a lot of money to be able to enjoy life here. I prefer to look for another city. Maybe I'll go back to New York... I look at the clock. It's time for bed, but first I'll make myself a cup of tea. As I wait for the water to boil, Victoria comes into the kitchen. She is in panties and has a t-shirt over it.

"Could you please make me one too?" she asks in English.

"What? Do you speak English?' I'm surprised.

'Oh, I guess I gave it away. Yes, I took several Business English courses during my undergraduate studies. But please don't tell Victor about it. He would probably be ashamed.' I don't think so, but it's probably better if I don't interfere in his affairs. "No fear. Where's Victor?” I ask. "He's all set and sleeping." Victoria grins contentedly. Then we sit together at the table and talk for a while. Your English is perfect.

At the garage club

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Two days later. We're meeting the two rich kids from Shambala for R 'n' B night at the Garage Club. Unusual cars are again in front of the door. This time they look like they came straight out of a Playstation game. Japanese and American street racers, pimped up to the point of no longer doing it. Almost all are painted in special colors, some decorated with elaborate airbrush motifs. It's cold outside and there's snow. Loud hip-hop blasts out of the cars, the doors are open and the owners of other cars and hot girls in clothes that are far too tight are standing around. It's still quiet in the club itself, apparently the warm-up is taking place outside. Victor's friend is a real estate agent and one of the owners of the club. We sit at the table with him and talk about the wild 90s in Moscow. Victor's friend distributed Red Bull in Russia until a few years ago. He says that one day he came home and the door to his apartment had been forced open. A couple of big boys were waiting in the apartment and they kindly asked him to hand over the distribution of the energy drink to them. "It was the mafia," he says. There was no point in resisting - he signed. Now he has a better "kryscha," says Victor's friend.

"Krysha?" I ask.

"It means 'roof,' and that means protection," Victor explains. “You can have two kinds of 'kryscha', the secret service, it used to be the KGB, now it's called the FSB. Or the mafia. It's best if you have contact with both of them. You need a "kryscha" if you want to do business."

"From what order of magnitude?" I ask.

“I think you get on their radar, usually by the IRS or your competition, if you're making more than $250,000 a year. Before that, you're too small for one number and they won't bother you unless you're disrupting one of their charges' business.'

"Interesting. How do I have to imagine that in concrete terms?”

“It's like a tax. You give away a certain percentage of your profit or sales. Sometimes it is the whole business if it disrupts their activities or is very profitable.”

Victor's friend adds: “An acquaintance of mine has invested in a computer tomography scanner in a town 300 kilometers outside of Moscow. That was the only device far and wide and became a gold mine. It didn't take long for word to get around and the mafia was at his door. They just took the thing from him. Thank God the device ran long enough to recoup the acquisition costs. So he didn't lose any money, but he didn't win any either."

Then our two girls finally come to our table. They move gracefully like models and I wonder how many hours they've practiced in front of the mirror. Victor's friend says goodbye. He has to go home to his wife, he says. Nastia and Sveta look even better than a few days ago. We'll order a few drinks and talk. Unfortunately, the conversation is superficial, arrogant and just too shallow for me. We only met briefly at Shambala, but the girls there were very different. It must have been the alcohol - either my level or hers. After a while I get bored with the chatter. I decide to go to the bar. First to get a drink, but maybe I can find better entertainment there. The club is slowly filling up but apparently it's still too early. Well, it's half past midnight on a Sunday night. What to expect Victor said the club fills up after one o'clock. Let's see.

"Barkeeper! Another Red Bull vodka, please.” Two women are sitting at the bar. A dark blonde with a good figure and a pageboy cut and a small brown-haired woman with slightly Asian eyes. Should I speak to her? No, there's bound to be something better. The bartender puts my drink at the bar for me and then talks to the girls. They seem to be friends. I decide to pretend to wait for my drink a little more. I just can't go back to our table. Suddenly Victor is standing in front of me.

"Man! These women are so stupid. That is not how it works."

I nod.

"What about these two?" he asks. I shrug disinterestedly, but Victor doesn't even wait for my answer before addressing the two of them. I can already imagine what nonsense he is talking about again. This is Chris, superstar, DJ, helicopter pilot and so on. After five minutes he turns to me: “These are two ballerinas from the Bolshoi Theater. Great, is not it? Which one do you want?”

"If I have to, I'll take the blonde," I answer sullenly. The constant teasing is getting on my nerves. The brown-haired girl, I learn, is called Lili and is the daughter of one of Russia's biggest mafia bosses. Lili isn't particularly tall, a bit more powerful, and you wouldn't think at first glance that she was dancing in the best ballet in the world. She has a Russian pop star as a boyfriend and is part of Moscow's better society.

Victor grabs my hand and pushes me to the blonde. »This is Julia, she is also a ballerina at the Bolshoi.«

He says it so proudly, as if he has known Julia since childhood. We introduce ourselves and shake hands.

“So, ballerina at the Bolshoi. Is that a big deal?” I ask. She immediately lectures me: "The Bolshoi is the best ballet in the world."

“These are stars!” adds Victor.

“Ah, sorry. I'm an art philistine.” She takes it easy. Then I casually add, "But I've had a ballerina girlfriend before. Back in New York. She was with Alvin Ailey, but that's more modern dance." Victor finds that the two rich goren have moved on.

"Shall we sit down at the table again?" he asks. The two girls are interested and come with me. Then we talk the rest of the night.

Julia is interesting and at first I didn't realize what a top physique she has. She is 24 years old and has been dancing at the Bolshoi since she was young. Her mother was a prima ballerina herself and now trains her. Her stepfather was the director of the Bolshoi, but is already retired.

Also, Julia had been dancing in Valencia for six years before coming back.

"What? Volunteering from Spain to Moscow?” I ask.

“Like I said, the Bolshoi is the best group in the world, and Moscow is my hometown. I wanted to go back, but today I sometimes regret the step. Maybe I'd be happier in Spain.'

As it turns out, Julia speaks very good English and fluent Spanish.

"The manager here is our friend," she explains. “We're here almost every Sunday because we have to dance over the weekend. Our day off is Monday.«

'Ah, that's good. I work tomorrow and Chris flies back on Wednesday. He could use an English-speaking guide,” says Victor.

Julia isn't too enthusiastic about the idea: »Let's see. Maybe,” she simply replies.

Around three o'clock in the morning it's time to go home. Lili has her own driver who is waiting for her outside in the black BMW 6 Series. Julia accepts Victor's offer to drive her home. He sits in the front with his driver while I talk to Julia in the back. "Can I see you again before I go?" I ask cautiously.

"Here's my number, call me tomorrow and we'll see." When we get there, I get out first and open the door for her. She likes that and gives me a kiss on the cheek to say goodbye. Then we drive to Victor's and I text her goodnight. She does not answer.

"So what do you think of them?" asks Victor.

'I wasn't interested at first. But when I spoke to her, I realized how beautiful and charming she is. And she's intelligent too. Great woman!"

"N / A? Someone has a crush on them, huh?” Victor replies.

"Crush? That would probably be an exaggeration. But she certainly impressed me and is the best girl I have met in Moscow so far«.

"Well, maybe there'll be something with that Moscow one-night stand after all..."

'Not so sure. She said she has a boyfriend."

"That doesn't mean much here," Victor replies.

The next day I call Julia, but she doesn't answer the phone. After three attempts I give up, I don't want to be pushy. In the evening Victor is more disappointed than I am. He really wants me to have sex before I fly back to Spain. Somehow I have a feeling he's looking for a boyfriend to go around town with and pick up women with. Therefore, if I had a reason to come back to Moscow, he would be quite pleased. However, I'm not sure if a one night stand would be reason enough to move to this horrid city. I used to compare New York to Sodom and Gomorrah, but Moscow seems a thousand times worse and far more decadent.

The next day I text Julia again. I would really like to see her before I fly back. During the day, however, there is radio silence, I am disappointed. Maybe Victor is even right about me having a bit of a crush. When Victor finally gets home from work, we go to a sushi restaurant. On the way he calls Lili and tries to invite both of them. When he hangs up, he grins: "They're just dancing, but we'll meet them after their performance and go for a drink."

I am content and thinking about how to behave. Around eleven we meet the girls in a bar. I flirt with Julia like a champion and I'm successful. First she takes my hand, then we get closer. When Lili wants to leave, Victor takes the initiative and invites them both over. Lili and Julia are coming with me. We'll keep drinking at home. Victor entertains Lili so that she doesn't leave too early. When Julia and I finally kiss, Lili goes home and Victor goes to bed. Finally we have time for ourselves. The night is spent! We're having sex and it's the best we've had in a long time. Then we lie in bed together and talk. When I hold Julia in my arms, I feel energy flowing between the two of us. It goes so far that we both start to tremble and then press each other even tighter. She has to leave at eight o'clock: "I have to be at training at ten and before that I have to go home and get ready."

"Will it work?" I ask with a bad conscience.

"It has to be, but it was worth it," Julia purrs contentedly, and we say goodbye with a long kiss. Then I pack my things. Meanwhile, Victor comes out of the bedroom.

"Well finally! Chris scored. But that was on the very last printer.«

"And not only that..." I add. “Now I actually have a bit of a crush. The woman is just great and in bed a bomb.«

"Well then I can send you home with peace of mind, right?"

An hour later we are already on our way to the airport. It's snowing badly. Again we drive on the six-lane outer ring road, the MKAD, past the prefabricated buildings of the suburbs. Our Gelandewagen lurches around trucks and slow-moving Ladas. From time to time it also goes over the hard shoulder if there is no other way to get past it. There are numerous stranded vehicles, but we always manage to just avoid them. Our heavy vehicle swerves several times, but the driver gets it under control every time.

Victor is silent. I look at the speedometer from behind and I'm worried. No, not about missing my flight. I have all the time in the world, there's no more job waiting for me, and another evening with Julia would suit me. No, I'm worried about my life, because our off-road vehicle is racing down the snow-covered slope at up to 150 km/h. There are unannounced lane changes across six lanes. Our driver does not know the word »minimum distance«. It seems as if he is trying to force the Lada in front of us off the road.

"Victor," I say softly. 'It's not so bad if I miss my flight. I'm about to pee my pants from fear. My life is more important to me.«

»Haha, you extreme snowboarders are scared? That's supposed to mean something. It's not really about you. I have to get back to the office because I have a meeting at eleven. Afraid you've got to go through that, boy."

After a horror drive we finally arrive at the airport. Victor says something in Russian to his driver and gives him an appreciative pat on the shoulder. I have weak knees.

“Now you have to go on alone, because I'm running out of time. Take care and let's talk on the phone at the weekend.« I thank Victor for his hospitality and caring. After that I run to the terminal. "Why is your face so pale?" asks the nice lady at check-in. I'm just in time. "Nothing," I reply. "Had a long night." "Well, I hope she was pretty and it was worth it." "Yes, she was," I say, grinning. “Then come back to Moscow soon and fly with our airline. Departure Zone A, Gate 10. Hurry up, passport control and security always take a while.” As we take off, I see the gray and desolate Moscow suburbs out the window. I'll review the last few days. No, Moscow is not for me, I'm looking forward to my warm Tenerife. But Julia was great. I grin to myself and feel a pleasant feeling in my stomach area. "They must be the famous butterflies in your stomach," I think when we fly out of the clouds and after ten days I finally see the sun again. Farewell to the island Six months later, in August, I drive to the south of Tenerife to pick up Julia from the airport. We've sent each other lots of emails and talked on the phone a lot over the last few months. How will the reunion be? I don't actually know her at all. She's quite brave to just fly into the unknown like that. When we meet again at the terminal, Julia hugs me and we kiss. There it is again, that feeling. All is well. My apartment in the north impresses her. The rooms all have a glass wall facing the sea. The beach is right in front of us and my terrace is three times the size of the apartment itself. "And this is the guest room," I say as I wheel Julia around. "Then I'll sleep here," Julia says, and I'm not sure if that's a question or a statement. "No," I say, "of course you'll sleep in my room." The week we spend together flies by. Julia shed a few tears when we say goodbye at the airport. "When will we meet again?" she asks. “I don't know, I can't say yet. I'm still a bit haphazard at the moment." Then Julia is already on her way. I stand with my car on Medano Beach and watch your plane take off. Then I drive back north. As I come over the hills, the sun is just setting in the west. Like almost every day, it falls into the Atlantic, followed by a red glow in the sky. "Should I go back to New York?" I think. Or maybe to Moscow? I can't decide and stay here for now. I still have enough money. My landlord calls at the end of September. "And?" he asks. "Are you going to renew the lease for another year?" I spontaneously say: "No, I'm moving to Moscow." After the interview, I phone Victor and ask him if I can live with him until I find a job and a place to live. "Of course!" he says. "That's great news. We shall have plenty of spades.' Then I book my flight. However, my things have to go to my mother in Bamberg first, because I'm traveling into the unknown. Who knows how long I will stay in Moscow? At the beginning of October I leave Tenerife with 180 kilos of luggage. Outside the sun is shining and it's still 30 degrees. The other tourists are amazed when I check in a snowboard in Tenerife, among other things. Julia Three months after moving to Moscow, I move in with Julia. We found a cheap apartment in the middle of the city. Now we live at the metro station Mayakovskaya. From there, Julia doesn't have to go far to the Bolshoi. I pay almost all the rent. Julia adds a symbolic amount, because as a ballerina she earns less than 1000 euros a month, and the apartment alone costs 800 euros to rent. The apartment has three rooms but is horribly furnished. Pink curtains with lace at the ends hang in the bedroom. The kitchen is spartan and the gas stove is from the 80s. I don't care about any of that. The main thing is that I'm with Julia. I think I found my dream woman. Julia is intelligent, looks good and anticipates my every wish. She goes to training in the morning It's May and not far away from Julia's birthday. We talk about their party that evening and I learn that in Russia you invite your friends to a restaurant. That costs around 1000 euros. In return, you get quite expensive gifts from them. Julia expects gifts worth two to three hundred euros from her friends. "Man oh man," I think. »How much do I have to invest then? I haven't had much work for the past few months and I'm running out of money.« That evening we have sex and then fall exhausted into the duvets and sleep. Before I can away, I think, "What a woman! direct hit. I want to marry her.« The next day, Julia gets up on the wrong foot because she provokes a fight in the morning, even though there is no reason for it. This is the beginning of the end. From that day on it just keeps getting worse. Julia seems dissatisfied with me, my income and my social status. On the other hand, she keeps telling me that she loves me. Two months later I'm still unemployed and I'm definitely running out of money. Julia has the summer off and wants to go on vacation. When I tell her that I can't afford it at the moment, she is disappointed. "In Russia, a man pays for his wife," she says, rubbing salt into my open wounds. I'm at the end. Now I'm in a totally foreign country, trying to find my way around and earn money, already feeling overwhelmed by the situation, and now my only reference person, my girlfriend, calls me a loser too. I want to cry. But that's no use. I've never been one to give up. After a short time I catch myself and hit back verbally. "Are you crazy? Do you even know why I'm here and why I'm in this bad situation? Because of you, Julia. Because of you. I came for you!” I yell at her. After that Julia is calm. A week later we book the holiday. I borrowed money from my mother and Julia is paying her own share. The FSB secret service After three months in our small apartment at the Mayakovskaya metro station, we move into an apartment owned by Julia's family. After communism, the families who lived in one of these apartments received it as a gift. Mind you, only the apartment, but not the plot of land on which the house stands, which often leads to problems today when the city sells the land to a construction tycoon who wants to build a modern block of flats instead of the old Stalin prefabricated building. It can happen that hit gangs show up and persuade the residents to sell, or the old owners are resettled in worthless new prefabricated buildings in the suburbs. As is so often the case in Russia, the whole thing is of course completely legitimate and even supported by the police. Julia's family owns several apartments. It's a nice 1960's house, relatively clean and quiet. Unfortunately it's not exactly in the centre, but it's also only twenty minutes away by car or metro, which is still considered central in Europe's largest city. The first few months pass quietly. I meet Kolya at a family dinner. Married to Julia's cousin, he is a senior executive at Yukos. He currently lives in Singapore and runs the Asian operations of Russia's largest oil company. Kolya first lived with his wife in our apartment and later bought his own nearby. His apartment has 160 square meters, a lot of rooms, its own sauna and jacuzzi. The kitchen is fantastically furnished. The audio system and home cinema with giant plasma screen are not bad either. Kolya's wife still lives with their son in the magnificent apartment. The boy should go to school in Russia and grow up there. Also, the rest of the family lives just a walk away. So do we. That evening we drink a lot of vodka with Julia's father and Kolya. It's the second binge with Julia's family, and I'm proving it stability. Julia's father adds: "I have no idea where that skinny boy puts all the vodka, but respect. He can drink like a Russian«. When he says that, I feel honored. Kolya winks at me and we down another vodka while the women at the table roll their eyes. Only a few weeks later, Kolja has long since returned to Singapore, the boss and owner of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is pulled out of his private jet at Novosibirsk airport and arrested. He must have made a few strategic mistakes and fallen out with Putin. He is now facing charges of tax evasion. The family is insecure. What will become of Kolya now? In our apartment there is still an award that he received from his boss for his services. Kolya decides to stay in Singapore. His wife and son fly to visit him regularly. Then the rumor goes around in the family that Kolya is also wanted. His former assistant was picked up by secret service people and disappeared for a week. Her husband had sounded the alarm. The family gets involved, let relationships play, and after a week the poor woman is released. She is driven directly from the FSB building to the airport and she takes the next flight to Singapore with her family. The move will be processed later. The FSB is the domestic secret service, you could say something like the Stasi in the former GDR. I ask my Russian friends whether the FSB is as well organized as the Stasi was back then, but they only laugh and say: »You Germans have always done everything to perfection. We Russians are not that good«. One has to imagine the FSB to be correspondingly chaotic. To this day I have not found out how deep the FSB's spying goes, although I have been in contact with the secret service. and she takes the next plane to Singapore with her family. The move will be processed later. The FSB is the domestic secret service, you could say something like the Stasi in the former GDR. I ask my Russian friends whether the FSB is as well organized as the Stasi was back then, but they only laugh and say: »You Germans have always done everything to perfection. We Russians are not that good«. One has to imagine the FSB to be correspondingly chaotic. To this day I have not found out how deep the FSB's spying goes, although I have been in contact with the secret service. and she takes the next plane to Singapore with her family. The move will be processed later. The FSB is the domestic secret service, you could say something like the Stasi in the former GDR. I ask my Russian friends whether the FSB is as well organized as the Stasi was back then, but they only laugh and say: »You Germans have always done everything to perfection. We Russians are not that good«. One has to imagine the FSB to be correspondingly chaotic. To this day I have not found out how deep the FSB's spying goes, although I have been in contact with the secret service. but they just laugh and say: »You Germans have always done everything to perfection. We Russians are not that good«. One has to imagine the FSB to be correspondingly chaotic. To this day I have not found out how deep the FSB's spying goes, although I have been in contact with the secret service. but they just laugh and say: »You Germans have always done everything to perfection. We Russians are not that good«. One has to imagine the FSB to be correspondingly chaotic. To this day I have not found out how deep the FSB's spying goes, although I have been in contact with the secret service. Half a year later. It's Monday morning, eight o'clock. Julia is free, lies in bed next to me and watches TV while I check my e-mails. Suddenly the doorbell rings. We generally don't answer the door if it's not a registered visitor. Because then it's peddlers or gypsies who want to beg. But the ringing doesn't stop, it gets stronger until the people outside finally ring the bell. I get enough in about fifteen minutes and storm the door in anger. When I open the door to the anteroom, I'm grabbed and pushed roughly against the wall. Two unassuming looking men are standing in front of me. They chatter to me in Russian and I try to teach them that I'm German and don't speak Russian. One of them holds out an ID card to me. The other a copied warrant, on which I recognize a picture of Kolya. Ah, the secret service. "Now what?" I think. Julia stays silent in the apartment. One of the guys is holding me against the wall, the other is about to go into the apartment when the neighbor shows up. Apparently they rang her bell too. The neighbor explains to the gentlemen that I'm German and that Kolja hasn't lived here for years. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. "Now what?" I think. Julia stays silent in the apartment. One of the guys is holding me against the wall, the other is about to go into the apartment when the neighbor shows up. Apparently they rang her bell too. The neighbor explains to the gentlemen that I'm German and that Kolja hasn't lived here for years. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. "Now what?" I think. Julia stays silent in the apartment. One of the guys is holding me against the wall, the other is about to go into the apartment when the neighbor shows up. Apparently they rang her bell too. The neighbor explains to the gentlemen that I'm German and that Kolja hasn't lived here for years. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. the other is about to go into the apartment when the neighbor shows up. Apparently they rang her bell too. The neighbor explains to the gentlemen that I'm German and that Kolja hasn't lived here for years. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. the other is about to go into the apartment when the neighbor shows up. Apparently they rang her bell too. The neighbor explains to the gentlemen that I'm German and that Kolja hasn't lived here for years. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. The neighbor gets louder, yells at both of them, finally I'm let go. I start ranting in German, threatening with a message and consequences. I'm sure they don't understand me, but that can't hurt at the moment. The two decide to retreat and leave the antechamber in silence. The neighbor then talks to Julia. She's still pretty shocked. »How did they even know that we were at home?« asks Julia. "Of course," I state, "they checked the phone and noticed that it was busy because I was on the internet." Then we call the rest of the family. At the same time, other family members were also visited and interrogated. Apparently, the FSB really didn't know that Kolya has been living in Singapore for a long time. But I'm also aware now that I've landed on the Secret Service's radar. What is this German doing in Kolja's apartment? What does he know? Does he have anything to do with Yukos? These are certainly the questions that the clerks at the secret service also ask themselves. Our phone often clicks quite strangely, sometimes there is no connection at all. I'm sure our landline and cell phones are bugged. Sometimes I call my mother and even joke about it. If the line clicks again, we'll send it a few nice greetings to the people on the other end. My mother worries a little, but gradually takes it easy and even laughs about it. It's also a good story for friends back home in Bamberg. It's not often that something like this is said. A few months later I get a call from Kolya. His wife and son have now also moved to Singapore because it is now clear that he is wanted in Russia and cannot come back. A week after his wife moved out, his luxurious apartment was broken into. And this despite the fact that you need one key to get into the fenced area of the house and another to get into the house itself. Then you have to go to a concierge. Upstairs you need a third key to get into the antechamber and two more to open the security door. The apartment is also secured with an alarm system. When the alarm goes off, a heavily armed police unit will be at the door within five minutes, checking on things. "The Secret Service?" I ask. "Whoever. You didn't steal anything. The police were there later too. Too late. They investigate against unknown. I wanted to ask you if you don't want to move in with Julia. I think it's safer then and they'll think twice before bothering the German." "Sure, we'll move in with you. That's a great apartment too." "You don't pay anything, of course, except for the running costs for electricity and heat, etc.," says Kolya generously. A week later we move in and I enjoy the luxury of his beautiful apartment, although I feel like I'm being watched at every turn. Here, too, the telephone clicks. In fact, I'm sure our internet traffic is logged and monitored. Sometimes I go looking for bugs. Who knows what they left here when they broke in. Lili, Julia's friend and mafia boss's daughter, brings in a specialist who searches everything with equipment, but can't find any cameras or bugs. Then, one afternoon, there are suddenly several armed police officers with Kalashnikovs and bulletproof vests in front of the door. I can see them standing in front of the door thanks to the video surveillance. Unfortunately, I'm home alone and the shock from the last FSB visit is still in my bones. I decide not to open the door and hide while I alert Julia on my cell phone. She calls the family and their lawyer. In the end it turns out that the alarm system triggered an alarm, although it was actually turned off. Kolja's mother lives nearby and comes by to deal with the police. I stay nervous in the back room for so long. Was it really a false alarm, or was it the Secret Service again, on their way to a small spot check? To finally find out who is this German who lives there in Kolya's apartment? You have to register in Russia at a place of residence. However, I'm registered elsewhere because it's easier that way. So the bureaucracy doesn't know where to put me. Proper vodka drinking "Are you coming to my family's for dinner?" Julia asks. "No, I don't want to," I reply. "It's just going to be another big spree anyway." "You don't have to drink so much," says Julia. "Oh yes? And if I don't, I'll be the foreign pussy afterwards." "What a crap. This isn't a drinking contest where you have to prove your masculinity, it's a family dinner.” "Does your father know that too? I can still remember the last time.« "The one where you almost didn't make it home?" Julia asks and grins. 'It's your own fault if you drink so much. We warned you." In Russia, drinking is part of everyday life. Men prefer to drink vodka, whiskey or cognac. The women stay with Krimsekt or sweet wine. I've been in Moscow for a few years now and I think I finally got the hang of it. Here are my tips for drinking vodka and how to avoid total failure and a nasty hangover: It doesn't matter whether I'm going to a business meeting or a private party: I eat something beforehand, even and especially when the meetings are in restaurants. Because the first two to three vodka are poured right at the beginning, before there is anything to eat. It has to be strong and as greasy as possible. Sausage or cheese with lots of bread. Adenauer advised his entourage on the way to Moscow to drink a lot of oil before meeting with the Soviets in order to prevent the vodka situation. If I can, I pour my own vodka. Then you can pour about 10% under the rim and thus have less in the glass, and small animals also suck, especially when you have to drink ten to fifteen vodka in the evening. The Russians always fill the glass to the brim, but foreigners are forgiven for a lot. Later you can pour less, or just drink half. In the heat of the moment, the others don't even notice that your glass is only half full. But that's only possible when the rest of the round is already well seated. As a welcome, there is the first vodka. Depending on the host's preference, there is the gentle variant in small shot glasses, or the flatter, the long 0.2l glass, half full. The Russians measure vodka in grams. A shot glass is 25 grams, the flattener is 100 grams. In any case, there is vodka without ice and you drink the glass in one gulp. You don't mix it, the good vodka, that would be a break in style. The Russian's heart breaks when he sees vodka being consumed in German nightclubs and restaurants. In the best case you have a glass of water or juice next to it and you are allowed to rewind. A toast is always included. There are many rules when it comes to drinking vodka. If you drink alone, you are an alcoholic. If you drink without a toast, i.e. without a reason, then too. The hosts speak first, after that there's one about every 15 minutes, and after each toast the vodka is geext. The order of who has to make the toast and when is determined by the ranking and importance of the guests present. At some point it's your turn, and you should think about what you're going to say beforehand. It should be profound. Personal and as warm as the heart after a downed vodka. It can't be cheesy and cheesy enough. I like to be inspired by 70s hits from Dieter Thomas Heck's hit parade. After the fifth or sixth vodka, reproachful looks hail from the women present. First they try it with their husbands, but they are used to it and ignore them. So the entire women's group turns to the foreign guest. It would be laughable if they didn't succeed in forcing at least this one to his knees and thus curbing the men's drinking. 'Do you really want to drink that much? You will feel bad tomorrow. You don't have to be there, you know?" It starts out friendly but gets more energetic from vodka to vodka. The women try to intimidate you, while the men make it clear through their looks and requests for a drink that you're a wimp if you don't continue. Eventually you feel all the alcohol. One gets slightly dizzy, and somehow the words don't want to come out of the mouth as clearly as one actually thinks them. Then it's time to go through the mental checklist. have i eaten enough It's best to push something greasy afterwards. And water? Did I drink enough water in between? It helps to dilute the vodka with plenty of water or juice (in the belly) during the 10-15 minute breaks. So pour another glass of water straight away. And then you slowly get better. You mumble less and your senses are ready for action again. The women now become even more energetic and do everything they can to eliminate you. The vodka glass can disappear there, or you can find it filled with water. In any case, you should grin when the host wants to refill. Oh, my glass was accidentally taken down, may I have a new one, please? The host grins back and the men have just scored a bonus point while the ladies roll their eyes in mild irritation. When it really gets too much, I only drink half a glass. As I said, the others often don't even notice, or they simply ignore it. In any case, you don't lose face that way. It gets really fun at the end. The women clear the table and retire to the kitchen to have a leisurely smoke and gossip about the stupid men. "Quick," says the host, "let's have another one without the bitching bitches." Immediately afterwards he goes to the cupboard and asks: "Tequila, cognac or whiskey?" Oh dear, now it's really getting started. The women know the game and ignore us and the other drinks as they come back to the table and serve dessert. After that, things will calm down for the men, too. "And? Let's have another one,' I ask cheekily. The women go through the roof while the men nod wearily. And of course we drink at least two or three vodka until finally the door closes behind me and we go down in the elevator. "Did that have to be?" asks Julia. “No, but I didn't really want to come either, because I find these family evenings boring. You wanted me to be there, and I was just following the custom.' 'What customs? Nobody made you drink that much, did they?' “Well, there was a bit of indirect coercion. If I hadn't been drinking with them, I wouldn't be a real man to them." "That's rubbish!" 'Those are men's things, you have no idea. It's not even Russian,' I slur and stagger home. The Russian women thing Paul is my first German contact in Moscow. My sister knows the mother of a Berlin friend of his. They often chat on the internet and found out that we both just moved to Moscow. I only meet Paul five months after arriving in Moscow. We instantly like each other and have a lot in common. While "Altmanner skateboarding" in a skate park in Moscow's suburbs, Paul sees my board. The luggage tape with the flight number of my entry to Russia is still stuck to the underside. "Aha, so you flew to Moschkau on October 16," says Paul in his best Swabian. "Yes, exactly. You too? That's crazy." Then it turns out that we were both on the same plane. Both on their way to live in Moscow. Two years later. "Dude, I got a new girlfriend last weekend," Paul says on the phone. “She's a bit young, but so cool and so sexy. She just wants to fuck all the time and anticipates my every wish.« "Sounds familiar," I reply and give Paul the short version of my theory that German men and Russian women don't mix well and that the relationship usually ends in drama. I'm not only referring to my own experiences. Over the years I've seen too many love affairs and even marriages break up, and the reasons for breakups were similar. Russian men grow up well protected by the women in their families. They don't have to worry about anything and are usually very dependent when it comes to housework, clothes or everyday life. Mom takes care of everything and makes the necessary decisions. Later one of the friends takes over. This usually happens in their mid-twenties. Single twenty-five-year-old women in Russia feel like thirty-five and are in a hurry to finally get under the hood. The newly married couple then either move in with one of the parents, or they are provided with an apartment by the family. The girlfriend then takes on the role of mother and is in charge. This may not coincide with the macho image that we Germans have of Russian men, Russian women acquire the necessary skills at an early age and do not see any other role models in their families. This is expressed in concrete terms in many areas of daily life. Russian women never carry their suitcases themselves. Not even when the man is already fully laden and time is running out. Not even two meters, because it's all about the principle. That's his problem and he has to take care of it. The men generally take out the garbage. And sometimes you stand in the doorway fully dressed, on your way to a business meeting or a family celebration. "You can't leave the house like that," she says, even though you're wearing the suit, which was OK last time. You made the mistake of not asking if you could wear that exact outfit. In this case, there is no chance even if we're already way too late because she was idling in front of the mirror all the time. It's the same when shopping in the supermarket. The man pushes the shopping cart and has to pay, but that also limits his rights. The selection of the products that end up in the shopping cart is made by the woman. This list of examples could go on for several pages, but I think you get the point. But that alone is not enough. There are other points of friction in a German-Russian relationship. Russians like it very emotional. An emancipated partnership based on partnership, as we know it in Germany, is too boring for the Russians. No, if you don't fight, you don't love each other. Thus, arguments are regularly conjured up out of nowhere just to get the other to prove their love. Not answering a Russian woman's argument, or even being defensive and trying to appease her, means you don't love your Russian woman. If you want to infuriate a Russian woman, all you have to do is try to placate her or let her go nowhere. It only causes the opposite, and the dream woman becomes a fury. it goes so far and I speak from my own experience that the Russian woman hits you angrily with her fists. After all, it's about love. Another point is the gift thing. The more you love your Russian wife, the bigger the gifts must be. You have to invest in your wife to avoid problems. The expenses depend on the woman's age, social status and previous experiences with other men. If you only invest minimally, you quickly run up. Incidentally, the amount of the expected sum is related to the man's income and should hurt him. Only then will the gift of love be accepted. This applies to Christmas and birthdays as well as to everyday life. There are no small gifts. Foreign men and Germans in general are often referred to as "stingy" by the women in Moscow's party scene. As a foreigner, you don't stand a chance with many women, because word has gotten around that that we never spend as much money as a Russian. It's also not uncommon in rich circles for a model to get a car the next day after a one-night stand. And we're not talking about a small car here, but a BMW 6 Series or something like that. Of course there are exceptions among women, but they are very rare and it is more likely to win the lottery than to find the right woman here. I've seen all of this over and over again over the past few years. In my own relationship, but also with friends and acquaintances. It's always the same: the Russian woman reads her husband's every wish from the eyes. Eventually, when she feels secure and superior in the relationship, the tide turns and she becomes a bitching bitch. With some you notice this after a short time, with others only afterwards months. The whole thing has nothing to do with women who are keen on a foreign passport. Or the so-called »gold diggers«, who only care about money. They abound in Moscow's "everyone consumes everyone" mood. "No. No,” Paul says, like everyone else, when I offer them my opinion on Russian-German relations. »Mine is completely different«. "Let's hope so," is my standard response. A few years later, his relationship is in bad shape. Paul doesn't want to put up with his “No. No« remember. A short time later he breaks up and soon after leaves for San Francisco. The Russia lover has become a realist. The oligarch Oligarch is a word that is used a lot in Russia. Millionaires are called oligarchs by the people, and as is well known, there are many of them in Moscow. The real oligarchs, however, are a dozen billionaires at the top of Russian society. Many of them made their money in the wild 90's. Most have gone to great lengths and appropriated some of the state-owned enterprises through fraud or blackmail. Some of today's oligarchs come from the environment of Boris Yeltsin, they are called "the family" because he gave them rich gifts during his tenure. Even Yeltsin's personal driver has become a millionaire thanks to him; he was given land and a magnificent city villa by the president. Some of the billionaires are on Putin's side. The others are now in jail or have fled to England or Israel. After Putin came to power, there was a deal between him and the oligarchs: "You can keep what you've misappropriated in recent years, but you can't get involved in politics." Initially, Putin did not have enough power to take up the fight with them. Later, one or the other danced out of line. So Khodorkovsky decided to go into politics and form an opposition against Putin, but Putin became powerful enough to send the formerly richest man in Russia to a labor camp in Siberia. what you have unlawfully appropriated in recent years, but you must not get involved in politics.' The oligarchs only cared about their business, and Putin initially did not have enough power to take up the fight with them. Later, one or the other danced out of line. So Khodorkovsky decided to go into politics and form an opposition against Putin, but Putin became powerful enough to send the formerly richest man in Russia to a labor camp in Siberia. what you have unlawfully appropriated in recent years, but you must not get involved in politics.' The oligarchs only cared about their business, and Putin initially did not have enough power to take up the fight with them. Later, one or the other danced out of line. So Khodorkovsky decided to go into politics and form an opposition against Putin, but Putin became powerful enough to send the formerly richest man in Russia to a labor camp in Siberia. Julia is on a four week tour with the Bolshoi in London. We talk on the phone almost every day. 'I have to go to some stupid event tonight. An oligarch, a sponsor of the Bolshoi, is throwing a private party tonight. For this he has chosen ten ballerinas who have to go there to entertain him and his guests.« "What do you mean? Entertain?” I ask. "No idea. We're supposed to go there and stand around. Don't know what to expect«. Somehow I don't have a good feeling about this. An oligarch is the sponsor of the Bolshoi and chooses ten girls for his private party? That sounds like forced prostitution. Yes, of course I'm exaggerating. Most of the girls probably voluntarily sleep with the oligarch or his wealthy friends, but my Julia is there. What will she do when she's expected to have sex with the oligarch? After all, the man is currently the third richest billionaire in Russia. "Don't go there," I say. "That will not do. We must. But do not worry. Nothing's going to happen, and no matter what, I'm going to say no." What she says sounds good, but it doesn't calm me down in the slightest. I toss and turn in bed all night worrying. The next day we call again. Julia talks about all sorts of irrelevant stuff and I have to ask her about the previous evening. Only then does she hesitantly tell me about the party. The girls got there and sat at a large table with the oligarch and his friends. One by one they hooked a girl, and a friend of the oligarch's in New York was interested in Julia. However, she put him in his place and didn't want to take part. "And?" I ask. "Nothing else. I sat around there for a while and then they drove me to the hotel.” "And you want me to believe that?" I ask angrily. "I guess you won't have any other choice," she replies. No, I have to trust her. I can't accuse her of anything, even if it's hard for me to believe this story. Why didn't Julia talk about it right away, but only after I asked her about it? There's something fishy about this. I know, but for now it's better to keep quiet. Julia is in London for a few more days. We don't talk on the phone that often anymore. She says she's busy and tired. I have no idea how to deal with this. Now she was involved with one of the guys there, wasn't she? This question worries me all the time and I can't really work anymore because it's hard for me to think about anything else. After a week Julia comes home. We act like nothing happened. But after a day the phone rings. Julia takes it and goes to the other room, although she speaks Russian and knows that I can't understand anything. "Who was that?" I ask. "Nothing. It was the theatre. They wanted something.« I don't believe her, but decide to leave it at that. Over the next few days the phone rings again and again, once even in the middle of the night. 'But that wasn't the theatre. At half past two in the morning. Or?” I ask angrily. "No, it wasn't," says Julia. "And? Who was it?" 'That was Oleg. He's in Ukraine, in a hotel. Drunk." "Oleg the oligarch?" I ask. 'Yes, the oligarch. But you gotta believe me I had nothing with him. Nothing happened that night in London. I'm home alone He got my phone number from the theater the next day. Since then he calls me and wants to meet me. Sometimes he just calls to tell me how cute he thinks I am and wants to talk. Most of the time he's drunk when he calls." I'm speechless. I sit on the edge of the bed, shaking my head. This is a huge problem. How did I get into this situation? The third richest man in Russia wants my girl. He can have any. But he just wants mine. What now? Pack up and give up? I don't stand a chance against this guy anyway. "And now?" I ask Julia. "No idea. I stall him. I don't want him, I just want you. It doesn't matter how much money he has. He'll give up at some point.« I'm stunned and touched at the same time. Over the next few weeks and months, Julia's phone rang regularly and she spoke to Oleg, sometimes for a long time, sometimes for a short time. Sometimes she is also late from work because Oleg ambushed her and she still had to talk to him. Once she even had to take a drink with him and came home two hours late. I ask my family how to deal with the situation but they just tell me to keep cool and wait. "Julia has to sort it out," my mother says, as do most of my friends. The subject also comes up at Julia's regular family gatherings. Julia's family is worried about me. The mother and stepfather would probably prefer to see Julia with the oligarch. The rest of the family, especially the father, are worried about me because I'm starting to get angry. Especially when I've downed a few vodka. I think a lot these days. Oleg is also just a man. OK, a powerful man, but he wants something that's mine, and I find it disrespectful that he's taking it so openly. In the end I decide to do something about it. It doesn't matter if I get beat up or end up dead in a dump. I would rather die with dignity than spend the rest of my life feeling like a wimp and a loser. "How far will he go?" I wonder. What am I getting myself into? Doesn't matter. I must go through it. First, I write down the whole story. I then send it to my best friends with instructions to go to the press if anything happens to me or I disappear. Then, on a Tuesday evening, Julia is in the shower and the phone rings again. I'll answer On the other side, someone whispers something in Russian that sounds something like "Well, my little one?" "This is Chris, Julia's boyfriend," I reply in English. 'Please don't call here again. I do not condone this.« "Sorry, I don't speak English," comes the broken voice from the other end. "Ah, that's it," I reply aggressively. "You're one of the richest men in Russia, with a villa in London, but you don't speak English, huh?" It clicks on the other side. Oleg hung up. I take the SIM card out of Julia's phone and roll it down the toilet. When Julia comes out of the shower, I tell her everything. She's mad at me because she's worried. When I tell her that I threw her SIM card in the toilet, she gets even more angry. "All my contacts!" she screams. "Sorry. There was no other way. We'll get you a new number tomorrow and don't give it to anyone in the theater,' I order. I expect the worst in the next few days. I don't dare go out on the street, just waiting for someone to pull me into a car or for a thug to show up and beat me up. But nothing happens. Nothing at all. A few weeks later, Oleg watches Julia after the performance. "So. So you have a boyfriend,' he says. “You'll regret that we didn't become friends and that you let me down like this. You'll need me sooner or later.«. Julia says goodbye politely and drives home to her middle-class German. At some point it's still over between Julia and me. The drama drags on for years until I finally find the strength to separate. She's a good girl and a great woman. We just don't fit together. In the end I'm almost glad and relieved that it's over. The relationship was all good and bad, there was nothing in between, and you never knew when trouble might come. Now I have more time and can enjoy Moscow's party life. It will be years before I hear from Oleg again. In the meantime, he's divorced, his empire has collapsed, and he's just one of many billionaires in the country. He also no longer sponsors the Bolshoi. But he's still interested in Julia. Although we haven't been together for years, she hasn't tried it with him yet. At least that's what she says. I don't care anymore. Joyce “Can I stay until Monday?” asks Joyce, a Brazilian DJ whom we fly to Moscow for a party. "Well, we have the hotel room for one night, but you can sleep in my guest room if you like." "Sure, that's how we do it," she texts back. Then I think. An exotic girl with us in the men flat share? There is no weekend without alcohol, drugs and women. Most of the time we meet up with our conquests in the kitchen for the after party somewhere between 6am and 12pm. One of our DJs plays there, we sit together and talk. It does happen that a girl strips for us. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the invitation was a good idea. Oh well. We will see. My roommate Pascha and I talk about it briefly. We both think it's very brave of Joyce. We only know her via email and have only spoken to each other on the phone so far. Friday. I lug Joyce's heavy bags down our aisle. She is in her mid-twenties, exotic and good-looking. A little bundle of energy. After just a few sentences, she's talking about sex. "Great," I think, already imagining today's after party in the kitchen. Then we go to the club. Along the way, I'm beginning to realize that Joyce also likes women. Once in a while. Or maybe always? Around four o'clock, Joyce has finished her DJ set. "So what do we do now?" I ask her. "We're going home and fucking," she says, grinning at me. I'm speechless for a moment. "Barman, another drink, please." That was a bit too direct for me, and I don't know what she means either. Natascha, my VJane, is sitting across from me at the mixing desk. She looks at me and shakes her head because she also wanted to go to the cake after party today. Joyce and I are sipping cocktails and fooling around. Natascha gives up and packs her things. When I get home, I ask: »And? Are we still going to a club?" "No, I'm tired. Let's listen to some more music,' she says. We're sitting in the kitchen and Joyce is playing me her own songs. At some point Pasha will be in the door. He can just stand. "I don't like Joyce," he whispers in my ear. “It's okay, I'll take care of her. you can go to bed Don't have to stay here with us." An hour later I'm just too tired and decide to go to bed. Luca, our third roommate, is now also at home. Exceptionally solo and halfway sober. That's why he let it rip yesterday and got me out of bed at six on Friday morning. When I went to complain, I found him in the kitchen with two girls and champagne. I wake up two hours later. The bass is still humming in the kitchen. It must be around nine or ten in the morning. People in the kitchen yell at each other. There are now also a few female voices. I don't care. I turn from side to side. Then I bury my head under the pillow, but I just can't sleep anymore. I don't know if it's all the Red Bull vodka from the night before or the shouting and loud music from the kitchen. I go to the toilet for a moment, warn the people in the kitchen about the neighbors and the police. Natascha is sitting with Joyce and the boys. In the end she probably decided to come and see us after all. Luca is still standing. Hard to believe. He slept a maximum of two hours yesterday. Joyce is flirting with me, and I wonder if she'll stop by before she goes back to her room. She wants me to stay in the kitchen, but I head back to bed. I am woken up half an hour later. A girl lies on top of me and whispers in my ear. "Are you already sleeping?" "What are you thinking?" I reply, half dazed. "Oh I see. OK, then I'll go again,' she says. Typical Natasha. "No, stay there." She turns around, grins and wants to slip under my covers with her clothes on. "Well?" I ask skeptically, "first take off your clothes." She obeys and slips naked under my covers. It doesn't take long and we start kissing. Shortly afterwards we have our fun. "What do you mean?" Natascha says. "Shall we bring Joyce in?" "Why not," I reply. "Oh no," she says. "I was just kidding." "OK then not. But I'm happy to go back into the kitchen and get them if you want." "No, let's do it," says Natascha. I am exhausted. It's been a long evening. At some point we fall asleep. Then, a few hours later, I wake up. Joyce comes into the room briefly, but leaves immediately. In the kitchen, the bass hums loudly. It's midday. I am going to the kitchen. Pasha and Joyce are still listening to music. Luca has disappeared. Joyce hugs me. Pasha is quite ready. Next to the two is an empty fruit brandy bottle. Joyce hugs me and dances with me. I briefly consider whether I should still invite her to our place. But Natascha doesn't want to. Around four o'clock Natascha wakes up and says she has to go home. I actually still have a few things to do. "Hm," says Natasha. “Maybe we should have done that with Joyce after all?” "Well, it's a bit late now," I reply. Joyce sleeps in the room next door. "Wake her up," Natascha suggests. 'No, I'm tired now and Joyce just went to bed. Besides, I'm glad she's sleeping and it's finally quiet.« Natascha is disappointed. She gets dressed and leaves. Only a few hours later we are on our way again. Joyce plays her set at another club and after that we go to Solyanka. There I talk to some girls, past loves and strangers. Every time I'm standing next to a girl, Joyce jumps up and joins in the conversation, flirting badly with the girls. Man, she's got more balls than all of us here. Joyce can tell I'm getting skeptical because a lot of the girls are taking ReiBaus. "What is it?" she asks. “We've got to get going. You want a nice threesome too, don't you?” I grin. It's time to move on. We want to go to Paparazzi, one of the best after-hour clubs. There is a nice girl on the way out. Class figure. She's in her early twenties. Joyce approaches her and invites her to come along. Surprisingly, she agrees. The two kiss in the taxi. I sit in front and watch. In the paparazzi, they both disappear together to the toilet, and my man fantasies are slowly waking up to me. When they come back I'm standing at the bar. It feels good to be standing around with two women making out and involving me. After an hour we go home. Joyce and her girl are back in the cab and I see Joyce's hand running down her legs and under the girl's skirt. She has closed her eyes and is obviously enjoying it. Arrived home, Joyce pulls her lover into my room. The two kiss. I decide to leave her alone, but just want to go inside to get my smokes. As I stand by my shelf and pull out the small metal box, Joyce grabs my arm and steers me towards the door. Even as she closes the door, she says: "If we need a cock, we'll call you." That was still quite cheeky. I sit on the couch and roll a joint. As I smoke it, I hear the two of them moaning in the next room. Maybe I should ruber and just lie down? No, I don't need it that much either. I lie down and slowly fall asleep while the two of them enjoy themselves noisily in my room. The next day the girl sneaks out of the room. I hear it but pretend I'm still asleep. Later we're having brunch and I ask Joyce how it was. "Yes, the Russians, they're great!" Joyce enthuses. "I have to come back soon." 'Sure, I'll book you as soon as I have an opportunity. But then you get a hotel room.« When Joyce is gone, Pasha comes out of his room. He still looks worn out from the last few days' drinking. He stayed home after the cake session, but continued to drink anyway. "And? Is she gone?” he asks. "Yeah, I just put her in the cab." Then I tell Pasha about last night's lesbian act. "It's probably better that she drives again," says Pascha. “A bisexual Brazilian in Moscow, that doesn't quite fit. It was quite exhausting.« "Or so you say? I looked after her for two days and nights. What shall I say first?' "Come on. Let's have a smoke and hope Joyce catches her plane.” Pasha grins. The Vikings in Moscow "How is it looking? I once felt like visiting you in Moscow,« writes Thomas on Facebook. "Aren't you fed up with me and the trouble we both get?" I ask. "It's OK. That makes life worth living," Thomas replies. I know him from the old snowboard days. At that time I was a coach at snowboard camps in Norway for a few weeks. Even then Thomas was a party animal and we had a lot of fun together. We met in Stryn, the first camp I was invited to. Thomas had a car and took me to his family in Bergen for a weekend. We made the local clubs unsafe there. Later he drove me to the other camps. I was there when he dismantled his car on a small Norwegian pass road. We are lucky that nothing happened to us at the time. When Thomas visited me in New York a few years later, we got into serious trouble. 'Cause we got set up by a drug dealer we even ended up in jail and then before the coroner and there was a lot of trouble. That was almost twelve years ago now. "So?" I ask. “Are you sure you want to come to Moscow? I don't know what prison is like here. Does your mother even let you come see me again?” “Yes, of course I want to come. Moscow will definitely be an adventure, and I can really use that!” says Thomas. Before that he told me that he has now given up snowboarding and has become a marketing manager in a large sausage factory. He was also married with two children and recently divorced. "I've got some catching up to do and the New York story was tough but one of the best of my life." A few weeks later Thomas is in Moscow. The first thing he does is pull a bottle of Jameson out of his luggage and grin. "You can drink it alone," is my answer. That same evening we go to Soljanka. Coincidentally, the club is celebrating its birthday that evening. There is a long queue in front of the door, but only invited guests can get past the doorman. There's a lot of free drinks inside and the place is packed. Thomas immediately gets the right impression of Moscow. He's happy because there are plenty of pretty women and hard liquor. He's still alone today, but tomorrow Jan-Erik, a mutual friend from Oslo, will join us and then we'll step on the gas. It's a long weekend and we have a lot to do. I lost Thomas in the commotion a few hours later, but I'm sure he's having fun. The last time I saw him he was standing next to a tall blonde woman and it seemed like something was moving between the two. I dance in the smaller bar room. When I look at the clock, I realize that it's already six o'clock in the morning. Then suddenly a girl stands in front of me and grins. She's holding a wine glass, which is unusual for Soljanka. "You're cute," she says. I grin. "Let's go fuck" is the second sentence and she grabs my hand and pulls me out of the commotion. She's in a hurry and pulls me out into the street. It's bitterly cold there and it's snowing. I wonder what she's up to, but follow her. My brain isn't working anymore anyway, because I've been drinking well all evening. The girl pulls me into the neighboring yard and there behind a gate. Shortly thereafter, she pulls my pants down, an elastic over them, and we have sex. Not only is it very cold, but I'm ankle-deep in the mud, and it smells really weird. After a while it gets to be too much for me. "Come on, let's go to my house or yours, there's no point in this," I say. "OK, let's go to you," she says. After that we get dressed and I realize that my pants were lying in the stinking mud and I smell pretty nasty now. As we walk back down the street, I remember leaving Thomas at the club. That's bad, because they won't let me in so dirty and smelly anymore. Just at that moment I see Thomas walking past us in front of the street. I call him, he stops and laughs. "Oh, here you are. I was just about to go to the subway and see how I can get to your house." Shortly thereafter, the three of us are sitting in the taxi and I learn that the girl's name is Olga and that she is a journalist. She seems to be in good spirits, as she writes on economic issues for one of Russia's largest daily newspapers, Kommersant, and she has even interviewed Putin. Thomas and I have respect for that. But I also have that in front of her directness. I think that was the quickest pick-up I've ever seen. Sex after almost three sentences, that hasn't even happened to me yet. And he was "dirty" too, I think to myself, because just now a cloud of scent from the stinking mud is wafting up into my nose. When you get home, the taxi driver suddenly wants double the agreed price. Olga gets mad and argues with him in Russian. I don't want to get into trouble and I know the Moscow taxi drivers well enough now to know that this can quickly turn violent, so I want to give him the money, but Olga holds me back. The taxi driver then calls her a foreign whore, which pisses Olga off even more. We get out and the driver follows us because we still haven't paid him. Outside I want to give him the money again, but Olga is now on one hundred and eighty. The driver calls her a whore again, which Olga acknowledges with a hard kick on the fender of his Lada. Thomas stands there tiredly, watches and wonders about the Russian girls. After the kick, the driver goes back to the car and gets something from the door shelf. I know from experience that this is not good, and I approach the driver to calm him down and finally pay him. He has a steel pipe in his hand and is trying to attack me with it. I am now standing between Olga and the driver and am being attacked from both sides, because Olga sees the steel bar and wants to hit the driver with her bare fists. "Pretty brave for a woman," I think, holding the steel bar with one hand and trying to push Olga out of reach with the other. Bad memories wash over Thomas at this moment and he decides to intervene before we end up in jail somewhere again. I'm pretty calm and relaxed now. Now Thomas comes at me and tries pulling me out of the middle while the taxi driver is now hitting him with the steel bar. But Thomas takes it well, because he is only hit in the arm and shoulder. He pushes me backwards into a safe area, now Thomas stands between the taxi driver, Olga and me. I try to give Thomas the money to pay the driver but every time I approach him he pushes me back and tells me to stay there and calm down. I'm still completely calm. I just can't shake the feeling that I'm the only one who can relax the situation, so I try again and again. It goes on like this for a few minutes, and Thomas has to take it pretty well by now. The driver hits harder and hits more often now. Olga, on the other hand, kicks the car again and just destroys one of the headlights, which makes the taxi driver even more angry. I decide to give up and open the door to my house. Then I call Thomas and Olga. After a while they break away from the driver and sprint over to me. The taxi driver runs after them in a rage. When the two of them are through the door, I toss a 500-ruble note onto the street and pull the door shut just before the driver manages to get in. Olga scolds me because I also gave the taxi driver some money. Thomas is happy we're out of harm's way and I didn't get him in trouble again. I decide to give up and open the door to my house. Then I call Thomas and Olga. After a while they break away from the driver and sprint over to me. The taxi driver runs after them in a rage. When the two of them are through the door, I toss a 500-ruble note onto the street and pull the door shut just before the driver manages to get in. Olga scolds me because I also gave the taxi driver some money. Thomas is happy we're out of harm's way and I didn't get him in trouble again. I decide to give up and open the door to my house. Then I call Thomas and Olga. After a while they break away from the driver and sprint over to me. The taxi driver runs after them in a rage. When the two of them are through the door, I toss a 500-ruble note onto the street and pull the door shut just before the driver manages to get in. Olga scolds me because I also gave the taxi driver some money. Thomas is happy we're out of harm's way and I didn't get him in trouble again. before the driver manages to get inside. Olga scolds me because I also gave the taxi driver some money. Thomas is happy we're out of harm's way and I didn't get him in trouble again. before the driver manages to get inside. Olga scolds me because I also gave the taxi driver some money. Thomas is happy we're out of harm's way and I didn't get him in trouble again. "But you're already answering," I say to Olga. "That damn asshole called me a whore!" 'Yeah, OK, but kick the car in a couple of dents right away? I don't know if that's the right way to answer," I say, thinking, "Just for one Journalist who usually deals with oligarchs and politicians.« Olga slowly calms down. Then we'll sit in my living room and have another drink. I've thrown my stinky mud jeans in the washing machine and I'm just looking forward to bed and continuing the dirty sex with Olga. It goes wild and is quite unconventional. It must be ten in the morning when we finally fall asleep. Olga snuggles up to me and is suddenly very tame. Around noon Thomas stands in front of my bed. "Come on, wake up!" he orders. "I'm hungry and we have to start sightseeing." I'd thrown a pillow in every other guest's face and chased them out, but I still feel guilty about the jail thing to Thomas. So I get up without a word and get dressed. "We can take Olga with us and throw it somewhere on the way," I say, while she crawls under the covers and doesn't understand at all how one can even think about sightseeing on a gray winter day with sleet. An hour later we are sitting in a taxi and driving through the city center. Olga's home is on the way to our first stop. On the way she plays the tourist guide and tells Thomas all sorts of things that I didn't know either. After we dropped Olga off, Thomas immediately wants to go to the next bar. He needs a beer for breakfast. In the late afternoon Jan-Erik comes along, and that completes the Vikings. The last time I saw Thomas, he was still relatively slim. He's big anyway, a real giant, over five feet. But the beer belly he's got is beyond the imagination of a true Bavarian. Well, it's no wonder he looks like that, and even in Bavaria there are few people who can manage eight beers and two rum cokes on a Saturday afternoon after a long night of drinking. Thomas doesn't even seem drunk. Jan-Erik is doing well too. When we leave Pacha around midnight, there are endless empty beer bottles in our living room, with the almost empty Jameson bottle in between. But the boys are in good spirits and still not showing any sign of tiredness, At Pacha we find the typical commercial party and the accompanying middle-class Moscow crowd. The store is too boring for me personally, but for guests it's always a good starting point for the capital's nightlife. The Pacha is just getting full. We're early. Guests often come to the club, and because it's still too empty, they decide to move on. Moscow simply has too many good clubs. It doesn't bother them at all. You go straight to the bar and order a round of long drinks. And because these are too weak, another round of tequila is thrown afterwards. The Vikings are lucky. Although Moscow is considered one of the most expensive cities in the world, it is a lot cheaper to go out here than in Oslo. And the many young girls with the skimpy clothes and the long legs that end in high heels are definitely a bonus, although there are very pretty women in Norway too. Of course, the guys don't know that at this time there are invariably models in the club who get paid to stand around. The club owner is convinced that this encourages the male guests to drink. It definitely seems to work for the Norwegians. They stand at the bar drinking up courage while staring at the girls next door. I just stand there, bored, wondering if I should enlighten her. No, I let the boys have their fun. The Pacha is slowly getting fuller and the normal guests trundle in. The club owner is convinced that this encourages the male guests to drink. It definitely seems to work for the Norwegians. They stand at the bar drinking up courage while staring at the girls next door. I just stand there, bored, wondering if I should enlighten her. No, I let the boys have their fun. The Pacha is slowly getting fuller and the normal guests trundle in. The club owner is convinced that this encourages the male guests to drink. It definitely seems to work for the Norwegians. They stand at the bar drinking up courage while staring at the girls next door. I just stand there, bored, wondering if I should enlighten her. No, I let the boys have their fun. The Pacha is slowly getting fuller and the normal guests trundle in. An hour later we sit briefly at the owner's table and drink another round of tequila. The owner, an American from LA, is a nice guy, one of the better guys in Moscow nightlife. He started as a promoter years ago, after which he had his first own club, which in the mid-2000s was one of the best in the city. Unfortunately, he wasn't so lucky with Pacha, even though the club is in a premium location, Nikolskaya, one of the most expensive shopping streets in the city center. He met the Pacha people while partying in Ibiza. They then sold him a license for the club. But Pacha Moscow is not Pacha Ibiza. This is where the general party people from all over the world meet to party for a hefty entrance fee. In Moscow, the audience was a little high-profile at first, but Pacha has quickly lost its glamor and become the playground of the upper middle class and the wannabe rich. The club has been struggling with its image for years, but is still one of the top five clubs in Moscow. The rich and famous, however, go elsewhere. But the Pacha is just right for my two Vikings. They would only get bored in a top store because they simply wouldn't pay any attention there. The Russians are pretty good at that. It's difficult enough to get into one of these clubs as it is, but once you do, you're completely ignored. Even the bartenders don't take an interest in you and you wait forever to be served, knowing that the foreigner just wants a beer while the Russian next door orders bottles of champagne for himself and his girls. It's different in Pacha. You're on par with the young middle-class managers, and it's much easier to strike up a conversation - or hit on a woman. This even seems to work for beer-bellied Norwegians, because before long my two boys are standing next to two girls. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. You're on par with the young middle-class managers, and it's much easier to strike up a conversation - or hit on a woman. This even seems to work for beer-bellied Norwegians, because before long my two boys are standing next to two girls. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. You're on par with the young middle-class managers, and it's much easier to strike up a conversation - or hit on a woman. This even seems to work for beer-bellied Norwegians, because before long my two boys are standing next to two girls. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. to start a conversation - or to hit on a woman. This even seems to work for beer-bellied Norwegians, because before long my two boys are standing next to two girls. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. to start a conversation - or to hit on a woman. This even seems to work for beer-bellied Norwegians, because before long my two boys are standing next to two girls. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. I'm still bored. "The music at Pacha isn't good at all," I think, just as a horde of dressed-up transvestites pass me. And even they look better in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe. I use the time, walk through the club and talk to a few old acquaintances. We're doing a project for Pacha at the moment and I know a lot of people on the staff. Even the otherwise angry-looking security guards grin and greet me with a handshake. When I come back, Thomas has his girl firmly under control. It's a tall blonde. She has a good figure but could have had a prettier face. I can tell by the style right away that it's a girl from the suburbs. Jan-Erik is alone and is already waiting for me with the next round of drinks. After that we go down to the dance floor to check the situation. On the way there we have to work our way through the crowd. There are all sorts of people on the steps who want to see and be seen. I move as best I can. On the one hand I don't like the music at all, on the other hand I bump into the people around me with every movement. Just when I've had enough and want to go back upstairs, a girl stands in front of me and grins at me. She makes a little space and dances. I look her up and down. A woman in her mid-twenties, blonde, in a black dress and with the typical ultra-high heels. Of course I like them, but when I see these things I always ask myself how you can even move with them. Let alone dancing or stumbling around on icy winter sidewalks. I grin back and we dance for a while. "My name is Anastasia," she yells in my ear. "I am pleased to meet you. Shall we go to the bar for a drink?” I ask, taking the opportunity to finally get off the dance floor. Jan-Erik dances next to me and is a little disappointed at first. But then he realizes that Anastasia still has a girlfriend with her. That was clear to me from the start, because only hookers are alone in Moscow's nightlife. Otherwise, the women always come in pairs, which always becomes a problem at the end of the evening when you've finally gotten one of the girls ready and want to go home with her. Then it suddenly doesn't matter that you've invested 150 euros in drinks and haven't looked at any other rock all evening. Then they are siblings and have to take care of each other. So that the other person doesn't do anything stupid. That's why your girl suddenly pulls back. And you thought you had everything under control and the pig in the poke. "And? What are we going to do with your girlfriend?” you asked earlier. "No problem. I'll tell her I want to be alone with you,' she replies. Then comes the moment when she goes to her friend to tell her that she is going home with you now. She comes back and says, "Just a moment. My girlfriend wants to stay here and I can't leave her alone.« Or: »Let's have breakfast together«, which almost always ends with me paying for breakfast and then going home alone. Your girl is often already in the taxi, and then her friend jumps in with her. "We'll drive to you first," they say. "What? The three of you?” I ask. Most of the time they drop me off at my place and then decide to drive on to their house and of course as a gentleman I have to pay for it. But sometimes I'm lucky and they come up with me. Then I have a chance, because one of my roommates is often waiting there for me to bring a surprise guest. Then they get drunk together and maybe after a while I can get my girl into bed while my roommate entertains the other one. If my friends knew that I was living in a shared apartment, they would never come up with me. We stand at the bar and drink the umpteenth round. I'm starting to feel the alcohol. Jan-Erik is working on Anastasia's girlfriend. However, both of them do not speak English at all, so it is not easy to communicate. But the alcohol helps. I look around the club looking for Thomas but I can't find him anywhere so I text him. “I'm on my way to my blonde's apartment. Fuck!” he writes. I'll send him my address and wish him a lot of fun. Hopefully she doesn't live too far away, because Moscow is very spread out and out there it will later be difficult to find transport to the city center alone and without knowledge of Russian. But Thomas is a big boy and he'll make it. Maybe the blonde will be okay and she'll take care of him. Let him have some fun. So, one Viking is taken care of. The other one is working on it, so I can take care of Anastasia. She stands next to me and grins at me, which I immediately acknowledge with a kiss. Then we stand at the bar for a while and fondle each other. Yes, sounds stupid, but what else should you call it? otherwise it's me who gets upset about people groping each other in public. I hate it when they shove their tongues down each other's throats and barpet. However, it gets me every now and then, and what's the point of conversation if I can hardly speak Russian and she can hardly speak English? Around five it's time to go home. I already have my girl in the sack, only Jan-Erik doesn't quite manage to get his girlfriend. I'm worried. "Shall we go to my house and continue from there?" I ask. The two girls consult. "Let's go to Neo," they say. The Neo is a lower-class after-hours club. It is right in the middle between the center and the suburbs. I've never been there but have heard about it. I shrug. Jan-Erik nods. "OK, let's go to the Neo." On the way I kiss Anastasia. She's excited, I can feel it. In the club she immediately pulls me across the dance floor, then up the stairs and into a dark back room. This is something like a VIP lounge. There are more people in the room. Some talk, others make out. I sit down on a couch next to Anastasia and we kiss. She kneels on the floor and unbuttons my pants. Then she gets up and pulls her dress up. She wears black stockings. A few seconds later she is sitting on me and we are kissing while moving rhythmically. She's getting faster and faster. I can't really relax because there are a lot of people sitting around me and I can feel some watching us while Anastasia rides me. Apparently I'm not drunk enough after all. After a while we calm down and go back to the dance floor. We also meet Anastasia's girlfriend there, but there is no sign of Jan-Erik far and wide. "I'm sure he'll have fun," I think, although I'm a bit concerned and text afterwards. He does not answer. In the meantime, I'm trying to get Anastasia to go home with me. There we could continue in peace and finish what started so well in the VIP lounge. It's another half hour before I get her ready to come with me. Just as we're in the cab, hers comes but there is no trace of Jan-Erik far and wide. "I'm sure he'll have fun," I think, although I'm a bit concerned and text afterwards. He does not answer. In the meantime, I'm trying to get Anastasia to go home with me. There we could continue in peace and finish what started so well in the VIP lounge. It's another half hour before I get her ready to come with me. Just as we're in the cab, hers comes but there is no trace of Jan-Erik far and wide. "I'm sure he'll have fun," I think, although I'm a bit concerned and text afterwards. He does not answer. In the meantime, I'm trying to get Anastasia to go home with me. There we could continue in peace and finish what started so well in the VIP lounge. It's another half hour before I get her ready to come with me. Just as we're in the cab, hers comes until I get her ready to come with me. Just as we're in the cab, hers comes until I get her ready to come with me. Just as we're in the cab, hers comes girlfriend and opens the door again. She's not wearing her coat, though, so I don't expect her to come with me. Anastasia gets out and says she'll be back in five minutes. I should wait The taxi driver turns around and looks questioningly. I'll offer him double the fare if he waits here with me because I don't want to go back to the club. But as I wait for her, I realize it was stupid to let her go. Just as the driver turns around again and looks at me questioningly, because the five minutes are long gone, the door of the club opens and Anastasia runs towards our taxi, smiling. That was close. I was about to give the order to depart. She gets in our car and kisses me hard. Jan-Erik is still missing. I tried calling him several times while I was waiting, even though a voice call to a Norwegian number would cost me a fortune. He also gets the home address and instructions on how to get home safely. It is pleasantly quiet in the apartment. My two roommates are either not at home or they are already asleep. It's already eight o'clock in the morning. Anastasia is a classy woman. I don't understand much of what she's saying, but in bed she's the loneliest. Around ten o'clock the doorbell rings. When I open it, Jan-Erik is standing in front of me. He's pretty drunk and staggers into the guest room. I'm calmed down now and go back to Anastasia. Contrary to expectations, she is still not asleep, but lies grinning in bed in front of me. Let's go to the next round. Two hours later, Thomas is standing in front of my bed and demanding another round of sightseeing with Jan-Erik. Today I am more relaxed: "Go to the diner for breakfast," I snarl. "I'll come there at three and pick you up." Anastasia pulls the covers over her head and Thomas withdraws, disappointed. After that it's quiet again in our apartment. The boys have left and we're in peace, but Anastasia doesn't want to sleep anymore and has other plans. I'm slowly running out of breath. Two days with less than three hours of sleep, a lot of alcohol and partying, even the strongest man can't stand it. Just as we're about to start, Anastasia's phone rings. Her boyfriend seems to be on the other end. "Where are you?" he asks. “With Irina. We partied for a long time, and I slept with her,” Anastasia replies. I have to grin. Her boyfriend seems suspicious because he asks for the landline number and wants to call them to check. Anastasia tries to make excuses and now has a problem. The guy on the other end gets louder. Then she just hangs up and turns off her phone. "I'll take care of that later," she says. I'm surprised at her calmness. Quite exhausted. After that I make us some coffee and it's the first time we've talked a little. It's actually going quite well with my few words of Russian. She asks what I do in Russia and I tell her that I have my own company. After breakfast I put her in a taxi and go to the diner to pick up the Norwegians. There is a children's afternoon with a team of animators in costumes. The Norwegians are right in the middle and as happy as the little ones. "And? What did you do?” I ask. "Had breakfast. And had a few beers.” "How many?" "Around six." "Together!?" "No, everyone!" Thomas grins. "How was your blonde?" I want to know. “I took her to the other side of town. There, where all the prefabricated buildings are, and even further. She was nice. We keep in touch. She wants to come visit me in Oslo.” "And where were you last night? We lost each other somehow«, I ask Jan-Erik. 'I wanted to go back to Pacha, but by the time I got there it was closed. After that I walked around the area for a bit until I found a bar where something was still going on. I met a girl there. At sunrise we went to Red Square. That was really nice. Then she dragged me into a doorway and gave me a blow job. That was even better.« By the cold? I'm not sure if that's true. Well no matter. Is his thing. "And after that?" I ask. 'After that we had breakfast and then I went home. I was pretty floored. Can't remember her name or what she looks like." "Well, I hope it wasn't a man because there's a gay bar around the corner," I joke. After brunch we do the second tour of the city. It's like yesterday, only now I have to take care of two Vikings. I have since learned that they need alcohol at least once an hour to keep them happy. This goes on for two days. On Tuesday afternoon I finally put the Norwegians in a taxi to the airport, after which I fall into bed exhausted and sleep in. Before they leave, the Vikings threaten me: "That was great, we'll do it once a year now. We'll be back soon!«  The friendly police "Let's go to the Real McCoy," says Michael, my German friend in Moscow. I know the place well because it's right under the Stalin Tower where I lived with Victor for the first few months. The Real McCoy is known for its boisterous weekend parties. Then the little bar is packed to the brim with nice suburban girls and the boys looking for an adventure for the night or more. Despite the quirky pop music, the mood is always boisterous. That may have something to do with the fact that they serve mojitos from 0.5 liter beer glasses here. The Long Island Ice Teas are just as big and pack a punch. The bar cannot be endured without alcohol either. Victor used to go downstairs while I stayed in the apartment and played Playstation. At that time I had Julia and no interest in other girls, although it was not uncommon for Victor to come home with two and want me to take care of the girlfriend. Today I know that it was pure self-interest. At the Real McCoy you will quickly make friends. It takes less than five minutes and you already have new friends. It often goes quite quickly with the girls. Two of the female guests are dancing on the bar. They're not my type, but they show all sorts of meat and let the crowd in front of the bar admire them. We joke with a few Russians, then meet a bunch of foreigners who are girl-hunting, and I talk to one or two old acquaintances. Then I go to the bar to get another drink. It's difficult to get through to the counter. A girl in a black dress is standing in front of me, and I am pressed firmly against her from behind. She turns her head to see who is behind her, pressing against her so insistently. I seem to please her 'cause she gives me a smile while I send a quick "Sorry" in her direction. Shortly thereafter, a seat opens up next to her and I finally get a chance to order my drink. The girl stands next to me and looks at me. She's pretty drunk already. "It's taking a while today," I think when she suddenly turns to me and tries to kiss me. I dodge it for a moment, but then go into it. It doesn't look that bad and we'll see what comes next. It's strange how quickly that sometimes happens in Moscow. When my drink comes, I make room for another and stand behind the little one again. We kiss again and she grabs my crotch, which of course excites me. Then she turns around. I'm pressed against her anyway by the crowd behind me and now I'm moving rhythmically to the music. She seems to like it because she leans forward to press her butt even tighter against me. I hug her from behind, continue dancing and slowly go up my legs from below. Her panties are already wet and I decide to go under and tease her even further. That's how it goes for a while. Suddenly she has her hand in my pants. None of the bystanders seem to notice anything. The store is just too crowded. "Why not more?" I think, unbuttoning my pants and pushing up her dress. Shortly thereafter I am in her. She seems to enjoy the adventure and is actively involved. Insanity! I fuck a girl at the bar. Right at the bar, in between all the people, and no one notices! It goes on for a while, but as always in situations like this, I worry about being discovered. So I pull her dress back down and zip up my pants. Then I take her by the hand and pull her through the crowd to the toilets. The good thing about the Real McCoy is that males and females use the same restrooms. Unfortunately, there is always a small line in front of it. As we stand there waiting for our chance, the girl's friend arrives. She tries to save her and drag her back to her clique. If she knew we'd already had sex at the bar, that would probably seem hopeless to her. Just then a door opens and I pull the girl inside. Her friend follows us and protests sharply, but my bar slut sends her out. It continues in the toilet, although someone knocks on the door every ten seconds. After the number, she is in a hurry to get back to her people. In such a hurry that she even forgets her black panties. "That's a nice trophy," I think, and put it in my pocket. rescue her and drag her back to her clique. If she knew we'd already had sex at the bar, that would probably seem hopeless to her. Just then a door opens and I pull the girl inside. Her friend follows us and protests sharply, but my bar slut sends her out. It continues in the toilet, although someone knocks on the door every ten seconds. After the number, she is in a hurry to get back to her people. In such a hurry that she even forgets her black panties. "That's a nice trophy," I think, and put it in my pocket. rescue her and drag her back to her clique. If she knew we'd already had sex at the bar, that would probably seem hopeless to her. Just then a door opens and I pull the girl inside. Her friend follows us and protests sharply, but my bar slut sends her out. It continues in the toilet, although someone knocks on the door every ten seconds. After the number, she is in a hurry to get back to her people. In such a hurry that she even forgets her black panties. "That's a nice trophy," I think, and put it in my pocket. Her friend follows us and protests sharply, but my bar slut sends her out. It continues in the toilet, although someone knocks on the door every ten seconds. After the number, she is in a hurry to get back to her people. In such a hurry that she even forgets her black panties. "That's a nice trophy," I think, and put it in my pocket. Her friend follows us and protests sharply, but my bar slut sends her out. It continues in the toilet, although someone knocks on the door every ten seconds. After the number, she is in a hurry to get back to her people. In such a hurry that she even forgets her black panties. "That's a nice trophy," I think, and put it in my pocket. “Where have you been so long?” asks Michael. "If you knew what just happened to me..." After that, the evening goes on like this. We drink and have fun with the other guys. When we stagger out of the Real McCoy at around five, Michael is driving home, but I still want to go to Mix, a hip after-hours club just around the corner. I dance there until the early hours of the morning. Again, it's easy to meet new people, and I'm drinking with Sasha, an oligarch's son. He pays for all my drinks, not just mine. I have a feeling he's paying for the whole club tonight. Nevertheless, Sascha is attached to me. He must be in his early twenties and has taken a liking to the crazy German. Maybe because I'm not only interested in the girls, I also talk to them. After all, I was already successful today, so I'm relatively calm, but at this time I'm pretty blue. At eight o'clock I decide to finally go home. Sascha comes out with us to say goodbye in peace. We're just exchanging numbers when two guys approach us and start talking. One of them pulls an ID card out of his pocket. They are police officers and they let us know that they would like to have a look in our pockets. A lot of drugs are used, especially in the after-hours clubs, but I'm there often and it's the first time in Russia that I've been caught in a civil patrol. Of course, neither of us have anything with us, but the policemen are happy anyway, because something is wrong with my papers. You have to register with the authorities in Russia within three days and I've been in the country for seven days since my last entry and had deliberately failed to "Then get in the car with us," says one of the police officers. Sascha protests violently. He wants to get a lawyer and take care of me because what's next looks like an arrest. "Don't worry. I've got it under control. I can handle it myself,' I reassure him. 'Go back to the club and have fun. I'll text you later so you don't have to worry." What follows is completely normal in Russia: you get in the car and negotiate how the problem can be solved. "That's a $200 fine if we take you to the station," says one. "Bullshit!" I slur back in a friendly way, because I'm not completely sober anymore either. 'I'm not a mere tourist. I know my way. The maximum fine is $100 and you can only detain me for three hours." "The laws have changed," says the policeman. "Well then, take me with you. Then you'll have a lot of trouble and paperwork, and you'll get nothing yourself.' The policemen are silent. “I'll give you thirty dollars. That's all I've got anyway." "That's not enough," says my negotiating partner. "That's all I have with me." 'There's an ATM over there. You can take off more there.« »Isn't. I've already drunk my budget for today and I'm broke. I won't get any more money until tomorrow,' I lie confidently. The police advise in Russian. "OK, give it to me," replies one. I'm about to pull the 1,000-ruble note out of my purse when I remember that I'll really be without any money. "Neh. Wait. I need two hundred rubles to get a taxi home.” "It's not our problem," says the policeman. 'Oh come on boys. You guys aren't leaving me out here in the cold.' 'Where do you live?' the police officers ask. »Sukharevskaya street. Not far from here, but too far to walk.” The two of them talk in Russian for a while, then the driver starts the car and we drive off. "Okay, we'll drive you home. Where are you going?” says the other. I give them my 1000 ruble note and I'm glad I got out of it so easily and on top of that I got a ride home. We make all sorts of jokes on the way, and the policemen tease me with anti-German jokes. The atmosphere is friendly. You could think they were my new best friends. When I get home, I get out of the police car. I'm still totally drunk. My neighbor is standing in front of the door with her dog. She already knows our wild flat share and is not surprised at my police escort home, but greets me in a friendly way. "Time for bed," I think. It's nine o'clock in the morning now and I've seen enough. The slave It's Saturday morning and already light when I get home. It was one of those boozy nights at Moscow's top clubs. After a few hours of sleep, I sit at the computer and do urgent emails. Then my Skype pops up. It's Florian, a friend. He asks me if I want a girl. "What do you mean?" I text back. "A girl, for fun." "A whore?" »No, not a whore, (my)a slave.« "Ah, slave. I don't know much about S&M..." "Then you'll learn..." "What does this cost?" "Nothing." "How long?" "All night. Until you send her home." An hour later, Florian and I pick up the girl from the subway. I have scruples, but I can't resist trying something completely new. I'm not expecting beauty and am totally surprised when a model lady in high heels and a fur coat gets into our car. Florian talks to her. I'm mute and a little unsure. In the elevator he unbuttons her coat. Underneath is only black, transparent underwear. She presents herself to me. I still have a very high residual alcohol level, which makes it all seem even more absurd to me than it already is. The spook will surely be over any moment. I'm probably still asleep and just dreaming about it all. The situation is so crazy, it just can't be reality. In the apartment, Florian explains the commands to me and warns me that I have to think along for the girl. 'She won't go to the toilet by herself, and she won't drink either. You have to tell her to. She doesn't talk at all unless you speak to her. You can let her do chores or just put her in the corner for a while.” That would actually be a good idea, he says, and implements it immediately with a verbal command. I've known Florian for years and have experienced and discussed all sorts of things with him, but I didn't expect anything like that. He just doesn't seem like an S&M guy. "So, now it's your turn," says Florian. I'm very insecure when I give my first orders. The girl has to suppress a smile and promptly gets her ass spanked by Florian, which she acknowledges with a »Thank you, Master!«. Then he admires the red imprint of his hand on her bottom and grins. A few hours later Florian leaves and leaves me alone with her. I still don't understand the whole thing. Regardless, it's kind of great. I have a beautiful girl with me all night. When she was handed over she got the order to spoil me - and she does that. All night. Over and over with a dedication that is second to none. In between she changes her underwear and presents herself in new outfits. Then she dances in front of me. pulls her skirt up a little, At some point I'll be in the game myself. That's how an actor has to feel in his role. The lines slowly blur and the role becomes reality. Every once in a while, reality catches up to me. Then I think, explore and try to understand what is happening here. Why is she doing this? does she play If so, then damn good, and she sees it through to the end. The girl is very sensitive. She explores me and adapts more and more. I'm surprised to see how quickly she learns. The best thing is that she takes an incredible amount of time. I don't feel any pressure, I can fully enjoy it. Not a minute goes by when the slave doesn't play around with me. It's getting to be too much for me, and I remember Florian's advice to put her in a corner every now and then. She's been standing there for about five minutes, looking down. I feel sorry for you and, to be honest, there's nothing wrong with sitting in front of the TV watching your favorite series while a girl is messing with you. So I let her come and demand a blowjob, which she gives me devotedly. The situation is just unreal. It's the moment when you ask yourself, "How did I get here? What am I doing here? Life is wonderful!" "How did I get here? What am I doing here? Life is wonderful!" "How did I get here? What am I doing here? Life is wonderful!" Then she sticks her ass out at me and politely asks if I'd like to fuck her. "No. Not now!' I reply harshly. Florian explained to me where the limits are and how far she can go. She gets sex when I want it, not when she wants it. The slave understands that she made a mistake and looks at me submissively. Actually, this dominant behavior is not my thing. I feel pretty stupid doing it. On the other side next to me is a very attractive woman who looks at me submissively and fulfills my every wish and every fantasy. No matter how crazy it may be. I wonder again if she's just pretending or if she's actually so submissive. Florian told me that she really is like that and lives it. She struggles because she always needs someone to call the shots. How about a girlfriend like that? Wouldn't that be great? when she has no opinion of her own and always does what I feel like doing? »Honey. I'm in the mood for a blow job now" or "I'm going to watch football with my boys now. You come with me, but sit quietly and don't make a peep. If I want a beer I'll give you a sign and you go get me one. My friends too.” Yes, that's it, right? No certainly not. I don't want a woman with no wills, nor do I want to take full responsibility for her life. But for one night it's an interesting experience. I wonder how does one get like that? Was she born like that or did she become like that later? She must have been abused as a child. How else can such an attractive woman be so wrecked in the head? No, I think wrong. She's a good girl and I should take her with me treat with respect. Let's try a little small talk. She speaks english. So that shouldn't be a problem. But which topic do you choose? How do you start a conversation with a girl who only wants to hear commands from you? Oh man, she looks so damn good. Maybe I should ask Florian if I can take it over. He doesn't have time for her anyway. "Are you playing me something, or are you living it?" I ask spontaneously and regret it at the same moment. How could I choose such a stupid topic? Come on Chris, you've got more brains. "I'm like this," she replies. 'Is something wrong, Sir Chris? Did I do something wrong?" "No. It's okay. You're sweet. Come here! I want to cuddle." Yeah, what an idiot, that Chris. Now he has the opportunity to do everything, to try everything, that he has always wanted to do. This really is an opportunity. Not everyone gets this chance. Life means well with you. And you? you want to cuddle She snuggles up to me like a cat and even purrs a little. I stroke her hair and then go down her beautiful body. "Shit!" I think. This is my chance. I'll do it and see it through to the end. "Come on! Lay down. I want to fuck!" Then I go through all the positions that I know. Even the somewhat complicated ones from the Kama Sutra. At some point, the slave looks at me a bit depressed. "What's going on?" I ask. She does not answer. I go through the checklist in my head. Meal? Check. Drink? Check! To pee? Hm, OK, she might need to go to the bathroom. "Do you have to pee?" I ask. she nods. "OK then go to the bathroom." She gets up and I drove her to the bathroom. And now? How far does it go with the commands? Do I have to stand by and tell her to pee? I decide not to take any chances: "OK, sit down and pee," I order. Shortly thereafter, it's already splashing. I squat down and slip my hand under her. My hands feel warm. So that's what it feels like. OK, checked. Then it continues on the couch. After a while I think to myself: "I've done anal before, but it still wouldn't be bad." Unfortunately I don't have any lube, but then it has to serve as it is. As I try to enter her, she twitches and makes a sound that lets me know she's in pain. So I let go of my plan. 'I'm sorry, Sir Chris. My anus is just too small for you,” she says slave. "It's OK. Let's move on to something else." We don't go to bed until two o'clock. "Shall I untie the leash from your collar?" I ask uncertainly. 'No sir. You don't have to. I sleep with the leash,” the slave replies. We lie naked in bed. I've had countless orgasms and I'm really at the end. Then I pull her to me, put her head on my shoulder, and we fall asleep. When I wake up in the night, she is lying next to me. She looks at me and asks if she can spoil me. It's getting to be too much for me, but whatever. Then we'll fuck again. After a while I fall back into the pillows. I'm tired and fall back asleep quickly. The next day my knees are shaking. I could keep her here all day. let them do the house cleaning. Play with her every now and then. But I'm just too done. In the early afternoon I take off her collar and leash and send her home. I think that was one of the best nights of my life. crazy! I still don't understand the whole thing and I have to think about it all the time. Many thoughts are buzzing through my head. Lots of questions and I'm trying to find an answer to them. Why did Florian bring her to me? And she just goes up to a complete stranger, lets himself be bossed around and has sex with him? She fulfills his every wish. Why is she doing that? Wouldn't that be the perfect partner for a marriage? Or not? It was all just a game anyway, wasn't it? Maybe not. I had the feeling that she really lives the Devote. And what comes now? What is to come after such a night? I thought for a long time whether I should write about it at all, because nobody believes me anyway. I wouldn't believe it either. No, I still can't believe it. "And? How was it?” asks Florian. "Class! I can't thank you enough for this experience,” I say. "Easy," says Florian. “I just spoke to her. “She likes you very much. You must have been very nice to her. She doesn't know that." Ah, I was nice. I really tried hard to be dominant. "Are you going to cede them to me?" I joke. "No. Certainly not. you are not strong enough You couldn't. She needs guidance. You still don't have enough experience for that,« Florian replies very seriously. "Want to learn more?" "No thanks. It was an interesting experience, but I don't want to delve deeper into this matter. That's not my thing. But I'd be happy if you park it with me every now and then,' I reply. “That probably won't happen again, because I don't have enough time to take care of her. That's why I'm giving it to another master. But I'll let you know if anything happens." Hm, I think. He gives them to another master. That sounds like she's a dog. This thought makes me kind of sad. That's why I should rather keep my hands off this scene. "So what now?" I think. I acted out my most secret and dirtiest fantasies last night and ticked off everything else I wanted to do in bed. How to proceed? No idea. We will see. Ballerina at the So-Ho Rooms Once a month I throw "A Small World" party at So-Ho Rooms, one of the best clubs in Moscow. Although it's always on Thursdays, the party is well attended by the members of this elite internet community, and we always get the club's terrace, a VIP area with a pool. She also uses the So-Ho for her own VIP guests, so there's a good mix of foreigners, rich Russians and pretty girls. As a rule, these "small world" meetings are quite boring. To be perfectly honest, the only time I can stand them now is when I've had a few drinks, because "small world" means small talk. Then I stand at the bar from nine in the evening until three or four in the morning and talk to one after the other. "Hi. How are you? Long time no see. How is the business going?" I'm in better spirits this time though because I was lucky at the last party. Just before we went home, a girl approached me and I took her with me. She was pretty and rich, but also pretty drunk. After sex she wanted to leave. I asked for her number but she made an excuse and left. Well, then it was just a one-night stand. I was surprised because the women at the So-Ho Rooms are out of my league. Only Moscow's elite cavort there. In the two years I've been throwing parties there, I've never taken a girl home from there. »But a blind hen can also find a grain of corn«, I think and grin as I stand at the bar that evening and order my second drink. It's three o'clock in the morning. I'm dead tired and just want to go to bed. We have just finished the billing, the turnover was modest. There's another Canadian I know standing at the bar. "Come have another drink with me," he slurs. "OK why not? One more nightcap before going home.” We talk a bit. Next to us are two high-class whores, whom the Canadian has an eye on. I check the dance floor because there's still something going on there. A couple of girls dance happily with two boys. One of them looks back and grins. She's wearing a red sundress that looks expensive. "Another rich kid," I think, turning my attention back to the Canadian. When I turn back to the dance floor after a few minutes, the girl is still grinning. She goes to her table, gets her drink and walks purposefully towards me. "Enchante," she says. "Nice to meet you too. What's your name?" "I'm Chloe and I'm from France," she replies. "Aha. What brings you to Moscow?” "I'm a ballerina!" she says proudly. »We were here last week for a guest performance at the Bolshoi and today is our last evening.« When I hear the keyword "ballerina" I'm immediately a bit disinterested, because I still associate Julia, pain and drama with this term. She notices that and flirts with me all the more. My drink is empty so I order another one to see where this goes because Chloe is actually quite nice. But she repeats the term ballerina several times and thinks that she can impress me with it. When it gets too much, I say, "OK, OK, I get it. I'm used to ballerinas, my ex is a ballerina at the Bolshoi, and I know half the company.« I realize that that was a bit rude and add another »But I still think you're cute!«. "Where do you live?" she asks. I don't know how many times I've heard this question, but it's a sure sign that the girl is considering coming home with me. "There's no such thing!" I think. Twice in a row I got lucky at the So-Ho Rooms. Crazy. “I live ten minutes from here. In the center,” I reply. This is followed by a few minutes of small talk and flirting. 'I have to be at the hotel for breakfast at eight thirty tomorrow morning and then we'll go to the airport around nine o'clock,' Chloe says eventually. I look at the clock and see that it's almost four. "Then what are we waiting for?" I ask her, looking deep into her eyes. "Are we going to your place or mine?" She's clearly shocked by my directness, but I'm tired and I'm tired of playing games. 'We can have a few more drinks and talk, of course, but it's all taking up our time to do better things. Let's not waste another minute. I want you!" she stares at me Then her features loosen and she grins. "You're right. Let's go to my hotel.' Then we kiss. The others in her group see this and are surprised. Two of them come over and talk to us. They grin and say: "What happens in Moscow stays in Moscow." I later learn that Chloe lives in Paris, is married and has a child. The others decide to share a taxi with us. "I've got another bottle of champagne," Chloe says. "Cool, we'll kill them!" the others reply. I just roll my eyes because my plan was different. Chloe has her own room, but there are four of us now. "Your girlfriend is very good looking, too," I think. "Who knows what they're up to." It's five o'clock when I go to the toilet. Just as I want to go back into the room, the door opens and Chloe is standing in front of me. She pushes me back into the bathroom and unbuttons my pants. After that she pulls me towards her and we have sex. »Oh dear. My condoms are in my jacket pocket,« I think briefly, but by then it's too late. She took the initiative. Heavy standing sex ensues, interrupted when one of the dancers storms into the bathroom, runs to the toilet bowl and starts throwing up. We straighten our clothes and go back into the room. "Sorry," says Chloe's girlfriend and grins. "We'll go straight to our rooms. As soon as that one in there is ready." Ten minutes later we finally have our peace. We'll have another glass of champagne and then it's on for the next three hours. I don't even think about the condoms anymore. I may be tired, but this woman is great. She has a great body, not an ounce of fat is too much and muscles as hard as stone. She fucks like hell. She has so much energy and totally challenges me. At some point she takes my best piece in her hand. Pulls it out and sticks it up her ass like it's the most natural thing in the world. "So it's true what they say about the French and anal sex," I'm thinking at that moment. At a quarter past eight we separate. I give Chloe one more long kiss. "That was great. I'm really glad I met you. Will we see each other again?” I ask. “I think we'll be back in Moscow in October. Or will you come visit me in Paris?" "And your husband?" "We'll find an opportunity, don't you think?" "Where there's a will, there's a way," I say, grinning. Then I accompany Chloe to the ground floor for breakfast. I give her the last long kiss in the elevator, because I don't want other colleagues to know that she took me to the hotel. It's Friday morning, just before nine. I'm sitting in a cab home with shaky knees and still pretty drunk. What a life! I love it. Chloe then texts me: 'Well, my little one. I'm already on the bus to the airport. It was wonderful with you. Don't forget me and let's keep in touch. Bisous, Chloe' Why did I only meet her last night? It would have been much nicer if we could have spent the week together. We'll be sending lots of messages back and forth over the next few days and weeks. Partly by phone, partly via Facebook. Chloe says she misses me. But sometimes she is more direct and writes that she just liked having sex with me. I think this woman is great, but I'm not going to get involved because she has family and no matter how bored or unsatisfied she seems, I will not interfere and cause problems. Then, a few days later, she suddenly deleted me from her friends list. So without any comment. She no longer responds to my phone messages. OK, so she broke up with me on Facebook without further ado. This is also a first time for me. I'm shocked, but after some thought I decide to just accept it. it's madness Six months later I'm sitting in bed Sunday night watching a movie when I get a text message. It's from Chloe and in a bit confused English: 'Are you okay? Also health? After our sex without a condom and condition.« What condition? was she ill Oh man! You have sex without a condom and then you hit the bull's eye. I'm an idiot! And then I also had anal sex with her! I'm panicking. “I'm fine, I think. am healthy How about you? Should I be worried?" It took twenty minutes for the answer to come: »Don't panic, I just wanted to ask. I'm healthy too," she writes. I'm a little reassured, but decide to do some tests first thing in the morning. A few days later I get the results, everything is fine. I'll be more careful going forward, I vow to myself. Chloe and I are still not Facebook friends again, but we do send each other a few nice texts every once in a while. Maybe I'll see her again sometime. In Moscow, in Paris or anywhere else in the world. Cold shower It's been twenty years since communism and the Soviets lost to capitalism. Since then, Russia has seen and suffered a lot. Of course, the country has evolved. It still takes for granted that it still claims superpower status in our modern world. Russia is the largest country on earth and possesses quite a few nuclear warheads. Oh yes, then there was oil and gas. The superpower Russia. A giant country with an area of around 17.1 million square kilometers, inhabited by just over 140 million people. downward trend. That's not even twice as many inhabitants as Germany has, and yet this country is so incredibly large. Recently I flew to Vladivostok and it took us eight and a half hours from Moscow. Thank goodness in business class. But Russia does not stop there near Korea. It extends much further east into the Kamchatka and Chukotka regions, which border Alaska. You can meet them all in Moscow. The Eskimos from Chukotka or the women with the bony faces from Kamchatka. Of course also the Asians from Central Asia. Russia is gigantic. But superpower? Whenever I listen to the Russians' patriotic self-adulation, and that often happens, I have to suppress a grin, because there is also a great deal of absurdity in the land of bears and vodka. The Eskimos from Chukotka or the women with the bony faces from Kamchatka. Of course also the Asians from Central Asia. Russia is gigantic. But superpower? Whenever I listen to the Russians' patriotic self-adulation, and that often happens, I have to suppress a grin, because there is also a great deal of absurdity in the land of bears and vodka. The Eskimos from Chukotka or the women with the bony faces from Kamchatka. Of course also the Asians from Central Asia. Russia is gigantic. But superpower? Whenever I listen to the Russians' patriotic self-adulation, and that often happens, I have to suppress a grin, because there is also a great deal of absurdity in the land of bears and vodka. Moscow is subject to the continental climate prevailing. Depending on which direction the wind is blowing from, it is damp and cold or dry and warm. But the Russians themselves found a way to control the weather. Much to the chagrin of people living in the Moscow suburbs. During important state visits or important holidays, silver iodide is sprayed into the clouds outside the city gates. According to Greenpeace, this is harmless to the environment, but very expensive. The chemical causes local clouds to rain down and binds moisture in the air, causing the clouds to dissipate. While we have bright blue skies in Moscow these days, there is constant rain in the suburbs. That alone is absurd enough, but a few years ago the mayor of Moscow came up with the idea of using this method, to protect the city from the annual snow chaos. He made a simple calculation: how much does it cost to spray silver iodide on the clouds? And how much does the winter service cost? He came to the conclusion that if there is no snow in Moscow in winter, the city will save enormously. The mayors of the suburbs weren't very happy about this method, of course, because they were going to get all the snow that way. No sooner said than done. The small propeller planes flew day and night and the winter service was sent home. The method worked wonderfully at first, but after four weeks of sunshine without precipitation, I asked myself how the poor vegetation in the city was doing. In addition, it was even dustier in the city than it already was. Then came the first winter storm, and one could no longer master the clouds. There just weren't enough planes. The city was covered in snow and the winter service was at home. After a few days the snow was two meters high in some places and we were to have problems all winter, although the planes stayed on the ground and winter service was called back. It's mid-April. The long winter is finally over and the sun is shining outside. The Moscow spring doesn't last long, and the difference between winter and summer couldn't be quicker or bigger. In early April it is usually still snowing. The skies are gray and temperatures are often below zero, so the snow stays put. Then the weather suddenly changes, from one day to the next the girls are suddenly in the street in ultra-short skirts, and you can go for a walk in a T-shirt late into the night. Suddenly Muscovites live outside. After work you sit in the park or at the subway station. You drink, talk and laugh. The people who were walking around with petrified mines last week suddenly grin at you. The wintry gray gives way to bright colors. But there is another reason why many people now prefer to be outdoors. Apartments and offices are heated with district heating. Most radiators do not have a thermostat or regulator. So you can't turn off the heating yourself. The district heating is traditionally switched off in the first weeks of May, no matter how warm it is in the weeks before. Even at twenty degrees, the radiators are still running at full speed and it gets unbearably hot in the apartments, while outside it is pleasantly fresh like early summer. The district heating is traditionally switched off in the first weeks of May, no matter how warm it is in the weeks before. Even at twenty degrees, the radiators are still running at full speed and it gets unbearably hot in the apartments, while outside it is pleasantly fresh like early summer. The district heating is traditionally switched off in the first weeks of May, no matter how warm it is in the weeks before. Even at twenty degrees, the radiators are still running at full speed and it gets unbearably hot in the apartments, while outside it is pleasantly fresh like early summer. It's eight o'clock in the morning and I'm still in bed when I hear Pascha scream. "Disc! They've turned off the hot water!' It's mid-May and we're suffering from a cold bad-weather front from the north. The heaters have now been turned off, and with temperatures of ten degrees it's getting pretty cool in our apartment too. The weather forecast doesn't look good. It should stay that way for at least a few more days. I hear Pasha taking a shower and pull the covers over my ears because later it will be my turn to take the cold shower. It will stay like this for two weeks from now, because we also depend on the district heating for the hot water, and that is switched off for two weeks once a year, sometime between May and September, to clean the pipes and check the system. Each borough comes at a different time so you can at least take a warm shower with your friends. Other Muscovites help themselves with instantaneous water heaters or boilers over the cold water period, although the electrical system in the apartment has to be able to cope with it. Last year we used a water heater and the light switch in the bathroom started smoldering. Since then there has only been one socket in the bathroom and we have a floor lamp for lighting. But it's not just about showering, but of course also about things like washing dishes in the kitchen. You only realize how important warm water is when you suddenly don't have it anymore. Pascha had a lot of bad luck today, because he was just in the shower when it was turned off. That's no fun, because the water not only suddenly gets cold, Time a dark brown sandy broth from the shower head. That too is Moscow. The lover The sun is shining outside and I should enjoy the day, but it's bitterly cold. So I'd rather stay at home. I pull the duvet up to my neck and rummage through my female Facebook contacts. I look at her photos. Ah, pretty legs. There a dress that was too tight and bulging breasts. One shows its sporty side. The other makes you look elegant. Then there are the sluts. But it's the inconspicuous, the inconspicuous, that surprise me again and again and with whom I experience particularly beautiful stories. There's the little Spaniard who actually looks quite decent. She wants to be a diplomat and I'm sure she comes from a good family. I met her at the club. She was there with a friend. After three minutes I knew she wanted me. She knows that I'm not the man for life, but a kid who doesn't want to grow up. I am not the boyfriend-to-be, the man who will take care of her and endure her regular bouts of female drama. No, it's clear that I'm just an adventure. We look into each other's eyes and immediately have a very different relationship. One that's a lot more honest, clear and simple, with no bullshit. No, she's not a bomb in bed. Most of these inconspicuous ones are not. They probably just don't have enough experience. Because they don't do it all the time and they may just have their second or third boyfriend. But they are gentle, empathetic and sensitive. It's not the quick fuck, it's the few hours of tenderness and cuddling. It's what you don't have when you're alone and living like that. I enjoy her closeness. Her soft skin and her smell. I can't help but pull her to me. I want to track her body. You carry. I smell her hair and can't get enough. Oh man! I love women. No, not this one woman, but women in the plural. Most of the time they have friends. Some even husbands. What to expect? The good ones are always taken. They are bored, go out and meet me. A lone wolf. A stray lion. An adventure. It is clear from the outset that they will not leave their boyfriend and will not give up the security of the relationship, coexistence and the feeling of knowing the other. You pulled yourself together and live the compromise. You need that security. The feeling of security. The protection. No, but they don't want quick and dirty sex either. You want feeling. Tenderness. You are looking for the sensual. They want a lover. Someone who does what their husbands did five years ago. One who loves them and shows them exactly that. One who looks deep into their eyes while they have sex with him. Someone who cares about her and who is not only concerned with having fun and coming sometime while he might still be thinking about his colleague, the one with the short skirt and high heels. You miss that feeling, the attention of the other. Where has it gone, the passion? At some point the butterflies decided to fly away and they took the passion with them. She got lost between the morning coffee together and the movie before bed. I don't think she's getting ready for the night thinking she's going to pick up a guy tonight. The friend is on the way. Finally she has time to go out alone. Let it rip today. Tomorrow she will be in bed late. Later she takes a bath and is lazy. It's Friday and she's standing at a bar. She's talking to strangers and suddenly she's standing in front of someone who looks different. His smile is special somehow. Then the thought occurs to her that she is actually alone today. But her friends are there. What should they think of her? she is in a relationship She's one of the good guys. No bitch. Better have another drink and let the thought go. To this day I still don't understand what happened next. I only know how it ends. You go to another club together, dance and lose each other. Hands slowly wander over each other's bodies, exploring them, and suddenly they're getting into a cab together. Often the question "Your place or mine?" She gives the driver her address before she slides exhausted onto the back seat and onto my shoulder. I pull her even closer to me. She looks me in the eyes and we kiss. The thought crosses my mind briefly that it belongs to someone else, but I don't feel like thinking about morals and decency right now. Yes, I know it's selfish. Where's the respect? Sorry, I just can't help it. She is so beautiful. Has such a sweet voice and smells so good. I'm curious how she is in bed. Today she is mine. Just for one night, then you can have her back. It's kind of your fault too. You neglected her. I'm just doing your job now. If you were more attentive and not so superficial, then that wouldn't happen in the first place. Yes, yes, I know that after so many years of living together, it's hard to keep going. The next day we wake up next to each other. First we had a passionate night, then we smoked another joint and talked. It's all said. The fronts are clear. We know where we stand. It's liberating. A special kind of honesty. Who knows if we'll ever see each other again. Maybe I'll become her lover. Maybe we'll avoid each other in the future. But we're honest with each other. We don't have to lie to each other just to keep the relationship alive. We don't have to take care of ourselves. It was only one night. We don't have to, but we want to. Precisely because this relationship is so honest and free. It's on my shoulder and I'm squeezing it tight. She likes this security. To be in the arms of a strong man. Exhausted from last night's music, dancing, drinking and sex. For a moment I think about what it would be like if we found each other. What if she left him now and came to me forever? I feel them. I like her. do i love her I could love her. I have this feeling in my heart, but I suppress it because it must not be. But how about it? An open relationship? She could also have a lover or two if she gave me the same freedom. Wouldn't it be nice to be honest with each other? Not just on this level. She's something special and I feel Maybe right now I'm holding the woman for life in my arms. Maybe I should fight for her. Taking them away from the other and making them stay with me. But I know that things aren't going that way right now. We end up catching each other in the web of the relationship. It's going to be exactly the same as always, and we're going to have problems with each other. Not the same as with the last partner. Other. Similar. Then we will find compromises. We lost our passion a long time ago anyway and didn't even notice it. No, I have to enjoy the moment. Here and now. Enjoy it to the full. The clock is ticking and at some point I have to go home. If I'm lucky, the next day. Sometimes not until Sunday evening or Monday. When things go badly, there is less time. "It was already with you," she says. "I missed that." "Yes," I reply. "I feel the same way." She wants to do it again. Clearly. It doesn't matter if it's a risk or not. I don't want to know what she's risking with that. "Of course we'll do it again," I say. "Call me when you're free." Then I reprint them firmly. Kiss her on the cheek. I pause for a moment and take another deep breath. My god, she smells so damn good. Out on the street I review it. The best moments and impressions. But it's just a movie. Still, I grin contentedly, and I'm sure people coming my way will think I've just smoked a joint. There were a lot of these girls. It was always the unexpected evenings. The ones that were supposed to be boring from the start and ended up being the best in life. It was often dangerous. There was a father who knew about our love affair and didn't approve of it. There was a husband who was a drug dealer. I've often wondered if I'll ever end up dead in a river. A Wall Street Bar bouncer recently said it's a miracle I haven't been shot in the head yet. He must know. He knows the guests and the women I go home with. It's dangerous at times, but they're worth it. Every minute and every second. Because these are the moments for me that make life worth living and that are responsible for the fact that I will eventually die with a grin on my face. Of course there are other moments. A sunrise or sunset on top of a mountain. A fresh breeze on your face, right by the sea, when you taste the salt in the air and feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. There are many more and not enough time and paper to write them all down. But women are my favorite. They are often so complicated, but I still love them. Olga's friend and Natasha's dismissal "This is Olga," my friend Masha says, and she has that special grin. Ever since I've been single, I've been introduced to girls all the time. Olga is slim, wears a fashionable dress and is actually quite pretty. I'm still a little shy. "Sorry, I'll be back later, it's my turn with my DJ set now," I say and walk over to the DJ booth. Olga and Masha look after me. An hour later the dance floor is full. Between the people I see Olga and Masha. Both dance deliberately cool. Olga flirts with her eyes, and Masha still grins so funny. My mix keeps me busy, and two Long Island Ice Teas on an empty stomach don't make it any easier. The dance floor is boiling, I'm in a good mood myself and dancing behind the turntables. After my set, I stand next to the DJ booth and talk to a few people. Then Masha and Olga come over. Masha's friend is also there. She says: "You know, Olga doesn't have a boyfriend." "Oh yes? Then we'll see how it goes." It's loud and Olga can't hear us. She dances next to us. Nevertheless, she turns to us at the right moment and grins. Shortly afterwards I talk to Masha's friend. "Do you like Olga?" he asks. "Yes, it's quite nice, the little one," I say. "But she has a boyfriend," he warns me. "Masha's ex," he then adds. "Aha," I say in surprise. I don't know if it's the two Long Islands that confuse me now, or the Masha-Freund-Olga trio. “I have to go to the Wall Street Bar. I've got a party there tonight, too. Are you coming with me?” I ask. "Of course," says Masha euphorically, and ten minutes later we're in the car, me with Olga in the back seat. "I was on vacation in Asia," she tells me. 'That wasn't so good. I had a really bad time with my boyfriend and we broke up.” Ah, OK, now I get it. Even before the Wall Street Bar, Masha and her boyfriend start an argument, and suddenly Olga and I are alone in front of the entrance. "Whatever, all the better," I think. We push past the doorman. It's boiling in the bar. Here is one of the best parties in Moscow at the moment. "Of course you think so," says one of my favorite guests. "It's your party too." I grin. "But you're right," he adds. I go to my DJs and check the situation. "Man, this is a good night," I say to Pasha. 'Yes, yes, I see that. You have a great wife with you too. he asks. I smile contentedly. Olga is standing next to the bar and is waiting for me. I dance to her and immediately she falls back and we cuddle a bit. "Great, that works," I think. After an hour I feel safe and think about retreating home. With Olga, of course. However, I still have to stay at the Wall Street Bar for a while to do the DJ billing with the manager. So I cuddle with Olga a little more. Maybe it's the two Red Bull vodkas, but I'm liking the woman better and better. Actually, I didn't want to be in a relationship with a Russian girl anymore, but I was able to make an exception for her. I hadn't thought this through to the end when a guy slapped me on the shoulder. He introduces himself politely. After a short pause he adds: "I'm Olga's friend, you know." "Ex-boyfriend," I correct him cheekily. "No, Masha's ex-boyfriend and Olga's boyfriend," he tells me. Now this is all very strange. I'm confused. did i drink too much Then why is she cuddling with me? Or does he not yet know that he is her ex-boyfriend? In any case, it means trouble and I decide to retire. Should the two clarify this between themselves. Olga now knows where to find me on Fridays. It's after five o'clock in the morning when I get into the taxi with my DJs and we drive to our regular hangout, the Soljanka. As always, we are greeted warmly by the bouncers. Natascha comes towards me in the hallway and grins. She works for us sometimes, and we've had one or two adventures. Class. That can comfort me for Olga's loss. An hour later Soljanka closes and we head to our favorite after-hours club, Paparazzi. There, too, we are greeted with hugs. You know each other in Moscow nightlife. The promoter is about to buy us a round of Red Bull vodka. We dance, have fun. Again and again nice girls come to me and flirt with me. I can already see them in bed with me, but Natasha drives them all away. Somehow I lose interest in Natascha, but she doesn't give up. After an hour my friends go home. "So," I mean, "let's go?" The brightest sunlight awaits us outside. I put on my sunglasses and get us a cab. The dry snow crunches under my feet. It was minus 20 degrees last night. Natascha is already in the taxi when she sees a friend and jumps out again. At first I think she wants to say goodbye, but then she calls out to me to drive alone. "What? As? First you're spoiling my tour, and now I'm supposed to drive alone?' I scold. She grins and slams the door without a word. "What now?" grumbles the taxi driver. I think for a moment. Should I go back to the paparazzi? There were still enough girls. Then I look at the clock and see that it's ten in the morning. Besides, I'm already quite irradiated. I drank too much. "OK, so let's go home." At home, the normal weekend afterparty takes place. One of my DJs is sleeping on the couch. The others drink and listen to nasty techno. "Where have you been?" one of my roommates asks. "Where's Natascha?" "Still at the club," I grumble. "The stupid cow first ruined my chances for a bed warmer and then dumped me." The others laugh and push me a joint ruber. I pull a few times, then I get dizzy. Too much alcohol and hash don't mix. I'm not in a good mood anyway, so off to bed. I stagger down the corridor to my room. There I fall into my bed tired and fall asleep immediately, despite all the Red Bull vodka. When I wake up, a girl is lying next to me in bed. She's slipping her hand under my shorts. At first I think I'm dreaming, but then clarity slowly comes to my head along with a terrible headache. "The Long Island Ice Teas," I think as Natascha's face appears from under the covers. What? As? Am I tripping? But she left me. I'm confused for a moment, but then the anger comes back. "Go," I command. 'Get dressed and go! I don't want you." She grumbles, but I just roll over and try to go back to sleep. In my head, the Einfallenden Neubauten are playing a concert with jackhammers and sledgehammers. It's around four when I wake up. my bed is empty Good. Maybe I just dreamed it all. I'm terribly thirsty and my head is still pounding. Every movement hurts. Why did I give myself like that again yesterday? I wanted to go home earlier. Oh yes, there was the story with Olga. And after that I was running hot and wanted to look for a replacement. Well, first a sip of water. I grope for my water bottle, but reach into nothing. Argggh. There was still my sparkling water yesterday. Damned! I curse and pull myself together. I meet my Italian roommate Luca in the kitchen, and that's where my bottle of water is. She is empty. The kitchen looks bad. "Tell me," I ask. "Was Natasha here earlier?" "Yes," says Luca. "She called me and then came over to our house for the after party." "When?" I ask. “It must have been twelve. Man, oh man, the twenty-year-old girls ... She's in your room," says Luca. 'But then she came back fifteen minutes later. She grinned and had a water bottle in her hand. Then she offered everyone water.” 'Yes, that was mine. She did that on purpose,' I say, making myself some tea. 'She knew I was waking up with a nasty hangover this afternoon and I needed water. She wanted to punish me because I kicked her out." Luca shakes his head. "Well, that's fine," I say. “I don't think I behaved correctly yesterday either. Maybe I deserve it.« Then I wonder what became of Olga and her boyfriend. Anyway, I need an aspirin first. bandits Russia currently offers many opportunities. The economy is growing and the middle class is developing rapidly. But opportunities only exist for people with the right education or connections to the cliques that run the country. As a simple girl, especially from the country, you often have no chance. Lena is 30 and Korean. She was born in communist North Korea, her parents emigrated to the Soviet Union shortly thereafter. Lena grew up in a small town in southern Russia by the sea. She loves the sea, she says and smiles. There were no jobs at home, so Lena, like so many, moved to Moscow to find work and prosperity. She first worked as a secretary, but life in Moscow is expensive. Her friends are »bandits«, as the prostitutes call themselves, and introduced her to the part-time job. Later, Lena lost her job and went full-on into prostitution. She hits the clubs every night looking for men who will pay for sex. In Moscow alone there are an estimated 150,000 prostitutes. The number of unreported cases is probably much higher. Life here is expensive, and even if the girls earn enough to keep themselves in the new middle-class jobs, access to the new luxury world of Moscow's nightclubs, restaurants, boutiques and high-end department stores is priceless for them. The average bandit makes between three and five hundred dollars per john. She has to give part of it to a network, a pimp or a club. Another part to the police to turn a blind eye because prostitution is illegal in Russia. A survey is shocking, according to which every eighth schoolgirl between the ages of ten and sixteen says »call girl« is their dream job. Not to earn food or the rent, but so that the Dolce & When the sun goes down, Lena goes to a club or sits in a cafe. She smiles at the men and hopes to strike up a conversation with them. The price is quickly negotiated and we take a taxi home to the client. I ask her whether she's not afraid or whether she's ever experienced something bad. Lena spits in the air three times, a sign of luck in Russia, and tells me that until now she has always been lucky and everything has gone smoothly. Of course there were a few drunks or even trouble, but mostly it was resolved peacefully. “I look at people carefully beforehand and choose who I go home with. Also, I have my girlfriends who check in on me regularly on the phone,” she says casually. Lena is an exception. She didn't become a »bandit« to be able to buy expensive clothes, but she uses the money to support her family and has already saved a lot. She is considering buying an apartment in Moscow as an investment, she says proudly, but the prices in Moscow are too high. She would rather invest in Europe. You can get a restaurant on the Spanish coast or a hotel in Croatia cheaply and she plans to buy one. Spain is her dream country, she adds. In general, Lena makes an intelligent impression. She speaks good German and seems to be familiar with costs and prices in the various real estate markets. She tells me about square meter prices in certain areas of Moscow and compares them to Spain and Croatia. "No, I would be stupid if I would buy something here. The real estate market in Moscow will collapse in two years anyway because it's grossly overvalued,” says Lena. "Do you enjoy your job?" I ask, adding "Yes, I know, that's a stupid question." “You know,” she says, “I meet a lot of people. I'm learning a lot for life and to be honest I enjoy sex too.« "Do you see anything wrong with that?" I ask. “Nowadays, 'bandits' are a part of life in Moscow. A Russian man has his wife at home at the stove and can take as many girls on the side as he can afford. Not to mention the foreigners. I like many of the men I choose. I might be going to bed with them anyway, but this is how I make money and can improve my life and situation. Sometimes I even think it's a shame that I never see many of these men again or just have a business relationship with them.« "Hm, isn't that a bit schizophrenic?" "Maybe, but I don't have a choice," Lena replies. "Are you still looking for a job as a secretary?" Lena laughs: »No, as a secretary I earn between three and four hundred dollars a month. As a "bandit" I can make $2,500 or more a month." I wish Lena good luck on parting. She can use that: HIV, hepatitis and other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in Russia. Many of the clients do not like to use condoms. This is how the part-time job becomes Russian roulette. But maybe also to leave Russia and start again somewhere else. Maybe she'll make it to Spain and leave her life in Russia behind. Maybe her new »job« will destroy her too. I hope she makes it. whorehouse visit We are sitting in the beer garden of Bavarius, a pseudo-Bavarian inn in Moscow. Next to me is an acquaintance from Munich. 'Natalia will be here soon. That's quite sweet. I think there's something going on." "Cool, I'm happy for you," I say, bored, and drink my wheat beer. Shortly thereafter, a good-looking girl walks up to our table and grins. She hugs my boyfriend, then he introduces her to me. For the next two hours we sit together, talk and drink a lot of beer. Natalia gets pretty drunk at some point. She flirts with both of us at the same time. "There's something going on," my friend repeats confidently. "I'm happy for you," I repeat, still bored. "No, I mean three." “Bullshit. That's not such a girl. I feel that.« "You'll see," he replies, smirking to himself. When Natalia comes back we decide to move to a bar and continue from there. It's Tuesday and there's not much going on in Moscow either. After a Red Bull vodka, Natalia has had enough. It's one o'clock in the morning and she has to go home. We'll pay and take you to the taxi. "I live just around the corner," my friend tries again. "Let's go to my place." "Another time. Not today, because I'm already too drunk,” says Natalia and gets into the taxi. We watch the Lada drive away into the night. My friend is visibly disappointed. And I'm obviously drunk. "Come on, let's go fuck," I say to cheer him up again. "I just made some money and invite you over." "I know a salon nearby," he says and is immediately in good spirits again. That's a good thing, because I don't know much about such things. It's rare that I pay for sex, and I never go to one of those whorehouses anyway, because the one-hour number isn't for me. I like to take my time. After a short walk through the Moscow night we stand in a backyard. We ring a doorbell and shortly thereafter we go up to the third floor. There is an open door there. As we enter, an older woman comes up to us and asks what we would like. "We do not know. Let's see." After that we are taken to a room. We'll wait there for a few minutes. Then the door opens and twelve barely dressed girls come in. They walk past us. Spin around so we can see everything too. Then they sit on the bed. We pick two. The others go. "Do you want sex right away or something to drink first?" asks one of the girls. Before I can answer, my friend exclaims, "Oh yes. Champagne!" "Are you crazy? Do you know how much this costs?' “I know. Feel like champagne now. What does that cost?" The elderly lady comes in. "Three hundred dollars for the Veuve," she says. "OK, give it to me." We're sitting in a living room drinking with the girls. There are also two new people sitting at our table. One of them is from Africa. We're having a good time, but I'm pretty drunk now and I'm wondering if I shouldn't go home after all. Just as I'm about to suggest I leave, my friend leans over and says, "I just nailed a deal. We can have the room with the jacuzzi, two of the girls, and we get a bottle of bubbly too. It's only eight hundred dollars." “Man, I was counting on five hundred dollars, that's really too expensive for me. Apart from the fact that after the champagne campaign I only have two hundred in my pocket.« I'm done and just want to go home. “Can I pay with my credit card?” he then asks the elderly lady. She nods. »Fuck it! You only live once. Let's do that. You pay for the bottle of bubbly and now I invite you.” "Man, you can't afford that," I admonish. But he is already being dragged into the whirlpool room by one of the women. I follow him and five minutes later the four of us are sitting in the pool sipping champagne. After that we have fun with the girls on the big bed. Then there's a knock on the door. My friend is going to check. "Our time is up," he calls to me. “OK, I'm too drunk anyway. Let's go." "No no. I'll take care of it,' he says, and disappears outside. Three minutes later he comes back 'And on we go. I've extended it again." "Are you insane?" I ask. "What did that cost?" "It doesn't matter, let's have fun." After another hour we stagger out of the apartment. It's already light outside. I say goodbye and get in a taxi to go home. At home I fall into bed and sleep. I have to work by noon at the latest, which won't be easy after so much beer and champagne, but I have to admit that there are worse things. Hot salsa in the metro Riding the Moscow subway can be a pain. Sometimes it's the heat. Sometimes the stench. Sometimes the journey becomes a torture for the senses, because the beautiful Russian women just tear you down. If you decide to drive, you may have peace and quiet, but you will be stuck in traffic jams for hours and the traffic is unpredictable day and night. The metro is more reliable, but hopelessly overcrowded during peak hours. Almost twelve million people want to go to work and back. I've already hardened from the New York subway, but Moscow beats everything. It's tight, you're being pushed, pushed, pushing each other on each other's skin. The neighbor stinks of vodka or garlic - or both. The old grannies are the worst. They like to elbow you in the ribs and squeeze harder than any sixteen-year-old. But it doesn't help - I have a meeting and I'm taking the subway. After that I jump down the stairs to the metro entrance in a good mood, but my good mood vanishes immediately on the platform. It's rush hour and there's a lot of people here. It's getting hard to get a seat on the nearest metro. The train stops and I happen to be right in front of a door. The crowd pushes me from behind into the already overcrowded carriage. It's way too narrow and too hot. I am pushed far into the car and just manage to turn back towards the door before it gets too narrow. A long-legged blonde is standing in front of me. I can't see her face, but she wears a secretary outfit that's just my style and has a killer figure. Long legs with black high-heeled boots, a short skirt, a tight white blouse and a tight, much too tight little jacket. Moscow subway rides often become visual torture for me because the girls here are really tantalizing. You'd think they'd spend twenty-four hours looking for their prince charming, their sugar daddy, or someone who'd marry them, court them, and pay everything for them. They play with their charms more than in any other culture that I have experienced so far. The crowd pushes more people into the wagon, and the girl in front of me is pressed tightly against me. Finally the doors close and the train starts moving. My nose is almost in the girl's neck. I wanted to turn away, but I don't have a chance because I'm wedged in from all sides. Her perfume smells damn good and her hair tickles my nose a bit. Then I feel her bottom. He's right in front of me. The old train rattles. It's loud in the car. With the beat of the rails and the constant back and forth, it's almost as if we were dancing. I'm starting to get aroused and try to control and calm myself, but with each push things get worse for me. It seems to me that she's moving to the rhythm, rubbing her bottom against me, up and down, left to right. I don't know if it's the train or if she's doing it on purpose. Actually, their movements are too slow and don't match the jerking of the train. I'm sure she can feel my breath on her neck. She tracks me behind her. It's almost like a hot salsa dance. I wanted to hold her in my arms. You stop and dance with her. They kiss. My breathing quickens... Hopefully the ride will be over soon. Or not, because I actually enjoy the situation, even though it's rather strange. The journey to the next station does not take long. Almost three minutes. Still, it seems like an eternity to me. My thoughts turn to her long legs. I feel her tight, hard buttocks where it shouldn't be. Between her and me is just a bit of sheer satin and my jeans. I love this material, satin. It feels so good. I would love to caress her with my hand, but whether I'm allowed to or not, my hands are wedged tightly between me and my neighbors anyway. The train is slowing down, I have to get off at the next station. When the doors open and the situation calms down, the girl turns around. She has a very pretty face. Our eyes meet for a brief moment. I catch my breath, then she smiles. It's not a cheeky, not a seductive smile, but a gentle, lovingly naive one. She exits the train and disappears into the crowd. I also have to keep fighting my way to the connecting train. A short time later I'm back in an overcrowded subway car and am almost crushed to death. It stinks and it's hot, but I still have a satisfied grin on my face. Wrong, drank a lot "I'm curious how things will turn out in Yekaterinburg," I say to Evgeni as we get on the plane. We're having a nightlife event at the best club in Russia's fourth largest city, and I'm supposed to give a speech and present the World's Finest Club award. Also included is Evgeni's crazy assistant. Two hours later we land in Yekaterinburg. Even in the airport there is a terrible smell of exhaust fumes. Our driver is waiting for us. "What stinks in here?" I ask him. 'The heavy industry. If the wind is unfavorable, the exhaust fumes go into the city.« "I didn't want to live here," I think, but keep quiet. Arriving at the hotel, I move into my room. I grab a beer from the minibar and watch TV. I've got two hours before we have to go to the club, and it's right next door. Later Evgeni picks me up for dinner. We sit in the hotel lobby and let ourselves be pampered. The guest DJ of the evening, a very nice Swede, is also there. We drink wine and eat a lot. Then it's time. The promoter picks us up and takes us to the club. "Where's our table?" Evgeni asks the promoter. “Yes,” he replies hesitantly, “there is a problem. We sold all the tables.« "What?" Evgeni gets angry. Part of our deal is that we get our own table for the whole evening. "I'll see what I can do," says the promoter and disappears. We stand next to the stage and examine the dance show of the go-gos. I slurp my first vodka Red Bull. Shortly thereafter, the promoter comes back. No, unfortunately there were no more free tables. "I don't care," I say to Evgeni, "as long as we get free drinks for us and our friends." "No," Evgeni says, "that's not possible. I don't stand around all night." The promoter makes a concerned face. Then the owner of the club comes with his wife and we are introduced. I smile kindly and shake her hands. After the greeting, Evgeni complains. "It's not a problem," says the owner. “You could sit at my table. It's right over here. It's okay if you invite girls over, too." Evgeni is halfway satisfied. We sit down. My speech is at two o'clock. I hand over the prize, then we sit down again at the table. The club cheers, and now everyone is celebrating. Our new Swedish DJ friend also puts on a very cool show. I'm sitting on the other end of the couch and I'm still bored. "I'm going to have a look around," I say to Evgeni. 'No, you can't. You have to represent,« he replies. "The owner expects that." "OK, OK, then I'll stay." I now have three Vodka Red Bull on my account. The proprietor orders a bottle of champagne, and he doesn't skimp because there's no Krimsekt or standard Moet. I am now sitting next to the owner's wife. She is a classy black-haired woman with a great figure and a pouty mouth. A friend is sitting next to her. We drink champagne and talk a little. Is she flirting with me? I ask myself at first. No this can not be. Her husband sits right across the street and can see everything. "You're a handsome man," she says suddenly. OK, she's flirting with me. Evgeni sees this too and warns me: "Be careful, her husband, the owner, is one of the mafia bosses here in Yekaterinburg." "That's what he looks like, too," I reply. Evgeni tells me about the mafia war in which most of the mobsters died and only a handful remained. My opponent is probably the alpha male among them. I want to be polite and turn back to the women. From now on I try to make small talk, but she wants more. She flirts really hard. I see her husband watching us out of the corner of my eye and get nervous. "So," she says, "I saw through you. Surely you only came to Yekaterinburg to have good sex, right?” She grins at me and it looks like she's about to eat me skin and hair. "Are they both swingers?" I think. 'Or why is she so obviously flirting with me in front of her husband? It does not matter. I have to get out of here or I might end up in a landfill.« "Excuse me please. I have to go to the bathroom,« I say and disappear. After a fifteen minute stroll around the club I decide to go back and not leave Evgeni alone. Arriving at the table, I sit down next to the mafia boss. "So," he says with a serious expression, "my wife likes you, huh?" He looks at me angrily, and I realize that the situation is serious. "Excuse me," and I consciously use his first-name form, although by now everyone has used the first name on me, "I know exactly who you are. Please believe me I never intended to flirt with your wife. I was just making small talk. I respect you and your position.” He looks at me, not quite sure how to react, but his expression is still serious. I feel that that's not enough, but I don't know what else to say either. 'You know,' I add after a while, 'it's not my fault if your wife hits on me. Just to get your attention.” The mafia boss is shocked by my direct manner. He mumbles something in Russian, but I can't understand it because of the loud music. "What can I do to fix the problem?" I ask submissively. "Let's drink vodka," is his reply. I nod, and a moment later the waitress comes over with a large bottle of Russkij Standard. Unfortunately, she also has the big glasses in her hands. "In our case it was Kolsch Glaser," I think as she fills it halfway. The mafia boss and I toast each other. He grins, then we smack the vodka down our throats. "It could still be something," I think and look over at Evgeni. A few vodkas later, the mafia boss and I are best friends. 'You've got to let me know when you're in Yekaterinburg again. Then we'll do it again.« "Sure, and you let me know when you're in Moscow," I reply, hoping he'll lose my number and never call back. When I wake up, someone taps me on the shoulder. "Sir!" says the young flight attendant. 'You must fasten your seat belt. We land in Moscow.« What? How did I get here? I'm sitting alone in my row, at the back of the plane. I'm only dressed with a t-shirt, my black pants and my shoes. These are a bit full of puke. My pockets are empty and there's nothing in the luggage compartment either. where is my passport How did I even get on board? As we touch down, it occurs to me that it's minus twenty degrees outside. I look for Evgeni and his assistant on the plane, but there is no trace of them either. It's only when the crew announces the local time that I know I'm on my planned flight. That's good because no matter what happens, I have a driver who will be waiting for me in the arrivals hall and will take me home. There I have to ring my flatmates out of their sleep. I hope they are home because they like to spend Saturday mornings in the after-hours club. As we disembark, I stagger out of the plane. My head is working fine again and I'm quite clear. Only the motor skills don't want to play along at all. I almost fall over my own feet. When I get to the baggage carousel, I have to sit down first. "Maybe my stuff will come out of here," I think, waiting for the tape to stop. It's probably better if I set off and look for my driver, because if I don't find him, I don't stand a chance. Without ID, money, phone and jacket, fifty kilometers outside of Moscow. When I look for my driver, I find Evgeni. He's totally drunk and slurs at me. Then his assistant comes, who seems to be quite sober. "Ah, there you are," he says. 'I found our driver. He's waiting outside. We have to go. Can you walk alone?' he asks me, taking Evgeni's arm over his shoulder to lead him out. "Where are my things?" I ask. “I have your passport and your wallet. The rest is still in Yekaterinburg, but will be on the next plane this evening,” he explains to me matter-of-factly. It's bitterly cold outside, and even the twenty meters from the hall to the taxi is torture for me. I literally fall into the car. Then he helps Evgeni from the other side and sits himself in the passenger seat. I'm waiting for an explanation, but he's silent and looks at the street. "What happened?" I finally ask. “You started drinking with the owner. Then Evgeni joined in too, and at some point you were all blown away. You and the owner had a lot of fun together. At some point you fell asleep. We let you sleep until it was time to go." "And then?" 'We just couldn't wake you up and we were running out of time. So club security put you in a car and drove you to the airport. Evgeni and I went to the hotel to get our bags, but we couldn't wait for them to gather and bring your things. At the airport you must have thrown up on the feet of the security people..." "Me too," I interrupt. »... and when you checked in they didn't want to accept you because you could barely stand. The security guys then made it clear who got you so drunk, after that they put you on the plane personally. All the way to the back so you can have your peace. Haha, they were glad to finally get rid of you." "So, apart from falling asleep, I haven't misbehaved?" I ask, incredulous. »No, everything was OK. We have no problem. And your things, as I said, will be on the next plane tonight.” After more hours of torment, I'm finally home. I fall into my bed exhausted. When I wake up in the evening I wonder if it was all just a bad dream? No, it was real: my shoes, which were puked on, are next to my bed. I get up and meet Pasha in the kitchen. When I tell him my story, he becomes thoughtful. "Boy!" he says. "You have been lucky. That could have ended up in a landfill. Don't do such a shit! Be a little more careful next time.” "Yes yes, it's OK. I'm still alive." Then I get ready and go to the club, because I have to hang up for five hours after midnight. Seven days, seven girls »I want to break the hundred mark!«, says Charlie Runkle in the TV series Californication. I've been through that for a long time. Eventually I even stopped paying. There are women I remember and there are adventures I'd rather forget. It's not like I'm going out and saying I'm taking a girl home today. Normally things are different. You go to the club, stand at the counter and talk to a nice woman. Sometimes it becomes something. Sometimes not. I don't believe in pick-ups who pick up a woman every time. These people probably have a problem with themselves and need to prove to themselves how great they are over and over again. That's not the case with me. I don't have a girlfriend and until the right one shows up I live my life trying to have fun. Maybe one day my dream woman will be there, and I'll change my lifestyle. After the slave everything has become relative anyway. I have lived out all fantasies with her. And? Am I feeling better now? No, on the contrary. Now there is emptiness. I'll take it easy for a while. After that, I decide to raise the bar a little bit more. I know what and how I like it. So it's about quantity, not so much quality I think. I am constantly meeting new women. It's always the same: most girls like me and see me as their next boyfriend. My answer is always the same: "I don't want a girlfriend, but we can have fun." You'd think most people would give up and try another man, but the opposite is true: they stay and try to get me around somehow. But it often goes wrong after just a few meetings. Some bitch immediately. Others only after the third date. Most of the time we don't get any further and the women look for someone else. Nevertheless, some remain and do not give up. My phone rings, it's Vera. "What are you doing this evening?" "It is Tuesday. What am I supposed to do? I'll stay home and chill,' I reply. "Can I come over?" she asks. On Wednesday it's the same with Nelly. So I always have enough to do. Sometimes it's even too much. I long for a quiet evening at home with my Playstation and a few beers. It doesn't matter when, I always have five girls on hold and I'm having trouble timing everything. When I'm traveling alone, I don't care about the breakdown. "I don't need another girl," I think. But the women notice that and jump at me even more. Thursday evening I'm at the propaganda. There's one dancing and grinning at me. She comes over and we talk, have a few drinks together, and in the morning it's over to my place. I'm DJing at a party on Friday night and it doesn't take long before I have a grinning little girl in vinyl leggings in front of the DJ booth. She turns her back on me and dances provocatively. Then she leans against the desk, pulls her head back and grins at me while I have a clear view of her breasts. After hanging up, I invite her for a drink, and shortly thereafter we end up in the taxi, then in bed. On Saturday we fuck all day, but in the evening I have to go out and DJ again. Today I'll take it easy, get the set ready, then go home and just sleep, I tell myself. Then Lola shows up. We only know each other from the internet. She has a good figure and a nice smile. "No, not again," says my friend Max, because he knows what I've been up to for the past few days. "No, not today," I reply. After the set I go to Lola's and we chat a little. She puts her hand on my leg. Then she slowly pushes her hand up. I want to remain adamant, but Lola is serious and goes a step further. She massages my cock through my jeans. Very openly and very unabashedly. "OK, let's fill up the five then," I think, pulling Lola over to kiss her. An hour later we are with me. She's good, a little bit different. I don't know what it is. She's only twenty-three but fucks with a lot of experience. It even scares me at some point, because I wonder how many men she must have had to be that good. Lola seems to see sex as a sport. She gives me orgasm after orgasm and it seems "Slow down," I say. "We don't have to set a world record here, do we?" "Why not?" asks Lola, grinning at me. After that she continues and tries to get me to have another orgasm. This goes on until dawn, and when I wake up around noon, Lola is trying to score again. My penis hurts and I'm totally screwed. When I'm finally rid of Lola and tiredly fall into my bed to enjoy the rest of the day alone, my phone rings. On the other end is Becky, an Englishwoman. We had a one night stand months ago. "What are you doing tonight?" she asks. "Chilling!" I answer firmly. "Can we chill together? I'm really tired. I've had a rough week,' she says. “No, really. I want to stay alone today.« "That's a shame," Becky says. "I've only got one more day in town and thought I'd drop by with a bottle of wine and spoil you." I remember Becky. She was particularly naughty last time. I liked that. Maybe it's a good thing if she comes over? "OK, come by later," I say, and then take a shower. Becky arrives in leather pants and heels and it's not long before we're in my bed having fun. But slowly it's starting to hurt, and I'm slowly getting tired of it. "What's happening? Why don't you come?” asks Becky. "I am tired. Had a lot of stress the last few days,« I reply, not mentioning that she's sixth and that I only had several orgasms last night. "It doesn't matter," I say, "as long as you're having fun. Don't worry about me." Thank God Becky has to be at the airport on time the next day and goes home that same night. I fall into my bed. Then it occurs to me that maybe I should change the sheets. I haven't gotten around to it for the past few days and now it's real enough. Monday. It's hard for me to work because I'm physically exhausted. Yes, it may sound great. Six days and six women, but it's really a marathon. Not just physically, because you have to offer and entertain women outside of the bedroom. Anyway, I'm surprised I haven't gotten their names mixed up in the last few days. In the evening I'm invited to Lisa's. She's bought lobster and caviar, she tells me on the phone, but I have to cancel. I know how the evening ends and I can't make it another night. "Sorry, I'm not feeling well," I fib over the phone. Lisa is disappointed, but is content that I will visit her in the next few days when I feel better. Seven days, seven women, that's crazy. Any man who brags about it is either a liar or Superman. It was just too much. In the future, I decide to take it slower. So it's not quantity either. The quality remains. The lawyer Thursday evening, we are bored at the bar of the So-Ho Room. Katsche, my new roommate, keeps me company. Today we are throwing our own party in the most exclusive club in Moscow. »You know me«, I say to him, »My heart is in the underground. I'm terribly bored with this posh attitude here at the So-Ho.” "Then why are you having a party here?" “Because of the coal. And it's also good for the image.« "You're right. It's boring and the music doesn't work at all. But at least the women are good here.” I shrug. "Yes and? The models don't look at you anyway. We don't have enough money and they know it." I just heard from the manager of the So-Ho that one of the women got a BMW 6 as a gift after a one-night stand with a fat rich Russian guy. No, we can't compete with that. “You know,” said the manager, “when one of your foreigners takes a table, he spends around three hundred euros. The Russian at the next table leaves a thousand euros and more.« "Just don't give up hope," replies Katsche. In front of us, six-foot-tall girls in high heels are dancing. My friend Maxim always calls them "basketball players." They are beautiful creatures: long legs, firm buttocks, clothes that are much too tight, always the perfect make-up and a hairstyle that looks as if it had just been created by a stylist. You can see that these girls are expensive. I always have visitors from Germany or other countries. The men are impressed by the women, but I have to keep telling them that Moscow is not Kyiv. Here you are worth nothing as a foreigner. At least not for that kind of woman. If you're lucky, you can buy her a drink, in return you can stand next to one of these goddesses for a short time. That's it. Nothing more will happen. At least most. There are a lot of people sitting at the tables today Russians. A Russian pop band from the 90s plays later, which always attracts a lot of guests. Two or three men sit at most tables and these long-legged models surround them. I look at the couch in front of me, there's a girl kneeling there in skin-tight vinyl pants. She's not wearing any underwear, you can see that. You can see every curve, that of the bottom, but also the Venus hill in between. The Luxembourg banker next to me is already drooling, but this girl belongs to one of the Russians. The bar is slowly getting fuller. Katsche talks to a few Italians while I move from guest to guest and make small talk. I have a lot of girls in my party community, but sadly most of them aren't model types, they're more middle class. Still, they don't look bad When the band plays, the party rages. everyone dance The drunk Russian men as well as the expats with their new girlfriends. It's almost two o'clock and most of them have already filled up. Katsche has tried his hand at a few girls, but now he's alone at the bar again. I think he's making the typical Moscow rookie mistake. You talk to a nice woman, flirt like crazy, but then someone else grins at you and actually looks a lot better. So you find the exit and move on. It goes on for a while until you get one that does the same thing and you're traded in for a better one. Then suddenly you're alone at the bar. It's late and you've already seen most of the women. Now they don't want to anymore and have meanwhile looked for someone else. We finally go home around three o'clock. Katsche has made a girl clear after all. It's a Russian who has lived in LA for a long time and is a lawyer. No, she's not pretty. But the worst thing about her is her mouth. She sits in the cab behind me and talks in a tour. Just stupid stuff at that. At home we sit in the living room and drink a glass of wine together. The lawyer still speaks without a period or a comma. "Please," I say to Katsche in German so that she can't understand me, "tell her to blow you. So that she finally shut up.« Katsche starts messing with her and she goes for it. Shortly thereafter, the two sit on the couch and kiss. I sit next to the table and watch. Actually, I was able to go to bed, but I have the feeling that more is happening here, because the lawyer also flirted heavily with me. After a while I take her leg and put it on my lap. Then I run my hand from her knee up and down her thigh, this time on the inside. The lawyer is visibly agitated. Her hand grabs Katsche between her legs and looks for the zipper. After a while I go to the end and feel through the panties that she is wet. Then I get up, sit next to her, and now she kisses me while she has Katsche tightly in her hand. That's how it goes for a while. Then I stand up and pull the lawyer to me. I push them into my room and slowly take off her dress there. Katsche stands behind her and strokes her. After that, I push her into bed and we have threesome sex. The lawyer is very excited. She is like in a trance and lives her personal porn. Katsche and I are a good team. We don't get in each other's way and the threesome works unusually well. After half an hour, the lawyer suddenly jumps up. She is now standing in bed in front of us and staring at us in panic. "No, that's not me! I didn't do that,” she says, and quickly begins to gather her clothes. She runs out of my room, and shortly afterwards I hear the apartment door slam shut. Katsche and I put on our shorts and sit back in the living room. We'll have another glass of wine and smoke a joint. "Strange woman," Katsche breaks the silence after a while. 'Yes, strange. It was almost as if she had been in a dream earlier and suddenly woken up.” "The poor. I hope it wasn't a nightmare,« says Katsche and laughs. "Well, that was good anyway, wasn't it?" "Absolutely." After that we go to bed. Before I fall asleep, I have to grin and, as so often, shake my head in disbelief. That was another one of those crazy Moscow stories. girlfriends Friday night. We're on our way to a new bar where I'm supposed to be DJing tonight. I was there last week and didn't like it at all. There's a strip club above the bar, so the crowd was mostly guys. "I don't really feel like going to the place at all," I say to Max. "Think this will be the first and last time that I DJ there." Actually, I'm playing house music at the moment. My tracks come directly from New York and are played there by the best DJs in the city on the super trendy roof terraces of design hotels. In Moscow, people don't understand my new style. They want pop hits, but I've had enough of them for a long time. Max brings me a beer and I put on the first tracks. Pop shit at its finest. I was also able to play the top 10 on the charts. It would be the same. Max stands at the bar, looks over at me and just shakes his head. »Hey, the audience likes it. I'm not in the mood for that shit either,' I say. I can't find my groove, I'm playing horribly, but the people at the tables are swaying to the beat, which is always a good sign. Well, that will take a maximum of two to three hours, then I can disappear. But contrary to expectations, more and more people come and the bar slowly fills up. Then suddenly a track hangs. I quickly slide in the next song and pull the CD out of the player to inspect it. OK, she's gauze. I throw them in my bag and later throw them away. Then I examine the other CDs and find that a good seventy percent of my pop discs have become unusable because they were lying around in the apartment or in my bag without a case. Thank God I quickly burned two CDs with the latest hits, and they run, but that's not nearly enough tracks to fill the evening. After another hour I slowly run out of songs. That's actually not so bad, because I didn't want to play here anymore anyway and wanted to keep the evening short. But it's getting fuller and the place rocks. Anyway, I'll just put my house on. The last time I tried this at one of those pop bars, the place was empty after three songs. The manager and bartenders just stood there shaking their heads. I can still find a halfway working CD with mixed versions of pop hits. So I put one of these in. Actually, this music fits better in a club than in a bar, but somehow it works today. A few of the guests even get up and dance at their table. However, the dance floor next to me is still empty. OK, now it's time for one of my New York tracks. The speed is right and I add a cool house track. people still dance there are now more between the tables. "OK, half won," I think, and again slide in a remix of a pop hit. So I slowly lead the guests over to my new style, and then the place rocks. The dance floor next to me is packed and people are grinning at me. Now I only play my new house. After a while the director approaches me. He grins and is euphoric. "Great Mukke," he says. "Keep it up!" I'm just wondering. It's almost two and actually I'm done. "Do you have another DJ?" I ask. "No, we didn't think it would be that good and we figured it would be over at two." "OK, I'll keep playing." Actually, I'm having fun myself now, but I've also been invited to the opening of a new big club today, and Leningrad, a famous Russian ska band, are playing there, which I've wanted to see live for a long time, especially since they don't actually play together anymore. I was invited by one of the owners of the club, DJ Bobo of Russia. It's going to be hard to get in, but I'm on the guest list and I can take friends. There's only one problem. Leningrad starts around two o'clock and I'm standing in a full bar with a roaring crowd. "And when are we leaving?" asks Max. He doesn't care about Leningrad, but he wants to see the new club and is excited to walk past a crowd of rich Russians who have to wait while we're on the VIP list. "They don't have a DJ," I reply, shrugging as I pull on the next track. Max laughs. "So are we staying here?" "I guess it looks like it." "Okay, then I'll go get you another Vodka Red Bull." Two Asian women are sitting at the table in front of me. I don't really care for this type of woman, but both of them are very pretty and have a great figure. One of them is Svetlana. I met her at a French friend's housewarming party last week. Great woman. She wears a tight black dress, has long brown hair and a very beautiful face. Max comes back and brings me my drink. He sees the two girls and how Svetlana adores me. "Maybe it won't be so bad if we stay here," he says. I grin. The party goes on and it's five in the morning when I finally finish. Six hours on the decks is enough. Svetlana is still there and I go to her table. “I'm still going to the opening of The Artist. Is a new club. We're on the guest list. are you still coming? Guess it's not that busy anymore, but let's stop by anyway. It's just around the corner." The girls drink up and we go. The doorman at Artist doesn't want to let me in because I'm wearing jeans and sneakers, which is an absolute no-go in Moscow's nightlife. 'Come on boy, first of all you know me, and secondly I'm on the guest list. Third, I come with two glamorous women. What more do you want?” I answer coolly and calmly. He grins and leafs through his list. Then he waves us in and wishes us a lot of fun. There really isn't much going on in the club anymore. It seems like most people had already moved on. The girls are a bit disappointed. "Can't do anything," I say when one of the owners comes up to me. We know each other well from nightlife, although we couldn't be more different when it comes to style. He produces and plays commercial music. The worst of the worst. The stuff you would expect at an Austrian apres-ski party, just in Russian. Still, he's a star, and the girls next to me can't get a word out. "What do you want to drink?" he asks. "Don't know?" "Whiskey for you and champagne for the girls." "Cool." He's off to organize the drinks. The girls still can't get a sound out. "Yes, I know. It is boring. We'll be right back. Got another party tonight and hope it's better,' I say to Svetlana. All she really wants to do is stay and hang out with the owner and his friends, but that's not going to happen because they're both mine tonight. It doesn't take long before the owner comes back and brings us the drinks. "And? How do you like the shop?” I think he's terrible, but I don't want to offend the owner. No, not because he's a big deal, but because I like him. "Great club," I say. "Sorry I'm late, but I had a good night at the Boom Boom Room myself and just had to hang up." He is happy about my answer and talks a bit more with Svetlana and her friend, which impresses the girls immensely. Then I drank my whiskey. 'Let's go, girls. We're going somewhere else. Sorry, we have to move on.« He grins because I have two models in tow to take care of. The girls are a bit disappointed, but they also understand that there is nothing going on here anymore. "And? Where are we going now? Maybe the So-Ho Rooms?” asks Svetlana. 'No, there's nothing going on there now. It's almost six in the morning. Let's move into my living room,' I reply cheekily. Svetlana is a little surprised by my directness. "Don't worry," I say. "I don't mean my real living room, but my favorite store, Soljanka." I know that nothing is going on with Svetlana today, after all her friend is there and takes care of her. I have to wait for a better opportunity or get her so drunk she doesn't care. “Solyanka?” asks Svetlana. "I don't even know the store." That doesn't surprise me, because these model types always go to the same clubs, the So-Ho Rooms or the Imperia Lounge. "Well then let yourself be surprised. It's a good shop and, as I said, my second living room.« Fifteen minutes later we're there. The bouncer greets me and waves us in. The girls are surprised again. In the club, however, it is already dead pants. Both rooms are almost empty. Anyway, I'll order a round of Red Bull vodka for me and the girls. "Great place," says Svetlana, but I can tell she's a bit disappointed. 'Well, I guess it's a bit too late. We'd better move to an after-hours club.« "What? Do you want to move on?' asks Svetlana's friend. I realize that the evening will soon be over and I will go away empty-handed. Then I can still persuade Svetlana to come with me, and we sit in a taxi to Glazur, one of the classier after-hour clubs. I probably should have suggested Kryscha Mira because it's super difficult to get in there too, but I'm not into techno, I want some more house. wrong decision! Svetlana's girlfriend gets her way and the two of them decide to go home when we arrive and I'm getting out of the taxi. "OK, no problem," I say, disappointed. 'See you next time then. I had fun with you two. We have to do it again.« After that I get a kiss from both of them and the taxi drives away. "Fuck me," I think and walk to the Glazur's entrance. Then I'll just keep drinking here, there will be a girl who wants to go home with me. Or rather not? Actually, I'm well through, and when I go to the Glazur, I don't get home until around noon. In the evening I already have two dates with other girls. Maybe it's better if I just go home and have a lie-in so I'll be fit again in the evening. So U-turn and back to the street. The bouncer looks at me in surprise, because just as I'm standing in front of him, I turn 180 degrees and slowly walk away without a word. When I get home, I put my DJ stuff in the cloakroom and go for a walk with my dog Muhackl. It's getting light outside. What a night! The fresh air is good and I'm glad Just as we have finished our walk, my phone rings. I'm surprised to see that Pasha's girlfriend is on the other end. After all, it's now eight o'clock in the morning. "It's good that you're still awake," she says. 'I can't reach Pasha and I don't have my keys with me. We're on our way to you." I go into his room and see him lying in bed. He's still wearing his jacket and shoes. Typical Pasha! He really kicks himself up every couple of weeks, then drinks through Friday through Sunday night. This is normal for many Russians. They call it zapoi, I call it going on a bender. It also happened that Pascha wasn't alone in his bed, or wasn't even at home at that time, so I wanted to check things out before I allowed his girlfriend to come by. "Hm, Pasha isn't that fit anymore," I tell her. 'You know him. He's really done it again." 'Anyway, we're coming over now. don't go to sleep I have two other friends with me and they want sex.« After that I hear loud laughter in the background and she hangs up. What? As? I don't even know her like that. She's actually a good girl from the suburbs. No, none of those who live in the prefabricated buildings. Your parents have money. Lot of money. Ten minutes later the doorbell rings. I open the door and she comes in with her friends. All three are in a good mood and quite drunk. They walk straight into our living room in their high-heeled shoes. One of them waves a plastic bag back and forth in front of me: "We brought beer!" I don't know if I can have anything else to drink, and beer at this time? It is already daylight outside. Pasha's girlfriend goes into his room, but comes back a short time later and laughs. "He's totally screwed," she says. "Do you have any more comfortable clothes for the girls?" I shrug. "T shirts?" I'll get the smallest ones I have. Her friends are in their early twenties and are both good looking. They can't compete with the models before, but at this time it doesn't matter. They have nice legs and great bums, which are now sticking out from under the T-shirts. I wonder if that was just a joke or if they really want to have fun. Both are blonde. Their names are Nastia and Katja. The latter is married to the son of an animal feed entrepreneur. I know him because he's learning German and occasionally needs help with his homework. As payment I always get a few bags of dog food for my little fox terrier. "Do you have anything left to smoke?" asks Nastia. "Naturally. You know us,' is my reply as I pick up the box of smokes and start rolling a joint. Nastia grins. The girls talk while I play music for them. You keep making lewd remarks. "Do you have a big cock?" asks Katja. "You're married." "So what? I like big cocks, too,” she flirts. I am shocked. Then I go to Pasha. I try to wake him up. "Hey dude! I have three wild girls sitting in the living room and it seems like all three want to fuck. At least take your girlfriend off my shoulders so I can enjoy it in peace." Pasha only growls drunk and turns to the other side. When I come back into the living room, the girls are drawing tattoos on their bodies with a black sharpie. Nastia gets a vagina painted on her arm. Katja's thigh is stylishly decorated with a large penis. I go back to my DJ table and put on the next track. "Now it's your turn," calls Katja and grins. She is standing in front of me in a tight black thong, my T-shirt is too big for her. One of her small firm breasts hangs out of the V-neckline. Katja comes up to me and pushes my t-shirt up. Then she paints me two big tits on my stomach. I resign myself to my fate and open another can of beer. It's getting later and I'm getting tired. The sun is already shining outside and it's high time to go to bed. "I go to bed now. You can carry on,« I say to the three of them. "No. Stay here. Weren't you listening earlier? I meant it on the phone." "OK, then I'll stay a little longer." But I tell her to go to Pasha's room. After all, she's my best friend's girlfriend. "Sorry. Nothing can happen between us, and you're not allowed to watch either. No matter how drunk you are.” "What? I'm supposed to go to bed with the stinker?' "Yes, you should. And there are no arguments!" "OK later. Yes?" So we sit together for another two hours. Talk, flirt and drink the remaining beers. Then she finally disappears into Pasha's room and I go to the toilet for a moment. When I come back, Nastia and Masha are lying next to each other on the couch and pretend they're already asleep. I was only gone for three minutes. “OK,” I think, “so they got scared. Okay, let's leave that." I go to my room but leave the living room door open in case either of them decides to have sex with me. I secretly hope it's Katja, because I like her best and she's been particularly flirtatious all morning. Then I lie in bed and wait. Nothing happens. Damn. chance missed. Maybe I should have taken the first step after all. Just lie down on the couch with them. But it's so small. The three of us had a lot more space in my bed. Doesn't matter. I decide to try it. In the worst case, they kick me out and then I can still sleep. So I go over to the two of them. Nastia is still awake and grins at me as I lay down with them. There is no room on the couch, and Nastia only allows me to lie down in front of her. We kiss eachother, and I'm fondling her. She doesn't seem to really want to, because whenever I want to go between her legs, she squeezes them tightly together so that I can't go any further. After a while I finally reach my goal and to my surprise I find an intimate piercing between Nastia's legs. Not bad for a twenty-two year old. She seems to be enjoying it now. Katja lies next to us and still pretends to be asleep. Then Nastia suddenly gets up and goes to the toilet. I take the opportunity to take care of Katja. She enjoys it at first, but then pushes my hand away when I want to go under her thong. Somehow I feel like a fourteen year old trying his first fumble. Then Nastia comes back and she doesn't think it's good that I'm messing around with Katja in the meantime. Katja is pretending to be asleep again, so it looks like I'm trying to grope her while she's sleeping. Nastia lies down with us, but no longer allows me to touch her. Now I'm lying between the two girls and don't know what to do. So the flirting and the snide remarks were just a game after all. Or the psychology between the three of us just broke it. I don't know, but think about the causes for a while and wait for one of the two to turn around and take the next step. After ten minutes I've had enough. I get up, kiss both girls on the forehead and wish them good night. Subliminally, I apologize for my misjudgment of the situation. Then, disappointed, I move off to my room, but leave the door open again. Did I misunderstand something? Before I fall asleep, all sorts of thoughts go through my head. What an evening. What a night and what a morning. But apparently I did something wrong, because I didn't succeed in turning the fantasies of the two girls into reality, even though we were all drunk and open enough by the end. Oh well. You can't always have everything, and actually the evening was good enough and full of surprises. I decide to be happy about it and fall asleep with a grin. Then suddenly I wake up. Nastia is sitting on the edge of my bed. "Let's smoke another one," she says. "And then?" "We'll see," is her reply. After smoking, I try to pull Nastia into bed, but she wants to stay on the edge of the bed. Uff. Those young chickens. They really don't know what they want. Actually I'm already too tired for these games at this time. Incidentally, the first hangover headache slowly sets in. I would like to just go back to sleep now. Let her sit there and think about what she wants. On the other hand, I started earlier. So I should finish the whole thing properly. I get up, sit down behind Nastia and start caressing her neck. She seems to enjoy it and we kiss. After that, my hand finds its way back into her lap, but the same thing awaits me there as before. Access. Okay, so let's just kiss for a while. It takes a full half hour until Nastia is finally lying in bed next to me, but then everything happens very quickly. She's suddenly naked and I can get a close look at her piercing. I find it very pleasant that most Russian women are shaved. I like the shape and look of the vagina. At least, most of the time. Nastia is bold. She keeps pushing me away and I feel like I'm doing something she doesn't want me to do. So I limit myself to the things she allows me to do. Then at some point I think that it can't be that and take it a step further. Only to be put back in her place by Nastia. Nonetheless, I enjoy my time with her. And this despite the fact that my headaches are getting worse and worse. I decide to take a short break to take a painkiller. After that we continue. It doesn't take long before I'm running too hot. The alcohol and the painkillers, plus the stimulation from Nastia, who now also works on me and participates. I want sex and push myself over her. But Nastia doesn't want to. "Hey! No problem!« I say as Nastia pushes me back down. "No fear. I have condoms.« I pull one out of the shelf next to the bed and want to open the package, but Nastia shakes her head. So I go back downstairs and play with her femininity. It's fun for me, and maybe I can still get them around that way. But when it doesn't work after the third attempt, I decide to give up. The painkillers have made me groggy, but the headache is getting worse and worse. Now I feel like someone is beating my skull with a sledgehammer. "Fuck that teenage attitude," I think. “The woman doesn't know what she wants. Why did she even come into my room if she doesn't want to fuck? Anyway, I've had my fun so far, and if she doesn't want to anymore, then I have to accept that." It's now midday and I've had enough and need some sleep. Who knows, maybe she'll change her mind later when we've slept a bit. I turn on my side and pull Nastia tightly to me. "Sorry. I have a terrible headache and I need a break. OK?” I ask. I lay her head on my shoulder and kiss her gently on the forehead. But Nastia wants more. She suddenly sits down on me and starts playing with me. My headaches are now unbearable and I wonder how I can still have an erection. Then Nastia suddenly sits down on me. "Disc! Again without a condom,' I think, but I start to move rhythmically because I don't care anymore. Nastia stops. she looks at me Then she pushes her pelvis down deep so that I penetrate deeply into her. Then she stops again. I keep trying to apply my thrusting movements, but it's not easy because Nastia has a tight grip on me. It's clear she wants to be in control. So I stop so she can call the shots. Then Nastia slaps me. I get the full force of her hand on the right side of my face. This is immediately followed by the left and then the right again. I'm surprised. At first I wonder what I did wrong. Probably everything. At least that's how it feels today. Then Nastia moves rhythmically again. she fucks me That can not be true! It was just like one of the Californication episodes. The one where Hank fucks his ex's stepdaughter, not knowing she's only sixteen. I don't know if Nastia watches too much TV or if it's coincidence, but I do know that the beatings weren't good for my headache. The pain becomes unbearable and I stop the whole process because while Nastia rides on me, I keep getting slaps in the face. It's a very strange way to have sex, and when I think about it, it occurs to me that I've never had such a dominant woman until now. And to be honest: I don't like this kind of sex at all. Nastia is on my shoulder again, because I pulled her down to me and laid her on her side. "Sorry. I can't take it anymore, my headache is killing me. Why don't you wait a bit for the pill to take effect and we'll get on with it,' I say apologetically. Nastia strokes my chest and says succinctly: »Boobs!« "What?" »Boobs! You have tits like a girl." I just shake my head and decide not to say anything more. Yes, my chest is not particularly flat. Even at school, when I was fourteen, I was teased about it by the alpha males in class in physical education and suffered a lot from it. After that I trained. My breasts are still protruding but are firm and hard. I haven't heard that accusation since I was fourteen. Nastia has hit the bull's eye and has now completely unsettled me. Outside in the living room I can hear Pasha and Julia. Then Pasha is already in my room. "Class. Well done!” he says to me. If he knew what I suffered in the last two hours. Nastia gets dressed and joins the others in the living room. I look at the clock. It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm closing the door to get at least some sleep. I wake up around six. Pasha and the three girls are sitting next door in the living room. He's been hanging up and drinking since the afternoon. He's in a good mood. I still have a heavy head and drag myself past people to the bathroom. Nastia doesn't look at me. Katja sits next to her and grins at me. I'm ashamed and a little uncomfortable with the situation. Then I walk the dog for an hour. When I come home again, I find the same situation: all four are sitting in the living room and celebrating. I'm still uncomfortable with what happened last night. That I messed around with Katja and also how Nastia abused me. Yes yes, abused is of course an exaggeration, but seriously: you don't hit on a man for hours and then treat him like he's the last straw. Something isn't right there, and I didn't want to know what experiences Nastia must have had to be so broken at twenty-two. I go back to my room and sleep for a few more hours. I wake up around eight o'clock and go to the bathroom. The girls have made themselves at home. You stay one more night. I'm slowly getting fit again, but Pascha is all the more drunk. He's standing at the DJ table and can hardly stand up straight, but he's still drinking white wine from the bottle. It's a good French one, but I'm sure Pascha doesn't care. I sit down with the girls. My headache is finally gone and I'm enjoying my first beer, it's cool and fresh. Max joined in the meantime. Katja tells him about last night. Her tone is a bit reproachful. She tells how she wakes up and someone is touching her. At first she thought it was Nastia, then, opening her eyes, she saw me. I blush Right now I can't even say anything back because she's telling the truth. However, leave it out that she teased me the whole time before and even offered me a blowjob. Now I'm the bloke. Doesn't matter. At some point Pascha is too drunk and goes to bed with his girlfriend. Max and the two girls are still here. Now I'm back at the DJ table while Max diligently rolls joints. Nastia and Katja are lying on the couch. Nastia sleeps while Katja talks to us. Then she too nods away. Max decides to leave around one o'clock and I retreat to my room. This time I close the door. Two hours later Katja crawls under the covers next to me. I wake up still groggy as her hand slides into my shorts. Now that's not true, is it? What a weekend. I can't believe it myself. I pull Katja close to me and kiss her. She has a wonderful body and her lips are so tight. In general, everything about her is fixed. I enjoy touching her. Katja disappears under the covers and gives me the blowjob she still owes me. She's pretty good at that and again I wonder where the little twenty-two year olds get their experience from. No wait. That's not true. Katja is only twenty-one. The next three hours are the Insanity. Katja is a very loving person, but with a lot of energy. She brings the last out of me. The sheets are completely wet when we end up hugging each other sweating. After that she stays for a while, we talk and smoke. Then she gets up and goes back to her couch in the living room. "I'm married, you know?" she says before leaving. I lie alone in bed and listen to some music before falling asleep. Great weekend. A bit weird at times, but overall very cool. Then on Sunday everyone acts as if nothing had happened. Pascha is still drunk, but at least he can stand up again. When I get up, his girlfriend is cooking lunch in the kitchen while the other two girls clear the decks. They even vacuum. Nastia looks at me a little reproachfully, while Katja completely avoids my eyes. I am a little confused. Everything could have been so simple and uncomplicated. But no, it had to end like this. One of the cell phones on the table rings. Katja answers and I understand that her husband is on the other end and will be coming to pick her up. I stay in my room a little longer to avoid them, because it seems like neither of them can handle the situation. Then I decide to walk the dog for an hour. When I get home, everyone is gathered in the kitchen. Katja's husband is also there and stands next to her. They hold hands. "We're going now," says Katja. "OK Nice to meet you guys. It was fun hanging out with you guys.” Pasha's girlfriend looks at me in horror and has to hold back her laughter. I can't shake the feeling that she had the most fun of all of this. "Good. Come visit again soon.” Then I say goodbye to Katja's husband and go to my room. Oh man, this Katja. What a body. I'm curious if and when she'll stop by for a visit again. number three Six o'clock in the morning. Michael and I just finished our clubs-we-don't-know-yet-tour and are dead drunk in one of the worst flophouses in Moscow. There are still a few girls from the suburbs on the dance floor. You can tell by looking at them: the cheap clothes, always a size too small and very provocative. A blonde is standing next to me at the bar and we quickly strike up a conversation. After that, it doesn't take long before we sit down at a table and make out. Michael has decided to go home. I don't know if he went alone or found a girl too. I'm way too drunk for that. Not much later we drive to my place. Tatiana hardly speaks English, but we don't have to talk much anymore anyway. Tatiana goes off like a grenade in bed. But somehow it's always the same. The next morning I even wonder why I didn't go home alone much earlier. Around noon Tatiana leaves and I'm glad to be rid of her. She's a good girl and we had fun, but that's about it. "Can I have your number?" she asks on her way to the door. "Sure, of course. Here it is,” I reply, punching my number into her phone. Tuesday afternoon. It's been over a week since I dated Tatiana and now she's texting me. "Shall we see each other tonight?" she asks. “I still have two meetings. After that I want to eat something for dinner. Maybe you want to come with me?” I send back. It'll take a while before I get an answer. I'm sitting in my meeting, bored with the usual business talk. Then it vibrates in my pocket and I'm surprised when I check. “No, I don't want to have dinner with you. I want to fuck! When will you be at home? Let me know and I'll see you later." This is unusual for Moscow. The girls from the suburbs in particular never miss an opportunity to scrounge up dinner in a good restaurant. "I'll be home at ten," I text back. "OK, see you at your place," comes the prompt reply. This is all strange and I'm starting to worry. So I'm going to dinner alone. When I'm finally home, it takes less than fifteen minutes and Tatiana is at my door. She is wearing a short dress and high heels. “Leave it on. They're sexy,' I say, because it's customary in Russia to take off your shoes indoors. After that we sit on my couch and drink red wine. "But now I have to ask you why you were so direct and didn't have dinner with me?" “You know,” she replies, “I'm 25. I have a 52-year-old boyfriend. He takes care of me and pays for everything, but I don't love him. Then I have a 30 year old friend. I love him and he's great. But both push the three-minute number in bed. Then they don't care about me. They only care about themselves and their orgasm. You took care of me and it was important to you that I have fun too. And that even though you were pretty drunk. I enjoyed it very much with you and I want more of it.« "So I'm your number three now? The man for the sex?” I ask. "Yes, it is," she replies confidently. "I'll be fine," I say, slipping my hand under her skirt. After that we go to bed. I'm taking even more time and trying to give Tatiana as much as I can because she seems to need it. "Slow down, slow down!" she moans as she climaxes. It won't be the last. I like being number three. Long legs It's summer and we're organizing a pool party at a hotel outside of Moscow. A few of our guests are frolicking in the water. Late in the afternoon, after my DJ set, I jump in and play water polo with the other guys. When the ball flies out of the pool again, I swim to the edge to get it. In front of me are two ultra-long legs. Natascha wears high heels and jeans hot pants. She has the ball in her hands, grins and bends down to me. "Well, long time no see," she says and gives me the ball. I met Natascha a year ago at the Didu Bar's cocktail tasting. After the tasting we all went to my house to keep partying and even then there was this special vibe between Natascha and me. We even lay in my bed for a moment and kissed, but nothing else happened. The next day I flew to Sochi and we lost touch. "I am happy to see you. Great that you came to our party, too,” I say. Natascha is here with two friends and their youngest daughter. We keep playing water polo and the girls are lying in the sun by the pool. Natascha often looks over at me and flirts with me. Later she comes into the water with her daughter. The water polo game is over and I have time to spend with the little one. She is brave and follows me with her swim wings into the deep water to get to the water polo. We both have a lot of fun together while Natasha sits by the pool and watches. "She likes you," she tells me later. "She doesn't usually swim that deep, but she seems to trust you." "That makes me happy. I think they're great too. She has so much energy and is so sweet.« Natascha laughs: "She can do things differently when she's bitchy." “I have to go and do the sound check for the night party. I hope to see you later." "Sure, that's why we came," says Natascha. I am very happy because Natascha is a classy woman. I would also like her for a longer relationship, although she already has two daughters. After the sound check I have lunch with my team and then I go back to the indoor pool to organize the party and DJ later. Unfortunately, we were only allowed to use the outdoor pool until 10 p.m., because there are other guests in the design hotel besides us, and they want to be left alone. Nothing is going on in the indoor pool when I arrive. The warm-up DJ plays his songs. Every now and then a few people come, but after a short time they leave and we are alone. We have a total of two hundred people in the hotel and I wonder where they are all staying. After all, they only came for our party. A few of them have already behaved so much in the afternoon that they are now drunk in their hotel beds. Others celebrate in their rooms, I heard. The complex consists of two hotels. One of them is very chic and a boutique hotel, the other one is more normal. There are also a number of cottages and houses on the site that are also rented out. Last winter they were hotspots for the after-hours parties after our Playboy party in the indoor pool. Around midnight I give up and the technicians start dismantling the material. I'm disappointed. We spent a ton of money renting the equipment and having it shipped over here to the country. In the last two hours I've seen maybe thirty people in the pool, nothing more. Not many of my own people showed up either. I even miss two of my DJs. But I'm even more disappointed that Natascha didn't come. I was so looking forward to her and hoping Around one everything is dismantled and stowed in the car. The lifeguard closes the indoor pool behind me, and I trudge to ours, disappointed A house. On the way I see that there is a private party going on in each of the cottages. Many of our guests move from house to house and celebrate with us. In front of almost every bungalow people are sitting next to the grill, drinking and having fun. They greeted me politely as I trotted past, but that doesn't cheer me up either. After all, I have lost about 2000 euros so far. "The concept of having different little parties in the huts isn't bad," I think. Unfortunately it killed our big party in the indoor pool. But honestly, who wants to sit in an indoor pool on a warm summer night. planning error! Anyway, now I'll open another beer and then I'll go to bed, even though it's only half past one. Just as I have arrived at our bungalow at the end of the long walk, Natascha is standing in front of me. "Where have you been?" she asks me, already a bit drunk. "Hanged up at the indoor pool," I reply sullenly. "Were there many people there?" "Nah, could have been more." "It doesn't matter, you're here now and we're celebrating," says Natascha happily. Then she takes my arm and pulls me back up the path with its countless steps to a neighboring house. 'This is ours. I've got another bottle of champagne." There is a small party in the living room of the house. Natasha's friends are here. Next to them are two Germans from Russia who I know well. You work for an Otto Versand start-up and you often come to my parties. They drink vodka with three super young students. These are guys from my production manager's group, whom I didn't see after the sound check either. 'Hm,' I think, 'three girls and six boys. It's not a good relationship, but the atmosphere is good.« I sit down and roll a joint while Natascha gets the bottle of champagne out of the fridge. There is laughter and fun. The students are already wide. One of them can hardly keep his eyes open but still peeks at Natasha's tits. He doesn't seem to mind. The door keeps opening and new people come. others go. The two Russian Germans stay. They are also targeting Natascha. But she only has eyes for me. She dances with me and we have fun. "Sorry guys," I say, when Natascha goes to the toilet, "It's mine." But that doesn't bother anyone present. They're all well drunk and don't want to give up. When Natascha comes back, she takes my hand and pulls me into the bathroom. We close the door and kiss. Natascha is super sexy. She's still wearing those denim hot pants, which are a size too small for her. One has the feeling that the seams could burst at any moment. She wears a white t-shirt on top and nothing underneath. I can see her stiff nipples through the shirt. And then those incredibly long legs. They end up in high heels, but Natascha can move very safely in them despite a few drinks. After a while we go back out to the others. We drink and Natasha dances on the table, still in her heels. Her bottom is firm and moves back and forth to the rhythm. I'm not the only one who is speechless and enjoys the attention. Later we sit outside in front of the house on the terrace. It's getting light and we're sipping the last of our champagne. Natascha and I kiss and flirt with each other, but the other boys are sitting next to us. They are now very drunk and never let Natascha out of their sight. I hear one of the students say: "What does she want with the stupid German? She's Russian, and they're ours. She should go with a Russian and not the German." They are now very drunk and never let Natascha out of their sight. I hear one of the students say: "What does she want with the stupid German? She's Russian, and they're ours. She should go with a Russian and not the German." They are now very drunk and never let Natascha out of their sight. I hear one of the students say: "What does she want with the stupid German? She's Russian, and they're ours. She should go with a Russian and not the German." He thinks I won't understand him, or he just doesn't care anymore. I glare at him. "You might want to go home," I say confidently. "Otherwise you might get slapped by the German." Natascha hears that, pulls me back into the house and closes the door. »Relax. I'm yours," she says, adding, "If you want me." "And whether!" Then we lie on the couch and exchange tenderness. I have the opportunity to explore Natascha's long legs and more. When I reach between her legs, I notice that she is very wet. Then the others come in. Natascha has a short chat with her friends and arranges for them to check on their little one. One of them is already sleeping with her daughter. She took on the role of babysitter early on so that Natascha could enjoy the evening. "Are we going over there?" she asks. "We'll have our peace there." Natasha took him by the hand and drove her to my house. However, there are two strange boys in my room. "Hey!" I wake her roughly. 'This is my bed and I need it now. piss off downstairs There is also a sofa bed in the living room.« It's occupied, I saw that when I came in, but I don't care. After a while I finally manage to get the boys out of the room. And then I lock the door - so they don't come back. Natascha is already half naked on my bed and looks at me seductively. "Shall I leave my shoes on?" she asks. “For now yes. We can take them off later,” I answer and laugh. What a woman. I'm in seventh heaven. Natascha is so incredible, even during sex. She says goodbye in the morning. She has to go back to her daughter and her friends. When we're packing up to go back to Moscow in the afternoon, she comes over again. 'Was that a one night stand? Or are we going to do this more often from now on?” she asks innocently. “Of course, let's do this more often. I'll call you next week." I see Natascha very often over the next few weeks. I still like her very much and am considering starting a serious relationship with her. She lives in the country with her mother, who also looks after the two daughters when Natascha stays with me. After the fifth date we're at my house on the couch and we're talking about everything. I lit some candles to make it romantic and hold Natasha tight. “You know,” she says out of context, “I need a man to take care of me. Financially I mean. I would also like to have a third child.« Oh la la. This is going a bit too fast for me now. Just a few days ago I overheard Natascha bullying one of her two ex-husbands on the phone. It was about money. After the phone call, she was really proud of herself. Natascha must be working out that I'm the next man to pay for her later. I was wondering anyway that she can afford not to work. After that night, I don't call her as often, and I don't always answer the phone when it's her turn. But this is also due to the fact that my smartphone has recently had dropouts and turns itself off every now and then. It's Tuesday evening. Natascha calls me: “I'm at the Didu with friends. Do you have something to smoke? Can we come by your place later? I would then spend the night with you, too, if you don't mind." "No problem. Just drop by later when you're ready." After that I didn't hear from her for two hours. When I look back at my phone to check the time, I find that it has turned itself off once again. After the reboot I get a lot of messages. Natascha is angry because she was standing in front of my door with her friends and I didn't open it. I call her back: "That was really bad luck," I try to explain, but Natascha angrily hangs up. "Stupid," I think. I had been working on a mix and didn't hear my very soft bell. Unfortunately, the phone also switched off. I pick up the lighter, light a joint and think. Maybe it was better that way. Life was probably kind to me. It's not just about good sex and long legs. I didn't hear from Natascha for the next few months. A year later I meet her at a party. "Let's go out again," I say kindly. "Maybe. Why not,« Natascha replies, but I sense that she has now lost interest in me. alternative service It's a boring day at the office. There's enough to do, but somehow it's always the same and I can't really motivate myself to work. So I'm wasting my time on vKontakte, the Russian Facebook. There I look at the pictures of my female contacts and am amazed at how revealing the girls are. Suddenly my phone rings. It's Florian. "What are you doing?" 'It's afternoon. During the week. What am I going to do? To work. And you?" Florian is a manager at a large German company and is usually under constant stress. But since the story with the slave I also know that Florian leads a double life and spends part of his time in the S&M and swingers scene in Moscow. "Would you like to have sex?" asks Florian. I laugh out loud: "What? Now? With you?" "Yes, now, with me," Florian replies seriously, because he didn't understand my joke. "Didn't know you were bi," I reply. "No. I mean with me and a woman. A threesome.' "Yes / Yes. It's clear. I'm just teasing you. When and where?” I ask, expecting “next Saturday evening.” "Now. I'll pick you up and we'll go out into the country. I organized something there.« I'm surprised by Florian's spontaneity and go through my appointments and work in my head. "How much should it cost?" I ask pro forma. "Have you ever had to pay me anything?" "No." "So what. We have to buy a nice bunch of flowers and that's it.' An hour later I'm in Florian's car and we're driving out of town. "Now what's the story?" I ask. »I made a post in a Russian forum and asked who was interested in a German gangbang. A few couples answered, and that has now become concrete. They live in the suburbs and are waiting for us. I've seen pictures of the woman and she looks pretty good." 'And her husband? How does he look like? Does he want to join too?” "No. He just wants to watch.” "Is that possible?" »Yes, they are so-called cuckolds. They get so horny when they're allowed to watch their wife being fucked,' Florian replies dryly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “We'll just go there now and see what's in store for us. If we don't like it, then we can go back home. Relax yourself." That's easier said than done. I've had a few threesomes, but I'm usually pretty drunk by then and I don't care if other people stand by and watch. Anyway, now I'm in the car with Florian and we're on our way to an adventure in the Moscow suburbs. On the way we stop at a flower shop and buy two beautiful bouquets. That would be the norm, explains Florian. Arrived in the suburbs, we are standing in front of a six-storey apartment building in a good area. We go inside and go to the top floor. Nina, the lady of the house, awaits us there. She is blonde, has a pretty face and is standing in front of us in high heels and a black negligee. "Come into the kitchen, my husband is waiting there," she says. We go into the apartment and take off our shoes. Nina is happy about the flowers she brought with her. She checked us out when we came in and she seems to like us. She struts down the aisle in front of us into the kitchen. There sits a man in his mid-forties in a wheelchair. I'm shocked. Florian isn't as cool as usual either. We sit down at the cake table and drink tea with the two of them. It's about getting to know each other. Nina's husband tells us that he was a colonel in the local police force and was hit by a car two years ago. Since then he has been in a wheelchair and paralyzed. We don't dare ask how it happened, but I think of mafia relationships that somehow went wrong. "I haven't had anything going on since the accident," he says. “After a while I realized that my wife needed sex and started looking for men for her. I love my wife and I want her to have fun. In the beginning I didn't want to be there, but now it's very exciting for me. It's sex in the head,” he explains. Florian and I are still shocked, but we understand the situation and want to try to participate. In addition, the two are very likeable. I think Florian also expected something else. He must be thinking of S&M or something equally wicked. After a while, Nina asks me if we want to take a quick shower. First thing I do is go to the bathroom and shower. All sorts of thoughts are running through my head there. This is a very strange situation and I don't know how to deal with it. At best, I just try to turn my head off and enjoy. Let's see how Nina is feeling. At least she looks good. When I come out of the shower, she takes my hand and leads me into the very small living room. In general, the apartment is quite cramped and small. I wonder, how her husband gets through here in a wheelchair. We sit down on the couch, which apparently also serves as a bed for the two of them. Nina starts and blows me one while the other two are still talking in the kitchen. Then I hear Florian taking a shower. Her husband stays in the kitchen and only comes to us when Florian is with him. His wheelchair is in the doorway and he watches while Nina acts out a porn movie with us. She seems to be enjoying it. I don't know what it is, if Nina's good technique or something else, but she excites me a lot. Her husband stays in the kitchen and only comes to us when Florian is with him. His wheelchair is in the doorway and he watches while Nina acts out a porn movie with us. She seems to be enjoying it. I don't know what it is, if Nina's good technique or something else, but she excites me a lot. Her husband stays in the kitchen and only comes to us when Florian is with him. His wheelchair is in the doorway and he watches while Nina acts out a porn movie with us. She seems to be enjoying it. I don't know what it is, if Nina's good technique or something else, but she excites me a lot. "She likes it when you cum in her face," says her husband, while Florian takes her from behind and she blows me. It doesn't take long for me to cum and she really seems to be enjoying it. Whatever I think. That's no problem. I take a short break, sit down next to her and watch Florian take care of her. He has to pull himself together not to fall into his S&M act too badly because it's obviously out of place here. Nina pulls me back in and I get aroused again, but we only have a little fun together before I go limp again. I just can't put my head down now. Her husband notices this and offers me another cup of tea in the kitchen. There we sit and talk while there's a lot of moaning in the living room. "She likes you," he says. 'I like to see her so excited. Actually, that was my idea with the foreigners. We used to always have Russians, but I wanted to try something different and found Florian's ad. You are doing really well!« "Thanks. I'm glad about that,' I reply shyly. After that I try to change the subject. I tell him that I used to be a policeman too. It's difficult to keep a conversation going because I don't know him and I don't want to give him too much information about us. It takes another half hour until Florian and Nina are finally done and come into the kitchen. "I am totally exhausted. Seems like I'm out of practice,' says Nina. Her husband had previously told me that they have a solid base of lovers for Nina and it is rare for her to have sex with more than one man at the same time. We drink one last cup of tea. As we leave the house and get into our car, it's getting dark outside. Nina hugged and kissed us as we said goodbye. "Come back soon. I loved it." Florian and I are silent for a while on the drive home. Our experience was nice, but also very depressing. “Are we going to do that again?” I ask Florian. "Don't know? Do you want to?” he asks back. "It's a bit far out, this suburb." 'Yes, next time she'll have to come into town. I guess she works there anyway.” After that we are silent again. Strange Russian pop music comes on the radio and I look at the hookers on the side of the road. They always stand on the arterial roads at night and wait for customers, mostly truck drivers. "What a shitty life," I think, and I'm glad I'm fine. Florian stays in touch with the two of them, and so I find out later that Nina has taken an apartment in the city. She hosts wild sex parties there on the weekends with several men who have to pay to attend. "She makes around a thousand euros per evening," says Florian. Nina has now even given up her job. "Shall we join in? She says we could for free...«, says Florian. "No thanks!" I interrupt him. "It's not my thing." Shit night! My phone is ringing. It's still early in the morning and I'm pretty exhausted. Last night I DJed at a company party. It was a difficult crowd and I couldn't get people dancing to the end despite the high vodka consumption. That happens every now and then. You just got booked for the wrong party. It would have been better if they had picked a Russian who plays 90's Russian pop hits. Although I went home early after the evening, I still had a few drinks at home with my roommates and the customer. After the customer left, a few joints made the rounds and I ended up lying motionless on the couch. It was only after a while that I was able to pull myself together and walk the dog before I fell into bed exhausted. No, that wasn't a good start to the weekend, and the fact that my cell phone is ringing again before ten doesn't make me any happier. My eyes are heavy and I can still taste the vodka in my mouth when I say a soft, "Hello?" Who is disturbing you at this time?” coughed into the phone. "Young! Had a rough night?” It's Michael, an old friend. He is with Anna and they have two children. I think that's also the reason why Michael is so alert so early. Honey, he's used to getting up at seven and has already gotten through the first five hours of his day while I'm still struggling for words. 'Let's not talk about it. Was shit!« “Anna is in Germany with the kids right now. Shall we do something together tonight?” "Clear. Let's call again in the evening. I have to hang up from midnight to two o'clock, but you can come with me." Michael is also a party boy. We are good friends and I also know his wife very well. Whenever Anna is in Germany, Michael calls me and we go out. Then we go through the clubs, drink and have fun. Oddly enough, Michael doesn't mean hitting on one girl at a time like most of my male friends do. He has a different kind of fun. I think he's one of the few men I know who doesn't run after every skirt. Especially if you've been married for a while and your wife is away. Michael is different. He can have fun without the sex and foreplay. I really like that about him, because it always makes the evening very relaxed, and yet it never gets boring. And as always, I still get my share of the women's world. I'm still drunk, so I put the phone down and let my heavy head fall back on the pillow to sleep off my intoxication. After that I take the dog to the park for a few hours. He loves the long walks and it clears my head. The day flies by and then I have Michael on the phone again. An hour later he's sitting on the couch with me. We smoke our first joint and drink Red Bull vodka while I warm up. Pasha and his girlfriend are sitting with us and drinking wine. Tonight's party doesn't sound very promising. It's Easter and most people are staying at home or going to church. Besides, the bar isn't very well known. We are there at eleven and nothing is going on. Gaping emptiness. There are no more than ten people in the whole bar. From midnight I hang up and at the beginning of the session I have technical problems. The bartenders are in a bad mood, the owner is also sitting in the corner in a grumpy mood. The manager is arguing with a guest about their bill. It can still be fun. At least Michael isn't alone. He's sitting with Daniel, an American friend who also works in nightlife and wanted to come over, even though I told him it was probably going to be shit here. After an hour, my DJ set is already over because the last guests are leaving and the manager wants to close. Michael and Daniel have moved on to the Boom Boom Room and are waiting for me there. The last two guests are sitting next to me on the couch. Two girls I don't know but apparently they know me and came to say hello during my DJ set. I sit down with them to at least relax a bit. The bartender doesn't want to give me any more beer, but then lets himself be persuaded. One of the girls jokes nonchalantly: "This is probably the quietest place in Moscow at the moment." She's right about that, because it's not even two o'clock and that's usually party prime time. Somehow I have no desire to go anywhere else. Through the flower, one of the two has offered to go to her house and continue there with Rum Cola. Maybe something could come of it, but I've got Michael on my cheek. He sends me text message after text: “Where are you staying?”, “Come on. It's good here!« SHIT! And I don't feel like it at all anymore. Yes, a bit of cuddling with the girl across the street, that would be nice. She has long legs, wears high-heeled, knee-high boots, black tights underneath and black shorts that are actually way too tight. The face could be prettier, but the figure is OK Then the next SMS comes. I'm trying to connect the two things My friends from Pacha are standing at the door of the club and do security and admittance. That makes things easier because I have a huge backpack full of DJ stuff with me. We go to the fifth floor and I can already hear people laughing in the elevator. Apparently something is really going on here. That bothers me because we used to have regular parties here ourselves up until three weeks ago and only one out of five weekends was good. I've been watching our successors' recent parties on Facebook and judging by the photos it was just as lame as ours. But now the store is raging. As the elevator opens, we run into a horde of dancing people. I'm pissed off right away and now I'm in a bad mood. Actually I just want to go home. Fuck the girls. smoke one at home then sleep and forget this shitty weekend as soon as possible. But Michael wants to stay. He orders me a drink. My girl lost her interest in me. You can't blame her either, because I'm not exactly a party animal at the moment. Her Ukrainian blonde friend takes the chance to hit on me. "At least something," I think. The style of the blonde leaves a lot to be desired. It seems she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid 90's and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. But Michael wants to stay. He orders me a drink. My girl lost her interest in me. You can't blame her either, because I'm not exactly a party animal at the moment. Her Ukrainian blonde friend takes the chance to hit on me. "At least something," I think. The style of the blonde leaves a lot to be desired. It seems she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid 90's and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. But Michael wants to stay. He orders me a drink. My girl lost her interest in me. You can't blame her either, because I'm not exactly a party animal at the moment. Her Ukrainian blonde friend takes the chance to hit on me. "At least something," I think. The style of the blonde leaves a lot to be desired. It seems she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid 90's and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. You can't blame her either, because I'm not exactly a party animal at the moment. Her Ukrainian blonde friend takes the chance to hit on me. "At least something," I think. The style of the blonde leaves a lot to be desired. It seems she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid 90's and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. You can't blame her either, because I'm not exactly a party animal at the moment. Her Ukrainian blonde friend takes the chance to hit on me. "At least something," I think. The style of the blonde leaves a lot to be desired. It seems she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid 90's and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. like she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid-nineties, and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. like she bought the tight black dress with the long silver zip down the back sometime in the mid-nineties, and her boots aren't exactly sexy either. In general, everything about her is boring. As drab and tasteless as the gum I've been chewing on for a few hours. In fact, she's not that ugly. She could do much more with herself. “Looks aren't everything. Maybe she's good in bed,' I think, but when she starts babbling to me and won't stop, I quickly lose interest. She thinks she has me firmly in her pocket. It's amazing how differently two people can perceive the same moment. And I'm still quite fit. I light a cigarette and take a quick sip of my drink to think about what to do next tonight. But then the blonde turns at the wrong moment and one leg touches my lit cigarette. She screams briefly and then turns into Fury. No, she is not injured. I just burned a hole in her pantyhose, and it certainly wasn't on purpose. "You buy me a new one!" she snaps at me. I did the last three rounds of drinks for her and her friend, but that's forgotten now. Despite some apologies, she won't calm down, so I go to the bathroom. When I come back, the blonde is talking to her friend and ignoring me. Michael dances drunk with Daniel. He in turn stares at the tits of a young Russian woman. He later tells me that she's in the entourage of a billionaire's son. A small petite Asian guy with glasses who looks like a nerd but pretends to be a gangster. Inside I have to laugh. Vika suddenly stands behind me. She is my competition and today the organizer of the party. I don't let it show and congratulate her on the successful evening. "And how was your day today?" she asks. I decide to be honest: "Shit! And that wasn't the first bad party lately." "Sorry," Vika says understandingly, and I'm surprised at her reaction. "Come on!" she says, "let's have a drink. Or two. relax.« Then we stand together and talk. It's noisy in the bar and I often have to be very close to her ear so that she can hear me. She winces and has to laugh. Then I see her goosebumps on her shoulder. "Your beard tickles." So I repeat the whole thing just to make her laugh again. Vika is actually quite cute. No, she's not a supermodel, but she still has a killer figure for her thirty years. She comes from Ufa, a city in southern Russia. She's been partying in Moscow for a few years and until now we rarely got in each other's way because she works with a different audience. Unfortunately, Vika is now bustling about in my segment, like so many other Russian promoters. The market has become much more difficult as a result. At some point, Vika no longer flinches when I speak in her ear, but now makes a movement in my direction to feel me even more. She seeks my closeness and I enjoy it. I'd love to kiss her right away, but I'll leave it at rubbing my cheek against her and kissing her gently on the neck. She winces again and gets goosebumps. The Ukrainian sees that, and suddenly I'm interesting to her again. She's trying to get my attention, but I only have eyes for Vika. As I turn to order another round of drinks, the Ukrainian speaks to me again. 'Bad selection, my dear. Bad choice!' she says so loudly that Vika has to hear it too, but she simply ignores it. "Sure baby," I think. "And you're the better one, aren't you?" I say nothing, nod politely and turn back to Vika. We play cat and mouse together, but in a very nice way. No bitching and no dislike. But when I come back from the toilets, she is suddenly right in front of me. She pulls me towards her and kisses me passionately. Then she wants to go to the toilet. I want to follow her, but she just grins and closes the door before I can follow her. I have to laugh. Well staged. At the bar I'm a bit reserved again. Not to play, but to protect Vika. This is her party, and I don't want people gossiping. On the other hand, it's a cool thing between us. We're supposed to be competitors, but we're standing at the bar and flirting. And it's not the hardcore pick-up number That's how it goes for a while. We flirt and chat. I would like to go home with Vika. It could also become more. But today it's going to be difficult, because Michael will probably sleep on my couch so that he doesn't have to go drunk to the suburbs where he lives. "Come. We'll go up to the strip club and see the chicks,' says Michael. In the same building there is a strip club, the entrance to it is even in the same stairwell. I have to laugh because that doesn't really suit him at all. 'No, I'm not interested. You know me." That's my standard answer when it comes to strip clubs. I still don't understand the point of these clubs to this day. You go and watch girls undress. And? That doesn't do me any good. If you want, you pay a little money and one of the dancers does a lap dance on my lap. It feels better then, and in Russia you can also touch the girls. But what for? After a song, the little girl moves on to the guy over there at the next table, who is now touching her with his sweaty hands, and I get sick just thinking about it. Michael persuades me anyway. He's like a little boy standing in front of a merry-go-round at the fairground. "No, Michael. You've driven enough. That's enough for today,« goes through my head, but in the end I give in and nod in agreement. Vika is a bit disappointed when we go upstairs. Maybe she'll still be there when we come down? On the other hand, it was actually just enough the way it was. I don't want any more, and this intimacy and tenderness simply spared me this miserable evening. It's already empty upstairs in the strip club. Just as we have our drink in hand, the lights come on and a security guard motions for us to piss off. This is unfortunately so common in many bars and clubs. Drinks are sold to the end without warning, and as soon as you hold your long drink in your hand, the light goes on and a security guard rudely asks you to leave. It doesn't matter how much money you just shelled out for the long drink. I try to explain that to our security guard, but he just snarls, "It's not my problem. Either you drink up straight away or you leave the drink.” This kind of customer service infuriates me, but after having a huge fight with the goalkeepers at another club over the same incident three years ago, I'm more cautious. When we check below to make things right, it's over here too. Vika is already gone, and now I'm a bit disappointed. "Anyway, let's go home and have a nightcap there," I say to Michael. We pack my DJ stuff and hit the streets. There I negotiate the price with a private driver, but it is too expensive. Behind it is a black VW Tuareg waiting for the taxi to drive on. When the Tuareg stands next to us and the windows go down, we are quite surprised. At the wheel sits a dark blonde in a short dress with fuck-me boots, next to her is a blonde, also with long hair and a very pretty face. Both are in their late twenties. “Where are you going?” asks the driver. “Sukharevskaya. Are two hundred OK?” For a moment I think we might be dealing with whores, so I throw in another "ruble!" - not that we end up shelling out dollars. The little one behind the wheel has to laugh. 'Get in the back. We'll drive you home." "But you're not taxi drivers?" "No, we've just come out of the Imperia Lounge and are going to drive around a bit," I get the answer in English. I'm really surprised. Two good looking girls in their late twenties come from one of the most elite clubs in town and stop to give us a ride home. Normally this was something to worry about. After all, we're in Moscow, and a shit ending would also go well with my shit night. But somehow I trust the Madels. We're not sitting in a Lada either, but a 60,000 euro car. Anyway, I wonder how the girls can afford it. On the way we make a short stop. The passenger gets out, she has to go upstairs to get something else. Now would be the moment. We're standing in a backyard, and if anyone followed us, they could now strike without a problem. But nothing happens. Shortly thereafter, the passenger gets back into the car and the journey continues. I also have to wonder about the girls. OK, we are German, but still. I hadn't left my girlfriend alone in the car with two strangers. Who knows what thoughts the two boys will come up with. Especially when she's so provocatively dressed and sitting alone in our car. We do a little small talk. When we get to my place, I ask again what we owe. "Nothing," laughs the driver. She is likeable and I am considering whether I should invite them both upstairs. What can happen? All you can do is decline anyway, and that's it. But I say goodbye politely and walk to the door with Michael. The girls honk their horns again and wave out of the window before speeding off. “What was that now?” Michael asks in amazement. "No idea. There's no use thinking about it." "But they weren't taxi drivers." "No. They didn't want any money either." Maybe I should have invited her, but Michael has a wife and child. While he would enjoy talking to the girls, he would end up doing nothing. So I had two wives - and that was definitely one too many. Also, I'm fairly certain the girls expected a better apartment. Add some coke and maybe a bottle of champagne. That would have been more her style. Still, it was a nice ride, and it seems like life is about to kick in just before bedtime to say, "See? Isn't everything as bad as it sometimes seems«. A perfectly normal evening Tuesday evening. I'm on my way to the nearby pond to walk my dog when the phone rings. Anna, a millionaire's daughter, is on the other end: "I hope you haven't forgotten our dinner today?" she asks. "Shit! Yes I have. When did we meet?” "I knew it," says Anna kindly. “Don't worry, we won't meet until ten o'clock at Revoljutsija. So you still have time.' Shit, actually I wanted to have a beer at home tonight. Anna had invited me a few weeks ago and I forgot to make a note of the date. She arranged a meeting with a wealthy gallery and restaurant owner who wants to meet me. He wanted me to organize parties for him. I didn't take Anna seriously at first. She had this simple concierge job at the hotel. She also organized dancers for the Moscow Pacha Club. And in general, Anna is not my type, even if she is cool and nice. Only later did I casually find out that she actually comes from a good family with a lot of money. That's often the case in Moscow: you misjudge people and only find out years later that they're dealing with very large calibers. I usually don't care anyway. Money doesn't make a better person. I try to be open with everyone and judge people by how they treat me. It doesn't help to know which families they come from, because otherwise you quickly get complexes or act a little strange. A lot of other people are still sitting at the long table in the restaurant, and the waiters are already bringing the first course when I show up at nine sharp. Anna has brought her friends from Les Clefs D'Or. This is a global association of 5-star hotel concierges. The gallery and restaurant owner wants us to be comfortable, and the wait staff bring only the best from the menu. We are sitting outside in the courtyard of an old house from the days of the Tsars. The current owner bought it from the oligarch Abramovich a few years ago. The house used to be his residence, now it is a mixture of gallery and restaurant. The style is a bit odd. Most rooms are still classically Russian and ostentatious, but modern art by painters such as Damien Hirst hangs on the walls. I wonder how they secured the artwork when the owner later leads us through the rooms. On the toilet of Revoljutsija there are photos of his biggest critics and of people whom he personally dislikes. Cool idea and a completely different way to vent your frustration. Dinner is endless, and new dishes are always coming to the table. "I'm about to burst!" I joke to Anna, who is already looking at me with pity. »Coming from a gourmet family, I'm used to eating a lot, but today it's more than enough for me. Come on, let's have a digestive schnapps,« she says and grins. I'm not sure if she wants something from me or just thinks I'm nice. "Man! Not every woman is automatically into you,” says the little devil on one shoulder. "But there are a lot of them, and then you have a problem," says the angel on the other. Anyway, I'll keep my distance and be nice without obligation. At the end of the evening, Anna asks me if I can accompany her to another bar, but I politely decline and point out that it's late and I have to work the next day. "What do you think? I have to get up early tomorrow, too,” Anna replies. 'I'd rather go home anyway. It's only Tuesday and I know how that ends up getting drunk somewhere." Anna grins and says goodbye with a kiss on the cheek. Shortly afterwards I organize a taxi. My driver is from the Caucasus, more precisely from the crisis region of Dagestan. There are constant fights between the government, mafia groups and Islamists. He begins the usual taxi small talk: 'You're not from Moscow, are you? Where are you from?' 'Germany,' I answer briefly and to the point, because I'm not in the mood for conversation. 'Ah, Germany. My brother lives in the Ruhr area. My name is Shamil, by the way,” says my driver. »What are you doing in Moscow? Other than driving a taxi,” I ask Shamil, who doesn't look like a typical Caucasian at all. He's around thirty, small, friendly and has a well-groomed beard. "I'm trying to earn some money to learn English and Arabic." Our conversation is interrupted. We'd been working our way through a traffic jam on the 12-lane Moscow ring road for the last few minutes. Traffic jams are actually quite unusual after midnight. Suddenly our Lada is right in front of a dead man. It's twisted on the street just a few yards in front of us. A couple of police officers stand next to him and look at him, in front of him a couple of safety hats and behind the dead man an ambulance. He's in the middle of the street. Far and wide I don't see a broken car or anything like that. Like everyone else, we dodge to the side and drive past the scene of the accident. Only then do I see more police and a car parked on the right-hand side of the road. Fifty yards further, a motorbike is lying to one side. Shamil is silent. "It happens too often," I say. "Because they all drive like maniacs," he says. It is not uncommon for a motorcyclist to shoot around the other cars at over a hundred km/h. Just last week I saw a gang of bikers darting through the slow-moving traffic. The first had casually folded in the mirrors of the cars next to him as he drove past, so that the others could later get through the maximum one meter wide gap faster. People don't seem to realize that the slightest mistake can cost them their lives. But that's how the Russians are. The future doesn't pay. What matters is the here and now. It's already past midnight when I finally get home. I'm pretty much done. Last weekend consisted of parties and lots of alcohol. Today I actually wanted to take it easy, and now I've downed a few beers again. Anyway, now all I have to do is take the dog for a quick walk, and then I can hit the ground running. My pooch is looking forward to the midnight walk. We do this every night before we go to bed, but every time I open the door, he's as happy as if it were his first time. The elevator door opens and Muhackel sprints towards the front door when my neighbor comes around the corner. He's in his early thirties and a nice guy. He often sits outside in the aisle and smokes. I think this is a kind of time off for him to get away from his family a bit. He staggers a bit and I can tell immediately that he's been drinking. This is quite unusual for him. He's happy to see me. "Are you walking the dog?" he asks. I nod. "Do you mind if I come with you for a bit?" "No, that's OK. I'm always pretty bored anyway." As we leave the house, he asks if I want to have a beer with him on the way. "Why not," I reply. "How many?" he asks, entering the supermarket while I wait outside with the dog. "One is enough, I think." 'Oh come on. Two, three maybe? And cigarettes?' "No no, one is really enough," I say firmly, and he disappears into the supermarket. But it doesn't take long for him to come back. In his hand he holds two bottles of beer. "Come on," I say, "let's go home. We can have a beer there if you want.” "You celebrated today?" I ask. 'No, just a little drunk. My family is on vacation and I am home alone. I can let it all out there.« "You're not going on vacation?" I ask. »No, the money is not enough. I had to borrow the coal for this holiday from a friend. Haven't been on vacation in four years,' he says. Later he sits on my couch and we talk a little. There are two cold beers on the table in front of us. "You're a DJ, aren't you?" he asks. “I always see you with so many women. One prettier than the other. What a life!" »Not only DJ. I work in an advertising agency during the week.« In doing so, I deliberately conceal the fact that I am the owner of the agency. However, he ignores my last sentence and asks me about my DJ life. He wants to know how it is in Moscow clubs. I find out that he himself works in an import-export agency and earns around 1000 euros a month. 'I'll leave all the money at home. There are five of us living in our apartment and I'm the only one making money. My wife doesn't work. I have two small children. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law live with us. You don't work either." Wow. 1000 euros for five people in Moscow. That is hard. I hope he doesn't ask me what I earn from DJing. Last week I DJed one night at Krysha Mira, one of the hottest clubs in Moscow, and made as much in one night as my neighbor does in a month. It puts my life in a completely different perspective. We say goodbye around two in the morning and he goes over to his apartment. »Next time we do a DJ session at our house, come over and join us. I'm sure it'll be good,« I say in farewell. But I know that in the future we will only greet each other in the corridor. He'll have a cigarette in his hand and we'll make some small talk while I wait for the elevator, that'll be it. Our lives are just too far apart. bitter end Today I'm a DJ at Paparazzi. We've been having our party there every Friday for a few months. Sometimes things go well, sometimes bad. So-so today. A few people are dancing in front of my DJ box. I'm a little bored because it's the same every weekend. So I light a cigarette and drink some Cranberry Vodka. The bartender likes me, that's why the mix is tough, she does half and half. It's my second today and I'm starting to feel the alcohol, which usually works well on my DJ set. Or maybe I'm just thinking that because I can't tell when I'm drunk. On the dance floor, two girls wave at me and grin from ear to ear. It's very dark in the club, so I can't see if they're pretty or not. After I'm done, I hand over to the next DJ and head to the bar for a nightcap before heading home. But there they are again, my two fans, and it turns out they're very young and pretty drunk too. I'll take the girls out for a drink and we'll talk a little. I quite like one of them, but she's really too young. She looks under 18 and I wonder how they got past the club's doorman. Whatever I think. She'll be of age, and then I'll be fine. "Would you like to go to Soljanka with you?" I ask, hoping that the doorman will squint and let me in with them. "Sure, of course! Let's keep partying," says Julie, one of the two. Michael is standing at the door of Soljanka. We know each other. I'm often here and we have mutual friends. I push past the line of people waiting with the two girls and say hello to him. He's impressed by my companionship: "You've got a nice one with you," he says, pointing to Sasha, the girl I like better too. I nod and thank you for letting me in. We keep drinking upstairs in the club, although the girls have had enough for a long time and I'm slowly reaching my limits. We dance and Sasha flirts with me, at least I think so. "I think you should go with Julie because it's her birthday," she then says, and I'm a little disappointed that she seems to want to get rid of me. "Certainly not!" I reply resolutely. »I like you and only want you.« Sasha grins and gives me the first kiss. She's not a top model, but she's very pretty in her own way. With her big eyes and big pout, she looks like a doll. Her face still has something very childlike and naïve about it. Normally I like mature women, but this time it's different and I don't know why. "How old are you?" I ask Sasha, secretly hoping she's 24 or 25 and just looks so damn young. "Nineteen," Sasha replies. "And you?" This is the moment when I want to run away. Man, I'm 21 years older than her! That is not how it works. What did I get myself into this time? “Too old!” I answer firmly and in a misleading way. “How old?” Sasha demands an answer. "Forty," I reply, embarrassed. “That's OK I like you. No matter how old you are. You're cool." Then we dance again. I'm speechless, because I have to digest the whole thing first. Sasha pulls me closer and we kiss again. "You're my dream man," she whispers in my ear afterwards. "We are getting married." OK, now it's really time to go. If I don't scratch the curve now, I'll have a girlfriend tomorrow, and I really don't want that. Never another Russian, I swore to myself. But Sasha won't let me go. She hugs me tight and wants more. That becomes clear to me at the latest when her hand wanders around my trousers, looking for an entrance. “OK I'm tired. Let's go home,' I say, all I really want to do is put Sasha in the cab and send her home. "Fine, we'll go to you. Where do you live?" The matter-of-factness with which she says that unsettles me. "You know," she says, "you're my future husband." Suddenly I have no more worries. I don't know why either, but now I don't care. The little one is super cute and has a killer body. If that's what she wants, then she should have it. Shit. Thirty minutes later we're in bed and the pangs of conscience are back. I'm not sure what it is. The age difference or not wanting a girlfriend? "Actually, I'm very tired," I say. “We can just sleep. What do you think?" "No! I want to fuck,” is Sasha's firm reply. A wild night follows. Although Sasha is naive in bed and seems to have little experience, she is a lot of fun with her. Before we fall asleep, I ask myself what will happen when I wake up tomorrow. It's raining outside. My eyes are still closed, but I hear the drops on the corrugated iron of the garages in the courtyard below. My head is heavy and I'm not feeling well. You'd think that after so much partying you'd get used to drinking, but the next day is just as bad as the first time. I open my eyes and see Sasha lying next to me. She is still sleeping. It's easy to see that the girl from last night is still pretty the morning after. I've woken up too many times and been unpleasantly surprised at how much the alcohol has clouded my vision. You don't get a routine with it either. Sasha stirs. She wakes up. Then her eyes widen. No, the whole thing doesn't happen slowly and comfortably, but jerkily. Sasha first looks at the ceiling, then left and right and finds me next to her in bed. She grimaces and seems shocked. "Well, I've never had that before," I think and I'm disappointed with her reaction, but I don't really know how to act now either. "So just wait and see," I think. 'How do I get here? What happened?" I am speechless and just look at her. Then Sasha jumps up and gathers her things. "I have to go," she says, distraught. I've finally found the right words. "What's that about? Like you can't remember last night? That's probably a stupid tour. You have to take responsibility for your actions, even if you were drunk.” I can't think of anything better. Do I really look that old? Well, maybe in the morning after so many drinks. I really should drink a little less. "See you. Eventually,” Sasha says as she storms out of our apartment. She doesn't wait for an answer from me. Out on the stairwell, she is in such a hurry that she prefers to take the stairs to wait for the elevator. I am disappointed and shocked. Although this reaction is certainly better than what I expected. But they couldn't have been more different. yes i am sick I don't feel like forty, we feel like eighty-five. It's my own fault. What am I getting myself into with such young hens? The next day my phone rings. It's Sasha. "What else does she want now?" I think. Miss me another one? Well, it can't get any worse. I'm still suffering “Hello, I just wanted to get in touch because I must have left my sweater with you. I miss my earrings and a bracelet too.« I look at the shelf by the bed. 'Yes, your earrings and bracelet are here. When do we want to see each other? I could invite you to dinner." What the hell got into me? OK, I can meet up with her and return her things, but why am I asking her out for dinner? After the escape yesterday? I guess my brain is still not working properly. "We will see. I don't have time this week anyway. Let's make a phone call for the weekend,” Sasha replies. The whole thing, however, in such a negative tone that I understand that she really only wants her things. Over the next few days, I find myself thinking about Sasha several times. The rebuff still bothers me. On the other hand, I kinda like her. Yes, yes, she is nineteen and the age difference is far too big. What do I actually want? At first I was afraid that she would fall in love with me and want to be my girlfriend. Now exactly the opposite has happened, but I don't seem to like that either. Is it vanity? Or have I developed feelings? Maybe what's appealing to me is that she doesn't want me and I'm actually not allowed to have her either. From a purely social point of view. Then I dismiss those thoughts because I just can't allow myself to think about them. It's all stupid anyway. On Thursday, I text Sasha, "Now what about your stuff? I have a party tomorrow near you. Come by and pick her up there.” I secretly hope that she will stay a little longer and drink with me again. The answer is a long time coming. "Can I bring friends?" "Of course," I text back. "See you tomorrow, then." It's Friday and we're having a private party at a gym. Max and I carry two heavy loudspeakers, a projector and all the DJ stuff. First by subway, later on the street, because there are traffic jams everywhere and it's not worth taking a taxi. We're way too late now anyway. When we arrive we are both totally sweaty and out of breath. At that moment, I get a text message from Sasha: "Sorry, can't make it to your party. I have to go somewhere else. Can we meet at the metro in twenty minutes?' Damn, I've just come from the metro station! Nevertheless, I throw on my army jacket and go back into the pre-winter cold. Sasha is standing in front of the entrance to the metro and is already waiting for me. She greets me warmly but reservedly. I immediately hand over her things because I feel out of place. "Where are you going today?" she asks. "We're having a Halloween party at friends' house." "And you're at this party all night?" 'No, only until eleven. Then I hang up again at the paparazzi. Like last week.' 'If you still want to come by,' I think, but don't dare say it. She must know what she is doing and also what she wants. "Unfortunately I couldn't find your sweater," I say. "It must be at your house somewhere," she replies, almost as if I kept it on purpose. "What nonsense," I think. "I'll keep it as pledge, won't I, a relic?" In the afternoon I had searched every nook and cranny of our apartment and couldn't find him. 'Sorry, I've looked everywhere and can't find him. What am I supposed to do with a girl's sweater? They're much too small for me.« Stupid answer. But I just couldn't think of anything better. 'Fine, I have to go. Report if you find him. OK?". "Sure," I say, giving her a gentle peck on the cheek, surprising her. "Ciao!" she says and runs away. Good, that's it. I guess I just have to book this as a one-night stand. I idiot, what was I thinking? Disappointed, I walk back to the party and get myself a Red Bull vodka to get in the mood again. It's like every weekend at the Paparazzi. Katja, one of my former lovers, is here. She came in male company, but looks over at me the whole time. She comes with other men more often because she wants to show me that she's independent, even though I know she has a crush on me. That's why I decided half a year ago not to see her anymore. Because the rules of the game were clear from the start: I don't want a girlfriend and we're just having fun. Unfortunately I got weak a few weeks ago. Once again I was drunk after hanging up, and Katja had also given herself the edge. In the end we went home together and slept together. That wasn't so bad, but I better control myself because I don't want to hurt anyone. Nina is sitting at the other table. She is from Ukraine and one of my customers. During the week we do business because my agency advertises their company. Nina looks hot today. She's wearing those skintight black vinyl leggings that I find so sexy. Anyway, I have to worry about the next track. As it starts up, I light a fag and take another long sip of my cranberry vodka. Then I check the tables and the dance floor. I still secretly hope Sasha shows up even though my DJ set is over in ten minutes. Maybe it's a good thing she's not there, because I'm pretty drunk now. During the week we do business because my agency advertises their company. Nina looks hot today. She's wearing those skintight black vinyl leggings that I find so sexy. Anyway, I have to worry about the next track. As it starts up, I light a fag and take another long sip of my cranberry vodka. Then I check the tables and the dance floor. I still secretly hope Sasha shows up even though my DJ set is over in ten minutes. Maybe it's a good thing she's not there, because I'm pretty drunk now. During the week we do business because my agency advertises their company. Nina looks hot today. She's wearing those skintight black vinyl leggings that I find so sexy. Anyway, I have to worry about the next track. As it starts up, I light a fag and take another long sip of my cranberry vodka. Then I check the tables and the dance floor. I still secretly hope Sasha shows up even though my DJ set is over in ten minutes. Maybe it's a good thing she's not there, because I'm pretty drunk now. I light a fag and take another long sip of my cranberry vodka. Then I check the tables and the dance floor. I still secretly hope Sasha shows up even though my DJ set is over in ten minutes. Maybe it's a good thing she's not there, because I'm pretty drunk now. I light a fag and take another long sip of my cranberry vodka. Then I check the tables and the dance floor. I still secretly hope Sasha shows up even though my DJ set is over in ten minutes. Maybe it's a good thing she's not there, because I'm pretty drunk now. After I've finished my set and packed my things, I go to Nina's. She flirts heavily with me and I just can't take my eyes off the high heels and vinyl leggings. Katja is watching from the next table and I feel I have to go over to explain myself or at least say hello. "Are you going somewhere else?" she asks. “Yes, we'll probably go to the Soljanka. But I have to take Nina with me. This is a customer of mine and I need to take care of her To take care of." I hope that Katja understands the situation and goes somewhere else with her companion. But she puts a spoke in my wheel. “OK, I just have to get rid of my acquaintance. Then I'll come with you," she says. Well, that can be fun. An hour later I'm standing at the bar in Soljanka and ordering drinks for Katja and Nina. I ask myself which of the two I should take home with me and decide on Nina because of the leggings. Two drinks later, Nina is sitting on my lap and I let my hands wander up her thighs. Katja sits opposite and talks to a guy, but is visibly annoyed. I wonder why she's doing this to herself. Why doesn't she just go home? Yes, I know I'm the asshole right now, but given my high drinking and disappointment with Sasha, I've thrown all morals overboard. I just want to have fun now. Nina probably sees it the same way. Only Katja sits next to her like a stubborn child and just doesn't want to give up. “Nina, I want to sleep with you. You're so sexy,' I slur in her ear. "No. No,” she replies. 'It won't work. I have a boyfriend and I love him. You're sexy and I've been wanting you. If it wasn't for my boyfriend we'd already have fucked, but I'm in love and I'm trying to pull myself together." "Bla blah blah," I reply, not believing her. she flirts with me She sits on my lap and allows me to stroke her thighs and I'm already way up there. You really can't go much further than that. Earlier, when we were standing next to each other at the bar, I had my hand on her tight bottom. These vinyl leggings are unique. They're so thin you almost think you've got your hands on your skin, only it feels different. Also, I think Nina isn't wearing any underwear. At least I can't feel anything of the sort. "No. You're mine tonight,' I say, feeling myself getting an erection. Nina does not answer. She just grins and sips hers Drink. But she doesn't get up either, and now my erection is so strong that she has to feel it and cannot misinterpret this sign of my desire. "There you go," I think. "It's only a matter of time before she softens and comes with me." Then it suddenly vibrates in my pants. ScheiBe!, a phone call. Nina jumps up. I don't know if she's taking the opportunity to free herself or if she wants to help me get my cell phone. There's no time to think about it either, because when I look at the ad, I see that Sasha is calling me. I still have an erection in my pants and I walk across the club to the anteroom with it. "Where are you?" Sasha asks. “In the solyanka. come over I'll take you in,' I answer and regret it at the same time, because I remember too late that I've already been here with two women and Sasha probably wouldn't like it. Let alone the other two. "No," says Sasha. "I'm already at home. But maybe you would like to come to me. I would like to see you." Bingo! Killed two birds with one stone. "Of course, I'm coming. Send me the address, please, and I'll be on my way." Then I go back to Nina and Katja. 'Sorry, I have to go home. I don't feel well,' I say to both of them. Katja only nods in disappointment, while Nina absolutely wants to come along. "Let's take a cab together and I'll kick you out," she says, following me to the exit. Outside I tell Nina the truth. "Alright, then I'll take you to your 19-year-old girl," says Nina and laughs. "Nina is really cool," I think and get into the taxi. During the drive I tell her about Sasha and I feel like a little boy in love. I'm still so surprised that Sasha called me. In front of Sasha's house, Nina wishes me a lot of fun and takes a taxi away. She meant it and I still can't believe how cool she was about it and how easygoing she is. Doesn't matter. I ring the bell and take the elevator up to Sasha's on the fourth floor. She's already standing in the doorway and throws her arms around my neck, grinning. Suddenly it's a completely different person. She must be drunk. I hope I'm as drunk as I am, because I'm already at the end of my rope. We kiss, the clothes fly in all directions, and shortly thereafter we are naked in bed. A few wild hours follow, and when she finally lies exhausted in my arms, I wonder what tomorrow's awakening will be like. After all, I'm with her in the apartment. So there's no running away this time. "She'll have to kick me out," I think. Then I hug Sasha tightly and give her one last kiss. "Somehow I'm in love," are my last thoughts before I fall asleep. And of course I realize that this isn't going to be a good thing. It's around noon when we wake up. Sasha looks at me and grins. I pull her to me and give her a big kiss. "Thank God there's no drama this time," I think to myself. Then we spend another hour in bed. Sasha takes care of my morning erection and then we talk. It's the first time we've talked without being drunk and it feels good. I don't dare talk about the last morning after because I'm glad she called me again and we spent the night together. But I feel that the status of our relationship needs to be addressed. "I like you," I begin. "You too. I didn't call you otherwise." "You were drunk and that's why you dared," I reply. "No. Maybe a little drunk, but I wanted to see you and I just couldn't control my feelings anymore." "And now?" I ask. "No idea. I want to see you again, but of course the age difference is a problem. My mother is only a year older than you. I don't know how to explain it to her or my friends." "Why don't we take it easy?" I reply. 'You don't have to tell anyone. We'll meet when we want to and see where this story takes us. I give you your freedom and you give me mine. Would that be possible?" "That's fine. But I want you to know that I'm very jealous.' 'OK, I get it.' "Friends?" she asks, confusing me. "Friends with Benefits," I reply, even though I want more from Sasha. After that we'll talk for a while. I'm amazed at how serene and mature she is. At nineteen I wasn't quite there yet. I would like to stay. Preferably the whole day and even longer, but at home my dog is waiting. My roommate took him for a walk last night, but it's about time for a walk again. "When will I see you again?" I ask. “I don't have time during the week. I have to work and then to university.« 'So next weekend. That fits, because I'm flying to Siberia tonight and staying until Wednesday,' I say. "We'll see," Sasha says, slowly sinking back into her usual coolness. To say goodbye, however, she kisses me for a long time and I hug her tightly. I'm happy in the taxi, but also somehow unsure. In the end, Sasha was again very hypothermic. It wasn't as bad as last time, but it was weird. 'Probably,' I think, 'she lets herself go and opens up when she's drunk. When she sobers up, she regrets what she did and distances herself. Well, my mother always said: 'Drunks and children tell the truth'. If so, there is still hope.« I spend the next few days in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. I was invited to give a talk there in front of students and the dean. "Do you want to fly home immediately after the lecture or stay another day to see the city," the organizers asked me at the time asked Sommer when I accepted the invitation. Since the trip is fully paid for, I was quite happy to be offered an extra day to explore the city. But at the time I hadn't thought about the fact that it's already very cold in Siberia at the end of October. At departure in Moscow it was +5°C. Upon arrival in Krasnoyarsk the next morning, temperatures are well below zero and snowing. My hotel is in the middle of the city, but when it's snowing heavily I just can't motivate myself to explore the area. Today is my day off. It's Sunday. We arrived in the morning and I slept until the afternoon. In the evening I am invited to dinner by the organizers. However, that is already over at seven, after that I sit bored in my hotel room. I had picked out a couple of dates on a popular Russian dating site two weeks ago. But now I kind of don't want to meet these girls because in my mind there is only Sasha. So I work on my speech, then I get a beer and watch several episodes of Breaking Bad on my notebook. My lecture the next day is a success. After that I spend the rest of the day at the university in workshops with the students. It's good to turn your back on Moscow and experience Russia in a completely different way. The students in particular have very fresh, sometimes naïve ideas, and I'm learning a lot about the mentality of the people who live outside of Moscow. In the evening I am back in the hotel and alone again. It's terribly cold outside and it's snowing again. After a Franziskaner Weissbier, I text Sasha: “Hello from Krasnoyarsk. I'm terribly bored. Would be glad if you were with me and we could have fun. Miss you. Chris." It wasn't until two episodes of Breaking Bad later that I got an answer: "Hey, we're just friends. Can you remember? Hope the boredom isn't too bad.' OK, now I'm not only bored, I'm also depressed. Unfortunately I can't sleep yet because of the time difference of four hours. So I go to the bar to get another beer. Somehow I was hoping that someone, someone, would be sitting there and being just as bored as I was, but the bar is empty. So I'll take my beer up to the room. I go through the contacts on my dating site again and write to a few girls. There might be a chat. Maybe more. After an hour of no response I give up and watch all the remaining episodes of Breaking Bad until 5am. Back in Moscow I decide not to contact Sasha anymore after that stupid text message. If she wants something from me, let her get in touch. I haven't heard anything for two weeks. In the meantime I find my way back to my old self and my lovers. But somehow it's no longer fun with them. I decide to take a break from everything and break up with two of my girls. I just don't get in touch with the others. Then I accidentally find Sasha's sweater behind the couch. Hm, what do I do with this thing now? I don't want to call her anymore. I put the sweater on the closet. Should he gather dust there? I do not care. But for the next week I find myself thinking about Sasha all the time. Maybe I should call her after all? After all, she's the first woman I've had strong feelings for in a long time. no D rather not. Again I think of the age difference. Also, she's acting weird. I don't want to blow my face and I've had enough strange experiences and negative feelings with her. Whatever, fuck it. Lets see what happens. I plan to call her at the weekend and tell her I found her sweater. Maybe she wants to see me and could we go out together. After all, it's already mid-December and this would be the last opportunity before I'll be in Germany for four weeks. Just as I'm pondering whether I should really do this, my phone rings. “Hey, this is Sasha. I wanted to get in touch again." "That's good," I say. “I was just thinking about you because I found your sweater. Shall we meet?" »Yes, that's why I'm calling. I wanted to know if we can see each other. How about tomorrow night?' "Great. Dinner? I'll invite you and you can choose the restaurant,' I say and immediately regret this sentence. I'm an idiot. It's an unspoken law among foreigners that Russian women shouldn't be given the choice of restaurants. Usually you end up in a posh shack and are then 300 euros poorer. Regardless, said is said. “I'll call you tomorrow and tell you where we're going. Shall we say at six?' "Okay, let's do it this way. Until then. You. I'm so glad you called me,' I say. "See you tomorrow," Sasha replies with her usual coldness. The next day we go to dinner. Sasha has chosen a sushi restaurant around the corner from her, and it's super cheap. We eat, drink tea and talk until midnight. After that I take Sasha home and I take a taxi to my place. We made an appointment to dance on Friday. It was nice talking to her. She is so natural and completely different from the other Russian women I have met. She wasn't cold at all this time, but very open. In the end we talked about everything. Also about us and the first evening. "You know," says Sasha, "I wasn't shocked because of you, it was because of me. I haven't been this drunk in a long time. I knew full well that I had made the choices I made last night, and I was shocked at myself for that. I felt ashamed of you. But I also remembered that you always gave me a choice, and that's how I know you're a good guy." 'Well,' I think, 'if she knew. I'm not that kind of an angel either.« Friday we meet to dance. We're both sober and it's hard for us to relate to each other and relax. We decide to get drunk together. Things get better after a few drinks in a bar. Then Toby calls. He and Marina are at Soljanka, will we come? "Shall we go?" I ask Sasha. She nods and grins. "I have to go to the toilet for a second," she says, and disappears while I line up to get the jackets. Next to me is Natalie, with whom I had an affair some time ago. She must have been in the bar too. I hadn't even seen her. We give each other cash and exchange phrases. Then Sasha stands next to me, grinning. Natalie is shocked because Sasha looks so young. She immediately puts me in the "he's cracked up" category and flees. It's not even enough for a decent farewell. Toby and his wife Marina are already waiting at Soljanka. "Who's that?" Toby asks. He's used to me showing up with new girls all the time. "Sasha. She has Frau Helmbrecht potential,” I add. I'm already slightly drunk, so I have a loose tongue. "She's still damn young, isn't she?" Toby says. "Nineteen," I answer succinctly. "Gosh, Chris! That won't work. The age difference is way too big,” Toby lectures me. “Man, I know that myself. But what am I supposed to do? Sasha is the best girl I've met in years. Should I just ignore that just because the age difference is too big? I've decided to just give it a try and see how it turns out. And all without stress. I'll try to control my urges so I don't end up falling flat on my face and suffering too much." "You have to know what you're doing," Toby says. Danach tanzen wir. Toby und Marina ignorieren Sasha mit Absicht. Beide mogen meine Exfreundin sehr gerne und denken, es ware am besten fur mich, wenn wir wieder zusammenkamen. Doch das wird nicht passieren. Wir sind einfach zu verschieden. Ein paar Drinks spater nimmt Toby mich zur Seite, um mit mir uber meine Ex zu reden. Marina steht daneben und nickt. Sasha hat irgendwie genug und beschlieBt, sich noch einen Drink zu holen. Als Toby endlich fertig ist und ich nach Sasha sehe, steht die neben einem Typen an der Bar und redet mit ihm. Das passt mir nicht, aber ich hatte ja gesagt, dass wir beide unsere Freiheiten haben. Also lasse ich sie machen. Ich rede wieder mit Toby und Marina und erwarte Sasha jeden Augenblick zuruck, doch die kommt nicht. Als ich wieder nach ihr sehe, sind Sasha und ihr Gesprachspartner verschwunden. "And? Where's your wife Helmbrecht?' Toby asks provocatively. "No idea. She must be in the loo,' I reply. After half an hour it is clear that Sasha is not on the toilet and my mood is at zero. "Shall we go to my place for a nightcap? I've got this new DJ controller I can show you around.« Toby nods and we head for the exit. “I'll check on my little one again. Maybe I can still find her somewhere. Go to the cloakroom. We meet there." After that, I walk the entire club, but don't see Sasha anywhere. Just as I'm about to walk to the stairs, I see her standing at the bar in the second room. With the guy from before. Close to each other. I am going to her. 'We're going home to my place for a nightcap. Do you want to come with me?” I ask, expecting a resounding yes! But Sasha just shrugs, looks at her new acquaintance and says, “No. I stay here." I turn around without a word and leave. Toby and Marina are waiting at the cloakroom. "Did you find her?" Toby asks. "Yes. She's upstairs at the bar with the other guy. Arm-in-arm. And she says she wants to stay." Toby doesn't know what to say. "Don't say anything! It's okay I'll survive. fucking bitch! Shit Moscow!” Moscow "I have a boyfriend now," says Natascha. "Ah yes? For real? It's a pity." We sit at the table in a dark corner. Natascha sometimes works here, in one of the oldest clubs in Moscow. We lost touch after our little tete-a-tete in the summer and I spontaneously decided to visit her at her club today. Natascha gets me another beer and orders a warm cake. She grins at me and flirts. I don't notice much that she now has a boyfriend. But one thing is for sure, I won't end up in bed with her tonight. It's the usual. She wanted more and I just wanted fun. I've been honest with her. Eventually she lost interest and moved on. I can't blame her. Natascha is very open. She tells me about her new boyfriend. Sometimes I don't know if she wants to make me jealous or if she's really that open and naive. After 30 minutes Natascha has to go back to work and I make my way home. It's windy outside and much too warm for the time of year. It's just after midnight and I decide to walk home. This week is strange. Somehow things just don't work out with women. I grin anyway. I feel freer than I have in a long time. The pavement is littered with small puddles. The Russians will never get the hang of building decent roads and sidewalks. After the rain, the water stands in potholes and puddles for days. You have to be very careful and walk around it to avoid getting wet. That's not so easy during the day because someone is always coming towards you. Even when it's dry, there's not enough space on the sidewalk. There really isn't enough space in this city. Yesterday, a bitterly cold polar wind blew in my face from the north, but today the wind is coming from the south, bringing not only lots of red dust but also warm air from the Caucasus. The city is dirty. There should have been snow by now and temperatures should be well below zero, but this year General Winter, as the Russians call him after defeating Napoleon and later the Germans, is taking his time. global warming? I should be fine. The winter will be long enough. I walk up the street and look at the shop windows. The Christmas decorations are slowly moving in here, too, although the Russians celebrate much later than we do. "Am I at home in Moscow now?" I ask myself. Moscow is actually a shitty city, and yet I've lived here for so long. "Of course, you're at home here!" she calls out to me. "Just accept it." It's the city speaking up. Apparently she's had enough of my constant vice. The next thing I expect is, "If you don't like it here, pack your bags and go somewhere else!" but she says nothing. Moskau ist typisch fur mein Leben. Ich hatte immer schon ein Faible fur die nicht perfekten Frauen. Die mit der dicken Nase oder den zu kurzen Beinen. Irgendwie war es naturlich auch immer leichter, eine von diesen aufzureiBen. Im Vergleich zu den Topmodels oder den Rich Kids hat man mit den Nicht-Perfekten eigentlich viel mehr SpaB. Anscheinend geht es mir mit Moskau genauso. "I'm not that ugly," the town whispers to me. “If you look closely, you can see my beauty. It's the people you don't like and who spoil your desire for me. It's also the people who bother me. I'm the biggest city in Europe and just look at what they make of me. That lunatic, Stalin, for example. That was a really bad relationship. He couldn't accept me as I am and always wanted to tinker with me. One cosmetic surgery after the other. We know how that ends. Well, he was successful sometimes, but overall, he made me uglier. My naturalness was lost. It's the people, I tell you. Sometimes I wish I was born somewhere else. Maybe in France, Italy or Spain. Oh yes, that would be something. Then I would be like Paris or Rome.« "Don't worry," I reply. “I like you just the way you are. True, often you are ugly. Your prefabricated buildings, the potholes, the traffic jams, the crowds and all the neon lights. Nevertheless, I like you, and you also have your beautiful sides. Especially in winter, when it's snowing and everything looks clean and magical. I like your rhythm, your energy and your sex. You can be pretty sexy too, you know that?' I ask. She purrs contentedly like a cat. "But let's not misunderstand each other," I add matter-of-factly. "I do not love you. There will be no relationship between us. I won't stay with you forever. This is just for fun. i live in the moment Here and now. At some point I have to move on. You have to understand that. This relationship isn't forever.” She falls silent. Two dark Caucasian boys are blocking my way. They look at me scrutinizingly. "A foreigner alone," they think. “He must have a lot of money, an expensive phone, maybe even a camera with him. Maybe he's drunk, that makes it even easier to rob him." I walk purposefully towards them, take turns looking deep into the eyes of both of them and steer towards the middle between the two. "Don't fuck with me!" I think. At the last moment, the two turn to the side. I still touch the shoulder of one. No, I don't turn around, I don't show fear and I keep walking. "C'mon baby, you don't have to be upset," I whisper softly. “I do like you, but this isn't love between us. What should I do if I don't feel them. I could pretend I love you, but where do we end up? no This is sex and fun. Incredible fun. Let's leave it at that. why do you want more Why do we even have to talk about it? let's live in the moment Let's just enjoy life.« The warm wind caresses my hair. The side street to my house is empty, and now the city is showing its most beautiful side. She seems to accept my suggestion. for now. That's how they are, women. Eventually she will lose interest in me. Or I'm interested in her, then it's time to leave Moscow and move on. sponsored bywww.boox.to

Appendix 3 - Why Russians Don’t Smile: A Guide to Doing Business in Russia and the CIS Countries

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9


This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Why Russians Don’t Smile: A Guide to Doing Business in Russia and the CIS Countries

4th Edition

Luc Jones

Why Russians Don’t Smile

4th Edition

Acknowledgements:

We would like to express our thanks to everybody who contributed comments, articles and general advice for our publication. Additionally we are extremely grateful to our sponsors for their support which helped to make this book possible.

Limitation of use:

Please note that commercial use, distribution, reprint or publication of all or any parts of the book is prohibited without prior written authorisation from the author. Reference to the author is obligatory when quoting any content from this publication.

Author: Luc Jones

Project manager: Evgeniya Gonzales

Designers: Ekaterina Gnidina, Nataliya Demkina

Published by: Intermark Relocation

7/1 Kropotkinsky Pereulok

119034, Moscow, Russia

+7 495 502 95 53

www.intermarkrelocation.ru

Moscow, 2020

Luc Jones Why Russians Don’t Smile 4th edition

Chapters

I. Scope of this book

II. Introduction to Russia and the CIS region

III. Expatriates in Russia

IV. Travelling to and around Russia and the CIS countries

V. Foreign assignments and hiring locally

VI. Behavioral differences faced by Expats

VII. Cultural differences

VIII. Language barriers and deciphering names

IX. Doing business part 1

X. Doing business part 2

XI. Entertainment in Russia

XII. Life in Russia - how Russians live

XIII. How Russians view foreigners

XIV. Charity, Corporate Social Responsibility

XV. Life outside of Moscow and St Petersburg

XVI. CIS focus - the ‘other’ Republics

XVII. Public Holidays in Russia

XVIII. Useful contacts

XIX. Glossary of Terms and Acronyms

About the author

Luc Jones

Luc Jones was born in Huntingdon, UK in 1973 to a British father and a French-Canadian mother and grew up in West Devon. His first trip to Russia was while still at high school in Tavistock: a week in Moscow and Leningrad in February 1991, followed by a year studying in Moscow and Yaroslavl in 1993/4 during his degree – Russian and Soviet Studies at The University of Portsmouth, UK. After a brief spell teaching English in Moscow in 1995/6, Luc joined ITE Group Plc (one of the world’s largest exhibition and conference organizers), working on the Moscow Motor Show.

Luc’s life in recruitment began with Antal in Warsaw in 1998 where he worked for 2 years, covering Poland and the Baltic States. He then joined CRM giant Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) based in Prague, responsible for the CEE region, Turkey and South Africa. Moving back in Moscow in early 2002 with Antal, Luc worked his way up to Partner and Commercial Director before he joined Fircroft at the start of 2019 as Regional Sales Director for the CIS countries.

An extensive traveler, Luc has visited 145 countries including all 15 former Soviet Republics and continues to discover new places of interest throughout the world. Luc lives in Moscow and plans to do so for the foreseeable future, yet travels extensively throughout the CIS. Luc speaks Russian fluently in addition to his native English and has a very good knowledge of (Quebecois) French, Polish and Spanish.

I. Scope of this book

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

What does it cover, whom is it written for and why

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN AS A GUIDE FOR THREE MAIN GROUPS:

Expatriates who have recently relocated to Russia/CIS (or are considering doing so in the nearest future) or live in their home country but visit on a regular basis. These are usually senior management of multinational corporations who are typically spend 3-4 years on a particular assignment before moving on or back home, or perhaps having been assigned this part of the world as a part of their overall territory.

People who perhaps don’t visit Russia/CIS often (or ever at all) but cover the region as part of their remit – this group includes human resources and recruitment managers, finance directors and even some CEOs. Since many multinational organizations use their European office to spearhead development and growth in the CIS region, this book has been written from the perspective of a Western/Central European manager.

Russians and citizens of other CIS countries who are interested in how they and their countries are perceived by foreigners. This is especially the case for those working for a multinational company, or perhaps for a local organization which is expanding into new markets abroad. If they report to a foreigner (based locally or abroad) or work with them on a regular basis, they can be more aware of potential pitfalls that they wouldn’t normally consider.

This book makes no apologies for being very much from a UK/European perspective as this has traditionally been the main target audience. Even US or Asian multinationals are likely to make business decisions for the CIS region from an office in Europe, for geographical and cultural reasons. However, this is not to say that North Americans, Africans, Asians, those from the Middle East or in fact anyone even remotely connected to the CIS might not benefit from reading this book.

The focus is primarily on Moscow although several chapters are devoted to other parts of Russia, such as St Petersburg and the Far East, plus all the CIS countries. Additionally this book does not claim to comprehensively cover every aspect of doing business in Russia/CIS, be it cultural, economic, business or social. An entire encyclopedia could be (and in many cases has already been) written on every single topic. Rather this book is meant as a guide for those new to this part of the world who wish to have an easy to read guide that they can quickly refer to, rather than having to read through a ‘War and Peace’ length novel.

THERE IS A SAYING THAT FOREIGNERS CRY TWICE – FIRSTLY WHEN THEY ARRIVE IN RUSSIA, AND SECONDLY WHEN THEY LEAVE IT.

Probably the biggest and most common mistake which foreigners make is that they assume that since Russians look like we do, they automatically think like we do. They don’t. Read on to find out more…

GETTING IT WRONG

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

The cost of failure can be high so you need to do your homework before setting out. Russia is not a country where you can just show up and make a fast buck – you need to be in it for the long term. Some have tried and failed, but many more have done extremely well in Russia. See also chapter 5 for whom to hire, how and why. One of the most frequent reactions to the first three editions of this book from Russians themselves has been that foreigners will read it, but ignore much (or all) of the advice given because they still think that they are smarter. Do yourself a favour and don’t fall into this category.

II. Background to Russia/CIS Geography, history, religion, nationalities and initial stereotypes

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.


GEOGRAPHY

You don’t need a University degree in Geography to know that Russia is not only the world’s largest country (even after the demise of the USSR), but covers one eighth of the earth’s land mass. It’s a vast territory although the majority of visitors and Russians alike see precious little of it. It spans nine time zones (until recently it was eleven, but was scaled back) yet cities thousands of miles apart look remarkably similar thanks to the Soviet uniformity of buildings. One of the key reasons for this concrete ubiquity is that until the 1917 October revolution, many of today’s towns and cities were little more than remote villages that were changed forever during Stalin’s industrialization policies of the 1930s. For ease of understanding, the country is generally broken down into three geographical zones:

Since European Russian is by far the most populous area, this region itself is divided up into five parts:

Moscow and the surrounding area (often referred to as the Golden Ring)

St Petersburg & North-Western Russia

The Volga Region

The South, which includes the Caucasus

The Urals, which form the border between Europe and Asia

Few people agree (apart from the geographical border between Europe and Asia) as to exactly where one area stops and the next one starts, so these are given more as a general guide.

European Russia

Siberia

The Far East

HISTORY

There are entire libraries devoted to Russia’s rich history, and one would do well to acquaint themselves with at least the basics of twentieth century Russian history for a broader understanding of where the country is today, and why.

From a business perspective, it is crucial to understand that Russia has come a long way in a very short space of time – it can be hard to imagine that little more than a generation ago, the whole essence of doing business as we know it was not only an alien concept, it was in fact highly illegal. There are complaints both from inside and outside of Russia that far too many people are still employed by the State – estimates vary but it’s rumored to be around 50% even if the official figure is considerably lower. Putting things into context however, until the fall of Communism, the figure (officially at least) was 100%.

Westerners are raised in a society where everyone is constantly trying to sell you something, advertising is everywhere, choice is the norm and the whole ethos of life is geared around making money. Russia and the former Soviet States are very much emerging markets without a history of commercial business. During Soviet times you typically bought what they had on sale regardless of whether or not you actually needed it as it probably wouldn’t be there tomorrow, and you could then quietly sell it on, or trade it off sometime down the line. The inefficiency of the planned economy led to chronic shortages of even the most basic consumer goods as efforts were ploughed into heavy industry and military production. As a result, a massive grey economy emerged as Soviet citizens showed their resourcefulness in obtaining supplies that weren’t available through normal channels (ie, shops). Previously your standard of living depended not only on your salary, but on your connections and clout (known in Russian as ‘blat’ or ’svyazi’) either personal, or via the workplace. Your physical location – Moscow was always considered the showpiece of the USSR (see the ‘Moscow vs the Rest of Russia’ piece below) meant better access to goods and services, and also your line of work; those in the military, even serving in remote locations were always well fed.

A joke from the Communist era sums up both the influence and the necessity of the Soviet grey economy rather aptly: A senior American and Soviet diplomat meet and are discussing salary levels and standards of living in their respective countries. The American proudly boasts that “in the United States of America, the average salary is $25,000 per year, and $15,000 is needed to survive, but we don’t care what he spends the remaining $10,000 on.” The Soviet diplomat replies, that “in the Soviet Union, the average salary is 2,000 RUB per year and the amount needed to survive is 5,000 RUB, but we don’t care where he finds the remaining 3,000 RUB!” The result today is that Russians maintain a high sense of loyalty to those that they deem close to them, such as their friends (especially those made during student days), former colleagues and family members – you will notice how Russians often refer to a cousin as a brother or sister. This is manifested in how Russians make hiring decisions in the workplace; ‘po rekomendatsii’, based on a trusted recommendation. This might strike Westerners as a classic case of cronyism, or even corrupt practices. Russians view it somewhat differently, as working with a reliable and trusted partner who can be called upon to be sure to get a job done. See chapters 9 and 10 for more information on doing business in Russia.

I ONCE ASKED A RUSSIAN ‘WHY IS THE AIM OF SOCIALISM TO MAKE EVERYBODY POOR?’ – HE DRYLY RESPONDED ‘THAT’S NOT THE AIM, BUT THAT’S CERTAINLY THE RESULT!’

RELIGION

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

The majority of Russians will claim adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Church, even if few actually attend services. The communist period was officially atheist and religious buildings were at best left to decay or reused for other purposes, such as storage, or in extreme cases, destroyed. Fortunately, slowly but surely some are being restored to at least part of their former glory, evident by the increasing beauty of onion domes on the horizons of many Russian cities, towns and even villages. It is interesting to observe that many drivers in Russia have mini Orthodox icons on their dashboards, especially in Russian-made cars – possibly a testament to the atrocious standard of driving in Russia and the high death rate on the roads. Few are aware that Russia has more Muslims than the rest of Europe combined – anywhere between 10-20 million, depending on which statistics you believe. However, the Sovietization policies resulted in heavy integration with surrounding Slavs, so most are moderate (Chechnya and Dagestan being the notable exceptions), and there is also a significant Buddhist minority in Kalmykia (southern Russia), the Altai region close to Mongolia and Buryatia (in Eastern Siberia, by Lake Baikal). The blatantly anti-Jewish policies of the Soviet Union resulted in a significant number of Jews emigrating (mainly to Israel and the USA) but many remain, and often occupy senior positions in large, local businesses. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that whilst some take their faith seriously, Russia is a secular State and not an openly religious country. Whilst Russians are well aware of other faiths, it is rarely brought up as a topic of conversation. New Year’s Eve is celebrated with considerably more vigour than either Christmas or Easter.

NATIONALITY

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

It is worth spending a moment or two on this as to Russians, one’s nationality and ethnicity means much more than it does to westerners. For starters, Russia is the ninth most populous nation on the planet, yet is far from being a homogenous country. You would be forgiven for assuming that this is a Slav-only place, and whilst Slavs certainly dominate, there are well over a hundred separate nationalities, ranging from Tatars who boast over five million, to the Evenki people in the far north-east of Russia whose numbers are in the tens of thousands. Despite Soviet attempts (in some areas considerably more ‘successfully’ than others) at wiping out individualism, effort was made to glorify the benefits of being a Soviet citizen, people will proudly tell you that they are ethnically Armenian/ Bashkir/Chuvash/Dagestani, albeit one that was born in Russia. Russians use two words to describe the people who live in Russia (not including Expatriates, tourists or migrant workers). This may strike Westerners as rather bizarre, and possibly even derogatory since someone of Indian parentage who was born and brought up in the UK would almost certainly consider him/herself as British, and anyone who has received their Green Card to the USA can quite proudly call themselves an American.

===RUSSKIY – REFERS TO PEOPLE WHO ARE CONSIDERED TO BE ETHNICALLY RUSSIAN ROSSIYANIN – REFERS TO PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN RUSSIA (OFTEN FOR GENERATIONS) BUT ARE NOT NECESSARILY ETHNIC RUSSIAN===

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Not so in Russia, and you will even hear people say ‘I’m not Russian, I’m Jewish’. Consequently some Russians can find it hard to comprehend how a black guy could be British or an Arab could be French. Obviously this is less likely to be the case with Russians who have lived, or travelled extensively abroad, but if you are of non-Caucasian origin, it’s worth bearing this in mind when visiting Russia as unfortunately some prejudice does exist. Whilst this is almost exclusively aimed at migrants from some former Soviet Republics (particularly Central Asia and the Caucasus) some Russians – especially in more remote regions, are unused to seeing anyone who doesn’t look like them, so although you are unlikely to encounter any outright hostility, do expect to be stared at.

Few are aware that Russia has more immigrants than any other country in the world after the United States. However, the overwhelming majority of these come from the former Soviet Republics, and there is some resentment of their presence – especially in Moscow where many head for. The fact that unemployment in Russia’s capital is low, and they are employed to do menial jobs that Russian don’t seem to want to do at salaries that Russians wouldn’t even consider getting out of bed for appears lost on many ethnic Russians. Do be aware that the word ‘Caucasian’ to Russians (pronounced ‘Kavkaz’ in Russian) refers to dark-haired people from the south of Russia (notably Chechnya, Dagestan and Ossetia), plus also the former Soviet Republics of Armenian, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It DOES NOT mean ‘white’ in the European sense.

MOSCOW VS THE REST OF RUSSIA

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

In Western culture, we usually begin introductions with asking someone’s name, and then where they are from. Non-Muscovites living in Moscow can be uncomfortable when faced with this question, and may either not reply, answer simply “I’m from Russia” or say that they are from Moscow, even if they arrived only recently. The exception is St Petersburgers, who view themselves as culturally more advanced, and are the only Russians who look down upon Muscovites, as brash. See chapter 15 for more information on life outside of Moscow and St Petersburg. Average living standards were higher in Moscow and Leningrad (as St Petersburg used to be called) than elsewhere in the USSR, and it is also where the best higher educational establishments were, so this is where Soviet citizens strove to move to. The USSR had a residency permit system, known as a ‘propiska’ which allowed you live and work in a certain part of the country, and the authorities dictated who lived where, and who was allowed to move where, and when. In practice it was a clever and useful tool for the state to control the population as it heavily restricted even basic freedoms, Russia has suffered from a severe housing shortage since Stalin’s industrialization policies that began in the late 1920s and which forced the masses from the countryside into urban areas. Nowadays the system still exists, although it is much less enforced than before, yet you may observe a slight superiority complex amongst Muscovites when in the company of out-of-towners, colloquially known as ‘limitchiki’. There is more than a grain of truth in the joke that when Russian girls from provincial towns arrive in the capital, their preference is for a husband who has a propiska. This is beginning to change, as wealthier Russians choose to move out from a polluted downtown Moscow to greener areas outside the city limits. Russia is a very centralized, top-down society and despite Vladimir Putin hailing from St Petersburg, Moscow is where the bulk of business decisions are made, and naturally where the wealth is concentrated.

FAQs FOR PEOPLE PLANNING TO VISIT RUSSIA FOR THE FIRST TIME: What’s Russia like?

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Whatever you’ve ever read in the international media or seen on TV, either ignore it or believe the opposite. Most people’s first comment upon arrival is “oh wow, it’s normal. I had no idea it would be like this”. Bottom line, come with an open mind and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Is it always cold?

It does get cold (if you’re concerned about global warming, come to Russia in the winter) but summers can be scorchingly hot, with spring and autumn seeming to last only a few weeks. However, buildings are well heated, often excessively so and it’s a drier cold than in Europe, so if you wrap up in appropriate clothing, you’ll be fine. Do you have to drink heavily to do business?

A lot of vodka does get drunk, although beer has in fact overtaken the clear stuff as Russians’ choice of tipple and wine and cocktails are increasing in popularity amongst the middle classes. Granted, there may not be many abstainers and Russians still refer to vodka as ‘water of life’ but there’s more sobriety than you may think. Lunchtime drinking in the corporate world is almost unheard of – see chapter 11 for more on entertainment after working hours.

Is Russia dangerous?

In a nutshell, no. Stories about the fabled Russian mafia might make great headlines for lazy journalists but the days of shootouts in broad daylight and kiosks being blown up are long gone, and were in fact highly exaggerated in the first place. Sure, Moscow has its fair share of petty crime like any other big city, but the majority of incidents against foreigners occurs due to drunken misunderstandings with the Police or taxi drivers (and/or with recently-met local women when under the influence).

Speaking some Russian or having a Russian friend/colleague generally prevents such issues as does local knowledge and not acting as though you’ve just arrived in town. Russians will tell you to avoid the outskirts of Moscow at night but there’s no reason for you to be there anyway, and the centre of Moscow or St Petersburg is probably safer than your hometown after dark.

====How will I get around if I can’t understand the funny writing?====

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, as do nearby Belarus, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and parts of the former Yugoslavia. It’s much less daunting than it first appears (some of the letters are the same, or similar to their Latin equivalents) and English language signage is on the increase, particularly in Moscow, St Petersburg and other places where foreigners may venture, such as airports. The World Cup in 2018 and the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 were just two examples of high profile events which improved matters considerably. You will even see Chinese characters in some places, in response to Russia’s drive to increase both business and tourism from the People’s Republic. See Chapter 8 for more information on learning the local language. Isn’t the country far too corrupt to be able to do business transparently?

Many of the world’s largest & best known multinational organizations are present in Russia, and run successful, profitable operations. Most have been here since the 1990s; they are audited and scrutinized both locally and internally, and simply wouldn’t tolerate an environment where they couldn’t run a clean business. Nobody is pretending that it’s plain sailing but it’s much less of an issue than the international media would have you believe. Chapter 10 goes into more detail on this subject.

====Surely international sanctions prevent our company from doing business with Russia?====

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014, economic sanctions were imposed against Russia by several nations, namely the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, the European Union, and (hardly surprisingly), Ukraine. Many of these sanctions are aimed directly at businesses connected to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and/or business connected with the Crimea itself, such as ports where cruise ships cannot dock. Mostly, the sanctions prohibit the sale, supply, transfer or export of goods and technology in certain sectors, although the number of companies whose businesses have actually been affected remains small. Sadly, some companies have chosen to ‘self sanction’, incorrectly assuming that they cannot do business in Russia and arguably it has been this assumption which has hurt the Russian economy more than the sanctions themselves. Obviously if you or your business are from one of the countries involved then it’s important to check what impact this might have (and your country’s Embassy will be able to advise here). Russia retaliated in August 2014 by banning certain foodstuffs from countries which had imposed sanctions and has managed to turn this into an opportunity to promote ‘import substitution’ which has enjoyed considerable successes. In some cases Russia lacks the equipment to produce locally, a gap in market which is being filled by foreign manufacturers.

Why does nobody ever smile?

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

If you travel on the metro in the mornings, you’ll certainly see many glum faces and yes, it is rare for Russians to smile for no reason. Why? Some blame a combination of the poor weather, at least in the winter, a turbulent history, especially in the past century coupled with a general mistrust of outsiders (it didn’t pay to be inquisitive during communist times) and difficult living conditions for most, even today. In Western culture we smile to make people feel comfortable rather than us being genuinely happy to see them. If a Russian doesn’t smile at you, it doesn’t mean that they don’t like you (don’t take offense – it’s nothing personal), but if they do smile, then chances are that you’ve made a favourable impression on them. There is another explanation, that Russians view someone with a permanent smile as the village idiot, and smiling without a reason is viewed as being insincere.

III. Expatriates in Russia

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Who are they and how they differ from each other and also from their local staff

Like in any large city, the Expat community is very much a mixed bag but the majority of white collar workers fall into three distinct categories. CORPORATE EXPATS (CORP-PATS)

Typically Corp-pats have been posted to Russia/CIS with little or no previous experience of this part of the world, but their key selling point is their in-depth knowledge of their employer after years, if not decades with the firm, perhaps in multiple locations. They are seen as a safe pair of hands and are almost always employed in senior level positions. Trust is another influencing factor, especially in a finance role. The standard assignment is three years in length, sometimes more but the aim is often to eventually replace yourself with a local before moving on to pastures new within the firm, or it could mean returning home. Corppats almost always confine themselves to the ‘Expat bubble’, living in a compound or an area populated by other foreigners. This is especially the case if they have arrived with a family in tow, and hang out in expat circles, which in reality means downtown bars & restaurants where they are likely to bump into people similar to themselves. Few learn much, if any Russian as the corporate language at work will be English and they see little need to immerse themselves into the local culture as in all likelihood they’ll be moving on in a few years anyway.

RUSSIFIED EXPATS (RUSS-PATS)

Russ-pats may have studied Russian language and/or Russian literature, politics, history, economics at University and moved to Russia as they genuinely love the place. They are employed in a wide range of professions, and may now have family ties here, such as a spouse, children and perhaps have even purchased an apartment, or God forbid, a dacha! Some are in fact Corp-pats who have somehow stayed on and immersed themselves into the local community and have set up their own business, or work for somebody who has. More recently some Expats with specific skills have found themselves in demand by Russian companies who value their international background & input, especially if they come with previous CIS work experience and some knowledge of the Russian language.

RE-PATS

Re-pats emigrated from the CIS after the fall of the Soviet Union, but for a variety of reasons have decided to return to the motherland. Initially it was adults who were seeking their fortune abroad, although increasingly we are seeing their children who left when they were very young and so are bilingual, or close to. Some felt disillusioned with life ‘abroad’, others found the going tough and didn’t make it whilst many wanted to be closer to their relatives as they age. A few even realized that from a purely business perspective, they could make more money and have a faster and more successful career back in Russia/CIS, having picked up business acumen and strong language skills abroad. Russians themselves are rarely positive about Re-pats, viewing them as arrogant. Admittedly some do return with a ‘hey, I’m better than you as I’ve lived/ worked/studied abroad and I speak great English’ attitude (Russians can spot them a mile away as they frequently drop English idioms into their everyday Russian speech). When interviewing Re-pats for jobs in Russia, they should be taken on an individual basis, while naturally those who return with a shiny American passport and demand an expat package and a hardship allowance, can be quickly discarded.

It’s also worth you checking if Re-pats are eligible to work in Russia as some will have lost, or given up their Russian citizenship. Expats view Re-pats as Re-pats, whereas Russians simply view Re-pats as Russians who’ve spent some time living abroad. Moscow is a fairly transient place as far as the expat community is concerned, since Corp-pats almost always leave once their three year contract is up, either moving on to their next assignment in another farflung place, or simply returning home. Nevertheless, the Moscow expat circle is extremely welcoming and easy to break into. There are numerous social clubs, sporting activities, business associations and religious groups that welcome newcomers. They are by no means exclusively aimed at Expats, and can be a great way to get to meet English-speaking locals. See chapter 18 for a list of websites.

IV. Travelling to, around and visiting Russia and the CIS countries, plus moving to and settling in Russia

GETTING TO/FROM MOSCOW FROM ABROAD

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Being the largest city in Europe, Moscow is served by daily flights from almost every European capital city of any significance with some countries (such as Germany) also having direct flights from provincial cities. From Western Europe flights tend to take off in the morning/ lunchtime, arriving in Moscow late afternoon/early evening, or leaving late evening, landing in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of the following morning. Flying east you will effectively either lose most of the day on the plane, or a night’s sleep – you choose what’s best for you, although upon your return you’ll land at pretty much the same time as you took off. There are also direct, regular scheduled flights from many large Asian and Middle-Eastern cities plus a few in the USA although from Africa, Latin America and Oceania you will almost certainly require a change of planes. Bear in mind that if you do arrive in the early hours of the morning, your hotel may well charge you for an extra night, or for early check-in, and given the cost of high-end accommodation in Moscow, this can outweigh the benefits of taking the ‘red-eye’ flight.

Sheremetyevo (SVO) airport is in the north of Moscow and is Aeroflot’s hub for both domestic and international flights. It also handles Skyteam’s airline partners (KLM-Air France, Delta, Korean Air, Alitalia, Czech Airlines), as well as Finnair, and for flights to mainland China with Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. Terminals D and E have been built recently and are very much up to international standards, while F was rebuilt for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and retains a certain Soviet feel to it. Terminals A, B & C are located on the other side of the airport; there is now a free shuttle train service, which runs under the runway, only takes a few minutes and operates frequently. These mainly handle domestic and charter flights although some changes and construction are still in progress so it is definitely worth checking in advance. Domodedovo (DME) airport is in the south and is home for most of OneWorld’s airlines, such as S7 one of Russia’s largest domestic carriers, British Airways (although be careful, one of the three daily flights to Heathrow now leaves from Sheremetyevo), Iberia, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and JAL. It’s also Star Alliance’s Russian home, so Lufthansa, Austrian, TAP, Thai, Turkish, Singapore and Egyptair fly from here, plus Emirates and Etihad. Air Astana recently relocated their Moscow home to here, for flights to Almaty & Nur-Sultan, in Kazakhstan, and Ural Airlines for numerous domestic and international destinations. Vnukovo (VKO) in the south-west acts an overspill for Moscow’s main two airports, plus Turkish Airlines who have moved here (landing and takeoff fees are reportedly lower). Additionally Uzbekistan Airlines now fly directly to 13 cities in Uzbekistan. Otherwise it is mainly used by Utair, Russia’s third largest airline, Pobeda (Aeroflot’s Low Coster) and for holiday charter flights.

Zhukovsky (ZIA) located to the east of Moscow with the aim of being a magnet for low-coster and charter. It only handles a few airlines, the most notable being Belavia with several flights per day to Minsk and URAL Airlines. For the time being at least, the biggest downside to Zhukovsky (apart from the small number of airlines actually using this airport) is that there is no direct train link from Moscow’s city centre. It necessary to catch a train from Kazansky station to the town of Zhukovsky, and connect from there on a shuttle bus. Or just catch a cab and risk the traffic. Clearing both customs and immigration is a relatively painless process; regardless of which airport you arrived at. Lines are rarely long (unless you are unlucky and several planes have landed just before yours) but queues move quite quickly. Unless you are carrying upwards of $10,000 in cash or any obviously restricted items, there is no need to fill out a customs form. GETTING TO/FROM THE AIRPORT INTO MOSCOW If you are new to Moscow and/or don’t speak Russian or read Cyrillic, it would make sense for you to arrange for your hotel to have a driver meet you at the airport, standing with a sign (with either your, or the hotel’s name on it) in the arrivals terminal.

TAXI

Nowadays, the taxi situation is largely regulated at Moscow’s main airports and is a considerable improvement from the “taxi mafia” days of the 1990s, but can still be a little daunting for the uninitiated as the waiting drivers tout for fares and can be quite pushy. The best advice is to walk past the waiting drivers (ignore the official looking badges they wear) as these guys charge well above the standard rate, and misunderstandings do happen. Use one of the desks further back as prices are now official and listed in. Russian and English, and the staff should speak reasonable English, even if your driver doesn’t. Early mornings and evenings heading into Moscow should be relatively traffic-free, at least by Moscow standards, but fares are generally fixed in advance and shouldn’t depend on the journey time. Unless you are taking one of the red-eye planes returning from Moscow, your flight back to Western Europe is likely to leave in the evening. Given the heavy traffic leaving downtown Moscow towards the end of the working day, allow a good two hours, especially if you’re setting off on a Thursday or Friday. The jams are at their peak in the summer months when it seems as though the entire city decamps from Friday lunchtime onwards and heads out to their dachas for the weekend.

AEROEXPRESS An easy way to avoid spending hours stuck in the back of a cab is to take the Aeroexpress train from central Moscow to the airport or vice versa. Trains service Moscow’s three largest airports every half hour; trains begin at around 06:00 and continue until at least midnight. Journey time is around 45 minutes, and means that you’ll never miss another flight ever again.

Trains for Sheremetyevo leave from Belorussky station (this line has recently been extended with additional stops en route, including to Moskva City, Moscow’s financial district)

Trains for Domodedovo leave from Paveletsky station Trains for Vnukovo leave from Kievsky station All three of these stations are on the Moscow metro’s circle (brown) line and are signposted in English. The Aeroexpress trains are clearly marked and are usually red (do NOT jump on to a green train; these are the suburban commuter trains, called ‘elektrichka’ which will take you into the middle of nowhere) but doors may only open a few minutes before the train actually departs for the airport. If in doubt, don’t worry, just ask, although a crowd of people carrying suitcases is generally a telltale sign. A single ticket is RUB500 and they have a business class carriage for RUB1,500 which guarantees you a seat and they give out free bottles of water & Russian language newspapers. At peak times these trains can get pretty full, although there is usually more space in the back few carriages, and you might be fortunate enough to ride on one of the swanky, new double-decker trains. For those in a hurry to get to the airport, you can jump on the train and buy a ticket upon arrival at one of the ticket booths, which also have instructions in English – they accept Rubles and credit cards, although there can be quite a scrum getting through the barriers so if possible buy one before you board. If you don’t need a receipt and have a contactless debit or credit card, you can save time and receive a small discount by simply tapping your card on the entrance/exit gate at the airport, and they are also available online at a reduced price. For information on the exact times (and any updates), check out: www.aeroexpress.ru (in Russian & English). In case you are feeling a little apprehensive, ask a Russian colleague or friend to accompany you as far as the train for the first time. Trust me, coming from someone who has missed flights in the past due to heavy traffic, these aeroexpress trains are a godsend. If you are visiting your Moscow office and your travel schedule has been arranged by your Russian office manager, it’s worth bearing in mind that she may assume that as an important foreigner, there is no way that you could even consider lowering yourself to taking Russian public transport, as few senior Russians would. She might be shocked that you even suggested it. In fact, she will probably think that as a clueless newcomer to Moscow you will invariably get lost, mugged or abducted and it will be all her fault, so she will insist that you take a taxi. Perhaps she just wants to get rid of you, but this will result in you leaving at lunchtime for an excruciatingly slow trip to the airport, probably arriving many hours before your evening flight. Bottom line, if time is important to you, consider taking the aeroexpress to/ from the airport. Finally, if transiting between Moscow’s airports, allow yourself a MINIMUM of two hours travelling time to get from Sheremetyevo to either Domodedovo or Vnukovo regardless of which mode of transport you use. GETTING AROUND MOSCOW Amongst the largest, best (and surely the most beautiful) in the world is the Moscow metro. Sure, it can get crowded at times, ridiculously so during rush hour, but it’s fast and very efficient. Little wonder that millions of people use it every day to get to & from work, and around the city. Many of the older stations are works of art in themselves, and a single ticket costs less than a Dollar, regardless of how far you travel – there are no zones. Tickets can be purchased for individual or multiple rides, or monthly passes which work out slightly cheaper in the long run, and are on sale at every station, whenever the metro is running, which is from shortly before 6am until 1am. Every metro station is permanently manned both by the metro’s own staff and by the Police, so consider it a pretty safe way to travel even at night. 38 39 One recent development is that there are now signs and announcements in both Russian and English at all stations. However, one slightly confusing aspect is that some stations use different names for the same interchange, but some are the same. An added bonus is that WiFi is available on the metro, for free. Your mobile phone should also work, even if the reception is a little patchy in places. If you have multiple meetings and especially if some are out on the outskirts of the city where metro stations are fewer and farther between, consider hiring a car with a driver for the day, or even for the duration of your trip. It’s not as expensive as it may sound, and your driver will drop you off & wait for you. Experienced drivers are pretty adept at sorting out a whole host of problems, such as when you’ve arrived at a building and the security guard doesn’t want to let you in as he can’t find the propusk (entry pass) that may or may not have been ordered. Curiously Russians don’t seem to mind sitting in traffic jams, viewing an hour stuck in gridlock in their own vehicle as preferable to a twenty minute ride on the crowded metro. This largely stems from cars having been difficult to obtain during the communist period, involving a long wait and invariably some strings pulled along the way, all to secure a Lada! So if you are going to a meeting together with Russians, don’t be surprised if they turn their noses up at the thought of taking the metro, although there is a good chance that they will have pre-arranged the transport. An increasing number of taxi companies operate in Moscow and even in mid-sized Russian/CIS cities, cabs can typically be at your door within five or ten minutes. Peak times are a different matter due to heavy traffic so to be on the safe side it’s best to book in advance. Waiting times are comparatively cheap so if you’re going to a meeting, it can make sense to ask the driver to wait and take you back. Parking can be limited, so your driver may in fact need to find a space half a mile down the road (where it’s free to park) and you ring him once you’re done already to return. The occasional dispatcher may speak a little English but drivers are unlikely to know more than the odd word, although if they’ve carried non Russian-speaking passengers before, they should know the drill. There are now certain apps which can be downloaded (such as Uber, Yandex Taxi or Gett) which avoid the need for speaking Russian, although in practice the driver is still likely to call you to tell you that he has arrived, and exactly where he is waiting for you. This is a safe bet as the car and the driver’s details will be sent by SMS to your mobile phone. For the fullblown Russian experience, do as many locals still do and stick your hand (not your thumb) out on a busy street, then watch the cars stop for you. Yes, in theory any car doubles up as a private taxi – you tell the driver where you want to go, agree a fare and jump in. The authorities have tried to make this practice illegal but old habits die hard and it is still a popular way of getting around quickly, especially late at night when the metro is closed. It’s safer than you might think, but if you don’t like the look of the driver (and/or his car) then don’t be shy about waving him on and getting into the next car. At busier spots at night, cars will often line up behind one another; it’s also possible that the driver may not want to take you if it’s completely out of his way. Avoid any cars that wait outside top end hotels, bars, clubs and especially at train stations & airports – these jokers charge much more than the going rate and are notorious for rip-offs, especially from drunken foreigners and can get aggressive if you don’t cough up. Only ever catch the moving cars and ALWAYS make sure that you’ve agreed on the destination AND the fare in advance. Worst case, get someone to write it down for you in Cyrillic beforehand. It is worth bearing in mind however that many of these ‘gypsy cab’ drivers are migrant workers from the poorer Central Asian and Caucasus Republics who cruise the Moscow streets at night looking for customers. They drive beaten-up old Ladas (called a ‘Zhiguli’ in Russian) that are barely roadworthy – count yourself lucky if the seatbelt actually works, and their knowledge of Moscow’s roads may be limited, especially if heading to the outskirts. Therefore, as well as not speaking any English (even Russian for most of them is a second language) they may ask YOU if you know the way to your destination ‘dorogu pokazhite’?! Normally this mode of transport is only recommended once you know your way around town but it’ll certainly be an experience that you don’t encounter back home. However, given the popularity and ease of ordering a cab visa an app, flagging down a car is much less common than it was just a few years ago. Many of Moscow’s downtown streets now have a ‘paid’ parking scheme, with shiny parking meters having sprung up, although few foreigner are brave enough to drive their own car around town. Those who do are generally long term Expats as it’s not common practice to hire a car and drive it yourself. 40 41 TRAVELLING WITHIN RUSSIA Russians like to joke that a foreigner drove his car into the Soviet Union and fairly quickly ran into a pot hole in the road. When help eventually arrived in the form of the GAI (the state traffic police) he grumbled that back home there would be a red flag warning of any such holes. The response was a blunt ‘didn’t you see the big, red flag (of the Soviet Union) when you crossed the border?!?!’ Despite some recent improvements, roads outside of cities can be in poor condition, exacerbated by extreme cold in the winter followed by heat waves in the summer. In Moscow these have been upgraded considerably but this has happened in conjunction with a boom in car ownership, resulting in gridlock throughout the day and well into the evening, so much so that you’ll hardly notice any lull outside of rush hour. Work out where you’re going in advance and allow more time than you’d expect as even major highways often only have a single lane going each way. Don’t expect much in the way of service stations (apart from fuel and perhaps a few snacks) so stock up and strap yourself in as it could be a bumpy ride. Driving your own car in Russia is an art in itself, and will require you to have your driving license from your home country translated into Russian. You’ll also require nerves of steel, and some might even say a death wish! RUSSIANS TRADITIONALLY COMPLAIN THAT THE TWO BIGGEST PROBLEMS IN THEIR COUNTRY ARE IDIOTS AND ROADS (AND SOME SAY IDIOTS WHO BUILD ROADS)! Russia boasts an impressive network of domestic flights on numerous airlines. There used to be dozens, some, tiny; with one plane running a daily service from a provincial town to Moscow and back, although the industry has consolidated considerably in recent years. The big 4 local carriers – Aeroflot, S7, Ural and Utair dominate most of the popular routes. Given the country’s size, flying is often the only way to travel, but this results in fares being expensive by international standards. Low-costers are in their infancy with the Aeroflot subsidiary ‘Pobeda’, which means ’victory’ being the only success story. Regional airports in Russia range from little more than a concrete shed, which have seen no renovation work done since communist times and to brand, spanking new buildings, such as the new Pulkovo terminal in St Petersburg, with Kazan, Irkutsk, Samara and Yekaterinburg also deserving a mention. Most provincial airports are somewhere in between, although infrastructure projects have been earmarked as priority in many cities, at long last. Even the most rundown airport should have a separate area for business class passengers (often just marked ‘VIP’ although in Central Asia it’s called ‘CIP’ – Commercially Important Person, but essentially the same thing). In some airports, such as Kazan it is in a neighbouring building and you will be bussed out to the plane separately. These zones are mainly for senior, local officials but business class travelers and those holding certain frequent flier status may also make use of them. Unlike in many business lounges throughout the world, expect to pay for some, if not all food and drink (if in doubt; ask – or don’t be surprised if you are presented with a hefty bill shortly before boarding the plane). Priority Pass is accepted at an increasing number of business lounges and some accept walk-in customers for a fee. Most domestic airlines have a business class section, although on the whole this is poor value for money for shorter hops. The Russian airline industry deservedly gets a bad press, although the larger airlines run fleets of almost exclusively foreign planes and since these are typically leased, they are required to conform to international safety standards. Even though Russia has seen an increasing number of domestic flights in the past decade, don’t automatically assume that you can fly directly from one provincial city to another. Even in Siberia the only route may be via Moscow and even if there is a direct flight, it could only operate once or twice a week and be prone to delays, especially in more remote areas where the weather can play havoc with timetables. At the time of writing, for most airlines if you check in for your flight in Russia on-line (domestic or international), you will still need to print out the boarding card. You cannot just flash your mobile phone at the security guard/immigration officer as he/she needs to stamp it to allow you through. The country’s rail network is impressive, extensive and safe. Trains always run on time and are clean, if a little on the slow side. Long distance trains have bunks for sleeping (typically in a ‘kupe’ compartment of two or four; there is also a dormitory class called ‘platskart’ which is probably best avoided if you value even a modicum of privacy) although fares can rival what you’d pay to fly now that government subsidies are being removed. If you’re not in a hurry and want to see the countryside at the same time as meeting ordinary Russians, experiencing life on the rails, practicing your Russian over an evening beer in the restaurant car, then the train is an ideal way to travel. I speak from experience as someone who journeyed as a student from Vladivostok to Moscow on the trans-Siberian back in 1994, stopping off for a few days each in Khabarovsk, Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Yaroslavl. Rather confusingly, ALL trains in Russia run on 42 43 Moscow time regardless of where you are, and train stations are hardly user-friendly places, especially to the uninitiated, even with some signage now in English. Fortunately tickets can be purchased via travel agencies and now online although they are printed in Russian only, and often still list the old name (ie, Sverdlovsk and Gorky for Yekaterinburg and Nizhniy Novgorod respectively) whereas the timetable at the station may use the new name. Business travelers are likely to be most interested in the Sapsan, the high-speed train that now runs several times a day between Moscow and St Petersburg and is proving to be stiff competition to the airlines on this popular route, taking a mere four hours. It has economy and business class, WiFi for all and a restaurant carriage, but has become a victim of its own success as tickets can sell out well in advance, so book early. The Sapsan now also runs from Moscow to Nizhniy Novgorod, with plans in place to extend it as far as Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, and frequencies are increasing but it still pays to book well in advance. ID is required when purchasing plane and train tickets (the exceptions are the Aeroexpress and the suburban ‘elektrichka’) and keep the same form of ID with you – preferably your passport, when you travel.

REGISTRATION

Russia still retains an annoying hangover from the Soviet period, whereby all citizens are required to register with the local authorities if spending more than three business days in a particular location (90 days, if you have an HSQ visa). If you are staying in a hotel, this will be done for you automatically; your passport will be taken away for a few moments and photocopied (some local authorities will charge you a small fee for the privilege of being in their city, although it is usually added to the final bill) sometimes it comes in the form of a stamp and a few handwritten squiggles on the back of your migration card, or it could be a separate piece of paper. It’s worth hanging on to these, just in case some overzealous, bored official decides to be particularly jobsworth and lays down the law. Gone are the days when every individual city had to be listed on your Russian visa, yet there are still certain cities and regions in Russia that require an additional permit to enter (the far-eastern province of Chukotka – where Roman Abramovich used to be the governor, is a a good example, as is Norilsk). Fortunately most of these places are extremely remote and it’s unlikely that they will be your first port of call. Many are judged to be strategic locations but it is worth enquiring with your hosts if prior permission is required – they will know if it is. As is often the case in Russia, there is a good chance that no-one will actually check whether or not you’ve registered at any stage during your trip, or even visited a restricted area. However, you could land yourself in hot water if someone decides to take a closer look (the Police have been known to inspect documents at some provincial airports and prevent you from boarding the plane if you cannot prove that you have registered). This is of course little more than a money-making scheme for them; they’re not in any hurry, but you are. The moral here is that unless you are familiar with the territory AND speak Russian, it’s better to play it safe or it could ruin your travel plans. Oh, and if you want to exit Russia smoothly, don’t lose your migration card which will be given to you as you go through passport control upon arrival. WHAT IS THE CIS? The Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS was formed in 1991 to incorporate the 15 former Soviet Republics minus the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). In practice, the CIS is effectively a loose association of states as Turkmenistan is an unofficial associate member, Georgia withdrew in 2009 and unknown to many Ukraine was never officially a formal member as it chose not to ratify the CIS Charter since it disagreed with Russia being the only legal successor of the Soviet Union. Whilst the term ‘CIS’ is preferable to expressions such ‘ex-Soviet’ and ‘Former USSR’, don’t expect colleagues back home to be familiar with it, or even know which part of the world it refers to.

TRAVELLING TO NEIGHBOURING CIS COUNTRIES

If your business takes you to other former Soviet Republics, you’ll need plenty of room in your passport for additional stamps (you will be stamped both upon arrival and departure), and possibly a visa. Unless you actually need to come to Russia (thus avoiding the need for a Russian visa), you can now fly directly from Europe & the Middle East to almost all CIS countries. Turkish Airlines boast the most extensive coverage of the CIS region, flying to every CIS capital (except to Yerevan, in Armenia, for political reasons) plus other major cities, with Lufthansa also a good bet. The advantage of flying from Moscow or St Petersburg (if you are already here, or planning a trip there anyway) is that both the list of destinations and the frequency of flights is significantly greater. For example there are direct flights from Moscow to more than a dozen cities in Kazakhstan, whereas flying in from abroad typically requires a change of planes in either Almaty or Nur-Sultan. It is becoming increasingly possible to fly from one CIS country to another, although the smaller (and less significant) the country, the greater the chance of having to change planes, usually in Moscow or Istanbul. When booking flights, note that the airport IATA code will often refer to the old, Soviet name of the city – some notable examples:

St Petersburg

Atyrau

Samara

Yekaterinburg

Aktau

Bishkek

Khujand

There are no scheduled flights between any cities in Russia and Ukraine, due to ongoing political tensions between the two countries. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change anytime soon; the standard routing is via Minsk, Warsaw or Chisinau. One option is to catch the overnight train between Moscow & Kiev if you don’t mind being woken up several times to allow the customs officials to search your bags and the immigration officers to stamp your passport.

At the time of writing, there are no direct flights between Russia and Georgia, although it is hoped that this is only a temporary measure, but you can fly via Yerevan or Baku without too much hassle. You can transit through five Russian airports (Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo & Vnukovo in Moscow, Pulkovo in St Petersburg and Koltsovo in Yekaterinburg), but you must have an onward ticket and you cannot leave the airport. Don’t try to do anything clever by attempting to fly into one Moscow airport and out of another as you won’t be allowed to do so; in fact you’ll probably be denied boarding at your original destination.

VISAS TO RUSSIA:

  • Visa information is subject to frequent change; please check before

travelling.

Basically, all Western visitors to Russia require a visa, and these must be obtained in advance. You cannot just rock up & buy one on the border, and on top of this you will require a letter of invitation (LOI). Even if you only need to change airports, you will need a transit visa and once again, this must be obtained in advance at a Russian Embassy or Consulate.

(Leningrad) (Guriyev) (Kuybyshev) (Sverdlovsk) (Shevchenko) (Frunze) (Leninabad) LED GUW KUF SVX SCO FRU LBD

Apply early. Sure, Russian visas can be procured by wellconnected agents in a day or two, but you’ll pay through the nose for the privilege. Visas come in several forms; chiefly tourist, business, transit & employment, and their length varies from a maximum of one month for a tourist visa, to a three year work visa for ‘highly qualified specialists’ (HQS).

If you are planning on making numerous trips to Russia, it would make sense to apply for a one-year multiple-entry business visa. Bear in mind that you are only allowed to spend a maximum of 180 days per year in Russia, and a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period. The point here being that you are not supposed to work on such a visa as it is aimed at businesspeople based abroad, and authorities do check (if you don’t believe me, take a look at the scanning equipment at passport control at international airports). Russian Embassies differ from country to country as to how strictly they apply the rules. In theory you are supposed to apply in your home country but this isn’t always enforced. The days when Expats living & working in Russia could hop over the border to Helsinki or Tallinn on a visa run may not be completely over, but it’s something of a lottery as to whether you’ll be lucky or turned away. Agencies can advise here but remember that they make a living by selling LOIs & their various add-on services so they are not exactly in the business of helping you to cut corners. The amount of information required when applying has increased recently, largely as a reciprocal response to Russians being required to jump through hoops to obtain certain visas. The UK is a prime example of this; since the British government insists on ALL visa applicants to the UK listing which countries they’ve recently visited and visiting a visa centre to have their fingerprints taken, the Russians decided to make Brits do the same. Unless your idea of fun is negotiating with Soviet-style consular staff (who generally look for problems rather than trying to solve them), it is highly advisable to use the services of a reputable agency for procuring visas. Granted, they don’t come cheaply – once you’ve factored in the Embassy fee, the LOI charge plus the agency’s service commission, it can run into several hundreds of dollars. However, if you value your time AND your sanity, you will trust me on this one. Every country has agencies who specialize in visas to CIS countries – almost all of these can also arrange other services that you may require, such as flights and hotel booking, airport transfers, 46 47 domestic flights, the use of an experienced interpreter whilst in Russia/CIS plus the translation of your company’s promotional materials into Russian. Avoid coming to Russia on a tourist visa if business is your primary reason for being in the country. Granted tourist visas are easier to obtain (a hotel booking should suffice, rather than an LOI), not to mention cheaper, and if you are simply attending a trade fair or a conference then you should be OK so long as you don’t do this repeatedly. However, arriving in a suit carrying a briefcase containing your firm’s promotional materials and some product samples may raise some suspicions upon arrival, and you may have some explaining to do if you are stopped. Having said that, arriving into Russia and clearing both immigration & customs is generally a fairly painless and swift experience, a world away from what it was like back in the chaotic days of the 1990s. All non-Russian and Belarusian citizens will be handed a small migration form (which is usually printed out on the spot for you at most Russian international airports); whatever you do, don’t lose it. It will be requested when you arrive at your hotel, and you will be asked to surrender it when you leave the country, regardless of what visa you are travelling on. Russia is currently in the process of implementing an e-visa scheme for selected nationalities to visit a few, specific parts of the country, namely St Petersburg (plus the surrounding Leningrad region), plus several territories in the Far East of the country. This is an attempt to boost tourist numbers, and shouldn’t be seen as a loophole for business travelers. Despite the existence of the CIS, there is no equivalent of the Schengen visa (and as for a single currency like the Euro, dream on) so you will need separate visas for visiting other, neighbouring countries. Fortunately, the entry requirements for most of these have eased up considerably in recent years. The problem is that hard facts can be difficult to source as certain CIS Embassies are particularly unhelpful and some visa agencies will try to sell you either a visa, or an LOI (or both) when in fact you no longer need one. See the individual country section 16 for more information on individual entry requirements, although the information provided should be used as a guide only, as every CIS country’s requirements vary and things can change without notice – and often do. CIS citizens may travel to each other’s countries visa free, making life easier when travelling with a Russian colleague or partner, or having a local representative in place who can simply jump on a plane at short notice. There are a few minor exceptions to the standard visa rules, such as some countries issuing visas upon arrival to citizens whose country doesn’t have an Embassy in their country. Nevertheless, in most cases you still need the LOI which needs to be pre-arranged, and you also run the risk of the airline staff not allowing you to board without a visa in your passport. Then, upon landing the consular officials may not be familiar with such procedures so expect delays. Summed up, you will save yourself a considerable amount of blood, sweat and tears by obtaining all the necessary visas in advance in your home country before you leave for a trip to the CIS, as these Embassies are more user-friendly. Oh, and before you bitch and moan about the hurdles that you have to jump over to get visas to come to Russia, spare a thought for CIS citizens when they apply for a visa to visit western countries. It can take weeks, and you often have to apply in person after having filled in pages of forms online together with copious accompanying documents. St Petersburg, Russia’s second city: St Petersburg is famous enough for cultural and historical reasons and does a considerably better job of attracting tourists than business people. Yet with a population close to 5 million, there is more to Russia’s second largest city than pretty buildings and museums. St Petersburg and the surrounding area, known as the Leningrad region (after the city’s name from Communist times) is in fact a key financial and industrial centre. Production ranges from pharmaceuticals, FMCG, medical equipment and chemicals to heavy machinery, automotive and military equipment, assisted in no small part by its strategic location giving easy access to the sea. Many international companies, particularly from Scandinavia use St Petersburg as a stepping stone into Russia and the CIS whereas others who began with Moscow have opened branch offices in St Petersburg given the city’s size and growth potential. The St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) is a prestigious business event taking place every year since 1997 and brings together heads of state, political leaders, senior figures in the Russian government, and of course business people. In recent years the forum has taken on increased significance as Vladimir Putin addresses the delegates and Kremlin watchers analyze his opening speech for hints as to which direction the country may be heading. Usually held in early or mid-June, SPIEF’s key purpose is to provide an opportunity for the public and private sectors to collectively work together as one, and overcome 48 49 obstacles, which divide Russia and other nations. Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and subsequent economic sanctions imposed, SPIEF has turned into a hot potato for foreign businesspeople and politicians alike. Show up and you face being accused of endorsing Mr Putin’s ‘aggression’, yet stay away and risk missing out on big investment deals. Many have opted for a midway point of sending a less-senior person along in their place, citing ‘more important’ matters back home or elsewhere, although anyone with any interest in Russia at a senior level should at least be aware of the prestige of this event.

www.forumspb.com – in English & Russian

Brand new Pulkovo airport (LED) is Russia’s 3rd busiest airport and has flights to all major cities within Russia, the CIS, and abroad. There are also frequent trains to Moscow, either on the Sapsan during the day, or overnight on a sleeper. The St Petersburg metro is Russia’s 2nd largest and an easy way to avoid the city’s traffic jams although careful if you suffer from vertigo as you descend as the stations are extremely deep. INTERMARK RELOCATION TIPS If you decide to take a job offer and move to Russia, it is easier to have a good relocation package. The key factors for a successful relocation are fast and safe moving, housing selection, leasing (or subleasing) contract agreement, and of course, visa and work permit registration. Going through this process can be excruciating and challenging experience. Based on our 26-year expertise, we selected the basic tips to make your move to Russia / CIS smooth and easy. To make it simple, we break it down into three most significant steps of any relocation – moving, home search and lease agreement. MOVING The road is always easier if you are traveling with a good map. Knowing when to get things done, and in what order, will put your mind at ease and prevent you from being overwhelmed by the details of a big move. Plan your move in advance Contact the moving specialists up to one month before you hope to leave even if you do not know exactly when the big day will be. They will tell you what they offer and what you need to plan for. This will help you organize your time and concentrate on the essentials.

Don’t pack everything yourself You can think that it’s a good way to save your money. In fact, you almost certainly would pay through the nose, as professional companies use a range of appropriate packing materials and employ trained staff to pack your things safely and in right way. And if you have antiques and artifacts with you, you will need someone with a proper experience to take a special care of it while moving. Decide what you really want to bring The less you have the cheaper it is to move. Start as early as possible and divide items into “keep”, “trash”, “recycling” and “donate”. Be ruthless! If you have not used it in a year (or forgot you even had it), then you do not need it. Another issue is import duties. Import customs duty in Russia is €4/ kg before tax. So think yourself – is it really cheaper to ship particular things and belongings from home or buy new here? HOUSING The rental market in Russia is still very young. In Soviet Russia, there were no high quality apartments or houses for rent. Nowadays, the majority of Russian people in big cities live in flats in residential blocks of different types. If you plan your relocation to Russia and are in a process of home-search, it is better to ask your HR coordinator or your relocation consultant to help selecting possible options. This will save you the trouble of contacting numerous real estate agencies, most likely complicating and duplicating the process and thus consuming your time and energy! What are the options? Most of housing options include three main types of buildings. Prerevolutionary houses are built before 1917; facilities and architectural features can be anything between beautifully decorated, reconstructed ones and shabby small houses. Stalin-era buildings mostly built in the period 1917-1950 and tend to have high ceilings, thick walls and big windows. Finally, modern buildings constructed after 1991 and favored by many expats for their good condition, security measures, underground parking and other facilities. Apartment sizes and features Most apartments even in Moscow are not very large – typically between 50 and 150 sqm. The number of rooms is an important factor influencing the price – for instance, if we take two apartments of a similar size, location and quality – the one that has more rooms will be more expensive. Smaller 50 51 apartments (up to 100 sqm) for rent are usually furnished, whereas larger ones are mostly offered for rent unfurnished. There is no defined market standard for what a furnished apartment must have, as it rather depends on the particular landlord. Renting Price We would say that rent price depends on the following key factors: location, security and parking features, standard of communal areas, infrastructure and amenities. Please keep in mind that most apartments in Russia belong to and are offered by private individual landlords who very often decide for themselves what they want to get for rent.

LEGAL AGREEMENT

When signing the lease, the parties need to use all their experience to provide important matters and avoid uncertainties that could prevent the long-term cooperation. If you have questions regarding specifics of legal agreements, we recommend you to look for a professional lawyer team.

Subject of agreement

It is important to write down all details of the deal - the exact address and boundaries of the property in lease. Are you planning to rent a furnished apartment? Do not forget to include an accurate list of furniture and household items provided by your landlord under the contract in order to avoid mutual claims upon termination or expiration of your agreement in the future.

Contract duration

Most lease agreements (both company and private) are concluded for 1 year. Of course, the tenant usually has the preferred right for contract extension, but the price may be reviewed by the landlord at the extension time. Speaking of agreement’s termination, the tenant can use this option if he informs his landlord 3 months before the planned move out. The landlord can’t cease the agreement unless the tenant breaks his contract obligations.

Payment and utility bills

All clauses of the contract relating to the rent terms and its amount must be as detailed as possible. A vague description of security deposit, damage compensations order and the currency in which the tenant makes monthly rent payments threatens undesirable disputes between the parties. Therefore, we recommend working out a step-by-step procedure for assessing and reimbursing the potential damage, indicating clear deadlines and responsibility for their failure. An early discussion of utility bills order of payment will also help you avoid future problems with your landlord. It is important not only to distinguish who pays for electricity, gas, water and other utilities, but also to establish the procedure for their payment or reimbursement. Moving to Russia and CIS can be challenging, therefore organizing your relocation in advance step by step is the best way to avoid stress and any potential difficulties in the process. Following the tips listed above may help you to find your ideal place to live and find time to explore Russia in its beauty. To make the experience of relocation to a totally new destination even more exciting and safe we recommend to choose a professional relocation consultancy with full range of services and years of exceptional professional experience. 52 53 V. The selection process: Foreign assignments vs hiring locally (recruitment and HR tips, plus Russians in the workplace) and settling into life in Russia Regardless of whether your company’s operation is looking to recruit its first person to run your business in Russia or you have had an office since the early 1990s and are simply in expansion – or reduction mode, you will nonetheless need to decide on whom to hire. There are no hard or fast rules about whether an Expatriate or a local is a better bet for the top job. This depends very much on your current situation, future plans and who your target audience is, in terms of customers. SMEs usually begin by visiting a trade fair and appointing a local distributor to represent them and promote their products but as the volume of business grows they realize that they need someone on the ground. Even one or even two visits a month simply isn’t sufficient for following up on leads, especially when they are outside of Moscow. Invariably they appoint a local national who speaks the language, is familiar with the territory and has some industry contacts. Such operations tend to remain small, occasionally not progressing much beyond a single sales representative or two working from home, or based at the office of a local partner. An Expatriate posted to Russia is viewed as a trusted pair of hands who is familiar with the internal functions of the firm (often having worked there for many years in various locations) and can help to instill the corporate culture to newly hired local staff, particularly in a larger operation. The benefit is that this person is deemed as highly trustworthy and won’t have his or her own agenda. The downside is that this individual usually arrives with little or no prior knowledge of the country and has to face the standard ‘this won’t work in Russia – Russia’s different’ from his local team. Regardless of the size of your existing or planned operation, if you are considering relocating an Expatriate employee from within your firm to Russia to either set up a new office or a particular line of business, there are a number of issues that you will need to take into account before departure. If the particular employee is a stranger to the CIS region, many employers wisely recommend an initial visit, known as a ‘look-see’ trip. Even if this person has been travelling regularly to the region, there is a world of a difference between spending a few nights a month in a top-end hotel and being ferried around by the company driver to actually living in an apartment, buying food in a supermarket, riding on the metro and having to handle other day-to-day issues that may arise – anything from the landlord showing up unannounced to waking up in the winter to find your car blocked in by a snowdrift. It is also advisable to bring your spouse with you at least once, so he or she can get some idea of what they are letting themselves in for. 54 55 The last thing you need is for an expatriate assignment to be terminated after only a few months as the employee’s better half can’t settle. If you do decide to relocate someone from abroad to work in Russia/CIS, it is absolutely crucial that the person is not only suitable on paper, but is prepared for the harsh realities of life in a former communist country. Just because one of your existing employees studied Russian history at University or has Polish grandparents does NOT automatically make them a perfect fit for the role. Whilst Moscow might appear as heaven on earth for single, straight guys (see chapter 11 for all the fun you can have out-of-hours), relocating with your wife and children presents certain challenges. Granted there are some spouses who have accompanied their Corp-pat husbands across the globe and rate Moscow as one of their best experiences amongst their various assignments. But it’s not a city for the faint-hearted as it can be bitterly cold for up to six months of the year – and then there’s the language barrier. Larger companies often have somebody in the Human Resources department who assists with such moves, helping you to get settled in. One of the many reasons why Expatriates take up assignments in Russia is thanks to the low level of income tax. Russia has a flat 13%, regardless of how much you bring in, which if you are a high earner can mean a lot of extra cash in your pocket every month, especially if you’re used to giving away half of your income to the taxman back home. Then, if your accommodation is paid for by your employer, Russia can be an excellent place to save, particularly if you are paid in a currency other than Rubles, after the recent devaluation. If this person is married, then the family accompany him (and to Russia/CIS, more often than not, it is indeed a ‘he’) as his assignments take him from country to country, with the wife known as a trailing spouse – although some firms prefer the more politically correct term, a ‘supporting spouse’. WHAT IS A ‘TRAILING SPOUSE’? The majority of large, multinational corporations like to maintain a modicum of control by sending in expatriates in for a few, key roles (usually the General Manager and/or the Finance Director). Many trailing spouses are comfortable with this arrangement as it allows them the opportunity to experience living amongst several different cultures although it does mean moving on very few years, sometimes when you’ve just found your feet. Finding somewhere to live in Moscow isn’t as easy as one might think; a shortage of living space in general pushes up prices to eye-watering levels. Even with the recent economic downturn there is a shortage of decent properties to rent at the high end and prices haven’t fallen by anywhere near as much as one might expect. This means that the market continues to favour landlords who conveniently (for them) are able to some extent dictate not only prices, but also terms of lease. Some trailing spouses find themselves in a dilemma when the husband is on a one-off assignment and his better half – who may well have a career of her own back home, has to give everything up to join him. Employment opportunities for trailing spouses in Russia are limited, largely due to lack of relevant experience and language skills, although many such ladies have kept themselves busy through a combination of charity and volunteer work. There are numerous real estate companies who will help you navigate this labyrinth and can advise as to the best areas for families, or closest to one’s office. For this you will pay a finders’ fee of at least one month’s rent, sometimes more, but then your agent effectively disappears and leaves you to it. Some are also able to arrange mini tours of Moscow, showing you round the various areas of the city so you can see for yourself before committing to a particular place. An English-speaking person (possibly even a long-term Expat) will accompany you with a driver and offer advice specific to your needs, which might include checking out the school where you plan for your children to attend. The range and quality of schools in Moscow has increased enormously in recent years, even though the better ones come at a price. With the recent exodus of many Expats, even the international schools may have a significant proportion of local children from wealthier families although this can help with your child’s assimilation to Russia. HIRING (& FIRING) LOCAL STAFF Some tips and advice for when hiring in Russia: Be clear about whom you want to hire, when and why, and avoid changing the job description mid-search. Be ready to make a quick decision – if you think you’ve found the right candidate, make an offer. If not, don’t be surprised if a week later your star candidate has already started another job with a rival firm. Notice periods in Russia are typically two weeks, so ensure that everything is ready for your new person to start. If you need to send your new person on a training course abroad, a 56 57 visa will almost certainly be required and this may take several weeks, so prepare for this in advance. Just because someone calls themselves a ‘manager’ doesn’t mean that they actually manage any people – job titles can be both misleading and inflated compared to what you are used to in your home country. Similarly, someone who calls themselves a ‘Director’ may not be anywhere as senior as you might think. Job titles and one’s status in general are important to Russians, and many will start their careers earlier, typically while they are still studying so a University graduate often comes with several years’ experience. Russians expect to be promoted more quickly than in the West, so when during an interview a candidate asks what the career path is, what they really mean is how long will it take for me to get promoted. Unemployment in Moscow is still relatively low by Western standards, and there is a severe shortage of English-speaking, customer-facing, presentable, pro-active people on the market. Don’t assume that you can just fly in and cherry-pick the best people for your organization, especially if your operation is in its early stages as Russians are relatively risk-averse to such ‘start-ups’, regardless of how large your operations are in other markets. Hard facts regarding pay scales can be hard to come by due to frequent economic changes, so any global salary data that you may have is often out of date before it’s even printed. Be flexible and be prepared to go outside of your bands for a strong person. Contrary to rumours you may have heard, relatively few companies index Ruble salaries against Dollars or Euros. Candidates generally expect a MINIMUM of a 20% uplift when changing jobs, regardless of how well the economy is faring. During tougher times it can in fact be MORE difficult to coax the best employees away so be prepared for greater increases than you would back home. Just because someone isn’t working at the moment doesn’t mean that they were fired, made redundant or are just plain lazy. Few Russians have mortgages or rent, so taking a month or three off work to spend the summer at the dacha isn’t viewed particularly negatively by prospective employers in Russia. 20% Russians aged under 30 will have no memory of the Soviet era and will only have heard rose-tinted stories from elderly relatives who recall the ‘good, old days’. Don’t expect Generations X & Y to have much, if any knowledge of this era. Even if someone is really keen to work for you, they probably won’t show it. Russians believe that demonstrating too much motivation during an interview makes them come across as desperate, so expect candidates to be ‘matter-of-fact’ about their achievements. Telephone interviews are not common in Russia. This might be the biggest country in the world but people meet face-to-face. Obviously if a line manager is based abroad then there may be no option but whereas no-one ever fully does themselves justice over the phone, this is particularly the case with Russians. Skype interviews are a good compromise in such cases. However, wherever possible avoid the need to fly a candidate abroad for an interview as this will severely delay the interview process, and for the same reason try not to have too many people based remotely involved in the decision-making process. Candidates in Russia/CIS generally quote their salaries monthly in local currency (unless otherwise indicated) and may give you the ‘net’ amount, which means after income tax has been deducted. If in any doubts, double-check as it’ll save you a lot of hassle down the line during the offer process, and don’t expect everybody to be familiar with terms such as OTE (On-Target Earnings) since bonus schemes can be rather fluid, particularly in Russian organizations. The office environment differs from back home in a number of ways, chiefly that Russians view work as a place to go, rather something that they actually do. The office is traditionally a place where trusted friendships are made, and even romances formed. The idea that people can work from home is a relatively new concept; when hiring people one of their first questions may be ‘where is your office located’? This is changing slowly, but flats are small so it’s not a case of simply converting a spare room into a mini-office at home as almost nobody has the luxury of so much space (many families sleep in the living room; the sofa converts into a bed at night). Therefore, be flexible about renting an instant office, or asking your local partner/distributor to find your person a desk if you are still in set-up mode. It is usual for Russians to hire family members, relatives and close friends, which is viewed as helping out trusted relatives. X Y Z 58 59 Russians see this as common sense, keeping control. Perhaps strangely, Russians seem happy to openly discuss their current salary with colleagues (so they will know if they are being over, or underpaid), friends and family. Even if you put a confidentiality clause into their contract, you cannot legally enforce it, and the same goes for a non-compete clause. ‘Gardening leave’ doesn’t exist, unless there is a gentlemen’s agreement, althoungh this is not common. Firing Do take advice from your legal and/or HR people if you need to let any of your employees go, regardless of the reason (underperformance, redundancy, etc). The Russian labour code is heavily weighted in favour of the employee so a director firing someone on the spot in a fit of rage is likely to end up paying for this dearly (both figuratively and in the financial sense) if the case does go legal. Ensure that you have everything in writing, fully documented and signed by both parties as e-mails do not (yet) constitute a legal document in a court of law. One trump card on the employer’s side is that every employee in Russia still has a labour book (trudovaya knizhka) which is a physical book that is kept by the company. Since no employee wants evidence that they were fired in this little book, most dismissals are settled ‘by mutual consent’ when both parties agree on a fixed amount for the contract to be terminated.

VI. Behavioral differences faced by Expats in Russia/CIS 60 61 Do’s and don’ts Don’t schedule early morning appointments unless they are with other foreigners. Moscow might be a 24-hour city but Russians don’t do mornings. Many offices don’t begin work until at least 10:00am, preferring to burn the midnight oil, which works in your favor given the time difference with Europe or North America. Breakfast meetings are not common in Russia; if you suggest meeting at seven thirty or eight, chances are that a Russian will think you mean seven thirty or eight in the evening, not morning. On this subject, don’t automatically assume that Russians are familiar with acronyms such as GMT, BST, CET, let alone EST & PST. Moscow and St Petersburg are three hours ahead of GMT, but Russia has experimented with not putting the clocks backwards/ forwards so the difference is sometimes two or three hours ahead for half of the year. Do double check as this is particularly vulnerable to change, and the same goes for other CIS countries. Finally, if you have operations in Siberia or the Far East of Russia, they will be many more time zones ahead of Europe; do take this into account before sending out an invitation for a regional conference call. Additionally, do expect Russians to take what you say at face value. ‘Call me anytime’ might sound like you’re simply being polite, but this could result in you being rung up on a Sunday morning, or at 10pm on a weekday evening (which incidentally isn’t considered late in Russia). Do re-confirm any appointments that you previously set up weeks or even days ago, the day before, or (even better) on the day of the meeting itself. Given the somewhat ad hoc nature of Russian business and the fast paced environment, it’s considered quite normal for meetings to be set up, moved or cancelled at the last minute. This can be done via the company reception or the person’s secretary if you don’t feel comfortable disturbing the person themselves. Reconfirming a meeting is known as a ‘kontrol’ny zvonok’, or a confirmation call. It is also a useful way of ensuring that a propusk has been ordered for you to enter the building, and if it hasn’t, it can be done at this point & will save you time upon arrival as security guards can become flustered when people arrive ‘unannounced’, particularly non-Russians. DO remember to bring some photo ID with you, preferably your passport or driving license or else your meeting may end up taking place in the office reception area. Don’t send a Russian an e-mail asking if you can telephone them in several days’ time (unless of course if it is a lengthy conference call or a telephone interview); just call them. If they are busy, they will tell you and you can quickly agree a time that works for both of you. Interrupting people isn’t really an issue on the phone – worst case, they won’t answer or their mobile will be switched off. Then you can e-mail them. Russians are not voicemail fans; few landlines and even fewer mobiles have this function, and even fewer Russians still will actually check them; if you don’t/can’t get through, it’s fine to send an SMS. On this subject, if you are from North America and you want a Russian to call you back, it would be helpful to add the +1 dialing code to the beginning of your number. Do bring a large stack of business cards with you, several times more than you think you’ll need. Invariably you will be introduced to additional people than those you were expecting to meet, such as other colleagues, partners or customers – be liberal when handing them out. Remember that coming to Russia without business cards is rather like going to a bar back home with no money. You’ll probably get a drink eventually, somehow, but you’ll struggle to be taken seriously. Even better if you can get them printed in Russian on the reverse side. Do greet people upon arrival at an office or business centre, although if you say ‘hello’ to somebody more than once per day, they will think that you forgot that you saw them earlier that day! Don’t believe everything that you read in the international media about Russia – come and find out for yourself. Chat to some Expats who’ve been in town for a while (not just those working for a multinational, blue-chip organisation, but also to those running their own businesses). They will give you more realistic insights into what’s going on than you’ll see on CNN or the BBC and you’ll see that it’s not all bad news by any means. Do take advice from people who have ‘been there and done it’, rather than people who think they have. ‘Yeah, I know all about Russia, I met this Bulgarian guy once who told me about it’ is similar to thinking you can become an astronaut after watching a few episodes of Star Trek. Don’t for a moment think that you are a pioneer just because you are embarking on your first trip to Russia. Sure, it’ll be cool to discuss with your friends in your local pub but Russia has been open to all for three decades. Do come out with a healthy dose of patience and a sense of humour, then explain to your head office that they need to learn to be comfortable with ambiguity. ! 62 63 Why Russians Don’t Smile? Alla Anastos D.M.D. – Dental Director at US Dental Care, Implantologist There are many explanations to why Russians don’t smile much. Most of them are based on the commonly accepted fact that smile in Russian communication is not a signal of courtesy. Russian smile is a sign of personal liking, sincere attitude and feelings, and not politeness. As the Dental Director at US Dental Care (Moscow) – a family oriented clinic that has been providing professional dental services by American Board Certified & Russian dentists since 1994 – I would also add another reason. In the USA, for example, people tend to take care of their teeth in advance, regularly do cleaning and check up. In Russia the situation is different. There is no such established culture. Sometimes patients come with very complicated cases, literally with no teeth and leave the clinic with a perfect smile. Numerous patients are actually shy to smile. We offer all kinds of general and cosmetic dentistry for such patients. Here, at US Dental Care, we strongly believe that preventive care is the key to dental health and a good smile. VII. Cultural differences, Russian superstitions & timekeeping 64 65 Contrary to how it may first appear, Russians are generally much more emotional than Westerners, and sometimes make decisions that on the surface can appear irrational to those of us with a more pragmatic mindset. (Russians think that emotionless, logical decisionmaking & long-term planning is plain boring). Emotions are much more likely to affect a Russian when making a decision than foreigners, who tend to take a more pragmatic approach. Changing jobs is a good example: a case in point is a candidate who has received a job offer that he plans to accept. All he has to do is formally resign, work out his notice period of two weeks and then start in his new company. Then along comes the counter-offer, when his existing employer faced with a valued employee walking out of the door, realizing that it will take considerable time, effort & money to replace this individual assume that it is better and easier to simply tell the guy how much you value him and offer him more cash to stay put. Back home we would rightly assume ‘if you thought I was that great, why didn’t you pay me this extra amount before’!? However, Russians are more likely to take an emotional view of the situation, thinking ‘wow, they not only love me but they’re even prepared to pay me more money – of course I’ll stay where I am’. The fact that the key reasons for wanting to change jobs in the first place were probably not money-related (evidence shows that people usually begin a job search for almost any other reason, be it that they don’t like the job itself, the office is too far from their home, they don’t see any potential promotion on the horizon, or – and this is the most common reason, that they simply don’t get on with their boss) fades away. Statistics reflect the truth that around 70% of people worldwide who accept a counter-offer leave within six months anyway as money wasn’t the main driver. Add to this the fact that as you’ve already demonstrated your loyalty (or rather, lack of it), some firms will pay you more to stay on, then quietly seek a replacement, and as soon as they have one lined up, will then give you the grand order of the boot. Be warned – as an employer, counter-offering is counter-productive (pardon the pun), and as an employee, accepting a counter-offer may seem like a wise move in the short term but definitely not a long term solution. Taking things personally is a very Russian trait – known as ‘obida’ (offence) and affects the way people work, particularly in sales. Russians are extremely reluctant to do anything that could be construed as unsolicited, such as making cold calls due to their fear of rejection which they will take to heart, almost as a personal insult. Add to this the fact that under communism nobody sold anything, and nobody bought anything either (at least not in the B2B sense) so Russia lacks a general sales culture. Concepts such as cross-selling and up-selling are alien to all but the most savvy salespeople. Don’t just show up assuming that it’s second nature because making a profit under communism was a crime that only evil capitalists committed (in theory at least). Networking for business or career purposes as we know it is not well established, and many Russians feel uncomfortable approaching people whom they haven’t met before in a non-social environment. Don’t expect too much from your staff here, and any guidance you can provide ought to prove invaluable. SUPERSTITIONS Even fully grown men will adhere to Russian superstitions – foreigners will be forgiven for any faux pas but it’s always useful to be aware some of the better known ones: In the workplace, Russians may be reluctant to forecast sales projections as they are worried that even mentioning it to someone before it is completed might jinx it (‘sglazit’), so you may find yourself having to ask more questions than you expected to get to the bottom of a project or sales campaign that is still in the pipeline. Similarly women may not announce that they are pregnant until several months into their pregnancy. Russians believe that it’s bad luck to shake hands, or in fact pass anything through the threshold of a door. If you leave home (or any building) and realize that you have forgotten something, it’s considered bad luck to return to fetch it. However, this can be atoned by looking in the mirror on the way out. Empty bottles should be placed on the floor, not left on the table (in practice this tends to happen in the home as one would expect the waiter in a restaurant to clear the empties – although in places where the service is a little on the slow side, you may see Russian guests doing this automatically). Celebrating Birthdays – or in fact any holiday or anniversary in advance of the actual date is considered bad luck. If someone’s Birthday falls on the weekend, colleagues at work would. celebrate it on the Monday afterwards, unlikely on the Friday before. Fortieth Birthdays are rarely celebrated as this date is considered unlucky. 66 67 If you step on someone’s foot by accident, you should let them step on your foot in return to avoid any future arguments – although this rule doesn’t apply on public transport. When giving flowers – and this is a ritual in Russia, be sure that the bouquet contains an odd number; an even number is for funerals. Flower sellers will know this but you would be wise to count as they may not know what occasion you are buying flowers for! Whistling inside any building deprives you of money. Sitting at the corner of the table means that you won’t get married (although this only applies to women, apparently). TIMEKEEPING There is a Russian expression ‘Pyat minut ne opazdanie’ (Five minutes doesn’t constitute being late), and given the traffic jams that you face in Moscow, this is understandable. Schedules are rather more fluid in Russia than in the West so showing up ten or even twenty minutes late is unlikely to raise many eyebrows, although it is considered courteous to call in advance and let them know that you’re en route, but stuck in traffic. A word of warning; meetings with senior government officials are likely to begin on time so it would be seen as bad form to arrive late. Even if they do show up late themselves, they will expect you to have arrived on time! Given the unpredictable nature of the traffic on the roads in Moscow, you should allow much more time for getting to meetings, particularly in the winter when snow and ice slow things down. Arriving early isn’t an issue, and in any case it can take time to actually get into a building as documents need to be checked, and in more remote locations the security staff may be unfamiliar with having foreign guests visiting and therefore may have difficulty deciphering your name on your ID if it isn’t written in Russian. This process at some larger state organizations can take a surprisingly long time (the overmanned security department need to justify their existence somehow, and some firms believe that this is part of their grandiose image, in the same way that an Oligarch surrounds himself with several bodyguards), and even longer if a propusk hasn’t been ordered for you. There is still a degree of paranoia about non-Russians visiting large, state-run companies and ordering a propusk could in fact take several days. Consequently if a meeting has been scheduled at short notice, or you are bringing along an additional colleague, it may be more convenient – and in some cases necessary, to meet in a nearby café or restaurant. Alternatively, if you have a local office in a convenient location, you can always invite your counterparts to your premises, it would be more convenient – and in some cases necessary, to meet in a nearby café or restaurant. Alternatively, if you have a local office in a convenient location, you can always invite your counterparts to your premises. Addresses can be a little deceiving as well as confusing. Since many new buildings have sprung up in recent years, rather than re-number all the existing buildings, the authorities chose a different tactic: adding additional numbers and letters, and there may be little logic as to the actual order. Google maps, SatNavs & their equivalents have assisted to a large extent, but again, allow additional time if the address looks ‘funny’. Bureaucracy continues to be the one of the greatest obstacles to running an efficient business in Russia. Basic tasks such as purchasing insurance or registering your car which in the West can be done on-line or by telephone often require a personal visit and probably during the working day. Applying for a new passport will require the holder to submit their documents in person, and this may involve a trip to the town where they are formally registered. While such procedures are slowly becoming simplified, often there is often no getting around having to take time off for such matters, and your flexibility (& understanding) will be required. Russians have a tendency to leave things until the last minute so don’t expect a little to be done each day or week unless you specifically arrange a call/meeting to discuss progress. Better still, set the deadline for the project much earlier than necessary to be on the safe side. Dress to impress – smart business attire is very much the order of the day (ie, suit, white shirt AND tie for men, skirt or dress for women), and you would be wise to err on the side of conservative, especially when meeting with government officials. It’s best to leave the pink shirt and the loud ties back in your wardrobe at home although the younger generation are more open to less formal styles. Casual Friday is becoming more popular but is not particularly widespread even though more men are now opting for the open collar & no tie look. 68 69 VIII. Language Language barriers and deciphering names Moscow is NOT Dubai, Hong Kong or Singapore, where the business language is English. In Russia and many CIS countries, the business language is Russian. The number of Englishspeakers is certainly on the increase, but don’t expect or assume that everyone speaks English, even in Moscow as outside of grade-A offices, most don’t know more than the basics. Russian is spoken as a first or second language by approximately 300 million people throughout the world, although around 95% of these reside within the borders of the former Soviet Union, and some people’s fluency in Russian in certain CIS countries is now open to question. Large numbers of students came to the Soviet period especially during the 1970s and 1980s from fellow communist countries, as the education system was considered not only prestigious but was more advanced than where they were from. Subsequently Asians (Vietnamese, North Koreans, Mongolians, Chinese, Cambodians and even some from Laos), Arabs (Yemenis, Syrians and Egyptians), Africans (Ethiopians were numerous although a surprising number came from places such as Benin, Mali or Guinea Bissau) and of course Cubans returned home with a degree and in many cases a Russian wife too, continuing the language tradition. The Eastern Bloc countries were generally resistant to the teaching of the Russian language as it was forced upon them, although thanks to being in the same linguistic group, some Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians and citizens of the former Yugoslavia, many people there – especially the older generation still retain some knowledge even if they claim to have ‘forgotten’ everything they learnt in school. Romania and Hungary are the exceptions – knowledge of Russian there will get you close to nowhere. You will also find many Russians speakers in countries where immigrants have congregated, such as the USA and Israel. Many (although by no means all) of these people are Soviet Jews who left during communist rule, or at the very end of the Soviet Union. Add to this the estimated several million non-Jews who have emigrated in the past generation, mostly to the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and Germany, the latter often being ‘Volga Germans’ who claim to retain some German roots. In fact, most first world cities will now have a diaspora of Russian speakers, ranging from some who have immigrated to others who are they for a shorter period, typically for work or study. So Russian is a more widely spoken language than it may first appear, spoken by many nationalities throughout the globe and therefore Russians are not surprised when they hear non-Russians 70 71 speaking Russian. Nevertheless they are not accustomed to Westerners being familiar with their language for the simple reason that so few actually are even able to hold a simple conversation, let alone master it. The majority of Expats in Russia are either on a business trip, a short-term project or a fixed term contract of 3-4 years whilst being confined to mixing with fellow nationals during their entire stay. They live a stone’s throw away from their downtown Moscow office where the staff speak at least some English, or in a compound filled with other foreigners. Even their driver knows enough to get them around, so it’s no surprise that they rarely pick up more than a few phrases since as soon as their time is up, they know that they’ll be posted elsewhere (or sent back home). Therefore it’s no surprise that few make more than a token effort, despite some starting out with the best of intentions upon arrival. To begin with, Russian is a tricky language with a fiendishly complex grammar – there are 108 different endings for regular nouns, and whilst the number of exceptions might not quite outweigh those that follow the rules, it sure feels like it to anyone trying to memorise them. Even a dedicated student taking daily lessons over a three year period (plus interaction with locals inside and outside of the office) is unlikely to get much past conversational/intermediate level. There are however a few bright spots. Unlike English, which is fairly basic to begin with, but gets harder the further you advance, Russian actually does become easier once you’ve hit a certain point – the difficulty is that disappointingly few ever reach that level. Russian is phonetic, meaning that letters are pronounced as you see them. Once you’ve mastered the Cyrillic alphabet, you can now read Russian. Pity foreigners trying to read British place names, such as Leicester, Slough, Worcester or Loughbrough! Additionally there are fewer regional variations to Russians, so what you hear in Kamchatka will be almost identical to what is spoken in Kaliningrad, Kalmykia or even Kazakhstan. There are minor regional dialects, such as Muscovites drawling their ‘o’ to sound more like ‘a’ so their city sounds more like ‘Maaaskvah’ but compared to how people from Scotland, Texas, Liverpool, South Africa, Jamaica and Birmingham speak English, difference in accents throughout the CIS are nominal. And it may also come as a surprise to hear that the Russian language is extremely standardized, given the country’s vast size and varied ethnic groups. What you’ll hear from all walks of life is almost identical, especially when you compare it to how differently an Australian miner and a London Newsreader would communicate. Please don’t take this as a sign that you shouldn’t bother to even try to learn Russian – quite the opposite! It will make your life a whole lot easier if you can actually read the street signs (many of which are in Cyrillic only) and can communicate with taxi drivers, staff in shops, ticket offices and some provincial hotels, where you will be lucky if even basic English is spoken. Russians will always be impressed if you’ve taken the time & effort to learn a few words and phrases of their language (even if you have to switch into English quite quickly) and will invariably be more helpful than if you just start off straight away in English. Although each CIS Republic has its own official language, Russian remains very much the language of business, politics and academia throughout the region, rather like English on the Indian subcontinent or French throughout much of West Africa. Although there has been some anti-Russian sentiment coupled with a growth in homegrown nationalism in a few countries, most non-Russian peoples of the CIS will only be too happy to speak to you in Russian (particularly if they know that you are not Russian). If you look Caucasian and speak Russian fluently then it may even be assumed that you ARE Russian. Russian, especially spoken Russian uses considerably fewer words than English, so saying ‘there is a cup of tea on the table’ in Russian would simply be ‘na stole – chai’, literally ‘on table – tea’. So when Russians speak English they may sound more abrupt than they mean to, and non Russian-speaking foreigners who hear Russians talking to each other could be forgiven for thinking that they are always arguing. However, written texts in Russian are often much wordier than they are in English. During conversations, be prepared to hear ‘sorry for interrupting’ and the person will continue speaking. Tune into a Russian live debate show on TV and you’ll get the idea! An example of a cultural and linguistic misunderstanding: a European company was looking to hire a General Manager for their Moscow office and decided to meet the first candidate faceto-face one morning in their hotel during a business trip to Moscow. ‘Vladimir’ was introduced to the Europeans and was asked if he would like to join them for breakfast. Vladimir simply answered ‘no’! What Vladimir 72 73 actually meant was ‘no to breakfast’ as he’d presumably eaten at home before the interview as he simply expecting an interview in the hotel lobby, perhaps over a cup of tea, not a full breakfast. Of course the correct answer would have been something along the lines of ‘well, I wasn’t expecting breakfast so I ate at home but I’d love to join you for a coffee!’ but this is rather long winded for Russians. Vladimir certainly didn’t mean to be rude, but the Europeans took this as a blunt rejection and not surprisingly Vladimir didn’t get the job. The moral here is that Russians don’t use wishy-washy expressions such as ‘not really’ when in fact they mean ‘no’, especially if their English isn’t great. Russians tend to read and write English much better than they speak it, largely due to the education system in Russia, coupled with a lack of general practice. Therefore, when speaking to Russians in English, avoid excessive use of slang of colloquialisms; best to park them on the back burner, if you catch my drift or else you could be barking up the wrong tree. Without wanting to sound condescending, stick to plain, easy to comprehend English, especially if you have a strong accent (Russians tell me that the Scottish are particularly difficult to understand). An example – in English, we say ‘yes, it is’, or ‘no, it isn’t’ whereas in Russian it is perfectly acceptable to say ‘yes, it isn’t’ or ‘no, it is’. And whereas Russians generally give shorter answers, this leads to situations where yes means no, or vice versa. Don’t be afraid to question anything that you are not sure about, especially if you don’t hear the answer that you are looking for. It’s best not to ask ‘do you mind doing’ as Russians will answer ‘yes’, meaning that ‘no, they don’t mind’! Bear in mind that if a Russian hasn’t understood you, it is highly unlikely that he or she will actually say so and ask you to repeat or explain - this is the Asian side of Russians; not wanting to lose face by admitting that they didn’t get it first time. Add to this the issue that Russians rarely volunteer information that they consider to be in the slightly bit superfluous, so expect to ask more questions that normal to get the required answer. The patronymic name is used in formal documents as well as when addressing older and/or more senior Russians (note that ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ plus the person’s surname is not common in Russia). Younger people, and especially those who consider themselves to be more international generally omit the patronymic in everyday situations, such as on business cards. Surnames (called ‘familiya’ in Russian) end in ‘ov’, ‘skiy’ or ‘in’ for men, and ‘ova’, ‘skaya’ or ‘ina’ for women. Also common are surnames ending in ‘ich’, ‘ko’ and ‘iuk’ especially for people of Ukrainian or Belarusian descent, for either sex. Surnames of Armenian origin almost always end in ‘yan’ and Georgian in either ‘vili’ or ‘adze’, for either sex. In formal documents, such as passports Russians begin with their surname followed by the name and then their patronymic. On business cards and on CVs however, they often put their name followed by their surname – but not always. Do note that there is no perfect way to transliterate Cyrillic into Latin so you will come across several spellings of the same name, such as Sergei or Sergey, Ludmila or Lioudmila and Evgeny or Yevgeniy. You will also find that some Russians have ‘Westernised’ their names, especially if they have lived abroad as they assume it makes life easier for non-Russians. Examples include Helen for Elena, Julia for Yulia, Kate or Catherine for Ekaterina and Eugene for Evgeny. Both Alexander and Alexei just shorten to Alex. Some pronunciation tips: The letter ‘e’ in Russian is typically pronounced as ‘yeh’ (especially at the beginning of the word) so Elena would be pronounced as Yel-yena and Evgeny as Yev-geny. Also, unstressed ‘o’ is pronounced more like ‘ah’ (especially in & around Moscow) so Oleg would call himself Ah-lyeg. Here are some of the more common first names, together with the more colloquial form – which isn’t necessarily shorter. The best advice would be to stick to the full form unless introduced, or otherwise asked to use the more familiar form (much as you would do in English). RUSSIAN NAMES Have you ever wondered why Natalia and Natasha can be the same person, yet Alexander and Alexey are not? Is Valery really a man’s name? Which way around do Russians write their names and what on earth is a patronymic, anyway?! To make life a little easier, here is a guide to Russian names. Which way around do Russians write their names and what on earth is a patronymic, anyway?! To make life a little easier, here is a guide to Russian names. In Western countries we typically have a first name, a surname with perhaps one or more middle names. Russians have a first name, a patronymic and a surname. MY NAME IS 74 75 Fortunately for newcomers, there are around twenty first names (called ‘imya’ in Russian) for the bulk of the population – a list of the most common names, plus the shortened version is given below. A patronymic name (called ‘otchestvo’ in Russian) is basically the person’s father’s name with – ovich (or sometimes –evich) for males, and –ovna (or sometimes –evna) for females. So Andrei whose father is Vladimir would be Andrei Vladimirovich and Tatiana whose father is Alexander would be Tatiana Alexandrovna. MALE FEMALE Full Alexander Alexey Artyom Boris Dmitriy Evgeniy Fyodor Gennady Georgiy Ivan Konstantin Mikhail Maxim Pavel Roman Sergei Stanislav Timur Valentin Valery Victor Vladimir Vladislav Vyacheslav Yuriy Full Alexandra Anastasia Anna Daria Ekaterina Elena Elizaveta Evgeniya Galina Irina Ksenia Liliya Ludmila Lyubov Margarita Maria Nadezhda Natalia Olga Polina Sofiya Svetlana Tatiana Valentina Valeriya Victoria Yuliya

Lyera Vika Yulia Sasha Lyosha Tyoma Borya Dima Zhenya Fedya Gena Gosha Vanya Kostya Misha Max Pasha Roma Seryozha Stas Tima Valya Valera Vitya Volodya or Vova

(not Vlad)

Vlad Slava Yura Sasha Nastia Anya Dasha Katya Lena Liza Zhenya Galya Ira Ksyusha Lilya Lyuda or Mila Lyuba Rita Masha Nadya Natasha Olya Polya Sonya Sveta Tanya Valya Shortened Shortened 76 77 IX. Doing business part 1 First impressions, breaking the ice and general corporate etiquette in the office You don’t need to be a genius to work out that the Russian economy remains heavily dependent on natural resources, and in particular, oil & gas. Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power coincided with a rise in the price of what comes out of the ground, thanks to a combination of factors, ranging from increased demand (helped in no small part by massive production output in neighbouring China). These petrodollars have funded unprecedented economic growth since the start of the twentieth century following the Ruble default in August 1998, which battered the economy. The main blip was the crash of early 2009 although Russia’s economy rebounded much more quickly than western markets. However, the dual shock of the fall in the world price of oil, coupled with international sanctions in 2014, plus a general negative view of Russia caused the economy to fall into a recession from which is has yet to fully emerge. The profits used from the sale of Russia’s resources fueled this growth, and living standards have risen substantially over the past two decades. Skeptics naturally questioned how sustainable this economic model is in even the medium term, since not only are there huge opportunities for grand-scale theft from the state budget, there has been little incentive to produce much, let alone innovate or reform loss-making industries. Much easier just to buy stuff from abroad, and the response is now a loud ‘I told you so’, even if the State prefers to blame outside interference for economic difficulties. Critics claim that this is the whole point, that it is corruption which keeps the system intact. There is a Russian expression from communist times: ‘Ryba gneyot s golovy’ which loosely translates as ‘a fish rots from the head downwards’ meaning that the corruption begins at the top, which still applies today. Too few state enterprises have been sufficiently reformed to be able to compete with either cheaper goods from China, or better quality products from more established European, North American or Far Eastern countries. There are large numbers of oneindustry towns in Russia which are heavily over-staffed and the standard of their output is questionable at best. They are kept afloat by government subsidies as well as trade barriers that make some imported goods prohibitively expensive. Such practices ought to be coming to an end now that Russia has joined the WTO but progress is slow. Regardless of what you think of the people in the Kremlin, for those enterprising foreign business people, the lack of decent, 78 79 locally produced goods (and services) creates ample opportunities for their companies who want to export to Russia. Russians like brands and are prepared to pay a premium for what they perceive to be quality; the mark-ups in shops can be horrendous when compared to what you would pay for the same items in Western Europe or North America. Starbucks wasn’t nicknamed ‘Ten Bucks’ for nothing. In short, Russians like expensive, which they perceive to be associated with high quality, Russians like things for free (known as ‘khalyava’ in Russian), but they don’t like cheap. Bottom line is that whilst the average Russian consumer is certainly becoming more price-conscious, low-end is viewed as shoddy, particularly in Moscow. One interesting feature of the retail trade is the arrival of promotions and discounts, something which hadn’t existed until fairly recently. The past few years have seen living standards remain static, so Russian consumers have become savvier, and more cost-concious. As a rule however, Russians don’t see the logic of saving money for a rainy day . There is not much of a culture of putting money aside for the future, and with good reason; large numbers of people saw their entire life savings effectively rendered virtually worthless with the onset of hyperinflation at the end of the Soviet Union. Then again after the default of 1998, rampant inflation resulted in many financial institutions going bankrupt and once again wiping out just about everything that wasn’t held in hard currencies. Certainly some trust in the banking system has been regained but the culture of spending what you have as soon as you get it remains. Note how many lower-end employees withdraw their entire month’s salary from the nearest ATM machine as soon as they receive it. Under communism if you didn’t buy it today, it almost certainly wouldn’t be there tomorrow, and this trait among Russians remains to this day even if shortages are a thing of the past. Add to this the fact that Russians’ outgoings (only a minority of Russian rent, have a mortgage or even have bank loan repayments) are small as even utility payments are nominal, especially by Western standards. Therefore you have a country full of people with disposable incomes who cannot buy everything that they want made locally, so the door for manufacturers from abroad opens up. Summed up in a sentence, Russians do business face-to-face, with whom they like, and with whom they trust. It’s not about having the flashiest presentation, or even the best product – what Russians want you to demonstrate is that you are taking them, their company and their country seriously. You may be surprised to hear that cost efficiency might not be your prospective customer’s main interest. Regardless of how big, profitable, impressive and well-branded your company is back home, or in other markets, the Russians that you meet will primarily be interested in what you have achieved so far in Russia itself, what you are currently doing and what your future plans are. It goes without saying that nobody enters a market with the intention of leaving but companies have arrived in Russia with the best of intentions, only to shut up shop after the global HQ changed their business strategy and decided to focus on other markets. The ‘legacy’ that they left behind hinders others, new entrants as it is often, regrettably assumed that they are only here for the good times. Whilst naturally you will want to maximize the time you spend in the country, especially if you only visit once or twice a quarter, one word of caution – avoid trying to cram in as many meetings as possible in a short trip. Russians are not usually as pressed for time as Westerners claim to be, and if they have taken the trouble to meet you, allow them the courtesy of a decent meeting. Usually you will find that the serious talking gets done first, and once business is taken care of, then you can move in to some lighter conversation. The people that you meet will no doubt be interested to hear how you like Russia, your impressions, whether or not it is your first visit and how you find their country. Avoid being negative – Russians are all too aware of their country’s shortcomings and will happily bitch about it, but will be deeply offended if they hear it from you, and will take it as a personal insult. As a result, expectations can be lower, summed up by the expression ‘pyerviy blin vsegda komom’ (the first pancake always comes out lumpy) so if things don’t go according to plan immediately, it might not be the end of the world for you. The exceptions to the rule about moaning are the weather, and the traffic – which everybody complains about continuously. Sport in general and football (soccer) in particular is a good topic for conversation as Russian men enjoy watching the top European leagues, and you can never go wrong with holidays and families, as is the case throughout the world. 80 81 Men will always shake hands with each other, although women do less often, particularly with each other. Don’t worry about initial awkward silences, and don’t feel that you have to talk just for the sake of it. Business meetings tend to be quite formal affairs, particularly in the early stages when you are dealing with people who don’t know much about you. Chances are that they will warm to you if they like both you as a person and your proposal, but instant chemistry isn’t common. The Russian equivalent of ‘breaking the ice’ is ‘melting the ice’. Whereas Russians aren’t particularly bothered if you show up a little late for a meeting, it is considered rude to abruptly finish a meeting that is in full flow (or even during the non business related conversation at the end) as you are rushing out to the next meeting. Russians are likely to consider such behavior as bad mannered, assuming that you are only interested in making money out of them, and aren’t actually interested in them as a person or a company. Schedule meetings accordingly, allowing much more time than you would normally allocate, and not just for the traffic. If you are in a genuine hurry, it is advisable to make the people aware of this at the start of a meeting, saying that you only have an hour as you need to get to the airport and are concerned about missing your flight. If your company is well established in Russia and has a reasonable-sized operation in Moscow, there is a good chance that you will be exposed to corporate life in a Russian office. During communist times, people were effectively paid for showing up to work, and although incentive schemes existed in theory, employees were paid more or less an identical sum regardless of either quantity or quality of output. Add to this the fact that your standard of living was not linked so much to your ability to pay (ie, how much you earn – as it is in the West) but rather to your access to goods & services. Most of these were not available in shops, which were largely devoid of anything that people wanted to buy anyway. The result was a massive, informal economy based on a system of favours via connections which bypassed the formal sector. Insurance companies have struggled to make inroads into the Russian market, largely due to Russians being a fatalist bunch. Until car insurance became compulsory, many Russians thought that buying insurance was pointless. I have heard ‘if I make monthly payments and my car hasn’t crashed or been stolen, then I’ve wasted my money. And if I did lose my car, then it was meant to be’. Fate (‘sud’ba’) is something that even seemingly sensible people believe strongly in, such as if they have a minor car crash on the way to a job interview, then it obviously wasn’t meant to be the job for me. Russians are fiercely loyal to their family and their close friends, which to outsiders can be perceived as a little strange. Since relationships are based largely on trust, it is not unusual for a manager to jump ship to a competitor and take part, or all of his team with him when leaving. The company itself is almost a secondary consideration. The office environment can appear very relaxed to outsiders, sometimes too much so, with a poor work ethic since employees spend time chatting with colleagues over tea and staring into their phones while on social networking sites. The ‘sandwich at your desk’ style of lunch is unusual in Russia (partly because sandwiches aren’t hugely popular); people will either leave the office in small groups for a ‘business lunch’ – a set menu in a nearby restaurant or in the office canteen, if there is one. Some firms subsidize this or have their own canteen, especially in production facilities located far from any hives of activity. Some employees bring food with them from home, purchased nearby, or from one of an increasing number of delivery services, but they will nonetheless eat together. Lunchtime is a fairly fluid time, and lunch itself could be taken anywhere between noon and 4pm. Aggressively trying to change such behavior is likely to be counter-productive and result in demotivated employees, and eventually people resigning. It is considered fairly normal for Russians to quit their job without having a new employer lined up – few, particularly in Moscow have a fear of losing their job thanks to low unemployment; they know that someone will soon hire them, even if they underperformed in their last position. Rather, take time to get to know your employees; join them for lunch or a chat over tea as your Russian staff will value being valued, particularly by a senior employee from abroad. There appears to be little, if any stigma in colleagues dating, even when one or both parties are married, or one reports directly to the other. Russians take a liberal view on such as matters such a boss being romantically involved with a subordinate who is half his age, even if similar actions in your home country are at best frowned upon, and at worst can trigger lawsuits. In downtown Moscow and other large CIS cities, you cannot fail to notice the number of expensive cars on the streets, which are seen as the ultimate status symbol, especially for men. 82 83 A guy driving a top-of-the range high-end vehicle will be assumed to have ‘made it’ in life, even if he had to take out a serious bank loan to finance this purchase and continues to live in a one-room, rented apartment on the outskirts of town with his mother! The equivalent for women would be a mink fur coat, followed closely by boutique clothes, shoes, designer handbag, make-up and jewelry. You only need to take a brief look at the structure of the Russian government (and pretty much all of the CIS countries too, for that matter) to see that it’s a very top-down system. What the big guy at the top says, goes and if you know what’s good for you, you don’t question it and you certainly don’t argue. This is a similar situation throughout the country, be it local government, or Russian companies, both big and small. In the same way that Mr Putin often appoints many regional governors whose key criteria is unwavering loyalty to him, a company owner or Director will similarly appoint trusted subordinates in key positions; often long-time friends or even members of his own family. This is particularly the case in organizations that are fully or partially state-owned and managed. Delegation is not Russians’ strength, partly down to lack of trust towards outsiders, but there are of course plusses and minuses to this. The individual who heads up a particular organization is by and large responsible for everything, even at a micro-level. While this can delay the decision-making process, there is the advantage that if you are able to meet the person in charge, you will avoid going through layers of middle-level managers who don’t decide anything at all and will be frightened to take any initiative. RUSSIANS ARE VERY IMAGE CONSCIOUS FOR THINGS WHICH MATTER TO THEM – REMEMBER THE SPRITE ADVERT WHICH RAN THE SLOGAN ‘IMAGE IS NOTHING, THIRST IS EVERYTHING – OBEY YOUR THIRST’? NOT SURPRISINGLY IT FLOPPED IN RUSSIA, WHERE IMAGE IS EVERYTHING – EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THIRST. Perhaps surprisingly, cold calling works rather well in Russia – secretaries are more likely to be administrative assistants than gatekeepers, and often when someone calls up in English, they assume it is somebody important and put the call through (it might also just be that they don’t speak English particularly well, and just want to get rid of you). Add to this the fact that it is less common for senior executives in Russia to be called up. It is certainly worth a try; you’ll be surprised as to how effective it can be, even though it might take some people that you contact a little while to work out what you want and why. Following up your call with an e-mail is also advisable given that Russians tend to read & write English better than they might speak it. 84 85 Welcome to Rosinka International Residences! We are a luxury gated community of rental family homes. Rosinka spreads over 134 acres of beautifully landscaped gated territory, with a private lake, indoor tennis courts, Olympic sized indoor swimming pool, large athletic complex, restaurants, walking trails, skate park, dog park and many other amenities. All houses have a two car garage. We are located just outside of Moscow, a few minutes from the nearest metro station. On site is the world renowned International School of Moscow, operated by Nord Anglia Education, offering contemporary British international education from Early Years through to secondary school. Our young residents can walk, bike or scooter to school safely without adult supervision. When the snow comes, Rosinka transforms into a winter wonderland and the children can enjoy a sleigh ride to school. Our strictly imposed 20 km/h speed limit allows for peace of mind for parents and children alike. As an enclosed and safe community, children can play and visit freely with their friends and schoolmates without worry and the hassle of travel. Rosinka is truly the unparalleled choice for families with school-aged children. Rosinka hosts over 350 families from more than 30 countries around the world. The spirit of community distinguishes Rosinka through the atmosphere of companionship. With cultural events, sports tournaments, fishing, exhibitions, children’s activities, and more than 20 resident clubs, Rosinka truly offers something for everyone. Our English speaking concierge is available 24/7 to make sure you always feel welcome and comfortable. We look forward to welcoming you and your family to your new home. +7 985 998 05 85 +7 916 900 05 13 rosinkarentals@gmail.com www.rosinka.ru 86 87 X. Doing business part 2 Next steps, negotiations, legalities and dealing with corruption Let’s start with what is foremost on your mind as you consider doing business in Russia. CORRUPTION Is corruption a major problem in Russia? The simple answer is both yes and no. Much depends on your particular line of business and your plans. Russia features high on international corruption indexes and in many respects deservedly so. However, corruption issues affect foreigners considerably less that the global media would have you believe. Much of the ‘corruption’ so to speak which affects Russians on a daily basis is petty – small bribes handed to low-level state employees who are badly paid and use their position of power as a Little Hitler to supplement their meager income, be it allowing someone to jump the line, receive better treatment in a hospital or ensure that repairs are done to their home properly, and more quickly. To what extent you can call this corruption is questionable; it doesn’t always take the form of a cash payment as it could be a box of chocolates or a bottle of Russian champagne given as a ‘thank you’. Everyone is fully aware of how little most people in government jobs earn and even with recent wage hikes, it’s not enough to live well on, so such gifts can make the difference between mere survival and some level of comfort. Putin’s opponents claim that this is all part of the masterplan, to keep everyone under control by expanding the number of public sector jobs, paying those workers a pittance, effectively forcing them to make ends meet by accepting bribes for essentially doing what they are supposed to do. In this way, they are frightened into toeing the line or face the sack for corruption. Inevitably some people are given their marching orders for this reason, although it’s often more to do with colleagues settling scores and/or advancing their own careers. It can even look good as Russia can say to the world ‘hey everybody, we’re fighting corruption; look at these people we’ve ousted’. Fortunately foreigners, even those living and working in Russia are largely sheltered from the hassles of dealing with petty officials who drag their feet in the hope that you will give them a little ‘present’ to speed things up. There is of course a lot of corruption at the top end of government, where appointments are made more on the basis of who you know rather than what you know. This so-called ‘jobs for the boys’ comes back to the issue of trust – any allegations of nepotism would 88 89 be countered by a Russian, saying ‘what, you want me to appoint someone that I don’t even know into this crucial role?! Why take the risk, when I have Mikhail here, whom I studied with at University and we worked together in our previous company. I trust him to get the job done’. Another reason why foreigners are less likely to be exposed to the worst aspect of corrupt practices in Russia is that these tend to involve embezzlement from the state budget when large projects come up for tender. Trust, (‘doveriye’) is a crucial factor when dealing with Russians. In the West we tend to automatically trust people when first meeting them, unless there is good cause not to do so, although even then we tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Seven decades of communism taught Soviet citizens to trust nobody apart from those closest to them, and to be naturally suspicious of outsiders. If your potential or existing Russian partners or customers suggest meeting up outside of the office, for example out for dinner, or even to visit a banya, you would be foolish not to take them up on the offer. For starters, it’s likely to be a great experience, but this is the Russian ‘getting to know – and trust you’ phase – see it as a Russian-style of due diligence, if you might. Fortunately, whether you are simply coming to Russia to sell your company’s products, or looking to set up production facilities, your main hassle is likely to be insurmountable piles of red tape, which in itself sometimes presents opportunities for corruption. In fact most Russians don’t really know how to approach foreigners in such a way, so bribing opportunities are likely to come in the form of a hint, such as ‘to receive this permission will take several months, but there is a quicker way, although it will cost a little more’. Of course you don’t need me or anyone else to insult your intelligence by telling you that the golden rule is never to engage in practices that could even be considered as anything other than ‘white’ as this will be just the beginning of a very slippery slope. You may win the initial battle but you will almost certainly end up losing the war. Few things in Russia are completely black or white – there are of course plenty of grey areas; an increasing number of multinational organizations have zero tolerance policies on accepting ‘gifts’ from suppliers; not so much a brown envelope stuffed full of cash but even a simple lunch or a calendar at Christmas. Russians rightly view this as petty, but for clarity’s sake you would do well to make it clear from the outset that due to corporate policy you cannot pay for, or accept anything – to save face on all sides, blaming your company’s headquarters is an easy way out, saying that they don’t understand Russia. Older Russians, and those less exposed to outsiders may struggle with the concept of a win-win scenario, assuming that if you are happy with the deal, then they have negotiated badly. Negotiating anywhere in the world is an art in itself, but takes on a particular significance in Russia as your counterparts want to see what you’re made of. Toughness is admired even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time; then there is the expression in Russian ‘proverka na vshivost’; seeing if you stand up to the test. Remember how even at the height of the cold war, the Soviets respected Margaret Thatcher since they viewed her as sticking to her guns. By comparison, Russians view most Western leaders nowadays as wimps, pandering to minority politics and not sticking up for their majority. THERE IS A FAIR DEGREE OF TRUTH IN THE QUOTE: ‘RUSSIA IS A LOUSY PLACE TO DO BUSINESS BUT A GREAT PLACE TO MAKE MONEY!’ Then there is the concept of ‘molchaniye – znak soglasiya’ (silence means approval) which can cause confusion as in the West we believe that if someone doesn’t reply to you then they either haven’t understood you, or more likely didn’t hear you. Again, do double-check but it often happens that if you ask someone to do something, they may simply start doing it without saying ‘yes’ or ‘OK’. Russians can make decisions in business that can strike westerners as illogical at best, and completely irrational at worst, generally based on impulsive emotion rather than any sense of pragmatism. A good example of this is the recent fall in demand for top-end apartments in downtown Moscow following the slide in the oil price, and the ruble crash/default which triggered an exodus of foreigners. Owners of flats that were previously being rented out for $10,000 suddenly found themselves with no takers as senior Expats left town and Russians downsized to cheaper options. A sensible approach (at least in our eyes) would be to find a taker who was ready to pay, say $8,000 a month, as eight grand might not be ten, but it’s certainly better than nothing. The Russian landlords’ view would be that this tenant is physically thieving two thousand bucks out of my pocket, so the majority are likely to remain empty until the market rebounds. This is 90 91 a fairly typical example of how Russians operate in business; even grown men in senior positions can change their mind on a whim, for no logical reason that any rational person can fathom. A FAMOUS QUOTE THAT RUSSIANS ADMIT SUMS UP THEIR COUNTRY IS ‘UMOM ROSSIYU NE PONYAT’ WHICH ROUGHLY TRANSLATES AS ‘THERE’S NO LOGICAL WAY TO UNDERSTAND RUSSIA’. Russia is plagued by a massive, overburdening bureaucracy, which some economists believe knocks several percentage points off the country’s GDP every year. Much of it is a hangover from the Soviet period where terms such as efficiency and profit didn’t exist, and there is rarely little if any logic as to why it is in place – other than possibly to provide employment. As a result, a massive service industry has formed to help ease you through the myriad of forms and officialdom that you will encounter, and this often seems to be done with official blessing. Visit any Moscow railway station (especially in the summer months) and you will see endless lines of people waiting to buy tickets, despite it now being possible to buy them online. Yet every station also has a Service Centre around the corner where for a ‘service charge’ of a few hundred Rubles per ticket you will be dealt with as efficiently as if you were visiting a travel agency, with no waiting. Of course it will be of no surprise to any Russian that this Service Centre is almost certainly owned, run or managed by the relative or friend of the railway station director. Whether you need your products imported, transported, or customs-cleared, your corporate literature translated into Russian, legal services, hiring local staff, payroll and accountancy outsourcing, finding an office, apartment or school for your kids or even just classes for you to learn a little Russian, there are plenty of firms to choose from who will help you. Most recognized international firms are well represented in Moscow, and quite possible also in regional cities plus some key CIS countries, but many others are not, or perhaps have a loose affiliate, franchise or partnership agreement with a local firm. Before engaging a supplier you would be wise to check out the nature of their CIS operation, how long they have been operating here, how big they are, who their client base consists of and whether or not you feel comfortable working with them. One word of warning; whilst many multinationals will have preferred-supplier agreements in places with service providers globally, I would strongly advise against engaging anyone who is not well established in Russia/CIS and genuinely knows what they’re doing. Unless you want to be used as a learning curve for one of your suppliers, you will make your life a whole lot smoother by working with someone who knows the local market, even if they are less well known in your home country. You can of course always try to do it yourself, although whilst you think you are saving yourself some money, there are some things that are best left to the experts – the end results are often disastrous. Don’t use Google Translate for translating your brochures or company website into Russian; the translations can be hilarious – just look at restaurant menus in provincial Russian cities and try to guess what ‘maritime language under marinade’ or ‘sausage in the fatherin-law’ is meant to refer to. Russians are keen readers and are more likely to read your corporate literature if it has been professionally translated into Russian. When looking to hire people in Russia/CIS, Linkedin might be a great tool for sourcing potential candidates, but it cannot establish a person’s motivation (or lack of it), manage the offer process, handle a potential counter-offer issue or provide information on current market trends. A reputable recruitment agency will be able to assist you in such cases. Apart from a few, small samples in your suitcase, you should import product via the correct channels using a recognized freight forwarder that has experience in dealing with customs authorities. Delays are a fact of life but these guys are your best bet for a smooth sailing. 92 93 Chet Bowling Partner Bellerage Alinga Six things a foreign CEO should know about managing a Russian company. Chet Bowling, who has lived and worked in Russia for almost 30 years and is a Partner at Bellerage Alinga - a TOP-5 financial outsourcing companies in Russia, shares the below with foreign CEO’s. 1. The Russian accounting system is governed by the state, including the chart of accounts, accounting principles, and statement forms. Unlike the accounting principles used in Europe (IFRS) and the US (US GAAP), Russian accounting is based not on the business transaction, but on the document confirming it (ie, the legal form is more important than the economic substance). 2. In Russia, it is impossible to dismiss an employee at the employer’s will (at-will termination) without citing grounds stipulated by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation; 3. Failure to comply with currency control requirements may result in significant fines of up to 100% of the transaction amount; 4. Violation of migration laws by the company is punishable by fines of up to RUB 1,000,000 and suspension of business activities for up to 90 days; 5. Over 90% of Russian companies use 1C, a local accounting software that makes it easy to report to the tax authorities; 6. The liability level of the General Director of a Russian business is immeasurably higher than would be the case in a Western company. You may learn more specifics of Russian legislation and business environment in Bellerage Alinga’s guide Doing Business in Russia, which is available on our website: http://www.bellerage.com/video/GuideDoingBusinessInRussia.pdf 94 95 Brookes Moscow (International School) Lazorevyy Proezd, 7, Moscow, Russia, 129323 Telephone: +7 (499) 110- 70-01 E-mail: info@moscow.brookes.org admissions@moscow.brookes.org Website: moscow.brookes.org Brookes Saint Petersburg (International School) Tatarskiy Pereulok, 3-5, St Petersburg, 197198 Telephone: +7 (812) 320-89-25 E-mail: info@saintpetersburg.brookes.org admissions@saintpetersburg.brookes.org Website: saintpetersburg.brookes.org XI. Entertainment in Russia Food, drink and extra-curricular activities and costs Food, drink and extra-curricular activities and costs 96 97 The idea that you have to drink heavily order to do business in Russia is both a myth and an outdated stereotype. Yes, Russia does have a serious alcohol problem but there is a considerable difference between the corporate world in large cities, and the situation in provincial towns and villages. In fact, Russians’ love for driving cars coupled with the zero tolerance for alcohol when driving means that more often than not, several of your Russian colleagues, partners or clients may not drink at all, unless at home or they may choose to leave the car at home on that particular day if they are expecting to drink over dinner. It’s rare for white collar workers to drink even a glass or wine or beer over lunch; the best advice is to go with the flow (no apologies for the pun). Sure boozy dinners occur but in all honesty you’re more likely to drink heavily with your colleagues or with other Expats than with clients. As always, there are exceptions so if you are going out for dinner, you would be wise to establish if it just a quick bite before your counterpart drives back home to his family or whether the booze plans to flow until the early hours. The difficulty is that Russians can be very spontaneous, especially if they are enjoying themselves so if you think it could go this way, best not to arrange an important breakfast meeting the following morning, as just during customer meetings, it is poor form to just jump up & make your excuses. See chapter 12 for what an invitation to visit a Russian home for dinner holds in store for you. The standard of service in hotels, bars and restaurants varies wildly although expensive joints in the largest CIS cities should be on par with what you are used to back home. The days when the ashtrays were emptied once the floor was full are gone; in fact you’re more likely to see it emptied every puff, or your glass of beer snatched away when you’ve only drunk three quarters of it by over-active waiters and waitresses who have been ‘trained’ up to international levels – if anything, it’ll keep you on your toes. TIPPING If the service was good then it’s customary to leave around 10% in restaurants although few places have the facilities to tip using your credit card. Even at those that do, the tip is highly unlikely to actually reach the person who served you; best to tip in cash. There is no need to leave big, American-style (20%+) tips, and whilst barmen and cloakroom attendants will not expect to be tipped, leaving them a RUB100 note is a kind gesture as these people are not usually well remunerated. When paying for a meal in cash, if you hand it over to your waiter or waitress and say ‘thank you’, they will take to mean that you don’t require any change back. If you do, save your spasibo for when you actually hand them the tip. MONEY & COSTS Summed up, since it is largely a business destination, Moscow isn’t a particularly cheap place to visit, and the top-end places can be seriously pricey. The capital regularly makes the top ten of the world’s most expensive cities according to annual surveys, and although a tiny bit of local knowledge can bring down prices significantly, there’s no getting away from the fact that your expenses on a business trip may be higher than many other cities in Europe. The weakened Ruble will work in your favour, especially as more mid-range options appear, especially hotels and restaurants. Public transport is ludicrously cheap and taxis are also good value for money, so long as you’re being charged the official rate. Purchases in Russia can only be made in Russian Rubles (RUB) and nowadays in 99% of cases, prices are listed in RUB. There is no need to buy Rubles before setting off for Russia as rates back home tend to be close to rip-off levels; all international airports in Russia have plenty of ATMs, plus 24 hour Bureau de Changes, even if the rates in the airport have recently worsened and aren’t as favourable as you’ll get in town. Euros (EUR) & US Dollars (USD) command the best rates; you can change just about any foreign currencies in Russia, but the less common they are, the worse deal you’ll get. Credit cards are increasingly accepted even in mid-sized establishments throughout Moscow & St Petersburg, plus most larger cities although it is worth carrying a stack of Rubles in case the PoS terminal is on the blink when you happen to be visiting. This can occur even in higher end places, and even then, don’t be surprised if not everybody can change a RUB5,000 note. CHIVALRY ISN’T DEAD, BUT FEMINISM HASN’T ARRIVED (YET)! A Russian girl once said to me that there would never be any feminism in Russia as all women hate each other here. This was, no doubt said somewhat tongue-in-cheek but there is more than a grain of truth in this expression. The Soviet Union lost millions of people in the Second World War, mostly young men. Countless millions more died in the Gulag 98 99 during Stalin’s infamous purges which began in the 1930s and lasted until his death in 1953; again, the bulk of whom were male. This has left a considerable gender imbalance that remains to this day, although some would argue that it’s now more due to the low life expectancy of Russian men than what happened in the country more than two generations ago. Nevertheless, there is still considerable social pressure on girls to get married (especially outside of Moscow and other big cities) at a young age, as their grandmothers and even mothers remember growing up with a shortage of males. Girls moan about the lack of eligible men and as a result some will date married men without much of an afterthought – even wives who subsequently find out can be more forgiving. Bear in mind that women in the CIS are not anywhere near as desperate to leave their country as they might have been in the early 1990s, and those who really wanted to flee abroad have probably done so already. Sure, there are stereotypes about the grass being greener in the West but unhappy stories of women having returned home disappointed after failed marriages to foreigners are also common. Being an Expat in itself is therefore no longer the guaranteed ticket to getting laid every night of the week, even if some still try (they’re known as ‘Sexpats’), but this isn’t Bangkok. You need to be able to offer something more than just having a western passport, and remember that there are a lot of rich Russian guys who’ll blow much more cash on their women than you’ll ever have – or be prepared to spend. Compared to free-spending Russians, Expats have a reputation for being stingy. Yes, for (straight) single men, one of the big attractions of doing business, or working in Russia/CIS is the opposite sex who deservedly have a reputation for keeping themselves slim and attractive, and dress well, even if it’s just a normal day in the office. Women not only like, but expect men to open doors for them, offer their hand when they step off a bus or get out of a car, help with their coat (on and off) and give them flowers & presents on regular occasions, not just anniversaries. On dates, men pay for everything – just try even suggesting splitting the bill and you can kiss goodbye to the chance of a second date! Equality is definitely a subjective term in Russia with male and female roles clearly defined. Men are expected to carry heavy bags, do DIY around the house and repair the car, whilst women cook, clean and look after the children. This isn’t to say that women are expected to sit at home; far from it, with many in fact earning more than their husbands. Feminism in the western sense is close to being an alien concept. On more than one occasion I have heard Russian women say ‘Feminists are women who act like men – why would I want to act like a man when I am a women. I want to be treated as a women and I want a strong man to look after me’. You’ll be waiting a long time to see Russian females in dungarees with shaved heads, burning bras. 100 101 XII. Life in Russia How Russians live 102 103 Urban Russians live in apartments, mostly in high-rise blocks in what they refer to as ‘sleeping regions’ – similar to what we know as suburbia. A lack of living space was a typical feature of the Soviet period thanks to a rapid industrialization programme, bringing people in from the countryside to towns and cities with little concern for where or what conditions they would have to endure. Entire families were often crammed into tiny two roomed flats (note that Russians refer to how many rooms they have, not bedrooms as the living room almost always doubled up as a bedroom, with a fold-out sofa. Fortunately the bathroom and kitchen don’t count in this tally). People would spend years on a waiting list for a new home, and one of the few ways of jumping the queue was to get married, which partly explains why Russians traditionally got hitched at a young age – often while still at University, and why many families in cities only had one child. The overall demographic situation has made the country’s housing shortage a little more bearable as the country has reported lost around 700,000 people every year since the fall of communism, partly through emigration but largely to a higher death than birth rate. The average life expectancy of a Russian male is shockingly short; in the low 60s. Although more apartment blocks have been constructed in recent years, they remain prohibitively expensive and well out of reach of the average Russian’s pocket, especially with the mortgage market being in its relative infancy. Therefore, the usual solution is to wait until an elderly relative dies, or moving them out to the dacha during their retirement years. WHAT IS A DACHA? A dacha is a Russian country house. These range in size and grandeur from a glorified shed on an allotment with no running water or electricity, to a mansion with all mod cons on the edge of a private lake. Under communism they functioned mainly as a piece of land that allowed the owner to grow food, which was especially important due to the lack of fresh produce available in state stores. Nowadays, only the elderly tend to their vegetables plots, whereas the younger generation (who have never experienced shortages) simply view dachas as a weekend retreat from the city with friends for a BBQ and drinks. THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE: Russia largely lacks the entrepreneurial ‘get-up-and-go’ spirit, with most Russians quietly content with their lot, whilst simultaneously grumbling that their neighbour is better off than they are. It’s easy to blame 70 years of communism for killing off anything remotely proactive, but ‘pofigism’ (a word that roughly translates as ‘can’t be bothered’) is a trait that goes back centuries. Asked why they lack motivation, Russians answer that deep down they believe in some big, kind Tsar who rules over them and that even if things are bad, that they will improve. This mentality helps to explain why Vladimir Putin remains a widely popular figure throughout the country, especially outside of Moscow and a handful of other large cities, despite Western propaganda attempting to suggest otherwise. Russians will openly admit that freedom and human rights as Westerners know them are hardly their top priority, and that a country as large and diverse as Russia can only be ruled in an authoritarian manner. The people want a strong ruler to maintain control and who will look after them, knowing from experience that the alternative is worse. Russia’s flirtation with democracy during Boris Yeltsin’s rule in the 1990s is a recent reminder to Russians that too much freedom leads to utter chaos, as was also the case during the reign of Tsar Nikolay II at the start of last century, whose weakness eventually led to his & his family’s abdication, eventual assassination, and the Russian Revolution in 1917. Russians’ attitudes to abortion, infidelity, divorce and even prostitution can strike outsiders are remarkably liberal, especially given how conservative they are regarding ’alternative’ religion, such as Hare Krishna and ‘different’ lifestyles (ie, non-heterosexual). The western media in particular has been guilty of blowing the anti-gay situation out of all proportion. Russians quite correctly point out that it is NOT a crime in Russia to be gay, yet in Qatar (which is due to host the 2022 World Cup) it IS illegal, and in neighbouring Saudi Arabia gays can face the death penalty, so why pick on Russia? Your best bet is to err on the side of caution and avoid controversial topics unless you want to lose friends and make enemies fast. Remember that you are a guest in Russia and here to do business, not to try to change Russia to suit your agenda. By all means set a good example through your own behavior, but doing anything deemed as remotely provocative will not go down well with Russians, whose attitude to meddling outsiders is ‘if you don’t like it here, leave’. SOCIAL MEDIA Russians are keen internet users and big fans of social media, which has taken the country by storm in recent years. As well 104 105 as Facebook & Instagram, both of which are extremely popular, there are numerous Russian equivalents, the best known being Vkontakte or VK (www.vk.com) which is essentially a Russian language version of Facebook. Whereas back home you typically use Linkedin* for business purposes and Facebook for your family and friends, in Russia the situation is less clear cut. Visitors to Russia are often surprised to receive a Facebook friend request not only from work colleagues, but from people they have met (perhaps just once, and only briefly) in a business situation, be it as a supplier, customer partner or even merely a client prospect. Russians view this as normal; after all the line between work and play in Russia is a blurred one, and don’t forget that Russians typically do business with people whom they are on friendly terms with. This can create a dilemma for people who prefer to keep their business and private lives separate. Ultimately whom you choose to be ‘friends’ with is up to you and there is no need to feel bad about not ‘befriending’ people whom you are not comfortable with seeing what you get up to outside of office hours. Just be aware that Facebook is fast becoming the main means of communication amongst your colleagues and you could find yourself missing out on much of what’s going on around you should you choose to blank those you work with. One solution is to set up a second profile, to keep your work and private lives somewhat separate. Even if you are not a social media aficionado, you may want to at least create a basic facebook account as there are numerous groups worth joining, such as Expats In Moscow. Many nationalities have their own ‘closed’ groups but will happily allow you in should you demonstrate some connection to that particular country.

  • At the time of writing Linkedin was still blocked by Roskomnadzor (the

federal body responsible for overseeing the media and IT) for failing to comply with the law about data protection. Whilst it is easy enough to access Linkedin in Russia if you have a VPN, Linkedin has fallen out of favour somewhat as a business networking tool, with many preferring Whatsapp and/or Facebook. Priyatnogo appetita! If you are ever invited to a Russian’s house for dinner, this is most certainly an opportunity you cannot refuse. Consider it an honour and you will experience overwhelming hospitality, especially given the huge choice of decent restaurants in larger cities, it’s less common to be invited into somebody’s home. Expect to be here for the entire evening, and preferably don’t schedule anything for early the following morning. Russians don’t invite people over for a quick cup of tea & biscuits; they go the full distance and pull out all the stops for guests. It’s polite to bring a gift, such as a bottle of wine and a box of biscuits or chocolates (preferably from your home country, but locally purchased is fine) plus a bunch of flowers for the lady of the house. Shops selling flowers are on almost every street corner and many are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; buy them on the way. Do remove your shoes upon entering the home – you will be offered a pair of slippers. You will arrive to a table groaning under the weight of all the food on it, usually platefuls of sliced meats, various salads, cheese, bread and cold vegetables, but before you get too carried away, this is only the starter, known in Russian as ‘zakuski’. Most likely vodka will be served (cold, and neat, of course) although women may be offered wine or Russian champagne, which is actually a sweet, sparkling wine, called ‘shampanskoye’. If on the vodka, take it easy! Have a swig of a soft drink (of which there will be a jug or bottle) after each shot, followed by a little food, but avoid the temptation of stuffing yourself. It is customary for each person to take a short toast when raising the glass, and everyone should hold the glass in the air until the speaker has finished, whereupon everyone knocks the vodka back in one gulp – sipping is for ligthtweights. When it’s your turn, it’s sufficient to thank the hosts for their invitation and hospitality, and how pleased you are that you had an opportunity to visit their home. Then say something positive about Russia and the friendship between your two nations; this always goes down well. The main course is likely to be a meat-based dish – there are very few vegetarians anywhere in the CIS, and since meat was often in short supply during Soviet times, the older generation will be somewhat perplexed at how or why you could refuse meat. Even if you’re completely full up, this isn’t the end as a large cake will later be brought out, followed by tea and chocolates (konfety) – it’s OK to pass on the chocs if you’re full to bursting point by this stage. Fortunately, this all takes place over several hours so the trick here is to pace yourself. You will certainly have an evening to remember, particularly as your 106 107 colleagues or clients will more than likely entertain you in a local restaurant. P.S. – ‘Priyatnogo appetita’ means «Bon appetit» and can be said not only at the beginning of any meal, but also whenever you see anyone eating. S lyokhkim parom! Getting naked, hot & sweaty with other men at first might not sound like your idea of fun but you can’t say that you’ve really ‘done’ Russia unless you’ve experienced a visit to a banya. On the surface it is basically a bath house but the whole process is taken seriously, yet at the same time it’s harmless fun even if it doesn’t always feel like it at the time. Think of it as a bit of male bonding, but it’s definitely something you won’t forget in a hurry. In Russia, the banya is very much a ritual although its origins stretch back centuries, to the days when bathing as we know it didn’t exist. Nowadays it’s much more of a pastime yet traditions are maintained so it’s useful to familiarise yourself with what you are about get yourself in to. Essentially you will enter a hot, steaming room, work up a sweat and then wash it off with cold water, but as you will see, there is much more to it than just an old-fashioned way of keeping yourself clean. For starters, a banya can range from a small, wooden shed in the country for just a few, close friends to a huge, ornate building which can accommodate dozens of people, such as the famous Sanduny (see contact details in Chapter 18). You will need a few items to make your experience complete, although these can be purchased or rented at the higher-end places. If going to a banya at somebody’s dacha, check if these will be provided although many shops sell the basics. Generally you pay an entry fee which allows you two hours, although you can add on additional hours if you’re not ready to leave. Many banya frequenters wear a felt hat which helps to protect your ears from the extreme heat. You strip off completely and head into a room where the temperature is close to 100C, so slipping on a pair of flip-flops is a wise move, as is a cloth sheet to wear around your waist if you’re a little shy. It does however double up into a mat to sit on once inside although some opt to stand; you don’t need a PhD in physics to quickly realize that hot air rises so the higher up you are, the hotter it gets. And the longer you stay in the sweatier you become, although hardcore banya aficionados can be seen beating each other with birch branches, called a ‘vyenik’ which improves the circulation, apparently. Water will periodically be poured onto the hot stones to create additional steam, and eucalyptus is occasionally added for a more authentic smell. Don’t be surprised if one of the more experienced participants starts to wave a towel around to spread the heat. Once you reach the stage when your body cannot stand any more heat, you exit the banya, and into a cold pool to wash off all the sweat. Depending on how sophisticated your banya is, this could be anything from a large swimming pool to a pond in the garden, and if you really want to show off in winter months, you can roll around in the snow although this is best done after a few vodka shots. On the subject of refreshments, you won’t be surprised to hear that there is often some alcohol involved after you’ve rinsed the sweat off yourself. Most public banyas will have a small café or shop selling beer, soft drinks and snacks although the swankier the venue, the better the fare (Sanduni boasts an extensive menu, featuring Russian, Georgian and Uzbek cuisine, plus an assortment of beverages from draught beer to vodka, cognac and champagne). Then it’s back in for another round of banya, a ritual which will be repeated several times until you’re ready to keel over. Unless you are lucky enough to have your own banya (or visit someone who does), or rich enough to rent out the entire premises, it’s likely to be a same-sex affair but it’s all completely innocent. Do bring along some soap, shampoo and a towel for showering at the end. Banyas are generally geared towards men but ladies can enjoy them too; some venues have a separate female section. If you only learn one banya-related phrase, it has to be ‘S lyokhkim parom’ which very roughly translates as ‘I hope the steam goes easy on you’. 108 109 XIII. How Russians view foreigners Those living and working in, or travelling to Russia Russians are genuinely interested in what foreigners (mainly Westerners) think of them and equally how they, themselves are perceived. They are acutely aware that Russia’s image abroad is on the whole rather negative and the widely held belief is that their country is unfairly targeted by a hostile western media with an anti-Russian agenda who fear a resurgent Russia. Of particularly annoyance is what they believe to be the double standards of the West selectively trying to force democracy on certain other countries, whilst ignoring the human rights abuses of dictatorial regimes who claim to be on their side. Modern Russia as a country is little more than a generation old and has come a long way in a very short space of time since the fall of communism. Russians are keen to learn but resent being dictated to, and find this attitude particularly condescending. The best advice is not to try to change Russia; the country will develop at its own pace and in its own way. One of the better legacies of the Soviet Union was the educational system which was free for all, and on the whole was pretty good. Literacy throughout the CIS region remains high, even in remote, impoverished areas and Russians who you meet in a business situation tend to be very well educated & highly knowledgeable in areas of culture, politics and geography. In fact the average Russian will probably know more about your country’s history and literature than you do. Many can be disappointed at how little foreigners know about Russia, and unless they are a Russophile, how little curiosity they have for Russia’s cultural heritage and customs. You will earn yourself considerable kudos before travelling to, or relocating to Russia by familiarizing yourself with some background in the country’s history and geography. I often hear from Russians that ‘oh, foreigners think that there are bears in the streets in Russia’ and are surprised when I reply that ‘no, in actual fact Russians think that foreigners think that there are bears in the streets in Russia’. For the record, I have seen bears in Russia on precisely two occasions; once at the Moscow zoo and the other time, in the wild with its cubs on the Kamchatka peninsula, two hours’ helicopter flight from the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. So yes, there are bears in Russia, but apart from in captivity they are a long way from human habitation. Remember, Russia’s a big country. 110 111 I ONCE ASKED A RUSSIAN ‘WHY IS THE AIM OF COMMUNISM TO MAKE EVERYBODY POOR’? HE REPLIED ‘THAT ISN’T THE AIM, THAT’S THE RESULT’! Once you break through the gruff exterior, Russians are extremely hospitable people who will go out of their way to help you – once you get to know them, that is and have gained their trust. Russia is a country of extremes, in more ways than pure distance. One simple example was when travelling the trans-Siberian railway, the world’s longest train journey from Vladivostok to Moscow, over 9,200 km. We attempted to buy tickets on the overnight train to Khabarovsk yet were being shouted at by the cashier who was questioning what the hell we were doing here and why we as foreigners weren’t being accompanied (admittedly this was the early 1990s and Vladivostok had only recently opened up – even to Russians. Under Communism as a strategic port it was deemed a closed city) – surely it would have been easier to simply sell us the tickets for the next train and get rid of us, oh, but no! She had to over-complicate the situation and create a huge fuss before we eventually purchased our freedom out of town. We couldn’t help wondering why she had been so rude – and we’d faced a similar story when we tried to check into a hotel several days before, when we were greeted with a ‘myest nyet’ (we’re full) by an obstinate, middle-aged woman at the reception. Yet when we tried again some twenty minutes later – it was the only hotel in town which accepted foreigners, a younger lady happily gave us a room, of which there turned out to be plenty. On the train where we shared a carriage with a family from Khabarovsk, who upon hearing that we had nowhere booked for the following night (online bookings didn’t exist back then) invited us to stay the night in their apartment, and their son gave us a tour of the city, followed by some beers and ‘vobla’ (dried fish snacks). Back home, everything is nicely boxed up – nobody will shout at you, yet nobody will go much out of their way to help you. The moral here is that you need to be prepared for either eventuality. Much has been written about the famous Russian soul, and few outsiders will ever fully comprehend it. The easiest way to sum it up is that when Russians do something, they do it ‘ot dushi’, meaning from the soul – ie, because they genuinely want to. Otherwise they simply wouldn’t do it, unless forced to do so, in which case they’d probably do it badly as their heart isn’t in it. Russians sometimes feel that all too often in the West, when people do something to help someone else, it is either because feel indebted to that person, hope that person will reciprocate at some stage in the future or (in the case of charity) it’s to make themselves feel better. But not done simply because you wanted to do it just to please that person. Russia vs America One country that Russians frequently compare and measure themselves against is the United States of America. In a similar way that older Brits may mourn the loss of the British Empire, there are Russians who also feel saddened by the demise of the USSR. This is not only at having ‘lost’ the other 14 republics but also at the fact that they believed that they were very much on par with the United States of America, even if the truth was rather different. I RECALL A CONVERSATION WHEN ONE RUSSIAN ASKED THE OTHER ‘WHY IS IT THAT AMERICA IS SO RICH WHEN AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID’? OVERHEARING THIS QUESTION, AN AMERICAN INTERJECTED ‘BECAUSE IN RUSSIA PEOPLE SIT AROUND THINKING ABOUT MAKING MONEY WHEREAS IN AMERICA WE JUST DO IT’. A good analogy for understanding the difference between Russians and Americans is by describing Americans as peaches (soft on the outside; easy to get to know but hard deep down) and Russians as coconuts (tough to penetrate but much softer once you’re on familiar terms). Russians seem to enjoy a love-hate relationship with America; on the one hand a substantial number of Russians and other CIS citizens have emigrated there since the fall of communism and as their friends & family visit, they have witnessed life on the other side. It’s usually a combination of envy (high living standards, a strong community spirit) mixed with relief that Russia is so much deeper since they perceive Americans to be superficial and insular, taking little interest in the greater world outside of their country. America’s image suffers from the increase in Russian nationalism, driven by the Kremlin playing the tough guy to a domestic image, wanting to demonstrate that all Russia’s woes are as a result of American foreign policy whose sole desire is to bring Russia to its knees. With a statecontrolled media, you would be surprised how many Russians, especially 112 113 the less-well educated genuinely swallow this propaganda, and refuse to comprehend that nowadays America might have other priorities. Some are even shocked to learn that America ISN’T purely focused on Russia, as surely it should be. XIV. Charity, Corporate Social Responsibility Your firm’s presence in Russia 114 115 Many visitors to Russia, and even Russians themselves cite envy (zavist) as one of the social problems facing the country today. The Soviet Union was nowhere near as equal as it liked to portray itself to the outside world – contrary to popular belief, not all Soviet citizens were paid the same, but inequality has soared since the beginning of capitalism in the early 1990s. The majority of the population struggled to adjust to life in a free-market society, with practically no safety net in the form of a welfare state that they had previously become accustomed to. Particularly hard to fathom was for state employees, factory workers or pensioners who had received no income in months and were left nearly penniless, seeing flash, ‘new Russians’ driving around in expensive, foreign cars and throwing money around as if there were no tomorrow. Although living standards have risen considerably across the board since Mr Putin’s rise to power, the gap between rich and poor in Russia – and sometimes even more so in certain CIS countries, is staggering. However, when Russians talk about white envy (belaya zavist) they in fact mean that whilst they are mildly jealous, they are in fact happy for you. If your firm is well established or planning to expand in Russia then there is a good chance that you will want to contribute to those less well-off in the country. Corporate Social Responsibility is still in its relative infancy in Russia, with charity still not well understood, and even less so in many CIS countries. Under communism, charities as such did not exist as it was the state’s role to look after its subjects so you are effectively dealing with a new entity here. The authorities’ overall perception of charity work is nowhere near as positive as it is back home. Whereas people in the West see it as giving something back, Russian officials view it as meddling by outsiders, possibly disguised as tax avoidance, a front for a religious cult or in worst cases, even espionage. Those in charge of the country still see their role as ensuring that everyone lives equally and fairly (even if this was never the case during Soviet rule and most definitely is not the case today) so any outside ‘help’ is therefore proof that the state is unable to provide for all. Which it clearly can’t, yet those at the top still prefer to cling to the ideology that the state knows best and outside assistance is neither welcome, nor required. Slowly but surely, attitudes are changing for the better and there are an increasing number of beneficial, gross-roots projects but it would be wise to seek advice before wading in with great intentions. Many Russians are themselves skeptical as to the benefits of charity, assuming (and sometimes, unfortunately not without good reason) that any money donated to a local hospital or orphanage is more likely to end up in the director’s pocket than reaching those it was intended to benefit. Although the entire Former Soviet Union has a lengthy list of social ills ranging from poverty causes by unemployment in some of the more remote southern republics to rampant alcoholism in areas further north, the biggest difference you can probably make is assistance with disadvantaged young people, in particular orphans. However, showing up at the local orphanage with armfuls of presents at Christmas might seem like a laudable thing to do, yet in practice, simply creates a dependency culture. Often the personal time you spend may be equally as important as any funds that you donate. A Russian friend who visited the UK back in the late 1990s commented to me that he couldn’t believe how many ‘invalids’ there were on the streets of London. It quickly dawned on him, however that back home there are just as many, but they are confined to a life indoors. Most buildings, both public and private are woefully under-equipped to handle wheelchairs, or anyone with any other disability, for that matter. There are a growing number of reputable organisations which are helping to improve the quality of life for those affected, and the perception of the population as a whole towards people with disabilities is beginning to change for the better. The various foreign business associations will be able to advise you as to how best to approach this delicate matter as almost all have made impressive inroads, even if it seems like a drop in the ocean. 116 117 XV. Life outside of Moscow and St Petersburg Just as London or New York are not representative of the United Kingdom or the United States respectively, Moscow, and to a certain extent St Petersburg are hardly accurate reflections of Russia as a whole. The bulk of the country’s wealth lies in the capital, and Moscow is where most decisions are made. Even if your company’s main focus is a remote part of the country, as is generally the case with the natural resources industry, it’s likely that you will have (or need to have) an operation in Moscow, even if it just a small, representative office. Unlike in many countries where each region and city has its own identity, in Russia you effectively have Moscow, followed by St Petersburg, and then there’s everything else. Next in line are the fourteen ‘million’ cities (in Russian they’re known as the Millioniki as their population is over 1,000,000). In descending order of population they are Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Samara, Ufa, Rostov-onDon, Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, Perm, Volgograd and Krasnodar. Recent statistics show that around 80% of foreign visitors to Russia do not venture outside of either Moscow or St Petersburg so taking a trip outside of Russia’s top 2 is already a step off the beaten track. Just like in Russia as a whole, cities also largely follow a top-down system, where the local governor of the region has often been personally appointed by Mr Putin himself. In return for being highly loyal local to the Kremlin, this governor is pretty much given a free rein to run his territory as a personal fiefdom, with official blessing. The same goes for the mayor of a particular town or city, and the way in which the area is run depends largely on this one person and his entourage. In practice, most of the key businesses and industries will be controlled by a handful of Minigarchs who are likely to be close friends or even relatives of the head honcho. As usual, there are both advantages and disadvantages to this system. On the plus side, in regions where the governor is progressive and wants to attract foreign investment, there is less bureaucracy, minimal corruption and things can generally get done a lot more quickly – IF, and here’s the caveat, you can convince the governor (or at least someone influential within his team) that your project is worthwhile. The cities of Kaluga, Ulyanovsk, Tyumen and Kazan are four excellent examples of where the local governor has gone out of his way to make 118 119 outside investors feel welcome, and personally made himself available to ensure that things got done. This of course works fine for large-scale investment, and there are numerous examples of blue-chip multinational organizations which have built up production facilities at record speed and are enjoying nice returns on their investment. The disadvantage is that smaller fry can struggle to make themselves heard and with Russians’ dislike of delegating, even a workaholic governor with all the best intentions may take quite a while to get around to seeing you. On the flip side, for every modern governor there at least as many, if not more ‘Red Directors’ who view business, and in particular foreigners with suspicion. Unless he (and it’s always a ‘he’) can see a personal benefit to what it is you want to do, it’s likely to be a non-starter. These regions tend to rely on handouts from the federal budget for their very survival but are allowed to exist in this way as they generally support ailing industry that is viewed as potentially strategic, or of possible value to the state. The commercial section of your country’s Embassy will be able to advise as to where to venture – and how, plus the various Chambers of Commerce can provide useful information on local conditions. Both Embassies and Chambers of Commerce run trade missions (sometimes in conjunction with one another) to other cities in Russia, which can be an extremely useful way of meeting senior local officials, talking to well-established companies already on their ground (both local and international), plus of course mixing with other potential investors on the trip. Trade fairs, exhibitions and conferences in regional cities also offer excellent insights into conditions and specifics of the region – the key is to do your homework before committing, and it is absolutely essential that you have both local approval AND support. One interesting, relatively recent development is that regional governors are now beginning to come to Moscow and even abroad with their entourage in order to pitch for inward investment projects. This is a huge leap forward as previously they simply sat at home & waited for the opportunities to roll in. Whether this change in strategy has been ordered from above or is their own initiative is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless it is definitely pleasing for potential investors they at last feel wanted. Some regions appear to be taking this seriously, and have hired young, English-speaking advisors who have created literature on past successes coupled with advice for potential investors. There is most definitely life outside of the MKAD. Even cities with a few hundred thousand people now have decent enough hotels & restaurants, plus an airport with regular, scheduled flights to Moscow and/or the provincial capital. They may lack the glitz of Moscow but you won’t starve. THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST Known to Russians as ‘Dal’ny Vostok’, the Russian Far East (RFE) is a vast territory, spanning east to west from Lake Baikal all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and from north to south from the Arctic sea to Manchuria. Virtually empty of people, yet highly strategic, the region shares land borders with Mongolia, China and North Korea, plus maritime borders with both the USA and Japan. Resource rich yet at the same time remote, even from Moscow this region has seen its population fall from around 8 million in the last days of the USSR, to just over 6 million today, largely as a result of migration to the European part of Russia (plus also abroad), and to declining birth rates in general in Russia. This is slightly less than one person per square kilometer, making it one of the most sparsely populated regions on the planet. Natural Resources are the primary reason why many investors, both foreign and Russian are active here; the key sectors are in oil, mining and forestry. Other industries include shipping, fishing and light industry. Sakhalin is all about offshore oil, with the capital, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk hosting a plethora of energy and services companies all getting in on the action. Mining operations (anything from gold, to coal, to silver to diamonds) are typically centered in and around the regions of Chita, Yakutsk, Magadan, Khabarovsk, Chukotka and Kamchatka. Offices will be in the provincial capitals but the actual sites may be located hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from anywhere. In many cases, you’ll be lucky if there is even a dirt or ice road; more often than not you will need to charter a plane or helicopter. Transport and logistics are an issue. There are regular flights to most cities but they don’t come cheap and are prone to delays and cancellations thanks to the weather. Be realistic when planning schedules, allow at least a day either side of any trip, if only to help you to adjust to the extensive time difference, regardless of whether you are travelling from east or west. One foolproof way of getting around without delays is by train. The famous Trans-Siberian railway has been transferring passengers from Moscow to Vladivostok since 1916, and the journey can be 120 121 done non-stop in 7 days (as opposed to a 9 hour flight). There are also branch lines, such as the BAM (Baikalo-Amurskaya Railway) which follows a similar, but slightly more northernly route over the top of Lake Baikal. Recent extensions include reaching north up to Yakutsk (well, the town on the other side of the Lena river, if you don’t then mind taking a ferry to finish your journey) and there is currently talk of building a bridge to link the island of Sakhalin to the mainland. Interestingly, the RFE was only, finally connected to the rest of Russia by road in 2010, when Vladimir Putin famously drove a Lada along a stretch of the Amur Highway, between Chita and Khabarovsk. Although Russia drives on the right, almost three quarters of cars in the region are right hand drive, typically meaning that they (mainly second hand) are imports from nearby Japan. Vladimir Putin has recently put an emphasis on investment in the Far East in recent years and traditionally attends the Eastern Economic Forum, which has been taking place in Vladivostok in early September every year since 2015. The aim has been to revitalize business and attract foreign investment to the region. It’s a major event, and one worth attending if you’re interested in this part of the world: www.forumvostok.ru (in Russia and and English) XVI. CIS focus The ‘other’ Republics 122 123 ARMENIA Population – 3,000,000 Capital City – Yerevan (population – 1,000,000) Currency – Dram The world’s oldest Christian country (adopting the religion in AD301) as any Armenian will proudly inform you, Armenia has a glorious history but current conditions are slightly less rosy. To say that the end of the USSR spelt disaster for Armenia is a gross understatement; the economy literally evaporated overnight as subsidies from Moscow ground to an instant halt and the markets for uncompetitive goods that nobody needed, produced in the country, disappeared. Armenia was already reeling from a massive earthquake in Spitak, in the north of the country in 1988 which killed over 35,000 people (mostly crushed to death as substandard Soviet-built buildings collapsed on top of them), and to make matters worse was embroiled in the Nagorno-Karabakh war with neighbouring Azerbaijan over rival territory. A Russian brokered peace was administered in 1994 but the two countries still do not enjoy any diplomatic relations. The 1990s saw Armenia lurch from one crisis to another; shortages of food, water and electricity plagued the country, and in solidarity with its Azeri ‘brother’, Turkey closed its border with Armenia, effectively ensuring a near blockade, as the border with Azerbaijan is also firmly shut. The route north to mother Russia via Georgia has also restricted over the years due to a dive in their bilateral relations although there are signs of improvement here. Millions of Armenians have fled the country since independence in 1991, mainly for Russia but there are also large Armenian diasporas in France, the USA (primarily in Los Angeles and New York), Lebanon and throughout the CIS, although in practice this means mostly in Russia. The country has been kept alive by generous donations from wealthy Armenians abroad, as well as migrant workers in Russia sending back a chunk of their wage packet to their family. A reported 25% of Armenia’s GDP is made up of remittances. Local infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, tunnels and new buildings are impressive for a small, poor landlocked, country – the newly built international school in Dilijan is just one example of what is being achieved to modernize the country. Investment opportunities however remain nominal for outsiders, apart from a smattering of mining, construction, infrastructure and tourism projects, although most tourists are from the diaspora – which is a shame as Armenia boasts a rich history. The official population officially hovers around the 3 million mark although is rumoured to be lower as those of working age seek better opportunities, and above all work abroad. Slowly but surely improvements are being felt, and the downtown area of Yerevan has undergone a makeover in recent years with new hotels, boutique stores and cafes continuing to open up. The country now has a new airline, Aircompany Armenia, after Armavia went bust in 2013. The official language is Armenian which is a separate branch of the Indo-European tree and is partially related to Persian (Armenian shares a small border with Iran to the south, and with whom it maintains surprisingly good relations; in fact Armenian is one of few countries in the world which can claim to get on with the USA, Russia and Iran)! Armenians call their country ‘Hayastan’ and Armenian even has its own alphabet, although Russian is widely spoken, especially in the capital Yerevan. English is on the increase, particularly amongst young, urban Armenians. Visas are not required for citizens from the UK, European Union or the USA. Canadian, South African, Australian, New Zealand, Israeli and even Turkish passport holders can buy one on arrival without an LOI. AZERBAIJAN Population – 10,000,000 Capital City – Baku (population – 2,250,000) Currency – Azerbaijani Manat The rise of Azerbaijan, and its relative wealth can be summed up in one simple word; oil. The black gold has funded a construction boom in downtown Baku, the capital that is situated 28 meters below sea level. The city certainly oozes wealth as can be seen by the number of shops selling the latest fashionable clothes and accessories, flash cars and top-end recreation venues, from hotels to restaurants and nightclubs. Nevertheless, many ordinary Azeris feel that the oil boom has provided them with little obvious improvements to their everyday lives, benefitting 124 125 mainly the corrupt elite, and that Baku’s beauty is all for show. Azerbaijan likes to portray itself as a ‘Europe meets the Orient’ destination, although ’Moscow meets the Mediterranean’ would possibly be a more accurate description – in a positive sense, of course. President Aliyev keeps a tight grip on power, and is accused of human rights abuses by some western countries as no real opposition to his family’s rule is tolerated. Most however prefer not to meddle in the country’s internal affairs to keep the oil pumping, turning a blind eye although in fairness Aliyev is genuinely a popular figure who has transformed the country from a remote backwater to a mini-Dubai with international recognition. Despite being a majority Muslim country, Azerbaijan prides itself on being tolerant of other peoples and religions. Azeris prefer western-style clothing; any women you see in Baku wearing headscarves will almost certainly be tourists from the Arab Gulf countries. Most restaurants (apart from fast food joints) serve alcohol, and the few Azeris who don’t drink certainly won’t mind if you have one. Or even two. One area where Azerbaijan has made considerable improvements is in the ease of doing business – the country was recently ranked 57th in the Global Competitiveness Report, which is significantly higher than other CIS countries. The oil is predicted to continue flowing for years to come, so with the right leadership Azerbaijan can look forward to a bright future. Although the currency was devalued in 2015 after global oil prices crashed, this proved to be a temporary blip. A dark spot is the frozen conflict with Armenia, which shows no sign of being resolved anytime soon; the two sides are locked in an apparent stalemate. Azerbaijan has been using some of its oil revenues to purchase military equipment and has been making threatening noises, although it is highly unlikely to attack Armenia – Russia maintains three military bases there in an attempt to keep stability in this volatile region. Whilst being the mainstay of the economy, oil however isn’t the only revenue earner. There is now more of an emphasis on diversity away from the energy sector, such as construction, agriculture and food production; don’t be surprised to see the Made in Azerbaijan slogan proudly showing on many goods. Tourism is the latest big thing, centred around the increasing number of events which Baku is fond of hosting, many of a sporting nature (think football or Formula 1), plus international conferences. Oil however dominates, plus the related services built up around the international majors, and of course the state energy giant SOCAR. Azeri language is closely related to Turkish, enough so that both peoples can just about understand each other. Although you’ll rarely see anything written in Cyrillic, Russian is still widely taught – and spoken by most people in business and in services positions, with English gaining in popularity, thanks in no small part to the large Expatriate community based in Baku. The good news is that Azerbaijan has introduced a relatively simple e-visa process, saving you the hassle of making a trip to an Azeri Embassy. However, these are intended either for people visiting on a business trip, or as tourists. They are generally single entry, valid for one month; the point being that you cannot use these to work in the country. BELARUS Population – 9,500,000 Capital City – Minsk (population – 2,000,000) Currency – Belarusian Ruble If you come to Belarus expecting a European version of North Korea then you’re in for something of a disappointment. Belarus’s long-serving President, Alexander Lukashenko has been dubbed ‘Europe’s Last Remaining Dictator’ by the USA, a title which he seems to relish but Belarus’s capital, Minsk is no Pyongyang. Granted at first glance Belarus looks like a throwback to the days of the Soviet Union; much of the country’s economy remains under state control. It is still heavily reliant on Russia for the import of raw materials, and as an export market for Belarusian goods, both FMCG, textiles & heavy machinery. Visitors’ initial comments are how little advertising there is on the streets compared to back home but the country, and especially the capital are kept spotlessly clean. Downtown Minsk is a classic example of Soviet planning on a grand scale, since the city was rebuilt after having been completely destroyed during the Second World War. In fact it’s fair to say that parts of Minsk resemble one huge war memorial, but when you think what Belarus went through (the 126 127 country – albeit as part of the Soviet Union, lost around three million people, almost a third of its population) you can begin to understand why its people don’t want to forget their sacrifice. Visit the new Belarusian Patriotic War Museum in Minsk or the nearby Khatyn memorial for better understanding. Belarus is still a tricky place to do business, but the climate does seem to be improving as Mr Lukashenko tries to rely less on what are essentially Russian subsidies in the form of cheap gas, amongst other carrots. Some western firms who previously relied on a local partner to sell their products are now setting up shop themselves, and Minsk now boasts decent hotels, bars, shopping malls and restaurants; something that was unthinkable only a decade ago. The Chinese are muscling in too, although the biggest investor by far is Russia, and Russian nationals make up most of the (admittedly small number of) tourists; many come to visit the twenty or so casinos, which are banned in Russia, and also in neighbouring Ukraine. Unemployment is low by European standards although this can be attributed to Soviet-style policies of employment; more people hired than required in state institutions, and salaries are therefore hard to live on in these roles. Many younger, more opportunistic Belarusians have left the country in search of higher-paid work elsewhere – mainly to Russia but also further afield, such as to Germany and the USA. Mr Lukashenko preaches stability as his motto, and raison-d’etre for staying in power, although the economy remains relatively weak. Although Belarusian and Russian are the two official languages of Belarus, in reality everyone in big cities speaks Russian as their native tongue with Belarusian only really used in rural areas. Signs could be in either, but the preference is very much for Russian, apart from the occasional government building, although there are plenty of similarities between the two. Alexander Lukashenko has in the past been ridiculed for promoting Belarusian despite having a poor grasp of the language himself. Don’t expect much English spoken outside of top end hotels and perhaps a few restaurants, although slowly, more signs are appearing in English to accommodate non-Russian speaking visitors. The majority of nationalities can now enter Belarus visa free, but only by flying into, and out of Minsk International Airport (MSQ), you’ll be stamped in and you can stay for up to 30 days. Land borders still require a visa obtained in advance although there is talk of moving these to visa-free too, in due course. The exception is flying from Russia; you MUST either have a Belarusian visa, or fly via a third country (usually Riga, Warsaw, or Vilnus) or you will be denied boarding. GEORGIA Population – 3,700,000 Capital City – Tbilisi (population – 1,150,000) Currency – Lari Not to be confused with the American state, Georgia (’Sakartvelo’ in Georgian) is in fact a sovereign country in the south Caucasus, but it is precisely this geographical location plus a complex ethnic make-up which have proved to be the country’s Achilles heel since independence in 1991. Georgia suffered from economic collapse as well as civil unrest with two regions – Abkhazia & South Ossetia breaking away. Following the brief war with Russia in 2008 both have since declared their independence, although hardly anyone recognizes them. It was only with the Rose Revolution in 2003 that saw the overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze did rampant corruption come to an abrupt end. So much so that Georgia has one of the world’s most favourable investment climates, and has attracted considerable inward investment, much of it from western countries, plus neighbouring Turkey. Growth in the first few years since Mikheil Saakashvili came to power was impressive, albeit from a low base, and poverty rates declined significantly, particularly in & around the capital Tbilisi. Some multinational companies use their office in Tbilisi as a base to cover the southern Caucasus since for political reasons if you are based in Azerbaijan you cannot realistically trade with Armenia, and vice versa; Georgia in such cases acts as a useful buffer between the two. It was the war with Russia in 2008 that damaged Georgia’s economy most of all; Russia had always been Georgia’s main trading partner and key market for Georgian produce, chiefly wine. Mr Putin took an instant dislike to Mr Saakashvili’s pro-western stance, and NATO ambitions, and when Saakashvili gambled on bringing back South Ossetia under Georgian control by force, Russia needed little encouragement in coming to the rescue. Just as relations with Russia appeared to be getting back on track, Georgia’s northern neighbour abruptly cancelled all flights between the two countries in the summer of 2019. These ups and downs over the past decade have forced Georgia to look elsewhere for new trading partners, mainly to Europe and to Asia. 128 129 Tbilisi, the capital has undergone a massive transformation in recent years, although if you step back a few streets from the very centre, much work remains to be completed. Roads have improved significantly as have the railways although the mountainous terrain keeps more rural towns isolated and little has changed there in decades; villagers effectively eke out a subsistence lifestyle. Tourism is playing an increasingly important role in the country’s economy and development, despite logistical difficulties for Russian visitors. However, Georgia’s location is a hindrance – surprisingly few western airlines fly to Tbilisi, even today although Kutaisi, the third largest city is beginning to attract low-costers. The world is finally waking up to the secret that Georgia offers stunning scenery, historic, old churches, often high up in the mountains and beaches on the Black sea. It’s also a ridiculously good value for money destination, with Georgian food and wine – and the famed Borjomi mineral water being worth the visit alone. Don’t plan on losing much weight during your visit as you won’t be able to resist yet another delicious khachapuri. Talk to Georgians and they are indeed grateful that petty corruption that used to make life a misery has come to an end, yet unemployment remains high. Those who have a job complain that they don’t earn enough, and prices continue to rise. Squabbles among the main political parties dominate local news and demonstrations have been frequent in the centre of Tbilisi. Georgians remain mixed in their opinion about whether or not the country is headed in the right direction. Georgian is a language isolate, having no proven connection to any other language, and it has its own, unique alphabet. It is the native language of all Georgians, and since Saakashvili came to power, the teaching and subsequently the use of Russian has dwindled significantly in place of English (Saakashvili studied in the USA and speaks English fluently). Nevertheless, anyone aged over 40 should have a good command of Russian, and younger Georgians are keen to learn English, especially in Tbilisi where over a quarter of Georgians live. In an attempt to encourage both tourism and inward investment, visas are not required for passport holders of all but the world’s poorest countries. KAZAKHSTAN Population – 18,500,000 Capital City – Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana (population – 1,000,000) Currency – Tenge The second largest country in the CIS by geography and the ninth largest country in the world – please get any thoughts of Borat out of your head immediately before visiting (the movie was filmed in Romania in case you were wondering). Instead, come & be part of one of the better economic secrets that the Eurasian region has to offer. Much of the country is steppe, meaning flat, grassy land where little grows, and between cities, there’s an awful of a lot of nothing in between. Yet what Kazakhstan does have going for it is natural resources in abundance. Mining is concentrated mainly in the north and east, there are copious amounts of oil by the Caspian Sea to the west, plus manufacturing further south. Add to this a government who are probusiness and welcome foreign investment, plus who manage to get along well with their key neighbours, plus western powers, and you have a recipe for a country going places. The main difficulty for investors is geography; Kazakhstan is a long way from virtually anywhere. Even from Moscow, Dubai, Beijing, Delhi or Istanbul to Almaty, you’re looking at a flight of at least four hours. This of course means less competition for those who do make the journey and the pickings are generally good if you can get it right. Of course it’s not all good news; the regime has little tolerance for dissent of any kind, resulting in no creditable opposition and the authorities’ human rights record is at best questionable. The GDP may be on par with Malaysia but there is huge inequality with many feeling left out and struggling to find their place in the new Kazakhstan, and corruption through nepotism is still a major issue for investors. One bright stop in particular was the smooth (& not to mention rather unexpected) transition of power from Nursultan Nazarbayev who had ruled since Soviet times, to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Nazarbayev is rumoured to still pull many strings from behind the scenes and therefore isn’t quite out of the picture as such, but most importantly, for foreign investors it does appear to be more or less business as usual. Rumours continue about further devaluations of the Tenge although despite the volatility regarding the world price of commodities, Kazakhstan does 130 131 seem to have largely weathered the storm since the global financial crisis a decade ago. However, ‘new’ is the operative word in the capital, recently renamed Nur-Sultan (from Astana, which translates as ‘capital’ in Kazakh), which an Australian Expatriate described as ‘Canberra on steroids’. Nur-Sultan was little more than a provincial backwater town in the middle of the northern steppe when it was chosen to supersede Almaty in 1997 and is now a testament to Kazakhstan’s vision for the next generation – hopefully a bright future, albeit a cold one in the winter when temperatures plummet. Almaty remains the commercial capital as Kazakhstan’s largest city and the population have also witnessed their city boom in recent years; quite a feat when expansion is made all the more difficult by the surrounding Tian Shen mountains – stunning as they are, but hard to build on. Given the distances between cities and the poor quality of many provincial roads, getting around is best done in the air. The country’s leading airline is Air Astana and has hubs in both Almaty and Nur-Sultan, with frequent flights to most other cities of any significance in Kazakhstan, as well as throughout the CIS, particularly to Russia. Their safety record is impressive, particularly compared with other carriers in the region. Middle class Kazakhs have money in their pockets and love quality products – they’re ready to pay a premium as it’s a long (& pricey) flight to go shopping for a weekend so most stay put and spend locally. Kazakhstan boasts around 130 different nationalities, although everyone seems to get along fine. Around 70% of Kazakhstan is ethnic Kazakh, with Russians making up almost a quarter of the population, although mixed marriages are considerably more common in Kazakhstan than in the other four Central Asian countries. Ethnic Russians tend to live in the larger cities and their presence over the past two centuries has had a profound influence urban Kazakhs, who differ significantly from their rural counterparts. The Kazakhs you come across in a business situation will be very well educated, either locally, in Russia or even further afield), and will wear western-style clothes. Alcohol consumption is the norm rather than the exception, and even if someone isn’t drinking (hey, they may be driving; Kazakhs love their cars too), they won’t object to you having a glass or two. Hospitality is a big issue in Kazakhstan, since given the remoteness, the country doesn’t see as many visitors as it should. Therefore you are likely to be given a warm welcome, and consider staying on an extra day or two to visit Almaty (or Nur-Sultan), especially if you’ve only been to the Caspian. Both street and city names can cause confusion in Kazakhstan, as many have been changed to a more Kazakh-sounding version yet locals often refer to the old, Soviet name. Some, such as Ust-Kamenogorsk, Uralsk or Semipalatinsk (now Oskemen, Oral and Semey respectively) are guessable yet the capital Nur-Sultan is now the 6th name for the city in under 200 years (in the past it has been called Akmoly, Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Akmola, and most recently, until the change in 2019, Astana). Almaty was until recently better known as Alma-Ata yet when founded was in fact Verny. Officially Kazakh and Russian have dual official status, but in larger cities such as Almaty and Karaganda (in fact any with a sizable ethnic Russian population), Russian dominates. Curiously Almaty doesn’t have what could be described as a single, main street running through the centre, such as Moscow’s Tverskaya or Kiev’s Khreshchatik; it’s simply a criss-cross of roads (admittedly some larger than others), and confusingly the city slopes downwards to the north. Hint, the mountains behind you are in the south – on the other side is Kyrgyzstan and lake Issyk-Kul, if you fancy a hike of several days. There also a knack to getting around town; the majority of Almaty streets have changed names since independence, with Kazakh warrior heroes taking preference over Soviet Communists. This would not be a problem in itself (many other CIS cities have swapped some road and metro names) yet old habits die hard and the majority of the population, regardless of ethnicity still refer to the ‘old’ version even though street signs list only the new one. And just to make your life even more difficult, since roads can be many miles long you will need to tell your driver not only the (old) name, but also the name of the nearest intersection. Sounds daunting but you get used to it – just allow ample time as buildings are large and what looks like a stone’s throw away on a map could be a half hour drive, and traffic jams are common throughout the day. A metro has been built recently in Almaty but currently only has one line and whilst beautifully decorated is of limited use to 132 133 business travelers, but cabs are cheap and plentiful. Do keep some energy for Almaty’s nightlife which has to be the best in Central Asia, boasting an excellent & growing selection of bars, cafes, restaurants and nightclubs. There is a solid Expat crowd which is welcoming and easy to break into, and plenty of networking events if you’re new to town – the remoteness results in foreigners still being much more of a novelty than in Moscow. The only ones complaining are those who have been forced to relocate to the capital or to the Caspian! The Kazakh language is currently undergoing a transition from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, and the process isn’t without its teething problems. Even using the Cyrillic alphabet, Kazakh had 9 letters for sounds which don’t exist in Russian, so series of accents have been added to supposedly ‘help’ make matters easier. Therefore don’t be surprised to see the country written as ‘Qazaqstan’, although only time will tell as to how smoothly (or not) this move will be. For decades, particularly during the Soviet period, the better educated the ethnic Kazakhs are, the less likely it is that may speak their own language in larger cities. In fact it was viewed as backwards to speak Kazakh, since Russian was the language of the USSR and this meant everything. Kazakhs even have an expression ‘Shala-Kazakh’ for Kazakhs who don’t know Kazakh, or speak it badly. Nevertheless, finally, and thanks to some government-backed initiatives, Kazakh is most certainly making a comeback even if many Kazakhs feel more comfortable using Russian (or even English) in business. Even some of the ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan learn some Kazakh now, and at the same time English is becoming more popular, but is still not widely spoken outside of business circles. Citizens of most countries can now visit Kazakhstan for 30 days visa-free, for either business or tourist purposes. Becoming legally employed in Kazakhstan is a trickier issue as there is a law regarding local content (ie, for every foreigner employed, you need to ‘balance the books’ with nine locals on your payroll), so this is where outsourcing providers play a role. KYRGYZSTAN Population – 6,400,000 Capital City – Bishkek (population – 1,000,000) Currency – Som Kyrgyzstan may be a popular answer to pub quiz questions as one of the four countries in the world that has only one vowel (the others are Chad, Egypt and Cyprus to save you having to Google the answer) but rarely makes the international headlines. Except when there’s a coup, of which there have been two since independence in 1991. Whereas the other four Central Asian countries are ruled by autocratic leaders who’ve been there since Soviet times (or their predecessors were, and little else has changed), Kyrgyzstan kicked out the aged Askar Akaev in 2005, only to do to the same to Kurmanbek Bakiev in 2010. Bakiev had promised much, but only delivered a similar recipe of corruption and cronyism which was great for the tiny few in his clan who benefited, but kept the bulk of the population in poverty. After ethnic riots killed hundreds in Kyrgyzstan’s second city, Osh in the south (which has a large Uzbek minority) following the second coup in 2010, calm appears to prevail, although economically the country still struggles. Interestingly, Kyrgyzstan until recently was the only country in the world to house both a Russian, and an American military base (the latter used to act as a transit point for NATO supplies into Afghanistan) although under pressure from Russia, the Americans were recently, finally given the elbow. Kyrgyzstan may badly need the Yankee Dollar but it needs the Russian Ruble much more. Foreign investment is largely centered around the mining industry, as there are few other opportunities on offer. Kyrgyzstan is a mostly mountainous country. More than a million of its people work abroad (typically in Kazakhstan or Russia) as migrant workers. These remittances are crucial to keeping their country afloat, as well paid employment back home remains scare. Add to this a lack of strategic investment thanks to perceived political instability and government-level corruption, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. The people of Kyrgyzstan continue to vote with their feet by leaving the country and heading abroad in search of better employment opportunities and few seem optimistic about better times lying ahead anytime soon. Tourism is one bright spot, and the removal of visas for all but the most tin-pot regimes has brought in more foreign visitors; prices are low and the mountain scenery is stunning, especially around lake Issyk-Kul, the world’s second highest. There’s little in the way of mustsee sights in the drab, Soviet-built capital, Bishkek, but it’s hard to visit Kyrgyzstan without spending at least a day in the capital, so make the most of it. Visit Osh bazaar close to the centre for some great souvenirs and you’d be surprised at what the nightlife throws up if you know where to look. 134 135 Curiously Bishkek was recently ranked as one of the cheapest capital cities in the world to live in, and is thus marketing itself as an inexpensive place to learn Russian. There are certainly worse places to spend a summer; the only major outlay will be your air fare. An increasing number of airlines fly into Bishkek despite its remoteness. In terms of language, Kyrgyzstan is the arguably the least localised of the Central Asian countries, despite most of the Russians having fled during the economic chaos in the 1990s. There have been some efforts to promote the Kyrgyz language although many signs are still in Russian only and in urban areas all Kyrgyz speak good, if not fluent Russian – in fact in Bishkek itself, Russian certainly dominates in business circles . Little English is spoken apart from those in the tourist industry although it is slowly on the rise. No visa required for most nationalities (ie, EU, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & Turkey); South Africans and Israelis can buy a visa upon arrival without an LOI. MOLDOVA Population – 2,700,000 Capital City – Chisinau (population – 700,000) Currency – Leu (plural – Lei) Moldova sometimes feels more like a remote province of Romania than a country in its own right, but that’s probably because essentially, that’s what is it. Formally founded when the MolotovRibbentrop pact was signed in 1939, dividing up large swathes of Eastern Europe into Soviet & Nazi spheres of influence, Moldova currently wins the booby prize for being the poorest country in Europe. Moldova has little going for it as far as the casual investor is concerned; there are no natural resources of any significance and wedged in between North-Eastern Romania and Western Ukraine gives the country little strategic importance or influence. It does hope to join the European Union at some stage although in reality this seems to a long way off, although Moldovan passport-holders may now visit (but not work in) the EU, visa free, the first CIS country to be granted such a privilege. There is one exception; wine. Produced in the region for centuries, the industry took a battering during Mikhail Gorbachev’s antialcohol campaign in the late 1980s, but has seen a revival in recent years and some of the better wines actually taste quite good & are pretty cheap when sampled locally. The smattering of tourists who visit Moldova usually take in a wine tour, and the Milestii Mici complex is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for having the largest wine cellars in the world, containing almost two million bottles. The second largest, Cojusna is also worth a visit & is closer to Chisinau, although both recommend that you book tours in advance as Moldova still isn’t really geared up to individual tourists just rocking up unexpected. The capital city, Chisinau (pronounced ‘Kish-in-ow’ in Moldovan, but Russian speakers refer to it as ‘Kish-in-yov’) thinks that it has undergone somewhat of a facelift in recent years, but in reality little has changed. Soviet-era high rise blocks of apartments dominate the skyline and there are few places of interest to visit other than in & around the main street, Stefan Cel Mare. For those wanting to experience a little piece of Soviet nostalgia, take a two hour drive (or train) east to the breakaway province of Transdniestria (Pridnestrovia in Russian), on the border with Ukraine. Incorrectly assuming that at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova would be re-incorporated into Romania proper, the ethnic Russians and Ukrainians who lived in the more builtup Transdniestria region took up arms and broke away from Moldova. A stalemate has ensued since 1992 but that hasn’t stopped Transdniestria from issuing its own currency, the Transdniestrian Ruble (worthless outside of the ‘country’ but makes great souvenirs). Their flag is the only one is the world to display the hammer and sickle, despite not actually being a communist state. Nowadays, no additional documents are required to visit for short stays and it’s worth a day trip to the capital, Tiraspol or the nearby town of Bendery. You’ll be surprised that such places still exist in Europe, a classic example of a frozen-conflict, and what’s more, it’s perfectly safe, if a little bizarre. Transdniestria functions pretty much as a country proper, even though no-one, not even Russia recognizes it; Transdniestrian citizens carry Russian passports. The Moldovan language is almost identical to Romanian, which are Romance languages with similarities to Catalan, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. This helps to explain why so many Moldovan migrants head to southern Europe in search of work (plus to Russia too, of course, and some, also to neighbouring Ukraine) as well paid jobs are in short supply in Moldova. Moldova’s population has almost halved since the break up of the USSR. 136 137 Moldovans are more likely to speak, or at least partially understand these languages in favour of English. Russian is spoken by pretty much everyone, and in cities many people will speak it as their first language. No visas are required for the majority of nationalities (ie, EU, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Turkey), although South Africans DO need to apply in advance, AND require an LOI. TAJIKISTAN Population – 9,300,000 Capital City – Dushanbe (population – 800,000) Currency – Somoni Always the poorest of the USSR’s 15 Republics, Tajikistan remains impoverished more than a generation after the fall of the Soviet Union. The country endured a civil war between 1992-1997 when with Russian backing the current leader, Emomali Rakhmon finally ousted the Islamic fundamentalists. Tajikistan’s geography severely hinders progress, as it borders Afghanistan to the south, China’s Xinjiang province to the east (over the Pamir mountains), Kyrgyzstan to the north (also over the Pamirs) and Uzbekistan to the west, with whom it rarely sees eye-toeye. This is partly a contest of egos but also a fight over who controls the region’s water supply – see the Uzbekistan chapter for more details on this touchy subject. President Rakhmon tolerates no dissent but his tight control over the country’s economy prevents growth, which is minimal. Potential projects in mining and hydro energy in the form of dams are fraught with wrangling, both legal and political and take forever to get off the ground; inward investment is minimal despite some recent efforts to market Tajikistan as a place to do business. Heroin smuggling from Afghanistan across the porous, mountainous border represents one of the few ways of making serious money, despite Russian attempts to prevent it, as that’s where much of the finished product ends up. Tajikistan is heavily depending on remittances from migrant workers who mainly toil on construction projects in Russia, bringing in almost 50% of the country’s GDP. Rakhmon is fully aware of his dependency on mother Russia yet from time to time irks the hand that feeds his country by behaving irrationally, such as threatening to ban the teaching of Russian in schools, or de-Russifying Tajik surnames (he was previously known as Rakhmonov, before dropping the ‘ov’ ending as it sounded ‘too Russian’). The NATO-led operation in Afghanistan had let to Tajikistan being used as a base for logistical support, and brought in much-needed funding. This has now all but dried up as the Allies withdrew, and without much-needed reforms the economy is unlikely to show many signs of growth. The Capital Dushanbe (which curiously means ‘Monday’ in Tajik) seems affluent enough, with plenty of decent shops, restaurants and even Hyatt & Hilton hotels, and everyone seems to have the latest mobile phone. Yet in rural areas people live close to a subsistence existence, relying on their animals, the crops they grow and money sent home by the men in their family working in Russia. Not that this stops the government embarking on seemly pointless, grandiose efforts to prove itself to the few who are paying any attention, such as building the world’s biggest library, tallest flagpole, largest tea house, and most recently an enormous theatre with the largest capacity in Central Asia. Dushanbe is adorned with Soviet-style posters of Rakhmon greeting happy workers, overseeing the country’s modernization and praising people surrounding completed projects, few of which bear any resemblance to reality. Nobody is expecting any serious improvements anytime soon; if anything the Tajik security services have strengthened their grip on sociality as a whole under the guise of preventing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. There have been recent clampdowns on any media outlets, which report anything even vaguely critical of the government and social networking websites are frequently blocked. Tajik is the ‘odd man out’ of the Central Asian Republics as the language is closely related to Persian, rather than Turkish but has borrowed words from other languages, including Russian, which is still spoken in larger cities. Tajiks are well aware that knowledge of Russian allows them to work in Russia and other CIS countries. Tajikistan sees very few outsiders other than fellow CIS citizens or the occasional Chinese delegation (either as business people or tourists) so as a result English is virtually non-existent. E-visas are now available so long as you fly into Dushanbe airport (but not at other airports or at any land borders), with no LOI required. TURKMENISTAN Population – 5,250,000 Capital City – Ashgabat (population – 1,000,000) Currency – Turkmenistani Manat ! 138 139 Arguably the second most closed country in the world after North Korea, Turkmenistan thrives thanks to having the world’s fifth largest deposits of natural gas. It’s a bizarre destination that few people ever visit thanks to its self-isolation policies. EVERY Non-Turkmen citizen needs a visa, and these can be hard to obtain for anything other than standard tourist trips, and even these must be fully escorted by a local guide at almost all times. The capital Ashgabat (which charming translates into ‘city of love’) is plain bizarre – try to imagine Dubai under communist rule and you’ll come close. Stories about the previous president Saparmurat Niyazov’s eccentricities were well documented; he changed his own name to Turkmenbashi (father of all the Turkmen people), as well as some of the names of the months of the year to make them sound like his relatives. A few of the many banned pleasures were smoking OUTSIDE, dogs in the entire capital and then libraries were shut down everywhere except in the capital. Niyazov died in 2006 but the gold statues that he had built of himself in Ashgabat remain. He was replaced by his dentist, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov who hinted at reform but has kept to similar hard-line, closed policy, perhaps with fewer of the eccentricities of his predecessor. Doing business in Turkmenistan requires the patience of a saint and extreme persistence, preferably with high-level contacts thrown in for good measure as the entire country’s economy is under state control. The majority of business not surprisingly revolves around the gas industry, but also construction and some agriculture. Those firms who have made it in Turkmenistan enjoy something of a monopoly, so there is some reason to be optimistic, but be prepared for frustrations, and to be there for the long haul. The official language is Turkmen which is related to, but isn’t as close to Turkish as the name might suggest. Few Russians remain in Turkmenistan and its isolation means that Russian is not as widely spoken as in other CIS countries, even though the well educated will still speak it fluently. Good luck trying to get around in English, but then again you’ll almost certainly be escorted by an agency-approved, English-speaking guide anyway. Visas required by all (including for CIS citizens), and must be obtained in advance. An LOI is required, and foreigners will need to be accompanied throughout their stay in Turkmenistan. If you ! do make it there, pat yourself on the back as Turkmenistan is one of the world’s least visited countries, so you’re one of a select few. UKRAINE Population – 42,000,000 Capital City – Kiev (also spelt ‘Kyiv’) (population – 2,900,000) Currency – Hrivnia The name ‘Ukraine’ literally translates as ‘the edge’ which is rather fitting since Ukraine cannot quite decide whether she wants to be part of Europe (meaning in practice stronger ties to the European Union), or greater Russia to which there are closer ties historically, especially East of Kiev and along the Black Sea coast. There is an expression told to me by a local businessman in Ukraine, that ‘dyengi lyubyat tishinu’ (money prefers calmness), something which has been in short supply in Ukraine. One feels that if, since gaining independence in 1991, politicians spent less time fighting amongst themselves (sometimes physically) and more time sorting out the country’s woes, Ukraine would be in a stronger position. Ukrainians lament that where Poland went through a process of shock-therapy in the early 1990s, Ukraine got the shock without the therapy to back it up. Ukraine is the largest country wholly in Europe and has the second largest population of any CIS country, after Russia. It was the breadbasket of the USSR and hosted large numbers of factories geared to industrial and military production in the east of the country. It was very much the CIS’s gateway to Europe, so should have been in considerably stronger shape than it is, even before hostilities broke out in the eastern part of the country. Corruption is a serious issue, and much of the economy is controlled by a handful of well-connected Oligarchs who have little incentive to instigate change, despite ‘assistance’ from well-meaning foreign advisors. Ukraine found itself virtually bankrupt in the early 1990s, immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union when shortages were rife, and the country issues such as the Chernobyl disaster to cope with, something that it simply couldn’t afford. The ongoing, semi-frozen conflict with Russia has decimated the country’s heavy industry and the loss of Crimea to Russia has dealt a blow to the Ukraine’s tourism industry. Doing business in Ukraine at the best of times is no walk in the park, and many investors have left disappointed, some with horror stories of how their businesses were stolen – either by, or with the 140 141 help of corrupt officials. There is money to be made; just look at how many multinational corporations have offices in Kiev although this is a world away from village life where little has changed since the collapse of the USSR. The retail sector continues to expand, and gas exploration has suddenly become big news, with FMCG, Agricultural & Pharmaceutical companies also showing growth. Ukraine surprised many in the world in 2019 by electing reality TV actor and comedian, Vladimir (‘Volodymyr’ in Ukrainian) Zelensky to become President. The irony was that Zelensky had played the role of an ordinary man who rants about corruption, and then goes on to become President, in a popular TV series. His landslide victory was confirmation that Ukrainian voters were fed-up with old-style politics and were ready to give a chance to someone who had a clean background. Most felt they had little to lose. Zelensky certainly has a job on his hands but early signs have been encouraging; the economy appears to slowly, be turning around and general business confidence is on the increase. Huge challenges remain, however, such as how to stem the flow of young, educated Ukrainians from leaving the country (estimated at around 100,000 per month), plus managing relations with Russia. Language is a thorny issue in Ukraine and certainly divides opinion – Kiev vs Kyiv isn’t a fixture in the Ukrainian footballing calendar, it is in fact the transliteration of the Ukraine’s capital into Latin letters from Russian vs Ukrainian. Not surprisingly Ukrainians prefer the latter version, although for continuity’s sake many people stick with the old form, to avoid confusion. Similarly you will see differences between the Russian spelling of some cities in Ukraine, such as (Lvov vs Lviv, Kharkov vs Kharkiv and Odessa vs Odesa). In theory at least Ukrainian is the country’s only official language, but visit large cities such as Kiev or Odessa, and you’ll see a very different picture, where Russian is by far the most common language on everyone’s lips. Russian always dominated in eastern cities and in the Crimea, and this is even more the case now. English is becoming more widely spoken in parts of Ukraine that attract more tourists, namely Kiev, Odessa and Lvov thanks to visa-free travel for westerners in 2005 that remains to this day. The European low-coster airlines were quick to seize the moment when Ukrainians were granted visa-free access to the Schengen zone, with flights now available to numerous Ukrainian cities from almost every European destination you can think of (and even some you’ve never heard of). No visas are required for many nationalities, and for those who do, electronic visas are easily available online. Be aware that The Crimea is now de facto under Russian control so Russian visa requirements apply. Whilst hostilities are on-going, travel to the Eastern part of Ukraine (particularly the Donetsk & Lugansk regions) is not recommended, and in any case business has almost ground to a halt there. UZBEKISTAN Population – 34,000,000 Capital City – Tashkent (population – 2,500,000) Currency – Sum Uzbekistan is a country undergoing huge transition quite literally, as we speak. Shunned by most international businesses since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Central Asia’s most populous nation has put itself back on investors’ maps as the multinationals pour into, and set up shop in the capital, Tashkent to take advantage of what the country now has to offer. The years following independence were not easy ones. Uzbeks understood the need for keeping control of a volatile area, as Uzbekistan is the only Central Asian country to share a border with all of the other four ‘Stans. The key was to prevent a civil war in the 1990s, as was witnessed in Tajikistan (and which many believe could easily have occurred in Uzbekistan). Nonetheless, Uzbeks lamented the tight grip over the country, in every way, from politics to the economy, using the threat of Islamic fundamentalism as an excuse to clamp down on just about anything. Uzbekistan’s long term leader Islam Karimov died in September 2016 after having ruled the country with an iron fist since Soviet times. During his tenure, the country had an appalling record for human rights, events of which have been well documented, including a daylight massacre of hundreds of civilians in Andijan in 2005. Karimov seemed to care little what the world thought, and western-imposed sanctions had no obvious effect on his domestic or foreign policy. His trump card had always been his country’s strategic location, sharing a border with Afghanistan, which ironically was from where the Soviet Union first attacked, then finally retreated from their decade-long war that began in late 1979. As NATO forces began to leave Afghanistan and take their tons of military equipment with them, Uzbekistan was an obvious exit route; many times safer than through the mountainous, tribal areas of Pakistan. Successive western 142 143 governments seemed happy to effectively turn a blind-eye to Karimov’s abuses at home in return for safe passage out of Afghanistan, a picture, which obviously suited Karimov nicely. Uzbekistan is a country rich in natural resources, particularly gold, copper & coal, plus considerable gas reserves. There is massive agricultural potential, especially in the harvesting of cotton, traditionally one of Uzbekistan’s hard currency earners. It is however precisely cotton that has caused so much agony in the region since production was stepped up by Soviet planners in the 1960s. Cotton is an extremely thirsty crop and rivers that normally flow into the Aral Sea were diverted to grow cotton on an industrial scale, resulting in the Aral Sea shrinking to only a fraction of its previous size. It’s said to be one of the biggest man-made, environmental disasters of all time, and yet water still dominates the political landscape in the southern part of Central Asia. Uzbekistan is both angry and frightened at the prospect of its two eastern neighbours Kyrgyzstan and in particular Tajikistan damming up mountain rivers as they could then more easily dictate terms, although some believe that has been more about a clash of personalities and egos among big men used to getting their own way. Everything changed once the current leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in December 2016. He set about removing Karimov’s cronies from power and began replacing them with (in his words) “new, young people who love their country”. Mirziyoyev has pursued an active foreign policy, and made it clear that he is keen to attract foreign inward investment. He has travelled the country extensively and stated that he intends for Tashkent to be a magnet for business. The result is that the capital is now awash with representatives of international businesses, and there are copious service providers who will help you and your company find your feet. Significant amounts of Red tape have been removed, the local currency, the Sum is now convertible, credit cards are more widely accepted and perhaps most importantly, you can repatriate any profits that your company makes. Critics will say that it’s simply been the transfer of power from one large family to another and that the speed of reform is slow, but changes continue, and largely for the better. Get there before your competitors do! Uzbekistan must also be visited for tourist purposes. The country will leave you in awe; there are thousands of years of history to be witnessed and prices are very low. The Uzbek people, despite all the hardships (most work for peanuts locally, and many others have left to seek their fortune elsewhere, mainly in Russia) are extremely hospitable and welcoming to foreigners. Given the beauty of the ancient, Silk Road buildings in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva to name just three places, it’s a shame that nowhere near as many people make the trip as should. The traditional Chaikhana (tea house) has been replicated throughout the CIS region which is testimony to the food’s popularity – you won’t be disappointed. Uzbek, the official language is related to Turkish, but more closely to Kazakh and Kyrgyz. Despite most of Uzbekistan’s sizable Russian minority having left the country in the past three decades, many remain and therefore Russian is still widely taught and therefore spoken, particularly in Tashkent. The ethnic Tajiks who live in Uzbekistan speak Tajik too, but don’t expect much English to be spoken although the language is gaining in popularity. In accordance with Uzbekistan’s open door policy, the majority of visitors, both business and tourist can now enter the country visa-free for at least 30 days, and those who do require a visa can get one online with a minimum of fuss. Along with visas, the country has also done away with customs declaration forms (unless of course you are bringing in restricted goods, and/or large quantities of cash). Immigration and customs formalities are now speedy processes, a world away from the long queues and bag searches of just a few years ago. 144 145 THE EURASIAN CUSTOMS UNION (TAMOZHENY SOYUZ) Much noise has been made about The Eurasian Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, which came into existence in January 2010 and was launched as a first step towards forming a broader European Union-type economic alliance of former Soviet states. Armenia & Kyrgyzstan subsequently joined up in 2015, and Tajikistan’s possible membership is still under discussion. There is also speculation that some non-CIS countries might eventually sign up (such as Mongolia, Turkey & Vietnam) , but as things stand, these remain as just rumours. Some Western critics see this as a way for Vladimir Putin to try to reestablish a Russian-dominated, USSR-style union among the Post-Soviet states, although in reality for foreign investors this Union is likely to be of interest if you produce goods in one of these countries (or ship into one), and subsequently export them to member states. Note that when flying between countries in the Customs Union, technically you cannot purchase anything from the airport Duty Free shops, even though not every store in the region feels the need to apply this rule. SPECIFICS OF RELOCATION TO THE CIS COUNTRIES Moving to CIS countries can be quite an interesting and versatile experience as their territories feature cosmopolitan cities with modern services and infrastructures among pristine rural areas. Although you can usually expect a welcoming and easy-going attitude towards expats in most of these countries, relocating and launching your business here can be a challenge for unprepared businesspersons. This is due to the common historical and institutional background during the Soviet period. However, as we can observe now, their economic and political development strategies have become increasingly divergent after gaining independence in 1991. While some CIS states have a developed housing market with various options, there are countries with a limited choice for expats. Putting aside Russia as its core member, let us take a closer look at the others below. The key players are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia (the latter two are formally not CIS members but usually featured as significant parts of the region). The housing market in these countries is still in the process of transformation; however, we cannot help but notice the rapid changes towards services quality and business environment progress in recent years. Common practices include landlord-oriented deals so be prepared to pay rental and insurance payments in cash, and small choice of high-class and big apartments in most of the cases. Rental prices usually include only cold rent, consequently, taxes and utilities come on top. On a positive side, market analytics shows a smooth shift to a tenant-focused supply in the last few years due to the expat influx, countries’ willingness to collaborate with the Western world, and favourable investment climate. Still, CIS is a colorful patchwork of regions with different cultures, customs and traditions. So let’s speak about some local differences in each of these countries.We start with Azerbaijan, the Land of Fire, as locals call it. The place where East meets West, this country mixes fairytale-like architecture of Arabian Nights and modern skyscrapers. Private property owners in Azerbaijan own the majority of the apartments on the market. Most local and international businesses are located in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. What is quite a rare situation in CIS countries is that you can find almost any type of housing here – from villas with large gardens and occasional swimming pools to duplex penthouses offering spectacular views of the city. Oriental exotic motifs in furnishing and interior design is a common thing, though it can be quite confusing (if not over the top) for many expats from the western part of the world. The same picture can be found in Kazakhstan where due to the country’s rapid development and economic growth the housing market is experiencing a massive increase in both real estate prices and rent over the past few years. Of course, like with the majority of CIS countries, most businesses are concentrated in the big cities - especially in Nur-Sultan (previously known as Astana, built from scratch among vast steppes and featuring a wide range of modern houses with facilities), Almaty (previously the principal city of Kazakhstan) and oil centers like Aktau and Atyrau. Local real estate agents often lack professional experience and may be unreliable in negotiating process. Most property owners show their apartments themselves, which can take a toll on the logistics of your search. Therefore, we recommend planning it in advance. Rental prices can vary depending on location and accommodation type. One of the most landlord-oriented countries is still Belarus. Still engulfed by its Soviet legacy, Belarus is emerging as a budding and modern expat destination. Despite its broad range of housing 146 147 options – from grandiose Soviet-era apartments to modern apartments and residential complexes – it is necessary to mention the difficulties you can face during the negotiations with the landlords. For example, it is usually complicated to discuss the proprietor’s responsibility for ongoing maintenance in your apartment and possibility to include utilities in your rent. As everywhere in CIS, cash payments are preferred. There are less popular directions for relocation in CIS states, however. Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan are traditionally considered to have less developed housing markets. Supply of high-quality apartments is very low and limited. Local currency in almost everywhere is volatile, so landlords prefer to sign rental agreements in USD/EUR with payments in cash. To avoid the risks of overpaying your property owner we recommend fixing rent in local currency. It would be very difficult to find a proper real estate agency here, as most deals are made by personal contact and sometimes only via verbal agreement. Among other CIS countries Uzbekistan has its own unique flavor. It combines medieval buildings as if from the pages of an old oriental tale, elegant European architecture from the period of the Turkestan governor-generalship, standard concrete “boxes” of the Soviet era and, finally, in the big cities, you can find even modern skyscrapers of glass and concrete. Landlords will almost always request USD payments in cash. Even though local housing market is still very young, recent political and economic changes promise a speedy development and significant influx of investments in the next few years. As already mentioned above, the personality and experience of the landlord is an important factor to consider. Intermark Relocation keeps a record on many proprietors and our consultants are able to advise you in many cases whether a particular landlord is easy to work with or not. Once you have chosen the property, we will start negotiations on your behalf. Our consultant will do the legal check on landlord’s ownership documents and provide you with a comprehensive report. Our professional team will help you and your family with all the necessary information and paperwork to make the process of moving and adaptation as smooth as possible. Relocation made easy with Intermark! Marina Semenova Managing Director & Shareholder Tel: +7 495 502 95 53 | +7 963 644 7770 m.semenova@intermarkrelocation.ru www.intermarkrelocation.ru 7/1 Kropotkinsky Pereulok Moscow, Russia, 119034 +7 495 502 95 53 www.intermarkrelocation.ru relo@intermarkrelocation With over 20 years of experience we here to help you to make Russia & CIS your home! • Temporary Housing • Orientation & Home-nding • Legal due diligence • Settling in & 24/7 Help-desk • Departure Support • Spousal support & Coaching RELOCATION • Work Permit • Visa support (all types) • Residence Permits • Migration registration & notications • Legalization & duplicates’ procurement • Immigration due diligence IMMIGRATION • International moving • Domestic moving • Transportations of antiques • Oce moving • Vehicle moving • Stock and storage MOVING PAS SP OR T 5 148 149 XVII. Public Holidays in Russia Russian public holidays fall on specific calendar days but there is an art to knowing exactly which day or days off you will get. Typically, if the holiday falls on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, you simply get that day off. If it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, you usually find that the following Monday won’t be a working day. If it’s a Tuesday or a Thursday, you might be given the Monday before – or Friday afterwards too, allowing for a longer weekend but you may be forced to work a Saturday the following week to compensate; but not always. A list of public holidays is available at the start of each calendar year but even these are subject to occasional change so it’s worth making absolutely certain in advance before booking flights out to Russia as some people may use the opportunity of a quieter spot to take the whole week off. KEY PUBLIC HOLIDAYS IN RUSSIA 1st January – New Year’s Day In fact the first working day of the New Year is often not until the 10th January since Russian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on 7th January. Due to the exorbitant cost of flights/ holidays over new year’s, some people take an additional week or even two off, so don’t count on much happening until the third week of January. 23rd February – Defender of the Fatherland Day Formerly known as Soviet Army Day; now women prepare food and drinks for the men in their lives (both in the office, and at home), in anticipation of 8th March, and is therefore commonly referred to as ‘Mens’ Day’. 8th March – International Women’s Day For Russia’s females, this is one of the biggest days of the year, with office parties, champagne, chocolates & presents galore. It’s worth being in Russia to witness this one; but come prepared (ie, bearing gifts), and watch the price of flowers shoot up in the days before. 1st May – Labour Day Don’t expect much business to take place during the first ten days of May as many Russians use this period as an opportunity to take an extended holiday. 9th May – Victory Day Commemorating the end of the Second World War – you will witness massive street parades involving WW2 memorabilia 150 151 (think tanks trundling down the main roads of Moscow and noisy aircraft flying overhead); remember that the Soviet Union lost a reported 27 million people between 1941 – 1945 so you can understand why this one is such a big deal. 12th June – Russia Day Until recently was known as Independence Day, but nobody was quite sure exactly from whom, hence the name change – but it’s a day off nonetheless. 4th November – Unity Day Previously October Revolution Day was celebrated on 7th November but now an obscure victory over the Poles in the 17th century is celebrated instead. Useful contacts Chambers of commerce, local websites, social events and corporate sponsors 152 153 CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE If your firm isn’t already a member of these organizations, then check these out and sign up. All have their own niche and can be extremely useful in terms of local knowledge, relevant contacts, networking and for lobbying on companies’ behalf. Annual subscriptions vary depending on company size – be prepared that some will try to charge you the maximum rate, based on your corporation’s global revenue, even if your Moscow office is only a two-man show. However, depending on the circumstances, some may let you sign up as an individual member at nominal cost but you will need to ask. Here are some of the largest and best known chambers, although even some of the smaller nationalities will have either a formal or informal network with events of varying frequency. American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) One of the largest chambers (not only in terms of members but also events) who have a history of effective lobbying on behalf of the foreign business community as a whole, and running sector specialized meetings with senior people ranging from multinationals to high-level government figures. Open to all; you don’t need to be an American or an American company or even have an office in the States to join up. There are separate Am Chams located in the capital cities of all major CIS countries. www.amcham.ru Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) A well-established and extremely well-connected chamber that is professionally run, with offices in London & Moscow. Events range from evening drinks/networking sessions (sometimes held at the British Ambassador’s Residence or in the Embassy) to specialized conferences with top-level industry speakers in all three locations. The RBCC also cooperates closely with the British Embassy and the DIT (formerly known as the UKTI), and also facilitates trade missions to key cities in Russia. www.rbcc.com British Business Club The BBC has been completely revamped, and now no longer requires an annual membership fee; you simply pay to attend each particular event, where there is an entrance fee, although this often does include some refreshments. Open to all, register via the website to receive regular updates about what’s coming up in the calendar. www.britishclub.ru Canadian Eurasian-Russian Business Association (CERBA) A forum for all Canadians in throughout the CIS, or anyone even vaguely connected with Canada. This may include those with a Canadian partner, working for a Canadian company or someone who has previously lived in Canada, as well as a platform for Canadians in Canada who have business interests in the CIS region, or are looking to do so. CERBA runs regular events, ranging from social to business (the annual mining conference is just one of many) as well as some political lobbying, in Canada as well as in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This is one chamber that definitely punches above its weight in terms of size and activity, with additional charity fundraisers and missions to far-flung parts of the CIS with a strong focus on where Canadian companies are particularly active (oil, gas and other natural resources such as mining and forestry, agriculture and transport) and publishes a regular newsletter. Offices in Moscow, Almaty, Tashkent plus five Canadian cities (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver) www.cerbanet.org Association of European Business (AEB) The AEB represents EU-related business in Russia under the motto of “Quality Information, Effective Lobbying, Valuable Networking” and runs a large number of events, some general, others more sector specific (IT/ Telecoms, Transport, HR, Oil and Gas to name but a few). Also hosts visiting trade delegations and evening networking events on at least a monthly basis, and produces a sector-specific quarterly magazine featuring business issues. www.aebrus.com The Russian-German Chamber of Commerce (AHK) Representing both the interests of German business in Russia, and Russian business in Germany since 1995, AHK consists of around 860 members, mainly SMEs. Germany is one of the largest and most prominent investors in Russia, and AHK stresses its mission as Impulse, Service and Lobbying, which in practice supports entry to the market to establish and maintain contacts with business partners, plus providing market information and practical advice. Various regular topical events are held for the German-speaking business community and lobbying the interests of German industry at the political and administrative level is another key feature. www.russland.ahk.de (in German & Russian) 154 155 CCI France Russie The French-Russian Chamber of Commerce, encompassing the Frenchspeaking world who organize conferences and events in numerous industry sectors & disciplines, as well as quarterly publications plus a surprisingly high number of social and cultural gatherings. You don’t have to be French or even speak French to join, but basic knowledge of français will certainly help. www.ccifr.ru BRBC – Belgian-Russian Business Club A semi-formal organization for Belgian nationals working in Moscow and for employees of Belgian companies operating in Russia. Holds events several times a year, typically a corporate presentation followed by networking over food and drinks held after work, often in the Belgian Embassy. For more information and to get yourself on the list, send an e-mail: belgianrussianbusinessclub@gmail.com EUROBAK European Business Association of Kazakhstan (EUROBAK) is a noncommercial organisation representing the European business community in Kazakhstan, with a particular focus on Almaty. It was formed upon the joint initiative of EU companies, working and investing in Kazakhstan, and the Delegation of the European Union to Kazakhstan. It plays a key role in promoting and nurturing mutual understanding between Kazakhstan and the countries of the European Union in both business and social spheres and runs regular events, both business and social in Almaty. www.eurobak.kz Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce (FRCC) was founded in 1946. It is a non-profit organization, whose mission is to promote companies’ business and competitiveness as well as economic relations between Russia and Finland. www.svkk.fi PUBLICATIONS, WEBSITES AND TV The Moscow Times Sadly no longer available in printed form (at least in English – there is a Chinese language edition), The Moscow Times is nonetheless an excellent source of news featuring business, politics, travel, and culture mostly in Moscow but also throughout Russia. Aimed primarily at foreigners living and working in Russia, although educated, Englishspeaking Russians are also regular readers. www.themoscowtimes.com Russia Today (RT) A Russian, state-funded TV channel featuring news bulletins, documentaries, talk shows plus cultural programmes and even some sports in Russia, but aimed at the overseas market. Mainly in English but also have Russian, Spanish & Arabic programmes. www.rt.com Russia Beyond Previously referred to as ‘Russia Beyond the Headlines’, Russia Beyond is a multi-lingual brand of TV-Novosti, an autonomous non-profit organization, funded by the Russian government. It publishes a wide range of expert opinion on current affairs, travel and cultural events in Russia, as well as Russian’s actions on the international arena. www.rbth.com The websites www.expat.ru & www.redtape.ru both provide excellent local knowledge on everything from obtaining visas to the latest restaurant, with chat forums to swap information with others. Russia in Your Pocket Available in print, PDF and on-line, In Your Pocket guides feature mainly Moscow and St Petersburg plus jaunts out to other cities. Frequently updated and brutally honest, IYP guides cover hotels, bars, restaurants plus other specifics to quickly find your feet in a new city, whether travelling as a tourist, businessman or as an Expat relocating to Russia. There are also separate guides to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. www.inyourpocket.com Internations Runs networking events throughout the world; ideal if you’re new in town or simply visiting and wish to hook up with other expatriates or internationallyminded locals. Active in most key cities in the CIS where Expats might live & work. www.internations.org Fryday A networking club for professionals organising social and business networking events across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. www.fryday.net Sanduny Banya (full name – Sandunovskskiye Bani) The website is now in English and Russian with plenty of pictures of what 156 157 you can expect inside; well worth a visit if you’re a banya virgin (foreigners are a rarity in this Russian ritual). www.sanduny.ru CONTACT DETAILS OF CORPORATE SPONSORS: Bellerage Alinga Moscow: Shchipok St., 11 bld.1, Moscow, Russia +7 495 755 55 68 Saint Petersburg: ‘Regus Nevsky Plaza’ business center, Nevski prospekt, 55A, St Petersburg, Russia

+7 812 313 91 43

www.bellerage.com Brookes School Moscow Lazorevyy Proyezd, 7, Moscow, Russia +7 499 110 70 01 www.moscow.brookes.org Conner & Co LLC ‘Mirland’ business center, 2nd Khutorskaya St., 38A, bld. 23, Moscow, Russia info@connerco.ru www.connerco.ru Fircroft Russia 4th Floor, Office 5, Tverskaya St., 16, bld.3, Moscow, Russia +7 499 649 28 29 www.fircroft.ru Intermark Relocation Kropotkinsky pereulok, 7/1, Moscow, Russia +7 495 502 95 53 relo@intermarkrelocation.ru www.intermarkrelocation.ru ROSINKA International Residencies IRC “Rosinka”, village Angelovo, Krasnogorsk Region, Moscow, Russia +7 985 998 05 85, +7 916 900 05 13 www.rosinka.ru US Dental Care Business Center ‘Olympic Hall’, Olimpiyskiy prospect, 16, bld.5, Moscow, Russia +7 495 933 86 86 www.usdentalcare.com XIX. Glossary of Terms and Acronyms 158 159 Banya – a Russian bath house (see the section at the end of chapter 12 for tips on visiting a banya) The Caucasus – the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea combining the three independent ex-Soviet Countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan & Georgia, plus several regions which are part of the Russian Federation (namely Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Ossetia & Kabardino-Balkaria), although some say it reaches as far as Sochi. Occasionally referred to as Transcaucasia. CEE – Central and Eastern Europe (usually refers to all of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries including the former Soviet Republics, although sometimes includes Germany, Austria and even Switzerland). Central Asia – sometimes referred to as ‘The Stans’, namely the 5 ex-Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Occasionally abbreviated to CAR (Central Asian Region). Eastern Bloc - a group of Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, plus East and South-East Asia under the hegemony of the USSR, between 1947-1991. However, Westerners generally use this term to refer to the USSR and its satellite states in Eastern Europe, namely East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Elektrichka – a suburban train. Very cheap, but a slow way to travel. EMEA – Europe, Middle East and Africa FSU – Former Soviet Union Letter of Invitation (LOI) from an official organization or a travel agency, often one approved by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs or sometimes it is simply a confirmation number, in order for a visa to be issued. Marshrutka – a minibus, which runs along a fixed route, often complementing the bus service. Faster, as it stops only on demand (& therefore the fare is slightly higher). Some also run to nearby towns. MKAD – the Moscow (or Minsk) ring road, similar to the M25 around London. In St Petersburg, it’s just KAD. NGO – Non-Governmental (and usually not-for-profit) Organisation Podyezd – Entrance to a building (usually residential) Propiska – a residency permit, allowing the bearer to live in a particular city (typically refers to Moscow) Propusk – a pass or entry permit (generally valid only once, unless you actually work there) allowing you to enter a particular building or compound SME – Small and Medium Enterprise (occasionally referred to as SMB – Small and Medium Businesses) Spravka – a piece of paper that is usually signed and stamped which is required to obtain a particular document

USSR – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Visa support – this usually comes in the form of an LOI (letter of invitation). 160

© Intermark Group, Inc. 2020

Appendix 4

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9


e

Twelve reasons why Russia sucks

February 12, 2024. I am an American lawyer who defected to Moscow Russia unsuccessfully in 2015, then again in 2018. I stay here because my hatred of American foreign policy is absolute. Since the fall of the USSR the United States has killed over a million people worldwide and now has 800 military bases.

I love Russia and so much and the Russian people, but collectively they are invasion of the body snatcher aliens with a beautiful “Potemkin village” face. Big cities show the best face and the worst excesses of any country. Moscow, where 80% of the economy goes through, is a cutthroat beautiful wild east with cell phones. Expats migrate here for opportunity. Especially after Covid-19 and the great worldwide immigrant purges, only the hardiest, bravest, or in my case, patriotic, Americans stay in Russia. -- Travis Lee Bailey, Esq., MSoc, MPol. Washington, DC lawyer and author in Moscow Russia. MoscowAmerican.com / WhyDontRusisansSmile.com

James Sunderland

June 9, 2018 • 30 min read

Two major difficulties that arise whenever I need to write something — how to start the story so that it enthralls readers and sets a proper article tone, and how to make an ending that, like a good wine, leaves a taste of something special. This time the difficulty has doubled — I now need a beginning to the whiny post that could persuade you it’s not whining at all.

I’ve played around with several options, tried to make it look like an insight, a counter-propaganda that exposes the lies about an almighty empire —the myth Russia is desperately trying to breed starting from late 2000-s, shortly after the famous Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. I’ve tried walking in the shoes of a man who mourns his dying country and cannot accept what is currently happening to it. But every attempt inevitably boils down to this — it’s a purebred whine. A yammer. My personal bitch-fest.

So then, let it be. A self-pity parade of a guy who cannot but think how unfair it is that every child on this planet plays a cruel lottery upon birth. Some are lucky enough to enjoy the birthrights of a civilized country, while others can only catch a glimpse of it. Something very similar to be born deaf-mute, or blind, or unable to experience anything else that is a regular part of “ordinary” people’ existence.

Sigh.

1 Poverty

2 Obedience

3 Indifference

4 The War

5 Enemies

6 Laws

7 Religion

8 Fatalism

9 Education

10 Aggression

11 Alcohol

12 Pride

“To know one country is to know none" - Seymour Martin Lipset, Sociologist

The French have a saying, “Quand on connait sa maladie, on est à moitié guéri”—“When you know your sickness, you are halfway cured.”

"No, I'm not a pessimist. At some point the world shits on everybody. Pretending it ain't shit makes you an idiot, not an optimist."[199]

Poverty

As a tourist, you would probably visit the “northern capital” of Russia — Saint Petersburg. Founded by Peter the Great, this former capital of the Russian Empire is indeed a sight to behold. Wandering among the gold-plated halls of famous art galleries, stone Griffins with golden wings, and marble Atlases that uphold the roof of the New Hermitage, one can get an impression of a truly European country with a proud history and strong economy to uphold this beauty.

Those who come to Moscow will also have a similar impression thanks to fascinating churches and galleries, the Moscow City district, and the amount of Bentleys, Lamborghinies, Ferraries and Teslas rewing on the streets.

I understand those who are fooled by these two cities, I really do. But here’s the truth — the rest of russian cities look like this.

Chelyabinsk

Ugly human anthills patched together into one depressing tohubohu, mud and holes instead of the roads, and the gray color — oh, this never-ending gray color that paints everything from houses and dead trees to frowned faces around you.

Velikij Ustug

For the last few years I’ve been living in Tula — this is the capital city of the Tula State, something like Austin in Texas or Sacramento in California. What if I tell you that this state capital and the place from the photo below, with crooked wooden barracks half-swallowed by the Earth itself, are in fact the same city? What an awesome opportunity to visit not just the country, but the living XVII century as well.

The central district of Tula, Boldina street

If now you are thinking I’m showing you the ruins of the suburbs and abandoned “ghost cities” of the USSR era — unfortunately, no. Brace yourselves, the pictures below are taken in Voronezh, a city with more than a million of citizens, a capital of the Voronezh State.


These photos were taken by a famous russian blogger Ilya Varlamov, you can see more in this LiveJournal post of his.

Now, let me get this straight — my goal here is to show you the dark side of a Moon, to confront the veneer of a prosperous and powerful country with the ghastliness of a daily life. For this sake, I may be exaggerating things — of course, such horrifying conditions are not that often in Russian cities. But neither they are rare. Seeing these pictures comes with no surprise to a regular Russian, we all accept the possibility of someone living in similar houses just down the street.

If you’re wondering what makes Russian cities (and — God have mercy on me— villages, I don’t even dare to post any photos of them) look like living illustrations for the “shithole” dictionary entry, the poverty must be among the major reasons for that. According to the most optimistic reports, the average salary in Russian cities (apart from Moscow and Saint Petersburg) is 20,000–40,000 rubles a month. That is $330–660, less than $8000 a year. Sometimes more, if you served in military and were engaged into local conflicts, or were employed by wealthy oil company. But most of the time, much less.

After 45 years of busting her ass as a nurse, my retired grandmother receives a pension of $210 a month. Imagine you make $2520 a year and ask yourselves, whether the photos above still seem unbelievable to you.

This all-embracing Russian poverty is everywhere: in people’s houses, clothes, the cars they drive, the food they eat, the entertainments they have. Every May, Russia celebrates the beginning of the barbecue season, “shashlyk”. Ask a Russian if (s)he loves shashlyk and most probably a smile will slowly cover his\her face. Hell yeah! However, this barbecue is somewhat different from what you’re probably imagining now. A “shashlyk” is basically a group of people sitting in the nearest forest (or right in the yard behind their home) in a pile of trash, grilling cheap meat and consuming tons of cheap alcohol, leaving burnt grass, coal, shattered glass, and plastic bottles behind them. This disgusting view is a music to a Russian ear, the fairly earned right to relax!

Happy holidays!

Every time you are tricked into thinking that Russia is a powerful and wealthy country, remember these pictures and laugh from your belly.

Obedience

If I had to pick one definitive feature of a Russian person that separates us from the “western people”, I’d choose obedience. Submission. And nope, I’m not talking about BDSM practices here.

Throughout the history, Russians had a very special relationship with people who wield power. Tzars and emperors were referred to as “The Lord’s Anointed”, the one who reigns by the divine right, and their power was believed to be sacred. Much like in the ancient Egypt, except for the fact that it was happening 4500 years later. When the Soviets were formed, this sacred monarchy was replaced by the religious communist cult — instead of the Lord’s Anointed ones we got the Bearers of the Great Lenin and Marx Ideology — a change of decorations, but not the idea behind. …As a result of this unhealthy relationship with the government, the regular Russian person is born with a rare genetic malfunction: an inborn submission to any authority — a president, a senator, a mayor, a cop, a boss, a landlord, you name it. Most importantly, to G-men.

Jozeph Stalin, one of the bloodiest tyrants ever born, has ordered millions of people shot or sent for years into concentration camps also known as GULAGs. Those few who are old enough to remember 1930-s, talk about a vivid memory of being constantly afraid. In the dark hours, people were waking up from the quiet squeals of car brakes in their yards — they knew who that was.

The black “Voronok” — the signature NKVD vehicle used to transport prisoners

Paralyzed, they would lay still in their beds listening to the NKVD officers’ steps, praying the executioners were not after them.

“You are under arrest”.

No one asked what exactly they were charged with. No one tried to fight back. Because it didn’t matter. It could be your neighbor who said you secretly listen to jazz music at nights. It could be your employee who did not receive a raise the previous month and claimed you are a British spy. It could even be an arrest with for reason at all, just because NKVD received orders to arrest 500 people in this area by the end of a month. It didn’t matter. People would silently go into those black cars without knowing if they ever going to see their families again.

Could you imagine something like that happening in France? Or Spain? Or U.S.? The entire nation is aware that the people are being enslaved and murdered by their own government, and still they praise the Party, the Leader, and silently march into their graves. And if you think those times are gone, you are wrong again.

Here’s South Korea — the riots booming in 2017 as the nation learned the President Park Geun-hye faces charges in bribery and influence peddling. ….

What’s the difference?

South Koreans kept protesting until the corrupted president got arrested and, later, sentenced to 24 years in prison. Russian “protest” lasted for a few hours.

Dozens of people beaten with police batons, hundreds arrested. The next day the country lives its ordinary life as nothing ever happened (probably, because nothing happened indeed). People head to their workplaces and talk to each other during the lunch break. Very few bring up the yesterday protests, and even when they do, everyone smiles. They all know it’s useless. Because THEY have always been stealing from US. And THEY always will be. WE know that and WE accept it.

This “WE versus THEY” metaphor is essential for understanding the Russian mentality. The “people” and “authorities” (any authorities, not just the government alone) both do everything they can to alienate themselves from the opposite party. This reminds me of the Indian caste social stratification system. If you are one of the “people”, you accept your poor status. This comes with understanding that THEY can do whatever they want — steal from you, send you to die for Assad in Syria, stick a broom into your arse or break your spine with a chair in a police station… Or mock your worst tragedy.

In March 2018, the fire in the Kemerovo “Winter Cherry” trade center killed nearly 70 people, the tragedy which inflamed minor protests against the fatal negligence of the town administration. During one these protests, the vice-senator Sergey Tsivilev said to the face of a man, who had lost a wife, a sister, and three kids to the fire, that he came on stage with his speech to “feed on this hot topic”. And the grieving father has swallowed that.

In Russia, the “government” is thought to be a separate, almost miraculous entity, something entirely different from the people. Ordinary citizens do not consider themselves as a part of the country, only as expendables. Keep that in mind while you read the rest of the article, this magic formula can solve a lot of your riddles.

Indifference

In her “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck” best-seller, Sarah Knight describes a “fuck budget” everyone has. Whenever you do something that requires your time or energy, you spend some of the “fuck bucks” from this budget. The life-changing magic itself is to understand that your budget is limited and stop wasting “fuck bucks” on irrelevant things. Well, if Russians are poor financially, at least they are “fuck bucks” millionaires, since “not giving a fuck” is another common Russian treat.

I’ve already mentioned not giving a hoot about massive corruptions and the fact that everyone, from the President to a local judge, steals budget money. In the end, people who consider themselves as expendables, not citizens of their country, have a moral right to have no responsibility for it, or a desire to change the course.

we don’t riot against this neo-monarchy — what’s for? Another one will come place and start stealing, what’s the difference?....Truly, this country does terrible things to your mind.

But the indifference stretches far beyond the politics. Russians don’t give a shit about how the city looks. Every elevator, every house is covered with penis drawings (or its textual representation, the branded Russian “hyi” word), gum, and piss (the later is even laughed upon, in the figure below people ask the symbol of “goddamn Americans”, President Obama, to stop pissing in their elevator — a local humor, don’t ask me to explain).

Most benches near the apartment entrances are broken. Doors are covered with ads. Light bulbs are broken or stolen. Patches of different paint — signs of feeble repairs attempts — cover dirty walls that lose their plaster skin.

Dog shit covers every yard and most of the playgrounds. Dog owners and their our own kids cannot walk more than 30 steps without stepping into another pile, but no one cares and (almost) no one cleans after their dogs.

Why? To quote a well-known Russian designer Artemy Lebedev, we all have our “comfort zones”, but if civilized people’ comfort zone includes the streets they walk, the parks they visit, the cities they live in, and the countries they inhabit, a comfort zone of a Russian ends at his doorsteps. Everything outside my apartment does not belong to me, hence I don’t give a shit about it.

And for those who dare to upset the established order of not caring, we have a perfect and constantly used reply: “Tebe bolshe vseh nado?”, which means “are you the one who cares the most?” Indeed, are you the one who stepped more than anyone into dog shit? We all do, buddy, shut up. We all live in these ugly homes, who gave you the right to be offended with this sight more than we are? Bite the bullet and keep your mouth shut, just like we do. And believe it or not, that works as a charm — most anyone instantly chills and backs out.

You don’t want to be the one who cares a little bit more than everyone around you does. And even if you do, “Odin v pole ne voin” — “One man, no man”.

The high noon of this herd morale is pictured in the critically acclaimed 2014 movie “The Fool” by Alexander Bykov: a regular service guy finds out that the house with 860 people inside is about to collapse because of a giant crack in the wall. Rushing into the restaurant, where the mayor happens to celebrate her birthday, he alerts everyone about the upcoming tragedy, which is about to happen because of the tragic negligence, bureaucracy and the fact that most of the city budget has been systematically stolen by the government pen-pushers throughout years. The good civil servants quickly come to understanding that they won’t be able to cover this story up, and they are much more comfortable with burying everyone alive under the ruins and blaming a couple of fall guys in the office, rather than evacuate that “living trash”. Desperate, the movie antagonist runs back to the falling building and starts banging into doors, shouting about the emergency and rushing everyone to get outside… where he eventually gets killed by the mob, angry at the guy who has forced them leave their cozy wormholes. A fiction movie, yes, but for everyone who’s lived here long enough it looks more like a terrifying prophecy, a dark omen of what is to come, a reminder for those who want to change the way the things work here.

“Chelovek cheloveky volk” — “We are wolves to each other”

The degree to which Russians don’t give a shit about the people around is frightening. A few years ago the Russian media was covering a story about a university teacher that had a heart attack and collapsed on a street in Saint-Petersburg. He lied down covered with snow for two hours and eventually died. No one approached him. “Huh, probably another alcoholic had too much for today, that’s not my business”. This specific case took place several years ago, but such tragic events happen every week.

The guy in the video pretends he suffers from a sudden pain in his stomach — watch how “fast” the help comes

The emergency medical info available from the locked iPhone screen, bracelets for diabetics that warn people about the wearer’s condition in case (s)he suddenly collapses — none of precautions make sense here in Russia, because should anything happen to you, the first one who approaches you would probably be a city worker who came to collect your body. But at least our “fuck budgets” are always topped, right?

The War

World War 2 (WWII) or the "Great Patriotic War) as it is called in Russia, is an event that keeps shaping and molding the modern Russia even 80 years after it ended.

The nation that lost over 30 million people killed directly at war, — not counting millions executed in Gulags by the Soviet government — celebrates the 9th of May as a demonstration of an endless power.

Occasionally, someone tries speaking about the 9th of May as a day of grief, a day to remember the terrible price we’ve payed, a day to respect the dead. Every year I see humble attempts to focus people’s attention on those few who actually participated in the Great War, who now live their last days abandoned by everyone, starving and unable to pay their utilities or buy their medicine. But those words are lost in the maddening joy and immeasurable pride of the “grateful sons”.

This is a day of massive celebration, very close to the New Year in terms of joy and involvement. By “celebration” many Russians mean drinking themselves half-dead (“for the Horde… ugh, veterans!”) and beating someone’s face to a pulp…

…or simply enjoying cat food (seriously) as a digestive

This is the day when car owners proudly ride with “We can repeat!” stickers on the rear car windshields. These stickers illustrate USSR dog-fucking the Nazi Germany and imply same will happen to our modern foes.

This is the day when people decorate everything — from bags and t-shirts to vodka bottles in shops with black-and-orange stripes, the “Georgy ribbon”, an official symbol of the victory.

Funnily enough, the St.George medal was never assigned to anyone during the war. This medal originates from the older times of the Russian Empire. For that reason, the black-and-orange ribbon was popular among the RLA (Russian Liberation Army) of General Vlasov — the famous “traitor” that has surrendered the entire army to Nazis and fought on the Reich’s side against the Soviet Union. Modern day patriots that preach the importance of remembering our history hail the Nazi symbol — quite peculiar, isn’t it? Did I already mention that Russians don’t give a shit about anything? This certainly applies to war symbols as well.

Enemies

There’s a perfect reason why Russia gladly cultivates the myth about the glorious victory — this ideology braces people in the face of the external threat, namely, the “goddamn America”. And the entire world with it, for that matter.

The war is not over. THEY (oh, this magical word again) are plotting to destroy our land, to take away our resources and treasures! Hitler ideas are still alive, only this time our western foes use economics instead of foot soldiers and cluster bombs.

If you ask a North Korean about the world outside, (s)he will probably be very honest in saying that Korea is surrounded by enemies and in front of the western capitalistic plague this proud little country stands strong as the last refuge for hope. Propaganda is known to be able to turn people into zombies, and it’s no surprise the modern day Russia swarms with brain-dead puppets who believe the same crap. …Our masters still ride luxurious cars and send their children to London and New York, while the regular people become the real target for those sanctions. Which doesn’t bother them much because first, that’s an evil plan by our enemies who are destined to fail, we just need to hold on a little longer, and secondly, hey we don’t give our “fuck bucks” away, remember?

Another interesting point to be made is that despite a very evident urge to secure their place in the sun through armed conflicts, Russians bear a wide-eyed confidence that Russia is a country that during its entire history has never started a war, only was a target of the hostile aggression from our neighbors. Well, ahem, don’t get mad: despite the fact that 53 out of 75 armed conflicts that took place since the middle of the XVI century were actually initiated by Russian Empire\USSR\Russia, our people prefer the good ol’ “from lip to lip” way to share the knowledge about the world, rather than using Google and their own heads.

In her memoirs, Elena Bonner, a wife of the Soviet nuclear bomb’s father and a Nobel peace prize laureate Andrey Sakharov, shared a memory of a dialog she had in a taxi cab, somewhere around 1971:

— (taxi driver) …that happened the same year the Czechs attacked us.

— Sorry?

— Well, Czechs… They attacked us in Prague, remember?

Laws

As I have said before, the total obedience to any government requests is a very common Russian trait. However, — surprisingly or not, — this is somehow mixed with a total outlawry. As another Russian proverb states (I’m gonna reference quite some of these throughout the article):

“The idiocy of Russian laws is offset by their poor enforcement”.

In a way, the total government corruption can be linked to the same philosophy of a total law denial. The difference is only in the caliber of a law you are allowed to disregard. “Small people” commit smaller crimes, — smoke in elevators and public transport, park their cars on the lawns, occupy parking lots arranged for disabled people, drive the wrong side of a road, cell alcohol and tobacco to teenagers, etc. — but they do it regularly. I doubt you can have a 20-minute walk without witnessing someone violating a law.

Jaywalking — check. Slaloming between moving vehicles— check. Police car driving the wrong way — check. The second pedestrian not giving a shit about a girl hit — check. Lifting a person with possible fractures after a car impact — check.

The most far-fetching iniquity that has been poisoning this poor country for years is, probably, the bribery. Though many researches point out that bribery — or, to be more specific, the tradition to give and receive “gifts” — is very common to most Asian countries (which is the reason for some very harsh punishments in, for instance, China: you don’t fight the plague with just procedure masks, sometimes you need to bring a flamethrower), many link the rise of this all-consuming crime to the times of the General Secretary of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev. They say, the dangerous mixture of bribery and a necessity to have a pull in every department was born exactly in Brezhnev’s days. But as a person who has lived here long enough, I personally do not care when or why did it start: all I care is how long will it last.

My first speculation of this venom that poisons my country happened when I was somewhat about 14. I suddenly started wondering why Mom takes a box of chocolates every time I catch a cold and need to see a doctor. Up until that time, I was considering such things as a simple gratitude. Kids’ parents buy presents for teachers in schools, patients take gifts to doctors, your relatives gift something to nurses that look after you in case you get hospitalized. Everything looked like a gratitude indeed — up until I realized this is a requirement rather your own good will.

Another Russian proverb: “Ne podmazhesh — ne poedesh”. Means “if you don’t grease the wheels, the cart won’t go”. And boy, do you need the grease when living in this country…

A gift to a doctor is not just a gratitude, it’s the assurance that (s)he will pay enough attention to your health issues. Same with nurses, if you want them to change bed and clean urinals after your severely ill relative — you need to be extra “grateful” to them. The fact that all these people must do that for free because that is their direct job and they are getting paid for it is totally ignored.

This becomes more of a problem when that is not exactly your wish to pay. Cops camp the roads hiding in the bushes to catch red-handed excessive speeding drivers and those who ride without safety belts on. But not to enforce the law, rather to trade the official punishment (licence suspension, for instance) for money. Pay them now, and you are free to go. Same applies to universities and colleges — you can buy your spot there and\or keep paying teachers to pass exams. Same applies to the army — parents pay enormous buybacks to allow their kids to dodge the humiliating service in Russian army.

And same applies to schools. For instance, have a look at this very symbolic article — auto-translate it to English, the language is pretty straightforward — about a kid from Zhigulevsk, who started a petition against the public school — which means it is officially free — that collects money to (the official explanation) pay salaries to security workers and janitors (yep, no one asked before why a federal school has no money to pay janitors for their service). The kid was labeled as a “traitor”, teachers started bullying his entire class: you get the idea, it’s safer to deal with the young rebel with the hands of other kids in the class who get angry when they are punished “for his actions”. In the video that one of the students has shot in the class, the teacher suggests that if this brave kid refuses to pay, he should bring a bucket, a mop, and start mopping floors in the class himself, and that he lives in the society and must obey its rules. Thankfully, the media brought the story to the public. But what if they didn’t?

The total “pay-to-win” system in Russia leaves no questions why the most powerful people in the country steal billions of budget money and people are somewhat okay with that: they do the same everyone else does, only on the bigger scale.

Religion

According to a Constitution of the Russian Federation — wow, it feels really weird mentioning it: it has been so long since we saw it working last — Russia is a multicultural nonsectarian secular state. However, that county exists only on Constitution pages as an utopia. The real Russia looks more like ISIS in terms of religious bigotry.

I am well aware that even democratic countries can be entangled with religious crap, the need for which sits tight somewhere in the back of our heads. U.S. alone has hundreds, maybe thousands of cults, from local one-town communities to powerful and influential organizations like Scientology. The itch to explain things in the most simple way (often, the most idiotic one at the same time) comes from the way our brain evolved — that organ that takes only 5% percent of our total body weight consumes around 70% of the total energy our organism produces. Cognition is a very costly process, and our internal systems — more precisely, the limbic system also known as the paleomammalian cortex, which manages our primal functions: eating, moving, breeding, emotional responses, etc. — that system does everything it can to minimize the risk of burning through the available energy supplies (your primal brain knows nothing about Walmart and your ability to buy more food and refill those supplies at any time). By the way, that is the reason you feel so nice when you take a day off and spend it on a couch watching a TV-show instead of doing something that needs to be done— as a reward for defeating the neocortex (involved in higher-order brain functions such as cognition, spatial reasoning and language), your brain gets a free shot of endorphins that enforce that feeling of pleasure.

Okay, enough with the medicine — the bottom line is that people are prone to making fast decisions and thinking less. Always have been, and always will be. That is the major reason why a set of ready-to-use “How to live your life” guides called religions are loved all around the world. But in Russia, that love has definitely grown into something much more ominous.

Let’s have some fun — I’ve made a test for you, answer the following questions with Yes\No statements:

Does the primary religion in your country openly spread a terrifying myth that HIV does not exist, and that AIDS comes from stress, vaccines, and bad environment — statements that enforce the HIV denial movement and lead to an epidemic?

Is your army equipped with mobile praying stations that can be deployed on a battlefield?

The church wagon…

…and its even more hilarious version — the pneumatic air church, yay!

Can you be convicted for 3.5 years for playing Pokemon Go in church in your country?

Does your country allot military corps to set up the guard of honor that meets a plane with a saint’s bones?

Is consecrating rockets a necessary procedure that ensures the flight will be successful?

Oops, sorry, that is the successful start of the Falcon Heavy by the heretic Elon Musk…

…and that is a Russian pope who sprinkles a rocket with holy water. Either a water was fake, or the priest wasn’t a sincere believer, or maybe the God himself was against this launch —anyway, the rocket crushes shortly after the take off.

Does the primary church in your country hire priests, who “cleanse” poor fellows with mental disorders by riding them?

Behind the scenes of the “Exorcist”

If gave positive answers to at least two of these questions, I bet we can chat about this article in Russian.

Fatalism

A careful reader has already smelled that scent of fatalism in the text above. The final piece of puzzle that can explain why any law is neglected and any crime is not big enough to inflame mass protests. The fate.

“Ne mi takie — zhizn’ takaya”

You guessed it — another proverb. “It’s not our fault — that’s just the way the life is”. Almost like 2Pac — “that’s just the way it is”. 2Pac, however, mixed that line with “we gotta make a change”. Russians drop this part for there is no light in a tunnel, no faith that anything at all can change. Our fates are sealed and there’s no way we can do anything about that (apart from writing a whiny Medium article, yes).

Those familiar with fascinating Russian literature agree that it’s largely touched by this feeling of something horrible nearby, the doom, the bitter end that awaits us. The epitome of such mood is probably Dostoevsky, whose novels are soaked in this grim mood, a unique mixture of desperation and faith in a higher power.

As I write these words, I suddenly have this thought: what if this blind Christian faith carried through centuries is in fact a natural response to the inevitability of the dark end, an answer for that all-consuming fatalism? If we, the unwilling, the unable, came in this world to suffer, without the prospect of any significant positive change to look forward to, — the end of times when the Lord will make everything right is the only thing left to believe in. Better late than never, huh? Could it be that I’m right, I wonder.

Education

Meet Mikhail Zadornov — one of the most iconic Russian stand-up comedians.

If you ask anyone what’s his iconic phrase, I doubt someone will have difficulties answering “Nu tupie-e-e-e”, which means “Oh they’re morons”. At first “they” meant Americans, later — any “western” person. Almost single-handedly, this guy has forever secured the myth about Russians who are the smartest nation ever. Or at least certainly smarter than moronic Americans.

This stuff wouldn’t gain so much popularity if many Russians didn’t already share the same opinion. As a journalist Alexander Nevzorov says, “a porn magazine can cause erection only if you have penis in the first place”. Believe it or not, many Russians are positively sure that Russia (26 Nobel laureates, many of which — surprisingly!— are residents of foreign countries, like 2010 laureates Geim and Novoselov who work in Manchester) is way “smarter” than the U.S. (371 Nobel laureates), which is largely considered to be the country for fags, morons and fatsos.

Most Russians are positively sure that Soviet Union had the world’s best education. Yeah, right, that pretty much explains why our university diplomas have no value outside Russia, or why millions of Russians were holding jars of water in front of their TV screens in 1980’s, waiting for the famous “psychics” and “faith healers” Chumak and Kashpirovsky to “charge” the liquid with their supernatural abilities and heal the viewers. Chumak is dead, but Kashpirovsky still packs the houses full of people ready to pay money for miraculous recovery.

Yes, that shit was broadcasted on official Soviet TV channels

Funnily enough, Zadornov who had publicly spoiled his U.S. visa and rose through the ranks by trash-talking about western people as untalented brain-dead hucksters and profiteers, rushed into a private EU clinic after being diagnosed with cancer. Unlike millions of his followers, who cannot afford the same and have learn the hard way that their country with “best-in-class educational system” cannot provide a decent medical treatment.

Aggression

If you have ever been to websites like bestgore.com, you probably know what human beings are capable of doing to each other. People behead, flay and dismember their foes alive— not for survival, but just for money, pleasure or out of religious beliefs.

This unspeakable cruelty is horrifying, but so it is rare — most of the time crimes like that are carried out by troubled people with absolutely no remorse or empathy towards others. What you see much more often is something I call a “household cruelty” — hateful actions performed by ordinary people in their everyday life. And that groundless, gratuitous hate towards the others is something in which no nation could arguably “outshine” Russians.

Those who ever tried online games like Counter Strike, Dota or WoW, instantly agree with me — Russians are often considered most toxic players ever. These people can abandon matches, intentionally “feed” their opponents and flame their teammates before the game has even started. Just watch any Russian Dota stream on Twitch or see any highlight compilations— 95% of these “highlights” are not some sick plays, but an exceptionally “epic” flame or a trash-talk.

Some people, however, are capable of turning that aggression into something fabulous.

The entire web, not just video games, is a place for any Russian maggot, obedient and speechless in everyday life, to show his\her true colors. Here’s an example.

A CCTV camera catches a group of teenagers stealing a bronze duck effigy from a city park. Most likely, drunk guys were having fun and showing off in front of the girl — you know how it goes, right?

Definitely, not the most admirable behavior by the young lads. But not the worst crime either. The question is what punishment is fair for these fellows? I’d say, they (or their parents, in case boys are under the legal age) must be charged for the repairs, plus an extra fee. That’s not what Russians in the comment sections think.

“Rip their heads off…”

“Nothing to do with their strength — send them to Syria!”

“Put them down before they breed.” (note: almost 60 more people love this idea)

“They should be sent to BAM or Belomorcanal” (note: the guy is talking about huge highways built by convicts in USSR; many have died on those backbreaking construction sites)

“They won’t feel any shame. Hit them with a crowbar in the spine so that at least they could feel pain :)”

“Execute these fuckers!!!”

“Castrate them!”

“Give them a life sentence!!!!”

“People like them should be gunned down.”

“I wish I knew who these creeps were, I’d break their legs”.

“These fuckers must be reading it now. I’d rip your arms and legs off. Honestly, I’d gladly beat you to death.”

Do not get me wrong, but don’t you think that wishing death, sterilization, legs torn out and arms ripped off is a bit too much for breaking the statue of a duck?

And if you wonder why there is no “intolerance” section here in this article — that is because intolerance is a direct consequence of this raging misanthropy. I do not think people hate gays — or blacks, or Americans, or Muslims, or anyone other person in the world for that matter — because they uphold traditional values and families. As simple as it is, all these people easily represent someone different from a regular Russian, and that reason alone is enough to break their faces and wish them death. As Marilyn Manson adequately puts in his song, “we’re killing strangers so we don’t kill the ones that we love”.

Alcohol

I guess you’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Yes — bears, vodka, balalaika. Vodka is a brand that instantly associates with Russia, and by the George I wish I could say that drunk Russians is nothing but a stereotype. But first, that would confront the official data regarding worldwide alcohol consumption per capita rates. And secondly, unfortunately, this is just the way it is.

Every birthday, every holiday, or simply every Friday or weekend is impossible without alcohol. And do not get me wrong, there are other countries whose drinking is almost a part of the national idea —for instance, South Korea or Japan. But honestly, I have little interest in drunk Japanese lying in the subway in their business suites every Friday. I’m concerned in the consequences drinking brings to my own country.

A drunk pope on the Geländewagen fatally hits two road workers and flees from the scene. This was one of 169,432 road accidents that took lives of 19,088 people in Russia in 2017.

A drunk student tries to step from the balcony into a window. Falls down eleven stories to his death (warning: graphic video).

A drunk cop walks into a supermarket and starts a shoot-out, executing two people and wounding seven more.

A politician gets sloshed with vodka in a forest with his friends, sees a wood ranger’s dog and kills it, then slams the ranger himself into the tree. According to the locals, shooting stray animals and people’s cattle is a well-known hobby of the civil servant, who by the way still keeps his position.

Four drunk teenagers, ages 15 to 17, torture a homeless woman and beat her to death.

Another group of drunk high school students kill a woman they meet in a cafe. According to the police reports, the attacker has torn the victim’s face apart and pulled her entrails through the vagina. I’m not sure if that case illustrates the terrors of drinking, or the aggression — or rather, the sadistic evil inside our people — but I will spare you from seeing the aftermath photo.

A drunk man teases the bear and loses the arm.

And of course…

Numerous drunk kids set stray cats and dogs on fire and chop their noses off.

Tons of drunk husbands beat their wives to death.

Thousands of drunk people attack random passers-by on streets.

Countless drunk workers lose their limbs and their lives in factory accidents.

Innumerable drunk parents beat and kill their kids.

Call me a hypocrite if you want, but the nation of people who unleash such horrors after a few sips should never have free access to alcohol. Which, sadly, will never happen. The alcohol provides a good measure of control: for as long as an “ordinary” Russian can get drunk, he would prefer that to fighting for his rights, justice, or country leaders that see other goals rather than filling their own pockets.

Pride

Finally, after everything written above, after you get the glimpse of that dark side of “ordinary” Russians — cruel, indifferent, ignorant, spineless people — does it come as a surprise that Russians are extremely proud of their country?

There are probably experts in Russia that can provide you with an exact formula of how this feeling emerges. I’m not one of them. I myself keep wondering what exactly gives birth to this moronic patriotism, a feeling that Bernard Shaw defines as “fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it”. I also cannot but quote George Carlin on this matter:

“Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill… it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say I’m proud to be 5'11”; I’m proud to have a pre-disposition for colon cancer.”

But still, even though patriotism it is a moronic feeling, I can understand Americans’ patriotism — in the end, they belong to of one of the most influential countries. I understand Swedes — people of the country that has been named the most livable country times and times again. I understand Chinese — people of the country that not too long ago was merely a machinery for the western world, but has now risen to have great impact on the globe and one of the world’s fastest growing economy.

But I can neither understand, nor comprehend the mysterious Russian patriotism. A feeling of pride that you belong to a country, inhabited by those who you hate. A feeling of joy to live in a state that shows no joy of knowing you live here. A feeling of honor to be born in a country that prefers making enemies rather than investing in its own people. An unconditional commitment to your land, a willingness to fight and die for the country that does not value your life and will most likely abandon its own defenders, as it did after every military conflict before.

One of numerous dog-poor WWII veterans goes begging in a Moscow subway

That illogical pride must be the final part of the grand absurd design that enchants many foreigners, who are mesmerized with the inexplicable way this country exists. God only knows how millions of these interconnected systems assemble into one love-hate piece, but that knowledge is not even required. In the end, it all boils down to immortal poem by Fedor Tyutchev:

You will not grasp her with your mind

Or cover with a common label,

For Russia is one of a kind —

Believe in her, if you are able.

Too bad the poet does not have advice for those who are unable.

External links

Gallery

Appendix 5

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9

Introduction

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Remove mention of the Kremlin.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia is a 2014 book by Peter Pomerantsev about 21st century Russian history.

Discusses prostitution. Read the book very carefully - Peter Pomerantsev is talking to prostitutes, as he is getting dressed.

  • The author recounts his experiences in Russia when he worked there in the reality television field in the 2000s. Elder describes the work as "Part reportage and part memoir". The author also includes stories of various figures who succeeded or faced hardships in that time period.
  • Pomerantsev only occasionally explicitly mentions the name of Vladimir Putin. Elder argued that this strategy "can be taken as a suggestion that we focus too much on him, that he’s so big he no longer requires discussion — or that we do not and cannot ever know who he truly is, so why even bother?"
  • Tony Wood of The Guardian wrote that the book shows that the "roots" of the psychological order was "the tumult and delirium of the country’s post-Soviet transformations".[200]

No languages yet. Add a new one?

Make the content available in more languages.

On Wikipedia, we can all create this book.

We can also petition President Putin, together, to abolish copyright completely - This will be LETTER Number 5 of 5 which I have written

ISBN

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

NOTHING IS TRUE AND EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE: THE SURREAL HEART OF THE NEW RUSSIA

PETER POMERANTSEV

2014

ISBN 978-1-61039-455-0 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-61039-456-7 (electronic)

1. Russia (Federation)—Social conditions—1991–

2. Russia (Federation)—History—1991—Biography.

3. Interviews—Russia (Federation)

4. Social change—Russia (Federation)

5. Social problems—Russia (Federation)

6. Power (Social sciences)—Russia (Federation)

7. Corruption—Russia (Federation)

8. Authoritarianism—Social aspects—Russia (Federation) 9. Russia (Federation)—Economic conditions— 1991-I.

Title.

HN530.2.A8P665 2014

306.0947—dc23 2014018638


First Edition

For my wife, parents, children, Aunt Sasha, and Paul

CONTENTS

ACT I REALITY SHOW RUSSIA

ACT II CRACKS IN THE KREMLIN MATRIX

ACT III FORMS OF DELIRIUM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EXTRA READING

ACT I REALITY SHOW RUSSIA

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

Flying in at night over Moscow you can see how the shape of the city is a series of concentric ringroads with the small ring of the Kremlin at the center. At the end of the twentieth century the light from the rings glowed a dim, dirty yellow. Moscow was a sad satellite at the edge of Europe, emitting the dying embers of the Soviet Empire.

Then, in the twenty-first century, something happened: money. Never had so much money flowed into so small a place in so short a time. The orbital system shifted. Up above the city the concentric rings began to shine with the lights of new skyscrapers, neon, and speeding Maybachs on the roads, swirling faster and faster in high-pitched, hypnotic fairground brilliance.

The Russians were the new jet set: the richest, the most energetic, the most dangerous. They had the most oil, the most beautiful women, the best parties. From being ready to sell anything, they became ready to buy anything: football clubs in London and basketball clubs in New York; art collections, English newspapers, and European energy companies. No one could understand them. They were both lewd and refined, cunning and naive. Only in Moscow did they make sense, a city living in fast-forward, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where boys become billionaires in the blink of an eye.

“Performance” was the city’s buzzword, a world where gangsters become artists, gold diggers quote Pushkin, Hells Angels hallucinate themselves as saints. Russia had seen so many worlds flick through in such blistering progression—from communism to perestroika to shock therapy to penury to oligarchy to mafia state to mega-rich—that its new heroes were left with the sense that life is just one glittering masquerade, where every role and any position or belief is mutable. “I want to try on every persona the world has ever known,” Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe would tell me. He was a performance artist and the city’s mascot, the inevitable guest at parties attended by the inevitable tycoons and supermodels, arriving dressed as Gorbachev, a fakir, Tutankhamen, the Russian President. When I first landed in Moscow I thought these infinite transformations the expression of a country liberated, pulling on different costumes in a frenzy of freedom, pushing the limits of personality as far as it could possibly go to what the President’s vizier would call “the heights of creation.” It was only years later that I came to see these endless mutations not as freedom but as forms of delirium, in which scare-puppets and nightmare mystics become convinced they’re almost real and march toward what the President’s vizier would go on to call the “the fifth world war, the first non-linear war of all against all.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

I work in television. Factual television. Factual entertainment, to be exact. I was flying into Moscow in 2006 because the television industry, like everything else, was booming. I knew the country already: since 2001, the year after I graduated from university, I had been living there most of my time, jumping jobs between think tanks and as a very minor consultant on European Union projects meant to be aiding Russian “development,” then at film school, and lately as an assistant on documentaries for Western networks. My parents had emigrated from the Soviet Union to England in the 1970s as political exiles, and I grew up speaking some sort of demotic émigré Russian. But I had always been an observer looking in at Russia. I wanted to get closer: London seemed so measured, so predictable; the America the rest of my émigré family lived in seemed so content; while the real Russians seemed truly alive, had the sense that anything was possible. What I really wanted to do was film. To press “record” and just point and shoot. I took my camera, the battered metal Sony Z1 small enough to always drop in my bag, everywhere. A lot of the time I just filmed so as not to let this world escape; I shot blindly, knowing I would never have a cast like this again. And I was in demand in the new Moscow for the simple reason that I could say the magic words “I am from London.” They worked like “open sesame.” Russians are convinced Londoners know the alchemical secret of successful television, can distill the next hit reality or talent show. No matter that I had never been more than a third-rate assistant on other people’s projects; just by whispering “Icome from London” could get me any meeting I wanted. I was a stowaway on the great armada of Western civilization, the bankers, lawyers, international development consultants, accountants, and architects who have sailed out to seek their fortune in the adventures of globalization.

But in Russia, working in television is about more than being a camera, an observer. In a country covering nine time zones, one-ninth of the world’s land mass, stretching from the Pacific to the Baltic, from the Arctic to the Central Asian deserts, from near-medieval villages where people still draw water from wooden wells by hand, through single-factory towns and back to the blue glass and steel skyscrapers of the new Moscow—TV is the only force that can unify and rule and bind this country. It’s the central mechanism of a new type of authoritarianism, one far subtler than twentieth-century strains. And as a TV producerI would be directed right into the center of its workings.

My first meeting took me to the top floor of Ostankino, the television center the size of five football fields... On the top floor, down a series of matt-black corridors, is a long conference room. Here Moscow’s flashiest minds met for the weekly brainstorming session to decide what Ostankino would broadcast. I was taken along by a friendly Russian publisher.

Due to my Russian surname no one had yet noticed I was British; I kept my mouth shut. There were more than twenty of us in the room: tanned broadcasters in white silk shirts and politics professors with sweaty beards and heavy breath and ad execs in trainers. There were no women. Everyone was smoking. There was so much smoke it made my skin itch.

At the end of the table sat one of the country’s most famous political TV presenters. He is small and speaks fast, with a smoky voice: We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense something is happening. They need to be kept entertained. So what should we play with? Shall we attack oligarchs? [He continued,] Who’s the enemy this week? Politics has got to feel like . . . like a movie!

...Sitting in that smoky room, I had the sense that reality was somehow malleable, that I was with Prosperos who could project any existence they wanted onto post-Soviet Russia...Ostankino’s strategies became ever more twisted, the need to incite panic and fear ever more urgent; rationality was tuned out, and ...cults and hate-mongers were put on prime time to keep the nation entranced, distracted, as ever more foreign hirelings would arrive to help ...spread its vision to the world.

But though my road would eventually lead back to Ostankino, my initial role in the vast scripted reality show of the new Russia was to help make it look and sound and feel Western. The network I initially worked with was TNT, which is housed in a new office center called Byzantium. On the ground floor is a spa done up in faux Roman style with Doric plaster columns and ruins, frequented by languid, leggy girls here to deepen already deep tans and have endless manicures and pedicures. The manicures are elaborate: rainbow-colored, multilayered, glitter-dusted designs of little hearts and flowers, so much brighter than the girls’ bored eyes, as if they pour all their utopias into the tiny spaces of their nails.

The network occupies several floors higher up in the building. When the elevator door opens you’re greeted by TNT’s logo, designed in blindingly bright, squealingly happy pinks, bright blues, and gold. Over the logo is written the network’s catchphrase, “Feel our Love!” This is the new, desperately happy Russia, and this is the image of Russia TNT projects: a youthful, bouncy, glossy country. The network sends a beam of hyperactive yellows and pinks into people’s darkling apartments. The offices are open plan, full of shiny, happy young things hurrying about, sprinkling their Russian with Anglicisms, whistling the tunes of Brit-pop hits. TNT makes hooligan television, and the young staff buzz with the excitement of cultural revolution. For them TNT is a piece of subversive pop art, a way to climb into the nation’s psyche and rewire it from inside. The network introduced the reality show to Russia: one raunchy show is—joy of TV producer joys—censured as immoral by aging Communists. TNT pioneered the Russian sitcom and the Russian trashy talk show à la Jerry Springer. The network gobbles up Western concepts one after the other, going through more formats in a year than the West can come up with in a decade. Many of the city’s brightest are defecting to entertainment channels and glossy magazines; here they won’t be forced to make propaganda, are encouraged to be rebellious. They just can’t do real politics here; it’s a news-free zone. Most are happy with the trade-off: complete freedom forcomplete silence.

“We want to find out what the new generation are really thinking. Piiitrrr.”

“What excites them, Piiitrrr.”

“We want to see real people on screen. The real heroes, Piiitrrr.”

“Piiitrrr.” That’s what the producers at TNT call me. Three women, all in their twenties. One raven haired, one curly haired, and one straight-haired, each picking up the ends of the other’s sentences.

They could call me by the Russian version of my name, “Piotr.” But they prefer Piiitrrr, which makes me sound more English. I am their window-dressing westerner, helping them create a pretend Western society. And I, in turn, pretend to be a much greater producer than I am. We start by launching TNT’s first documentary strand. It takes me just thirty minutes to get my first commission: How to Marry a Millionaire (A Gold Digger’s Guide). I reckon I could have got three films if I had made the effort. In London or New York you would spend months trying to get a project off the ground. But TNT is sponsored by the world’s largest gas company. Actually, scratch that; it’s the world’s largest company, full stop.

NO COMPLEXES

“Business theory teaches us one important lesson,” says the instructress. “Always thoroughly research the desires of the consumer. Apply this principle when you search for a rich man. On a first date there’s one key rule: never talk about yourself. Listen to him. Find him fascinating. Find out his desires. Study his hobbies; then change yourself accordingly.”

Gold Digger Academy. A pool of serious blonde girls taking careful notes. Finding a sugar daddy is a craft, a profession. The academy has faux-marble halls, long mirrors, and gold-color-painted details. Next door is a spa and beauty salon. You go for your gold-digger lessons, then you go get waxed and tanned. The teacher is a forty-something redhead with a psychology degree, an MBA, and a shrill smile, her voice high and prim, a Miss Jean Brodie in short skirts: “Never wear jewelry on a first date, the man should think you’re poor. Make him want to buy you jewelry. Arrive in a broken-down car: make him want to buy you a smarter one.”

The students take notes in neat writing. They have paid a thousand dollars for each week of the course. There are dozens of such “academies” in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with names such as “Geisha School” or“How to Be a Real Woman.”

“Go to an expensive area of town,” continues the instructress. “Stand with a map and pretend you are lost. A wealthy man might approach to help.”

“I want a man who can stand strong on [his] own two feet. Who will make me feel as safe as behind a wall of stone,” says Oliona, a recent graduate, employing the parallel language of the gold digger (what she means is she wants a man with money). Usually Oliona wouldn’t even think of talking to me, one of those impossible-to-access girls who would bat me away with a flick of her eyelashes. But I’m going to put her on television, and that changes everything. The show is going to be called How to Marry a Millionaire. I had thought it would be tough to get Oliona to talk, that she would be shy about her life.

Quite the opposite: she can’t wait to tell the world; the way of the gold digger has become one of the country’s favorite myths. Bookstores are stocked with self-help books telling girls how to bag a millionaire. A roly-poly pimp, Peter Listerman, is a TV celebrity. He doesn’t call himself a pimp (that would be illegal), but a “matchmaker.” Girls pay him to introduce them to rich men. Rich men pay him to introduce them to girls. His agents, gay teenage boys, search at the train stations, looking for longlegged, lithe young things who have come to Moscow for some sort of life. Listerman calls the girls his “chickens”; he poses for photos with kebab sticks of grilled poussins: “Come to me if you’re after chicken,” his advertisements say. Oliona lives in a small, sparkly new apartment with her nervous little dog. The apartment is on one of the main roads that leads to billionaire’s row, Rublevka. Rich men put their mistresses there so they can nip in and visit them on the way home. She firstcame to Moscow from Donbas, a Ukrainian mining region taken over by mafia bosses in the 1990s. Her mother was a hairdresser. Oliona studied the same profession, but her mother’s little boutique went bust. Oliona came to Moscow with next to nothing when she was twenty and started as a stripper at one of the casinos, Golden Girls. She danced well, which is how she met her sugar daddy. Now she earns the basic Moscow mistress rate: the apartment, $4,000 a month, a car, and a weeklong holiday in Turkey or Egypt twice a year. In return the sugar daddy gets her supple and tanned body any time he wants, day or night, always rainbow happy, always ready to perform. “You should see the eyes of the girls back home. They’re deadly jealous,” says Oliona. “‘Oh, so your accent’s changed, you speak like a Muscovite now,’ they say. Well, fuck them: that just makes me proud.” “Could you ever go back there?” “Never. That would mean I’d failed. Gone back to mummy.”

But her sugar daddy promised her a new car three months ago, and he still hasn’t delivered; she’s worried he’s going off her. “Everything you see in this flat is his; I don’t own anything,” says Oliona, peering at her own apartment as if it’s just a stage set, as if it’s someone else who lives there. And the minute the sugar daddy gets bored with her, she’s out. Back on the street with her nervous little dog and a dozen sequined dresses. So Oliona’s looking for a new sugar daddy (they’re not called “sugar daddies” here but “sponsors”). Thus the Gold Digger Academy, a sort of adult education. “But how can you meet with others guys?” I ask. “Doesn’t your present sponsor keep tabs on you?” “Oh yeah, I have to be careful; he has one of his bodyguards check up on me. But he does it in a nice way; the bodyguard turns up with shopping. But I know he’s checking there’ve been no guys here. He tries to be subtle. I think that’s sweet. Other girls have it much worse. Cameras. Private eyes.” Oliona’s playing fields are a constellation of clubs and restaurants designed almost exclusively for the purpose of sponsors looking for girls and girls looking for sponsors. The guys are known as “Forbeses” (as in Forbes rich list); the girls as “tiolki,” cattle. It’s a buyer’s market: there are dozens, no, hundreds, of “cattle” for every “Forbes.”

We start the evening at Galeria. Opposite is a red-brick monastery leaning like an ocean liner in the snow. Outside the restaurant black cars are quadruple parked up the narrow pavement and onto the boulevard; scowling, smoking bodyguards wait for their masters, who sit inside. Galeria was created by Arkady Novikov: his restaurants are the place to go in Moscow (he also does the Kremlin’s catering). Each restaurant has a new theme: the Middle East, Asia. Not so much imitative pastiche as knowing hints at someone else’s style. Galeria is a collage of quotations: columns, chrome black tables, panels with English paisley fabric. The tables are lit up with cinema spotlights. The seating plan is such that you can see people in other corners. And the main subjects on display are women. They sit by the bar, careful to just order Voss water and thus provoke a Forbes to invite them for a drink. “Ha, they’re so naïve,” says Oliona. “Everyone knows that trick by now.” She orders a cocktail and sushi: “I always pretend I don’t need anything from a man. That gets them in.” At midnight Oliona heads for the latest club. Worming cavalcades of black (always black), bulletproof Bentleys and Mercedeses move slowly toward the entrance. Near the door thousands of stilettos slide and shuffle on black ice, somehow always keeping their immaculate balance. (Oh nation of ballet dancers!) Thousands of platinum-blonde manes brush against bare, perma-tanned backs moist with snow. The winter air is rent with cries from thousands of puffed up lips, begging to be let in. This is not about fashion, about cool; this is about work. Tonight is the one chance for the girls to dance and glance their way over the usually impossible barriers of money, private armies, security fences. For one evening a week the most divided city in the northern hemisphere, where the mega-rich live fenced off in a separate, silky civilization, opens a little, narrow sluice into paradise. And the girls pile and push and crawl into that little sluice, knowing full well that it will be open for one night only before it shuts them back out in a mean Moscow. Oliona walks lightly to the front of the line. She’s on the VIP list. At the beginning of every year she pays the bouncer several thousand dollars to make sure she can always be let in, a necessary tax for her profession. Inside, the club is built like a baroque theater, with a dance floor in the center and rows of loggias up the walls. The Forbeses sit in the darkened loggias (they pay tens of thousands for the pleasure), while Oliona and hundreds of other girls dance below, throwing practiced glances up at the loggias, hoping to be invited up. The loggias are in darkness. The girls have no idea who exactly is sitting there; they’re flirting with shadows. “So many eighteen-year-old girls,” says Oliona, “breathing down my neck.” She’s only twenty-two, but that’s already near the end of a Moscow mistress’s career. “I know I’ll have to start lowering my standards soon,” she tells me, amused rather than appalled. Now that Oliona has taken me into her confidence, I find that she’s nothing like I thought she would be. Not hard, but soft-drink bubbly. Everything’s just play with her. This must be the secret to her success: the room feels fizzier when she’s there. “Of course I’m still hoping for a real Forbes,” she says, “but if the worst comes to the worst I’ll settle forsome millionaire dunce who’s come up from the provinces, or one of those dull ex-pats. Orsome vile old man.” But no one knows what a gold digger’s future really holds; this is the first generation to have treated this sort of life as a career. Oliona has a mafia mining town behind her and god-knows-what in front of her; she’s giggling and dancing over an abyss. Back at the academy the lessons continue. “Today we will learn the algorithm for receiving presents,” the instructor tells her students. “When you desire a present from a man, place yourself at his left, irrational, emotional side. His right is his rational side: you stand to his right if you’re discussing business projects. But if you desire a present, position yourself by his left. If he is sitting in a chair crouch down, so he feels taller, like you’re a child. Squeeze your vaginal muscles. Yes, your vaginal muscles. This will make your pupils dilate, making you more attractive. When he says something, nod; this nodding will induce him to agree with you. And finally, when you ask for your car, your dress, whatever it is you want, stroke his hand. Gently. Now repeat: Look! Nod! Stroke!” The girls chant back in unison: “Look. Nod. Stroke. . . . Look, Nod, Stroke.” (“They think they’ve won something when they get a dress out of us,” one millionaire acquaintance tells me when I tell him about the lessons at the academy. “I let them win sometimes. Butcome on: What could they ever, ever take from us we didn’t actually let them?” “You know what my word for them is?,” asks another. “I call them gulls, like sea-gulls, circling over garbage dumps. And they sound like gulls, you know, when they sit and gossip in a bartogether. Kar-Kar! Kar-Kar! Gulls! Funny: isn’t it?”) As I research the show I get to know more graduates from the academies. Natasha speaks decent German. She works as a translator for visiting businessmen. The translation agency only advertises for girls with “no complexes”: code for being prepared to bed the client. Everywhere you see advertisements for secretaries or PAs with “no complexes” added in small print at the bottom. The phrase somehow transforms humiliation into an act of personal liberation. Natasha is working for a German energy boss. She hopes he’ll take her back to Munich. “Russian men are completely spoilt for choice; Western men are much easier,” she says earnestly, like one carrying out market research. “But the problem with westerners is they don’t buy you presents, never pay for dinner. My German guy will need some work.” Lena wants to be a pop star. In Moscow they’re known as “singing knickers”: girls with no talent but rich sponsors. Lena knows perfectly well she can’t sing, but she also knows that doesn’t matter. “I don’t understand the whole thing of working 24–7 in some office. It’s humiliating having to work like that. A man is a lift to the top, and I intend to take it.” The red-haired instructress with the MBA agrees: “Feminism is wrong. Why should a woman kill herself at a job? That’s a man’s role. It’s up to us to perfect ourselves as women.” “But what about you?” I ask her when the students are out of the room. “You work; the academy makes you money.” The instructress gives a little smile and changes the subject: “Next I’m opening up a clinic that will help stop aging: Would you like to come and film that, too?” The class continues. The instructress draws a pie chart on a white board. She divides it into three. “There are three types of men,” she tells her students. “The creatives. The analysts. We’re not interested in those. The ones we want are ‘the possessors’,” and she repeats the tell-all, prison-intimating phrase, “a man behind whom you feel like behind a wall of stone. We all know how to spot them. The strong, silent men. They wear dark suits. They have deep voices. They mean what they say. These men are interested in control. They don’t want a forceful woman. They have enough of that already. They want a girl who’ll be a pretty flower.” Do I even need to mention that Oliona grew up fatherless? As did Lena, Natasha, and all the gold diggers I met. All fatherless. A generation of orphaned, high-heeled girls, looking for a daddy as much as a sugar daddy. And that’s the funny thing about Oliona and the other students: her cunning comes with fairy-tale fantasies about the tsar who, today or tomorrow or the day after, will jet her off to his majestic Maybach kingdom. And of course it’s the President who encapsulates that image. All the shirtless photos hunting tigers and harpooning whales are love letters to the endless queues of fatherless girls. The President as the ultimate sugar daddy, the ultimate protector with whom you can be as “behind a stone wall.” When I see Oliona back at her flat she brings out a tome of Pushkin. She met a Forbes at the club the other night who is fond of literature. She’s learning whole stanzas of “Eugene Onegin” by heart: Whom to love, whom to believe in, On whom alone shall we depend? Who will fit their speech and on, To our measure, in the end? . . . Never pursue a phantom, Or waste your efforts on the air Love yourself, your only care. . . . “I’ll slip them in, just when he’s least expecting it.” She winks, keen to show off hercunning. The Forbes has already taken her on a ride in his private jet. “Can you imagine: you can smoke in there, drink in there, throw your feet up on the seat. No seat belts! Freedom! It’s all true, you can really have the life; it’s not just in the movies!” She met the Forbes when she went up to the VIP room. “He’s handsome as a God,” Oliona tells me, whispering with excitement. “He was giving out hundred dollar bills to girls for blow jobs. Kept going all night. Imagine his stamina! And those poor girls, they don’t just do it for the money you know; every one of them thinks he’ll remember them, that they’re special, so they try extra hard. Of course I refused when he offered: I’m not like THEM. . . . Now we’re seeing each other. Wish me luck!” The one thing Oliona will never, ever think of herself as is a prostitute. There’s a clear distinction: prostitutes have to have sex with whomever a pimp tells them to. She does her own hunting. “Once, when I was working as a dancing girl, my boss said I had to go home with one of the clients. He was a regular. Influential. Fat. Not too young either. ‘Do I really have to go home with him?’ I asked my boss. ‘Yes.’ I went back to his hotel. When he wasn’t looking I slipped some Ruffinol in his drink and ran off.” Oliona tells this proudly. It’s a badge of distinction. “But what about love?” I ask Oliona. It’s late; we’re taping an interview in her apartment. We’re drinking sticky, sweet Prosecco. Herfavorite. The nervous little dog snores by the couch. “My first boyfriend. Back home in Donbas. That was love. He was a local authority.” Authority is a nice word for gangster. “Why didn’t you stay together?” “He was at war with another gang—they used me to get to him. I was standing on the corner. I think I was waiting for a tram. Then these two guys, big guys, grab me and start putting me in a car. I kicked and screamed. But they just told passersby I was a drunk friend. No one was going to mess with guys like that. They took me to an apartment. Tied my hands to a chair. Kept me there for a week.” “Did they rape you?” Oliona keeps on sipping the sweet Prosecco. Keeps on smiling. She’s still wearing a sparkly dress. She’s taken off her high heels and wears pink, fluffy slippers. She smokes thin, perfumed cigarettes. She talks about everything matter-of-factly, even with amusement: the story of a very bad, but somehow slightly funny, working day. “They took turns. Over a week. Occasionally one would go out for pickled fish and vodka. The whole room smelt of pickled fish and vodka. I can still remember that room. It was bare. A wooden table. Dumbbells. A workout bench: they would lift weights in between sessions. I remember there was a Soviet flag on the wall. I would stare at that flag during the sessions. In the end one of them took pity on me. When the other went for more vodka he let me go.” “And your authority?” “When I told him what happened he raged, promised to kill them. But then he made peace with the other gang. And that was that, he never did anything. I would see those men often. One, the one who let me go, even apologized. He turned out to be a nice guy. The other would always smirk when I saw him. I left town.” As we pack up Oliona is as thoughtful as I’ve ever seen her: “Actually could you avoid what happened in that room in your program?” “Of course. Itcould be dangerous.” “Dangerous? No, it’s not that. But it would make me seem, well, sad. Depressing. I wouldn’t want people to see me that way. People think of me as bubbly. That’s good.” I feel bad for making hertalk about what happened. “Look, I’m sorry I raised all that. I didn’t mean to. It must be awful to bring it all up again.” Oliona shrugs. “Listen. It’s normal. Happens to all the girls. No biggie.” Oliona’s relationship with the Pushkin-loving Forbes didn’t last long. “I thought at first he wanted a bitch. So I played that role. Now I’m not sure, maybe he doesn’t want a bitch. Maybe he wants a nice girl. You know, sometimes I get confused, I can’t even tell which one I am, the nice girl or the bitch.” This isn’t said dejectedly but as always softly detached, like she thinks about herself in the third person. Whenever I look for a vein of sadness in Oliona it melts away. As a director it’s my job to catch her out, find a chink, pull the emotional lever where her façade crumbles and she breaks and cries. But she just turns and twists and smiles and shimmers with every color. She’s not scared of poverty, humiliation. If she loses hersponsorshe’ll just start again, reinvent herself, and press reload. At 5:00 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbes stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realize how equal the Forbes and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier-mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5:00 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: “Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?” A HERO FOR OUR TIMES I am in a meeting at TNT when my phone goes off. The display says “undisclosed,” which could mean it’s something important from home. I apologize and move to the corridor, under the neon sign “Feel our Love!” When I answer at first there’s a long silence. Breathing. Then a hoarse, whistling laugh. “Piiitrrr. You recognize me? It’s Vitaly Djomochka. I need you to do me a favor. Will you do me a favor? Just a small favor?” Vitaly has a way of asking that makes it uncomfortable to say “no.” “Sure.” “Come to D— station. Bring a camera. And not a little one. A real one. Deal?” “Sure. . . . ” In the evening I make my way down to D—. The journey will take an hour on one of the slow, suburban trains. These trains are among the most miserable rides in Russia: full of the angry poor of satellite towns, the shop assistants and cops and cleaners, who come every day to the big city to be within breathing distance of all the platinum watches and Porsches, only to be blown back again each evening to their dark peripheries, carrying their shift clothes crumpled in plastic bags, drinking lukewarm beer in a cold train. The benches are wooden and impossible to sit on comfortably. I fidget and wonder what Vitaly could possibly be doing in D—, it doesn’t strike me as his sort of place. But it has been a while since I last heard from him.

Once upon a time Vitaly Djomochka had been a gangster. In the 1990s the words “Russian” and “gangster” became almost synonymous, but when the President ascended to the Kremlin the era of the gangster ended...Some hoodlums became Duma deputies to make their money safe, while others retired to become regular businessmen.

But in Siberia Vitaly Djomochka had other plans: he wanted to direct movies. He gathered his crew. No more grand theft auto and extorting businessmen, he told them; they were going to make films about themselves, starring themselves.

None of them knew anything about filmmaking. They had never heard of montage, storyboards, or camera movements. There was no film school they could go to, no famous directorto guide them. Vitaly worked out how to make movies himself. He watched and rewatched the classics, breaking down every shot, every cut, every twist and turn in the plot. There was no script on paper; scripts were for saps.

Everyone knew the scenes from memory. They didn’t use makeup or stuntmen; they jumped from tall buildings themselves and crashed their own cars. All the blood you saw on screen was real; when there wasn’t enough from the wound, Vitaly would stab a syringe in his own vein and spray the contents all over himself. The guns and bullets were all real, too; when they filmed a shoot-’em-up in a bar the place was wasted.

The result was an epic, six-hour miniseries, The Spets (literally “The Specialist”), and when it was ready the gangster auteurs had their own ideas about managing distribution. They would walk into local TV stations with a copy of the series and tell the managers to show it—or else. No one argued. The sound was all over the place, and some of the shots didn’t match. But overall Vitaly had cracked it. There was plot, action, drive. It was a sensation. He became a Siberian star. When I first met Vitaly he was at the height of his fame and had come to Moscow to appear on talk shows and look for money for his next big film. I was working as an assistant to an American documentary director, and we were trying to persuade Vitaly to let us make a documentary about him. We set a date in one of the new Moscow cafés. Pastel lights diffused through a gentle indoor fountain. Muzak played softly in the background. Tall and lean and shaven headed, Vitaly looked uncannily like the President’s meaner, taller twin. He wore a designer tracksuit, pressed flat. He drank cappuccinos, dabbing his lip with a tightly folded napkin, careful that no trace of froth remained. “Capp-ooo-sheknows,” he called them, enjoying the word. He told the waitress off for giving him a dirty spoon. “Did you always want to be a gangster?” we asked. “I always knew Icould be more than other people. Run faster, jump higher, shoot better. Just more.” He talked in a way that was ever so statuesque, with silences between each short sentence. Everything about him seemed so contained. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and told me off for swearing. He used to be a junkie, but he quit. He laughed in a hoarse, slow way, and at the oddest things (the word “latte” he found hilarious). It had taken weeks to set up this little meeting; he first arranged dates, then broke them off at the last moment, leaving us fretting and exhausted. With time I learned this was his way, a little tactic to wrap you around him. “What made you want to make movies?” “I’d spent eight years in jail. You watch a lot of TV in jail. There were all these cops and robbers shows. They were showing my life, my world. But it was all fake. The fights were fake. The guns were fake. The crimes were fake. What can an actor know about being a gangster? Nothing. Only I could tell my story.” Vitaly’s TV miniseries showed his life of crime in scrupulous detail. In his violent pomp he had been a modern Dick Turpin, a real highwayman. He would hide in the bushes by the side of the motorway, waiting for a coach-load of brand new Mitsubishis or Toyotas just brought in from Japan. Then he would pull a kerchief over his face, draw out his sawn-off shotgun, and walk out into the middle of the highway. He would stand legs apart, gun pointed out from his hips, alone in the middle of the road, facing down the oncoming truck. They always stopped, and the cars were all his. If the driver struggled, Vitaly would beat him. The TV series reveled in these moments of violence. The dialogue was sometimes stilted (Vitaly wouldn’t let his crew swear on screen), but when it came to kicking, stomping on, and humiliating, the gangster actors were in their element, theirfaces lighting up with joy and anger. “But what about your victims—did you everfeel sorry forthem?” asked the American. Vitaly looked nonplussed. He turned to me: “Of course not. No one who does what I do feels sorry for the victim. You’re either a dope or a real man, and dopes deserve all they get.” The central scene of Spets involved Vitaly killing another mob boss. In the film he calmly walks up and shoots his rival, then calmly walks away again. The whole thing happens so fast I had to rewind and replay to double check what had happened. “How many have you killed?” I asked when the waitress left. “I can only talk about one time. That was revenge for my brother. I served time for the killing, but afterthat no one messed with me.” “Can anyone be a killer?” asked the American. “No. When I was in prison there were men who regretted what they’d done. They wept, went to church. Not everyone has the innerstrength to do it. But I do.” “And would you everreturn to crime? Vitaly smiled: “Nowadays my life is all about art.” We persuaded him to take us down to his hometown and let us film him shooting a scene for his next project. We’d have an exclusive with the gangster director at work, and he’d have a promo to help raise money. “Usually you’d be one of my victims,” he said matter-of-factly. “But in this case we’ll be partners.” The flight to Ussuriysk, Vitaly’s hometown, took all day. Vitaly just lay back, smiled, and slept the whole journey. I chatted to another former gangster friend of his, Sergey, who wrote the music for The Spets. A former power-lifting champion, Sergey took up two seats on the flight. He had quit being a gangster when he found God: a bullet that should have killed him miraculously passed through his body. Afterward he had seen the light (with the help of an American evangelical sect that helped nurse him back to health afterthe shooting). He was a laughing, jolly, blonde bear of a man, with questioning, kind, light blue eyes. Previously he had dealt heroin and smuggled girls from Ukraine to Europe. “How does the new, religious you make sense of the past?” I asked. “When I was baptized all my sins were washed away,” answered Sergey. “But do you feel guilt for what you used to do?” “I was a demon, but I was still fulfilling God’s will. All my victims must have deserved it. God only punishes bad people.” On the flight Sergey was trying to write a film script. It was to be a modern spin on the old Russian fairy tale of the “three bogatyri,” huge knights of unnatural strength who traveled old Russia taming dragons and invaders. In Sergey’s version the “bogatyri” were former gangsters. When we finally landed in Vladivostok (the nearest airport to Ussuriysk) I expected to see the orient; we were, after all, 1,000 km east of Beijing, where Russia meets the Pacific. Apart from Vitaly this region is famous for its tigers. But instead it looked like more of the same Russia, the same green-brown blur of hills and thin, unhappy trees. We might as well have been in suburban Moscow. Vitaly’s crew were at the hanger of an airport to meet us: young, polite men with darting eyes, shell suits, gold medallions, tidy haircuts, and neat nails. One brought Vitaly a new Jeep, a vassal fetching his lord a new, stolen steed. No plates. We drove in a spread-eagled cortege across both lanes of the highway, so fast it made me first scared and then ecstatic. Vitaly ignored the first traffic cop who waved at him, then stopped for the second one. When the cop saw who it was, he waved him on. “They know betterthan to mess with me,” said Vitaly. Vitaly didn’t need to stop. It was all just demonstration, just to let everyone know: he’s back. We sped into Ussuriysk itself, past the oversized, windy central square, designed with military parades and not human beings in mind. The cinema, town hall, and swimming pool were all in the same stiff Soviet classicism. Wide avenues led to nowhere, stopping abruptly at the endless taiga. You find the same towns throughout the old Soviet Empire, all designed in some Moscow Ministry for Urbanism, awkward and ill at ease. The town was clean. Quiet. “Us gangsters keep this town disciplined,” said Vitaly. “There used to be druggies, prostitutes. Teens with long hair. They wouldn’t dare show their faces now. We showed them who’s boss. I don’t even let anyone in my crew smoke cigarettes. If anyone of my boys were to get drunk in public, I’d give them such a beating.” Vitaly was a celebrity here. When we walked down the streets teenage girls with large shoulders and short skirts stopped to have their pictures taken with him. When we paused by a school the kids saw him through the window and came running out, mobbing Vitaly and thrusting forward their math books and homework pads for him to sign, the teachers smiling benignly. His new film was to be about his teenage years, in the late 1980s, when the first gangsters emerged together with the first businessmen. The next day Vitaly was casting teens to play his younger self. A crowd gathered in front of the Palace of Culture and Leisure, the old Soviet theater. Fathers had taken theirsons out of school and brought them to try out forthe parts of the Young Vitaly and his first gang. “I want my son to learn about our history,” said one of the dads. “The gangsters hold this town together, keep it disciplined.” Vitaly did his casting in a rehearsal room. On the walls were pictures of Chekhov and Stanislavsky, the great Russian inventor of method acting. Vitaly had the boys walk up and down the room: “You need to walk like gangsters, like you mean it. Don’t look to the sides. Don’t look tense. Imagine everyone’s looking at you. Slowly. Walk slowly. This is yourterritory.” He picked out a few of the boys. They were thrilled. He lined them up against the wall, scanning the line, choosing which one would play him. “Too short. Too fat. Too loud. You. You’ll do. But you’ll have to cut off that forelock.” The kid he chose was the quiet one (and the best looking). His name was Mitya. He studied history at the local college. He seemed entirely emotionless at the idea of acting out Vitaly—or maybe he was just in the role already. Vitaly drove him to the local park for a lesson on how to play him. “See those kids over there? The ones drinking beer over by those benches? I want you to go over and tell them to leave. And get them to pick up their litter, too. Act like you own the place. Talk quietly. Firmly. Instruct. Let them feel you’ve got numbers behind you. Imagine that you’re me.” The kid did well. His menace came in the pauses between the words. He told the drinking boys to pack up. Just as they were leaving, he threw in the little humiliation: “Don’t forget your rubbish.” That touch was pure Vitaly: always looking to jab you with a put-down. (“That camera you use is so small Peter, don’t you have a real camera?” he liked to ask me, or “you don’t know how to interview; am I going to have to teach you?”) Mitya seemed a good boy, who would finish university and probably go on to a career in a state corporation. But his behavior, his style, was already pure gangster. “Do you think Mitya could be as good a gangster as you?” we asked. “He has potential,” said Vitaly, “but he would need to toughen up a bit. By his age I was already serving my first term in prison forracketeering.” We went to see Vitaly’s parents. I had hoped they would help explain the way he is, but I was disappointed. Vitaly’s father was a hard-working factory man, used to soldering parts on tanks. He was small and shy and talked about fishing. Vitaly’s mother, slightly tipsy but polite, kept a neat home. They seemed frightened of Vitaly themselves, and he was so disdainful of them he wouldn’t even enter the apartment. “He had been a tear-away at school,” said the dad. “We so hoped prison would help calm him down. That he would come out and get a normal job at the armaments factory. But when he came out of prison you could tell he was a big boss already.” Prison was Vitaly’s alma mater. This part of Siberia was full of them. Everywhere you looked were barbed wire, watchtowers, and concrete walls. We shot an interview with Vitaly as he gazed toward where he had first served time. “Everything I learned was there,” he said. It was the first time I’d seen him even vaguely sentimental. “You have to prove you’re a real man and not a chicken straight away. You don’t cry, you don’t blabber, you don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Only say what you mean, speak slowly, and if you promise something, keep it.” Vitaly had served five years that first time. He had first gone inside in 1988. When he came out in 1993 the whole universe he had grown up in was transformed. The Soviet Union had disappeared. Everyone who had previously been someone was suddenly a nobody. The teachers and cops and judges went unpaid. The factory workers were making fridges and train parts no one needed. The war heroes were penniless pensioners. When he had been first put away, men like Vitaly had been destined for a life on the margins; they were shpana, scum. Now, suddenly, he sensed this was his era. “Why would I work for pennies in a factory like my dad? That would be crazy.” The only values in this new Ussuriysk were cars and cash. The gangsters could access these things the fastest, with the most direct methods. But they didn’t just extort and steal. Businessmen called them in to guarantee deals (if one partnerreneged, the gangsters would sort him out); people turned to them instead of the uninterested police to catch rapists and thieves. They became the establishment, the glue that holds everything together. In this new world no one knew quite how to behave: all the old Soviet role models had been made redundant, and the “West” was just a story far away. But the gangsters had their own prison code, which had survived perestroika. And this made the gangsters more than just feared bullies. They were the only people in this lost, new Russia who knew who on earth they were and what they stood for. And now in the twenty-first century, although many gangsters were out of a job, their way of behaving has become ubiquitous. As he prepared for his shoot Vitaly would often disappear, his usual trick of keeping us on tenterhooks. He designated a friend of his, Stas, to look after us. Stas had a Jeep with a little shovel screwed on at the front: the gangster’s sign. He had a girlfriend with him. She was a tall, pale, bored blonde who only lit up when she talked about her collection of hosiery: “I even have a pair of snakeskin tights at home,” she told me. Stas took us on a tour of Ussuriysk. The town was famous for its car market, one of the biggest in the whole of Russia. We were near the sea with Japan, and all the new Mitsubishis and Toyotas were traded here. The market was on a hill at the entrance to the town. As we approached, it gleamed silver like a magic mountain. Only when we got closer did we realize it was the sun glinting off the new Jeeps and other four-by-fours. Everyone here drove the latest models. They might have their toilets in wooden outhouses, and their apartments might be yellowing, but the big, black cars were always shining with a TV commercial sparkle. Stas took us to a meet at which locals showed off how they’d upgraded their automobiles. One guy had installed a Jacuzzi in the back; another had a movie theater. There was tenderness in how they showed off their prized possessions. These heavy men touched their cars so delicately. Stas took out a little toothbrush to clean the headlights on his Land Cruiser: he scrubbed it softly, patiently, like he was washing a toddler. Stas took us to the hills above the town so we could get the best view. The corroding factories still chugged smoke. Among the hills were the cemeteries with their black marble headstones. On them were engravings for young gangsters: “Buba the boxer,” “Boris Mercedes.” Their portraits were engraved into the headstones, depicting them in gangster pomp—one dangled the keys to his Mercedes, another posed with his mobile phone—like Egyptian pharaohs sent to the next world with their most vital possessions. Dates on the headstones often coincided; the young men had died on the same days in the 1990s. These were the dates of gang battles, a whole generation decimated. “You have many friends here?” I asked Stas. “Most of my class,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “Not just gangsters. Many were just caught in the cross fire.” In the evening we headed to a restaurant, The Miami. Outside was a twelve-foot, plastic palm tree. The plastic palm trees were everywhere around town; they were considered fashionable. The Miami had a parking garage out front and a massage parlorin the basement. “It’s compact,” explained Stas, “all you might want in one place.” The restaurant itself was done up with plush burgundy walls and black lacquer chairs. All the clientele wore ironed shell suits. The restaurant was Chinese owned; we were just fifty miles from the Chinese border, and rumor had it that a third of the population was illegal Chinese immigrants. “The Chinks used to just walk anywhere,” said Stas, “but the gangsters sorted that out. Now they just keep themselves to the market and the suburbs. They need to know this is Russian territory. . . . But they do have the best restaurants.” With the meal there was karaoke. As the Chinese waiters brought the food, everyone at the restaurant sang “shanson,” the gravelly, syrupy gangster ballads that have become some of Russia’s favorite pop music. Shanson reflect the gangsters’ journeys to the center of Russian culture. These used to be underground, prison songs, full of gangster slang, tales of Siberian labor camps and missing your mother. Now every taxi driver and grocery plays them. “Vladimirsky Tsentral” is a wedding classic. Tipsy brides across the country in cream-puff wedding dresses and high, thin heels slow-dance with their drunker grooms: “The thaw is thinning underneath the bars of my cell / but the Spring of my life has passed so fast.” At the Chinese restaurant Miami Stas sang along too, but he seemed too meek, too obliging to be a gangster. “Me? A gangster? God no,” he seemed surprised when asked. “I’m just a businessman. The shovel, well that’s just forshow. I like hanging around with Vitaly.” I asked him what theirrelationship was. He changed the subject fast. We asked Vitaly the next time we saw him. “Stas? Stas is one of the businessmen we used to extort money from.” “And now you’re friends?” “He does what I tell him to.” It turned out Vitaly had once beaten Stas to a pulp, and now Stas half worshiped, half lived in fear of him, helping Vitaly put on his coat and holding his phone for him. And everyone we met in the town seemed somehow crumpled, mumbling, black and white. Only the gangsters strode tall in glorious Technicolor. This was Vitaly’s town, the representative, cross-section town of Russia, the country where a third of males have been to prison, the sort of town spin doctors and TV men look at when they design politicians. The day of his big shoot Vitaly took over a whole market. The scene had the young Vitaly and his gang being busted as they extorted money from the market traders. The traders played themselves, and cops had been hired to play cops. “Isn’t there a problem that you’re working for a gangstertoday?” we asked the cops. They laughed. “Who do you think we work for anyway?” (The new mayor of Vladivostok was a man nicknamed Winnie-the-Pooh, a mob boss who had previously served time for threatening to kill a businessman.) Vitaly’s set had a cast of hundreds, and it should have been chaos, but I’d never seen a film set so slickly run. His gangster crew was the production team. Who would dare to be late on set when professional killers are running the show? Vitaly was a natural. Cap pulled low, long finger tapping against his mouth, he set up every camera position unerringly. Though there was no script on paper, he never got lost, giving terse, tight instructions to all the players. “It’s just like setting up a heist,” he told me. “Everything’s got to be exact. Not like one of your little documentaries.” Every detail of the clothes, the guns, and the items the market traders were selling had been reproduced just as they were in the late 1980s. But for all its detailed accuracy, the way Vitaly shot his films was more like a cheesy B-movie than documentary-style realism. Every shot of Vitaly was a glamorous close-up. He wiped his sweaty brow, sighed like a pantomime hero, looked intently into the distance, and escaped death to the sound of the Star Wars sound track. This was how he saw himself, his life, his crimes. All the pain and death he had caused and suffered were viewed by him through the corny music and cloud-machine smoke of a bad action movie. “What sort of films inspire you?” we asked. Vitaly paused. “Titanic. That’s a real film. With DiCaprio. That’s real life. That’s the sort of thing I aim to make if I get my budget. . . . ” That was the last time I had seen him, three years before. But I was still reminded of him often. There’s a little scene that gets played out on the Ostankino channels every week. The president sits at the head of a long table. Along each side sit the governors of every region: the western, central, northeastern, and so on. The president points to each one, who tells him what’s going on in his patch. “Rogue terrorists, pensions unpaid, fuel shortages. . . . ” The governors looked petrified. The president toys with them, pure Vitaly. “Well, if you can’t sort out the mess in your backyard, we can always find a different governor. . . . ” For a long time I couldn’t remember what the scene reminded me of. Then I realized: it’s straight out of The Godfather, when Marlon Brando gathers the mafia bosses from the five boroughs. Quentin Tarantino used a similar scene when Lucy Liu meets with the heads of the Tokyo Yakuza clans in Kill Bill—it’s a mafia movie trope....

Word went out from the Ministry of Culture and Ostankino for more positive, upbeat films. Russian gangster movies, which should theoretically have rivaled the greatest in the world, were phased out. Actors who had primed themselves to be the Russian De Niros suddenly had to revamp their images and star in rom-coms. It’s the reverse of the situation in the West, where politicians try to act like upstanding citizens while films and TV shows are obsessed with the underworld; here the politicians imitate mobsters but the films are rosy.

Whenever I pitch a gangster program to TNT, they stare, aghast: “We make happy things, Peter. Happy!” I supposed Vitaly never found money for his blockbuster. I was a little worried for him.

• • •

Vitaly was at the station to meet me. He was wearing his usual ironed tracksuit; it had been a while since I’d seen anybody wear one. He greeted me warmly. I sensed he was genuinely glad to see someone from the “old days.”

“Thanks forcoming.”

“You live in D— now?”

“I’m lying low. I avoid Moscow: too many cops wanting to check your documents. Everyone back home has been put away, the last of my crew. I wouldn’t have anyone to film with even if I could raise the money.”

I sensed Vitaly was flirting with his old profession, but I thought it best not to pry. We walked overto his car: a brand new four-by-four (of course). No plates. Vitaly had a freshly pressed shell suit hanging in the back.

“I’m living in the car while I lie low. I’ve always preferred it to apartments anyway.”

“Whatever happened to yourfilm project?” I ask.

“I met some Moscow producers. They wanted me to show them a script. Do they think I’m stupid? I know they’ll just steal it.”

“But Vitaly, that’s how it works here. You’d have a copyright, guarantees.”

“That means nothing. You can’t trust producers, they’re all crooks. I tried to get money from my own people, mob bosses. People you can trust. But none of them wanted to invest in gangster movies. ‘Not the future,’ they told me.” It turned out Vitaly wanted me to shoot a short interview with him. He was planning a documentary about himself. “None of you TV people could capture me right in yourfilms. Did you bring a big camera? Good.” We shot the interview in the car. Vitaly put on his most statuesque look, part reptilian, part Romantic, speaking everso slowly. “Ever since I was a child I knew I could be more than other people. Run faster. Jump higher—” Suddenly, mid-sentence, he broke off and burst out of the car. He started screaming, spitting at a crumpled bum with wildly swollen eyes drinking from a bottle in a plastic bag behind the car. The bum crawled away. Vitaly got back in, still breathing hard, but the angerswitched off like a light. “You wouldn’t want him in the same shot as me. He’d make it ugly.” Then Vitaly shot an interview with me. He had all my words written out already; I just had to memorize the script. “The first time I met Vitaly he struck me as the most talented dangerous man, and the most dangerous talented man, I had ever encountered. . . . ” It was a long speech, and I kept fluffing my lines. But Vitaly was a patient director, and by the fifth take we got it right. Afterthe shoot Vitaly leaned into the back and brought out a pile of hardcover books. “These are for you.” They were novels, written by Vitaly. “I’ve taken to writing books. They’re selling pretty well. I’ll be honest, the first one was ghostwritten. But since then I’ve learned how to write myself.” Most of the early books were based on Vitaly’s life of crime. But in the last book he had changed genres. It was a satire of Russian politics, about a bully, gangster state that uses its giant reserves of fart gases to manipulate the countries around it into submission (at the time Russia was threatening Ukraine with shutting off its gas supply). “I often think now I should have gone into politics,” said Vitaly. “I just thought it boring, I didn’t realize they used the same methods as us. It’s too late now, though. I’ve dedicated myself to art. If I can’t film, I’ll write. And you know what the future is, Peter? Comedy. Set up a meeting for me at TNT; they might want to televise my fart-book.” I told Vitaly I’d do my best. He insisted I take a stack of thick, black glossy books to show people. I couldn’t say no and carried them in two plastic bags back to town, the sharp edges of the books tearing through the plastic and spiking against my legs with every step. At TNT I went through the motions of helping Vitaly and gave the scripted comedy department a copy of the book. “No idea whether it’s any good, but I promised,” I explained, almost apologizing. And thought that would be the end of it. But a few weeks laterI walked into TNT and there was Vitaly, sitting in one of the little glass meeting rooms with a couple of producers, wearing his shell suit and cap. He noticed me when I came in, stood up, took off his cap, and waved. “Hi, brother,” I could hear him calling, the words low and distorted through the glass. Suddenly I wanted to turn away, ignore him, pretend I’d never met him and didn’t know him. ‘Brother!’ he called again, waving his cap in ever larger motions. And the only way I could override the sudden desire to run away was to play up and call out even louder: ‘Brother! Brother!’ until everyone in the office could hear and was looking at me. “Is he forreal?” the women in the drama department asked me afterward. “It all seems a bit of an act.” “Oh, he’s quite real. You actually interested in his book?” “It’s well written. We need to think about it.”

One of the areas TNT specializes in is satire. If the USSR drove humor underground and thus made it an enemy of the state, the new Kremlin actively encourages people to have a laugh at its expense: one TNT sketch show is about corrupt Duma deputies who are always whoring and partying while praising each other’s patriotism; anotheris about the only traffic cop in Russia who doesn’t take bribes—his family is starving and his wife is always nagging him to become “normal” and more corrupt. As long as no real government officials are named, then why not let the audience blow off some steam? Vitaly’s sense that his satire would work inside the Kremlin’s rules was right.

When I tried to follow up on the meeting with Vitaly, he had disappeared. Sergey told me that another warrant had been issued for his arrest, and he was lying low again, sleeping in his Jeep, and keeping well out of any cities. But I guess he’s okay; every yearI see a new novel of his on the pulp fiction shelves in bookstores, most of them comedies. RUSSIA TODAY Western ex-pats first arrived in Russia as emissaries of the victorious party in the Cold War. They were superior and came to teach Russia how to be civilized. Now all that is changing. Russia is resurgent, the teachers have become the servants, and I’m not even sure who won the Cold War after all. I first got to know Benedict in Scandinavia, a favorite restaurant of those ex-pats come to school Russia in the ways of the West in the decades of glorious afterglow after the end of the Cold War: “magic circle” lawyers, “big five” accountants, investment bankers. It’s just off Tverskaya, Moscow’s central drag, in a little courtyard of large green trees. It’s owned by Swedes, and when it first opened everything was imported from Stockholm: the waiters, cooks, burgers, fries—all flown in. In the early 2000s the guests largely spoke English; it wasn’t opulent enough for Russian oligarchs and was too expensive for “ordinary” Russians. The westerners would come here like to an oasis, before they got drunk and courageous enough to explore the Moscow night. It felt like the descendant of an old colonial club in an age that prided itself on being past all that. The Scandinavia set were tanned and spoke earnest schoolbook English. They discussed compliance, corporate governance, and workouts. Finding somewhere to go jogging, the consensus went, was a nightmare in Moscow. As was the smoking. And the traffic. When they got tipsy they made jokes about Russian girls, unless they were with their wives, in which case they discussed holiday plans. They had white teeth. Benedict had yellow teeth, drank wine at lunch, and smoked long, thick Dunhills. He was slight and moved like a cricket, waving his smoke away from others in mock apology. He was Irish, but of the Shaw or Wilde variety. “I’m a lapsed economist,” he liked to tell people when they asked what he did. Benedict was an international development consultant. “International development consultants” are the missionaries of democratic capitalism. They emerged en masse at the end of the Cold War, at the end of history, marching out of America and Europe to teach the rest of the world to be like them. They work on projects for the EU, WB, OECD, IMF, OSCE, IMF, DIFD, SIDA, and other national and multinational bodies that represent the “developed world” (the donor) and advise governments, central and local, of the “developing world” (the beneficiary). They wear Marks and Spencer (or Zara or Brooks Brothers) suits, and under their arms they carry wide binders that contain the Terms of Reference (known as TORA) for their projects, which have names like “building a market economy in the Russian Federation” or “achieving gender equality in the post-Soviet space.” The TORA lay out “logical framework matrices” to achieve “objectively verifiable indicators of democratization.” Western civilization condensed into bullet points: “Elections? Check.” “Freedom of Expression? Check.” “Private Property? Check.” Underlying the projects is a clear vision of history, taught in the new “international development” departments of universities and taken as gospel in ministries and multinational bodies: postcommunism, the former Soviet states would pass through the temptations of “transition” to the plateaus of liberal democracy and the market economy. Benedict was still an economics lecturer in a small-town Irish university when he went to Russia for the first time. He gave a lecture on principles of “business and effective management” at St. Petersburg University. It was 1992. The students listened carefully, lapping up the new language: “SME,” “IPO,” “cash flow.” In the evening after the lecture Benedict walked back to his hotel. He took a wrong turn at reception and found himself in the middle of a wedding party. He tried to ask the way in English. The bride and groom were delighted a westerner had joined them and insisted he stay. He was a piece of exotica, a present in himself. They drank his health, and he stayed on drinking with them. At one point he went to his room and brought back a carton of Marlboros and some Imperial Leather soap as presents. The bride and groom were thrilled. They drank more, and everyone danced. Benedict felt that Russia would be like the West very soon. He left his job at the Irish university a few years later, swapping $50,000 a year in a provincial college for the tax-free, six-figure sums of the strutting new development industry. Benedict was offered a position as team leader on a project called Technical Assistance for the Economic Development of the Kaliningrad Free Economic Zone. He had no idea where Kaliningrad was; he had to look it up on a map. Kaliningrad used to be known as Koenigsberg, the capital of Eastern Prussia, the home of Kant. It lies on the Baltic Sea, between Lithuania and Poland, opposite Sweden. At the end of World War II it was captured by the Soviets, renamed, repopulated with imported Soviets from across the empire, and made into a high-security, closed-off military port. It was the most western point of the USSR. After the Cold War the Russians held onto it, though Kaliningrad has no border with Russia proper. It is now an exclave of Russia inside the European Union, a geopolitical freak. The EU recognized “the special position of Kaliningrad” but had “concerns regarding soft security issues”; that is to say, it was leaking heroin, weapons, AIDS, and a mutant strain of tuberculosis into the EU. Kaliningrad either had to change or risk having a wall built around it. There were no direct flights from Europe. Benedict had to fly all the way to Moscow, then double back and fly west to Kaliningrad. He was in his late forties and divorced, and he wanted a new start. It was almost painful to see the difference between the tired, elegant nineteenth-century houses of the old Koenigsberg and the postwar Soviet new-builds. The red gothic cathedral, home to Kant’s grave, was surrounded, on one side by shabby hordes of aggressive, concrete apartment blocks and on the other by a harbor full of rusting, resting warships. In the evening sailors would go drinking in the bars along the waterfront. I remember finding myself in such a bar on a brief visit to Kaliningrad. The light in the bar was a murky, Baltic Sea green. I ordered a cognac. “A local one?” asked the waitress. “What sort of grapes grow in Kaliningrad?” I asked, not disingenuously. “Why would you need grapes forcognac?” asked the waitress. The shot was poured. One gulp took me through thirty seconds of pure euphoria straight through to the worst hangoverI have ever known. The Kaliningrad Ministry for Economic Development was a weighty Soviet palace on a central square. Benedict and his translator, Marina, passed through the low, heavy doors and into the world of Russian bureaucracy. Wide, dusty, empty corridors where everything happens as if under water. Telephones, installed in the mid-1970s, rang patiently without being answered. Stopped. Then rang again. Velvet curtains sagged. In all the offices hung photos of the President, smiling almost apologetically, with his head tilted to the side. The officials were mainly strong, stern women in their forties and fifties, the real foundations of the Russian state. There were fewer men, and they all seemed to be stooping. All called each other by their patronymics: “Igor Arkadievich” and “Lydia Alexandrovna.” Benedict’s opposite number was P, a midlevel official. He wore sagging suits and had a paunch that seemed to pull him downward. “You the man with the European technical assistance? We need computers,” said P when they met. Technical assistance, Benedict explained, did not mean technology. It meant schooling from Western consultants. Benedict’s interpretertried to get the point across. “We need computers,” answered P. Benedict arranged for some $200,000 worth of computers to be delivered; he explained to P that he would need to sign some paperwork when they arrived to confirm receipt. He got on with the development strategy for Kaliningrad. He was given an office in the Institute of Cybernetics. He asked the dean of the institute whether he cared to advise on IT development in the region. Sorry, said the dean, though the Institute of Cybernetics was still officially a university, the salaries were so low all the staff were now involved in trading fish. It was every man for himself in Kaliningrad. The old armaments factories were making macaroni. Soldiers demobbed from East Germany sold off stockpiles of Kalashnikovs and RPGs. One of the saddest places was the zoo, once the city’s pride: the fox ran round its cage chasing its own tail; the wolf stumbled around stunned in an open pit, the polar bears grinned wildly and stared into the distance, the wild squirrel would run and slam itself against the bars of its cage again and again and again. Benedict had the beige walls of his office painted white and replaced the velvet curtains with venetian blinds. He brought in top managers from EU blue chip companies to inspect the telecommunications, aviation, agrarian, financial, and tourism sectors. Over the next four years they produced SWOT analyses and intervention plans and knowledge trees and gender mainstreaming strategies. Benedict would then send the reports on to P. But when he phoned afterward he could only ever get through to the assistant, Elena. “P will get back to you next week,” Elena, would say. And giggle. P never did. Elena had been a singer at the Crystal Nightclub on Karl Marx Street before she joined the ministry. Some time later, even Elena disappeared, running off to live in Turkey with a Scandinavian ambassador who had left his wife, children, and diplomatic careerfor her. The local government had its own ideas about development. The governor also ran the commercial port, and now his economics minister was busy setting up a network of banks to launder money from the proceeds. The governor himself was large and bald and always sweating. “I went to Poland recently,” he told Benedict the only time they met. “I saw them making ketchup in cement mixers. That’s the sort of innovation we need here.” At the end of the project Benedict asked P for the paperwork to confirm that the $200,000 worth of computers had arrived. P refused to give it to him; the computers had never made it, he claimed. Benedict suspected the computers had been sold out the back door, but he couldn’t prove anything. Benedict put his lack of progress down to the provincial nature of Kaliningrad local government. He was given a new job, in Moscow, working with a federal-level ministry, where he hoped the bureaucrats would be of a different class. And there was much he was enjoying about life in Russia. He had married his translator, Marina, a friendly, unpretentious lady the same age and with the same sense of humor as him. He enjoyed the relative wealth: no longerthe down-at-heel academic, he was now a consultant with a driver, and he always bought the drinks. And another good thing had come out of the project: Benedict had allocated $136,000 for Danish experts to fix the zoo. The animals were acting normally again. Even the squirrel had calmed down. In Moscow Benedict worked opposite the federal Ministry for Economic Development to guide the EU’s strategy in Russia. The minister for economic development was considered the most enlightened minister in Russia. He was an academic and a personal friend of the President, wore sharp suits and pink shirts, and was beloved at Davos. He had fifteen deputy ministers, many of them bright young things with MBAs (or at least studying for MBAs). The ministry was in the middle of reconstruction: some floors were bright and new, many more an extension of what Benedict had seen in Kaliningrad: the same darkling corridors and ever-ringing phones and heavy curtains and photos of the President—now the new one, but still smiling apologetically. “Can you bring paper?” a woman who was Benedict’s liaison at the ministry asked him. “Always bring paper. A4. Every department is allowed a quota, and we can never get the amount of paper we need.” Every time Benedict went for a meeting at the ministry he would load himself up with stacks of A4, sheltering them with his overcoat from the snowstorm. “I’m not sure the ministry understand what we’re here for,” he told me one evening in Scandinavia. “The other day they asked us to organize and pay for a New Year’s party for the whole department.” Meanwhile the country around us was changing. Every day Benedict would evaluate the hundreds of-millions-of-dollars’ worth of EU projects in Russia. They all ticked their boxes: “Democracy? Check: Russia is a presidential democracy with elections every four years.” “Civil Society Development? Check. Russia has many new NGOs.” “Private Property? Check.”

Now, Russia does have elections, but the “opposition,” with its almost comical leaders, is designed and funded in such a way as to actually strengthen the Kremlin: when the beetroot-faced communists and the spitting nationalists row on TV political debating shows, the viewer is left with the feeling that, compared to this lot, the President is the only sane candidate. And Russia does have nongovernmental organizations, representing everyone from bikers to beekeepers, but they are often created by the Kremlin, which uses them to create a “civil society” that is ever loyal to it. And though Russia does officially have a free market, with mega-corporations floating their record-breaking IPOs on the global stock exchanges, most of the owners are friends of the President. Or else they are oligarchs who officially pledge that everything that belongs to them is also the President’s when he needs it: “All that I have belongs to the state,” says Oleg Deripaska, one of the country’s richest men. This isn’t a country in transition but some sort of postmodern dictatorship that uses the language and institutions of democratic capitalism for authoritarian ends. I would rarely see Benedict angry, but when he talked about this he would start to stutter and grow red in the face. He was just a bugler in the grand march of international bureaucracy, but he felt frustrated and unheard. The West was condoning this, agreeing to this perversion of meaning. Benedict was never a moralist, but there was something about fakery that dismayed him. “If you start saying one thing is another, then, well, then the whole thing will come tumbling down, . . . ” he would say, slapping his lighter on the table. And then, when he would calm down: “It’s like the West reflected in a crooked mirror.” I told Benedict I had learned how Russian TV channels were structured. On the surface most Russian TV channels are organized like any Western TV station. Independent production companies pitch program ideas at the network in what looks like open competition. But there is a twist. Most of the production companies, I soon realized, were either owned or part-owned by the heads of the network and senior execs. They were commissioning forthemselves. But as they had a genuine interest in making good shows and gaining ratings, they would create a plethora of companies, each competing against the other and thus improving the quality of ideas. And while the channels themselves pay their taxes and are housed in new office buildings, the production companies, where the real money is made, operate in a quite different world. Recently I had been cutting a show at one such production company, Potemkin. It was based far away from Moscow’s blue-glass-and-steel center, in a quiet road on an industrial estate. No graduates in horn-rimmed glasses snorting coke and eating organic sandwiches here, just the blotchy faces and twinkle-drunk eyes of factory workers and the tattooed bellies of the long-distance lorry drivers who ferry goods across one-sixth of the world’s mud, ice, and bogs. The gray warehouse building where Potemkin was based had no sign, no number on the black metal door. Behind the door was a dirty, draughty, prison-like room where I was met by a bored, unsober guard who would look at me each day as if I were a stranger encroaching on his living space. To get to the office I walked down an unlit concrete corridor and turned sharp right, up two flights of narrow stairs, at the top of which was another black, unmarked metal door. There I rang the bell and an unfriendly voice asked through the intercom: “Who are you?”‘ I waved my passport at where I guessed the spy camera to be. Then came the beep-beep beep of the door being opened, and I was inside Potemkin Productions. Suddenly I was back in a Western office, with Ikea furniture and lots of twentysomethings in jeans and bright T-shirts running around with coffees, cameras, and props. It could be any television production office anywhere in the world. But going past the reception desk, the conference room, coffee bar, and casting department, you reach a closed white door. Many turn back at this point, thinking they have seen the whole office. But tap in a code and you enter a much larger set of rooms: here the producers and their assistants sit and argue; here the accountants glide around with spreadsheets and solemnity; and here are the loggers, rows of young girls staring at screens as their hyperactive fingers type out interviews and dialogue from rushes. At the end of this office is another door. Tap in another code and you enter the editing suites, little cells where directors and video editors sweat and swear at one another. And beyond that is the final, most important, and least conspicuous of all the inconspicuous doors, with a code that few people know. It leads to the office of the head of the company, Ivan, and the room where the real accounts are kept. This whole elaborate setup is intended to foil the tax police. That’s who the guards are there to keep out, or keep out long enough for the back office to be cleared and the hidden back entrance put to good use. Whatever measures were taken, the tax police would occasionally turn up anyway, tipped off by someone. When they did we knew the drill: pick up your things and leave quietly. If anyone asks, say you’ve just come in for a meeting or casting. The first time it happened I was convinced we were about to be handcuffed and sent down for fraud. But for my Russian colleagues the raids were a reason to celebrate: the rest of the day was invariably a holiday (deadlines be damned) as Ivan haggled with the tax police to keep down the size of the payoff. “Only a dozen people work here,” he would say with a wink as they looked around at the many dozens of desks, chairs, and computers still warm from use. Then, I imagine, Ivan would bring out the fake accounts from the front office to support his case, and they would sit down to negotiate, with tea and biscuits, as if this were the most normal of business deals. And in Russia it was. The officials would look at the fake books, which they knew perfectly well to be fake, and extract fines in line with legislation they knew Ivan did not need to comply with. So everything would be settled, and every role, pose, and line of dialogue would reproduce the ritual of legality. It was a ritual played out every day in every medium-sized businesses, every restaurant, modeling agency, and PR firm across the country. I once asked Ivan whether all this was necessary. Couldn’t he just pay his taxes? He laughed. If he did that, he said, there would be no profit at all. No entrepreneurs paid theirtaxes in full; it wouldn’t occurto them. It wasn’t about morality; Ivan was a religious man and paid a tithe in voluntary charity. But no one thought taxes would ever be spent on schools or roads. And the tax police were much happier taking bribes than going to the trouble of stealing money that had been paid in the orthodox fashion. In any case, Ivan’s profits were already squeezed by the broadcasters. Around 15 percent of any budget went to the guy at the channel who commissioned the programs and part-owned the company. When a British TV producer I knew tried opening a production company and didn’t agree to let the head of the channel in on the deal, he was out of the country in a flash. You had to play by these rules. Benedict’s problem was that he couldn’t, and his career suffered for it. People at the ministry kept asking him for “favors”: a study tour to Sweden, a plasma TV for an office. Benedict refused. The ministry complained about him to Brussels; as the “beneficiary” it was up to the Russian side to approve Western consultants. Any new projects for Benedict were put on hold until the whole thing was cleared up. In the meantime he needed money to support himself and Marina. The Moscow movie business was booming, and I helped him get bit parts as the token English man in Russian action movies. He got to know some Russian actors and would give them lessons to get their English accents right. The work was irregular. He moved into a smaller apartment. When we saw each other again it was in Sbarro; Scandinavia was a little pricy. Benedict didn’t look glum. There was always much of the chirpy, bright public school boy about him. “I’ve joined the media,” he told me. “I’m at Russia Today.” Russia Today is Russia’s answer to BBC World and Al-Jazeera, a rolling 24/7 news channel broadcasting in English (and Arabic and Spanish) across every hotel and living room in the world, set up by presidential decree with an annual budget over $300 million and with a mission to “give Russia’s point of view on world events.” Wasn’t Benedict worried he might end up doing the Kremlin’s PR work? “I’ll leave if they censor me on anything. And it’s only fair Russia should have the chance of expressing its point of view.” Benedict had been asked to put together a strategy for the business news section. He wrote papers to the head of the channel advising what sectors business news should cover, questions journalists should ask Russian CEOs so City analysts would watch the channel. He wasn’t censored or leaned on in any way. Russia Today began to look and sound like any 24/7 news channel: the thumping music before the news flash, the earnest, pretty newscasters, the jock-like sports broadcasters. British and American twentysomethings straight out of university would be offered generous compensation packages, whereas in London or Washington they would have been expected to work for free. Of course they all wondered whether RT would turn out to be a propaganda channel. The twenty-three-year-olds would sit in Scandinavia after work and talk about it: “Well, it’s all about expressing the Russian point of view,” they would say, a little uncertain. Since the war in Iraq many were skeptical about the virtue of the West. And then the financial crash undermined any superiority they felt the West might have. All the words that had been used to win the Cold War—“freedom,” “democracy”—seemed to have swelled and mutated and changed their meaning, to become redundant. If during the Cold War Russia gave the West the opposition it needed to unify its various freedoms (cultural and economic and political) into one narrative, now that the opposition has disappeared, the unity of the Western story seems unwound. And in such a new world, what could be wrong with a “Russian point of view?” “There is no such thing as objective reporting,” the managing editor of Russia Today once told me when I asked him about the philosophy of his channel. He had been kind enough to meet me in his large, bright office. He speaks near-perfect English. “But what is a Russian point of view? What does Russia Today stand for?” “Oh, there is always a Russian point of view,” he answered. “Take a banana. For someone it’s food. Forsomeone else it’s a weapon. For a racist it’s something to tease a black person with.” As I left the office I noticed a bag of golf clubs and a Kalashnikov leaning by the door. “Does it scare you?” asked the managing editor. It took a while for those working at RT to sense something was not quite right, that the “Russian point of view” could easily mean “the Kremlin point of view,” and that “there is no such thing as objective reporting” meant the Kremlin had complete control over the truth. Once things had settled down it turned out that only about two hundred of the two-thousand-or-so employees were native English speakers. They were the on-screen window dressing and spell-checkers of the operation. Behind the scene the real decisions were made by a small band of Russian producers. In between the bland sports reports came the soft interviews with the President. (“Why is the opposition to you so small, Mr. President?” was one legendary question.) When K, a twenty-three-year-old straight out of Oxford, wrote a news story in which he stated that Estonia had been occupied by the USSR in 1945, he received a bollocking from the head of news: “We saved Estonia,” he was told and was ordered to change the copy. When T, straight out of Bristol, was covering forest fires in Russia and wrote that the President wasn’t coping, he was told: “You have to say the President is at the forefront of fighting against the fires.” During the Russian war with Georgia, Russia Today ran a banner across its screen nonstop, screaming: “Georgians commit genocide in Ossetia.” Nothing of the kind had been, or would ever be, proven. And when the President will go on to annex Crimea and launch his new war with the West, RT will be in the vanguard, fabricating startling fictions about fascists taking over Ukraine. But the first-time viewer would not necessarily register these stories, for such obvious pro-Kremlin messaging is only one part of RT’s output. Its popularity stems from coverage of what it calls “other,” or “unreported,” news. Julian Assange, head of WikiLeaks, had a talk show on RT. American academics who fight the American World Order, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, antiglobalists, and the European Far Right are given generous space. Nigel Farage, leader of the nonparliamentary anti-immigration UKIP party, is a frequent guest; Far Left supporter of Saddam Hussein George Galloway hosts a program about Western media bias. The channel has been nominated for an Emmy for its reporting on the Occupy movement in the United States and is described as “antihegemonic” by its fans; it is the most watched channel on YouTube, with one billion viewers, and the third most watched news channel in the United Kingdom, and its Washington office is expanding. But the channel is not uniformly “antihegemonic”: when it suits, RT shows establishment stalwarts like Larry King, who hosts his own show on the network. So the Kremlin’s message reaches a much wider audience than it would on its own: the President is spliced together with Assange and Larry King. This is a new type of Kremlin propaganda, less about arguing against the West with a counter-model as in the Cold War, more about slipping inside its language to play and taunt it from inside. In the ad for Larry King’s show, keywords associated with the journalist flash up on-screen: “reputation,” “intelligence,” “respect,” more and more of them until they merge into a fuzz, finishing with the jokey “suspenders.” Then King, sitting in a studio, turns to the camera and says: “I would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf. That’s why you can find my new show, Larry King Now, right here on RT. Question more.” The little ad seems to be bundling the clichés of CNN and the BBC into a few seconds, pushing them to absurdity. There is a sense of giving two fingers to the Western media tradition: anyone can speak your language; it’s meaningless! The journalists who cotton on to what is happening leave quickly, often keen to scrub RT out of their résumés. Some even resign or complain on air, saying they no longer want to be “Putin’s pawns.” But most stay: those who are so ideologically driven by their hatred of the West they don’t notice (or don’tcare) how they are being used, those so keen to be on TV they would work anywhere, orthose who simply think “well, all news is fake, it’s all just a bit of a game—isn’t it?” At any time the turnover at RT is high, as those who make a fuss are sifted out, but there is no shortage of newcomers. In the evenings they hang out at Scandinavia, joined by the other new ex-pats, the communications experts and marketing consultants. An easy relativism ambles through the conversation. A Western journalist who has just taken up a Kremlin PR portfolio is asked how he squares it with his old job. “It’s a challenge,” he explains. There’s nothing unusual in his career trajectory. Why, even the head of the BBC in Moscow moved to work in Kremlin PR. “It would be an interesting job,” everyone at Scandinavia agrees. “Russia might be naughty—but the West is bad, too,” one often hears. I would still see the old ex-pats at Scandinavia, the investment bankers and consultants. They still have tans and white teeth and talk about jogging. Many left their wives for Russian girls; many left to work for Russian companies. Benedict spent six months at RT. He worked mainly from home, e-mailing his reports to the head of the channel. They were all ignored. The business news section on RT is slim; deep reporting on Russian companies would mean analyzing theircorruption. On his last day, as Benedict left the RT offices, the managing editor stepped into the corridor to greet him. He was, as ever, wearing a tweed suit. “Would you like to pop into my office for a second?” he asked in his near-perfect English. Inside the office the managing editor brought out a bag of golf clubs. “I’m a great fan of golf,” he said to Benedict. “Would you care to come share a round with me some time?” “I don’t play golf,” said Benedict. “Pity. But we should become friends anyway. Look me up.” Benedict walked out, confused. The incident stayed with him. This strange Russian, dressed like an Edwardian gentleman, in the bland corridors of RT, speaking in a faintly plummy accent, offering to play golf. “What was he thinking? Dressed that way? What did he want from me?” Benedict wondered. If he had stayed longer at RT, Benedict would have found out the managing editor was thought by all to be the (alleged) secret service guy in the office. When Benedict’s blacklisting was lifted, he was given another EU job: first in Montenegro and then back in Kaliningrad. The ex-clave has changed. There are Lexuses and Mercedeses everywhere, shopping malls and sushi bars. P is now a minister. He wears Italian tailored suits and a Rolex; rumor has it he asks $10,000 for his signature to greenlight local deals. Kaliningrad is sealed off from the EU states around it, but local bureaucrats have made that into an advantage: there is great business to be made from bribes at border crossings. From their point of view it’s more profitable for Kaliningrad to be sealed off. The border-bribes business is carefully organized on principles of effective management and cash flow, with every layer of bureaucrat taking an agreed upon cut, all the way up to the customs headquarters in Moscow. Russia has taken on the business lessons that development consultants like Benedict had come to teach, but applies them like gross carbuncles to state corruption. Benedict has stayed on in Kaliningrad after his last project. It is Marina’s home, and there is little to connect him any more to Ireland. He is in his sixties now. He has spent well over a decade in Russia. He teaches a little English on the side. In the evening he walks his dog through the new Kaliningrad. New-builds are coming up everywhere. The old waterfront with its sailor bars has been replaced with a replica of a seventeenthcentury gingerbread German town, all merrily colored in pastels. At night the new houses are largely dark and empty. As he strolls along the waterfront, Benedict raps his knuckles on the pastel houses. They are hollow to the touch, painted Perspex and plasterimitating stone, timber, and iron. HELLO-GOODBYE I met Dinara in a bar near one of Moscow’s train stations. Girls would come from all over the country to be in that one bar. They would take the train into town, go straight to the bar, and hope to pick up a client. There were all types of girls: students looking for a few hundred bucks, Botox-and-silicone hookers, old and sagging divorcees, provincial teens just out for a good time. It could be hard to tell between the girls who were working and those who were just hanging out. Once you get in it is basically an old, dark shed with one long bar running the whole length. The girls sit in one interminable row along the dark bar, staring hard at every man who comes in. Above the row of girls is a row of televisions, which if you come early in the evening might be tuned to the hysterical neon pinks and yellows, the hyperactive bursts of color, the canned laughter, the swelling, swirling logo “Feel our Love!” of my entertainment channel, TNT (later in the evening it’s tuned to sports). The girls at the bar are TNT’s target audience: eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old females with basic education, approximately $2,000 a month salary, and a thirst for brightcolors. When I tell the girls I work for TNT, they drop their stares and become excited groupies. They crowd around me asking for autographs from our stars. Their favorite show is a sitcom called Happy Together, a Russian remake of the US show Married with Children, in which a wife with bright red hair and bright high heels dominates her slow, weak husband. It’s the first show in Russia in which women are stronger than men, and the girls in the bar love it. They’re less crazy about the show I’m working on: a reality series called Hello-Goodbye, about passengers meeting and parting in the Moscow airport. It’s an emotional affair with lots of tears. “There are so many lovers saying good-bye in your show. You should have more happy stories,” advised one of the girls. “Are all the people in yourshow real?” asked another. The question was fair. Russian reality shows are all scripted—just like the politicians in the Duma are managed by the Kremlin (“the Duma is not a place for debate,” the Speaker of the House once famously said), just like election results are all preordained—so Russian TV producers are paranoid about surrendering even a smidgen of control. Hello-Goodbye was an experiment in a real reality format in prime time (single documentary films don’tcount; they could neverfill a prime-time slot). Dinara stood modestly in the corner and smiled at me, her large black eyes behind the bangs of her bobbed black hair: the girls who looked least like prostitutes, I noticed, were often the most successful. I bought her whisky and colas, and we were still drinking the next morning. I offered to buy pizza. She said sure—but no pepperoni, she didn’t eat pork. “I’m still a Muslim. Even though I’m a pro-sti-tute.” She let each syllable of the word pop through her mouth, as if she were saying it for the first time in a strange language: “a pro-sti-tute.” And so it was that talk turned to matters of God. Dinara said she believed in God but was afraid to touch the Koran since she became a prostitute. Would Allah forgive her? She liked being a prostitute—or at least she didn’t mind. But what of Allah? He hated whoring. She could feel his rebuke. It kept her awake at night. I told herthat I’m sure Allah keeps things in perspective. She told me herreal name; up until then she’d called herself Tanya. Then she told me herstory. Dinara’s parents were schoolteachers in Dagestan, a republic in the North Caucasus next to Chechnya. Her parents, and most people they knew, were out of work. She had come to Moscow to study but had failed all her entrance exams. She couldn’t go back and tell them. She couldn’t move forward and get a good job. So she hung out in bars and waited for people like me. She would do this for a while, then she would stop. In her hometown things had started to get very religious. Her parents were secular Soviets, but the younger ones were all enthralled by the Wahhabi preachers who had come to the Caucasus from Saudi Arabia. Dinara couldn’t stand the Wahhabis. But her younger sister was hooked. She had started to wear a head scarf and talked incessantly about jihad, about freeing the Caucasus from Moscow’s yoke, about a caliphate stretching from Afghanistan to Turkey. Dinara was worried they would make herinto a suicide bomber, a “Black Widow.” All her sister’s friends wanted to become Black Widows, to come to Moscow and blow themselves up. Two sisters. One a prostitute. The other on jihad. • • • It was the Black Widows who had given me my first break in television. On October 23, 2002, between forty and fifty Chechen men and women drove in a blacked-out van through the evening Moscow traffic and out to a suburb once home to the world’s largest ball-bearing factory. Having pulled balaclavas or scarves over their heads and belts of dynamite across their bodies, the terrorists walked briskly into the main entrance of a concrete, brutalist theater known as Palace of Culture Number 10. The theater that evening was showing a performance of Nord Ost, a musical set in Stalin’s Russia. It was Russia’s first musical, a sign that Russian entertainment was becoming as good as the West’s, and the show was sold out. The terrorists came onto the stage during a love aria. They fired into the air. At first many in the audience thought the terrorists were part of the play. When they realized they weren’t, there were screams and a charge for the doors. The doors were blocked off already by Black Widows with explosives wired between their bodies and the doors. The men on the stage ordered the audience back into their seats; anyone who moved would be executed. The Moscow theater siege had begun; it would last four nights. By the time I arrived the next morning, as a fixer to a tabloid journalist (later I would assist on a documentary), the theater was surrounded by soldiers, medics, TV cameras, cops, and crowds of the curious. Hacks high-fived; police sucked on cigarettes with teenage girls playing hooky from school. Baked potato and hot dog vendors had come from across town and were having a field day. “Get your sausages here,” they called to the crowd. A hundred yards between jolliness and terror, between hot dog stalls and hostages. At first I couldn’t understand: Why is everyone acting like they’re in a comedy, when this is a tragedy? Weren’t we all meant to sit in silence? Bite our nails? Pray? Back in the theater the orchestra pit was being used as a toilet; the people in the front row were sweating from the stench. Rows of seats were rattling as the hostages shook with fear. “When we die, how will I recognize you in paradise?” a seven-year-old girl asked her mother. The hostages were losing hope. The terrorists demanded the President pull all federal forces out of the North Caucasus. The Kremlin had said there was no way it would negotiate: the President’s credibility was based on quelling the rebellion in Chechnya. In the late 1990s, when he was still prime minister, he had been transformed from gray nobody to warrior by the Second Chechen War, suddenly appearing in camouflage sharing toasts with soldiers on the front. The war had been launched after a series of apartment buildings had been bombed in mainland Russia, killing 293 people in their homes. Nowhere, nowhere at all, had seemed safe. The perpetrators were announced on TV to be Chechen terrorists—though many still suspect they were working with the Kremlin’s connivance to give the gray nobody who was meant to become president a reason to start a war. Many in the Russian public, cynical after living among Soviet lies so long, often assume the Kremlin’s reality is scripted. There were indeed some grounds for skepticism: the Russian security services had been caught planting a bomb in an apartment block (they claimed it was a training accident); the speaker of the Duma had publicly announced one of the explosions before it had taken place. While they held the Nord Ost theater the Chechen terrorists welcomed TV crews inside to give interviews live for Russian TV. The men spoke in heavily accented Russian, the southern accents usually used in Russian comedies. “We’ve come to die here for Allah. We’ll take hundreds of unbelievers with us,” they announced. One of the Black Widows spoke on camera. Through her head scarf you could see the most elegant, almond eyes. She said she was from a secular family and had joined a sect when her father, husband, and cousin were killed during the war with Russia. “If we die it’s not the end,” she told the television audience, quite calmly. “There are many more of us.” It was my job to stay outside and wait to see if anything happened while my bosses went back to their hotel. It drizzled. The cold rain tasted salty. I drank warm beer, listening for an explosion or gunfire. There wouldn’t be any. At 5:00 a.m. on the fourth night of the siege, special forces slipped a fizzing, mystery anesthetic blended with an aerosol spray gas into the ventilation system of the theater. A gray mist rose through the auditorium. The Black Widows were knocked out instantly, slouching over and sliding onto the floor. The hostages and hostage-takers all snored. Barely a shot was fired as special forces, safe from the fumes in gas masks, entered. All the Chechens were quickly killed. The soldiers celebrated the perfect operation. The darkness around me was lit up with the spotlights of news crews reporting a miracle of military brilliance. The medics moved in to resuscitate the audience. They hadn’t been warned about the gas. There weren’t enough stretchers or medics. No one knew what the gas was, so they couldn’t give the right antidotes. The sleeping hostages, fighting for breath, were carried out, placed face up on the steps of the theater, choking on their tongues, on their own vomit. I, and a thousand TV cameras, saw the stillsleeping hostages dragged through cold puddles to city buses standing nearby, thrown inside any which way and on top of each other. The buses pulled past me, the hostages slumped and sagging across the seats and on the wooden floor, like wasted bums on the last night bus. Some 129 hostages died: in the seats of the auditorium, on the steps of the theater, in buses. The news crews reported a self-inflicted catastrophe. The Nord Ost theater siege, this terror-reality show—in which the whole country saw its own sicknesses in close-up, broadcast on live TV; saw its smirking cops, its lost politicians desperate for guidance not knowing how to behave; saw Black Widows, somehow pitiable despite their actions, elevated to prime-time TV stars; saw victories turn to disasters within one news flash—was when television in Russia changed. No longer would there be anything uncontrolled, unvetted, un-thoughtthrough. The conflict in the Caucasus disappeared from TV, only to be mentioned when the President announced the war there was over, that billions were being invested, that everything was just fine, that Chechnya had been rebuilt, that tourism was booming, that 98 percent of Chechens voted for the President in elections, and that the terrorists had been forced out to refuges in the hills and forests. When someone from the Caucasus appears on television now, it’s usually as entertainment, the butt of jokes like the Irish are forthe English. But despite all the good news from the Caucasus, Black Widows still make it up to Moscow with rhythmic regularity. Over time their profile has changed: they are less likely to be the wives or daughters of those killed in the war in Chechnya. Instead they are from middle-class families in Makhachkala or Nalchik: the Salafi and Wahhabi preachers are doing their work. My journey to TNT in the mornings is on the subway. My line stops by the coach station, where long-haul coaches finish their fifty-hour journey from the Caucasus. On the morning of March 29, 2010, two Black Widows arrived there, descended into the subway, and blew themselves up a few stops into town, killing forty and injuring a hundred. This was done before 9:00 a.m. By the time I got on the subway a few hours later, the blood and glass and flesh entwined with metal had been cleaned away, and when I arrived at Byzantium and ascended the elevatorto TNT, the whole thing, if not forgotten, was then out of mind. There are no Black Widows in this neon-colored land. • • • When I went down to the Caucasus four years after Nord Ost, it was to work on a documentary about a local celebrity. I landed in the capital of Balkaria, Nalchik, toward evening. Balkaria is near Chechnya, the other side from Dagestan. The suburbs were dark; streetlights are still a problem. Driving into town, the only brightly lit building was the brand new central mosque, paid for personally by the Kremlin-backed local leader, Arsen Kanokov. It’s a nouveau riche mosque with mirrored glass, faux-marble towers, and goldplated crescents: new money and new religion in one prayer. Locals call it the KGB mosque, an attempt by the government to co-opt Islam. The young prefer renegade Salafi preachers. In 2005 Nalchik had been attacked by 217 Islamic militants, who had stormed the TV tower and government offices. It had taken the army days to defeat them, and there were one hundred deaths, including fourteen civilians. “We were shocked when we found out the militants weren’t Chechens but local lads from the university where I teach,” a history professor, Anzor, told me when we had dinner that evening. He was doing a bit of moonlighting as my fixer. “I don’t know what my students think about, it’s like they speak anotherlanguage to me. My generation were all Soviet. But my students, they don’t feel Russian. There’s nothing to bind them to Moscow.” The waitress brought more tough, smoked mutton. We were having dinner in the Sosruko restaurant, the town’s most famous, named after a local mythical hero, a sort of Hercules. The restaurant, twenty meters high and concrete, is in the shape of the head of a medieval knight, with helmet and huge moustache, perched on a hill above the town and lit up in neon green, the only building well lit aside from the new mosque. “When my pupils go to Moscow they have people on the street tell them to go home. But yet we’re part of the Russian state. Not immigrants. So what does that mean: ‘go home’? Meanwhile there’s no work here forthe young,”continued Anzor, “and only the Wahhabis spend time with them.” The next morning I could finally see Nalchik clearly. The center was neat, with perfect beds of bright flowers in front of government buildings in Soviet elephantine neoclassicism. Mount Elbrus loomed over Nalchik like a bully threatening violence at any moment. The celebrity I had come to meet was one Jambik Hatohov, at the time the biggest boy in the world. Seven years old, he weighed over a hundred kilos. Tabloid hacks and television crews would fly in from across the world to take his picture. I drove out of town to his mother’s apartment in a suburb of Soviet matchbox blocks standing crooked on uneven dirt roads (the local FSB following, to make sure I wasn’t meeting jihadists on the sly). The staircase was dark, the green paint peeling. The mother, Nelya, opened the door for me. Inside the apartment had been refurbished in the IKEA style, paid for by Jambik’s media appearances. Jambik was in the bath when I arrived. I could hear him splashing and squealing and snorting. I went in to say hello. He was so overweight his penis was covered by flab, and his toes and eyes barely peaked out. He grunted rather than breathed. There was water all over the floor, and he was sliding up and down in a bath he could hardly fit in, splashing water everywhere. He charged me when I came in, and I was slammed against the door. “He never had a father,” said Nelya. “He needs a man in his life.” We went into town. It was the “day of the city,” the state-sponsored party to instill local pride. There were fairground rides and sporting events. Jambik was known by everyone; he was a star. “It’s our Sosruko, our little warrior!” locals would cry as we passed through the festival. Everyone gave him food: shashlik, smoked mutton, Snickers, pizza, Coke. They let us on rides for free. Jambik ate all the time, grunting. When Nelya tried to stop him he would scream like a burglar alarm and hit her with the full weight of his hundred-and-something kilos. We stopped to watch a wrestling competition. There were fighters from several North Caucasus republics (Dagestan, Balkaria, Ingushetia), who represented themselves rather than “Russia.” There were Olympic champions; the North Caucasus produces the greatest wrestlers in the world, and it’s always a problem for the local wrestlers to feel they win their golds for “Russia.” But for many young males the choice is between jihad and wrestling. Nelya hoped Jambik would grow up to become a wrestler, though the local trainers all told her he was too slow. Nelya thought he might make it in sumo. After a while I noticed Jambik’s speech was slow and slurred. “How’s he doing at school?” I asked Nelya. “Oh, he’s such a starthey let him pass into the year above without taking any exams,” said Nelya. We flew Jambik to Moscow, where he appeared on Russia’s number one talk show and pushed a Jeep forthe cameras. He auditioned at Russia’s top children’s TV sketch show. Meanwhile concerned doctors met with Nelya: Jambik was not a warrior, they explained, but a very sick child who needed help or he would die. She needed to put him on a diet, change their lifestyle. Nelya didn’t want to know: he was her bloated, golden goose and their ticket to another life. I felt for her; I had seen what happened when she tried to deny Jambik food. “God has willed him to be this way,” she insisted. When we parted Jambik hugged me so hard I could barely breathe. Later I heard that he had received an offer to study sumo in Japan. That had always been Nelya’s dream for him. But the sumo never did work out for Jambik. Soon the family was back in Nalchik. A couple of years later an even bigger boy was born, in Mexico, and some of Jambik’s star allure was lost. At the age of eleven he weighed 146 kilos. • • • “Switch on the news,” said the text message from one of my producers on Hello-Goodbye. “The fuckers wrecked ourset! Ourset!” A suicide bomber had blown himself up in the arrivals hall of Domodedovo international airport, where we had earlier shot Hello-Goodbye. On the news CCTV footage showed a blurred figure walking across the hall, then the shot was filled with a burst of blinding bright light, and when we saw the hall again it was full of blood. Thirty-seven people died. One-hundred-eighty were injured. A mass of worried messages jammed my phone: I was nowhere near the airport at the time, and the series had been scrapped long before the bomb went off. Domodedovo is the newest of Moscow’s three airports. It’s all glass and light, swept marble floors, cappuccino bars, and bikini boutiques. When I made Hello-Goodbye I spent a lot of time in Domodedovo. I know every place the smoke alarms are dummies and you can have a crafty fag, when the best light floods through the glass walls to get the best shots, how to cut a deal with the customs guys so they go and buy you duty-free whisky. I know which flights bring in which type of passenger and what stories they bring with them. Our presenter, dressed in a bright orange shirt, would walk around the airport and talk to people parting or meeting: slow-kissing lovers parting as he leaves to work in San Francisco; funny lads off for a dirty weekend in Thailand; a secretary waiting for her boss, whom she is secretly in love with, to return from a business trip to London. A microcosm of the new, middle-class Russia, the first Russian generation that not only flies but even flies abroad as a matter of course, a generation’s aspirations under one high-domed roof, in this bright new airport in a bright new nation. So many of our stories were about women waiting for men. There was the fur-clad Anna, a former ballerina from Voronezh, who now danced at strip clubs in Zurich. Her Swiss banker boyfriend was coming to meet her family in Russia and her two children from previous men who had dumped her without leaving a penny behind. The banker wanted to marry her, but it was happening all too fast, and she wasn’t so sure. Two weeks later we saw them again; they parted frostily, then he flew back to Zurich. She wouldn’t tell us what went wrong, only: “Us girls called strip clubs Krankenhauser, loony bins, only mentally ill men go there.” And there was “the milkmaid,” whose story became a YouTube hit. A woman of uncertain age, with golden teeth, a huge permed haircut, bright pink lips, and a fur coat over mud-splattered, knee-high white boots, she was a milkmaid on a cooperative farm. She was waiting for her boyfriend, a teenage Tajik who helped clean refuse at the farm. Their relationship was the scandal of the village: not only was she old enough to be his mother, but worse, she was a white woman going with a “churok,” the insulting nickname Russians give to anyone from the Caucasus or Central Asia. The paranoia that men from the “south” will take away white women has grown into something of a Russian obsession: the “churok” women will blow us up; the “churok” men will take away our women; the “churki” will rebel and the Russian Empire will be no more. But the “milkmaid” didn’t give a damn about what the locals on the farm said about her lover. She reveled in all the details of their affair: “At work I wearthis little white robe, shows off my legs, he likes that!” she told us. “I didn’t give it up straight away, I told him he’d have to give me perfume first. That’s what my mother taught me!” And now she was pregnant. She told him when he came off the plane, on camera. We caught all his emotions: shock (he couldn’t have been older than seventeen), anger, and then the joy as he hauled her up and twirled her: perm, fur coat, white boots, and all. Other people in the arrivals lounge began to applaud and cheer. That was right on the spot where the suicide bomber would blow himself up. The arrivals hall was always the most difficult to film in. It has been under construction ever since I can remember. It has no natural light, is cramped and narrow. We had to drag and place contributors in front of a neon café sign to make the picture palatable. If they stood naturally the shot was awful, made positively ghoulish by the black-coated, grim-faced mob of illegal taxi drivers who leap on anyone coming out of customs and try to bully them into taking overpriced rides to town. Many of these taxi drivers are from the North Caucasus; the suicide bomber’s victims were compatriots and coreligionists. And as we shot Hello-Goodbye, there was always another reality just out of frame. For every London and Paris flight, there were far more from Makhachkala, Nalchik, Tashkent. Clans of gold-toothed migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia squatted in the manicured halls, among hills of plastic sacks full of clothes and fruit they bring to trade in Moscow’s markets. “We don’t want to see them,” the producer at TNT would complain. “We’ve researched our audience. They don’t want to hear about the people from the Caucasus or Central Asia. They don’t relate to them. We need ethnic Russians.” Eventually, however, we had to deal with a serious story about Chechnya. One young couple we interviewed were parting for at least six months. The guy looked like a young Steve McQueen; the girl was spotty. “Why so long?” “There’s war on where I work. I’m a soldier. I serve in Chechnya. She can’t go there.” This is how they met. He was alone and bored at his post, a little brick hut high in the Caucasus. It was night, and he was drunk. He wanted to find a girl away from the front. He looked down at the serial number on his gun. Just for the hell of it he took out his phone and dialed the Moscow area code followed by the serial number. A sleepy girl answered. “Who is this?” He told her. She slammed down the phone. “I just liked her voice,” he said. “So I kept on phoning.” He called every day. Slowly she caved in. They sent each other photos of themselves on their cell phones. Two weeks before our shoot he had some leave and came to visit her. She was from a traditional family from the Caucasus, and he asked her father’s permission to marry her. The father agreed. Now they both wore rings. The wedding was planned for when he would return from Chechnya in six months. “This is my last tour of duty. I’m done with the army. In six months I come back and that’s it, no more war.” “Do you still have the gun with her number?” “The gun? I’ll always keep that gun.” He blew kisses and she cried as he went through passport control. I have no idea what happened to them afterthat. • • • It was a while since I’d been back to the long, long bar by the train station. “How’s yourshow?” asked the girls. “It got scrapped.” The ratings for Hello-Goodbye had sucked. Part of the problem was that the audience wouldn’t believe the stories in the show were real. After so many years of fake reality, it was hard to convince them this was genuine. Dinara skipped up to me with a squeal. She bought me a drink. Her hair was longer. She hadn’t been able to get a properjob orresume herstudies. Herface looked puffy. “How’s yoursister?” “Great,” said Dinara. “Great.” “Is she still with the Wahhabis?” “The nightmare’s passed. I went back home and convinced herto join me here. Thank God, she loves Moscow, she doesn’t want to do jihad any more. Now we work together, we’re both pro-sti-tutes.” Dinara was delighted. Thank God. A story with a happy ending. THE HEIGHTS OF CREATION Though we are expecting Vladislav Surkov, the man known as the “Kremlin demiurge,” who has “privatized the Russian political system,” to enter from the front of the university auditorium, he surprises us all by striding in from the back. He’s got his famous Cheshire Cat smile on. He’s wearing a white shirt and a leather jacket that is part Joy Division and part 1930s commissar. He walks straight to the stage in front of an audience of PhD students, professors, journalists, and politicians. “I am the author, or one of the authors, of the new Russian system,” he tells us by way of introduction. “My portfolio at the Kremlin and in government has included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernization, innovation, foreign relations, and . . . ” here he pauses and smiles, “modern art.” He offers to not make a speech, instead welcoming the audience to pose questions and have an open discussion. After the first question he talks for almost forty-five minutes, leaving hardly any time for questions after all. It’s his political system in miniature: democratic rhetoric and undemocratic intent. As former deputy head of the presidential administration, later deputy prime minister and then assistant to the President on foreign affairs, Surkov has directed Russian society like one great reality show. He claps once and a new political party appears. He claps again and creates Nashi, the Russian equivalent of the Hitler Youth, who are trained for street battles with potential prodemocracy supporters and burn books by unpatriotic writers on Red Square. As deputy head of the administration he would meet once a week with the heads of the television channels in his Kremlin office, instructing them on whom to attack and whom to defend, who is allowed on TV and who is banned, how the President is to be presented, and the very language and categories the country thinks and feels in. The Ostankino TV presenters, instructed by Surkov, pluck a theme (oligarchs, America, the Middle East) and speak for twenty minutes, hinting, nudging, winking, insinuating though rarely ever saying anything directly, repeating words like “them” and “the enemy” endlessly until they are imprinted on the mind. They repeat the great mantras of the era: the President is the President of “stability,” the antithesis to the era of “confusion and twilight” in the 1990s. “Stability”—the word is repeated again and again in a myriad seemingly irrelevant contexts until it echoes and tolls like a great bell and seems to mean everything good; anyone who opposes the President is an enemy of the great God of “stability.” “Effective manager,” a term quarried from Western corporate speak, is transmuted into a term to venerate the President as the most “effective manager” of all. “Effective” becomes the raison d’être for everything: Stalin was an “effective manager” who had to make sacrifices for the sake of being “effective.” The words trickle into the streets: “Our relationship is not effective” lovers tell each other when they break up. “Effective,” “stability”: no one can quite define what they actually mean, and as the city transforms and surges, everyone senses things are the very opposite of stable, and certainly nothing is “effective,” but the way Surkov and his puppets use them the words have taken on a life of their own and act like falling axes over anyone who is in any way disloyal. One of Surkov’s many nicknames is the “political technologist of all of Rus.” Political technologists are the new Russian name for a very old profession: viziers, gray cardinals, wizards of Oz. They first emerged in the mid-1990s, knocking on the gates of power like pied pipers, bowing low and offering their services to explain the world and whispering that they could reinvent it. They inherited a very Soviet tradition of top-down governance and tsarist practices of co-opting antistate actors (anarchists in the nineteenth century, neo-Nazis and religious fanatics now), all fused with the latest thinking in television, advertising, and black PR. Their first clients were actually Russian modernizers: in 1996 the political technologists, coordinated by Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch nicknamed the “Godfather of the Kremlin” and the man who first understood the power of television in Russia, managed to win then President Boris Yeltsin a seemingly lost election by persuading the nation he was the only man who could save it from a return to revanchist Communism and new fascism. They produced TV scare-stories of looming pogroms and conjured fake Far Right parties, insinuating that the other candidate was a Stalinist (he was actually more a socialist democrat), to help create the mirage of a looming “red-brown” menace. In the twenty-first century the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk on which were phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. The brilliance of this new type of authoritarianism is that instead of simply oppressing opposition, as had been the case with twentieth-century strains, it climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd. One moment Surkov would fund civic forums and human rights NGOs, the next he would quietly support nationalist movements that accuse the NGOs of being tools of the West. With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals forthe most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime. Living in the world of Surkov and the political technologists, I find myself increasingly confused. Recently my salary almost doubled. On top of directing shows for TNT, I have been doing some work for a new media house called SNOB, which encompasses TV channels and magazines and a gated online community for the country’s most brilliant minds. It is meant to foster a new type of “global Russian,” a new class who will fight for all things Western and liberal in the country. It is financed by one of Russia’s richest men, the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who also owns the Brooklyn Nets. I have been hired as a “consultant” for one of SNOB’s TV channels. I write interminable notes and strategies and flowcharts, though nothing ever seems to happen. But I get paid. And the offices, where I drop in several times a week to talk about “unique selling points” and “high production values,” are like some sort of hipster fantasy: set in a converted factory, the open brickwork left untouched, the huge arches of the giant windows preserved, with edit suites and open plan offices built in delicately. The employees are the children of Soviet intelligentsia, with perfect English and vocal in their criticism of the regime. The deputy editor is a well-known American Russian activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and her articles in glossy Western magazines attack the President vociferously. But for all the opposition posturing of SNOB, it’s also clear there is no way a project so high profile could have been created without the Kremlin’s blessing. Is this not just the sort of “managed” opposition the Kremlin is very comfortable with? On the one hand allowing liberals to feel they have a free voice and a home (and a paycheck), on the other helping the Kremlin define the “opposition” as hipster Muscovites, out of touch with “ordinary” Russians, obsessed with “marginal” issues such as gay rights (in a homophobic country). The very name of the project, “SNOB,” though meant ironically, already defines us as a potential object of hate. And for all the anti-Kremlin rants on SNOB, we never actually do any real investigative journalism, find out any hard facts about money stolen from the state budget: in twenty-first-century Russia you are allowed to say anything you want as long as you don’t follow the corruption trail. After work I sit with my colleagues, drinking and talking: Are we the opposition? Are we helping Russia become a freer place? Or are we actually a Kremlin project strengthening the President? Actually doing damage to the cause of liberty? Or are we both? A card to be played? Sure enough, in the next presidential elections Prokhorov will become the Kremlin-endorsed liberal candidate: the SNOB project helps endear him to the intelligentsia, but as a flamboyant oligarch best known for partying in Courchevel with busloads of models, he is an easy target for the Kremlin. Again Moscow’s chattering classes speculate: Is Prokhorov a genuine candidate? Is it better to vote for him, or does that mean you’re playing the Kremlin game? Or should one vote for no one and ignore the system? In the end Prokhorov gains a fairly impressive 8 percent—before elegantly retreating from the political scene to wait for his nextcall-up. We are all just bit-part players in the political technologists’ great reality show. But Surkov is more than just a political operator. He is an aesthete who pens essays on modern art, an aficionado of gangsta rap who keeps a photo of Tupac on his desk next to that of the President. He likes to say the President has been sent to us from God, yet writes lyrics forrock groups such as these: He is always ahead of us in scarlet silk on a pale horse. We follow him, up to our knees in mud and our necks in guilt. Along our road burn houses and bridges. I will be like you. You will be like him. We will be like everyone. And Surkov is also the alleged author of a novel, Almost Zero, published in 2008 and informed by his own experiences. “Alleged” because the novel was published under the pseudonym Natan Dubovitsky; Surkov’s wife is called Natalya Dubovitskaya. Officially Surkov is the author of the preface, in which he denies being the author of the novel, then makes a point of contradicting himself: “The author of this novel is an unoriginal Hamlet-obsessed hack”; “this is the best book I have ever read.” In interviews he can come close to admitting to being the author while always pulling back from a complete confession. Whether or not he actually wrote every word of it, he has gone out of his way to associate himself with it. And it is a best seller: the key confession of the era, the closest we might ever come to seeing inside the mind of the system. The novel is a satire of contemporary Russia whose hero, Egor, is a corrupt PR man happy to serve anyone who’ll pay the rent. A former publisher of avant-garde poetry, he now buys texts from impoverished underground writers, then sells the rights to rich bureaucrats and gangsters with artistic ambitions, who publish them under their own names. Everyone is for sale in this world; even the most “liberal” journalists have their price. The world of PR and publishing as portrayed in the novel is dangerous. Publishing houses have their own gangs, whose members shoot each other over the rights to Nabokov and Pushkin, and the secret services infiltrate them for their own murky ends. It’s exactly the sort of book Surkov’s youth groups burn on Red Square. Born in provincial Russia to a single mother, Egor grows up as a bookish hipster disenchanted with the late Soviet Union’s sham ideology. In the 1980s he moves to Moscow to hang out on the fringes of the bohemian set; in the 1990s he becomes a PR guru. It’s a background that has a lot in common with what we know of Surkov’s own—he only leaks details to the press when he sees fit. He was born in 1964, the son of a Russian mother and a Chechen father who left when Surkov was still a young child. Former schoolmates remember him as someone who made fun of the teacher’s pets in the Komsomol, wore velvet trousers, had long hair like Pink Floyd, wrote poetry, and was a hit with the girls. He was a straight-A student whose essays on literature were read aloud by teachers in the staff room; it wasn’t only in his own eyes that he was too smart to believe in the social and political set around him. “The revolutionary poet Mayakovsky claimed that life (after the communist revolution) is good and it’s good to be alive,” wrote the teenage Surkov in lines that were strikingly subversive for a Soviet pupil. “However, this did not stop Mayakovsky from shooting himself several years later.” After he moved to Moscow, Surkov first pursued and abandoned a range of university careers from metallurgy to theater directing, then put in a spell in the army (where he might have served in military espionage), and engaged in regular violent altercations (he was expelled from drama school for fighting). His first wife was an artist famous for her collection of theater puppets (which Surkov would later build up into a museum). And as Surkov matured, Russia experimented with different models at a dizzying rate: Soviet stagnation led to perestroika, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal euphoria, economic disaster, oligarchy, and the mafia state. How can you believe in anything when everything around you is changing so fast? He was drawn to the bohemian set in Moscow, where performance artists were starting to capture the sense of dizzying mutability. No party would be complete without Oleg Kulik (who would impersonate a rabid dog to show the brokenness of post-Soviet man), German Vinogradov (who would walk naked into the street and pourice water over himself), orlater Andrej Bartenjev (who would dress as an alien to highlight how weird this new world was). And of course Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe. Hyper-camp and always playing with a repertoire of poses, Vladik was a post-Soviet Warhol mixed with Ru Paul. Russia’s first drag artist, he started out impersonating Marilyn Monroe and Hitler (“the two greatest symbols of the twentieth century,” he would say) and went on to portray Russian pop stars, Rasputin, and Gorbachev as an Indian woman; he turned up at parties as Yeltsin, Tutankhamen, or Karl Lagerfeld. “When I perform, for a few seconds I become my subject,” Vladik liked to say. His impersonations were always obsessively accurate, pushing his subject to the point of extreme, where the person’s image would begin to reveal and undermine itself. At the same time Russia was discovering the magic of PR and advertising, and Surkov found his métier. He was given his chance by Russia’s best-looking oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In 1992 he launched Khodorkovsky’s first ad campaign, in which the oligarch, in checked jacket, moustache, and a massive grin, was pictured holding out bundles of cash: “Join my bank if you want some easy money” was the message. “I’ve made it; so can you!” The poster was pinned up on every bus and billboard, and for a population raised on anticapitalist values, it was a shock. It was the first time a Russian company had used the face of its own owner as the brand. It was the first time wealth had been advertised as a virtue. Previously millionaires might have existed, but they always had to hide their success. But Surkov could sense the world was shifting. Surkov next worked as head of PR at Ostankino’s Channel 1, forthe then grand vizier of the Kremlin court, Boris Berezovsky. In 1999 he joined the Kremlin, creating the President’s image just as he had created Khodorkovsky’s. When the President exiled Berezovsky and arrested and jailed Khodorkovsky, Surkov helped run the media campaign, which featured a new image of Khodorkovsky: instead of the grinning oligarch pictured handing out money, he was now always shown behind bars. The message was clear—you’re only a photo away from going from the cover of Forbes to a prison cell. And through all these changes Surkov switched positions, masters, and ideologies without seeming to skip a beat. Perhaps the most interesting parts of Almost Zero occur when the author moves away from social satire to describe the inner world of his protagonist. Egor is described as a “vulgar Hamlet” who can see through the superficiality of his age but is unable to have genuine feelings for anyone or anything: “His self was locked in a nutshell . . . outside were his shadows, dolls. He saw himself as almost autistic, imitating contact with the outside world, talking to others in false voices to fish out whatever he needed from the Moscow squall: books, sex, money, food, power and other useful things.” Egoris a manipulator but not a nihilist; he has a very clearconception of the divine: “Egor could clearly see the heights of Creation, where in a blinding abyss frolic non-corporeal, unpiloted, pathless words, free beings, joining and dividing and merging to create beautiful patterns.” The heights of creation! Egor’s god is beyond good and evil, and Egor is his privileged companion: too clever to care for anyone, too close to God to need morality. He sees the world as a space in which to project different realities. Surkov articulates the underlying philosophy of the new elite, a generation of post-Soviet supermen who are stronger, more clearheaded, faster, and more flexible than anyone that has come before. I encounter forms of this attitude every day. The producers who work at the Ostankino channels might all be liberals in their private lives, holiday in Tuscany, and be completely European in theirtastes. When I ask how they marry their professional and personal lives, they look at me as if I were a fool and answer: “Over the last twenty years we’ve lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we’ve realized they are illusions, that everything is PR.” “Everything is PR” has become the favorite phrase of the new Russia; my Moscow peers are filled with a sense that they are both cynical and enlightened. When I ask them about Soviet-era dissidents, like my parents, who fought against communism, they dismiss them as naïve dreamers and my own Western attachment to such vague notions as “human rights” and “freedom” as a blunder. “Can’t you see your own governments are just as bad as ours?” they ask me. I try to protest—but they just smile and pity me. To believe in something and stand by it in this world is derided, the ability to be a shape-shifter celebrated. Vladimir Nabokov once described a species of butterfly that at an early stage in its development had to learn how to change colors to hide from predators. The butterfly’s predators had long died off, but still it changed its colors from the sheer pleasure of transformation. Something similar has happened to the Russian elites: during the Soviet period they learned to dissimulate in order to survive; now there is no need to constantly change their colors, but they continue to do so out of a sort of dark joy, conformism raised to the level of aesthetic act. Surkov himself is the ultimate expression of this psychology. As I watch him give his speech to the students and journalists, he seems to change and transform like mercury, from cherubic smile to demonic stare, from a woolly liberal preaching “modernization” to a finger-wagging nationalist, spitting out willfully contradictory ideas: “managed democracy,” “conservative modernization.” Then he steps back, smiling, and says: “We need a new political party, and we should help it happen, no need to wait and make it form by itself.” And when you look closely at the party men in the political reality show Surkov directs, the spitting nationalists and beetroot-faced communists, you notice how they all seem to perform theirroles with a little ironic twinkle. Elsewhere Surkov likes to invoke the new postmodern texts just translated into Russian, the breakdown of grand narratives, the impossibility of truth, how everything is only “simulacrum” and “simulacra” . . . and then in the next moment he says how he despises relativism and loves conservatism, before quoting Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra,” in English and by heart. If the West once undermined and helped to ultimately defeat the USSR by uniting free market economics, cool culture, and democratic politics into one package (parliaments, investment banks, and abstract expressionism fused to defeat the Politburo, planned economics, and social realism), Surkov’s genius has been to tear those associations apart, to marry authoritarianism and modern art, to use the language of rights and representation to validate tyranny, to recut and paste democratic capitalism until it means the reverse of its original purpose. At the height of his power Surkov’s ambition grew beyond mere parties and policies or even novels. He began to dream of creating a new city, a utopia. Its name was to be Skolkovo, a Russian Silicon Valley, a gated community of post-Soviet perfection. Hundreds of millions were poured into the project. I found myself invited on a media tour to Surkov’s city of the sun. We were taken on a coach and driven for hours outside of Moscow. At the visitor’s center at Skolkovo a girl with clover-blue eyes showed us 3-D video projections of the future city: offices built into the landscape in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, artificial lakes and schools, eternal sunshine and adventure sports, and entrepreneurs in sneakers. We got into the bus and drove across the real landscape: miles of snowy wastes and bare trees. Since Skolkovo’s launch billions have been spent, but virtually nothing has been built (there are whispers and rumors the project was at least partly created to give Surkov’s circle a mechanism through which to siphon off state money). We were being taken to the hyper-cube, the only building of the future city already constructed. “We will soon arrive at the hyper-cube,” our guide said. “The hyper-cube is just coming into view.” It turned out to be a very modernist little structure, looking lost in an empty field. It had exposed concrete walls and large video screens. A PR man with a deep tan and the nasty smile common to upper-end foreignservice KGB men told us that all the corruption scandals related to Skolkovo had been solved. Behind him, on the video screens, the words “innovation” and “modernization” kept popping up. I asked whether the “modernization” project had failed: every week there were more arrests of businessmen and -women, and many of them worked in companies that were either directly owned by or existed only at the Kremlin's whim. Polls showed that young people no longer wanted to be entrepreneurs but bureaucrats. The PR man shrugged and answered that the President was fully behind Skolkovo. On the tour of Skolkovo we were accompanied by a young man named Sergey Kalenik, a member of the Kremlin youth group, Nashi, created by Surkov. Sergey wore a hoodie, goatee, and skinny jeans and looked like any hipster youth you find in Brooklyn or Hackney—then he opened his mouth and began to sing paeans to the President and how the West is out to get Russia. Sergey was from a humble background in Minsk, Belarus. He first made his name by drawing a really rather good manga cartoon that showed the President as superhero doing battle against zombie protesters and evil monster anticorruption bloggers: a nice example of the Surkovian tactic of co-opting hipster language to its own ends, trying to get the “cool” people on the Kremlin’s side. The cartoon was so successful Kalenik was introduced to senior government officials, and his career as a young spin doctor was launched. “Politics is the ability to use any situation to advance your own status,” Sergey told me with a smile that seemed to mimic Surkov’s (who in turn mimics the KGB men). “How do you define your political views?” I asked him. He looked at me like I was a fool to ask, then smiled: “I’m a liberal . . . it can mean anything!”

ACT II CRACKS IN THE MATRIX

This section is in the process of an expansion or major restructuring.

This page was last edited by Admin today.

You think prison is something bad that happens to other people. And then you wake up and my God you’re a convict.

In the evening before her arrest, Yana Yakovleva was sitting in the garden of her country dacha. It was Sunday. The last of the summer was slowly draining out of the light. The guests had left; there were empty wine glasses and wine bottles and plates with cheese and sushi from the picnic lying on the mown grass. Yana leant back in the chaise longue to catch the last of the sun. It was getting cold fast.

Suddenly, very suddenly, she had the sense something bad was about to happen. It was so strong Yana suddenly realized she was crying.

Alexey, her lover, was moving about the garden collecting things. Yana wanted to call out to him, then changed her mind. She couldn’t explain her sudden fear. They had been living together for two years, and she knew what he would say: he would tell herto snap out of it. The next morning, a Monday, she drove the Lexus back into town still wearing the clothes from the weekend party: a short white frilly dress, pink heels, and a white handbag. They stopped for a cappuccino at the new coffeehouse on Frunzenskaya and skimmed through Vedemosti, the Russian version of the Financial Times. Then Alexey grabbed a cab to his job as a senior manager in one of the big new Russian energy companies, and Yana drove to the gym. All the while the sense that something bad was about to happen wouldn’t go away, like a distant but ever-present ringing in her ears. At the reception desk she noticed the girl behind the counter was staring at herin a strange way. Yana thought it rude; this was a private gym, and it wasn’t the sort of stare members paid to receive. Near the door to the back office there was a small group of men in polyester suits. They didn’t look like they belonged here. One was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands. Her trainer had Yana box, run, and then finish off with abs. It hurt after the weekend’s wine, and her trainer let her go easy on the abs. “See you Thursday,” the trainer said. She usually trained three times a week. “If I make it,” said Yana. It just came out; she wasn’t sure why she had said it. “Oh, there’s nowhere you could disappearto” laughed the trainer. Yana showered and changed back into the white dress and pink heels. They would giggle behind her back at work, but it was her company, and there was no one to tell her what to wear. She had been running the company since she was twenty with one other partner. Now she was thirty-four, they had dozens of employees, and she could afford to turn up late wearing high heels. It was the sort of company the general public rarely notices but that makes good money: importing and reselling industrial cleaning fluids to factories and army bases. Yana came from a family of academic scientists; her father had taught chemistry, and now she made her money in the chemicals industry. Soviet knowledge transmuting smoothly to post-Soviet economics. When she came out of the changing room the girl at the reception desk was staring at her even harder. It was embarrassing. Yana had decided enough was enough; she was going to tell her off. Then the men in polyester suits approached. The nervous one flashed his badge and said, “We’re from the FDCS [Drug Enforcement Agency]; you need to come with us.” The first thought that went through Yana’s mind was: “That explains why the reception girl had been looking at me funny. ‘The FDCS have come for Yakovleva’—it makes me sound like I’m a drug dealer!” Yana flashed the girl at reception a quick smile as if to say, “Hey, it’s no big deal, I work in pharmaceuticals, we deal with the FDCS all the time,” but the girl turned away. Yana felt no panic. She had done nothing wrong, so why should she panic? The FDCS had been visiting her office regularly over the last few months: the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry, along with illegal drugs, were regulated by them. Men in masks carrying Kalashnikovs had raided the accounts department. No big deal: that happens regularly in Russia, to every business—when the organs want to find something, anything wrong in your taxes or your forms and registrations and extract some bribes. Yana had never worried about it. Her company had done nothing wrong. And if they had done nothing wrong, what did she have to fear? It would be fine. Yana followed the men from the FDCS to the front door. They looked awkward in their cheap suits in the up-market gym. The main one was sweating, but he had calmed down once he realized she wasn’t putting up a fight. But why should she put up a fight? Outside were two drivers. They had parked their old matchbox Soviet cars in front of her new Lexus so she wouldn’t be able to make a getaway. It made her smile; it was like in some cops and robbers TV show. One of the drivers walked up to her. He looked her up and down. “It’s nice to arrest decent looking people.” “I’m being arrested?” “Well . . . held.” “I need to call my boyfriend.” “No phone calls,” they told her. They let her drive her own car to the FDCS headquarters. They sat in the back and let her drive. It was all very casual. She could sense she was entering a different world, one where the rules were different, where other people would tell her what to do. But she didn’t feel panic. Just strange. She was trying to work out what the rules of this new world were. It feltcurious. It tingled. The office of the FDCS was in the north of town, a large gray Stalin building like an elaborately carved gravestone with the heraldic sign of the Kremlin’s double-headed eagle at the entrance. The doors were heavy to push open. Inside were long office corridors and lots of men in polyester suits. They seemed to hush when they saw Yana, eyeing her as if she were someone terribly important. They took her to an office room with a table and two chairs. They fussed over her: Did she want some tea? Something to eat? She asked for a chocolate bar, and they ran off to the local store to buy one. Her lawyer was there and told her to make calls. Yana phoned Alexey, but he wouldn’t pick up. So she texted instead: “I’ve been arrested.” And then a smiley face. “You’d better ask him to bring you some clothes,” said the lawyer. This struck Yana. “You think I will be here a while?” “Not too long. We’ll sort it out.” Then the detective came in. His name was Vaselkov, which sounds like the Russian word for “cornflower.” He had a face like a bulldog. “We are charging you with a particularly serious crime,” said Vaselkov. “Which one?” “Read this,” he said and handed her a folder of ninety pages or so. “And then sign that you have understood everything.” Yana looked at Vaselkov. He stared into nowhere like an automaton. She opened the folder. Inside were photocopies of her company’s accounts and transactions. Bills for buying and selling. Page after page of them. Just their accounts and bills. What they did normally every day. She couldn’t understand. What was she being charged with? “You have been trading in diethyl ether,” said Vaselkov. Diethyl ether was a chemical cleaning agent. Yakovleva’s company had built its business around it, importing it from France and selling it on. “Yes.” “It’s an illegal narcotic substance. You are being charged with the distribution of illegal narcotics.” Some misunderstanding, thought Yana, just some misunderstanding. “But we have a license for it,” answered Yana, almost laughing. She was being charged with trading what she traded. Since when was a cleaning agent used in every factory a narcotic substance? It didn’t make any sense. She had been trading in diethyl ether for over a decade. It was like telling a chocolate bar factory thatchocolate was illegal. Or a jeans factory that jeans were illegal. She looked at Vaselkov, but he just stared back dumbly. She continued reading through the charges. The paperwork was just her everyday accounts; that’s what the men in masks must have been taking from the office. In the folder, page after page said the same thing: “bought 150 liters of diethyl ether, sold 100 liters of diethyl ether.” It was what she did every day. What was she being charged with? “If you have familiarized yourself with the charges, please sign,” said Vaselkov. She signed, but she didn’t understand. Everything was starting to spin. Her synapses couldn’t make sense of what was going on, a short circuit in logic. Chairs seemed lighter, walls flimsier. The world around us is made up of the association of words to things, and hers was buckling. She kept on trying to square the logic in her head but kept slipping and falling whenevershe tried. She was still spinning as she walked into the corridor. Alexey was there. All she could see were his eyes. They steadied her. She moved toward him to embrace him, but someone pushed her on. “This isn’t some dinner date,” someone said. Alexey handed her a plastic bag with sneakers and jeans in it. Again someone pushed her to move on. She was losing control. She started crying. This time they put her in their own car, a broken-down old Lada. They drove her to Petrovka 38, Moscow’s main police station. Outside it is a lovely old nineteenthcentury palace, with a grand triangular portico like on a Greek temple, standing on the corner of one of the tree-draped boulevards right opposite the Galeria restaurant where gold diggers meet oligarchs and the Bentleys are quadruple-parked onto the pavement. Yana was pushed inside Petrovka 38 into a hive of cops. She had never seen so many cops in one place, men and women, young and old. But all somehow pasty and semolina-like, as if they were all distantly related or from one village, and all wearing blue uniforms against the seaweed-green walls. They were leading criminals back and forth and into cells. You could tell they were criminals: drunks and youths with smashed-up faces, gypsy girls and junkies. Everywhere the sound of locks turning, keys jangling, doors slamming. Yana kept thinking of the Count of Monte Cristo. She was taken into one room and then another. She felt like she was becoming a parcel, passed from one cop to the next. Turn around! Bend down! Put your hands to your head! Shoes off—belt off—socks off—panties off. Body search. She was crying all the time by now. All the time. Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a criminal? Every cop she looked at, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t they see she didn’t belong here among all these criminals? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe if they could just see she wasn’t meant to be here, it would change something? Everything? But they just looked at her as if she were a parcel. In the morning she had been a businesswoman driving a Lexus in a frilly white dress. Now she was a parcel. They put her in a dark cell. There were three bunks. She lay there for a while, stunned. When she turned to the wall, someone called through the door: “Turn around so we can see you.” The next day they would take herto court to decide on bail. “The court will sort it out,” thought Yana. “The court will sort it out”: she had grown up with that phrase. Courts were places where things were sorted out. She assumed she would get bail. She had no convictions. She had done nothing wrong. Why wouldn’t she get bail? They drove herto court in the back of a van. She hadn’t slept or eaten. Her hair was a mess. At court they put her in a cage in the accused stand. The judge looked matronly, with her hair in a bun and glasses. She looked like a sensible person. She would sort it out. “Well?” said the judge. “I don’t understand the charges,” Yana began. She tried to sound authoritative, but as she spoke she started to cry again. She didn’t want to, it was just the absurdity of it all. The tears came from the effort to make sense of it. “I’m being charged with trading what I trade. It doesn’t make sense. . . . ” She was sobbing now. “All right,” said the judge. “Prosecution?” The prosecutor was another man in a polyestersuit. “Yakovleva is a highly dangerous criminal. She has been hiding from us. We had to hunt her down. She needs to be put under arrest until the trial.” What had he just said? Hiding? Where? Where had she been hiding? At the gym? At work? What were they talking about? The prosecutor just smiled at her. The judge nodded and repeated what he had said word for word and said no bail was granted. She would await trial in prison. The next hearing would be in two months. Everything was spinning again. The prosecutor walked up to Yana and whispered, “Bad girl, why did you hide from us?” Black is white and white is black. There is no reality. Whatever they say is reality. Yana began to scream. The more Yana screamed, the more guilty she looked: she saw herself for a second, a redhead with red eyes screaming in a cage in a courtroom. They took her back to Petrovka. They took her prints. Her hands were covered with ink. She cried out for some soap. Some soap! They laughed at her. Then someone threw some soap at her: a gnarly corner of industrial soap that was dirtier than her hands. Then they said, “When you’re done with the soap we need it back.” They put herin another police van and drove toward the prison. There was a small barred window at the back of the van, and through it Yana could see Moscow. She put her face to the barred window. It was the dead of night, and the streets were empty. She felt like she was being smuggled, not just out of the city but out of reality itself into a nightmare fantasy land. Or was she just leaving the fantasy? We live in a world designed by the political technologists. A fragile reality show set that can seem, if you squint, almost genuine. We move from gym to open plan office to coffee bar to French movie to wine bar to holidays in Turkey, and it could seem better than Paris: better because it’s newer and more precious. And we can read SNOB or watch the reality shows on TNT, and it’s a simulacrum of the whole democratic thing. It feels almost real. But at the same time the other, real Russia rumbles on like a distant ringing in the ears. And itcan grab us and pull us in at any moment. She noticed they were driving around and around the Garden Ring. She couldn’t see the drivers, but by their voices she thought they were out of towners. “Are you lost?” she called through the metal cage. “Shut up.” Then, after a pause: “We need to find the turning for Volgograd Avenue.” It had its humor, this new world. Hand in hand with everything else. Yana directed them like they were learner drivers and she their instructor. Which lane to move into, where to U-turn, where to drive on. It felt good; for a moment she was in charge again. They said “thank-you”; they were new in Moscow and couldn’t get their bearings. These ring-roads were confusing, you could go round and round for hours not knowing where to get off. And again Yana found herself wanting to prove to the drivers, to these provincial lads, that she wasn’t a criminal. She tried to control the feeling: What did it matter what they thought? But it did matter. Because she needed some way to hold onto the life she lived a day ago. Just one day ago and that was disappearing. She could hear the prison before she could see it. Triple iron gates opening. Huge locks and giant bolts turning. The great machine turning. Then the van was full of magnesium bright light that blinded her. There was the sound of dogs, many dogs, growling and howling and barking and scratching against the van. And there was the smell. The smell of prison. Mold and damp and cigarettes. She would never forget that smell. • • • All the while I’m shooting Yana’s story I’m thinking: Will TNT let me show this? Lately they have been telling me they want more of the new Russian woman, self-made, independent. Enough already of the gold diggers. There is a new generation stirring. And Yana ticked all the boxes. She was tall and strong and flame-haired. TNT said they wanted more drama—and Yana’s story certainly had plenty of that. And it was a love story, too. I really played up the love story angle when I pitched the film. But what about the rest? How much could I get away with? A wrongful arrest—maybe. Depending on how I could frame it . . . Shawshank Redemption? This was the paradox: TNT wanted to find the new heroes. Capture (and advertise to) the new (lucrative) middle class. But TNT couldn’t touch politics. And at one point the two meet. Crash. And so all the time I’m waiting forthe call: “We can’t show this. Sorry, Piiitrrr, we can’t show this.” • • • She woke to the sound of forty-six throats coughing. All she could see were women. There were so many and so close they seemed to split into body parts rather than form separate human beings: dozens of noses and scores of hands, feet sticking out from bunk beds, butts, thighs, and breasts. There were fortysix women in her cell, all packed together; it was like being in the subway at rush hour but with no way out. In the farcorner was a kitchen and a television playing MTV as loud as any nightclub. Someone was dancing, twirling in between the bunks. There were voices shouting, swearing, singing, laughing. Above her someone was snoring and beside her someone was rustling paper bags. At the end of the room were the toilets, and the water was pouring out of five taps full strength all the time because something had burst, and everyone was coughing. Then it was time for their walk. They went down the stairs and into the yard: a sequence of concrete corridors that led to a concrete sack of a space ten meters by ten with two saplings and bars over the top. She paced round and round, thinking of tigers in cages. She didn’t talk to anyone, not at first. At night she could hear the trains. The prison was right by the train lines. There were no windows facing the outside, but she could hear the signals and whistles of the train lines, and they would keep her up all night. Outside was suburban Moscow. In the first days she just wrote. She curled up in her bunk and wrote letters to Alexey. Love letters. They kept her sane. They were sickly and sentimental, and she never intended to send them, but she needed to keep thinking about her life outside. She wrote about his eyes, how she dreamt of making love to him, how she wanted children with him, how they would be a family. Every time the door of the cell opened she would start up with the hope that the guards would say, “Yakovleva, you’re free,” but of course they never did. She was allowed no visits from family, but her parents passed her a parcel with clothes. The clothes smelled so much of home; she burst outcrying. A woman, older, Eskimo-looking, came up to her. “Don’t cry,” she said sternly. “It’s the worst thing you can do.” The older woman took out some photos from her pocket. “These are my children. I haven’t seen them for three years. But I don’t cry. We all want to cry.” It was the first time Yana had a conversation with another inmate. She wrote a letter to herself, a list of commandments: 1. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. 2. Don’tcry. 3. Don’t think about yourlife on the outside. 4. Be patient. 5. He will wait for you. He won’t leave you. 6. Smile. 7. He loves you. In the following days she began to look around the cell more carefully. On every bunk there was a little micro-world. One woman was praying, another writing, another playing cards. Suddenly a group of half a dozen women got up at the same time and went to a corner of the cell, stood in a little circle, and began exercising. Squats, push-ups, abs. They looked like stumbling bears. They were doing everything wrong. Yana came up and asked whether she could join them. The next day she began to correct them, gently at first, just showing them how to do the exercises right. By the end of the week she was their trainer. She began to get to know them. It turned out everyone here had the same recurring dream: they were trying to call someone and couldn’t get through. She had that dream every night: trying to call Alexey on his cell phone but he was out of area. It was a relief to know everyone had the same dream. Hercell was for first-time offenders. Half were twentysomething girls, virtually all in for drugs. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. They didn’t know how to have a properconversation; they just watched MTV and TNT and gossiped, but when Yana talked to them they all began to say how much they missed their parents. They had never had a relationship with them and now they missed them. There was an eighteen-year-old, Lara from Ukraine, who had been busted for a sack of weed her boyfriend had given her to take over the Ukraine-Russia border. She followed Yana everywhere. “What should I do with myself?” she would ask, over and over. At night she would come and stare at Yana lying in her bunk. Yana would wake and ask: “What are you doing?” “I tried to read but I keep on getting these thoughts in my head.” The other half of the women were in their forties and accountants; they were in for white collar crimes like Yana. The elder women would fuss around the twenty-year-olds: “Make sure you wash the cups” and “don’t swear.” Most of the older women had worked in small businesses: estate agents, travel companies. It wasn’t the thing to do to ask what exactly others were in for, and of course they all said they were “innocent,” but after a while a couple of them told Yana what had happened. The companies had been fiddling taxes, but the male bosses fled the country in time to avoid getting caught, and it was the female accountants who went to prison. After all, their signatures were on everything. The women had been doing nothing more illegal than any other business in the country, the same double bookkeeping every small company needed to do if it wanted to survive. But either the tax police needed to fill some arrest quotas, or they wanted to scare someone else, someone bigger, and needed to make an example, so they had gone after these companies. Still other women were sure the hits on their companies had been ordered by rivals or bureaucrats who wanted to bankrupt them and then take over their companies. This was called “reiding” and was the most common form of corporate takeover in Russia, with more than a hundred recorded cases a year. Business rivals or bureaucrats—they have long become the same thing—pay the security services to have the head of a company arrested; while they are in prison their documents and registrations are seized, the company is re-registered under different owners, and by the time the original owners are released, the company has been bought and sold and split up by new owners. These raids happened at every level, from the very top—where the Kremlin would arrest the owner of an oil company like Mikhail Kho-dorkovsky, then hand the company over to friends of the President—right down to local police chiefs taking over furniture stores. It was the right to do this that glued together the great “power vertical” that stretched from the President down to the lowliest traffic cop. Yana suspected this was what was happening to her. Of course she had heard of other companies being victims of “reiderstvo.” But she had always assumed they must have been guilty of something to be attacked. They must have done something wrong. Something. She felt stupid now to have fooled herself that way. The usual way out was a bribe. There was a whole network and industry of payoffs. Good “lawyers” were not those who could defend you in court—the verdicts were predetermined—but those who had the right connections to know whom to pay off in the judiciary and relevant ministry. It was a complex game; pay off the wrong person and you just wasted money. You had to find the real decision maker. And quickly a whole mass of middle men would begin to appear who want to persuade you that they, and only they, know how to pay off the right person. Yana knew her parents were looking for that person on the outside. They had found a “lawyer” who said he could help—he suggested she admit to the charges, and then he could get everything sorted. Meanwhile he told Yana’s parents to sell their apartment to pay for the bribe, which would be near a million dollars. She smelled a rat. Something was wrong. Her company had done nothing wrong; shouldn’t she stick to that? And what exactly was she meant to own up to? That she had traded what she traded? Own up to absurdity? If she even started to negotiate, it would be like giving away a part of her sanity, letting them own and dictate what the truth was. And then everything would start to slip. She asked for another lawyer. He said the same thing. These were the rules. She understood the rules, didn’t she? It was Galya who first made Yana think there might be something bigger going on, more than just a case of common “reiderstvo.” She had first met Galya at Petrovka 38, before herinitial trial. She had been pushed into the cell, plump and trembling with tears. Over fifty. The sort of woman you see selling vegetables or hosiery at train stations. She was crying and spoke with a Ukrainian accent. Galya, it turned out, was a cashier at a pharmacy. There are little pharmacies at train stations. One morning the FDCS had come and arrested her for selling food additives. Food additives! Yana’s interest was piqued. “What’s your name?” asked Galya. “Yana.” “Yana Yakovleva?” How could she know her name? Yana had heard of stool pigeons. Was this one? “When I was arrested,” Galya explained, “the cops were talking to each other and said I was being taken down underthe same law as Yana Yakovleva. They’re all talking about you.” • • • Though she was only just starting to work out the full picture, this was why Yana was in prison. In 1950, in Leningrad, near the port, Viktor Cherkesov was born into a family of dock workers. A working-class kid, he joined the army straight out of school. It is there he is suspected to have joined the KGB; with no connections, it was a way up the ladder. The KGB sent him to study law at St. Petersburg University, in the same class as the young man who would become the President, who became his friend. Like the President he studied poorly. In 1975 Cherkesov joined the fifth department of the Leningrad KGB, which was in charge of arresting dissidents and nonconformist thinkers. For some KGB men, working in the fifth department was considered an embarrassment, compared to the heroics of real espionage. In the 1970s Cherkesov worked on cases rounding up, breaking, and jailing members of underground religious and feminist groups. He became head of the department. In 1982 he personally headed up the investigation of the Soviet Union’s first independent trade union, SMOT. Vyacheslav Dolinin was one of those he interrogated: Cherkesov was a gray, dim man. His only strength was he could lie without blushing. When a superior would come in, he would leap up instantly, he was very obsequious and dependent on them [remembers Dolinin]. He would threaten us: “we’re not beating you, though we can use such measures.” But he was not especially vicious and not a great detective. He didn’t manage to find out the bulk of my dissident activities. Igor Bunich was a witness in several of Cherkesov’s cases between 1980 and 1982: During interrogation Cherkesov followed the principle laid down by Alexander Shuvalov, the head of the secret police under the Empress Elizabeth in the eighteenth century: “Always keep the accused confused.” At the start of an interrogation Cherkesov would lay out three pieces of paper on the table in front of a dissident. Each was a law the dissidentcould be charged with—all worded in a very similar way butcarrying quite different punishments: Law 190, “spreading anti-Soviet ideas,” usually punishable with an enforced stay in a psychiatric ward; Law 70, on “anti-Soviet propaganda,” usually carrying five years’ imprisonment; and Law 64, on “treachery to the Soviet Union,” which carried the death penalty (firing squad). If the dissident cooperated and snitched, his case would be registered under Law 190, with a suspended sentence. If you didn’tcooperate you would be charged underthe otherlaws. Other dissidents he interrogated described how Cherkesov’s daughter would call during interrogations. He would pick up the phone, smile gently, and change his tone: “My pet, I’m interrogating now,” he would say. He had that ability all KGB men have, to split his personality at will. But Cherkesov was also a poor judge of history. In 1988, with perestroika in full swing, he launched an investigation into the new “Democratic Alliance,” a group of activists who were calling for the end of the USSR. It was the final case ever tried in the USSR under the antidissident “Law 70.” Cherkesov called a press conference saying he had discovered an important anti-Soviet conspiracy. The thing was a farce: the young activists were soon deputies in the Duma, and the law itself was rescinded. Within two years the USSR didn’t exist. After 1991 Cherkesov became head of the St. Petersburg KGB, supported by his friend, the future President, who was deputy head of the mayor’s office. When the young President moved to Moscow to become head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB), Cherkesov moved with him and became his deputy. The rumor in Moscow was that when the President was inaugurated, Cherkesov expected to become head of the FSB. But he was overlooked for Nikolaj Patrushev, also a graduate of the 1970s St. Petersburg KGB, but from the much more glamorous counterespionage department. The president gave Cherkesov the FDCS, the least important of the security organs. Starting in 2006 the FDCS launched a series of moves to capture the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries. Overnight a whole host of chemicals had theirstatus changed from industrial or medical to narcotic. Pharmacies that traded in food additives were raided, veterinarians who gave ketamine to cats and horses were marched into police stations, and the heads of chemical companies like Yana were suddenly informed they were drug dealers. The plan was to “break” these industries. Yana was meant to swing from the gallows by the edge of the road, a warning to everyone of what would happen if they disagreed with the FDCS. • • • She had been there four months. Most of the time she would tell herself: “This is a game, a test”; that’s how she coped. But once every two months they would wake her at 5:00 a.m. and take her down to the basement to await hertrip to court to see whethershe would be granted bail. “Yesterday was the worst day,” she wrote in one of the letters to Alexey she neversent. “The worst point is when in a dark, concrete, completely closed space 20 people start smoking at the same time. It’s horrible. Waiting for the van and its cages, concrete, darkness, metal, handcuffs, smoke, smoke. It’s very hard to make yourself feel this is all a game and everyone around you are just actors.” After two hours they put the women into a prison van and drove them, as if in a school bus, to various courtrooms around Moscow. When she saw Moscow everything suddenly became real. “We drove along the Garden Ring. I could see people walking along the street, hurrying about their own business. And inside I screamed: ‘I will return. This world can’t survive without me. I will return and forget all that has happened. I will cross it out.’” And even more strongly she wanted to scream: “Pedestrians! Citizens! Stop! Help! Can’t you see me? I’m here.” Though of course she never did. And all passersby ever saw was a small prison van with dark, barred windows. At the court they put her in a cage again. Her parents were always there, but the last time Alexey hadn’t come. Her mother would always wear her best dress, which was a way of showing that their spirit hadn’t been crushed. They looked good, and thus they were strong. Yana would repeat to the judge that she had no idea why she was in prison; none of the charges made sense. The judge would nod and give her anothertwo months, and they would bundle her out again. She had a new lawyer, Evgeny Chernousov. They had found him after he defended a few veterinarians in Yaroslavl against the FDCS. The vets had been charged with dealing ketamine, a drug they used as a painkiller for cats. Evgeny had managed to raise enough noise for the charges to be dropped. But there he had just gone up against provincial FDCS guys out to make a few quick bucks. Now he would be going against senior officials in a much bigger case. The plan was to make so much fuss it would become unprofitable for the FDCS to hold Yana: this was the opposite to what most prisoners did, which was to keep the case as quiet as possible and pay off the right person. Chernousov told Yana he would activate the human rights NGOs, business associations. He was a formercop himself, and he took on cases no one else would. He used to catch criminals, and now he liked to catch cops. He had served in Afghanistan and Ossetia, and it had done something to his head. More than anything he loved a fight against the odds, and he seemed tipsy a lot of the time. He told Yana not to lose hope. She was almost happy when they brought her back to prison after these excursions into reality. She knew that outside her parents and Chernousov were trying to change the world for her, but beyond giving direction to the overall plan there was nothing she could do from the inside. Her task was to stay sane. She had half a dozen fitness “students.” They would exercise in the morning, and then again in the afternoon during their “walk.” They would take old plastic bottles, fill them with grit, and use them as weights. They were getting better, slimming down. A couple had even stopped smoking. As the “trainer” she had a certain status, was allowed into the showers first. She even managed to convince the others to sometimes change the channel from TNT and MTV to the news. The trick was to keep herself busy all the time. Writing letters, reading newspapers, learning English, doing push-ups. Never a moment to spare. She had almost perfected this. There were several big NOs for all prisoners: never cry; never talk about the future or release; never, ever, talk about sex. But sex was on everybody’s mind. Tanya, an accountant on the bunk opposite her, would cut out pictures of men from magazines and put them beneath her pillow: “Maybe I’ll dream of one,” she would say quietly. Yana dreamt of Alexey every night. She would dream of his eyes when he had come to the FDCS headquarters to bring her bag. In her letters she worried he would forget about her: “Does that make me an egoist?” she wrote. “But the only way I can keep myself together is to know there’s someone waiting for me.” When she went into the yard for exercise she became aware, in a way she never had been when she was free, of smells: “In summer the two little trees in the yard smelled of heat and bread. Before I would go to a forest and not notice anything. Here there are just two thin trees yet how many impressions!” One time she was exercising in the yard with Sasha. Sasha owned a travel agency. She was a little younger than Yana, and they started talking about how they wanted children. They weren’t supposed to talk about things like that, and Yana wasn’t even sure how the conversation started. Sasha wanted two. Yana told her about Alexey and how she thought it was time to start a family, take a break from work. Sasha looked at her and said: “You’re thirty-five; it’s too late for children. There’s no way they’ll give you less than five years, that’s the very minimum. Once you’re in here that’s it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re guilty. Forget about kids. . . . ” Yana switched off and stopped listening to her and started doing starjumps so fast Sasha couldn’t keep up. Of those charged in Russia, 99 percent receive guilty verdicts. The women in Yana’s cell would return after their trials broken, all found guilty. Their sentences were worse than anyone could have imagined: five years for possession of one gram of cocaine; four years for faking a prescription; eleven years for working as a cashier at one of the country’s top construction companies whose owner had fallen out with someone in the Kremlin. They were often set up by their own lawyers: the lawyers would take the bribes, then use that as “evidence” that the prisoners were guilty (the bribes would then disappear). Yana’s prosecutor, the one who had told the court she was dangerous and had been in hiding, had a reputation for being the fiercest. “I’m stronger than him,” she wrote to herself. She would scour the news for reports about herself. Chernousov had told her they were writing letters to Duma deputies; there had been meetings and small pickets where human rights activists had defended her. But in Russia you can protest all you like; it won’t change anything. You can scream and scream, but no one will hear you. There was one tiny paragraph about her in a liberal newspaper, and that was it. Every day new white collar prisoners were brought to the cell. The last was a woman who had just won an award in Cannes for having Russia’s best travel agency. “Soon,” wrote Yana, “prison will become like a University get together. Now I’m afraid again. What should I be preparing myself for? For the worst? Should I be saying good-bye to everyone? Time is passing and nothing is changing. I’m the same as the others. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor. This system grabs people off the street, from work, from home, and eats them up. And no one knows when it will happen to them.” Then one day, as they were watching the news, she suddenly saw a report about herself. Not on one of the Ostankino channels, but on a slightly smaller one with an “opposition” reputation though actually owned by one of the President’s oldest friends. There were five hundred people on Pushkin Square protesting against her imprisonment. There were posters with her face on them that said “freedom to Yana Yakovleva.” A relatively famous musician played a resistance song on a stage. Chernousov was making a speech. The reporter said: “The FDCS appears to be arresting people who have nothing to do with drug dealing at all.” The next day her story was a double spread in one of the newspapers. When she came in after the shower everyone in the cell was gathered around reading it. “Hey,” they called out, “so you really are innocent.” • • • Cherkesov had enemies. He was trying to prove to the President that Patrushev, his rival and the head of the FSB, was a weak link. The President encouraged Cherkesov, handing the FDCS responsibility for investigating an illegal customs business on the China-Russia border allegedly managed by the FSB. This sort of investigation was way out of the FDCS’s remit: Could the fact the President had entrusted it to Cherkesov mean he preferred him to Patrushev? But Patrushev and the FSB were not going to go down easily. Just as Cherkesov was investigating Patrushev, so Patrushev supported those who were fighting Cherkesov. So when the FSB heard about Yana’s story, they made sure the police didn’t close down the demonstrations, that the right TV channels and newspapers covered the protests. This was one of the reasons “liberal” papers and channels existed, to give one power broker a weapon to hit another power broker with. Every day Yana’s story became better known. It was nicknamed the “case of the Chemists,” to echo a Stalinist era purge known as the “case of the Doctors.” None of this ever would have happened if Yana, her parents, and Chernousov had not decided to fight back in the first place. Without the first dissident impulse, nothing would have appeared. But neither would that alone have been enough. To make something happen in Russia, you have to be both valiant protester and Machiavellian, playing one clan off against the other. • • • Shortly before she was released Yana had a dream. She and Alexey were lying on chaise longues in a strange country. Alexey was reading a newspaper. She got up and climbed a tall tree next to the chaise longue. The tree was very tall, and from the top she could see fields and forests. Suddenly she saw a grizzly bear was in the tree, too. He was coming toward her, growling. She froze in terror. He put his wet teeth right up to her face. And then he stopped. She thought he would eat her. Then suddenly he started to retreat. There was a great noise: below the tree a whole tribe of rabid bulls was running by, making the earth shake. Alexey kept on reading the newspaper as if nothing had happened. She was awakened by the snores of the woman on the bunk above. She snored so hard her dentures popped out of her mouth and flew clattering onto the floor. When Yana told the others about the dream, they all said, “It’s a sign, the evil is retreating, but the dangeris not over by a long shot.” The day of her release she was doing exercises with Luba, the Ukrainian girl who would stand next to her at night. Boxing, then some abs. “If you leave,” Luba suddenly said, “I’m not sure how I’ll cope without you.” “Where would I possibly go?” laughed Yana. They went back in for lunch. They were all eating when the warden came in. “Yakovleva, get your clothes and your documents and follow me,” she shouted. All the prisoners looked at each other. “Probably another date with the inspector,” joked Yana. “They’re probably going to let you go,” said Tanya. “You’ll be free.” “Shh,” said Yana, “you know we neversay that word.” They drove her back to the FDCS HQ in northern Moscow. Her lawyer was there, and her parents. Her lawyer said: “Look, we’ve done a deal. They will let you out on bail, but they are keeping your business partnerin until the trial.” She didn’t feel anything at first. She only turned and asked her mother: “Is Alexey here?” “He knows you’re being released but he’s not here,” her mother answered. They went back to the prison to sign her out. She was still numb. Only when the TV cameras turned up at the prison did she begin crying. It was cold and the tears felt hot in her mouth; there were the people from human rights groups there and journalists; she was hugging all of them and she was crying out of gratitude to them. She had been inside for seven months, and now that she was outside it was suddenly like she had never been there. But it wasn’t over yet: she had been granted bail, but the biggest battle was the trial that lay ahead. Chernousov drove her back to the apartment she shared with Alexey. She knew theirrelationship was over. All those letters to him, the letters she never sent, they had been for her. She needed that illusion to keep her going. When they had spoken on the phone (four times over seven months), he was more distant each time. He wasn’t even pretending he cared. She made excuses for him: he was afraid she would come out emotionally damaged. Their relationship had been between two independent grownups, and now he was worried he would have to look aftersomeone frail. “Ha,” Chernousov grunted, “he’s just a coward. Wouldn’t even meet with me. He’s afraid it might damage his career at the company.” Alexey was at the apartment when she arrived. They embraced formally. She gathered her things and put them into bags and waved good-bye as she left. She didn’t show any emotion. She had dreamt of coming back to that apartment. That’s what had kept her going. This was one final test, and maybe it was even the hardest. She passed it with a quick smile as she waved good-bye. “Women always wait for men in jail,” she told Chernousov, “but men never wait. There’s been research on it.” The trial began a few weeks later. The fact that they were even allowed to call witnesses for the defense meant they had a chance. Essentially it was diethyl ether itself that was on trial. It was bizarre. The FDCS’s scientists tried to prove it was a narcotic. Yana’s scientists tried to show it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Meanwhile the battle that really mattered was starting to rage on the Olympus of the Kremlin. The conflict between Cherkesov and Patrushev became known as the “war of Chekists” (the KGB men). Cherkesov’s men arrested the FSB generals involved in the Chinese border racket. In revenge Patrushev’s men arrested the FDCS’s top generals right in the middle of Domodedovo airport, surrounding them with masked gunmen and dragging them off to prison. (Hello-Goodbye was being filmed at Domodedovo at the same time, though they missed the standoff.) For a few rare months the thick stage curtain that separates the shareholders of the Russian state from the general public was pulled back. The country’s elites were split down the middle between those who backed Patrushev and those who backed Cherkesov. With no instructions coming from the Kremlin, TV stations and newspapers had to choose sides. Cherkesov wrote an opinion piece in Kommersant, the country’s main broadsheet, which became known as the declaration of the Chekist: “Only us Chekists have saved Russian from destruction,” wrote Cherkesov. “We need to unify.” Cherkesov had broken a cardinal rule—he had spoken publicly about an inner conflict. Why had he done it? Could the President have secretly encouraged him? Where was the President? Could he not keep his own clans undercontrol? For the first time since he had become president, he looked weak. Was he losing his grip? No. He was just waiting for his moment. Both men had compromised themselves: Cherkesov with the scandals around the FDCS and the letter in Kommersant, and Patrushev with the revelations about cross-bordersmuggling. Within one week both were fired. In one swing the President had got rid of two potential challengers, they had eaten each other up. Even the President’s detractors could only step back and quietly applaud. Yana won at her trial. The law was thrown out. Diethyl ether became legal again. She still officially runs her business, but she spends most of hertime on an NGO she has set up called Business Solidarity: a sort of Good Samaritans for businesses that get into the same trouble she did. She connects them with the right lawyers, the media, me. She moved into a new apartment opposite my own. This meant whenever there was something left to film of her story, she could call me and I would grab the camera and run overto her apartment or wherevershe was going. Sometimes she takes me along to the trials. The courtrooms, to my surprise, are all brand new, with shiny bright tiles and high ceilings and lots of light. It’s their modernity, their normality, that makes the actual trials so much more twisted. There are the little businessmen, all facing trumped-up charges, all with the same look of pure confusion, like they are being sucked into a whirlpool and into an underwater world where nothing at all makes sense. And Yana walks up to them and comforts them. They calm down when they see her; she brings if not the hope for justice then at least the promise of sanity. And as I scamper behind her she walks with ever-elongating strides through the corridors and courtrooms, seeming to get taller with every step, her huge, red hair filling up the room like something burning. • • • This is how Icut the story (with Yana’s blessing). All the high-level political stuff goes. All the stuff about Cherkesov and the President and Patrushev. According to the film, she is released due to a bottom-up campaign againstcorrupt bureaucrats: proving that though of course there is corruption, one can fight it. It’s an exception rather than the norm; in other words, there’s hope in the country if you try hard. I focus on the love story, the strong woman facing huge challenges. The story is cut together with another story about a young mother who was told her infant would die of cancer if she couldn’t raise $50,000 for his operation, which she moved heaven and earth to achieve. So it becomes a film about strong women, not just about political oppression. It’s a compromise. It’s a narrow corridor. But at least it’s something. And the ratings are good. The country wants new heroes. ANOTHER RUSSIA The demolition ball keeps the time of the city, a metronome that swings on every corner. The city changes so fast you lose all sense of reality, you can’t recognize streets. You look for a place where you went to eat a week ago, and before your eyes the whole block is being demolished. Whole swathes of town are demolished in fits of self-destruction, wastelands abandoned for years and for no apparent reason, skyscrapers erupting before there are any roads leading to them and then left standing empty in the dirty snow. The search for a style is psychotic. The first builds of the boom imitated whatever the post-Soviets had seen abroad and most desired: Turkish hotels, German castles, Swiss chalets. When Ostozhenka, the area right opposite the Kremlin, was knocked down, it was renamed “Moscow Belgravia”; there are “Mos Angeles” and “Moscow Côte D’Azur.” Dropped into the city as artificially and awkwardly as the political technologist’s faux Western-style parties. Elsewhere you can spy a neonmedieval: behind high black gates peak out Disney-like towers tacked onto pink concrete castles, with rows of offices shaped like the knight’s helmets, so they look like an army of warriors emerging from the ground. Often you find all the styles compiled into one building. A new office center on the other side of the river from the Kremlin starts with a Roman portico, then morphs into medieval ramparts with spikes and gold-glass reflective windows, all topped with turrets and Stalin spires. The effect is at first amusing, then disturbing. It’s like talking to the victim of a multiple personality disorder: Who are you? What are you trying to say? Increasingly new skyscrapers recall the Gotham-gothic turrets of Stalin architecture. Triumph-Palace, briefly Europe’s tallest apartment building, is a copy of the Stalinist “seven sisters.” Long before the city’s political scientists started shouting that the Kremlin was building a new dictatorship, the architects were already whispering: “Look at this new architecture, it dreams of Stalin. Be warned, the evil Empire is back.” But the original Stalin skyscrapers were made of granite, with grand mosaics and Valhalla halls leading to small, ascetic apartments. The new ones try to be domineering but come across as camp; developers steal so much money during construction that even the most VIP, luxury, elite of the skyscrapers crack and sink everso quickly. That unique Moscow mix of tackiness and menace. One time I see a poster advertising a new property development thatcaptures the tone nicely. Got up in the style of a Nazi poster, it shows two Germanic-looking youths against a glorious alpine mountain over the slogan “Life Is Getting Better.” It would be wrong to say the ad is humorous, but it’s not quite serious, either. It’s sort of both. It’s saying this is the society we live in (a dictatorship), but we’re just playing at it (we can make jokes about it), but playing in a serious way (we’re making money playing it and won’t let anyone subvert its rules). I can hear the groan and feel the shudders of the excavator before I even turn onto Gnezdnikovsky Alley, the air already filling up with clouds of red-brick dust. A nineteenth-century, two-story palace folds so easily. The clumsy arm of the excavator pulls down a wall awkwardly, like a toddler playing, revealing for a moment the innards of an old apartment—the 1970s wallpaper, photographs, a radio— and then the demolition ball swings, and it’s all gone for good. Gnezdnikovsky is just off Pushkin Square, what tourist guides describe as “Moscow’s historic center.” It should be untouchable. But the tremors of drill and demolition ball only become more frenzied with every meter closer you get to the Kremlin. Property prices are measured by distance from Red Square: the aim is to build your office or apartment as close to the center of power as possible, the market organized by a still feudal social structure defined by needing to be within touching distance of the tsar, the general secretary of the Communist Party, the President of the Russian Federation. The country’s institutions—oil companies, banks, ministries, and courts—all want to crowd around the Kremlin like courtiers. This means the city is almost destined to destroy itself; it can’t grow outward, so every generation stomps on the heads of previous ones. Over a thousand buildings have been knocked down in the center so far this century, with hundreds of officially “protected” historic monuments lost. But the new buildings meant to replace them often stand dark and empty; property is the most effective money laundering scheme, making money for members of the Moscow government who give contracts to their own development companies, for the agents who sell the buildings to the nameless and faceless Forbeses, who need some way to stabilize their assets. A small crowd has gathered near the building site on Gnezdnikovsky. They put candles and flowers on the pavement in a little gesture of lament. These flash mobs mourning the death of old Moscow have become more frequent. In my spare time I’ve been filming the disappearing city, the last of Atlantis. Alexander Mozhayev stands at the head of the little crowd, hair pointed in different directions, scarf down to his knees, a vodka bottle and a kefir bottle stuck out of each deep pocket of his sailor’s coat. He is a member of what in another context might be a somewhat marginal profession, an architectural and urban historian, but here he has developed a slightly cult-like following as the guardian spirit of Old Moscow. Mozhayev and his friends have started salvaging buildings from the wrecking ball. They picket in front of wooden houses under threat, try to raise enough fuss that developers back off. But these victories are few and far between. Over several years they have saved three buildings out of three thousand. Mozhayev is young, a thirtysomething, but his voice is full of cracks and sandpaper tones, like the walls of Old Moscow itself. He takes out a bottle and says: “We’re here to say a wake, to this building, to old Moscow, all these buildings are set to be destroyed.” Mozhayev and his followers put on the Pinocchio-like masks they wear for this lament and begin to howl into the air like professional mourners at a funeral. “Bastards, how long will you keep on destroying our city?” they cry. “Soon there will be nothing, nothing left!” (The little scene will then be posted online.) He turns, and we follow him under an arch and into the last of the older, tender Moscow: the web of little lanes, courtyards, and alleyways that spread in a horizontal swirl between the great trunks of the gargantuan Stalin-era avenues. We pass through narrow arches and into suddenly spacious courtyards where teens play ice hockey on a skating rink poured between the houses. The light is different here, darker and softer, the fresh snow reflecting back the remains of the day to under-light the crumbling lions and angels stuccoed onto buildings. Everything here is scuffed, textured, tawny, ragged, and lived in. The lights are starting to come on in the houses, and parents call their children to come inside. Even the language here is different, full of sing-song and caressing, affectionate diminutives: “Come here my dovelet,” “my little bluebell.” An almost rural mood of childhood, soft snow, and sleds. Here is the Moscow that existed before the Soviet experiment. Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries St. Petersburg was the capital, the city of power, regime, order. Moscow was a backwater, the holiday city where you could sleep in late and spend the day in your pajamas. Here we find places with names like Krivokolennaya, the street of the crooked knee, and Po-ta-poffsky, a word that falls like snowflakes in the mouth. But my favorite of all is Pyatnitskaya: in English, the Street-of-All-Fridays. There is no pomposity on the Street-of-All-Fridays. It is full of little two-story, nineteenth-century mini-mansions, leaning higgledy-piggledy on each other like happy drunk friends singing on their way home to a warm bed. In every courtyard there is a bar, some little place with cheap vodka and smoky rooms. There are no office blocks, no narcissistic skyscrapers, no domineering malls. But there is an old metro station, a large, low, yellow, pancake-shaped building in which students share beers and boys chase girls. I love the street for its name. Friday is the best of days, Friday eve especially. When the working week melts into the days of rest. As the day darkens the mood lightens, the frowns turn to smiles, breathing comes better and deeper. Pyatnitskaya is a street dedicated to that moment, the materialization in space of a mood in time. Everything about the street says, “Let’s drink, have a chat, swap stories: I haven’t seen you for so long, I haven’t been myself for so long.” And then, later, I like to wander across town and overtoward Pechatnikov, house 3, where you enter an arch near a pale, crooked baroque mansion with outsized angels and a window that leads nowhere, and inside is a long yard with tall houses around it that make you feel you’ve suddenly entered a deep valley; a long, low wooden house wrapped around the yard glowing with an orange light; and a bench collapsing in the middle. “I call the courtyard of Pechyatnikov the time machine,” says Mozhayev as we walk. “To anyone familiar with Prague or London or Rome or Edinburgh, these old Moscow courtyards are probably of little architectural significance. I’m not even sure they even qualify as beautiful. But in contrast to the new Moscow with its endless imitations, this world is real.” On the corner of Pakrovka three plump women who look like schoolteachers or doctors patrol an art nouveau apartment block, surrounded by their Labradors. They squint aggressively as we approach, then relax and greet Mozhayev when they see him. These little vigilante gangs have become common in Moscow, protecting not from burglars but from developers, who send arsonists to set buildings ablaze, then use the fire as an excuse to evict homeowners by claiming the houses are now fire hazards. The motivation is great: property prices rose by over 400 percent in the first decade after 2000. So these fires have become habitual in Moscow. Muscovites have taken to patrolling their own buildings at night: gangs of doctors, teachers, grannies, and housewives eyeing every passerby as if he were an arsonist. It’s pointless for them to call the police; the largest groups of developers are friends and relatives of the mayor and the government. The mayor’s wife is the biggest of the lot. The near mythical Russian middle class, suddenly finding they have no real rights at all over their property, can be thrown out and relocated like serfs under a feudal whim. We follow Mozhayev as he climbs into the remains of a broken wooden mansion, recently gutted by one of these mysterious fires. In the palace the snow wafts through the burnt-out roofs into rooms with sky-blue wallpaper and the remains of an ancient fireplace now hung with icicles. Under open boards beneath our feet we can see bums sleeping in the basement. Mozhayev finds old notebooks from the people who once lived there. He begins to tell the story of the building, who lived here and who did what. His little audience listens closely. There is something almost hallucinogenic about his storytelling: the roof on the house seems to grow back, you can feel the fire burning in the hearth and hear the footsteps of lost aristocracy and the gossip of their servants, then see how the house was taken over by communists in 1917, hear the shots when the original owners were executed, and see the little palace be converted into a communal apartment—where everyone was arrested during Stalin’s terror—then become a small hospital during the war. “Old walls and doors know something we can’t understand,” Mozhayev wrote in one of his essays: “the true nature of time. The drama of human lives is written in the buildings. We will be gone; only places remain.” “Mozhayev is the city’s memory,” a girl with orange pigtails tells me when I ask her why she has come. “Before I had no idea about the city I grew up in.” But Russia has problems with its memories. There isn’t a building that we walk past that wasn’t the scene of execution squads, betrayals, mass murders. The most gentle courtyards reveal the most awful secrets. Around the corner from Potapoffsky is an apartment block where every one of the families had someone arrested during Stalin’s terror. In the basement of what is now a brand new shopping mall was the courtroom where innocent after innocent was sentenced to labor camps, the courts working so fast they would get through two cases inside a minute. And those are just the Stalin years, not even encroaching on the dismal betrayals of later decades, listening at the door of your neighbors’ rooms to report them tuning into the BBC or Radio Free Europe. “Every new regime rebuilds the past so radically,” Mozhayev says as we move back toward Barrikadnaya. “Lenin and Trotsky ripping up the memory of the tsars, Stalin ripping up the memory of Trotsky, Khrushchev of Stalin, Brezhnev of Khrushchev; perestroika gutting the whole Communist century . . . and every time the heroes turn to villains, saviors are rewritten as devils, the names of streets are changed, faces [are] scrubbed out from photographs, encyclopedias [are] re-edited. And so every regime destroys and rebuilds the previous city.” On the corner of Barrikadnaya a little baroque house is pushed out of the way by a constructivist apartment block of the 1920s, in turn dominated by a sneering, Stalin skyscraper, itself now outflanked by the dark glinting tiles of a huge, domed new mall, resembling the tents and spears of Mongol battle camps. And all these buildings seem to push and shove each other out of the way. If areas of London or Paris are built in a similar style—searching for some sort of harmony, memory, identity—here each building looks to stamp and disdain the last, just as every regime discredited the previous. Whenever twenty-first-century Russian culture looks for a foundation it can build itself from, healthy and happy, it finds the floor gives way and buries it in soil and blood. When the Ostankino channels launch the Russian version of the British TV show Greatest Britons, renamed Name of Russia, it’s meant to be a straightforward PR project to boost the country’s patriotism. The audiences across the nation are to vote for Russia’s greatest heroes. But as the country starts to look for its role models, its fathers, it turns out that every candidate is a tyrant: Ivan the Terrible, founder of Russia proper in the sixteenth century and the first tsar; Peter the Great; Lenin; Stalin. The country seems transfixed in adoration of abusive leaders. When the popular vote starts to come in for Name of Russia, the producers are embarrassed to find Stalin winning. They have to rig the vote so that Alexander Nevsky, a nearmythical medieval warrior knight, born, we think, in 1220, can win. He lived so long ago, when Russia was still a colony of the Mongol Empire between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, that he seems a neutral choice. Russia has to reach outside the history of its own state to find a father figure. But though this was never mentioned in the program, what little evidence there is of his career shows that Nevsky made his name by collecting taxes, quelling and killing other rebellious Russian princelings for his Mongol suzerain. How do you build a history based on ceaseless self-slaughter and betrayal? Do you deny it? Forget it? But then you are left orphaned. So history is rewritten to suit the present. As the President looks for a way to validate his own authoritarianism, Stalin is praised as a great leader who won the Soviet Union the war. On TV the first attempts to explore the past, the well-made dramas about Stalin’s Terror of the 1930s, are taken off screen and replaced with celebrations of World War II. (But while Stalin’s victory is celebrated publicly and loudly, invoking him also silently resurrects old fears: Stalin is back! Be very afraid!) The architecture reflects these agonies. The city writhes as twentyfirst-century Russia searches, runs away, returns, denies, and reinvents itself. “Moscow is the only city where old buildings are knocked down,” says Mozhayev, “and then rebuilt again as replicas of themselves with straight lines, Perspex, double glazing.” The Moskva Hotel opposite the Kremlin, a grim Stalin gravestone of a building, is first deconstructed, then after much debate about what should replace it, is eventually rebuilt as a slightly brighter-colored version of itself. And this will be the fate of Gnezdnikovsky, demolished and then rebuilt to house restaurants in the faux tsarist style, where waiters speak pre-revolutionary Russian, the menu features pelmeni with brains, and tourists are delighted at encountering the “real Russia.” And so Mozhayev’s walks become more than just about architecture, but about the way the whole society is governed. The glossy Moscow magazines that would never dare touch big politics instead talk about urban policy as a metaphor: “Give us back our city,” they write, and through that express their much more general discontent. Bells are ringing. Mozhayev stops and says a little prayer. He’s Orthodox; always says a blessing before every swig. He brings us to a church. There is a crowd around the entrance, all holding candles reflected on the snow, which make this corner of the street look like it’s been painted gold. Inside the prayers are coming thick with that almost Buddhist chanting of the Orthodox, there’s a strong smell of incense, and people are crowding around the icons lighting candles. Your heart can’t help but swell, and your skin prickles. There’s something very true in the claim of the Orthodox that their version of the faith is closer to the original, less rational and more emotional and experiential. Everything presses in on you, the chanting and the people and the light, driving you toward the icons. And being, after all, someone who works in television, I notice how the experience follows the visual-emotional logic of my profession: you look deep at the icon of the suffering Christ, identifying your own experience with him just as the TV or movie viewer identifies with the close-up of the hero on the screen. And I remember something once told to me by the Russian émigré artist Vitaly Komar, that the genius in casting Christ as the main hero of the divine drama was that for the first time the viewer had a God he could truly identify with. “Christ is the precursor to Chaplin and all the other great loser-heroes of cinema and television,” Komar said. “Before Christ all the Gods were either perfect, aspirational Apollos, or invisible: but this one is frail and broken. Just like you.” (In his own paintings Komar had first satirized Soviet iconography with depictions of Stalin embraced by Grecian muses, and then, after emigrating, he searched for a new, divine symbolism.) And as you stand in the church, finding in the image of the suffering Christ the comforting mirrorfor all your failures, you turn your head and see the image of a newborn baby and his mother, and your emotions move from comforted loserto the possibility of a new beginning. Mozhayev’s walk continues, across the boulevards all hugged with snow and past buildings covered in thick green gauze, a sign they are about to be destroyed. And all along the way Mozhayev is talking and swigging, bringing alive the alleyways and houses so they seem to teem with living ghosts. There’s something mystic in his psycho-geography, his search forthe Old, Holy Moscow, a city that doesn’t quite exist, a search forsomething better and imagined. It’s well into the night as Mozhayev and I loop back toward Gnezdnikovsky. The excavators are silent. Mozhayev stoops down to wipe the top layer off the snow. Under the lamplight you can see how the next layeris a thick brick red from the dust of the day’s great demolition: “When we go to the barricades,” jokes Mozhayev, “this will be the color of our blood.” The walk is over. We part and Mozhayev grabs a gypsy-cab home. I’d always assumed he lived somewhere in the alleyways of Old Moscow. Instead the car drives him deep into the suburbs. Shanson is playing on the taxi’s radio. He drives far out from the magic of Mozhayevland, past hordes of rectangular apartment blocks, right to the MKAD, the final, outermost ring-road encircling Moscow. Mozhayev’s unkempt, twenty-story, 1980s block is right by the ring-road’s edge. The elevator is out of order, and he climbs the stairs past lame graffiti and tin cans full of damp cigarette ends. The walk is sobering. He pants. His own home was knocked down a few years ago, replaced with high-rises. He is an émigré. “You grow up sure that everything will always be the same: house, trees, parents,” he will write laterin another essay. “When my parents died I could remember them through the building that we lived in. Buildings aren’t so much about recollecting time as about the victory overtime.” After the cold outside the building is overheated, and he is sweating heavily by the time he reaches his own floor. He tries to be quiet as he enters the apartment; his wife and children are asleep. The youngest (of three) is lying in his cot in the corridor. He makes his way to the tiny living room. Everywhere there are small artifacts of the wreckage of old Moscow, which Mozhayev has retrieved from demolition: shards of sixteenth-century designs of flowers from the basements of houses, wood carvings from the sashes of destroyed windows—firebirds, gentle giants, mouse-kings. They are laid out like exhibits from a long-lostcivilization. Outside the sound of rushing traffic on the MKAD rises. The high-rises merge with the darkness. Only the flocks of cranes still glimmer and swing around construction sites, working through the night, like catching a theater set between the acts. In the distance the thickest flock surrounds the ever-inconstruction Federation Tower, the central skyscraper of “Moscow City,” Russia’s rebuttal to La Defense and Canary Wharf but built higher, faster, and with shoulder-barging, get-out-of-my-way insistence near the middle of the capital, so much taller and bigger than anything in the city that it redefines its dimensions, its very idea of height and size. “It is time for Russia to get up off its knees,” the President’s favorite sound bite goes, and the Federation Tower rises like the folklore warriors of Russian stories, growing “not by days but by the hour.” There’s a cry as Mozhayev’s newborn starts sobbing in his cot. Mozhayev lifts the baby up, rocks him up and down to stop the mewling. He’s only a few months old and a half-caste. Mozhayev’s wife is from Cuba; her parents were communists who moved to Soviet Moscow expecting a utopia. All three of Mozhayev’s kids are black, the only black kids the other kids around here have ever met. They get smacked about, called nasty names. Mozhayev has been thinking about emigrating for them to have a normal life. Montenegro, he thinks to himself; he’s always liked the sound of the word “Montenegro.” Or London. Or maybe farther. INITIATIONS Late morning smell of benzine coating the city, overburn of weekend nights coating the mouth, white Sunday snow turning to Monday sludge—I’m late. I grab the camera and run out of my top-floor apartment with its grand view of the bend in the frozen river, and beyond that, the great jagged tooth of one of the Stalin-Gothic skyscrapers. The dark green stairwell is full of cigarette ends and small brown puddles of melted snow knocked from boots. The apartment doors are padded forsecurity, which makes them resemble asylum cells. Behind the padded doors are millionaire’s apartments; everyone’s done well in this city of baby-faced billionaires, but especially so on this block, the old Stalin gothic block reserved for party and KGB and diplomatic elite and great actors, the last to profit from the old order and the first to profit from the new one. Yet no one cares to band together and redecorate the stairwells. Care stops at the threshold of your apartment. You lavish and stroke your personal world, but when you reach the public space, you pull on your warface. I ride the elevator, still lit with a dim yellow bulb, past the mad woman who sits on the stairwell shouting, “I am an egg, I am an egg,” all day and night. “The KGB came and took me. They came and took me. I am an egg!” (What does she mean?, I always think to myself, Did they do something to her? Or is it just nonsense?) At the front door I pat my trouser pocket to check for the thin outline of my passport and realize it’s not there. Always the passport, always the “dokumenti!” You can get stopped and checked for papers at any moment. It might only actually happen once or maybe even twice a year, but you still have to stand in queues and knock on doors to obtain the whole library of little stamps, regulations, permits—the legal stipulations and requirements that are themselves always changing. A little trick to keep you always on tenterhooks, always patting your pockets for your papers, always waking up worried that you might have lost them in a bar. Over time you begin to pat for the passport instinctively, your hand going down unthinkingly to check your pocket so many times a day you don’t even notice any more. That’s true power—when it starts to influence the unconscious movements of your arms. I have to go back up to the apartment. There are so many little initiations, so many ways the system wraps itself around you. My latest has been a driving test. I would never pass, my instructor had explained, if I didn’t pay a bribe (this month $500, but about to jump to $1,000 if I didn’t hurry). I protested that I wanted to learn and pass the test for real. He explained the traffic police would fail me until I paid up. The instructor was a friend of a friend of my parents, and I was told to trust him by everyone I knew. He specialized in giving lessons to what he described as “nervous” types: actresses and ex-pats. I gave up the money, and he made the appropriate deal. I had assumed I would then receive the license in an envelope. To my surprise my instructor told me to go to the traffic center to take the test with everyone else. The theory part of the test was held in a large, bright, new office room with very new computers. There were around twenty of us seated in front of computers completing simulations of various driving scenarios. I assumed, with a little relief, that my bribe had been lost in the works and set about using my common sense to answer the questions. To my self-satisfied surprise I received 18/20, enough to pass. Only later did it hit me that every computer in the room must have been a priori rigged to give 18/20: everyone in the room had paid forthe right result. Then came the test proper, a sequence of maneuvers around cones in a car park. I got into a car, an instructor’s model with two sets of pedals, next to a traffic cop in uniform. He told me to start the car. I was so nervous and had completed so few lessons, I couldn’t get the pedals right and kept on stalling. The traffic cop smiled, glanced over his shoulder, and managed the ignition himself. “Put your hands on the wheel and pretend to drive,” he told me. I did as I was told, and while the traffic cop controlled the whole movement of the car from his set of pedals, I cruised around with an inane grin. After a while I had the sense I was almost driving the car myself. Back in the apartment I find the passport in yesterday’s trousers in the unmade bed. I keep it in a special inner pocket where it would be hard to steal. But that means the passport is permanently plastered to the sweat of my leg. The logo at the front is rubbing off. The edges are curled up. The plastic coating over my photo is peeling. I hurry back down to the street to hail a ride. The cars speed up as they turn the corner: Mitsubishis, Hummers, BMWs, Mercedeses, all with tinted windows. You’re only someone as long as you at least pretend to have something to hide. One stops. The window starts to come down, and I crouch down to be at eye level; you only have a few seconds to evaluate the driver’s face. A drunk? Nutter? Or worse, someone who will drive you to a lay-by and mug you? For all the little bits of paper and little forms you need to sign to survive here, everything comes down to these little moments of improvised trust and deals, “kak dogovoritsa,” in which everyone understands the game though nothing is everformalized. 300 to Three Station Square? 400? 350. I sit in the front and try to size up my driver further. It’s an odd relationship you have inside these cars: on the one hand you’ve paid and you should be in charge; on the other it’s not a real taxi and the driver can get offended. This one has a beard and looks composed. He switches on the CD and it’s playing psalms. I advise him to take care on the corner where the traffic police like to change the signs from “single lane” to “no way” overnight to catch out drivers and extract theirrent—the city is an obstacle course of corruption, and your options are to get angry or pay up and play the game and just enjoy it. The traffic has already curdled—my journey is short but this will be a long ride. A Muscovite measures out his life in jams, the day’s success orfailure judged by how many hours you spend in traffic. They have become the city’s symbol. The only way to relieve the city would be to move financial and government centers out of the inner rings of town. But that would be out of keeping with the feudal instincts of the system. So the traffic becomes the expression of the stalemate at the center of everything: on the one hand the free market means everyone can own a car, but on the other all the cars are in jams because of the underlying social structure. The siren-wielding, black (always black), bullet-proof Mercedeses of the big, rich, and powerful are free to drive against the flow of traffic, speed through the acid sludge, driven by modern-day barons who live by different rules. The sirens are the city’s status symbol, awarded like knighthoods to the most loyal bureaucrats, businessmen, and film directors (or for a certain price). As they pass us the driver and I both grunt, united, I sense, for a moment against a common enemy. I relax and tell him how much I like the psalms he’s playing. But when we end our journey and I get out to go, he suddenly grabs my shoulder and pulls me around so we are face to face. His arm is strong and his grip hard. “Don’t worry, my brother,” he tells me, “we’ll clean the streets of all the filth, all the darkies, the Muslims and their dirty money. Holy Russia will rise again.” One bumps into these types occasionally, Eurasianists, Great Russians, holy neo-imperialists, and the like, few but quietly supported by the Kremlin to have a mouthpiece through which to keep the conversation away from corruption and focused on fury at foreigners (the Kremlin isn’t keen to say these words itself). I pass through the station and head for the St. Petersburg train and my latest story—about mandatory military service, the great initiation into Russian manhood. Every April and October the color khaki seems to suddenly sprout on the streets as bands of young soldiers appear in the cities; skinny, in uniforms either too large or small, with pinched red noses and red ears, scowling at the Maybachs and gold-leaf restaurants. They hang around at the entrances of metro stations where the warm air gusts up from the underground, shiver while sucking on tepid beer on street corners of major thoroughfares. They come shuffling up stairs and knocking on apartment doors and stalk through parks. It’s the time of year of Russia’s great annual hide and seek; the soldiers have been given orders to catch young men dodging the draft and force them to join the army. Military service might be mandatory for healthy males between eighteen and twenty-seven, but anyone who can avoids it. The most common way out is a medical certificate. Some play mad, spending a month at a psychiatric clinic. Their mothers will bring them in: “My son is psychologically disturbed,” they will say. “He has been threatening me with violence, he wakes up crying.” The doctors of course know they are pretending, and the bribe to stay a month in a loony bin will set you back thousands of dollars. You will never be forced to join up again—the mad are not trusted with guns—but you will also have a certificate of mental illness hanging over you for the rest of your career. Other medical solutions are more short term: a week in the hospital with a supposedly injured hand or back. This will have to be repeated every year, and annually the hospitals fill up with pimply youths simulating illness. But the medical route takes months of preparation: finding the right doctor, the right ailment—because the ailments that can get you off change all the time. You turn up at the military center with the little stamped registration card that your mother has spent months organizing and saving for, then find that this year flat feet or shortsightedness are no longer a legal excuse. If you’re at a university you avoid military service (or rather you fulfill it with tame drills at the faculty) until you graduate. There is no greater stimulus for seeking a higher education, and Russian males take on endless master’s degree programs until their late twenties. And if you’re not good enough to make it into college? Then you must bribe your way into an institution; there are dozens of new universities that have opened in part to service the need to avoid the draft. And the possibility of the draft makes dropping out of college much more dangerous—the army will snap you up straightaway. When the bad marks come in, mothers start to fret and scream at their sons to work harder. And when they can see the boys might fail, it’s time to pay another bribe, to make sure they pass the year. But there are a certain number of pupils the teacher has to fail to keep up appearances, and the fretting mothers start to put out feelers for the most desperate and most expensive remedy: the bribe to the military command. The mothers come to the generals, beat and weep on the doors of the commanders, cry about their sons’ freedoms (money by itself is not always enough; you have to earn the emotional right to pay the bribe). But all these options are only available for those with money and connections. For the others, for the poorer ones, it’s hide and seek time. The soldiers will grab anyone who looks the right age and demand his documents and letters of exemption, and if he doesn’t have them march him off to the local recruitment center. So the young spend their time avoiding underground stops or hiding behind columns and darting past when they see the soldiers are flirting with girls or scrounging cigarettes off passersby. You see teens sprinting through the long, dark marble corridors of the subway as cops give chase. When soldiers come by apartments, potential conscripts pretend they are not there, barricading themselves in, holding their breath until the soldiers go away. The soldiers eventually get tired and leave, but from now on every time you have your documents checked by police you will be trembling that they might ring through and see whether you dodged the draft. And every time you go into the subway, every time you cross a main road, every time you meet friends near a cinema, any time you leave your little yard, life becomes full of trepidation. And you will live semilegally until you are twenty-seven, unable to registerfor an official passport and thus unable to travel outside of the country. This is the genius of the system: even if you manage to avoid the draft, you, your mother, and your family become part of the network of bribes and fears and simulations; you learn to become an actor playing out his different roles in his relationship with the state, knowing already that the state is the great colonizer you fear and want to avoid or cheat or buy off. Already you are semilegal, a transgressor. And that’s fine for the system: as long as you’re a simulator you will never do anything real, you will always look for your compromise with the state, which in turn makes you feel just the right amount of discomfort. Whichever way, you’re hooked. Indeed, it could be said that if a year in the army is the overt process that molds young Russians, a far more powerful bond with the system is created by the rituals of avoiding military service. Those too poor, too lazy, or too unlucky to avoid the draft—or those for whom the army seems a better option than anything they have—are rounded up, stripped, shaved, and packed off to bases all across the country. At the end of the April and October call-ups the city streets are clogged with great trucks full of conscripts, decked with tarpaulins and open at the back. The new conscripts sit and stare at the city they are leaving, rubbing their heads as they get used to the lightness of their newly shaved skulls. Where he will be sent depends on the bribe a soldier pays. Some will go to Chechnya, to Ossetia, to the death zones everyone dreads. But if you pay in time, you’ll avoid those. What no one will be safe from is hazing, known in Russia as the “law of the grandfather”: dozens of conscripts are killed every year, hundreds commit suicide, and thousands are abused. (Those are just the official statistics.) This is why every mother wants to keep her son away from the army. New conscripts are known as “spirits.” And as the tarpaulin-covered trucks pass through the gates of the army bases, the conscripts will hear the shouts of the older officers waiting forthem: “Hang yourselves, spirits, hang yourselves!” they call. And the great breaking-in begins. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, an NGO run by the mothers of conscripts past and present, is the refuge “spirits” flee to when they run away from camp. The headquarters are in St. Petersburg. I take the Sapsan, the new train as smart as a TGV with wider seats and so expensive no one but the new middle class can afford it, up to the northern capital. The Sapsan takes four hours to reach Petersburg, the normal train takes eight. Some laugh that the Sapsan was built especially by the President so his “team” could travel between the two cities in comfort. The country is ruled now by the “St. Petersburg set,” the President’s old chums who were raised and studied with him. As I leave the train station I drive into town through a city built like a theater set, the original Russian facade of European civilization as imagined by Peterthe Great, with little of its content. In the office of the Soldiers’ Mothers the walls are lined with photographs of dead soldiers. I’ve come to interview four eighteen-year-olds who have recently fled from a nearby base called Kamenka. I’m late, but they’re all waiting quietly and jump to attention when I walk in. They wear hoodies and the football scarves of Zenit, the St. Petersburg football team, and are desperate to prove they didn’t just run away because of common hazing, that they’re loyal, tough. They seem embarrassed by having to take shelter with fifty-year-old women. They never call the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers by its name, just “the Organization.” “You get beaten up, that’s fine. I pissed blood but that didn’t scare me,” says one, the skinniest. “Stools broken over your head. It’s good for you,” echoes another. “They put a gas mask over yourface, then force you to smoke cigarettes while you do push-ups. If you get through that you’re a real man.” “I’m not red, . . . ” they all repeat. “Red” means “traitors.” It’s a prison word: in the 1940s Stalin started to fill up the ranks of the army with prisoners, infecting the system with prison code and hierarchies. “You need discipline. But what happens at Kamenka has nothing to do with discipline.” “The ‘grandfathers’ beat you to extort money, not because they want to make a soldier out of you.” The conscripts spend most of their time repairing and repainting military vehicles, which are then sold on the sly by Kamenka’s command. The “spirits” are essentially used as free labor. The boys had run away after a night of nonstop beatings. The “grandfathers” had been drinking all day, and then at night they began to whack the boys with truncheons. The commanding officer came by but did nothing; commanding officers need the help of the “grandfathers” in their larger corruption schemes and let them have their fun. They go to great lengths to cover up for the “grandfathers.” In one week, the Soldiers’ Mothers told me, five “spirits” at Kamenka had their spleens beaten to a pulp. The commanders couldn’t take the “spirits” to a normal hospital; too many questions would be asked. So they had to take them privately, paying 40,000 rubles (over $1,000) for each operation. At 6:00 a.m. the “grandfathers” told the “spirits” they needed to each bring 2,000 rubles ($50) by lunchtime or they would kill them. One of the conscripts, Volodya, had decided to make a run for it. He slipped through the fence and made it to the road. His father had picked him up and brought him to the Organization. Volodya mutters as he tells his tale. I have to keep on asking him to speak up. “Of course it’s because the commanding officerin the army is a darkie from the Caucasus. The darkies control the camp, it’s all their fault,” he tells me. The women from the Organization tut-tut and shake their heads. They hear this every day, especially in St. Petersburg, the skinhead capital, and especially among the supporters of Zenit, Volodya’s team. “Were the ‘dembels’ who beat you darkies?” ask the “mothers.” “No, they were white,” admits Volodya. The story might have died after he ran away; Volodya would have reported who had carried out the beatings. The army would have denied them. And that would have been the end of it. But the commanding officer panicked. He drove into town, grabbed Volodya from the street in front of his apartment, bundled him into his car, and tried to bring him back to the base. Volodya’s father had given chase in his car and collided with the commanding officer’s car to stop him. There was a pileup. The cops turned up; TV cameras turned up. The Soldiers’ Mothers managed to extract Volodya. Then the new minister of defense found out about the story. The Kremlin had just pledged to reform the military. The minister needed an example to show everyone he meant it. Kamenka was already under examination; three conscripts had died during military exercises in the previous month. Maybe that’s why the commanding officer had panicked. Now the ministry had an excuse to ramp up the investigation, and the TV reporters were being encouraged to make films about it (a couple of years later the anticorruption minister of defense was himself tried for embezzlement, in the next round of Kremlin purges). I have learned to play this game by now, feed off the scraps of freedom given by the system. I will intercut Volodya’s story together with other tales of bullying: a reality show star who married an abusive husband, a kid picked on in his yard. And my producers are happy. They have worked out that these stories about the little man being beaten up by the state play well; this is the everyday reality of the TNT generation. They’re commissioning more of them. Another director is shooting a film about a man in Ekaterinburg who was beaten nearly to death by traffic cops when he refused to pay a bribe; now he exacts his vengeance by catching traffic cops giving bribes on video and posting them online. Another film TNT is making is about a young woman killed when her car was crashed into by the head of an oil company; he got off due to his connections. Back in Moscow I have just filmed a story about teens beaten by the police. The whole thing was caught on cell phones, but the police have brought charges against the teens for beating THEM up. I hear the same chorus of confused despair from the teens that I heard from Yana Yakovleva: “It’s like they can define reality, like the floor disappears from under you.” The Kremlin has announced a new campaign to clean up the police, and the parents hope this will help save theirchildren (and thus I’m allowed to shoot my story). The victims I meet never talk of human rights or democracy; the Kremlin has long learned to use this language and has eaten up all the space within which any opposition could articulate itself. The rage is more inchoate: hatred of cops, the army. Or blame it all on foreigners. Some teens, the anarchists and artists, have started to gather and protest, rushing out of the metro and cutting off the roads and the main squares. They call their gatherings “Monstrations” and carry absurdist banners: “The sun is your enemy.” “We will make English Japanese.” “Eifiyatoloknu for president.” The only response to the absurdity of the Kremlin is to be absurd back. An art group called Vojna (“War”) are the great tricksters of the Monstration movement: running through the streets and kissing policewomen; setting cockroaches loose in a courtroom; graffiti-ing a penis on the underside of a bridge in St. Petersburg so when the bridge comes up the penis faces the local FSB; projecting a skull and crossbones onto the parliament building. In any other culture this might seem flippant; in this society of spectacle and cruelty it feels like oxygen. Even the performance artist Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe has become politicized, posing in a magazine as a grotesque version of the President. He spent days immersing himself in the role: “When I became Putin, I felt myself become a totemic maggot, about to explode with shit. But I wasn’t the baddie, I was the janitor, who needed to eat up everything, Russia, the USSR, so the new life could begin. . . . Putin will eat up our country. One day we will reach into the cupboard and reach for our clothes and they will turn to dust in our hands because they have been eaten by maggots.” But just as I feel I’m on a roll, my little corridoris cut off. “We’re sorry, Peter,” my producers tell me at TNT, “we’ve been told to stop making . . . ‘social’ films. You understand. . . . ” They look a little uncomfortable when they say this (there’s a new one among them, a redhead, who has replaced the raven-haired, who has married and left to live in London). I’m uncomfortable for their discomfort, and I find myself nodding. Of course I understand. I have learned to pick things up on the edge of a hint. I don’t ask “why.” I don’t argue that ratings should be our priority. There are unspoken walls. The Kremlin wave of cleaning things up has finished. The 2008 financial crisis in the West has lowered the oil price, and there’s less money for the Kremlin to indulge in toying with reforms. We need calm now. The economy is curdling. As I am coming out of TNT toward evening, the neon lamps on the sushi bars are already lighting up dark mountains of dirty acid sludge: the chemicals the city puts in grit burn the paws of stray dogs. You can hear them whimper as they huddle by the warm pipes along the buildings. Two pork-faced cops, whom Muscovites have taken to calling “werewolves in uniform,” patrol the corner. I try not to gawk and walk past in the Moscow style, face down and furious. The main thing is not to catch their eye—one of my many registrations has expired. But they can still smell the fear on me—belching out the phrase that is their mark of power: “Documents: Now!” I know the script. They shepherd me toward the darkness of a courtyard. Then comes the ultimate Moscow transaction, the slipping of the bribe, a 500- ruble note already placed that morning among the pages of my passport (the rate has been going up as the economy worsens). But never offer money directly. Paying bribes requires a degree of delicacy. Russians have more words for“bribe” than Eskimos do for“snow.” I use my favorite formulation: “May I use this opportunity to show a sign of my respect for you?” “Of course you may,” the werewolves say, smiling suddenly, and slip the cash undertheir policeman’s caps. All they ever wanted was some respect. And though I still tremble quietly at the act, I have become good at this. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAMS An advertisement hangs on huge billboards over the city: a single, handsome, male eye staring out of a dark room through a crack in a door, both spying on the passersby and imploring them to release him. The advertisement is for one of Grigory’s companies, office furniture (black sells best) to fill up the justbuilt offices of the new Moscow. At thirtysomething, Grigory is one of Moscow’s young self-made multimillionaires, one of the boys who became rich in a blink during the 1990s, when being an entrepreneur, and not a bureaucrat, was the thing to do. Moscow knows Grigory best through his great parties: oases where we escape the barons and werewolves for a night. Tonight’s event is in honor of Grigory’s marriage. He has taken over a miniVersailles-like palace for the occasion. Near the entrance to the park teams of makeup artists from Moscow’s film studios dress up the guests in motion picture costumes: tonight’s theme is “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The same crowd follows Grigory around from week to week, re-creating itself for his latest whim. Inside the park trapeze artists on invisible ropes swoop down and through the trees; synchronized swimmers dressed as mermaids with shining silver tails flip and dive in the dark lake. Geysers shoot up from the water: as the droplets fall they’re lit up to create a rainbow in the night. Everyone wonders: Where are the bride and groom? A spotlight illuminates the lake. Grigory and his bride appear on opposite sides, on separate little boats made up like tortoise shells, both dressed in white. The tortoise shells move magically toward each other (pushed, I later learn, by frogmen). The boats meet in the middle; the lovers join hands and step barefoot on the water. They do not sink. Suspended on the lake, they turn and walk across the water toward us, their path illuminated by lasers. We gasp at the miracle and all applaud. The effect is achieved with a secret walkway installed specially under the lake, but it is still divine. But when Monday comes Grigory will return to a world of corrupt officials demanding bribes. The world of businessmen is shrinking. Even the poster for Grigory’s company seems to suggest a secret social edge: Is the eye peeking through the door a reference to “Big Brotheris watching you”? I first met Grigory through an old university friend, Karine. Back home I’d remembered Karine as wearing sandals and tie-dyed skirts, forever getting her curls in her eyes. Then she went to Moscow and was transformed: her hair up, back bare, designer heels replacing Birkenstocks. She’d changed after meeting some Russian guy. That was Grigory. When I first came to Moscow she introduced us. He was living in one of the new skyscrapers, his penthouse perched over the erupting city. The apartment had been specially designed for Grigory and was featured in glossy architecture magazines: open plan, allwhite, a lot of plastic. A vision of the future—or maybe a lunatic asylum. Grigory would pace it with the walk common to many of Moscow’s newly rich: a confident strut with the odd, sudden alarmed glances. He was small and lithe, with the eternally young face of a choir boy. Looking around, I noticed the apartment seemed to have no signs of personal history: no old books, clothes, silverware, photographs. As if Grigory had emerged out of a void. With time I found out more about him. He grew up in Tatarstan. His dad was just another Soviet oil worker, a small cog in the great state energy machine. Growing up the young Grigory excelled at math and physics, the type of quiet boy who would spend hours on the toilet reading chess books, forgetting where he was, learning grand masters’ games by heart. (I played him once; he beat me in ten moves.) His talents were quickly spotted, and in the 1980s he was dispatched to a special math and physics college in Moscow, to be taught by Nobel Prize winners, with others being crunched and molded into crack intellectual troops to glorify the Soviet Empire. It was perestroika, and the Soviet Union was creaking, swaying. Films and books and music from the West were starting to seep into the new black markets. Everyone pieced together his own version of the West, his own collage of freedom. Grigory got into Freddy Mercury, later films by Pasolini and Jarman, Dadaists, Greenaway—as far away from Soviet Tatarstan as you could possibly go. He was finishing his studies as the Soviet Union collapsed. For an older generation, for men like the President, the collapse of the empire was tragic. But for a twentysomething like Grigory, it meant that suddenly anything was possible. Grigory began by making his own computers. They sold well. Soon he had a team of other students working with him. Got involved with banking. Then came the new world of threats, bodyguards. At the parties, people would whisper he was lucky to have made it through alive. “The worst is when people owe you money,” Grigory told me once as we drove through the woods outside of Moscow in a new, silver, sports car. “As long as you owe them, they’ll never kill you. But if they owe you they’d rather kill than pay. I dream of being able to go outside without bodyguards. A normal life.” (The bodyguard’s Jeep was visible in the rearview mirror as we drove.) “What is it you want from Moscow, Peter?” he asked me another time, as we were drinking bright blue cocktails. “Well, you know, it’s a booming city. It’s up and up and up.” “Only a foreignercan think that. This city devours itself.” And then once, when he was thinking of resuming his studies, but this time in political economy: “There must be some way of working out how to make Russia work. Must be!” Whenever I see Grigory he is accompanied by Sergey, who directs the human scenery around his boss: he brings artists, directors, actors, and foreigners so Grigory feels he’s at the center of a bohemian feast. A personal tailor makes Sergey’s clothes: capes, knee-high boots, tweed breeches, the cultivated getup of a twenty-first-century necromancer. He has a way of making his pupils shrink and dilate in hypnotic pulsations. He drives a green vintage Jag (whose very appearance is some sort of wizardry in this black-Jeep-and-Hummer-dominated town). Sergey and Grigory studied together at the math and physics college, shared rooms. But after school, while Grigory had become a millionaire, Sergey had tried to be an artist. He discontinued that and joined a cult. He returned talking mystic riddles about the “materialization of dreams” and “re-dividing reality into segments you can travel through.” “I’m Grigory’s healer, his wizard,” Sergey likes to say. “The parties are mystery plays.” Sometimes Grigory smiles at Sergey’s mystical obsessions, but with every week he seems to need him more, waiting for Sergey to take him by the hand and escape to a better world straight out of the movies they grew up on. One evening Sergey delivers an invitation for another Grigory party. Guests are told to prepare for the art project of the year. The impossibly fashionable boys are all dressed in black this time. Grigory enters, and his court photographer (he has a stutter and is the only one here drinking as heavily as me) puts down his cocktail and scampers over. A burst of photographs: this is the Moscow way—all the rich have their own photographers. They take them on holidays, to parties, to family gatherings; you’ve only made it when yourlife becomes a magazine. Grigory comes over and we toast the evening. “Tonight is when we reveal the true face of Russia,” says Grigory. “I present Sklyarov!” A light comes on, illuminating a stage at the far end of the club. A man with a face like a gargoyle sits on a throne, dressed in tsarist robes. Rocking, he spits and mutters. A bulge on his forehead sticks out like a small, second head, pushing the eyes down into dark slits. The eyes dart around the room like a trapped animal’s. This is Sklyarov. Sergey had picked him up outside a railroad bar in a polluted provincial town. Sklyarov was the local madman and a prodigious scribbler: conspiracy theories, nonsense political utopias, frenetic sketches of the ideal city. When Sergey showed Grigory the scribbles, he was inspired: this was the true voice of the new Russia. They flew Sklyarov to Moscow (he’d never flown before and soiled his seat), put him up in the best hotel on the highest floor, and told him people in the highest echelons of power were interested in his ideas. Tonight they are launching Sklyarov’s book, his mendicant vision for the future of the country. Sergey introduces the mendicant as a great Russian prophet, a future leader of the nation. Sklyarov begins to read extracts from his book. His hands tremble as he holds it; it’s the hands that are the most appalling, caked with layers of factory soot, dirt, blood, the scum of railway toilets. The book opens with a description of life in his hometown, which in tsarist times had the most apt name of Yama, literally “the pit.” Sklyarov, frightened at first, reads fast: The psychological situation in Yama has become critical, acts of psychological violence are on the increase. The violence takes place on the pathological, material, political, moral, financial, and other levels. There is an increase in corruption among bureaucrats aimed at destabilizing the psychological arsenal of the people. The thing works like a nonsense satire of Moscow. The impossibly fashionable boys and girls start to relax, applaud, congratulate Grigory on the art project of the year. Sklyarov reads on; the next chapter deals with his autobiography: As regards the story of my own life, in all its facts, numbers, events, trials, tortures, pluses, minuses, flights, falls, ravelings, unravelings, realities, realisms, points of view, versions, dark, light and colored phases: I was born at four o’clock and twenty minutes, in the year 1972, in the town of Yama, in the then-Soviet Union. I was raised in the tradition, order and instructions of Communism, though my soul always rebelled against them. On October 28, 1979, I was made into a Young Pioneer. I took my Young Pioneer badge and flushed it down the toilet with the words: “Maybe you, toilet, can be a young pioneer.” Grigory stares up at the gargoyle. As the mendicant tells his story I start to notice how uncannily he and Grigory reflect each other: born in the same period, both children of one system they disbelieved, now in conflict with a new system ruled by corrupt bureaucrats. Grigory feels that he lives in an asylum, rebuilds his penthouse to look like one. Sklyarov spent all his formative years in real ones—his asylum diary takes up the bulk of his autobiography. Sergey is as ever on Grigory’s shoulder, smiling with his success. After the event the three link arms and pose for photographs; in this city they rhyme. But every week Grigory seems to need rebirths ever more intensely. Every time I see him he is wearing a new costume, transforming himself for another of his fancy dress evenings—one night an elf, then Hitler, Rasputin—escaping, changing, and mutating, clipping his hair short, growing it longer, brushing it to the side, then forward. (Only the bodyguards stay the same. Their boss is an eccentric, and I can never tell whether they hate or love him for it.) Sergey consults lunar calendars, arranges parties to match zodiacal principles. When Aquarius is in the sky he makes a deal with those who run the Moscow zoo and takes over the dolphinarium at night, the partygoers diving and swimming between slippery, pretty girls and dolphins. When the moon is new the theme of the party is “White.” Grigory, carrying a white rabbit in a cage, announces “tonight is all about my rebirth, a new me.” One week Grigory works as a waiter in a café (“I want to find out what it’s like to be a normal person,” he tells me), the next he’s writing plays, flying so fast no role can stick to him, and all around him the city is churning, the demolition ball swinging, and Gotham-gothic towers erupting. And now the bully bureaucrats and Chekists are closing in, and on the news there is always the same message: “Our great President has brought stability.” But all I see happening is that the brilliant boys like Grigory are being eaten. Television is also increasingly affected. Originally TNT’s formula for success was to remake hit Western reality shows like The Apprentice or Dragon’s Den. They were successful across the world—why not here? But when TNT made Russian versions, they flopped. The premise for most Western shows is what we in the industry call “aspirational”: someone works hard and is rewarded with a wonderful new life. The shows celebrate the outstanding individual, the bright extrovert. But in Russia that type ends up in jail or exile. Russia rewards the man who operates from the shadows, the gray apparatchik, the master of the politique de couloir. The shows that worked here were based on a different set of principles. By far the biggest success was Posledny Geroi (“The Last Hero”), a version of Survivor, a show based on humiliation and hardship. Slowly Grigory, like thousands of other Russians, starts to discreetly shift to the safety and serenity of London. Every year he spends less and less time in Moscow. Away from Russia he settles down. Has kids. He posts photos of his new life on his Facebook page: at trance festivals in Arizona, among the snows of Iceland, in the Scottish highlands. Grigory now feels calm enough to ditch the bodyguards. And though he has all the money in the world he likes to travel across west London in big red public transport buses. • • • For all their restoration hedonism, there can be something so forced about the glittering whirligig of the grander, gaudier Moscow nights. One time there is even a “Putin Party” in Heaven, one of the clubs where Oliona does her hunting. Strippers writhe around poles chanting: “I want you, Prime Minister.” (The President is briefly Prime Minister at the time, though still actually in charge, still the real President, just dressed up as the Prime Minister as at a masquerade.) The mood at the “Putin Party” is a mix of feudal poses and arch, postmodern irony: the sucking up to the master completely genuine, but as we’re all liberated, twenty-first-century people who enjoy Coen brothers films, we’ll do oursucking up with an ironic grin while acknowledging that if we were everto cross him, we would quite quickly be dead. So, midway during nights in the baroque clubs with their Forbeses and girls, at around 2:00 a.m., I tend to take my leave, pull on my coat and scarf, and slide and stumble across black ice to one of Mitya Borisov’s bars. In earlier years I went to his little basement bar on Potapoffsky, then later to his oneroom place on Herzen Street. There might be many of the same faces I’d seen earlier at the more glamorous events: Borisov’s bars aren’t “underground” places, and they’re not particularly cheap. The food ranges from okay to abhorrent, the booze is warm and often the wrong bottle. Borisov himself may well be there, but he has been drunk for so many years that his puffy, drooping face stares past you when you walk in even if you once swore friendship. He’s too tight ever to have installed air-conditioning, and the bars are such a smog of sour Russian cigarettes it makes a chain-smoker choke. Even so, as soon as you are through the door you can breathe more easily than in all the other places. Borisov’s bars tap into the only unbroken tradition in Moscow, that of Soviet dissidents and nonconformists, a tradition that started off in Soviet kitchens and didn’t have to reinvent itself after 1991 because it had never pretended to “speak Bolshevik” beforehand. It just continued out of the kitchens and into Borisov’s bars. Borisov’s father, a literature professor, served time (he’ll tell you the story around 4:00 a.m.), and his first venue was an old apartment where you brought your own bottles and read your own poems. The clientele now range from an older generation in their sixties to their children and grandchildren. There’s no face control, but Borisov might threaten to throw you out if you can’t tell a decent rhyme from a bad one. During the night I make my way from one of Borisov’s bars to the next. He’s put a bunch of places on one street so you never have to leave this world. There’s Kvartira 44, decorated like a 1970s dissident apartment, with the same books you would have found in your parents’ homes. (We’re back drinking in kitchens—though now you have to pay for the experience.) There’s Jean-Jacques, themed as a French bistro, John Donne as an English pub. But they don’t feel like hollow pastiche so much as witty acts of imaginary emigration, like visiting a White Russian émigré locale in 1920s Paris or a nineteenth-century London pub full of exiled antitsarists. Between darkness and dawn we all want to escape from the President’s Russia. And if the mood is still with me the next day, I like to head down to the big yellow concert hall on Herzen Street and order a large Armenian brandy from the bar in the grand, scuffed marble foyer, with a little slice of lemon on the side (always insist on a fresh one). I avoid the stalls and stride right upstairs and take my seat among the gods with the pale, intense conservatoire students and the slight spinsters, usually music teachers, whose breath smells of brandy and who are quite convinced these concerts are just for them. And when I get to my seat and finally look around, I notice something unusual, namely the light. Most classical concert rooms only have artificial lighting. But here on Herzen Street there are great, arched windows that show the sky. Only the sky; you don’t see any roofs. And if your timing is lucky it will just be approaching sunset and the sky will be turning brandy-tinted. As the music starts I always have the sense the concert hall is somehow lifting. And if the wind is blowing and the clouds are moving fast, you get the extraordinary feeling that you’re flying on a zeppelin powered by brandy, lemon, wind, sky, and music.

ACT III FORMS OF DELIRIUM

THE LOST GIRLS

When Ruslana Korshunova was first spotted as a potential supermodel at the age of sixteen, it was her eyes that caught everyone’s attention. Large and a wolf blue, the light of her Siberian ancestry: somewhere far off, a white midwinter sun on snowy wastes. Their power was heightened by a slight physical defect: in the bottom inside indent of each of Ruslana’s eyes there was a slight cup, which led to them always being filled with liquid and thus always shining, giving the impression she might be about to cry or maybe had just been crying—though whether in joy or sadness you could never tell. The rest of herface, in stark contrast to those deep, light, blue, complex eyes, was all innocence. The eyes of a thirtyyear-old woman, more actress than model, in the face of a child. At the age of eighteen she became the star of a campaign for a “magical, enchanting perfume” from Nina Ricci. You might even remember the ad. It’s in the style of a fairy tale. Ruslana, in a pink ball gown with bouncing curls, enters a white palace room. The room is empty apart from a tree, withered and bare but for a bottle of perfume shaped like a pink apple, which dangles from one of the branches, and a high mountain of dark, red apples in front of the tree. Ruslana sees the pink apple, and the camera zooms in as she gasps with teen excitement. She climbs the apple mountain, higher and higher, up to the very top, stretches, and reaches forthe object of desire. Two days before her twenty-first birthday she was dead. It was all over the tabloids, cable channels, and glossies: “Russian supermodel dies after plunging from near her ninth-floor apartment in downtown Manhattan. Her death is a presumed suicide. There was no note.” The moment her body hit the ground the story exploded into a clusterfuck of rumors. Was it drugs? Love? Mafia? Prostitution? She had burst into a thousand Ruslanas—the addict, the whore, the spurned lover. And through all these rumors the magical face of the girl stared out at me. I had “access,” that magical word all documentary makers and TV producers crave. A friend of mine knew Ruslana’s friends and family. In the months since her death they had refused documentary makers, but they would make an exception for me. I phoned TNT, excited. It was the story that had everything. There would be supermodels, suicide, and parties. There was Moscow, New York, London, and Paris. Glamour and tragedy. It was the easiest commission I ever had. I was even given a larger advance than usual to produce the film. “But don’t make it too dark,” TNT said, “Remember we need positive stories.”

• • •

She died on Water Street, at the corner of Wall Street, Manhattan, where the financial district meets the East River. The evening I arrive is cold and wet. During the day it’s crowded here with office workers, but after 6:00 p.m. it goes quiet quickly. Just the last clerks in pall-bearer black suits hurrying home, the coffee bars already closing. Ruslana’s apartment is the only residential building on the street. It’s a twelve-floor concrete jagged thing, the floors at different angles that fold awkwardly to fit onto the corner. Few families live here, just the tired travelers of trade and commerce, the foot soldiers of globalization: a Pakistani wool trader, a Malaysian PhD student. Jobbing models handed Ruslana’s apartment down to each other. The police report of her death shows photographs of herrented rooms: there are no books, no photos on the wall, no paintings. The door was locked from inside. The door to the balcony was open. There were cigarette butts on the floor—she would always smoke there. The balcony was covered with thick black netting from the building site next door. On the floor of the balcony there was a kitchen knife. There was a long cut through the netting: she must have taken the knife and sliced it open. The balcony is set at an angle away from the street. She couldn’t have jumped from there; any fall would have been broken by the floors beneath. There was a small gap through the scaffolding to the building site. It was so small only a lithe girl could make it. When the police arrived none of them could slitherthrough. Next door the frame of the new fifteen-floor office building was already built. A concrete shell, complete with stairs and dividing walls, but with no front. The police report doesn’t specify how long she spent wandering the empty building site. Several levels up one of the floors juts out into the street like a diving board. Could it have been from there? The police report doesn’t specify where she jumped from. The street was nearly empty the Saturday she died. It was the hottest day of the year, a headachemaking hot New York high summer. On weekends the bankers are away, and in high summer anyone who can flees the financial district. At 12:45 a city laborer working on the street heard a loud thud: “I thought a car had hit a person. I turned around and there was a girl lying in the middle of the road,” he told police. She was lying right out by the dividing lines, 8.5 meters away from the building—8.5 meters. The supermodel didn’t take a step off and fall. She took a run and soared. The night before her death Ruslana was with Vlada Ruslakova, the Chanel girl. I’m lucky to catch her in New York—she’s about to fly off again, to somewhere in Asia. They’re nothing like their images on paper, these girls. Brittle, with lost looks not quite sure on what to focus. I suppose it’s only when they strike a pose for work that they become resolved; until then they are oddly in-between. But Vlada’s face is perfectly proportioned: she holds the center of the shot very well during the interview. “We had dinner in Manhattan, at our favorite bistro. We were planning for her to maybe come to Paris in a few days’ time. Later that evening I took a plane to Paris myself for a shoot. She texted me when I landed—to see if I had arrived okay. That must have been morning in New York. And then a few hours later. . . a few hours laterI saw on the news she was dead.” “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” “No. But she had spent much of the last year in Moscow. So we hadn’t seen each other much recently.” “Was she upset about anything?” “No.” “Was she high?” “No!” “Why do you think she killed herself?” “I refuse . . . Ican’t . . . I don’t believe she did.” Vlada describes Ruslana as “sweet,” “honest,” and “intelligent.” “Like a child.” She repeats this: “like a child.” Behind me Ruslana’s mother is there during the whole of the interview. Vlada only agreed to talk because the mother asked herto, and Ican’t quite tell whethershe’s revealing all she knows. Ican hearthe mother gasping for breath like one holding back tears throughout our conversation. When it’s her turn to give an interview, she runs out of the room weeping afterjust a couple of questions. “I should never have let her go. Never. She was a child. She wasn’t right forthis world.” The mother has the same eyes, the exact same eyes, as Ruslana, and as I talk to her it can seem as if Ruslana is somehow present. She speaks in a small, sharp voice thatcuts the ears everso slightly. Valentina hates the media, TV, journalists—anyone who had taken possession of and tried to tell her daughter’s story. “Why do they all say she was a drug addict, a prostitute? How dare they? How can you just take someone and talk about them when you never knew them? What right do they have?” I tell her I will be different. Samples of Ruslana’s organs and blood are kept in a vault under the New York coroner’s office. Valentina allows me to send blood samples for a full test to see whether there are traces of heavy drug use. She also insists we test for Ruffinol and chloroform or any other drug that could have been administered to knock her out. “She would have never killed herself,” both Valentina and Vlada insist. “She wasn’t like that.” • • • Ruslana grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The family was Russian: Ruslana’s father was a Red Army officer, and Kazakhstan happened to be the last place he was stationed before the breakup of the USSR. He then went into private business. “We were wealthy. One of the first to be really wealthy,” the mother tells me as we walk through New York. “But he was killed.” Ruslana was only five at the time. She had a younger brother, Ruslan. Ruslan and Ruslana. “You gave them the same names?” “Yes—it’s beautiful. Don’t you find?” Valentina looked around for work. She found door-to-door sales; American cosmetics companies were just expanding in Kazakhstan. Their business was dipping in the west but rising in the east. Valentina enrolled. She attended training to make her into a model salesperson: you can sell anything to anyone, they preached, as long as you believe. They taught her the “secrets” of sales success: make the customer say “yes” three times when you first chat with her, she can just be agreeing about the weather, that way she will be tuned into saying “yes” when you offer lipstick or anti-ageing cream. In the postSoviet space such companies were hugely successful: the promise of money, secret knowledge, and Western beauty all in one package. (The catch was that the sales reps were actually being conned; they had to buy the cosmetics in bulk and see if they could sell them. They felt like salespeople, but actually they were the customers.) “I was one of the best,” Valentina tells me, and I can almost hear the corporate training pride. “I made it to the level of middle manager.” Valentina sent Ruslana to the local German-language school, considered the best in Almaty. It was prestigious to attend one. Ruslana had braces, got good marks, and was preparing for university in Germany. She had hairthat reached down to her knees. “Such beautiful hair,” remembers Valentina. “I would help her wash it. Until the age of fifteen she never washed her hair alone.” When the call came from the modeling scout, Valentina laughed it off. Modeling wasn’t their sort of thing; it smelled of prostitution. Ruslana was going to university after all. But the scout kept on calling. She explained that modeling was the best way to pay for a university education, even in England or America. Ruslana would go straight to the West; she wouldn’t be held up in Moscow. They would try her at London fashion week. “London, I’ll finally see London!” Ruslana told her mother as she begged to go. • • • The scout’s name is Tatyana Cherednikova. I find her in Moscow. She is on her way to the airport, and we talk in the back of the car. I expected someone in a designer dress and heels. Tatyana is quite the opposite. She wears a fleece with a reindeer pattern on it and snow boots. We listen to a CD of Christmas carols on the player. It’s approaching the Western date for Christmas (the Russian date is in January). Tatyana converted to Protestantism during hertravels in Europe and America. “It’s all about hard work and honesty,” she tells me about her new faith. I ask about Ruslana. “Of course I feel guilty. There she was, happy with her mum, preparing for university—and up I pop and say Hey, come to modeling land, it’s wonderful out here. . . . And then it all ends up the way it did. . . . But I really thought it would be a good way for her to make money for university. It is for lots of girls. It’s a chance.” She says this simply—there’s nothing duplicitous about her. I ask her how she found Ruslana. Tatyana spends 50 percent of her life on the road. Her life is an endless progression of cheekbones, legs, buttocks, lips. She sees thousands of girls a year. Maybe three will make it to the top. The former Soviet Union is her territory. In the Cold War it was spies who knew this country, studied it, poured over every detail: every block of high-rises, every muddy road, every factory. Now it is modeling scouts. Voronezh, Karaganda, Alma Ata, Rostov, Minsk—these are the great wells of beauty, raw girl crude to be pumped and refined. Many have never heard of these places. Tatyana knows them inside out. The Soviet Union occupied 20 percent of the world’s land mass; its former states produce 15 percent of the world’s oil. But over 50 percent of the models on the catwalks of Paris and Milan are from the former USSR. In 2004 Tatyana had gone to Kazakhstan. She was on the jury of Miss Alma Ata. Local businessmen invited her down; they wanted her to choose one of the girls, many their mistresses, and whisk her off to Paris. But the girls were all breasts and bums: oligarch lolls. Nothing that would suit the needs of Paris and Milan. She had gone around all the agencies while she was there, too; no one had stood out. A disappointing trip. Tatyana was on the flight back. She had finished the paperback she was reading quicker than she thought. She flicked through the in-flight magazine. And then she stopped. In between the whisky ad and the piece on Kazakh flora was a photo of a girl. Amazing. The photo was in dubious taste: a semiclad waif in tribal garb, posing like some cross between Lolita and Mowgli in a jungle of plastic trees. But the girl herself—she was amazing. Her blue gaze went on forever, so powerful and deep that everything—Tatyana, the plane, the clouds—seemed to be caught inside it: small toys suspended inside this young girl’s gaze. As soon as Tatyana landed, she phoned her colleagues at a Moscow casting agency. “Find that girl,” she said. “Find that girl.” But Ruslana wasn’t a model. No agency had heard of her. In the end they found the photographer. Ruslana had been friends with the daughter of the editor of the magazine. They had taken the photographs for fun, for a piece about Amazons. Tatyana spotting the photos was magical chance. Fairytale stuff. “She was hired by a London agency straightaway. She was doing the shows in London, Paris, Milan. Just in the holidays, in between school. Later, when she went full time, she would ring to say thank-you. It’s rare to hear‘thank-you’ from a model. Ruslana was different.” “Why do you think she killed herself?” “She was the most emotionally stable model I knew. The most balanced. The best educated. It just doesn’t make any sense.” The traffic is becoming congested, and we barely make Tatyana’s flight. She rushes to the departure area. Before she goes she turns and says: “If you see Ruslana’s mother give her my love. Tell her I think of Ruslana every day. And if you need to find me I’m atchurch most Sundays.” • • • I find video of Ruslana’s first trip to London, her first trip outside the former Soviet Union. A teenager— no, child—in a hoodie on a blustery London day, snapping photos of Tower Bridge, grinning goofily, laughing widely, and trying to hide her braces as she does so. Then she takes the hoodie off, and down it tumbles: that heavy, golden, knee-length hair. They nicknamed her “the Russian Rapunzel” in modeling land. Masha was her best friend during those first European days. We meet up during Moscow Fashion Week. Passing backstage during the shows, I’m struck by how young the girls look. Not even nymphetlike, just skinny like prepubescent boys. Masha is twentysomething, but she still looks fifteen. She has Bambi brown eyes. She met Ruslana in London on herseventeenth birthday. It was Ruslana’s first season modeling. “Who would wash her hair?” I ask to break the ice. “We all took turns in the apartment. When we first met I had the sense Ruslana was my child, she was so innocent,” says Masha. They shared digs in six-to-a-room flats in London, Paris, and Milan. Those were the days of casting upon casting. Life squeezed into measurements (32–23–33), tense girls eyeing each other’s legs-hipsbreasts, desperate to be the one who is picked: every rejection a slap saying your body’s wrong, you’re wrong. We think of models as ideal; they think only of how they don’t quite fit. “Ruslana would cry; she took rejection personally. But then she’d pull herself together. Wrote poems to console herself.” Some poems still survive online: Instead of moaning at the thorns, I’m happy that a rose among them grows Often they went hungry: agencies only provide a small allowance forfood. That gets spent quickly. “In Paris and Milan there’d be these dinners, rich men would pay to come, we could join in for free. Ruslana and I would go: it was our only chance to eat.” “And?” “The men could tell we weren’t like THAT. For lots of girls modeling is just a chance to meet a rich guy. It’s not as if the men have to work hard to sleep with someone. All that stuff was happening around us.” Some girls, the Russian girls from god-knows-where who grew up with no running water, go nuts, sucked into the whirlpool of champagne, cocaine, debauchery. But not Ruslana. “We were the dunces,” says Masha, “the ones who went to bed early.” Success came quickly for Ruslana. Within a year she had her first hit for Officiel. The long hair spun into seaweed chains, entwining her body. Her face made over to cross the line from childhood to sex. But not Lolita-like; ratherthe stuff of folktales. And again that gaze: the taiga, Baikal, snowy wastes. Then came the ad that took Ruslana and transformed her life. Nina Ricci. The magical tree. The pink apple . . . and stardom. The ad catapulted Ruslana into the jet set. Jerry Epstein, the head of Bear Sterns, famous for his love of teenage girls (he was later jailed for statutory rape), flew her down to his private Caribbean island. The new Russian mega-rich were especially keen to be seen with the new Russian supermodel. She spent more and more time in Moscow, found herself in the VIP lounge of all the clubs. The dream life of all the gold diggers and wannabes: she was living it. It was Moscow she fell in love with, felt most at home in. Herrise chimed together with the city’s. She met Alexander at a club (though no one can remember whether in New York or in Moscow). He was one of the handsomest Russian tycoons on the scene, and she fell blissfully in love. Luba, a former Miss Chelyabinsk, knew her during the affair. Luba’s Moscow apartment is drowning in hercollection of cuddly bears. A little pug yaps throughout ourconversation. “I never had toys when I was small,” says Luba. “Now I’m making up for it. I have over two thousand bears. Every city I visit I buy new ones.” She tells me about Alexander. “He’s not that young, but he is gorgeous. Girls drop at his feet. He’s been with so many of my friends. All of them perfect.” Friends, experienced models like Luba, warned Ruslana not to fall in love. But she was certain this was the real thing. She wanted marriage, children, a steady home. “That was the thing about Ruslana,” says Luba. “There was something childish about her. She believed. And she liked that he was older, she missed herfather.” Ruslana told friends Alexander wanted to marry her. Introduced him to her mother. They lived together. When Alexander dumped Ruslana she kept on texting him, hoping for an answer. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Lost weight. She would ask friends to persuade him to change his mind. Her Facebook page was full of poems of unrequited love: I gave love and forgave hurt, Hid pain in my heart in anticipation of the miracle. You left again, leaving in return A castle of pink dreams and ruined walls. And: Don’t be silent my love, don’t be silent. My soul yearns for you. Turn back. Glance back. My bright little sun. I can’t breathe without you. In the end Alexander’s assistantcontacted her and told her not to bother him again. And just as suddenly as Alexander dumped her, Ruslana’s careerstalled. The calls dried up. “She couldn’t understand,” says Luba. “Suddenly she was one of a thousand girls. A no one.” She went back to New York to look for more work in the last months before her death. There was a new boyfriend, Mark, a Russian luxury car dealer in New York, but better known as a guy who parties with all the models. “I’m probably the only girl Mark hasn’t had an affair with,” says Luba. Ruslana had fallen for another playboy, though this time a much poorer one. “That was Ruslana’s problem,” repeats Luba. “She believed.” • • • Elena Obukhova used to be a model. Now she’s a psychologist. “Look at these girls, they’re all lost. Moscow is full of them. I’d have lots of clients: it’s a very specific journey. I would understand them betterthan a regular analyst.” Elena too was discovered by chance, on the street in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where, like Ruslana in Kazakhstan, she was one of the blonde ethnic Russian girls left after the empire fell. We walk through a spring Moscow, all the men looking around at the giant blonde beside me. When we come to shoot the interview she’s different than the younger girls I’ve interviewed: she has a language to talk about herself in, stares down the camera instead of searching in the airfor words. “I was fifteen and I remember listening in at the kitchen door. The scout was trying to convince my parents to let me go to Milan. I couldn’t understand why he had chosen me, just like that on the street. I thought I was too tall, ugly, everyone at school would tease me. And now I was listening in at the door, just praying my parents would say yes. Italy! I hadn’t been to Moscow, let alone Italy. And my poor father, he couldn’t understand what was going on, he thought a model and fashion designer was the same thing.” Her parents let her go eventually, though only after she had finished school. She was sixteen going on seventeen when she reached Milan. “Oh, I was so confused. People were nice and nasty at the same time. I mean, they talked nicely but said nasty things. I had thought everyone would be fascinated by me, I would be like a movie star. But it’s the opposite. No one cares about your personality. You become a picture. That was hard, because growing up I had been used to talking about myself, gesticulating, shouting, laughing. The first thing you learn in modeling is to put on a mask, strike an array of poses, pouts, smiles. And before you know it you’ve lost the ability to talk normally, laugh naturally. But you’re sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, everything inside is boiling over, but your profession is all about suppressing that.” “And the men?” “Oh the men. They flock around. You’re a prize—but they’re sleeping with the girl on the photo, not you, and you begin to become your image and just become even more lost. And then there is a very common type you come across whose life is dedicated to making models fall in love with them. They’re these pseudo-romantics, who imitate a tortured inner world and con models into romances, one after another, which no doubt makes them feel a little more self-worth. It seems all perfect with cars and private planes and flowers and you begin to think it’s real, and when you hit reality you are just dashed to bits. And you get to this point where you’re so confused as to who you are, what’s real and what’s fake, that, and I realize this sounds odd, but you begin to feel the only way you can become real again is to kill yourself. My method was hanging. I stood on the windowsill and jumped off. The rope must have given way, and Icame to hours later bruised but alive. I just felt shame, so much shame.” But when I put forward that love and career were the catalyst for Ruslana’s suicide, her friends and mother all turn to me and say in a chorus: “Not Ruslana!” “She wasn’t like that!” “She wouldn’t kill herself oversome guy!” “She was looking forward to university, didn’t care if modeling was behind her. None of that mattered to her!” Back in the United States the drug tests we sent out have returned: Ruslana had no signs of illegal drug abuse over the last months. But neither had she been drugged with anything that could have knocked her out. But the more Ruslana’s family and friends interrogate the police account of her death, the more skeptical they become. Why didn’t the police look in the actual building that she jumped from? Why didn’t they specify the actual place she leapt from? How could she have jumped 8.5 meters? How? She wrote incessantly—why no note? She’d hinted to friends she was owed money from old contracts; could one of those have led to some sort of conflict? I help the mother find a postmortem expert to go over the evidence again. He asks for samples of Ruslana’s organs: histology tests will show whether her organs had stopped functioning before she hit the ground. He will reinspect the autopsy to see if it yields fresh clues. • • • A few months pass. I get a call. Another model has killed herself, this time in Kiev, Ukraine. She was Ruslana’s friend; her name was Anastasia Drozdova. She too threw herself from a high-rise block of flats. Luba knew both girls well. She chain-smokes backstage at a fashion show, chews her lips: “First Ruslana, now Anastasia. I’m wondering which of my friends will be next?” I phone TNT: “There’s been anothersuicide. I’m on my way to meet the parents now.” The producers at TNT are cautious. “Two suicides is a little depressing for us. We need positive stories. Please keep that in mind.” I sit with Olga, the mother of the second girl, in a Kiev café. She’s slight, a former ballerina. A waitress takes our orders, the process torturous: how to decide whether you want extra cream when you’ve just lost your daughter? “I got home late. She wasn’t there. I found a note: ‘Forgive me for everything. Cremate me.’ I ran to the police station. A cop said casually: ‘You the mother of that girl who threw herself from the block of flats?’ I didn’t know what to say. They showed me a bag with trainers. They were hers. Then there could be no doubt.” Back at the mother’s apartment she shows me home video of Anastasia as a child. The apartment is in a regular 1960s panel block, but inside it’s done up nicely with new floors and a European, open kitchen. Anastasia paid for it as a present to her mother. When she was growing up they had shared bunks in the dormitories where dancers were housed by provincial ballets. The father had left when Anastasia was young. The mother had sent Anastasia to ballet school. “At least she would have one profession to fall back on,” says Olga. “During the USSR being a ballerina was a steady job. That’s less the case now.” The home video shows Anastasia practicing ballet when she was fourteen. She’s tallerthan the others, awkward, trips during her pirouettes. Olga winces at her mistakes; she herself is petite, every movement light and exact. “She was a little uncoordinated, too tall and gangly to be a dancer. She was picked on by teachers; it was all one long humiliation. But everyone would tell her she should try modeling, her lankiness would be perfect there. She would nag: ‘Let me try, let me try.’ I made her wait until she graduated and then I couldn’t hold her back.” In Moscow Anastasia placed in the top five of the Elite Model Look competition. Her ballet training meant she had ideal posture and movement. She was flown to the all-European tournament in Tunis, and ranked in the top fifteen. When Olga saw her get off the plane from Tunis, she knew that was it, her daughter was a different person now: “She had seen a new world, yachts and cars and wealth I could never give her. What can you say to a child who’s set to be earning more than you? Whatcould I teach her?” In the first years Anastasia would return home bubbling over with stories about Europe, all the people she had seen and all the parties that she’d been to. She decided to make Moscow her base. And slowly she changed. “She began to be more, how shall I say, materialistic,” says Olga. The mother’s friends are less gentle on the daughter: “‘I need a man with money, with a top car, who can give me a house and holidays,’ that’s how she began to talk,” says Rudolf, a former Ukrainian high-jump champion and Olympic bronze medalist, who dated Olga. “She could be very specific in her desires. But in a way I could understand her. A model is like a sportsman. You have to grab everything when you are young.” Anastasia was trying to play the Moscow game. She had affairs with wealthy married men who promised to house her in smart places on Rublevka. Anastasia would tell friends she was “made.” Her favorite phrase was “I’m going to cling on in Moscow, cling on!” But she wasn’t any good at playing that game at all. She kept falling in love, wanted to be the only focus of a man’s attention. But she was in relationships a priori based on other rules. And so she was always in a muddle and getting hurt. Her relationships with married men kept breaking down; she would be housed in some penthouse and then would find herself out again, crashing with friends or sharing small flats with other girls. Her modeling career went sidewise. It wasn’t a disaster, but neither did she become a cover girl. By the time she was twenty-four, the age of her death, she knew hercareerin modeling was ending. In the last year of her life her behavior started to change radically. She became aggressive. On her last trips to Milan, in the spring before her death, she would miss castings, get into fights with other girls. Her agents would get calls from their Italian partners complaining about her behavior. They couldn’t understand it; she had always been professional. When Anastasia came home that final summer she was unrecognizable. Terribly thin—her hips just eighty-two centimeters. Silent, with her head down. She looked like she knew some awful secret but couldn’t tell anyone about it. She had always been the buoyant life of any party; in restaurants she would laugh so loud people at other tables would turn around and stare. Now she wouldn’t leave her room. In 40-degree heat she sat scrunched up under a duvet. She complained of stomach cramps and switched off her phone. She didn’t wash her hair for a whole week. When she had an interview for a new job she broke down when she couldn’t decide what she should wear. She walked around the flat, rocking, repeating, “there’s no way out.” “It wasn’t her, it was some different person,” says Olga. “She’d always told me what was going on in herlife. Now she was silent.” After Anastasia’s death her mother searched her room. It was strange walking inside without her there. She didn’t really know what she was looking for. A diary, clues, anything. She came across a folder she’d never seen before. There were two “diplomas” that looked like university diplomas, but the name of the institution caught Olga’s eye: the “Rose of the World.” The Rose of the World? What sort of name was that? One diploma was for passing the foundation course, the other for the advanced course. There were papers with Anastasia’s writing on them—saying how she must transform, change herself, become a different person. There were pages and pages on which she listed the worst traits in her personality: laziness, lack of aims, drugs, the wrong men. And there was a postcard, with a note addressed to Anastasia: “When you understand who and what you really are, then everyone around you recognizes you without a word of opposition. Anastasia: you’re on your way. Your lullaby is ‘winter’s end.’” What did it mean, “You are on your way?” Now Olga remembered the Rose of the World. A year and a half before Anastasia had mentioned that she had started to attend what she referred to as “psychological trainings” in Moscow. When Olga asked her what went on there, Anastasia was vague—something about remembering childhood experiences. Telling all your secrets. She explained that she had signed a contract promising not to tell anyone what went on at “the Rose.” But she explained that these courses would transform her, perfect her; if she could pass them she could do anything, anything at all. Olga told Anastasia she was a healthy girl and didn’t need any self-perfecting. She should stop. Olga thought little of Rose of the World back then, but now she wanted to know more. After the funeral she took Anastasia’s friends aside to ask whetherthey knew anything. Did Olga know Anastasia had spent another year at the Rose of the World? they asked. She’d been going until a few months before her death. No, Olga answered, she hadn’t known. Anastasia had told hershe’d stopped going over a year ago. Did Olga know how much money she’d spent there? No. Thousands of dollars, thousands and thousands. And did Olga know Ruslana went there, too? They went there together. Ruslana stayed three months, Anastasia over a year. “We think it might be a sect,” said the model friends. “Though we can’t quite be sure.” Olga started to look online. “Trainings for personality development” is how the Rose of the World describes itself. “Our seminars will teach you how to find your true self, realize your goals and achieve material wealth,” its Web site states—lit up by photographs of happy, shiny people standing on the top of a hill, shot from the bottom up, their arms out embracing a strong wind so it looks like they’re almost flying. The Rose also specializes in corporate training. Olga went through Anastasia’s papers from the Rose. She found the names of two men mentioned there and matched their numbers to Anastasia’s phone (a gold-plated Vertu, given to her by some lover). One number didn’t answer; another did. When he picked up the phone and Olga told him who she was and what had happened to Anastasia, he was shocked. But, no, he didn’t think the Rose was that important. He couldn’t say exactly what happened there, he also had signed some papers, but he mentioned there was lots of crying. He had only finished the first basic course before he quit. Anastasia had stayed much longer. On Internet forums and in chat rooms there is some discussion, though not much, about the Rose. A couple of people write that it changed their lives forever and they are transformed. Others write that it’s a con. Still others write that they think it might be dangerous. The posts in the chat rooms are all anonymous. • • • When I tell my editors at TNT about the Rose they aren’t particularly excited. “Find out anything you need, Piiitrrr. But why should our audience care about life-trainings for Muscovites?” says one producer. “How much did you say they cost? 1,000 a go?” adds another. “How does that relate to a provincial single mother? Our audience? It’s not part of her world, nor is it anything she aspires to or understands. Keep it brief,” says the third. “But what if it is a sect?” I answer back. “Russian sects are crazed freaks on communes in Siberia. What do this lot do: corporate trainings? That’s not like any Russian sect we know. And Piiitrrr, we still need more positive stories.” • • • Everyone who has been at the Rose has pledged themselves to secrecy. I need someone to go in and blend with the girls there, make friends with the employees and those who have been there a while. There must be some gossip since two students have now died. I want someone Russian, preferably the same age as the girls. I approach an undercover reporter, Alex (not his real name), who is excited to help out. Alex is meant to be the best in the business, has penetrated gangs and corrupt state institutions. We pay just under $1,000 for the foundation course. It will last three days. After each day of the trainings Alex will meet with me and Vita Holmogorova, a professional psychologist and member of the Russian Association of Psychotherapists, to go through all the events and thoughts. Based on Alex’s testimony, recordings, and interviews I do with present and former adepts and the psychotherapist’s analysis, I slowly start to piece together what happened to Ruslana and Anastasia at the Rose. • • • The Rose of the World runs its trainings in a Soviet-gothic palace at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNH) in northern Moscow. VDNH was commissioned by Stalin to celebrate Soviet success, with great gothic pavilions and statues dedicated to every republic from Armenia to Ukraine and every accomplishment from agriculture to space. Now it is rented out to petty traders selling anything from kitsch art to kitchens, furs, and rare flowers. Stray dogs hunt in packs between gargantuan statues of collective farm girls and decommissioned rockets. The Rose’s trainings are in the old Palace of Culture. When you walk in at 10:00 a.m. there’s a table with name tags on it, just like at a professional conference. You’re directed up the grand staircase toward the main hall. It’s closed. All the participants of the training stand around in the foyerlooking a little awkward. There’s some tea. There are roughly forty people: a few stolid fortysomething businessmen and a lot of younger women in their twenties who are clearly well looked after. Suddenly you’re startled by Star Wars music blasting from inside the hall itself. The doors burst open. The music is really loud, so loud it almost hurts. A woman is standing at the entrance: “The doors to our auditorium are open! Come inside! Come inside!” She shouts this over and over as you enter. Inside it’s almost pitch black, and all around the sides are people shouting: “Quick, quick, take your seats, put your bags away.” This is the “group of support,” volunteers who have been at the Rose several years. They’re shouting at you all the time, and they seem to be everywhere in the darkness. From the moment you walk in you’re lost, disorientated, somewhat stunned. You take a seat on chairs that spread in a fan several rows deep around the stage. The volunteers are seated in the row behind you—so you can’t see them but their voices are shouting at the back of your head: “Sit down! Hurry! Hurry!” Then everything is silent. A bright light comes on up on the stage, and the “life coach” enters. He has a face like a teddy bear and wears an earpiece microphone and a slightly baggy suit with a bright tie that looks too loud. One of those silly ties you get as a joke for Christmas. He talks fast, very fast, and in provincial Russian with some grammatical mistakes. His accent is so hokey and he looks so comedic with his baggy suit, soft face, and silly tie that at first you find him funny. He talks about nothing in particular. How his mother was a seamstress. How he’s from the sticks. He tells a few stories, like a bad comedian. Everyone is looking at each other—what have they signed up for? This is a “life coach?” He keeps on talking very fast, the microphone pitched at a level that slightly hurts the ears. Your head begins to ache mildly. He brings out a huge white board and draws flowcharts, complicated shapes and arrows showing how you will transform and what your personality consists of. You try to keep up with all the formulas and arrows and flowcharts, but at some point you start to get confused, lose your orientation. The more clever and alert you are, the more you focus on what he’s saying and drawing, but it never quite makes sense, and you getconfused all over again. This is the point of the introduction. The shouting, the darkness, his jokes, and the frenetic drawing: your brain starts to get scrambled. After a period (you’re not sure quite how long) of this a woman gets up to leave the room. “Where are you going?” the life coach says, suddenly angry. “The toilet.” “You can’t go,” says the life coach. Everyone thinks he’s joking. “But I need to,” smiles the woman. The life coach shouts back at her: “You want to change your life? And you can’t stop yourself from going to the toilet? You’re weak.” Everyone is shocked. The woman explains that she really does need to go. “Off you go then,” he says, light again, and waves her away. What was that? He talks on, jovial. A few minutes later another woman wants to go to the bathroom. When she’s at the doorthe life coach, stern again, says: “Forget aboutcoming back if you leave.” She turns back. “Why?” This time he screams louder, longer, waving his arms in front of her face: “Why? We’ve come here to transform. Change. I could just wander off and grab a snack. But we’re here to perfect ourselves. You’re weak. You’re just weak!” “That’s ridiculous,” says the young woman who wants to go to the bathroom. At first everyone in the audience backs her up; the life coach is being a tyrant. In her time Ruslana was one of the loudest and brightest in the audience, the first to pick a fight with the life teacher. The life coach starts to negotiate with the audience. Their transformation starts now, today, he argues, this minute. Don’t they want to change? Defeat all their fears and inner demons? Be free? Together they can do it. And the only person holding them back is the woman who wants to go to the bathroom. She’s betraying them. They’ve spent how long now discussing this? Ten minutes? Fifteen? So she didn’t really need to go, did she? It’s all in her head. “Yes, she didn’t really need to go,” repeat the volunteers from the back of the room. The woman looks uncomfortable. What if they are right? And without you noticing, the life coach has brought the audience around to his side, and the whole audience is calling on the person who needs the bathroom to be strong, she can make it, if she can make it they all can. She sits back down. Everyone applauds. They have crossed a little Rubicon together. The life coach has their attention. “In the next days,” says the life coach, “you will feel discomfort, fear, but that is good, that’s because you are changing, transforming toward a brighter, more effective life. You’re like a plane, experiencing turbulence as you rise higher and higher. We all know you can’t grow without discomfort. Don’t we?” The life coach calls up anyone who is ready to join him on the stage. Ruslana had been one of the first to try this. He asked her why she came, what were her aims, what was holding her back in life. She said her problem was men: she couldn’t get any relationship right. And then the life coach ploughed into her: it was her own fault she let men leave her, she had an “inner monologue” that made her a victim. Ruslana tried to fight back—she was the innocent party, she explained. But the trainerspun her words back at her: she wanted everyone to think she was a “good girl” and that made her weak. The more you push back against the life coach, the more he argues: “Ha, the fact you’re fighting me shows how scared you are to admit you’re wrong! Scared to change!” You find yourself first outraged and then slowly nodding. Then everyone stands and has to recite together, like in an army, the “Commandments of Training”: I will not tell anyone what goes on here. I will not make any recordings. I will not be late. I will not drink alcohol forthe duration of the training. Smokers are told to stand. There are seven or so out of the forty. Anastasia and Ruslana were both smokers. Alex is, too. The trainer tells the smokers they have a chance to change their lives and quit. Those who promise to quit can sit. A couple (the stubborn ones) keep on standing. And the trainer begins to lay into them again; he keeps talking for ten, twenty minutes, until their legs are hurting, and they face a challenge between the physical pain they are experiencing and not giving in to the life trainer. Meanwhile the volunteers and some in the audience begin to shout at them: “Come on, sit down, you’re taking up ourtime.” Eventually everyone sits down. There’s a lunch break. It’s packed lunches or takeout; you’re not allowed to leave the building. Many are outraged and upset at the trainer—but no one leaves. People have come here for different reasons: some are midlevel professionals who want the training to give them a boost. This is what the trainer promises: to make you more “effective,” borrowing the language of the Kremlin and the political technologists. Others have been brought here by friends or lovers who have been through the courses themselves and insisted they come too. “My girlfriend said she would leave me if I didn’t do it,” says one young man. After lunch you go back into the hall and there’s some ambient music playing. “Who’s strong enough to tell their darkest secret?” asks the life trainer. He seems suddenly gentle now, caring. Everyone is sworn to secrecy, he repeats; this is one community. Someone stands up and tells how she was sacked at work. Someone else how a girlfriend left him. Then a woman stands up and talks about how she was raped when she was still a child, raped repeatedly. She breaks down afterward and cries; the volunteers cradle her. It’s the first time she has told anyone. There’s a hush around the room. There’s a lot of crying. When it was her turn Ruslana talked about her father: how she had felt when he departed. Anastasia remembered her parents’ divorce when she was young. For the first time the models had a place where someone would listen to them. They felt for the first time that they could be themselves. No one even knew they were models here. And now the trainer moves in for another kill: all these events were your fault. If you were sacked— your fault. Raped—your fault. You’re all full of self-pity; you’re all victims. Now break into pairs, he orders, and tell each other your worst memories, but retell them as if you’re taking responsibility, as if you’re the creator, not the victim, of your life. This will go on for hours. And as you retell the worst moments of your life as if you were the creator, the one who made everything happen, you start to feel differently, you feel lighter, more powerful. Now you look at the life trainer a little differently. He’s bullied you and then he’s lifted you up and then confused you and made you cry, and now something else entirely. Without noticing you have been in the room twelve hours, but the time has just flown past, you’ve lost all sense of it. You feel soft by now, somehow rubbery. You feel very close, closer than anyone you have ever known, to the other people in your group, as if you’ve always been meant to meet them. “Transformation,” “effective,” “bright”: as you walk home these words ring through your head like gongs. You think about seeing the trainertomorrow. You want to please him, to let him know you didn’t smoke, as you had promised. You feel a wave of warmth when you think about him. He’s tough, but he means well. You get home toward midnight. Your relatives or roommates notice that you seem strange, but you shrug it off. It’s just that they’ve never seen you outside your comfort zone. You do the homework: detailed notes on everything you don’t like about yourself. Everything you want to change. You get to sleep at 1:00, maybe 2:00 a.m. At night you dream about the trainer. In the morning you’re there early. So is everybody else. When the doors open everyone rushes in, keen to show that they made it here on time. The doors are shut at 10:00 and any spare chairs removed. One guy comes in late, but there’s nowhere for him to sit. The trainerscreams at him: “You promised to be on time. You made a pledge. Why are you late?” “I was hesitating whetherI should come at all,” says the young man. “Yesterday I saw you didn’t confess to any painful memories. You just looked at the others as if they were a show. That’s how you see everyone, entertainment, and now you want to run off. Is that the case?” And if you were sympathetic to the young man when he was late, you now find yourself shouting: “A show! You think we’re just a show for your entertainment!” The young man squats in the corner of the hall, ashamed. “Yes,” he admits later, “I was just afraid to leave my comfort zone.” The trainer begins to draw more diagrams—arrows that show how you are going in one direction, and the people you know at home and work are going in another. That’s why they might not understand you after you do the trainings. You’re changing; they loved you for the person you were before, but you’re growing. This is a test for them: only the ones who really love you will be able to cope, to love the new you. And for those who don’t accept you, you should ask yourself: Are those relationships holding you back? Should you lose them? The girl who yesterday talked about unspeakable things that happened in her childhood takes the microphone and says she regrets confessing now: some people in the hall seem wary of her, she says. But instead of feeling sympathy, everyone in the hall turns on her: “You’re just a victim,” they shout. “You’re enjoying showing off your feelings.” The life trainer doesn’t even have to tell them anymore what they should think. Now the trainer’s talking about death. Death is no big deal. The other day some Russian tourists died in a bus explosion in Egypt. Is it a good or a bad thing? Well? It’s neither. A friend of his died recently. It’s neutral. Just a fact of life. Everyone here will die. You all, you all will die. “Who remembers that girl Ruslana?” says the life trainer. “The model who killed herself? Jumped from a skyscraper. I knew her well. Her ‘inner monologue’ was ‘suicide.’ You know she had five attempts at suicide before she came to us?” (This is new: none of her friends, colleagues, or family remember suicide attempts. Quite the opposite: they all say how well-balanced she appeared.) “And did you know,” he continues, “her mother was taking money from her? She once borrowed 200 bucks from me to pay for her apartment in New York. And she was a supermodel!” (New again: everyone else has told me how close she was to her mother.) “Ruslana,” says the life trainer, “was a typical victim.” After he says this one girl puts up her hand. “But don’t you feel bad that one of yourstudents killed herself?” “Sometimes it’s better to commit suicide than not to change. And the fact you’re feeling so sorry for this girl means you’re a victim too. It was herchoice to do it.” And everyone in the room agrees: it was Ruslana’s own choice to do it. And who could possibly disagree with that? Toward the middle of the day your head will start to feel light, like bubbles are rising through it. There are role-playing games and team-building games. Everyone has to walk around the room shouting at each other, “I need you, I like you,” if they think the person is transforming, or “I don’t need you, I don’t like you,” if they think the person is not. The girl who felt bad after she told everyone what happened during her childhood now takes the microphone and admits she’s a victim and she’s ready to transform. Everyone’s applauding her, the life trainer is saying how proud he is of her, and you’re sitting there just waiting for him to praise you and frightened that he won’t. During the lunch break you’re told to sit quietly for half an hour. Not a sound. Just think about all your mistakes in life. All the relationships you messed up, all your failures in your career. When you come back inside the hall there’s dancing, lots of fast dancing with loud, banging music, and you’re happy now and hugging people. Then the music changes to ambient. You’re told to stand in two lines opposite each other. You look into the eyes of the person opposite. You look for one, two, three, four minutes. Longer. It’s uncomfortable to look into the eyes of someone you barely know. You feel it’s the first time you have really looked into someone’s eyes. “Now take a step to the right, look into the next person’s eyes, imagine they’re your mother,” says the life trainer, “how she raised you when you were small. Her lullabies. How she felt when she sensed you growing inside her womb, how she looked at you when you were in the cradle.” Everyone softens. “Now imagine the eyes of someone you have lost. A loved one.” Ruslana thought of her father, Anastasia of her best friend, a fellow model who had died in a car accident the previous summer on the road between Kiev and Moscow. Everyone’s eyes are wet. “Now take a step to the right, look into the eyes of the next person, and imagine it’s the person you’ve lost, and think of all the things you didn’t have a chance to tell them.” Everyone is crying by now. The volunteers are walking around with tissues. You use dozens and put them in your pockets, and your legs grow wet from the number of wet tissues you are using. “Now take a step back to the left, look into the eyes of the person opposite, and imagine, for a moment, the person you lost is back with you, they’ve returned. Now you may hug them.” At this point everyone breaks down. You’re lying on the floor. The trainer tells you to close your eyes. Breathe deeply. His voice takes you through a deep wood; the wood is your life, then you find a hut, in the hut there’s a room, and in the room are all the times people have let you down, betrayed you; beyond that is another room, where are all the times you let others down; and now you’re running, running free through the woods, ready to change, to lead a bright, effective life. As you walk home you feel warm inside. Everything around you, the whole evening, seems to be dissolved in a slightly fuzzy light. People look beautiful. The trainer has given you homework: you’ve been told to walk through town and hug at least ten strangers. And you do it. You can do anything. You feel free. They look at you funny, but no one reacts badly. You’ve made them smile. You can break free of all barriers and limits, you can change. A bright, effective life. You won’t be a victim. You’ll take responsibility. At night you lie awake buzzing so powerfully you can’t sleep. After a couple of days of the training many women find their periods have suddenly started earlier than usual. The life trainer has warned that you will suffer from stomach cramps, and you get these, bad. The people you live with say they can’t recognize you. You smile. They say you’ve changed. Of course you have. Looking back forty-eight hours, you can’t even rememberthe person you were before the training started. You’re back at the training next morning a good half hour before it starts. You want to be the first to tell the life trainer you’ve managed to hug ten people as he told you to. The others are there, too. No one has slept. Everyone is so glad to see each other. When you go inside the hall everyone swaps stories about how they hugged people on the street. Others rang their neighbors’ doorbells and said they wanted to be friends with them, phoned long-lost friends or parents they barely speak to. The ones who failed in the homework confess to failure. You attack them for being weak, victims, not transforming. The life teacher barely says anything; he just stands at the side: you’re doing it all yourselves now. And then you’re playing another game. You’re in little groups of seven all screaming at each other, “I am your aim” or “I am your obstacle,” and you have to scream past your obstacles to reach your aims. Everyone is screaming, but instead of being painful it’s like rocket fuel, and now you’ve been told to stand opposite each other and the other person is shouting at you, “What do you want? What do you want?” And it’s like that for forty minutes. Your desires start to come out of you like intestines, first cars and houses and all the easy stuff and then the silly stuff like painting the floorboards yellow or dressing up like a fairy queen, and then the really heavy stuff about wanting to hit your mother or stab the ex who dumped you. By the end you just feel free, and for the first time you can see what you really, really, really want. Then the life trainer comes out and says if you want your dreams, now that you’ve finally realized what they are, you can achieve them if you pay another $1,000 and come to the advanced course. There’s a one-on-one consultation afterward with a volunteer. You sit at a table with that person, who says that if you sign up for the advanced course this week, then you can get a hundred dollar discount. You say, “there’s something funny with my head right now, I can’t think critically,” and the volunteer says, “but that’s good you’re not thinking critically, the trainings are all about learning not to think, yourthinking holds you back, you’re learning to use your emotions, don’t you agree?” “Yes . . . but I’m not thinking. . . . ” “ . . . and because you’re not thinking you should sign up now. Don’t you want to live a bright life? Transform? Become effective? Take responsibility?” And every time you hearthose words your whole body starts to rush. You delay a bit, though there are plenty who are signing on already. The next day comes the phone calls. Alex is sitting with me and the psychotherapist Vita in her office when the calls from the Rose start to come in. Alex switches on the speaker. There’s a woman from the Rose on the other end. “Alex, don’t you want to live a bright life? Full of real emotion?” “Of course. But I don’t have money at the moment. I’m sorry, Ican’t go.” “But that’s yourchallenge. Find the money. That shows you can be strong.” Alex is half laughing: in a way the manipulation is so crass. But he doesn’t hang up. “Come on, Alex,” says the volunteer from the Rose. “Don’t you want to change? Transform? Take responsibility?” The words set off a Pavlovian reaction inside Alex. He starts to relive the last few days, the most intense days of his life, all his most intense experiences, most secret memories. He hangs up the phone, and though on the one hand he can tell quite clearly that the people at the Rose are toying with him, all of him is still desperate to go back there. “Those bastards. They reach into your most sacred places and then wrap it around them.” He starts to laugh, then cry. Then laughs again, but in a way that sounds very forced. His pupils are dilating. He seems to be splitting in two. Ruslana and Anastasia would be called by the Rose of the World daily. When they were with friends they would get a call and then leave to talk and notcome back for hours. At first theirfriends thought the girls were talking to boyfriends or parents; when they found out it was the Rose they were confused. Why talk to them when you’re with your friends already? One time, sitting in a London restaurant with Masha, Ruslana was talking to the Rose, then put the phone down and ran into the street and started stopping people to retie their laces. She came back grinning and slightly sweating. It wasn’t that the task they’d given her was so weird, it was just the way she dropped everything, the dinner, theirconversation, to run and do their bidding. Alex’s friends keep a close watch over him the next few days; they’re worried a call from the Rose will entice him to go back. Over the next weeks his sleep is ruined; he starts to wake up in the middle of the night and yearns to go back inside the training. Alex is the only one from the group not to have signed up for the advanced course. Every time anyone mentions words he heard inside the training he starts to feel nauseated. He dreams of the life trainer, can hear his voice. The real problems start in about two or three months. Alex loses his appetite. He starts to skip deadlines and fuck up at work, shouts at his editor. Everything hurts. He starts to cry in the middle of the day, for no reason. “I justcan’t find my way back to myself,” Alex tells me when we meet. He’s shaved his hair off and lost weight. At work they tell Alex he needs medical help. When Alex goes to see the doctor, he takes one look at Alex and prescribes a course of antidepressants, massages, acupuncture. Alex had only spent one course at the Rose. Anastasia and Ruslana went back for more. Each course costs a little more than the previous one, and each one is far more intense. The volunteers and life trainers at the Rose told people they were getting better, stronger. Anastasia at first seemed happier than ever. “I can do anything now, anything,” she told her friends. When they went out clubbing she would say, “You’ve just got to grab the guy you want, just grab him and take him.” As the models moved further into the Rose, they were instructed to bring more pupils. This is how the Rose gets new clients: adepts are expected to bring in more people. Ruslana tried to persuade Masha. She insisted so much that Masha ended up agreeing. Then she couldn’t go after all due to a family thing. Ruslana got angry. Masha had never seen her angry. Ruslana swore. Ruslana cursed. She had never used swear words before. She’d stopped being the gentle girl Masha had known. Masha missed the old Ruslana. Soon after Ruslana had to go back to New York for work. Anastasia kept on attending courses at the Rose. She signed on for the master course. One of her first challenges was to bring in at least twenty people, or she would be thrown out. This was her “exam”—and she failed it. Try as she might, she couldn’t get people to come. She was told she was letting everyone else down. She drifted away from the organization. That was in February. By May she was displaying all the signs of the depression that killed her. “I’ve failed,” she would say. She was a victim. She hadn’t been able to transform. The cruelest part was that in the last half yearshe had met the man she always dreamed of. Kostya picks me up in his new Maserati. He’s a former Olympic judo champ who now “works in oil.” “Those fucking trainings fucked her up,” he says. “Every time she visited them she would come back cranky, nuts. She’d promised she’d stopped going. . . . ” He wanted her to move in with him, was ready to settle down. But now she’d found her perfect man Anastasia couldn’t be happy with him. Her mind was starting to slip and tangle. When she and Kostya went out on the town, she would have awful attacks of jealousy, would cry if she saw him so much as talking with other women. A month before she died he left her at his home and went off on a business trip. When he came back she was gone. She was having so many panic attacks she couldn’t stand to be alone. She told friends she would hear the voice of her friend who had died the year before. She went back to her mother, to Kiev. She kept on complaining of stomach cramps. Kostya phoned herconstantly the last few days before her death. Her phone was off. “Those fucking trainings fucked her up,” he repeats as he lets me out of the Maserati. “I’m going to get my boys to see to them.” It’s all words. He never does. • • • “We really gave the opportunity for Anastasia to change. But some people you can’t change. She wouldn’t let herself transform. And let’s be honest—I hear she was into drugs. Blame modeling. Her lifestyle. Not us.” It’s taken me a while to find Volodya, the only senior person from the Rose of the World who agrees to speak to me. He was Anastasia and Ruslana’s “chairman” from the volunteer group when they attended. Now he’s branching off to start his own training. He’s only in his twenties, boyish. Wears a white track suit top and jeans. He has the slightly glazed look of the true believer. He also had a brief affair with Ruslana when she was at the Rose. I ask whetherthat’s normal. “Oh, that’s normal. Happens all the time. The trainings are intense. People open up.” “Do people ever go through depression afterthe Rose?” “That’s normal. We call it a rollback. Ruslana had one. She would cry at night. Would wander about town, not knowing where she was going. You have to go through that to grow. Like turbulence on a plane as it takes off. But by the time Ruslana went back to New York in March she was okay.” Volodya’s claims contradict what his own boss, the life trainer, said about “Ruslana”: he had argued at the training that she was a “typical victim.” When I raise this with Volodya he simply says the life trainer is confused. Ruslana wasn’t the suicidal type, he says. “So does anyone ever have any serious medical trouble afterthe Rose?” I ask Volodya. “Of course they do. That’s normal. Sometimes it can be pretty rough. Not everyone can transform. But Ruslana was now a different person. She told me she wanted to fight for money she felt was owed to her from various contracts. She was new. Look—when I first started going to the trainings I quit my job, left my girlfriend. I fought with everyone I knew; my parents still think I’m in a sect. But I’m happy. I’m real. But people around you, they can get offended when you become strong. I’m sure Ruslana was murdered. Sure of it.” The latest tests from Ruslana’s autopsy have arrived. They say there is no new evidence pointing to her being dead before she hit the ground; the neck muscles had no injuries, the thyroid and hyoid bone of the neck had no injuries. The scleras of the eyes were white without any petechia, ruling out strangulation. Meanwhile I have been doing some background checks about the Rose. On a small corner of its Web site, behind several tabs you would never think to open, is a small reference saying the trainings are based on a discipline called Lifespring, once popular in the United States. What the site doesn’t mention are the lawsuits brought against Lifespring by former adherents for mental damage, cases that caused the US part of the organization to go bankrupt in 1980, though spin-offs would quickly reopen under different names. In Russia Lifespring is in vogue; few have heard about its past. When I contact Rick Ross in New Jersey, head of the Cult Education Forum and the world authority on Lifespring, and tell him about what happened to Alex, Anastasia, and Ruslana, he replies that he has seen the pattern dozens of times: “These organizations never blame themselves. They always say, ‘It’s the victim’s fault.’ They work like drugs: giving you peak experiences, their adherents always coming back for more. The serious problems start when people leave. The trainings have become their lives—they come back to emptiness. And just like with drugs, some will just move on. But the sensitive ones, or the ones who have any form of latent mental illness, break.” To what extent were Lifespring courses responsible for the models’ suicides? When Anastasia’s mother meets with lawyers to ask about the possibility of opening proceedings against the Rose, she is told that proving in court that someone was forced into suicide in this case, after she is already dead and has left no accusatory letter, is nearly impossible. But what is clear is that the Rose’s advertising doesn’t provide information about the risks associated with Lifespring, and the organization preys on those members of society—young, lost women—who are vulnerable. Girls from the former Soviet bloc are particularly fragile. Six of the seven countries with the highest suicide rates among young females are former Soviet republics; Russia is sixth in the list, Kazakhstan second. Emile Durkheim once argued that suicide viruses occur at civilizational breaks, when the parents have no traditions, no value systems to pass on to their children. Thus there is no deep-seated ideology to support them when they are under emotional stress. The flip side of triumphant cynicism, of the ideology of endless shape-shifting, is despair. “When was the last time you spoke to Ruslana?” I ask Volodya. He pauses as he tries to recall. “Come to think of it—it was the day she died. It was late in Moscow, I was in a bar. It was kinda loud. I asked if there was any reason for her call—could she call back later? She said there was no real reason. She just wanted to chat. She would call back. I can’t remember the exact time, but it must have been inside the last hour before her death. I think I must have been the last one to speak to her. I didn’t notice anything abnormal.” • • • In March Ruslana went back to New York to look for work. Her social media posts from the time mix the light and breezy with messages full of confusion and self-hatred: “My own fault—that I allowed in. My own fault—that I fell in love. My own fault—that I allowed my heart to be broken. My own fault.” And then: “Life is very fragile and its flow can easily be ruined. I’m so lost: will I ever find myself?” One day before her death, Ruslana starred in a photo shoot on a roof in midtown New York. A weird day: first rain, then sun so hot the camera burns. The photographer’s name is Erik Heck. On a final trip to New York I visit his Harlem apartment, and he shows me grainy 8mm video of Ruslana’s last day. The Ruslana I see in this shoot is completely different from her previous work. She’s a grown woman, not a fairy-tale princess. For the first time I catch a glimpse of the real person. “She’d always been told to play different roles. What I saw in her was more than that, a timeless beauty,” Heck says. “I shot her when she wasn’t watching, she had no time to pose. That’s when you get the best work. She was free.” A day later she was dead, three days before her twenty-first birthday. Her mother is still convinced it’s murder. Each new pathology test proves nothing new, but leaves just enough room forspeculation. More than two years after her death, the Nina Ricci ad with Ruslana in it was still used in Russia, her face hanging over Moscow with “a promise of enchantment.” The perfume is a hit with teens. It smells of seductive, adult musk, mixed with childhood scents of toffee, apples, and vanilla. A BRIEF HISTORY OF SECTS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA The Rose of the World wasn’t the first sect I had encountered in Russia. As the Soviet Union had sunk, so sects had bubbled to the surface. Indeed, it was the Kremlin that had given them an impetus, via the power of Ostankino. In 1989 a new show appeared on Soviet TV. Instead of the usual ballet and costume dramas, the audience suddenly saw a close-up of a man with 1970s porn star looks, black hair, and even blacker eyes. He had a very deep voice. Slowly and steadily and repeatedly he instructed the viewer to breathe deeply, relax, breathe deeply. “Close your eyes. You can cure cancer or alcoholism or any ailment with the power of thought,” he said. This was Anatoly Kashpirovsky. He was a professional hypnotherapist who had prepared Soviet weight-lifting teams for the Olympics. He had been brought to late Soviet TV to help keep the country calm and pacified. To keep people watching TV while everything went to shit. His most famous lecture involved asking the audience at home to put a glass of water in front of their TV sets. Millions did. At the end of the program Kashpirovsky told the audience the water was “charged with healing energy” from his through-the-screen influence. Millions fell forthis. But Kashpirovsky was only the beginning. There was Grabovoy, who had a show on television and claimed he could raise the victims of Chechen terror attacks from the dead; there was Bronnikov, who claimed he had found a way of making the blind see with an inner vision. The sect the TNT personnel were referring to when they mentioned “communes in Siberia” was that of Vissarion, a former postal worker from Krasnodar who became convinced he was the returned Christ. In the 1990s he had founded a colony in the mountains near the border with Mongolia: “The Abode of Dawn City.” It’s still there. While still a film student I had helped out on a British documentary about it. We flew into Abakan and drove into mountains that look like giant, frozen waves. Vissarion and his forty-five hundred followers had built their settlement up in the peaks. You have to climb for two hours to get there. There are no roads. The members of the sect live in wooden houses they built themselves, cutting down and sawing the trees. They plant their own food; they don’t drink alcohol or eat meat; and they all have clear, crystal blue eyes and powerful shoulders and look ten years younger than their actual age. As first they filled me with wonder. Then they told me they were there to wait for the apocalypse. Only their mountain would be safe when the seas flooded the earth. “You’re lucky to have come for Christmas,” they told me. Both the Western and Orthodox Christmas had passed. “Christmas?” I asked. “Yes, Christmas is now on Vissarion’s birthday.” Many of Vissarion’s followers were former minor bohemians, actors, rock musicians, painters. They were educated, but now they mostly read Vissarion’s works. Vissarion had written a New New Testament, in which he had united all the different religions (Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Judaism) into one meta-story. Just as Surkov had gathered together all political models to create a grand pastiche, or Moscow’s architecture tried to fit all styles of building onto one, Vissarion had created a collage of all religions. His followers would study transcendental meditation in the morning and whirl like dervishes in the afternoon. Vissarion also provided them with textbook drawings to explain everything from reincarnation to evil (see diagram below). On Christmas day Vissarion came down from his house, perched highest on the mountain, to meet his followers. He was dressed in flowing velvet robes, like he was playing “Jesus Christ Superstar” in an amateur production. He sat down at the front of a great wooden hall and answered questions. Someone was having problems with his wife; Vissarion told him to listen to her more. Had they tried talking about theirchildhoods to each other? “Can’t you see his wisdom? Isn’t he the heirto the new consciousness?” his followers asked me. We weren’t the first, or the last, to film Vissarion. Camera crews from around the world went up and down the mountain near Abakan regularly. Every few years Vissarion would announce the coming of the apocalypse. When it didn’t come he would tell his followers it was thanks to their prayers and efforts. No one from the Abode of Dawn protested at this. They enjoyed it. And the TV crews coming to the mountain only confirmed theirsense of self-importance. Closer to Moscow, Sergey, Grigory’s “wizard,” took me to meet Boris Zolotov, his guru and the author of The Golden Way. We drove for miles out of Moscow into the murmuring Russian forest. It was night when we arrived. “The Golden Way” was painted (in English) on the road, illuminated briefly by our fog-lights. An arrow pointed the way to a disused holiday resort for Soviet factory workers: a few low, prefab buildings fenced in by concrete walls and spiky wire. We headed for the largest building. In the green corridor was a huge pile of shoes: dirty sneakers, high heels, winter boots, sandals. We left ours, too. Through the double doors Icould hearlaughter and little shrieks. Inside was a disused gymnasium. It was bright. Most people in the room were lying down, and everywhere was the smell of unwashed feet; people had been here for days. They lay in a half-moon shape around a stage, upon which, on a swiveling armchair, sat a round, grey-haired man. He wore a yellow shell suit. This was the teacher—Boris Zolotov. He spoke, and the people in the hall repeated the words back to him: The energy of time and matter were put into the earth’s core, forming an energy track in the base matrix of the planet, creating the path of circumstances into a state of light. Where Vissarion spoke in plain, almost childlike Russian (to followers he considered children), Zolotov’s idea was to remake language to re-create consciousness. He had been a theoretical physicist in the USSR, and he spoke in a montage of science and mysticism about the “materialization of dreams” and “redividing reality into segments you can travel through.” Zolotov’s “method” was to stage experiments in which his followers would penetrate to the new level of consciousness: sweating orgies where the old, ugly, young, and beautiful rub and kiss and caress each other in a communal bliss. They spent whole days talking to each other in grunts, howls, meows, and belches. And always Zolotov sat in the middle, conducting the sweaty chaos. Many of his pupils had been with him since the early 1990s; when the Soviet floor gave way millions of Russians just kept falling and falling, deconstructing reality to the point where they thought they could see the very core of the universe. “The new consciousness could only appear here,” Zolotov would say, “in this country which is the graveyard of all ideologies.” This idea united all the post-Soviet sects: all the suffering, all the shocks Russia had gone through made it the place where the new man, the future, could be born. And the sects also tapped into an even deeper myth: the idea that Russia will be the birthplace for a new, messianic consciousness. In the fifteenth century, when Moscow became the capital of what would become the Russian state, it pronounced itself the last bastion of Orthodox Christianity, the true faith of Christ: Europe was mired in the heresy of Catholicism, Byzantium had fallen to the Turks, but Ivan III’s Muscovy was to be “The Third and Final Rome,” the inheritor of holiness from St. Peter’s Rome and Byzantium. Russian literature and thinking brims with the messianic. Dostoevsky’s heroes profess that Russians are the only “God-bearing people” and that the second coming of Christ will take place in Russia. Berdyayev said that Russia was the bearer of a “vigorous messianic consciousness” rivaled only by the Jews. International communism was the most geopolitically ambitious expression of this idea: Moscow as the shining city on the hill of socialism, the churning forge of the new era to end all eras. Stalin built his seven great Gotham skyscrapers, which dominate and define the circumference of the city, to echo the Seven Hills of Rome. Any idea, not necessarily religious, finds itself magnified here to an iconic extreme: The Russian white supremacist will see Russia as the last bastion of white-ness in the world; the Russian nihilist will become the nihilist; Surkov’s triumphant cynic-mystic becomes postSoviet superman, the political technologist who can see through all ideas to the “heights of creation.” But if Moscow is the place where the Messiah will return, then of course it has to be the place where the devil will come to challenge him. Bulgakov envisioned the devil coming to Stalin’s Moscow, strolling down its boulevards as if they were his own. It’s as if the only way the city can make sense of itself is in the messianic; it has to envision itself as the place of the great battle of good and evil. It was an idea that I again saw expressed while watching a theater production of Surkov’s Almost Zero at the Stanislavsky Moscow Arts Theatre. It had been nearly impossible to find a ticket; black market ones were going for thousands of US dollars. In the end, I managed to obtain entrance for two bottles of champagne and a promise to one of the theater’s leading ladies to let her use my parents’ London home rent-free. It turned out that the fee wasn’t even worth a proper seat. The ushers let me in after the lights were dimmed. They gave me a cushion and told me to sit on the floor by the front row. My head spent the night knocking against the perfumed thigh of some model, her bald partner seeming none too pleased. The audience was full of these types—the hard, clever men who rule the country and their stunning female satellites. You don’t usually find them at the theater, but they were there because it was the thing to do. If they ever bumped into Surkov, they could tell him how much they liked his fascinating piece. But it was soon apparent that the staging of Almost Zero had transformed the novel. In passages that were added in, the actors talked straight at the audience, accusing it of being at ease in a world of killing and corruption. (The hard men and their satellites stared ahead, unblinking, as if these provocations had nothing to do with them. Many left at the interval.) And the Egor in the play was nothing like the Superman of the book, but rather a man wracked by self-loathing, miserable in his shiny life with its casual humiliations. A man in hell. “Isn’t it obvious Moscow is the Third Rome? The holy city?” asks Rustam Rakhmatullin. I sit opposite Rustam in a café: a little wooden building with neon soft drink signs that reflect in our Lipton tea and Rustam’s glasses. I orderchicken soup, but it’s just cold bouillon and I leave it standing to the side. Through the windows I can see a roundabout of two motorways, so heavily congested that black smoke hangs above the cars. Above the little wooden café are 1970s apartment buildings, the blocks of concrete naked, as if someone started building them and got bored halfway through and left. Rustam looks like an insect with thick glasses. He talks like a computer. “Moscow is a perfect web, if you take the map of Moscow,” he says. “Spin it around and you can see how it matches up perfectly with Jerusalem. Take a map of Rome, and Moscow matches onto that. This city is an expression of God’s thought.” Rustam is no city madman. He is a scholar, a columnist in an establishment newspaper. We are talking about his new book, The Metaphysics of Moscow, which will go on to be a best seller and win highbrow literary prizes. He will later host a show on TV. He teaches the “metaphysics of the city” at a local university. The book is a kabbalah of Moscow’s streets, where nothing is accidental: the yard where in the eighteenth century a feudal lady killed fifty of her serfs, two hundred years later becomes the home of a saintly prison doctor who sacrifices everything to improve the lot of prisoners, thus “cleansing” the original sin. And so on forfive hundred pages. Rustam is one of the good guys. He works with Mozhayev to save old houses, campaigns against corruption in city government. But he catches the broader zeitgeist, the growth of the associative, irrational, and magical. For if the likes of Zolotov and Vissarion were provincial oddities, now as Moscow becomes ever more full of its own uniqueness, as it watches itself transform with new money as fast and as strangely as looking down at your own body and seeing it change from flesh to gold in one sweep under your very eyes, so the center of the capital begins to swirl with mystic, messianic clouds. In the compound of the Night Wolves, the Russian equivalent of the Hells Angels, ships’ connecting rods have been refashioned as crosses ten feet high. Broken plane parts have been bolted to truck engines to make a giant stage; crushed Harley-Davidsons have been beaten into a bar; boats’ hulls have been molded into chairs; and train parts have been made into Valhalla-sized tables. The crosses are everywhere: the Night Wolves are bikers who have found a Russian God. “We only have a few years to rescue the soul of holy Russia,” Alexei Weitz says. “Just a few years.” Weitz is a leading member of the Night Wolves. There are five thousand of them in the country, five thousand Beowulf-like bearded men in leathers riding Harleys. It’s Weitz who has done most to turn them from outlaws into religious patriots, riding through Moscow on Harleys with icons of Mary the Mother, of God and Stalin. “Why Stalin?” I ask. “Didn’t he murder hundreds of thousands of priests?” “We don’t know why he was sent by God. Maybe he had to slaughter them so the faith could be tested. It’s not for us to judge. When you cut out a disease you have to cut out healthy flesh too.” As we speak Weitz is changing from his office clothes into leathers. The biking movement in the USSR sprang up in the late 1980s, utterly anti-Soviet, pro-freedom, pro-Steppenwolf, and by association proAmerican. In the 1990s it remained a fringe subculture, though connected to biker gangs in Europe and beyond. The patriotic shift came late. The legend goes that Aleksandr Zaldostanov, the Surgeon, the Night Wolves’ leader, met a priest on the road who told him he needed to change his life, help save Holy Rus. Weitz, whose day job is as a leader of a Kremlin-funded political party, a “Just Cause,” helped give that impulse form. The Night Wolves are a top-down organization: if the Surgeon and Weitz say they are now Orthodox, everyone follows suit. Weitz drops six lumps of sugar into his goblet and tells me his story. “I trained as an actor. I received the classic Stanislavsky method acting training. My teacher used to say I can be both tragic and comic at the same time. It’s a rare gift.” He breaks off to quote a line from a Russian movie version of The Cherry Orchard, replicating the original perfectly. He pauses, waiting for me to clap. “My breakdown came in 1994. I was starring in The Cherry Orchard, we were on tour in London—we were staying in a hotel at Seven Sisters. You know it? Nice area—and I just couldn’t take it anymore, there were just too many roles. Too many ‘me’s.” “You mean too many theaterroles?” “Oh no, that was fine. I’m a professional. Something else. For a while I’d been seeing visions, religious visions. I could see devils and angels on people’s shoulders. I could see serpents wrapping themselves around people as they spoke, their true souls. I could see the things others can’t. People’s auras, the colors around them. . . . You’re looking at me like I’m crazy. I just have gifts. I was finding my way to the true faith. Icouldn’t be both an actor and a man of God.” When he came back from London, Weitz gave up acting. He became more devout. But he still needed a job, so a friend found him a position at a new political consultancy. Using the Stanislavsky method he started training politicians “to manipulate public consciousness” with “verbal and non-verbal forms of influence.” “I applied the principles of method acting. First they had to decide where they were headed. What they wanted. . . . Where are you headed, Peter?” he suddenly asks. I don’t know. “You’re headed to death. We’re all headed to death. That’s the first thing I would make them realize. . . . That’s the thing about us bikers. We live with death every day. We’re a death cult. We know where we’re going. Russia is the last bastion of true religion,” continues Weitz. “Stanislavsky used to say: ‘Either you are for art, or art is for you.’ That is the difference between the West and Russia. You are imperialists, you think all art is for you and we think we are all for art. We give, you take. That is why we can have Stalin and God together. We can fit everything inside us, Ukrainians and Georgians and Germans, Estonians and Lithuanians. The West wipes out small peoples; inside Russia they flourish. You want everything to be like you. The West has been sending us its influencers of corruption. A Russian who is trained in a Western company starts to think differently: self-love is at the root of Western rationality. That is not our way. You have been sending us yourconsumerculture. I don’t think of Washington or London as being in charge. Satan commands them. You have to learn to see the holy war underneath the everyday. Democracy is a fallen state. To split ‘left’ and ‘right’ is to divide. In the kingdom of God there is only above and below. All is one. Which is why the Russian soul is holy. It can unite everything. Like in an icon. Stalin and God. Like everything you see here in the Night Wolves, we take bits of broken machinery and mold them together.” He stops for a moment. I must have been looking at him strangely, my goblet of tea held in midair. The switch from Stanislavsky to the kingdom of God had happened so smoothly that I didn’t have time to readjust my face. “Or at least I’m trying to piece everything together,” Weitz says, more quietly. “It’s a work in progress. Maybe we won’t be able to manage it.” But there is also a very practical side to the Night Wolves’ mix of politics and religion. In the 2000s international biker gangs began to consider spreading their influence in Russia. Most prominent among them were the Bandidos, originally American but now global, who offered to make the Night Wolves their local chapter. The Night Wolves want to rule by themselves, and to keep their own bikers in line they needed their own creed. So they started to build up a nationalist siege mentality. They changed their insignia to Russian and began to spread stories that the Bandidos wanted to flood Russia with drugs. It’s hard to fathom how real the foreign threat to the Night Wolves is. There are thousands of Night Wolves and no more than a few dozen Bandidos in Russia. But to hear Weitz speak of it, they are surrounded. When Surkov finds out about the Night Wolves he is delighted. The country needs new patriotic stars, the great Kremlin reality show is open for auditions, and the Night Wolves are just the type that’s needed, helping the Kremlin rewrite the narrative of protesters from political injustice and corruption to one of Holy Russia versus Foreign Devils, deflecting the conversation from the economic slide and how the rate of bribes that bureaucrats demand has shot up from 15 percent to 50 percent of any deal. They will receive Kremlin support for their annual bike show and rock concert in Crimea, the one-time jewel in the Tsarist Empire that ended up as part of Ukraine during Soviet times, and where the Night Wolves use their massive shows to call for retaking the peninsula from Ukraine and restoring the lands of Greater Russia; posing with the President in photo ops in which he wears Ray-Bans and leathers and rides a three-wheel Harley (he can’t quite handle a two-wheeler); playing mega-concerts to 250,000 cheering fans celebrating the victory at Stalingrad in World War II and the eternal Holy War Russia is destined to fight against the West, with Cirque du Soleil–like trapeze acts, Spielberg-scale battle reenactments, religious icons, and holy ecstasies—in the middle of which come speeches from Stalin, read aloud to the 250,000 and announcing the holiness of the Soviet warrior—after which come more dancing girls and then the Night Wolves’ anthem, “Slavic Skies”: We are being attacked by the yoke of the infidels: But the sky of the Slavsboils in our veins . . . Russian speech rings like chain-mail in the ears of the foreigners, And the white host rises from the coppice to the stars. And as I work on my film about the models and the Rose of the World, I start to notice how the new mysticism is seeping into everything on TV. On the Ostankino channels the President’s personal confessor, the Archimandrite Tikhon, dressed in a long black cassock and walking through Istanbul, is telling a prime-time tale about the fall of Byzantium, of how the great Orthodox Empire (to which Russia is the successor) was brought low by a mix of oligarchs and the West. Professional historians howl in protest at this pseudo-history, but the Kremlin is starting to use religion and the supernatural for its own ends. Byzantium and Muscovy could only flourish under one great autocrat, the Archimandrite states. This is why we need the President to be like a tsar. Even supposedly science-based programs are not immune. There is a spate of prime-time documentaries about “psychological weapons.” One is The Call of the Void. It features secret service men who inform the audience about the psychic weapons they have developed. The Russian military has “sleepers,” psychics who can go into a trance and enterthe world’s collective unconscious, its deepersoul, and from thence penetrate the minds of foreign statesmen to uncover their nefarious designs. One has entered the mind of the US president and then reconfigured the intentions of one of his advisers so that whatever hideous plan the US had hatched has failed to come off. The message is clear: if the secret services can see into the US president’s mind, they could definitely see into yours; the state is everywhere, watching your every thought. The most expensive documentary ever shown on Russian television is called Plesen (“Mold”). It argues that mold is taking over the earth, that it has been doing so since the days of Moses. It is the devil’s weapon, mentioned in ancient mystic texts, an invisible but omnipresent enemy whose evil spores have been invading our lives, causing death and disease. When the film ends large numbers of fearful people go out and buy the “mold-cleaning machines” that were advertised in the film; its manufacturers were among the producers. Under siege from psychic spies and airborne fungi, audiences are kept in a constant state of panic and medieval ecstasies. The more rational critical language is pushed off TV, the fewer critical films are made about the past and present, the more the mystic narratives take hold. “The financial crisis has the Kremlin worried,” Anna, a friend who used to work with TNT and now makes entertainment shows at Ostankino, tells me when we meet for a drink in a barcalled Courvoisier. “Spiritual stuff is always good to keep people distracted. And the ratings will be good—our people love some mysticism when things are bad. Rememberthe 1990s.” Eventually even Kashpirovsky makes a return to mainstream television, hosting an eleven-part documentary series about immortality, ghosts, and “bending time.” And while I am still editing my material about the Rose, I find out that the Lifespring movement in Russia is gathering strength. The largest of the Ostankino channels has created a pilot with another life trainer (much more successful and slick than the Rose of the World’s) in which the humiliations and transformations from the trainings are turned into a show. The head of Ostankino loves the format. All the tears and conflicts make for great TV. THE CALL OF THE VOID “You look tired, Piiitrrr.” “You should take a holiday.” “You’re too, how shall we say. . . . ” “You’re too emotional about this story.” I’m at TNT to talk about the edit of the models’ story, and it’s not going well. The curly haired, redhead, and straight haired producers are too nice to say it, but I think they think I’ve become obsessed. They’re not altogether wrong. I’ve spent so much time deciphering what happens at the Rose, it’s all I think and talk about. Whenever I pass a high-rise I think of those girls and how they felt before they ran and leapt. The project is so late that no one even mentions the deadline any more. “We did say we don’t want too many negative stories.” “You know we need a happy ending.” “Where are the positive stories?” “How soon can you find them?” I say I will do my best. • • • “How long are you going to keep making films with TNT?” asks Anna, the friend who has moved from making shows at TNT to the big leagues at Ostankino. “It’s child’s play. If you want to make real films you have to come and work with Ostankino. When can you come for a meeting?” TNT’s success has meant many who work there are being wooed by Channel 1: the spiky comedians, the presenters, the “creative producers” are all getting contracts. I had barely been inside Ostankino since my first visit almost a decade earlier to meet the political technologists who defined reality on the upper floors. But the great spire of the television tower had always acted as a compass for me, guiding me whenever I would be lost in town, always due north and steady among the sudden candle-flame domes of just-built cathedrals, glowing red stars of Stalin gothic towers, the erupting skyscrapers, turning cranes, and swinging wrecking balls that give a sense of perpetual movement to the horizon. My meeting was scheduled for late, after 10:00 p.m., but the flat, wide train station of a building was still blazing with light when I arrived. In a country of nine time zones, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, comprising one-sixth of the world’s land mass, where television is the only force that can unify and rule and bind—the great battering ram of propaganda couldn’t possibly everrest. The lobby had been given a gleaming tile and glass makeover. The old grubby cafeteria was gone, and there was a coffee bar with the full range of beverages. Green tea with jasmine, cappuccinos, and cognac served with a slice of lemon. There was a banging coming from something being built to the left of the main doors: a new Orthodox chapel, I was told. I was met by an assistant, and as we rode up in the elevator the doors would open, and every floor was a different civilization. The doors open once, and you find yourself on a floor with a black chrome news studio as new as a private jet. The doors open again, and you’re back in 1970-something, with beige corridors and mature women with bleached hair up in a high bun. Another floor is under reconstruction, another bright blue. Ostankino is renovated piecemeal, the whole great thing split up into a thousand little fiefdoms, each carrying on at its own rate of history. Then it’s our floor, and the corridors begin. Left, right, left, down some stairs. As I walk I realize I’ll neverfind the way out again. All those doors. All the same. My meeting is at Red Square Productions. It wins the commissions for the big factual entertainment shows for Channel 1 and is owned by the wife of the head of Channel 1. There’s a small anteroom before you enter the personal office of Red Square’s creative director. I’m asked to wait. I have CDs of my latest programs in my hand, and I shuffle them. I wait over an hour. I’m pissed off and want to go out for a cigarette, but I’m worried I won’t find the way back. It’s nearing midnight when I finally go in. The door is heavy, and inside the office are wooden shelves with lots of books and a long table and beyond that, wide windows looking over the Moscow night. On the other side of the table sits a thin, pale, young man in a light suit with floppy black hair. He never stops smiling. This is Doctor Kurpatov, Russia’s first self-help TV psychologist. He has made a fortune with his show, on which people come to cry and be told how to change their lives. He can teach you anything, from how to conquer your fears to how to have good sex to how to love your child or make a fortune. He is a master of neuro-linguisticprogramming and hypnosis, bereavement counseling, and philosophy. All along the walls of the office are his self-help books. And now he’s not just a star with his own show, but the creative director of the production company closest to the head of the most important channel. Now he has to choose the programs that will keep the whole nation calm, happy, overcoming its fears. He asks me to sit down and tells me how much he likes my work. I know he’s lying, but he’s just so nice, nodding and agreeing at all the points he should be and engaging just enough to make me feel he’s genuinely interested. He says it must be odd for someone from London working inside Russia. I say “oh yes!” and tell him so many of my adventures and misadventures I don’t even notice half an hour has passed and all my discomfort at being at Ostankino has quite gone. The next day his assistant phones to say Dr. Kurpatov really liked me and Ostankino wants to make me an offer. Whatever personality test that meeting was all about, I have passed. Would I like to helm a historical drama-documentary? With a real, big, mini-movie budget for actors and reconstructions and set designers? The sort of thing you make when you’re right at the top of the TV tree in the West and that TNT could and would never even dream of making. The genre is new in Russia, and it’s only now with Ostankino so flush that it can afford to do this. I’ve been wanting to emigrate away from straight observational documentary for a while, to think more about costumes and camera angles and a little less about funerals and sects and suicides. The story is to be about a World War II admiral who defied Stalin’s orders and started the attack on the Germans, while the Kremlin was still in denial about Hitler’s intentions and hoped for peace. The admiral was later purged and largely forgotten. It’s a good story. It’s a really good story. It’s the dream project. I tell herI need time to decide. She says no rush. • • • The models project is so late, I’m so over budget, and the advance is so long spent that I’ve been asking for money from family to keep production going. With the end of the oil boom, places like SNOB have long stopped paying. I have had to move out of my old place with its grand view of the Moscow River into a smaller, grubbier, lower apartment. It’s right by one of the markets where traders from the North Caucasus sell replica designer suits and stolen phones. At night they get into fights with racist football fans underneath my windows. People in this part of town wear plastic Chinese slippers and carry their things in plastic bags. The warm little stores sell herring from open containers with a film of filth. The smell of the herring swells down the street, infused into the heat. One morning I wake with the taste of burning in my mouth. There is smoke everywhere. I run to the kitchen to see whether the stove is on fire, but it’s fine, and now I look up and notice the smoke is outside on the street, too. Thick and prickly, green and yellowish, rubbing up against the closed window, pouring slowly through the open one I never shut in summer. It seems like the whole street is on fire. I push out onto the little balcony and see that it’s not just the street but the whole city. Buildings and sickly trees and the fly-over of the third ring-road are all half lost in haze. The smoke stings my eyes. It smells of fire and pine and forests, but mixed with gasoline, with traffic jams and perfume and something industrial. And it smells of peat. The peat fires are back. This happens some summers. The peat fields around Moscow catch fire, and the smoke blows into town. Smoke so thick you can wrap it around you like a coat. Asthmatics, old people, and children are rushed away to relatives in the country. But then the smoke will go there, too. And they have to travel farther and farther, toward Petersburg or Bryansk or Monaco. Out on the street the city seems abandoned. You almost push your way through the smoke. The first sign of another life-form is the sound of something going clack-clack-clack. At first the sound is startling. Then I realize: high heels. A girl goes by, dressed in heels, a bikini, and a dust mask. It’s that hot. And then more and more people emerge and disappear back into the smoke: a wedding party with the confetti being thrown up into the haze, where it seems to be lost forever. A cop looking quite lost. Couples kissing. I buy beers and return to the apartment. The camera, the old beaten metal-cased Z-1, the picture resolution of which is past its sell-by date since the arrival of hi-def, is on my bed. There are tapes all around it with castings and tasters from my search for TNT’s positive stories. Many of the tapes are about Alexander: a blind football player, the star of Russia’s first blind football team. I had hoped his story would be inspirational. He’s someone who has overcome things: blind since childhood and now a potential para-Olympian. On the tapes he looks like a Viking god with his long, red hair. He talks loudly and goes everywhere with his girlfriend, a quiet girl who teaches music to small children. When they walk she guides him gently beneath the elbow, around pillars and through doors. She’s part blind herself, with glasses as thick as the bottoms of bottles, but she can see more than Alexander. Blind boys usually go out with girls who are partially sighted. The boys, especially the football players, act tough, but it’s the girls who are in charge. They can see. The blind boys are always worried their girls are looking at someone else. Or even kissing and touching someone else in the same room. Alexander supports Dynamo Moscow. Every weekend he takes his place in the stands among the hard-core supporters behind the goal. He doesn’t listen to radio commentary, as most blind supporters do: he tells me he can feel what’s going on during the game with an innerfootball vision. Dynamo Moscow is known for having racist supporters, and I soon find out Alexander is no exception. “Ican hearthose darkies in the street. Ican heartheirlanguage in the metro. My yard used to be full of the sound of Russian . . . when I hearthose darkies I justcome up and take a swing. Just like that.” When he fights he swings wide and wildly. But when he connects it’s powerful. “We believe Russia is a great empire that other powers want to tear away parts from. We need to restore our power, occupy our lost lands, grab Crimea from the Ukrainians,” the football supporters say, then in the same breath: “We want a Russia for Russians, all these darkies from the Caucasus and Central Asia need to go home.” This has always been the paradox of the new Russian nationalism: on the one hand wanting to conquer all regions around, on the other wanting an ethnically pure great power. And all that comes out of this confusion is an ever-growing anger. There are more of them, hooligans and skinheads, lighting up the square opposite the Kremlin with their flares in marches of hundreds of thousands, chanting “jump if you’re not a darkie.” And when they jump together, the pavement trembles. All the positive stories I touch on seem to tumble into negativity. On my bed there are more tapes, about a girl called Katja who has told me she managed to quit injecting amphetamines after a near-death experience. But when I begin to film her it turns out she’s been lying to me and is smoking morphine boiled down from prescription painkillers (illegally bought from pharmacies paying a cut to corrupt FDCS agents). Katja is always asking me for money, claiming she’s just been mugged or has someone after hershe needs to pay off. A bunch of girls from Kiev who call themselves Femen and who protest sex tourism by stripping down and running about naked at state events to highlight the sexism of the system sounded perfect for TNT. But suddenly they start protesting against the President. “The patriarchal is political,” they tell me when Icall them. TNT would nevertouch them now. I am running out of money. And I am considering joining Ostankino. For every Call of the Void or blatant propaganda show Ostankino makes, there’s some edgy realist drama, some acerbic comedy. You can laugh and ignore the propaganda and watch the good stuff, and that’s what people I know do. There’s nothing bad about the film Channel 1 wants me to make; it’s a good story. And yet I realize that though my film might be clean, it could easily be put next to some World War II hymn praising Stalin and the President as his newest incarnation. Would my film be the “good” program that validates everything I don’t want to be a part of? The one that wins trust, for that trust to be manipulated in the next moment? But then again—so what if the other shows on Channel 1 are propaganda? Lots of good people make big shows and films for Ostankino, and no one holds it against them. We all have to carve out our little space. You make your own project, keep “your hands clean,” as everyone here likes to say, and the rest just isn’t yourconcern. It’s just a job. That’s not you. • • • Growing up I had never really thought too much about my parents’ life in the Soviet Union, why they had emigrated. The USSR was just someplace people left. My father was being arrested for spreading copies of Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn. Who wouldn’t want to leave that sort of suffocation? But what exactly was it that they were rejecting? I had always just assumed “dictatorship” but had never thought much about how the system really worked. Now I remembered a story my mother had once told me. She was fifteen. It was 1971. Their teacher at her very ordinary suburban Kiev school announced that today they would receive a very special visitor. He was from Radio Komintern, one of the propaganda elite who broadcast Soviet ideas to the West. The man was in his thirties and he wore jeans and a leather jacket. Only the coolest, most rebellious, yet best-connected (only the best-connected could afford to be rebellious) were able to get hold of jeans and leather jackets—they only came from the West, and it was a privilege to go there or even know someone who went there. This man was nothing like their square teachers. He sat on the edge of the teacher’s desk and smirked that knowing smirk that my mother would later recognize as the mark of the KGB boys, and that I now see on the President and the men around him. The smile of the men who know they can see through everything. The special visitor told the kids how Russia was surrounded by enemies, how they needed to be careful of Western agents and Western influences. Then he went to smoke in the corridor. The kids followed him. He gave them cigarettes, which they lit with trepidation, but their teachers were so in awe of the special visitor they didn’t dare stop them from smoking with him. He talked about how he had Beatles records at home (my mother had always been scared to even say the word “Beatles” in public). He told them he had even been abroad (no one in my mother’s school had ever been abroad). In 1968 he had been in Prague, part of the Soviet forces that had “liberated” Czechoslovakia from counterrevolution. He told the kids about how they would go drinking in the cafés of the old town (my mothertried to imagine “cafés in the old town” but struggled to form a picture in her mind). And he told them how one time, when he was sitting in a café, some Czechs ran in and started shouting, “Russians go home! Russians go home!” This struck my mother. She had always believed the stuff about the Soviet Union “liberating” Czechoslovakia. She believed the Soviet Union stood for global social justice. “You mean they weren’t happy to see you?” she asked. He looked at herlike she was an idiot. Everyone who grew up in the Soviet Union had a moment when they woke up. That was my mother’s. And as she began to look at the world around her, she slowly saw how everyone was pretending, was faking belief, being one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon. But scared, too. Fear and irony together. And so many voices at the same time. One you in the morning at the Komsomol. Another you in the afternoon reading Solzhenitsyn. One you at work being a good socialist and another listening to the BBC in secret in your kitchen, yet everyone knowing you listened because they were all listening themselves. Whenever I ask my Russian bosses, the older TV producers and media types who run the system, what it was like growing up in the late Soviet Union, whether they believed in the Communist ideology that surrounded them, they always laugh at me. “Don’t be silly,” most answer. “But you sang the songs? Were good members of the Komsomol?” “Of course we did, and we felt good when we sang them. And then straight after we would listen to ‘Deep Purple’ and the BBC.” “So you were dissidents? You believed in finishing the USSR?” “No. It’s not like that. You just speak several languages at the same time, all the time. There’s like several ‘you’s.” Seen from this perspective, the great drama of Russia is not the “transition” between communism and capitalism, between one fervently held set of beliefs and another, but that during the final decades of the USSR no one believed in communism and yet carried on living as if they did, and now they can only create a society of simulations. For this remains the common, everyday psychology: the Ostankino producers who make news worshiping the President in the day and then switch on an opposition radio as soon as they get off work; the political technologists who morph from role to role with liquid ease—a nationalist autocrat one moment and a liberal aesthete the next; the “orthodox” oligarchs who sing hymns to Russian religious conservatism—and keep their money and families in London. All cultures have differences between “public” and “private” selves, but in Russia the contradiction can be quite extreme. And as I walk around this fog-asphyxiated Moscow, I see how the city’s topography articulates these splits: the bullying avenues with their baron-bureaucrats, bribes, and werewolves in uniform, where the only way to survive is to be as corrupt as they are, and just a few meters away the gentle courtyards with an almost bucolic mood and small-town ideas of decency. Before I used to think the two worlds were in conflict, but the truth is a symbiosis. It’s almost as if you are encouraged to have one identity one moment and the opposite one the next. So you’re always split into little bits and can never quite commit to changing things. And a result is the somewhat aggressive apathy you can encounter here so often. That’s the underlying mind-set that supported the USSR and supports the new Russia now even though the USSR might officially be long gone. But there is a great comfort in these splits, too: you can leave all your guilt with your “public” self. That wasn’t you stealing that budget/making that propaganda show/bending your knee to the President, just a role you were playing; you’re a good person really. It’s not so much about denial. It’s not even about suppressing dark secrets. You can see everything you do, all yoursins. You just reorganize your emotional life so as not to care. And always the buildings express this mind-set. In the fog above my head, balconies stick out seemingly suspended in the sky. Russians put all their shit on balconies, detritus on show. Satellite dishes, jars of gherkins, broken toys, punctured tires—all on the balcony. The English stack their sentimental junk and dirty secrets far away in the garden shed; the Germans have “Keller,” basements, deep underground to hide all their dark memories. But in Russia you just throw it on the balcony; just as long as it isn’t in the flat itself, who cares if the neighbors see? We’ll deal with all that rubbish some other time. It’s not even part of us. But it’s not everyone who can, or who wants to, pull off this psychologically acrobatic self-division. At some point in the 1970s, during her late teens, my mother had laid down on a bed and thought she was losing her mind. All those people she was meant to be, without any center. She could feel herself splitting up into little bits. Then began herjourney to find the small bands of Soviet dissidents. They had their own vocabulary. They talked about “poryadochnost,” “decency,” which in practice could mean not being an informant. About “dostojnstvo,” “dignity,” which in practice could mean not making films or writing books or saying things the Kremlin wanted but you hated. And for many in the 1970s the only way out was prison or emigration. And sometimes it still is. • • • I’ve been keeping the windows shut against the peat smog, but it still penetrates through everything. My clothes, hair, glasses, and camera are all full of the smell. I wash the clothes over and over, but still can’t get the smell out. I shave off my hair. But it’s in my scalp, my fingers. A national emergency has been announced. The Kremlin youth groups, the Nashi, are shown in the papers putting out the fires with a great hose; then it turns out those shots were faked, too. On the Ostankino news they say the President has the crisis under control, but the emergency services fail repeatedly: the fire engines haven’t been repaired for years and break down. People have started putting out the fires themselves, vigilante groups with buckets fighting great screaming fires in the crackling forests of middle Russia. I have told TNT I can’t find their positive stories. I have run out of money. Maybe I could beg them for more, but the truth is I don’t want to. Another director will come in and finish up the work, splice in the positive stories. They are better at it than I am, and they will do it much faster than I ever could. I’ve fucked up. I’ve failed. The three producers, the curly haired and the redhead and the straight haired, are angry at first, and then they pity me. The little TNT island of happy neon is shrinking. There’s less and less factual, even “factual entertainment,” on the network. Sitcoms are the thing now. They’re brilliant; but they have nothing to do with any Russia I have encountered. A hospital comedy is set in a hospital so spotless and shiny it could almost be teasing the viewer. And always that canned laughter. The more asphyxiating the country gets, the more canned laughter TNT erupts in. I have told the people at Ostankino I won’t take up their offer. “Ostankino will only give you this chance once,” they tell me. They say that to everyone. I just need to leave. I need to go back to London, which is measured. Where you don’t have to split yourself up into little bits. Where words mean things. Looking around I notice how many of my friends have left. Grigory. My first producer from TNT. Even Vladik, the performance artist, lives in Bali now. Before he left he wrote a public letter asking the President to resign: “It is time to save millions of people from this simulacra of power.” What role could there be for a performance artist, where to watch a piece of grotesque performance art you just have to switch on the TV? Vladik had been outdone. OFFSHORE London. Chancery Lane. The Court of the Rolls: a squat new glass-and-steel building just behind the gray spires of the Old Bailey. Court number 26. Next door runs the humdrum affair of Plenty of Fish Media vs. Plenty More LLP. Across the hall a case dealing with a toilet paper patent. Nearly empty courtrooms with fluorescent lighting and IKEA desks. But court 26 is crammed to overflowing with oligarchs, political technologists, Chechen ministers in waiting, wannabe revolutionaries, and God knows how many security guys. Unidentified stunning females enter, glancing this way and that: gold diggers dropping in on the trial to meet a potential Forbes. It seems like the whole of the Russia I have spent a decade among is crammed into this little English courtroom. I spot Grigory, the young Moscow millionaire who threw the Midsummer’s Night parties. He’s wearing orange trousers and a peacock blue cardigan. “I thought I’d drop in to have a look at them all,” he says. “You could never get so close to so many of the powerful in Moscow. Only in London.” This is the largest private litigation in history: $5.8 billion. Boris Berezovsky, the “Godfather of the Kremlin,” the original oligarch, the man who created the Russian system and molded the President before being exiled by his own creation and fleeing to London—versus his protégé, Roman Abramovich, the “Stealth Oligarch,” who outgrew the old master to become one of the President’s new favorites. And who has also moved to London, though not to seek asylum, but to become one of the UK’s richest men, a timid, unshaven, baggy-suited herald of the twenty-first-century Russia that buys up sports clubs, castles, German ex-chancellors, and newspapers. Abramovich owns Chelsea Football Club. He owns the largest private yacht in the world. He’s worth $9 billion. Berezovsky served the writ on Sloane Street, Knightsbridge. He was shopping at Dolce and Gabbana and saw Abramovich at Hermes next door. He ran to his Maybach, grabbed the writ, bustled past Abramovich’s bodyguards, and threw the paperin Abramovich’s direction: “This is to you, from me,” the shop assistant heard him say. Now when Berezovsky arrives at Chancery Lane he skips and struts into court, a whirr of jokes and gesticulations, always in the center of an entourage of pretty women, chinstroking advisers, giant Israeli bodyguards. In the morning before testifying, when he sees a traffic policeman outside the court ticket his Maybach, he calls out with a laugh: “Stop—we can do business together!” “This is a very Russian story,” says Berezovsky when he takes the witness stand, “with lots of killers, where the President himself is almost a killer.” The ostensible cause of the complaint is Sibneft, an oil company. It was privatized for $100 million in 1996, and by 2005 was worth $13.5 billion. Berezovsky claims Abramovich and he were co-owners until Abramovich “acted like a gangster” and took Berezovsky’s share away, when he was on the political ropes, threatening to jail one of Berezovsky’s friends unless he gave up his part of the company. Of course there’s nothing on paper to prove the company was Berezovsky’s, but didn’t everyone know they had a verbal deal? Hadn’t the press always described Berezovsky as co-owner? (They had, and I have spent so long in Russia I think it perfectly normal forthe actual beneficiary to never appear on paper.) “I know it’s hard for you to imagine a world where two men shake on it and that’s it,” explains Berezovsky, patiently, to the judge, Elizabeth Gloster, “but this is Russia.” Berezovsky delights in explaining how he acquired the oil company in question, using his Kremlin influence at a privatization auction, negotiating furiously in the corridors, getting one rival to bid lower in return forfavors, anotherto withdraw if he paid off his debts. Abramovich’s lawyer, Jonathan Sumption, who in his spare time writes history books about medieval wars and is described in the papers as “the cleverest man in England” (he is being paid a reported record $12 million forthis case), rocks backward and forward and moves in forthe kill: “You made a collusive agreement with one of the bidders and bought off the other: would it be fair to say that the auction was stitched up in advance?” “It’s not fixed,” insists Berezovsky. “I just find the way through! In my terminology, it’s not fixing.” Abramovich, bottle of cold water pressed to his temple against a headache, explains that it was not he but Berezovsky who was the gangster, the political godfather he would have to pay extortion money to when Berezovsky was vizier in the 1990s Kremlin. But as soon as Berezovsky lost his influence, he lost his access to money. Thus the President and his network find it so hard to leave the Kremlin now; the minute he retires, they might lose everything. There are no Western-style property rights in this system, only gradations of proximity to the Kremlin, rituals of bribes and toadying, casual violence. And as the trial wears on, as court assistants wheel in six-foot-high stacks of binders with testimony and witness statements until they fill up all the aisles between the desks, as historians are called by both sides to explain the meanings of “krysha” (“protection”) and “kydalo” (a “backstabber in business”), it becomes apparent just how unsuited the language and rational categories of English law are to evaluate the liquid mass of networks, corruption, and evasion—elusive yet instantly recognizable to members—that orders Russia. And as I observe the trial from my cramped corner among the public seats, it takes on a dimly epic feel: not just a squabble between two men, but a judgment on the era. “I was the first victim of President Putin’s regime,” pleads Berezovsky. “And then step by step he increased the number of victims.” And with a rising passion he reels off the names of all the jailed businessmen and women, murdered journalists, and dead lawyers. And then Abramovich, speaking quietly, explains how back in the 1990s he would sell oil at base prices to his own companies in Cyprus and then to others at a market rate. “If Russia in the 1990s was corrupt on a scale of four out of ten,” argues Berezovsky, “now it is corrupt ten out of ten. It is corrupt totally!” Some $50 billion (sometimes more) is now moved illicitly out of Russia every year. Over the decades the tricks have multiplied: the state pipeline company, run by a friend of the President, buys pipes at inflated prices from a company that then turns out to be a shell owned by the state pipeline company’s management; state banks invest pension funds in companies that then mysteriously go bust. (The money just disappears! The banks deny all prior knowledge that the deals would sour.) The latest economic model is to create “hyper-projects,” which can act as vehicles for siphoning off the budget. The cost for the Russian Winter Olympics in Sochi was $50 billion, making it $30 billion more expensive than the previous summer games in London, and five times more expensive than any Winter Olympics ever. Some $30 billion is thought to have been “diverted.” There is also a “hyper-bridge,” which swings above the Pacific, connecting Vladivostok and South Sakhalin. There is nothing on South Sakhalin, the real economic benefits are almost zero, but the opportunities for graft are great. The new planned “hyper-project” is a tunnel between Russia and Japan. The USSR built mega-projects that made no macroeconomic sense but fitted the hallucinations of the planned economy; the new hyper-projects make no macroeconomic sense but are vehicles for the enrichment of those whose loyalty the Kremlin needs to reward, quickly. But it was power, ratherthan money, that was always Berezovsky’s interest. The oil company the two oligarchs are fighting over was never more than a means to an end; he needed it to fund his control of television. He had been the first in Russia, in 1994, to understand that television could bring him that power. It was Berezovsky who introduced the “fabricated documentary” to Ostankino, inventing barely credible scandals about the President’s political opponents, his presenters brandishing random pieces of paper at the camera that “proved” corruption. In 1999 it was Berezovsky’s TV channel that created the new President, supporting his war in Chechnya and turning him from gray “moth” into macho leader. It was Berezovsky who invented the fake political parties, television puppet constructs, shells without any policy whose one point was to prop up the President. Russia’s slide from representative democracy to a society of pure spectacle was given its great push by Berezovsky. He created the theater I would later work inside, and which, after his exile, cast him as the eternal bogeyman: his old Ostankino channel blaming him for everything from sponsoring terrorism to political assassinations. And Berezovsky plays up to the role of Übervillain, claiming, once his influence was almost gone, that he was sponsoring attempted revolutions in Ukraine and Russia. On Shrove Sunday during the trial, Berezovsky posts a confession on his Facebook page: I ask for your forgiveness, oh People of Russia . . . for destroying freedom of speech and democratic values. . . . I confess for bringing the President to power. I understand confession is not words but deeds, these will soon follow. The Russian journalists covering the trial chortle in response. No one can believe a word he says. Berezovsky is not so much the opponent of the Kremlin’s system as its progenitor turned absurd reflection. The shape-shifterspun to the point of tragicomedy. “I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be molded to suit his current purposes,” says Justice Gloster in her final judgment. “I gained the impression that he was not necessarily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of events.” Berezovsky is sitting just in front of me and begins to shake and laugh as the judge speaks. It’s a choking sort of laugh. In the hall outside the courtroom he paces up and down and then walks in circles for a while. He is still laughing when he goes outside to face the press. In the following months he fades from view, for once refusing to give interviews. The rumor is that he is destitute. The trial has cost him over $100 million. Six months later he sells a Warhol at Christie’s, one of 120 silk-screen prints of Red Lenin showing the Soviet leader in sun-touched yellow emerging from (or being submerged by) a canvas of blood red. It sells for $202,000. Three days later Berezovsky is dead, hanging himself in the bathroom of his ex-wife’s Ascot mansion. I had assumed the Ostankino channels would gloat. Instead the atmosphere is mournful. The President’s press secretary sets the tone, announcing that the death of any person is a tragedy. Eduard Limonov, a former dissident émigré writer who transformed himself into the leader of the National Bolsheviks—a movement that started as an art project, became an anti-oligarch revolutionary party mixing Trotskyism and Fascism, and then transformed again to become a Kremlin ally—writes: “I had always admired him. He was great, like a Shakespeare character.” Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist scarecrow used by the Kremlin to frighten voters, who normally spits and scowls when he speaks of Russia’s enemies, sounds almost tender: “I’d seen him a few months ago in Israel. He was tired, disillusioned.” An Ostankino channel shows black-and-white photos of Berezovsky as touching mood music is played. “After all this time,” the presenter says, “and all the roles he’s played, we never did find out who he really was.” It is as if the vast charade of Russian politics has suddenly paused and all the actors are turning to the audience to applaud a fallen player, welcoming in his corpse. But though the old master may be dead, the system he begat is growing, mutating, swelling now out of Moscow and flowing through many offshore, tax-free, beneficiary-disguised archipelagoes in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Monaco and from there into Mayfair, Belgravia, Sloane Street, White Hall, Central Park West. For the President’s men and those who fear him, for the bully-bureaucrats and the gangsters-turned-oil-traders, for the real entrepreneurs and the Russians who just want to get out and live a normal life. For everyone the pattern is the same. Make, steal, siphon your money off in Russia. Stash it in New York, Paris, Geneva, and especially London. My Moscow has landed. • • • I have been working on a TV show. My nine years in Russia are a bit of a black hole in my résumé, and I’m back at the bottom of the pile again: officially a “producer” (the word has lost all meaning), but actually an assistant with no editorial control, on a glitzy, trashy, documentary entertainment series for an American-English cable channel. Meet the Russians is about the new, post-Soviet rich in London, and the ad promises to take the viewer“into a world of wealth he has never before witnessed.” There’s the pop star married to the steel tycoon who has spent $2 million on her career, including albums, winning Mrs. World (the husband bought the rights to the competition the year before she won) and starring in a Hollywood B movie with Stephen Dorff (the husband financed the movie). She keeps a falcon in their home. The home is decorated to copy a seven-star Dubai hotel she once stayed in. She takes baths in champagne to keep herskin smooth. There’s the footballer’s wife who has spent over a hundred grand on Louboutins (“I can’t walk on anything less than 5-inch heels!”) and thinks that English women are frumpy (“They don’t even look like women!”). There’s the ex-wife of the entrepreneur whose partnerfell foul of the President and now can’t go back to Russia; she poses for us in her $180,000 furcoat. And as the nine-part series rolls out, we see how those who have been in England for a while learn their Ps and Qs, learn how to spend righteously, not vulgarly, learn about charity and the virtues of flat shoes. Become, and I seem to hearthis word a lot as I work on the program, “classy.” The show rates well and feeds a double appetite. The local audience get to titter and feel pleasantly superior to the new rich they are selling parts of theircountry to: “Meet the most vulgar reality characters ever on TV,” explains the Daily Mail. But beyond this there is a deeper comfort in the thought that though the new Russian rich might be wealthier than any English person could ever hope to be, though the Sunday Times rich list is topped no longer by the queen but by Abramovich, Usmanov, and Blavatnik, at the end of the day these global nouveaux all yearn to fit into “our way of doing things.” Instinctively, out of habit, the editorial producers on Meet the Russians reach for some version of Vanity Fair, My Fair Lady, the myths the English grow up with. The Victorian compromise, the traditional marriage between new money and old class, is extrapolated to the era of globalization. The new global rich, the myth goes, all yearn for ourculture, law, schools. Civilization. Except I’m not entirely sure that’s what is happening at all. • • • Sergey is a character in Meet the Russians. He grew up in a Russian family in Estonia. In 1999, when he was thirteen, his parents took him on a holiday to London. He had never been abroad before. They took the ferry over and booked into the small, three-star Earls Court Hotel. Sergey was crazy about basketball, and he had never seen real black people before. They were all wearing the Nike Air Jordans that were his dream, and his head was already bursting with all of this, when his parents sat him down on the edge of the bed. This was not a holiday, they explained. They were asking for asylum as Russians discriminated against in Estonia. This was his new life. They moved to Kent. His father became an alcohol delivery driver. Worked hard. Bought a semi. On weekends Sergey would sneak up to London. First he organized underground raves in North London. As he turned eighteen, the Russian wave of money was just cresting: Abramovich was buying Chelsea, Lebedev the Standard and the Independent. The English were retreating, pulling out of their own post codes of aspiration, out of Mayfair and Belgravia and Knightsbridge, selling up and moving out to Oxfordshire or Tuscany or Norfolk, leaving behind the polished stucco squares and gated gardens to be inhabited by the new heroes of sudden wealth from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, India, Krasnoyarsk, Qatar, Donetsk. Sergey has found himself a niche. He’s the artful dodger of this world. The Mr. Fixit. Need a Mayfair penthouse? A Warhol? A live flamingo for your party? Sergey’s your man. He’s got different business cards for all his different roles, but his main one is as “club promoter.” But that just means he knows everyone in the golden triangle between New Bond Street in the east, Sloane Street in the West, and Berkeley Square at its tip. When we first meet he’s running nights at Baku, the Azeri place on Sloane Street, rumored to be owned by the Azeri president, Heydar Aliev’s, daughter, where the dance floor is decorated with $50,000 bottles of wine guarded by bouncers. Then there is Kitsch on Upper Burlington, where two Russians, Sergey likes to boast, came in and dropped $200,000 in one evening after they signed some epic deal. Now we’re having lunch in Selfridges, a few days after New Year’s, when the English are still asleep, but the store is packed with Arabs, Chinese, Russians. They’re the ones who bring in the profits. “When my mum and dad asked for asylum here they probably thought I would become English. British. Whatever,” says Sergey. “But in the world I work in, in Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia, I often end up speaking more Russian than English. The English aren’t the ones with the real money any more. They still might rule the other side of Sloane Square, down in Chelsea, but in Mayfair they can’t keep up. A good club night here brings in $180, 000. That’s three times more than out there.” At the tip of London the city breaks through and out of England and up into a different space, which is neither Europe northe Middle East nor Asia nor America but somewhere altogether offshore. Sergey’s core clientele are the Golden Youth. The kids of Russian (and Ukrainian and Kazakh and Azeri) bureaucrat-businessmen (the roles are hyphenated), sent away to be educated at the prettier boarding schools and then on to international business schools in Europe and America. Wellington and Stowe, with their porticos and playing fields, are favorites. The more patriotic the Russian elites become, the more they sing hymns to “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Tsarism,” the more they damn the West—the more they send theirchildren to study in England. In a previous age, when the English were the club you aspired to join, some new immigrants would change their names, from “Vinogradov” to “Grade,” “Mironov” to “Mirren,” “Brokhovich” to “Brook.” But that wouldn’t occur to the Golden Youth: why bother when the richest people in the city have nonEnglish names now anyway? The parents of the Golden Youth send them to boarding schools not because they want them to become English, but because it’s the status thing to do, along with having a home in St. Tropez or a bank account in Switzerland. But neither do the Golden Youth I meet peg themselves to Russia. They don’t deny their roots. But their reference points run Hong Kong-GenevaFifth Avenue-London-South of France and from there to private yachts, private planes. Offshore. Having one nationality, whether American, Russian, or British, seems passé, a little twentieth century. “So what are you?” I ask the daughter of a Russian pop star (childhood in a gated community in Moscow, boarding school in Switzerland, and now college and clubbing off Sloane Square). “Where do you feel you belong to?” I ask two sisters, who went to boarding school near Cambridge, and whose fatherfrom Orienburg has bought them a boutique in Mayfair where they sell gem-studded Uggs. And they pause, think, and say: “We’re sort of in-ter-na-tio-nal.” Sergey echoes this. “My clients are the internationals” (though large swathes of those at his parties are former Soviets). But when you press to find out what “international” means, no one can quite answer. Evenings start at Novikov on Berkeley Street. The same Novikov who created all the zeitgeist Forbes-and-girls restaurants in Moscow where Oliona used to do (maybe still does) her hunting. This is the first place to bear to his actual name, a name that has become a signifier for the New Moscow. And the New Moscow, it turns out, is now something to aspire to. Past the bouncers outside and the girls smoking long, skinny cigarettes, past the tinted glass doors and the jade stone Novikov has put in near the entrance for good luck. Inside, Novikov opens up so anyone can see everyone in almost every corner at any moment, the same theatrical seating as in his Moscow places. But the London Novikov is so much bigger. There are three floors. One floor is “Asian,” all black walls and plates. Another floor is “Italian,” with off-white tiled floors and trees and classic paintings. Downstairs is the bar-cum-club, in the style of a library in an English country house, with wooden bookshelves and rows of hardcover books. It’s a Moscow Novikov restaurant cubed: a series of quotes, of references wrapped in a tinted window void, shorn of their original memories and meanings (but so much colder and more distant than the accessible, colorful pastiche of somewhere like Las Vegas). This had always been the style and mood in the “elite,” “VIP” places in Moscow, all along the Rublevka and in the Garden Ring, where the just-made rich exist in a great void where they can buy anything, but nothing means anything because all the old orders of meaning are gone. Here objects become unconnected to any binding force. Old Masters and English boarding schools and Fabergé eggs all floating, suspended in a culture of zero gravity. But now it’s not just Moscow anymore where this style resonates. Over in Bernie Arnaut’s Bulgari Hotel, on the corner of Hyde Park, the most expensive hotel in London (rooms start at $1,200 a night; the penthouse is $26,000), the floors are black granite and the walls are black glass, with older men and younger women in the blackness hard, scowling, and sparkling. The lost-in-new-wealth world of Moscow rises and blends with the sudden global money from all the emerging, expanding new economies. And the Russians are the pacesetters, the trendsetters. Because they’ve been perfecting this for just a few years longer, because the learning curve was so much harder and faster when their Soviet world disappeared and they were all shot into cold space. They became post-Soviet a breath before the whole world went post-everything. Post-national and post-West and post-Bretton-Woods and postwhatever-else. The Yuri Gagarins of the culture of zero gravity. Just south of Piccadilly, on St. James, England looks like the same old-boy country it always was: the Reform Club, Brooks, the members-only halls with their worn carpets, secret passwords, and centuriesold walls. But one simply doesn’t need “in” here anymore. A partner from Novikov’s, I’m told, is buying up a building on St. James for his own private London gentlemen’s club. It’ll be more discreet, more private, more exclusive. And Novikov itself is crowded every night, bringing in $1.3 million a week, full of Paris-raised Qataris and Monaco-registered Nigerians, American hedge fund managers and Golden Youth and Premier League Football agents, escorts from Brazil and Moldova and the Swiss “lawyers” with offices in Moscow and Hong Kong, complaining loudly over house music that their business is about to go to shit because the Swiss parliament now demands that foreigners with accounts in Swiss banks reveal theirreal identities. “The point of a Swiss bank account is that it’s fucking secret!” they shout at the bar in the style of an English country house library. “I’m going to lose all my Moscow business! It’s the end of Switzerland!” • • • Skinners Hall, built in 1670, just off Cannon Street in the “heart of the City.” The Great Dining Room, oak paneled and hung with tapestries and coats of arms, is lit with spotlights of acid pink and dark cobalt blue, which combined make a sort of neon dusk. Tonight there’s an evening for the London Russian great and good who have sponsored the annual “Russia week”: a week of ballet galas at the Coliseum and Slavic rock concerts in Trafalgar Square thatcelebrate the Russian influx. The men are in black tie and the women are dressed uneasily in gowns that feel just off the rack. A quintet plays something classical. Then comes the Babushki, a trio of old women singing village songs to Euro-beats who were the Russian entry at the Eurovision Song Contest. One of the Russian wives is putting on some sort of fashion show. There’s no catwalk for the models, and they have to move in between the tables. The dresses are velvet, swooping, Italianate aristo Grace Kelly gowns: “timeless classics.” But you can’t make out the colors because of the pink and cobalt lighting. “Look,” whispers the fashion wife to me, “there’s T. I last saw him in Monte Carlo. That man can never go back to Russia, he’s such a crook. What is he here? A philanthropist? It’s like he’s had plastic surgery for his identity. Pulled on a new face.” “Is that A?” asks someone else. “The one who makes out she’s an aristo? Ha. I remember her in Moscow. Fine aristo she was then. You know how she met her first husband, the billionaire? She was ‘modeling.’” Original identities become as obscure as the true ownership of funds flowing between the former Soviet Union and the West. Especially since the President has passed a law banning state officials and the heads of state companies (and now most of the companies are state companies) from having bank accounts or stocks and bonds abroad, even when the point of rising in the system is the privilege to lift money over there and migrate it over here. And so the Kremlin both regulates the status that confirms the privilege and keeps everyone scared. And as long as everyone is scared, they’ll remain loyal. There might well be more FSB agents now in London than at any time in history, but their aim is less nuclear secrets and more the other Russians and whom you can hit up. A paranoia runs through every meeting and conversation. “See B,” a Russian high society writerleans in and says to me, “the one there in the pearls? With all the guys around her? She appeared from nowhere and opened her own networking agency. Everyone thinks she’s FSB. Why else would she need to have everyone’s contacts? Know who is here and who is not?” And all this makes conversation difficult outside tiny circles of loyal friends. The usual openings —“What do you do?” or “What are your politics?”—lead to dead ends. A lot of the time, the only neutral thing that people seem to be able to talk about is Art. • • • “I spent a lot of time in London when I was studying. I loved the museums, Tate Modern especially. And I thought it would be great to create a space like that in the Russian context,” says Dasha Zhukova, with the disarming simplicity only the really, truly rich can carry off: she’s building a new modern art museum in Moscow as we speak. She is the daughter of one Russian tycoon, the longtime girlfriend of another, Roman Abramovich. I’m interviewing her before an event at Art Basel that she is sponsoring. (I’m taking up a bit of writing to paper over the gaps in television work.) Trying to set up a meeting has been complicated. Within a few hours the location switches from London to the south of France to Moscow to New York. We end up meeting in Los Angeles, where she grew up. I fly economy for a one-hourchat. Her father made his money trading oil. There was also some story about his selling arms from Russia to the war in Yugoslavia, and he spent some time in an Italian prison on account of this (he was eventually cleared of charges). The last time I saw Abramovich he was in an English courtroom timidly revealing the moves he had pulled to make his first money. But all that hinterland seems to just fall away when I talk to Dasha. She’s beautiful in an unaggressive sort of way. She nods and listens. Her accent is unplaceable, wavering among tough Muscovite and breezy Valley Girl and hints of London. She was nine when she left Moscow, living with her Russian academic mother first in Texas and then LA. Whenever I try to steer the conversation to politics, she just ignores it. We just talk art. About the cool spaces in the gaps between Donald Judd sculptures. About the honesty of 1960s modernism. About not knowing quite where to belong. Identities are dissolved, reborn, in the clean, pure, simple lines of abstract art. Whenever I meet a candidate for the TV show they tell me to come along to the Arts Club on Davies Street. It’s the most “international” of the private members’ places. There’s a chandelier of shiny plastic bubbles as you climb up the staircase, and when you get up to the first floor you can soon spot the clusters of Russian wives. The men are still mainly in Moscow or Tyumen pumping crude and cash. The wives are here, worried about or resigned to whomever he is sleeping with out there (the stewardesses of private planes are always suspect), while they sit in London watching overthe cash flows and keeping the bolt-holes ready, lunching in little groups in La Durée at Harrods; perfectly dressed in Hermes or something equally “classy” and restrained to the point of tautness, going for private showings at Fabergé and then meetings with a dealer at the Arts Club. The wealthier wives run galleries. In the surrounding streets, north from Piccadilly, up Albermarle and along Upper Burlington the new galleries belong to the post-Soviets: the Erarta, the St. Petersburg, Most 26. Those who can afford it become patrons. The former Moscow mayor’s wife, who made part of her billions by winning construction contracts from the city government while her husband was mayor (she denies there’s any connection), is the latest to arrive. Back home Mozhayev and his friends, the defenders of Moscow’s historic architecture, blame the mayor and his wife for the “cultural genocide” of Moscow’s buildings, swathes of the old city destroyed to make way for menacing imitations of Disney towers and Dubai hotels; Russian constructivist masterpieces, which admirers come across the world to see, left to decay. Now based in London, the mayor’s wife has a foundation called Be Open, launching a Young Talent Award at Milan Design Week and devoting a new program at London Design Week “to innovative projects that reach out to the sixth sense, orintuition.” I’m invited to a Russian party during the Frieze Art Fair. During the last financial crash many thought it meant the end for Frieze: the Wall Street men and City boys were broke. But it turned out a Russian (and a Ukrainian and an Armenian) will still trust London over Moscow or Kiev to secure their wealth. Your bank accounts might get seized, but no one can get to your family’s Jeff Koons or seize your wife’s Knightsbridge mansion. So Frieze didn’t collapse; it swelled. (In Moscow itself the market for contemporary, Western art has been failing. Not because there is no money—there are more Russian billionaires every year—but because the new demand, issued from the Kremlin, is for the patriotic. So now you buy socialist realism for your Moscow place and Rothkos for your London and New York ones.) The party is in one of the Nash stucco mansions on a crescent opposite Regents Park (these places can go for $50 million). The London Russians have banded together to show off art from their collections: Van Goghs are spread about casually on the walls of the stairwell and in little corners, right next to student works by wives and girlfriends who are taking courses at St. Martins College of Art and Design to pass the time in London. Most of the crowd is Russian. Around them swarm the English art dealers, with slightly worn elbows, looking to start a conversation about some trade. The big thing recently is Russian avant-garde: that little moment in the early twentieth century when Russia was not just in step with but defined the world, and which you buy to be both a patriot and global. And it so happens this is the easiest art to copy. Who can tell one pure black square apart from yet another? Much of Russian avant-garde art on the market is fake. Churned out in factories run by Russian crime syndicates in Israel and Germany, then confirmed by Western art historians. Without them the fakes would never make it to the market. They play the same role as the Swiss and English lawyers who act as “nominal beneficiaries” for money-laundering shell companies, lending their signatures to help make the simulated real, and like those lawyers, they are only too happy to look the other way, as are the dealers who then sell all the fakes to the more gullible new money. The Russians swerve around the dealers and move to the VIP area on the third floor. Down by the bar on the first floor roam the estate agents. Many are graduates from private schools. They look happy. Business is good: three-quarters of houses over $10 million in the golden triangle are sold to the new global rich. The estate agents tell great tales. About the new oligarch exiled from Russia who misses his childhood dacha so much he asked an architect to fly to Moscow, then re-create the place, panel by panel, with the same 1980s wallpapers and settees in the English countryside. Sourcing the old Soviet wallpaper was tough; there’s only one factory in Russia you can get it from. And then there’s the tycoon who wanted a new house in Belgravia. That wasn’t hard. But then he asked for six apartments, of equal size, in a tenminute-walk circumference around the house. They were for his mistresses, so he could walk in any direction and arrive at one. And have you heard the one about the thief the police caught recently? Who put on an accent and would turn up at viewings for mansions saying he was a Russian oligarch and then steal jewels from the bedrooms as he went around? Actually he was a hood from Tottenham. But everyone fell for him, the accent was so good. There’s free champagne. Some can remember the easy days when new Russians were still suckers. In the 1990s an agent in Geneva managed to sell the head of Russian Railways a property on the slope facing away from the lake for the price of a property facing the lake; that’s twice the price. You don’t really get dunces like that anymore. Now you rarely meet the owners. They send an English lawyer. The deeds are all in the name of some company in an offshore Crown dependency. The estate agents don’t ask too many questions. • • • As I wait for William Browder to come in for his interview in Meet the Russians, I look at the newspaper cuttings that are all over the walls of his office on Golden Square: “One Man’s Crusade against the Kremlin,” “The Man who Took on Vladimir Putin.” Browder used to be one of the President’s more vocal supporters, back when he was the largest foreign investor in Russia. He’d come to the country in the 1990s, when most in Western finance said it was crazy to even try. He proved them all wrong. Then in 2006 he pissed off the wrong people in Russia and was banned from the country. Then things got worse: the documents for his old investment vehicles were taken in a raid by the police. Browder told a Russian lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, who worked for a Moscow-based law firm called Firestone and Duncan, to follow the trail. It turned out the investment companies were being illegally signed over by the cops to petty criminals, who would then ask for tax rebates on the companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which were then granted by corrupt tax officials, signed off on by the same cops who had taken the documents in the first place, and wired to two banks owned by a convicted fraudster, an old friend of the aforementioned cops and tax officials. Officially the tax officials and cops only earned a few thousand a year, but they had property worth hundreds of thousands, drove Porsches, and went on shopping trips to Harrods in London. And this was happening year after year. The biggest tax fraud scheme in history. Magnitsky thought he had caught a few bad apples. Magnitsky gave an interview to Bloomberg Business Week. Twelve days later he was arrested; he was tortured and eventually died in a Russian prison a year later. It hadn’t been a case of a few bad apples. An anonymous letter by a whistle-blowerto a Russian newspapersaid the tax rebate mechanism was known as the “black till of the Kremlin,” used systematically for everything from personal enrichment to financing covert wars orforeign elections. “The day I found out about Sergey’s death was the worst day of my life,” says Browder when we start the interview. “He was killed to get at me.” He is tall and balding, with glasses, direct but emotionally contained. (How many times, I wonder, must he have given the same interview?) He is American but based in London. “I have sworn to get justice. The Putin regime has blood on its hands. I used to be an investment banker, but now I’m a human rights activist.” We carry on shooting as we drive through Belgravia: “Your viewer probably thinks the sort of people who killed Magnitsky and stole that money are gangsters with gold chains. But they’re officials who dress nicely and own nice houses and send theirchildren to nice schools,”continues Browder. We arrive at Parliament. Browderis having a meeting with a member of Parliament in a corner office of Portcullis House overlooking the Thames. Since Magnitsky’s death he has researched where the stolen money went. It all went abroad, via Moldova, Latvia, and Cyprus, and from there into bank accounts in Switzerland and property in Dubai and Manhattan. A Russian businessman who helped reveal these flows died of a sudden heart attack after a jog near his gated compound in Surrey. He was forty-four and had no history of illness. He had a lot of enemies. Two postmortems could not determine the cause of his death. Browder takes out some files: lists of UK companies that helped launder bits of the Magnitsky money. (We do several takes to get a nice shot. Browder and the MP are used to it.) “I’ve filed complaints with the authorities, but there’s no response. Could you see what’s happening?” The MP says he will try. The English financial authorities are notoriously slow at clamping down on money laundered through the country. London is the perfect home for money launderers: terrific lawyers to defend your stolen assets; great bankers to move it; weak cops who don’t ask where they came from. A little later I’m invited back to Parliament for a presentation, “Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Act.” The US version of the act is Browder’s great achievement, banning Russian human rights abusers and corrupt officials from entry into, investments in, and owning property in the United States. The White House and the business community all initially opposed the bill: human rights and finance, they argued, shouldn’t mix. Browder pushed it through even though most said it would be impossible. But now no government in Europe is prepared to touch the act: it might stop the money coming in. Browder hopes to provoke a referendum. There are only a couple of dozen people at the presentation, in a small room at the end of a long corridor in a quiet corner of Parliament. I see a couple of backbench MPs, a leftie journalist, a neo-con magazine editor. No one from government. Jamison Firestone is there, too; he looks to be in his mid- thirties though he is actually pushing fifty and just has that everlasting boyish thing. Firestone was the American lawyer for whom Sergey Magnitsky worked at Firestone and Duncan, the Moscow law firm Browder hired. Browder never really knew Magnitsky, had rarely seen him. It’s all very different for Firestone. He seems to twist in pain every time he talks about his dead colleague. I see him regularly, pacing through every party and every conference and business meeting and lecture about Russia, calling out on the money launderers and murderers and repeating the name “Magnitsky! Magnitsky!” until it burns in everybody’s ears. A canary in the mine of Mayfaircalling that this is all wrong. We meet a little later in a café in Maida Vale. As we speak Firestone’s voice sometimes rises, and people look around at us, startled. When I glance up again later I spot them quietly listening in. There’s a downpour outside with reports of flooding further down the Thames estuary. Firestone calls Magnitsky by his first name, Sergey. “Sergey was the best lawyer I ever knew. I never saw him lose a case, never. We would have clients charged for taxes they didn’t owe, and every time he would challenge the courts and win. He was an optimist. He only ever got emotional about classical music. Even when he was arrested. He called me from the car on the way to the police station and he was calm: he was sure it would all clear up.” After Sergey was arrested the police came for Firestone’s other lawyers. He had to take one colleague down the fire escape of her home with the police at the front door, and then they took a night train across the Russian-Ukrainian border. Anotherflew straight to London. “I had spent eighteen years in Russia but for my colleagues it was their whole life. We rented a threebedroom apartment together. My colleagues would sit in their rooms crying. Their relatives were ill or suffering, but they couldn’t go back to see them. But none of us could really say anything, since what was happening to Sergey was so much worse.” When Sergey had been in prison for nine months, nine months in which no one was allowed to visit him, his wife managed to get hold of his prison diary. “I received it by e-mail,” continues Firestone. “Just page after page of stoical, detailed description. Like a lawyer, just cataloguing everything calmly. How the sewage would flood the cell and they would live with it for days; how he would have to stand to write because there was no room there were so many prisoners; how each cell got worse because he wouldn’t confess and incriminate others; how there was no glass in the windows in the cell in winter and it was freezing. In the summer overcrowded cells and prisonertransport trucks were like filthy never ending saunas; how he would not get treatment when the pain in his stomach was becoming unbearable. . . . What made it worse was the calm way he was cataloguing it all. Icould hear his voice. Same as always.” Firestone’s own voice is rising again. He neverthought he would end up taking on the Kremlin. “I had a wonderful life, my colleagues had wonderful lives. And to hold onto it, all we had to do was shut up and let this pass. But somebody was killed.” He tells me he still yearns to go back to Russia. He had Russian residency and was about to apply for a passport for a second citizenship, planned to spend his life there. He had first moved to Moscow in 1991, straight after he graduated from college. It was his father who had advised him he should learn Russian in high school; back in the 1980s he had already told Jamison the USSR would collapse one day and Russia was where the money would be. Firestone’s father was a serial entrepreneur who had made and lost a fortune in California real estate, created the only Internet porn site to lose money, and then made $12 million by creating another site that helps kids with their homework. At the time Firestone went to Russia his father was in jail forselling fraudulent tax shelters. “My dad liked to hang out with gangsters the way Frank Sinatra would like to hang out with gangsters. When he was released he came over to Russia and tried to get a protection racket involved in my first business: importing cars to Russia. He said everyone in Russia needs protection, but I didn’t want the mafia in my business and he took a hit out to break the legs of my friend and law partner: ‘If I have yourlegs broken you’ll ignore it because you’re strong. If you see yourfriend with broken legs you’ll understand the cost of opposing me,’ my dad told me. I resigned and then the protection racket my dad hired stole ourcars and that was the end of his foray into Russia. My dad was always my moral compass: whatever he suggested I did the opposite.” Firestone had many moments in Russia when he had to think about his dad: all the times he was asked to “move some money”; the partner in his audit company who told him they should cheat on their firm’s taxes. (Firestone had him thrown out of the building by guards with AK-47s and reported him to the police.) Then there was the time the Russian minister for development (the same one Benedict had worked for) asked Firestone what he thought needed to change in Russia to protect private property. The minister expected a polite answer, but Firestone told him publicly that while ministers and oligarchs were above the law, the country was fucked. Firestone was a board member and head of the small business committee of the American Chamber of Commerce at the time. One of his fellow board members from a Fortune 100 company told him off for being outspoken: “We like what you’re saying Jamison—butcould you say it quieter?” “We were all making a lot of money,” says Firestone, “but Icould tell things were getting scummier.” But Ican also hearthe thrill in his voice when he talks about his Moscow adventures. “I’ll wearthe lawyer’s hat,” says Firestone, “but I was a really good street fighter. I fired mafias twice on behalf of my clients. Mafia, like police, can only react to two responses: ‘yes sir’ or‘no sir’ (which gets you killed). One time a client was raided and had his business database stolen by the mafia group that was meant to be protecting him: they’d crossed over to a rival. So we went to meet these guys in a hotel on Petrovka and I told them in Russian and in my nicestcorporate voice: “My client pays you 100,000 a month for a package of services that you say includes protection. We don’t understand how you can also work with other clients protecting their right to steal from my client, who is also your client. I’m a lawyer, for example, and I could never defend both sides.” “That’s why we’re different from you lawyers,” the mafia guys answered. “You guys quarrel all the time. We work with everyone and ensure peace for all sides.” “You’re quite right. We didn’t understand. And I’m sure it’s our fault—but now that we understand the services you offer we don’t need them anymore.” “We walked out of a room of shocked Mafiosi. The others were only paying them 30,000. Next week the racketcame back with all the computers from the rivals.” Firestone still smiles when he relates this, playing out each line of the dialogue in Americanized, but nearly perfect, Russian. And he tells me of the time he had to hide out in a government hospital to hide from corrupt cops (they could grab him anywhere apart from a hospital full of ministers); and when his first office was raided by thugs working for his neighbor and his staff were handcuffed to the furniture and threatened at knifepoint; or when he had to fly to New York and buy up all the bugging equipment at the Spy store to give to the antifraud squad in Moscow so they would have the equipment with which to bust other bentcops trying to extort money from him. “You know, one of the problems I have living in London is that if I actually tell the truth about my story people just assume I’m lying. They never call me back. I’ve learned to just talk pleasantries. Or if someone really wants the truth I tell them there’s a condition: ‘You give me your e-mail now before the conversation starts, and I will tell you my story and then send you some links and you can see me on the BBC or read some newspaper articles about me. And then maybe you might call me back. Because you won’tcall me back otherwise. It’s just too weird. . . . ’” Russia as the place where you are forced into extremes, which then make you examine your every decision and what you’re made of, where the choice between good and evil becomes distilled. Is this what makes it so addictive? Another incarnation of Moscow as Third Rome. We all end up becoming sucked into the city’s myths, become expressions of the only story it knows how to tell. The same tragedy can happen in so many places, but in Russia it takes on that iconic intensity. When I refocus on what Jamison is saying, his voice is rising again. “London shocked me. The whole system is built around wanting that money to come here. We want their money. We want their trade. And now you’ve got former German chancellor Schroeder and Lord Mandelson and Lord So-and-So working for these Russian state companies, and you know I think they should just be honest and say ‘some Kremlin company offered me 500,000 to sit on their board and I don’t do anything and I don’t know anything about how the company is run but sometimes they ask me to open some doors.’ And the argument I hear from everyone is ‘well if the money doesn’t go here it will go somewhere else’: well here ain’t going to be here if you take that attitude, here is going to be there. We used to have this self-centered idea that Western democracies were the end point of evolution, and we’re dealing from a position of strength, and people are becoming like us. It’s not that way. Because if you think this thing we have here isn’t fragile you are kidding yourself. This,” and here Jamison takes a breath and waves his hand around to denote Maida Vale, London, the whole of Western civilization, “this is fragile.” And I see Jamison pacing through Parliament and through every think tank meeting and dinner party in London agitating and crying out, full of his American fervor and that pain that seems to physically twist him when he talks about Sergey Magnitsky. And the pain is even greater because he feels the men who are responsible for killing Sergey are here too, enjoying their stucco mansions and Harrods, and they are utterly untouchable. But what Jamison says causes no great revelation in the golden triangle. Rather it’s assumed that everything everywhere is, well, terrible. And though most agree that yes, Mayfair and Belgravia and Knightsbridge might belong to a different order now, are part of the great offshore, and naturally we would never approve it if our own ministers did the same as that Russian (or Azeri or Nigerian) deputy prime minister who just bought that penthouse off St. James’s with money made through self-dealing government contracts, but overall we’ll be fine because we’ll keep all that bad stuff up in the spare room of ourculture and it won’tchange us. And Jamison, poorsoul, had a terrible time, and he means well and in a way of course he’s right, but let’s not get carried away: the world has always been this way. Or others sigh and say well everything has changed here already anyway and there is no West anymore: for who are we to teach anyone how to behave? And in the end the editorial producers cut the story about Sergey Magnitsky from Meet the Russians, including all those scenes we shot in Belgravia and Parliament, because try as they might they just can’t make it fit with the overall masterconcept: it’s meant to be a feel-good sort of show. NOTHING IS TRUE AND EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE I am at the airport, getting ready to catch the Moscow flight. My daughter is with me. Her mother, my wife, is a Muscovite; we met during the almost decade I spent in Russia. My daughter was born while I still worked in Moscow. Now we all live together in London. When I travel to Russia it is less often on TV projects and more frequently as a father. I don’t travel with a camera anymore. I find I do less of those sorts of TV projects, the ones where you push your way into people’s lives, try to get as close to things as possible. For all our claims to capture the real, a factual director is always a manipulator, a miniature vizier, seducing, framing, spinning his subjects, asking one question but waiting for another slip up, always thinking how every action we’re shooting relates not to its direct environment but to the final cut. And when we begin to edit, our subject’s video representation takes on a life of its own, a hologram cross-faded, saturated, flipped, squeezed, and cut in different ways for US, UK, Internet, and promotional edits. So almost no person is ever happy with themself on screen, even when we’ve done everything to make them “positive,” because it’s never the “him” or “her” they think they are. Yet here’s the rub. Those holograms we have created then pursue us. The emotions oursubjects once poured out to us stay with us. And we begin to live in a parallel reality of video ghosts. The parents of the dead models in their deep grief, the gold diggers, the soldier off to Chechnya, Jambik, the milkmaid, the terror victims, everyone I’ve everfilmed: they visit me from time to time. “Come back!” my wife exclaims when she sees me with that distracted look. “Look at your daughter. The real world. We’re here.” The airport is packed. I’m taking my daughter over for summer holidays, and she is looking forward to the trip. She has recently started school in London, and it can be tough for her. I have been away filming so often that her Russian is still better than her English. The other day she came home from school crying: “I can’t understand what the other children are saying about me, what if it’s something horrible?” Russia for her means adoring relatives. When we land at Domodedovo my in-laws will be there to greet her in a scene straight out of Hello-Goodbye. They will take her out to their small family dacha. The front of the dacha faces onto mild hills, with a little church peeking out on the horizon. The back porch runs into wild woods. She will spend the summer wandering among the hills and in the woods, listening to Russian fairy tales and imagining herself in them, stopping by little rivers, picking wild strawberries in the intense light loveliness of Russian summer, which is so short and thus so special. I imagine how when I land my in-laws and I will talk about the weather. Will there be peat fires this year? Will the fires reach the dacha? We will think about the best way to drive out of town; the traffic has only gotten worse. Maybe they will recommend a concert I should attend at the conservatory, and we will negotiate our conversation through the pleasant byways of our relationship. As if everything is normal. As if there is no war. And at first glance the city will seem just as it ever was: the bulletproof Bentleys will still be triple parked across from the red-brick monastery; the flocks of cranes will still swing across a skyline changing in fast-forward. And everything will be fine until someone (a taxi driver, an old friend, someone in a bar) will casually mention, mantra-like: “Russia is strong again, we’ve got up from our knees!” “All the world fears us!” “The West is out to get us!” “There are traitors everywhere!” And then I will switch on the television. The weekly news roundup show is on. The well-dressed presenter walks across the well-made set and into shot, briskly summing up the week’s events, all seemingly quite normal. Then suddenly he’ll twirl around to camera 2, and before you know it he’s talking about how the West is sunk in the slough of homosexuality, and only Holy Russia can save the world from Gay-Europa, and how among us all are the fifth columnists, the secret Western spies who dress themselves up as anticorruption activists but are actually all CIA. (Who else would dare to criticize the President?) The West, he’ll say, is sponsoring antiRussian “fascists” in Ukraine, and all of them are out to get Russia and take away its oil; the Americansponsored fascists are crucifying Russian children on the squares of Ukrainian towns because the West is organizing a genocide against us Russians, and there are women crying on camera saying how they were threatened by roving gangs of Russia-haters, and of course only the President can make this right, and that’s why Russia did the right thing to annex Crimea, why it’s right to arm and send mercenaries to Ukraine, and this is just the beginning of the great new conflict between Russia and the West. When you go to check (through friends, news wires, anyone who isn’t Ostankino) to see whether there really are fascists taking over Ukraine or whether there are children being crucified, you find it’s all untrue, and the women who said they saw it all are actually hired extras dressed up as “eye-witnesses,” and the whole line between fact and fiction at Ostankino has become irrelevant. But even when you know the whole justification for the President’s war is fabricated, even when you fathom that the real reason is to create a story to keep the President all-powerful and help us all forget about the melting money, the lies are told so often that after a while you find yourself nodding because it’s hard to get your head around the idea that they are lying quite so much and quite so brazenly—and at some level you feel that if Ostankino can lie so much and get away with it, doesn’t that mean they have real power, the powerto define what is true and what isn’t? Wouldn’t you do better just to nod anyway? And flipping over to another channel, there are the Night Wolves riding in cavalcades through Sevastopol to celebrate the annexation, the resurrection of the Empire, holding aloft icons of Mary the Mother of God and quoting Stalin and playing their great theme tune: Russian speech rings like chain-mail in the ears of the foreigners, And the white host rises from the coppice to the stars. The Night Wolves are just one of the many stars of the new Ostankino cast. There are the Cherubims, who dress in all black emblazoned with skulls and crosses, calling to cleanse Russia of moral darkness; the neo-Nazis with MTV dancer bodies who film themselves beating up gay teenagers in the name of patriotism; the whip-wielding Cossacks attacking performance artists on the streets. And all of them are pushed to the center of the screen to appear on trashy talk shows and star in factual entertainment formats, keeping the TV spinning with oohs and aahs about gays and God, Satan and the CIA. Their emergence is not some bottom-up swell; only a tiny number of Russians go to church. Rather, the Kremlin has finally mastered the art of fusing reality TV and authoritarianism to keep the great, 140-million-strong population entertained, distracted, constantly exposed to geopolitical nightmares, which if repeated enough times can become infectious. For when I talk to many of my old colleagues who are still working in the ranks of Russian media or in state corporations, they might laugh off all the Holy Russia stuff as so much PR (because everything is PR!), but their triumphant cynicism in turn means they can be made to feel there are conspiracies everywhere: because if nothing is true and all motives are corrupt and no one is to be trusted, doesn’t it mean that some dark hand must be behind everything? Flipping over onto anotherchannel, there is the life trainerfrom the Rose of the World giving advice on how to deal with all your hang-ups (after the story with the models broke, he just changed the name of his organization and carried on regardless). How similarly Ostankino works to the Lifespring courses: repeating and endlessly playing out all of Russia’s fears and panic attacks and fevers, not searching for some criticism or cure, but just stirring them so you’re sucked in but never free, while the Kremlin ties the public to itself by first humiliating and bullying with werewolves in uniform and baron bureaucrats, and then lifts the country up with marvelous military conquests. Later in the schedule come the shows with Duma deputies, some still spitting or beetroot-faced but more now with English suits, rimless glasses, and prim buns, their latest challenge to make up laws so flamboyant in their patriotic burlesque it will get them noticed. They conjure motions to “ban untraditional sex” or “ban English words”—and to sanction Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Glance through the careers of these new religious patriots, and you find they were recently committed democrats and liberals, pro-Western, preaching modernization, innovation, and commitment to Russia’s European course, before which they were all good Communists. And though on the one hand their latest incarnations are just new acts in the Moscow political cabaret, something about their delivery is different from the common Russian political performer who gives his rants with a knowing wink and nod. Now the delivery is somewhat deadpan. Flat and hollow-eyed, as if they have been turned and twisted in so many ways they’ve spun right off the whirligig into something clinical. Because isn’t some sort of madness implicit in the system? If at one end of the spectrum are the political technologists toying with reality, or Oliona transforming herself for every sugar daddy, or Vitaly acting out a fantasy of himself in movies he himself directs about his own life, then at the other is Boris Berezovsky, the progenitor of the system who became its absurd reflection, bankrupt, making no sense in an English courtroom, told that he “deludes himself into believing his own version of events.” And on every channel is the President, who as a made-for-TV projection has fitted every Russian archetype into himself, so now he seems to burst with all of Russia, cutting ever quicker between gangster-statesman-conqueror-biker-believer-emperor, one moment diplomatically rational and the next frothing with conspiracies. And on TV the President is chatting via live video-link to factory workers posing in overalls in front of a tank they’ve built, and the factory workers are promising the President that if protests against him continue, they will “come to Moscow and defend our stability.” But then it turns out the workers don’t actually exist; the whole thing is a piece of playacting organized by local political technologists (because everyone is a political technologist now), the TV spinning off to someplace where there is no reference point back to reality, where puppets talk to holograms when both are convinced they are real, where nothing is true and everything is possible. And the result of all this delirium is a curious sense of weightlessness. But look underneath the Kremlin’s whirligig, and don’t you see the most precise, hard calculations? For if one part of the system is all about wild performance, another is about slow, patient co-optation. And the Kremlin has been co-opting the West for years: “The English likes to make fun of us,” said a Kremlin tabloid after Meet the Russians was released, “but is it prepared to lose ourinvestments?” “It was the first non-linear war,” wrote Vladislav Surkov in a new short story, “Without Sky,” published under his pseudonym and set in a dystopian future afterthe “fifth world war”: In the primitive wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was common for just two sides to fight. Two countries. Two groups of allies. Now four coalitions collided. Not two against two, or three against one. No. All against all. There is no mention of holy wars in Surkov’s vision, none of the cabaret used to provoke and tease the West. But there is a darkling vision of globalization, in which instead of everyone rising together, interconnection means multiple contests between movements and corporations and city-states. Where the old alliances, the EUs and NATOs and “the West,” have all worn out, and where the Kremlin can play the new, fluctuating lines of loyalty and interest, the flows of oil and money, splitting Europe from America, pitting one Western company against another and against both their governments so no one knows whose interests are what and where they’re headed. “A few provinces would join one side,” Surkov continues. “A few others a different one. One town or generation or gender would join yet another. Then they could switch sides, sometimes mid-battle. Their aims were quite different. Most understood the war to be part of a process. Not necessarily its most important part.” The Kremlin switches messages at will to its advantage, climbing inside everything: European rightwing nationalists are seduced with an anti-EU message; the Far Left is co-opted with tales of fighting US hegemony; US religious conservatives are convinced by the Kremlin’s fight against homosexuality. And the result is an array of voices, working away at global audiences from different angles, producing a cumulative echo chamber of Kremlin support, all broadcast on RT. “We’re minority shareholders in globalization,” I hear from Russian corporate spooks and politicians. Which, remembering how the system tried to break Yana, might mean that the best way to imagine the Kremlin’s vision of itself in the world is as a “corporate reider”: the ultraviolent cousin of Western corporate raiders. For “reiding” is how most of the Russian elite made their first money, buying into a company and then using any means possible (arrests, guns, seizures, explosions, bribery, blackmail) to extract its advantages. The Kremlin is the great corporate reider inside globalization, convinced that it can see through all the old ways of the slow West to play at something more subversive. The twenty-first century’s geopolitical avant-garde. “Without Sky” was published on March 12, 2014. A few days later Russia annexed Crimea. Surkov helped to organize the annexation, with his whole theater of Night Wolves, Cossacks, staged referendums, scripted puppet politicians, and men with guns. As punishment, Surkov was one of the first Russian officials to be sanctioned by the West, banned from traveling to or investing in the United States and European Union. “Won’t this ban affect you?” a reporter asked Surkov as he passed through the Kremlin Palace. “Your tastes point to you being a very Western person.” Surkov smiled and pointed to his head: “I can fit Europe in here.” Later he announced: “I see the decision by the administration in Washington as an acknowledgment of my service to Russia. It’s a big honor for me: like being nominated for the political equivalent of an Oscar. I don’t have accounts abroad. The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing.” My daughter and I are through passport control. We’ll be boarding soon. She’s choosing souvenirs in Duty Free, mementos of England for Russian relatives. I always feel so at home in airport lounges, when you’re neither here nor there, where everyone is stateless. It used to be easy to spot the Russians in the lounge: either under- or overdressed. You’d never notice now, it’s hard to tell whether passengers are going home or departing. And as the flight is called and we move toward the plane, I wonder whether I will find any of the other Russia on this visit: sometimes when I visit Moscow the streets are filled with protests against the Kremlin. “Don’t lie, don’t steal” is the protesters’ slogan, which might sound somewhat priggish and maybe matronly in English, but in Russian “ne vrat i ne vorovat,” with its vibrating repeating Vs and rolling Rs, sounds like an angry Old Testament growl (maybe “thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal” is a better approximation), capturing in four words the connection between financial and intellectual corruption, where words never mean what they say they mean and figures on budgets are never what they are. One time, on the boulevard ring at dusk, there was a protest leader on a stage addressing a crowd, holding up the old picture of Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe impersonating the President, and he was saying: “This is a portrait by our favorite artist Vladik and this is what we need to get rid of.” And by that he meant not so much the President himself but the whole culture of simulation that eats up everything and which Vladik tried to describe: ‘“One day we will reach into the cupboard, and reach for our clothes, and they will turn to dust in our hands because they have been eaten by maggots.” Vladik himself has died. He was found floating in a pool in Bali. Death by heart attack. Right at the end an oligarch acquaintance had made him an offer to come over to the Kremlin side and star in a series of paintings in which he would dress up as the new protest leaders engaged in sodomy. Vladik had refused. I’ve noticed something new when wandering around the protests and talking to the new Moscow dissidents. If once upon a time they used the word “the West” in general, and the word “London” in particular, to represent the beacon of what they aimed toward, now the words “London” and the “West” can be said with a light disgust, as the place that shelters and rewards and reinforces the very forces that oppress them. And so, in the classic Third Rome twist, the Russian liberal can become the last true liberal on Earth, the only one still believing in the ideas preached by Benedict and the international developmentconsultants. I hope I’ll be able to find Mozhayev, still searching for his Old Moscow, wandering and talking with a bottle of port in his pocket (he’s abandoned vodka). He never did emigrate, of course. I’ve heard he’s even managed to save a few buildings recently. But he could do nothing for Pechatnikov house 3, which was destroyed, and now only Mozhayev’s elegy of it survives. “This place was known as ‘the heart of Moscow,’” wrote Mozhayev in an essay Icame across. The yard was an odd sort of shape, leaning on the slope. There was a broken bench in the middle where I would like to sit. It was best to come here in the evening, when the lights were coming on in the houses, and you could feel time stopping: the ivy crawling up the open brick work, the sheets hanging out in the yard to dry, the children’s strollers by the open doors . . . they all seemed to belong to another time. Of course the sheets and strollers actually belonged to illegal migrants from Central Asia squatting in the houses, and many of the windows were boarded up and broken, and there was graffiti everywhere—but oddly the migrants gave the whole thing a sense of lived-in-ness. And there was one first-floor apartment, whose windows looked directly out onto the bench, which was pure Old Moscow, with a yellow low-hanging lampshade, and books stacked up to the ceiling where they seemed to be keeling over, and a big man with a big beard moving about with tea inside, and a cat that would fling itself repeatedly at the wood-framed windows. We’re flying now. My daughter has the window seat she likes best. She’s bent right over, forehead pressed up against the cold glass, looking to glimpse the lights of cities between the clouds. The burning concentric rings of Moscow will soon be coming into view. One neverreally leaves places anymore. The whole “I went on a journey far away” yarn doesn’t feel quite real. Movement between Moscow and London has become so casual (eight flights a day including budget airlines, with the weekend plane nicknamed “the school bus”) that the two cities have become smudged in my mind. I walk into an underpass by Hyde Park Corner and emerge out on the Boulevard Ring and see many of the same faces I just saw off Piccadilly. Turn the corner of Prospekt Mira, and I am back walking along the Thames. My daughter already finds these jump cuts between countries normal. Sometimes she likes to play a game in which she divides her face into the identities she gets to toy with: “This half of my face is Russian —and this half English. My cheek Jewish. My ear belongs to London and my mouth to Moscow, but I’m keeping my eyes for . . . ” And then she starts to laugh. Already a child of the great Offshore? And what will it turn out to be like? Almost Zero? The Street-of-All-Fridays? And before I know it this trip will be over and I’ll be back in London, on my way to another of Grigory’s Midsummer’s Night parties, which he hosts in both Moscow and London now. It’s at the Orangerie in Kensington Palace. I try to get a costume at the last minute, but by the time I call the stores, all the Midsummer’s Night costumes in central London are already gone. I make myself a lame garland out of flowers plucked from some gardens near the subway. I’m running late, and for some reason I assume the entrance will be from the Knightsbridge end of the Palace, but then when I cross the park I’m told I have to go round to the other, Queensway, side. There’s no clear path, it’s getting dark, and I get lost. I’m scrambling through hedges and thorns, then turn off somewhere and find myself on the edge of Kensington Palace Gardens, which is the most expensive street in London, and the guards by the high gates are looking at me strangely. Then I’m back in the park, my trousers smeared with dirt, and hear the music and finally emerge by the right entrance. There’s a spiked black rail and a bouncer and a woman dressed as the god Pan with a guest list on her iPad. Beyond the gate I can see elf-girls in high heels and Queens of the Night in shining gowns, all talking in many languages and all disappearing beyond the corner of the palace to the party proper, which I can hear but can’t quite see. I say my name, but I’m told it isn’t on the guest list, and I’m late, and they won’t let me in. I try texting Grigory, but of course he must be busy with his guests and doesn’t answer. And I lean over the rail as far as I can go, with the blunt tips digging into my stomach, one hand holding my garland to my head, craning my neck to see if I can somehow catch a glimpse of him.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book wouldn’t have been attempted without Paul Copeland, and it couldn’t have been completed without his generous help. He has taught me new meanings in friendship. I am always indebted to my parents, with this book more than ever, and to Aunt Sasha for being our guardian angel. I would like to thank Daniel Soar and Mary-Kay Wilmers at the London Review of Books, who gave me a chance; Tunku Varadarajan and Tina Brown for giving me some more; my agent and publishers; and Ben Judah, forthe last-minute read-through. Also my producers at TNT: both for letting me make some exciting projects and forshowing grace and kindness when I failed.

EXTRA READING

The biography of Surkov was informed by Zoya Svetova’s “Who Is Mr. Surkov?” in New Times Magazine (December 26, 2011).

Alena Ledeneva’s Can Russia Modernise? (Cambridge University Press, 2013) provides context for the battles among various Russian security agencies and “reiding.”

Yana Yakovleva published her book of prison letters, Неэлектронные Письма (Праксис, 2008). A detailed account of architectural destruction in Moscow can be found in “Moscow Heritage at Crisis Point,” updated edition (SAVE Europe’s Heritage, Moscow Architectural Preservation Society, 2009).

Vitaly Djomochka’s latest novel is Газовый Кризис 2 (Gas Crisis 2) (Зебра Е, 2010).

Peter Pomerantsev is an award-winning contributor to the London Review of Books. His writing has been published in the Financial Times, NewYorker.com, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Daily Beast, Newsweek, and Atlantic Monthly. He has also worked as a consultant for the EU and for think tanks on projects covering the former Soviet Union. He lives in London.

Appendix 6

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9

Template:Appendix 6

Appendix 7

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9

Template:Appendix 7

Appendix 8

e

  1. #Appendix 1
  2. #Appendix 2
  3. #Appendix 3
  4. #Appendix 4
  5. #Appendix 5
  6. #Appendix 6
  7. #Appendix 7
  8. #Appendix 8
  9. #Appendix 9

Template:Appendix 8

Index

e 


Footnotes

  1. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  2. Moscow Believes in Tears: Russians and Their Movies. Louis Menashe. (2014). Famous Russian idioms. New Academia Publishing. https://books.google.ru/books?id=S3u3b_U-c78C&printsec=frontcover
  3. Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006), Sociologist.
  4. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  5. Nicolas Zernov. (1978). The Russians and Their Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 176.
  6. Hofstede Insights, Country Comparison: USA. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/the-usa/
  7. Hofstede Insights, Country Comparison: Russia. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/russia/
  8. Realo, Anu; Allik, Jüri. (April 1999). A Cross-Cultural Study of Collectivism: A Comparison of American, Estonian, and Russian Students. The Journal of Social Psychology 139(2):133-142. DOI: 10.1080/00224549909598367 http://universitypublications.net/ijas/0705/pdf/H4V1015.pdf
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Meyer, Erin. (2014). The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qoT-v2SDoSuj0VIXAmOpVxvvw4uUi5Vy (Full Book).
  10. Lugris, Mark. (June 13, 2018). Russian Workers Being Trained To Smile More Before The World Cup. https://www.thetravel.com/russia-teaches-workers-smile/
  11. Trompenaars, Fons., & Hampden-Turner, Charles. (1998). Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, 2nd ed. McGraw Hill. 83–86.
  12. Riding the Waves of Culture. Exclusive Interview with Dr. Fons Trompenaars. (March, 2018). https://mundus-international.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Swedish-Press-Mar-2018-Interview-Trompenaars-Williams.pdf
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 Meyer, Erin. (May 30, 2014). One Reason Cross-Cultural Small Talk Is So Tricky. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/05/one-reason-cross-cultural-small-talk-is-so-tricky
  14. Taras, Vas. (December, 2015). Peach vs. Coconut Cultures. https://x-culture.org/peach-vs-coconut-cultures
  15. Lebowitz, Shana. (August, 2017). The 'coconut vs peach' metaphor explains why Americans find the French standoffish and the French find Americans superficial. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-french-people-find-americans-superficial-2017-8
  16. Lugris, Mark. (June 13, 2018). Russian Workers Being Trained To Smile More Before The World Cup. https://www.thetravel.com/russia-teaches-workers-smile/
  17. Bohm, Michael. (April 28, 2011). Why Russians Don't Smile. The Moscow Times. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2011/04/28/why-russians-dont-smile-a6672
  18. Putnam, Samuel., & Gartstein, Masha A. (June 2018). Russians don’t smile much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/russians-dont-smile-much-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-dont-like-you/2018/06/29/beceb9d8-7a21-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html
  19. Khazan, Olga. (May, 2016), Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling, Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smiling/483827/
  20. Olga Khazan. (May 3, 2017). Why Americans Smile So Much. How immigration and cultural values affect what people do with their faces. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/why-americans-smile-so-much/524967/
  21. Adam Chandler. (October 21, 2016). Why Do Americans Move So Much More Than Europeans? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/us-geographic-mobility/504968/
  22. Park, Robert E. (July-August, 1924). The Concept of Social Distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 8 339-344. Emory S. Bogardus. (March-April, 1925). Measuring Social Distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 9 299-308.
  23. Putnam, Samuel., & Gartstein, Masha A. (June 2018). Russians don’t smile much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/russians-dont-smile-much-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-dont-like-you/2018/06/29/beceb9d8-7a21-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html
  24. Arapova, Maria A. (2017), Cultural differences in Russian and Western smiling, Russian Journal of Communication, 9:1, 34-52, DOI: 10.1080/19409419.2016.1262208
  25. Khazan, Olga. (May, 2016). Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling, Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smiling/483827/
  26. Samuel Putnam, (June 27, 2018). Why are Russians so stingy with their smiles? https://theconversation.com/why-are-russians-so-stingy-with-their-smiles-98799
  27. The "Heartland" is the central part of a country. A prerogative used by those on the coasts of the USA is “Fly over states”.
  28. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  29. Bohm, Michael. (April 28, 2011). Why Russians Don't Smile. The Moscow Times. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2011/04/28/why-russians-dont-smile-a6672
  30. Koren, Marina. (February, 2014). Why Russians Aren’t Smiling at You in Sochi. The first rule about smiling at Russians is you do not smile at Russians. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/02/why-russians-arent-smiling-at-you-in-sochi/569632/
  31. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  32. Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1952). The Decline of Imperial Russia, 1855–1914. Routledge. 24.
  33. Gray, Paul. (July 24, 1989). Russia's Prophet in Exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Time Magazine. 61. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,958205-8,00.html
  34. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  35. Edward Adrian-Vallance, https://www.facebook.com/edward.adrianvallance
  36. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  37. Edward Adrian-Vallance, https://www.facebook.com/edward.adrianvallance
  38. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  39. 55
  40. Herbert, Wray. ‘To suffer is to suffer’: Analyzing the Russian national character. (June 30, 2010). Association for Psychological Science. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/to-suffer-is-to-suffer-analyzing-the-russian-national-character.html
  41. Oleg Yegorov. February 22 2019. Why do Russians benefit from suffering? https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/330011-russian-suffering
  42. Jonah Lehrer. 2010. Why Russians Don't Get Depressed. https://www.wired.com/2010/08/why-russians-dont-get-depressed/
  43. Caroline Humer. (July 15, 2010). Russians brood, but Americans get depressed - study, Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN15202897. "Russians dwell on negative emotions much as novelists Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy so famously detailed, but they are less likely to become depressed than Americans, according to two new studies." Igor Grossmann. University of Michigan researcher who worked on the studies.
  44. Varnum, M. E. W., Grossmann, I., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2010). The Origin of Cultural Differences in Cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 9–13. doi:10.1177/0963721409359301
  45. Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross. The Impact of Culture on Adaptive Versus Maladaptive Self-Reflection. Psychological Science , AUGUST 2010, Vol. 21, No. 8 (AUGUST 2010), pp. 1150-1157 Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Association for Psychological Science. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41062346 "Although recent findings indicate that people can reflect either adaptively or maladaptively over negative experiences, extant research has not examined how culture influences this process. We compared the self-reflective practices of Russians (members of an interdependent culture characterized by a tendency to brood) and Americans (members of an independent culture in which self-reflection has been studied extensively). We predicted that self-reflection would be associated with less-detrimental outcomes among Russians because they self-distance more when analyzing their feelings than Americans do. Findings from two studies supported these predictions. In Study 1, self-reflection was associated with fewer depressive symptoms among Russians than among Americans. In Study 2, Russians displayed less distress and a more adaptive pattern of construals than Americans after reflecting over a recent..."
  46. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  47. Li Mu, https://www.facebook.com/li.mu.5015
  48. Edward Adrian-Vallance, https://www.facebook.com/edward.adrianvallance
  49. Edward Adrian-Vallance, https://www.facebook.com/edward.adrianvallance
  50. Nina Khrushcheva, "Culture Matters, But Not (of All Places) in Russia," in Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, winter, 2000/2001 no. 7), 48.
  51. Laurens Van der Post. (1964). Journey Into Russia. Random House.
  52. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 124.
  53. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 207.
  54. Daniel Matuszewski, former IREX deputy director, in a December 15, 2001 e-mail to Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  55. Lev A. Tikhomirov, Russia, Political and Social, quoted by Wright Miller in Russians as People (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961), 81.
  56. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  57. Fred Hiatt. (December 3, 1994). Russian Astrologers' Horrorscopes. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/12/03/russian-astrologers-horrorscopes/3a9536df-d9f3-402c-b798-6418b3b10c82/
  58. Richard Lourie. 1991. Predicting Russia’s Future. Knoxville, TN: Whittle Direct Books. 82.
  59. Richard Lourie and Aleksei Mikhalev. Why You'll Never Have Fun in Russian. The New York Times, June 18, 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/18/books/why-you-ll-never-have-fun-in-russian.html
  60. Richard Bernstein. (November 28, 1989). Soviet Author's Humor Has a Bitter Aftertaste. The New York Times.
  61. Llewellyn Thompson, in his final briefing for American correspondents prior to his departure from Moscow in 1968, a meeting that Yale Richmond, attended found in From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. (2008) Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  62. Tibor Szamuely. (1974). The Russian Tradition. New York: McGraw-Hill. 6.
  63. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (1873). "A Word or Two about Vranyo," Diary of a Writer. Quoted in Hingley, Ronald. (1977). The Russian Mind. 166.
  64. Andreyev, Leonid. (1913). Pan-Russian Vranyo. Vserossiiskoe vranyo. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (All Russian Lies. Full Composition of Writings). St. Petersburg. Volume V.
  65. Samuel Rachlin. (March 20, 2015). Propaganda and the Russian Art of Lying. https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/96536/propaganda-and-the-russian-art-of-lying
  66. Putin and the Presidents: Julia Ioffe (interview). PBS, Frontline. (Jan 31, 2023). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEu0oRajJxE at 33:11.
  67. Ronald Hingley. (March-April, 1962). That’s No Lie, Comrade. Problems of Communism. http://traveller.in.net/2019/03/03/vranyo/
  68. Fyodorov, Boris. (May 1, 2001). The Washington Post.
  69. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (1873). "A Word or Two about Vranyo," Diary of a Writer. Quoted in Hingley, Ronald. (1977). The Russian Mind. 105.
  70. Hingley, Ronald. (March-April, 1962). That’s No Lie, Comrade. Problems of Communism. http://traveller.in.net/2019/03/03/vranyo/
  71. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  72. Zbigniew Brzezinski quoted in the Wall Street Journal. March 25, 1983.
  73. Sharon Tennison, Center for U.S.-U.S.S.R. Initiatives, San Francisco, California, in a memo to U.S. foundations, May 15, 1990.
  74. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  75. William McCulloch. (March 14, 1994). Kennan Institute, Washington, DC.
  76. Parade Magazine (October 8, 1989). 27.
  77. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  78. Nina Khrushcheva, "Culture Matters, But Not (of All Places) in Russia," in Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, winter, 2000/2001 no. 7).
  79. Geoffrey Hosking. (1990). The Awakening of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 132.
  80. Ruth Amende Roosa, "Russian Industrialists Look to the Future: Thoughts on Economic Development, 1906–17." in Essays in Russian and Soviet History. (1963). John Shelton Curtiss. New York: Columbia University Press. 198–218.
  81. Vladimir V. Belyakov & Walter J. Raymond. (1994). The Constitution of the Russian Federation. Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick Publishing. 27.
  82. Russian Agrarian Reform: A Status Report from the Field. (August 1994). Seattle: Rural Development Institute.
  83. Background Note: Russia. (February, 2007). U.S. State Department.
  84. Vladimir Shlapentokh. (May 20, 2007).Johnson’s Russia List #114.
  85. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  86. Georgi Poltavchenko. August 5, 2000. Rossiskaya Gazeta.
  87. Pyotr Savitsky, quoted by Françoise Thom in “Eurasianism: A New Russian Foreign Policy,” Uncaptive Minds 7, no. 2 (Summer 1994), 66.
  88. Marshall Shulman. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington, DC, February 12, 1989.
  89. The New York Times. (June 1, 1990).
  90. Andrew Jack. (2005). Inside Putin’s Russia. (2005). New York: Oxford University Press. 62.
  91. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  92. Yevgeny Yevtushenko. (April 7, 1958). Literaturnaya Gazeta, quoted by Klaus Mehnert. (1961). Soviet Man and His World. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 30.
  93. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  94. Marquis de Custine. (1989). Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia.New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books. 183.
  95. Anton Chekhov. (1900). Three Sisters, Act II.
  96. Elena Petrova. (2006). How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  97. Ana Siljak. (December 2016). Nikolai Berdiaev and the Origin of Russian Messianism. The Journal of Modern History. Volume 88, Number 4. https://doi.org/10.1086/688982
  98. Mikhail F. Antonov. Bill Keller. (January 28, 1990). Yearning for an Iron Hand. The New York Times Magazine. 19.
  99. Serge Schmemann. (February 20, 1994). Russia Lurches Into Reform, But Old Ways Are Tenacious. The New York Times.
  100. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  101. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  102. Marquis de Custine. (1989). Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia. New York: Doubleday. 437.
  103. Andrei Sinyavsky [Abram Tertz, pseudonym]. (July 19, 1965). Thought Unaware. New Leader 48, no. 15. 1.
  104. Hedrick Smith. (1976). The Russians. New York: Times Books, Quadrangle. 120–21.
  105. Anna Hunt. (November 2001). So Has the Russian Mafia Met Its Match? The Independent. https://www.malkin-71.net/news/business/news/so-has-russian-mafia-finally-met-its-match-9256977.html
  106. The New York Times, (November 7, 2007).
  107. Marshall I. Goldman. (June 1990). Gorbachev at Risk. World Monitor. 38.
  108. Johnson’s Russia List #20, (January 29, 2008).
  109. Johnson’s Russia List #25, (February 5, 2008).
  110. Johnson’s Russia List #20, (January 29, 2008).
  111. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  112. Robert G. Kaiser. (July 8, 2001). Washington Post Book World.
  113. George Vernadsky. (1953). The Mongols and Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 337.
  114. Yuri Afanasyev. (January 31, 1991). The Coming Dictatorship. The New York Review of Books. 38.
  115. George F. Kennan. (February 5, 1989). After the Cold War. The New York Times Magazine. 38.
  116. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  117. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  118. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  119. 119.0 119.1 Sorokina, Anna. (2018, July). What should you say when Russians ask ‘How are you’? Russia Beyond. https://www.rbth.com/education/328673-how-are-you-russian
  120. Meyer, Erin. (2014). The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. https://tinyurl.com/TheCultureMap (FULL BOOK).
  121. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  122. Serge Schmemann. (December 26, 1993). What Would Happen If...? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/26/books/what-would-happen-if.html
  123. Richard Lourie and Aleksei Mikhalev. (June 18, 1989). Why You'll Never Have Fun in Russian. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/18/books/why-you-ll-never-have-fun-in-russian.html
  124. Barbara Monahan. (1983). A Dictionary of Russian Gesture. Tenafly, NJ: Hermitage. 15.
  125. George F. Kennan. (1967). Memoirs, 1925–1950. Boston: Little, Brown. 564.
  126. The Soviet Union Approach to Negotiation: Selected Writings Compiled by the Subcommitte on National Security and International Operations (pursuant to S. Res. 24, 91st Congress). (1969). https://books.google.ru/books?id=T7lgtPwJqq4C
  127. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  128. Ripp, Victor. (1990). Pizza in Pushkin Square: What Russians Think About Americans and the American Way of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-66725-2.
  129. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  130. Inge Morath and Arthur Miller. (1969). In Russia. New York: Viking. 15.
  131. Nina Belyaeva. Quoted by Georgie Anne Geyer. (May 31, 1990). “… wrong basket?” The Washington Times.
  132. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  133. Geoffrey Hosking. (1990). The Awakening of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  134. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  135. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  136. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  137. David M. Buss, "The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating", where research was run across 37 cultures.
  138. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  139. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  140. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  141. Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  142. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  143. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  144. ITAR-TASS Reports Women Earn Less Than Men, Have Better Education. (March 8, 2005). Statistics from Russia’s State Statistics Committee. (It is not stated where or how Poleyev did his research).
  145. Hingley, Ronald. (1977). The Russian Mind. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 188. https://archive.org/details/russianmind00hing
  146. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  147. Elena Petrova. (2006). How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  148. The Washington Post. (October 28, 1994).
  149. Serge Schmemann. (February 20, 1994). Russia Lurches Into Reform, But Old Ways Are Tenacious. The New York Times.
  150. Crossroads. (Spring 1991). Newsletter of the American Collegiate Consortium for East-West Cultural and Academic Exchange. Middlebury, VT.
  151. Landon Pearson. (1990), Children of Glasnost: Growing Up Soviet. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 94.
  152. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  153. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  154. Pamela Druckerman. (March 25, 2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. ISBN: 978-0143113294
  155. Pamela Druckerman. (March 25, 2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. ISBN: 978-0143113294
  156. Sauer, Derk. Typisch Russisch. (Typically Russian). Amsterdam: Veen, (2001). https://www.russlandjournal.de/typisch-russisch/
  157. Psychologist Alexei Zinger.
  158. Pamela Druckerman. (March 25, 2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. ISBN: 978-0143113294
  159. Pamela Druckerman. (March 25, 2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. ISBN: 978-0143113294
  160. Pamela Druckerman. (2008). Sleeping Around the World. January Magazine. https://www.januarymagazine.com/features/lustexc.html
  161. Wendy Z. Goldman. (1993). Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936. Cambridge. 107
  162. Natalia Lebina. (1999). Povsednevnaia zhizn’sovetskogo goroda: normy i anomalii, 1920–1930 gody. St Petersburg. 272.
  163. Igal Halfin. (2002). Intimacy in an Ideological Key: The Communist Case of the 1920s and 1930s’, in Language and Revolution: Making Modern Political Identities. London. 187–188.
  164. Orlando Figes. (2008). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. Picador.
  165. Leon Trotsky. (1973). Problems of Everyday Life: Creating the Foundations of a New Society in Revolutionary Russia. London. 72
  166. Alex Inkeles & Raymond Augustine Bauer. (1959). The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society. Cambridge, Mass. 205.
  167. Masha Gessen, (2017). The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
  168. Julia Ioffe. (2010). The Cheating Cheaters of Moscow How infidelity has become accepted and even expected in Russia, Slate.
  169. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  170. Murray Feshbach. (November 1, 1994). Kennan Institute, Washington, DC.
  171. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  172. Alaka Malwade Basu. (2003). The Sociocultural and Political Aspects of Abortion: Global Perspectives. Greenwood Publishing Group.
  173. Chloe Arnold. Abortion Remains Top Birth-Control Option In Russia. (June 28, 2008). Radio Free Europe.
  174. Russian Survey Highlights-Results of the 2011 Russian. (2011). CDC.
  175. Putin’s Next Target Is Russia’s Abortion Culture. (October 3, 2017). Foreign Policy.
  176. Marriage in Russia, Facts and Details. http://factsanddetails.com/russia/People_and_Life/sub9_2d/entry-5011.html
  177. Murray Feshbach. Russian Military: Population and Health Constraints. Prepared for the Conference on Russian Power Structures: Present and Future Roles in Russian Politics, sponsored by the Swedish Research Institute of National Defense and the Swedish Defense Commission, Stockholm, October 17–18, 2007.
  178. Moscow Times, (November 29, 2001).
  179. Women’s Day was formerly known as International Women’s Day.
  180. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  181. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  182. ITAR-TASS Reports Women Earn Less Than Men, Have Better Education. (March 8, 2005). Statistics from Russia’s State Statistics Committee. (It is not stated where or how Poleyev did his research).
  183. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  184. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  185. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  186. Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages. Hippocrene Books.
  187. Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (1977). Novosti. 38.
  188. ITAR-TASS Reports Women Earn Less Than Men, Have Better Education. (March 8, 2005). Statistics from Russia’s State Statistics Committee.
  189. Richmond, Yale. (2008). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
  190. Louneva, Tanya, "Business Negotiations Between Americans and Russians" (2010). Wharton Research Scholars. 57. https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=wharton_research_scholars
  191. Russia: Among the Worst Countries for Expats. Expat Insider 2021. Internations. https://www.internations.org/expat-insider/2021/russia-40134
  192. Adapted from Vladimir Zhelvis, Xenophobe’s Guide to the Russians (2001; London: Oval Books, 2010).
  193. Why do so few Russians speak good English? https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/330073-why-russians-speak-english March 6, 2019 YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA.
  194. Sinelshikova, Yekaterina. (January 29, 2018). Why People Hate Muscovites. Russian Beyond. https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/327414-why-people-hate-muscovites .
  195. Klien, Naomi. (2008). The Shock Doctrine. "In this...alternative history of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free-market economic revolution, Naomi Klein challenges the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory. From Chile in 1973 to Iraq today, Klein shows how Friedman and his followers have repeatedly harnessed terrible shocks and violence to implement their radical policies. As John Gray wrote in The Guardian, "There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books."
  196. The wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. (17 April 2014). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
  197. L. Robert Kohls, Executive Director, The Washington International Center. Washington, D.C., April 1984.
  198. Kaplan, Dana Evan (Aug 15, 2005). The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism. Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-521-82204-6.
  199. http://shitmydadsays.com/
  200. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Is_True_and_Everything_Is_Possible

Bibliography

e 


Videos

Install extension

About the Authors

Edit this page

Travis

Travis.jpeg

Nitish

Nitish.jpeg

Olga

Olga.jpeg

Michael

Michael.jpeg

Gallery


Old

Looking for more authors for the 2nd edition.

Second edition, 2 sections:

Section 1: Written by myself (Travis Lee Bailey). The majority of my focus, the Yeltsin years and how business works in Russia today.

Section 2: Culture. Pictures. Museums. It can be *anywhere* in Russia, but the primary focus for edition 2 will be in Moscow, and maybe St. Pete's.

Differences between Russians and Americans

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma -- Winston Churchill

Translation: Russian is a deep deep mystery to English and Americans.

Television Program

{{#ev:youtube|TFG9qtvfJy8}}

Russian language television program in which Travis Lee Bailey spoke at length about the differences between Americans and Russians. (February 2020).


Section 1: Communication - Russians are Coconuts, Americans are Peaches

Peach vs. Coconut

Peaches and coconuts THIS ONE with flags WITH link (1).jpg

PEACH VS. COCONUT: FRIENDLY DOES NOT EQUAL RELATIONSHIP BASED

Just as it is easy to misinterpret the reason for an icebreaker activity, it’s easy to mistake certain social customs of Americans that might suggest strong personal connections where none are intended. For example, Americans are more likely than those from many cultures to smile at strangers and to engage in personal discussions with people they hardly know. Others may interpret this “friendliness” as an offer of friendship. Later, when the Americans don’t follow through on their unintended offer, those other cultures often accuse them of being “fake” or “hypocritical.”

Igor Agapova...tells this story about his first trip to the United States:

I sat down next to a stranger on the airplane for a nine-hour flight to New York. This American began asking me very personal questions: did I have any children, was it my first trip to the U.S., what was I leaving behind in Russia? And he began to also share very personal information about himself. He showed me pictures of his children, told me he was a bass player, and talked about how difficult his frequent traveling was for his wife, who was with his newborn child right now in Florida.
In response, Agapova started to do something that was unnatural for him and unusual in Russian culture—he shared his personal story quite openly with this friendly stranger, thinking they had built an unusually deep friendship in a short period of time. The sequel was quite disappointing:
I thought that after this type of connection, we would be friends for a very long time. When the airplane landed, imagine my surprise when, as I reached for a piece of paper in order to write down my phone number, my new friend stood up and with a friendly wave of his hand said, “Nice to meet you! Have a great trip!” And that was it. I never saw him again. I felt he had purposely tricked me into opening up when he had no intention of following through on the relationship he had instigated.

Kurt Lewin was one of the first social scientists to explain individual personality as being partially formed by the cultural system in which a person was raised.

Americans are Peaches and Russians are Coconuts
Friendly does not equal relationship based

Authors Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner later expanded on Lewin’s model to explain how:

Different cultures have different layers of information that they divulge publicly or reserve for private relationships.

These models are frequently referred to as the peach and coconut models of personal interaction. In peach cultures like the United States or Brazil, to name a couple, people tend to be friendly (“soft”) with others they have just met:

  1. They smile frequently at strangers,
  2. move quickly to first-name usage,
  3. share information about themselves, and
  4. ask personal questions of those they hardly know.

But after a little friendly interaction with a peach person, you may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self. In these cultures, friendliness does not equal friendship.

If you are a peach person traveling in a coconut culture, be aware of the Russian saying “If we pass a stranger on the street who is smiling, we know with certainty that that person is crazy . . . or else American.”

In coconut cultures such Russia and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with. They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately. But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier. And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer….[1]

If you enter a room in Moscow (or Belgrade, Prague, or even Munich or Stockholm) and find a group of solemn-looking managers who make no effort to chat, do not take this as a sign that the culture does not value relationship building. On the contrary, it is through building a warm personal connection over time that your coconut-culture counterparts will become trusting, loyal partners.[2]

The culture map - Erin Meyer (excerpt about Russia):

Americans expect total honesty in marriage

[Duplicate]

The ideal of total honesty that is professed in many American marriages is alien to the Russian mentality. Muriel and Joyce were surprised that their Russian husbands did not tell them about their former girlfriends, and did not want to hear about their wives' previous experiences. "Those things are private," Sergei explained. "If you're married and you're attracted to someone else, you keep it to yourself. Otherwise you only hurt your spouse's feelings." Muriel's arguments about honesty got nowhere. "I'm not going to tell you what I do outside the house," Sergei retorted. "All this blathering Americans think is honesty only winds up offending everyone."[3]

Americans talk a lot about Mental health - revealing every secret

The American infatuation with "professional help" and "mental health" puts most Russians off. Russians do not like to engage in detailed analysis of their feelings towards each other with their spouse or lover. Russians believe that people should solve problems and conflicts on their own, or with help from friends. A Russian journalist was surprised by the widespread role of therapists in the United States. "And I want to emphasize a specific trait-the aspiration of Americans to total candor. To unveil everything secret, to talk through everything." For Russians, true intimacy lies in the silence of a couple who understand each other by a look or a gesture. As a matter of fact, the American penchant for self-analysis and "letting it all hang out" strikes Russians as mostly superficial: when it comes to a real opening up, Russians find Americans quite closed.[3]

Common courtesies

Americans find Russian rude because they hardly ever say please or thank you

Their American friends found Sergei and Pyotr rude because they hardly ever said "please" and "thank you." In Russian, polite requests are expressed primarily through a rise and fall in intonation, or through expressions such as "be so kind." Sergei was very polite in Russian, but "Give me this" or "Pass the bread" sounded extremely rude to Muriel's American friends.

Nor do Russians use a pen to say thank you. One Russian bride had to be pushed by her American mother-in-law to write thank you notes for the wedding gifts. "Russians don't write them," she said in exasperation.

Fyodor was offended when people he had just met addressed him by his first name. So were Boris's Russian friends when Mary C. addressed them by their first names instead of by the first name and patronymic. "I can't remember everybody's father's name!" she wailed. "It's hard enough remembering all the first names in this impossible language!"[3]

Smiling

Gestures and body language can also cause misunderstandings. For an American a smile on being introduced signals pleasure at making a new acquaintance, and a willingness to engage in conversation. Russians do not smile on meeting people.

When Carol first introduced her husband Fyodor to scientists who could be professionally helpful, his face was locked in a scowl. "Why should I smile at someone I don't know?" he asked her. "I'm not a clown. If I'm ready for a serious conversation I have to look serious." In Russia a smile on meeting a stranger may be interpreted as a sign that the person is not serious about the upcoming talk, or that he has a hidden agenda under a superficial and hypocritical smile. Carol explained to Fyodor that his refusal to smile made colleagues think he was being cold and unfriendly.

As an American professor of Russian observed, Russians are accustomed to using an unsmiling expression as a barrier between themselves and the outside world: The Russians' lack of personal space at home in their apartments, on public transportation or on the job causes them to erect their personal space boundaries next to their skin. Therefore it is common for Russians to have deadpan or frozen expressions on their faces. We tend to perceive this as unfriendly and it may ruffle our feathers."[3]

Three likely explanations for Russians not smiling

People in different cultures communicate with one another. Different cultures have different “display rules,” or norms that dictate how individuals should express themselves.

Display rules are often governed by something called “social distance,” which refers to the expectation of privacy in a given culture. Studies have found that in Russia, social distance is lower relative to the U.S., meaning that people generally expect to be approached by strangers and there’s more mutual understanding. There’s less pressure to display a positive emotion like smiling to signal friendliness or openness, because it’s generally assumed you’re already on the same wavelength.

When there’s greater social distance, there’s more wiggle room to get into trouble during a chance encounter. Because Americans expect a modicum of privacy even when out in public, strangers approach one another less frequently. When it does happen, it can be anxiety-inducing.

So when approaching a stranger, a smile can grease the social wheels of the interaction and help the other person feel at ease.[4]

Countries with lots of immigration have historically relied more on nonverbal communication. Thus, people there might smile more. Emotional expressiveness was correlated with diversity. In other words, when there are a lot of immigrants around, you might have to smile more to build trust and cooperation, since you don’t all speak the same language.

In countries that are more uniform, people were more likely to smile to show they were superior to one another.[5]

😀😀😀😀😀 Russians smile less because they used to be slaves.(seefdom) 😐😐😐😐

Gesturing

Russians tend to gesture far more than Americans. Muriel thought Sergei was upset when he waved his arm or hammered his fist on the table, but this was merely nonverbal punctuation. Pyotr's habit of shaking his index finger at her, as though scolding a naughty child, infuriated Joyce. "Cut it out and stop lecturing me!" she snapped. "I'm not lecturing you," he protested, surprised. "I'm just saying be sure you lock the door when you leave."[3]

Personal space - eye contact

Muriel had to explain to her girlfriends that when Sergei moved very close to them during a conversation, he was not making passes. He would stand eight inches away, much closer than the distance at which Americans feel comfortable: it's the Russian way. Nor was he trying to look soulfully and romantically into their eyes.

  • Russians are in the habit of looking directly and unblinkingly at the person they are addressing. Fred had to tell Irina not to "stare" at his American friends, who were uncomfortable when she concentrated her gaze on them.

Body language situations are particularly tricky because the problem remains unstated; the American does not say "You're standing so close I feel uncomfortable," and a Russian does not ask "Why are you looking away from me?"[3]

Physical contact between the opposite sex

On meeting and parting there is far more embracing, kissing and holding hands among Russians than among Americans. Carol explained to her girlfriend that Fyodor was not trying to flirt when he took her arm while escorting her to a cab after dinner; he was being a gentleman.

She, in turn, could not get used to the way the Russian wives of her American friends took her arm in the street.

Sergei learned not to embrace or kiss American men on meeting or parting, a friendly Russian gesture which can be drastically misinterpreted by American men.[3]

Conversational style

Russians talk in lengthy, uninterrupted monologues

Then there are differences in conversational style. Russians tend to talk in lengthy, uninterrupted monologues, and find the American style of short answers and repartee brusque and rude. Americans normally talk about their activities and experiences what they have done, where they have gone, whom they have seen. For Russians, anything and everything is grist for the mill: people, ideas, politics, books, movies. "They can even analyze a borshch," Muriel commented, "as though it were a theoretical problem, like the existence of God."

Americans get straight to the point

When answering a question, Americans get straight to the point. Russians tend to go back to the beginning of time. "Every time someone asks Fyodor how he likes America, all he has to do is say 'fine,"' Carol sighed. "Instead out comes a doctoral thesis on the history of the United States and what's wrong with the country." "When my aunt asked Pyotr how his mother was, he gave her the woman's entire medical history," Joyce said.

  • The Russian feels it is discourteous to give a short answer.
  • The American resents being held captive to a long monologue.
  • Americans feel that simplicity and brevity are the soul of wit and wisdom.
  • For Russians, a valuable idea is a complex idea.

Muriel phoned a friend for some information and spent only a minute or two on pleasantries before getting down to business. In Moscow there would first have been a long conversation about the family, the weather, and so on. Starting off with a request, or responding with "What can I do for you?" would be rude.

To American spouses and friends, the endless Russian stories that are a staple of Russian gettogethers can be boring and pompous. Americans like to save time and get to the point. The Russian prefers to go around in circles, lacing his speech with literary, mythological or historical allusions. As the cultural anthropologist Edward Hall noted,

  • "Americans are often uncomfortable with indirectness . . . Most Americans keep their social conversations light, rather than engaging in serious, intellectual or philosophical discussions, a trait which especially bothers Europeans."

"I'm wasting my time with your friends," Sergei grumbled at Muriel. "I keep trying to tell them something interesting, and they sit there fidgeting and interrupting."

Years of living in fear of the secret police make Russians hesitant to state their ideas explicitly

  • Years of living in fear of the secret police make Russians hesitant to state their ideas explicitly, and they often seek a veiled or subtle way of conveying a thought. If the listener is intelligent, he should understand what is meant, and it is insulting to spoonfeed him.
  • For the American, speaking intelligently means speaking directly and clearly.

"I feel like they're talking in code," Joyce complained of Pyotr and his friends. "Why can't they just say what they mean?" Many Russians see their [American] mates as childish and unsophisticated.' "I can see my American friends' eyes glaze over when Sergei gets going on one of his half-hour philosophical diatribes," Muriel said. "That just convinces him even more of how superior he and his friends are to all of us."[3]

Section 2: SEX

Russians have a glaring contrast between a kind of puritanism that avoids the slightest mention of sex and a tolerance for obscene jokes and language that shocks even sophisticated Westerners.

A recent survey of sexual activity in fifteen countries shows Americans as the most active nationality, engaging in sex 135 times per year, with Russians in second place with 133 acts annually.

When Joyce told Pyotr that she was getting up from bed to insert her diaphragm he was shocked. "That female stuff-go do it and don't talk about it!" he snapped. He insisted that she always jump up and "wash" immediately after sex since, like many Russian men, he was convinced that "washing" was an effective means of contraception-and besides, he felt that after sex a woman was "dirty." Joyce would have much preferred to fall asleep in his arms, but he saw her reluctance as yet another proof of her poor hygiene.

Russian mothers rarely talk about sex or contraception to their daughters, and, even though most Russian doctors are women, many young women are too embarrassed to speak to them.

Seventy per cent of Soviet women say they have never experienced orgasm." Partly this is because many Russian men don't know, or don't care, what satisfies a woman, but another common reason is the fear of pregnancy and a widespread belief that female orgasm increases chances of conception.

In Russia talking about sex - which many Americans take for granted-was for perverts and prostitutes. This silence appears to have been a blessing for many American men, tired of being told what to do during every minute of lovemaking. Unless he were hurting her, a Russian would be horrified by his wife's telling him she did not like what he was doing, and would be even more shocked were she to tell him what he should do. One Muscovite whose marriage ended in divorce was repelled by his American wife's behavior. "She was unbelievably aggressive in bed," he recalled. "Always telling me what she liked and what she didn't, put my hand here and my tongue there, trying to program me as though I were a computer. And she never shut up. It was like being at a horizontal seminar, not like making love."

In Russia, a woman who initiates sex is considered extremely forward. It is the man who calls the shots. Even though Muriel had to get up early, Sergei insisted on having sex whenever he wanted, even at five in the morning after an all-night drinking bout. A man does not expect his initiatives to be rejected. "

Despite this "chauvinist" attitude, Russians can seem very romantic to American women who have talked themselves hoarse about sex inside and outside the bedroom. apart from vulgar "men's language" there is no "erotic language" in Russian, and that the language barely has the linguistic tools with which to talk about sex. "Even married couples," writes Kon, "find themselves in terrible straits because they have no acceptable words to express their specific desires or explain their problems, even to each other."

Since Russian women have been brought up to think that displaying an interest in sex is indecent, many never dared say anything if a man ignored foreplay.[3]

Section 3: Abortion

  • During Soviet times "women terminated seven pregnancies on average during their lifetimes."[6]
  • Women have, on average, five abortions in their lifetime, two of which are illegal.[7]
  • Lifetime abortions per woman: Average number of abortions a Russian woman has during her reproductive years.
    • 1990: 3.0,
    • 2006: 1.2,
    • 2010: 1.0.[8]
  • 10 percent of women who undergo [abortion] are left sterile. According to U.S. demographer Murray Feshbach, two of every three pregnancies in Russia end in abortion, and women, on average, have six to eight abortions during their lifetime; at least 80 percent of all women have a pathology (abnormality) during pregnancy; and only 30 percent of all children are born healthy.[9]
  • In 1920.... the Soviet Union became the first state in the world to legalize abortion... (it was banned once before — for a 20-year period beginning with Josef Stalin in 1936)...official figures show almost 930,000 women terminate a pregnancy each year. That number is half of what it was in 1995, and one seventh what it was for the Soviet Union in 1965, when abortions nearly tripled the number of births.[10]
  • Birth control and abortion in Russia

Section 4: Fidelity - Adultery - Russians cheat A LOT, Americans act like puritans

Attitudes towards sexual fidelity also differ. In Russia, the shortage of men provides considerable opportunities for short and long-term affairs, and for Russian men infidelity is the rule rather than the exception. Since men are at a premium, a wife may have to put up with her husband's having a permanent mistress and even an out-of-wedlock child. Such a "second family" is quite common, and a man is not criticized for it; in fact, he may be praised for keeping both women happy by not abandoning either of them.

A Russian woman will not be criticized for leaving a husband who beats her or who is an inveterate drunkard, but male adultery is not assumed to be automatic grounds for the wife's walking out.

A man is expected to be discrete, and to spare his wife's feelings by keeping his dalliances from her.[3]

Extramarital sex, both casual and long-term, is quite common; more than three quarters of the people surveyed had extramarital contacts in 1989, whereas in 1969, the figure was less than half. But public opinion is critical of extramarital sex. In a 1992 survey only 23 percent agreed that it is okay to have a lover as well as a husband or wife, while 50 percent disagreed. Extramarital affairs seem to be morally more acceptable for men than for women.[11]

During the Soviet Union, “Sex was the last thing they couldn’t take away from us, and that’s why we did it so much. Everyone had affairs with everyone. Moscow was the most erotic city in the world.”

One REASON there’s so much adultery in Russia is that there are so few men. Since the 1980s the average life expectancy for Russian men has fallen from sixty-five to fifty-eight. They die of alcoholism, cigarettes, job injuries, and car accidents. By the time men and women reach sixty-five there are just 46 Russian men left for every 100 women (compared with 72 men for every 100 women of that age in the United States).

These skewed demographics infect romance. In Moscow I have lunch with a well-off single woman in her forties who tells me that if she didn’t go out with married men she’d have almost no one to date. In fact, she doesn’t know any single women who don’t date married men. And none of them try to hide this. For Russian women in their thirties and forties, let alone older ones, a man who isn’t married or an alcoholic is as rare as a Faberge egg.

Woman "need to accept [men cheating], because he feeds her, her children, everybody. She needs a strong man, but a strong man can leave for one or two nights.”

Eighteen-year-old Katya is tall and skinny, with a pageboy haircut and a precocious command of English. She’s animated and confident, especially when describing what she wants in a husband: someone who doesn’t drink or beat her. She says she’ll be lucky if she finds someone like this. She’s just a few years shy of marrying age. Though she has the occasional fling, there are no significant prospects on the horizon. Boys her age are “very cruel, and they drink.” The few serious ones are more focused on their careers than on relationships, and there’s a lot of competition for them. “For me, of course I would like my husband to be faithful, and I will do the same, but I don’t know, it depends on the situation. But if we have a good relationship as family partners, we have children, then if he has someone on the side, I have someone on the side, it’s okay, so that the child will grow up in a family with both parents.”

In the Russian edition of Cosmopolitan, Russia’s bestselling magazine, is running a primer for women on how to hide their lovers from their husbands.

Outside Russia’s big cities some husbands don’t even bother hiding their affairs.

Russians, like Americans, seem to believe that married people shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. But whereas in America that presupposes a harmless emotional openness and intimacy, in Russia it often means exposing harsh truths about affairs.

If there’s a 50 percent affair rate for men, then presumably the other half of men don’t cheat. So where are these missing men? I can’t find them. The whole time I’m in Moscow, I don’t meet a single person who admits to being monogamous.[12]

In Moscow, women in their forties told me that, by necessity, they only date married men. That's because, since the life expectancy for Russian men has fallen so sharply (to 59) that by age 65 there are just 46 men left for every 100 women.

And it was clear that Russian men flaunted this demographic advantage. With the exception of a pastor (who was sitting with his wife at the time), I didn't meet a single married man in Russia who admitted to being monogamous.

A family psychologist whom I had intended to interview as an "expert" boasted about her own extramarital relationships and insisted that given Russia's endemic alcoholism, violent crime, and tiny apartments, affairs are "obligatory."[13]

Soviet policies which encouraged adultery

From the book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

The Bolsheviks also intervened more directly in domestic life. The new Code on Marriage and the Family (1918) established a legislative framework that clearly aimed to facilitate the breakdown of the traditional family. It removed the influence of the Church from marriage and divorce, making both a process of simple registration with the state. It granted the same legal rights to de facto marriages (couples living together) as it gave to legal marriages. The Code turned divorce from a luxury for the rich to something that was easy and affordable for all. The result was a huge increase in casual marriages and the highest rate of divorce in the world – three times higher than in France or Germany and twenty-six times higher than in England by 1926 – as the collapse of the Christianpatriarchal order and the chaos of the revolutionary years loosened sexual morals along with family and communal ties. 13

In the early years of Soviet power, family breakdown was so common among revolutionary activists that it almost constituted an occupational hazard. Casual relationships were practically the norm in Bolshevik circles during the Civil War, when any comrade could be sent at a moment’s notice to some distant sector of the front. Such relaxed attitudes remained common throughout the 1920s, as Party activists and their young emulators in the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) were taught to put their commitment to the proletariat before romantic love or family. Sexual promiscuity was more pronounced in the Party’s youthful ranks than among Soviet youth in general. Many Bolsheviks regarded sexual licence as a form of liberation from bourgeois moral conventions and as a sign of ‘Soviet modernity’. Some even advocated promiscuity as a way to counteract the formation of coupling relationships that separated lovers from the collective and detracted from their loyalty to the Party. 14

It was a commonplace that the Bolshevik made a bad husband and father because the demands of the Party took him away from the home. ‘We Communists don’t know our own families,’ remarked one Moscow Bolshevik. ‘You leave early and come home late. You seldom see your wife and almost never see your children.’ At Party congresses, where the issue was discussed throughout the 1920s, it was recognized that Bolsheviks were far more likely than non-Party husbands to abandon wives and families, and that this had much to do with the primacy of Party loyalties over sexual fidelity. But in fact the problem of absent wives and mothers was almost as acute in Party circles, as indeed it was in the broader circles of the Soviet intelligentsia, where most women were involved in the public sphere. 15

Khrushchev administration policies encourages infidelity

For decades in the Soviet Union had been trying, and failing, to recover from the catastrophic population loss caused by the Second World War and the Gulag extermination system. The thrust of the population policies initiated by Khrushchev was to get as many women as possible to have children by the comparatively few surviving men. The policies dictated that men who fathered children out of wedlock would not be held responsible for child support but the state would help the single mother both with financial subsidies and with childcare: she could even leave the child at an orphanage for any length of time, as many times as she needed, without forfeiting her parental rights. The state endeavored to remove any stigma associated with resorting to the help of orphanages, or with single motherhood and having children out of wedlock. Women could put down a fictitious man as the father on the child’s birth certificate—or even name the actual father, without his having to fear being burdened with responsibility. “The new project was designed to encourage both men and women to have non-conjugal sexual relationships that would result in procreation,” writes historian Mie Nakachi.[14]

Russians are willing to cheat more than 24 other countries

By 1998, a study showed that Russian men and women led their peers in 24 other countries in their willingness to engage in and approve of extramarital affairs. Faithfulness in marriage is seen as something that is nice but unrealistic. If women don't really expect it of their husbands, they can pre-empt feelings of shock and betrayal.[15]

Section 3: Privacy - There is no word for privacy in Russian

There is no word for privacy in the Russian language.* (See also "smiling")

A husband married to an American was accustomed to Russia where living in a two-room apartment with his parents, grandfather and sister, he was able to ignore Muriel's telephone conversations, the television and the clatter of pots and pans.

"It's as though he builds an invisible wall around himself," Muriel said. "Their language doesn't even have a word for privacy, and in Russia there was so little of it that they simply create their personal space out of nothing."

Americans do not give up their "personal space" lightly. Mary C. refused to have the living room in her St. Petersburg apartment double as a bedroom, and insisted on making the smaller room, which Boris wanted as a study, into the bedroom.

Many Russians don't understand why two people, even if they plan to have children, would need four or six rooms.[3]

Section 4: Home life

Housework

Most wives in Russia [wind] up doing all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Even if a Russian wife works, the man looks on himself as the breadwinner and on her as responsible for the housework and child care.

Russian men...are thrown off by the unwillingness of "liberated" American women to take on the role of homemaker.[3]


Household furnishings

Gelsey Kirkland found Baryshnikov's austerely furnished country house heavy, dark and oppressive, but he loved the place because it reminded him of Russia.' The Oswalds' first house in America was shabbily furnished and decrepit, but Marina was enchanted by the privacy and space.' Even a woman as sophisticated as Raissa Gorbachev was amazed by the spaciousness of the home of the American family with whom she had tea during her visit to the United States, and by the fact that each of the four children had his own bedroom.'

When everything is available, Russians can become incredibly demanding. Nothing but the best will do. A new house or apartment is treated as a home for life, for in Russia if you were lucky enough to find a nice place to live, moving again was furthest from your thoughts. When Carol and Fyodor wanted to buy an apartment they saw at least eighty places before Fyodor was satisfied. The rooms were too small or the lobby was unattractive, or there was no view. When it comes to wallpaper, furniture, and china, the Russian spouse is likely to opt for the most colorful, extravagant, and expensive items.

The memory of hundreds of virtually identical Soviet interiors is engraved on Russians' minds. The standard set of glossy dark wood furniture, a couch doubling as a bed, a rug hanging on the wall, glass-enclosed bookcases, a large television set and a sideboard with china and crystal-all this is transferred like a decal to the new American home. Svetlana could not imagine doing without a hall with a large mirror for the ritual hair-combing that takes place the minute a Russian enters, or a rack for the boots and shoes that are exchanged for slippers when coming in from snowy streets.

"Mary keeps saying Russian furniture is gloomy," Boris complained. "But I don't really like that rug that looks as if it's from the Museum of Modern Art." "I didn't want the place to look like a Russian souvenir store," Joyce recalled. "Pyotr had all these clumsy wooden figures and nesting dolls, and cheap reproductions of Impressionist landscapes.[3]

Clothing - appearance

Carol could not make Fyodor wear a tie-which, like so many Russian men, he detested-to anything other than a wedding or a funeral.

In Russia men often wear boxer shorts and tank top undershirts at home, but Carol could not stand Fyodor's sitting around the house in his underwear. Many American wives were surprised to discover that undershirts and boxer shorts doubled for their husbands as night clothes, since men's pajamas are virtually nonexistent in Russia.

Nor do most Russian men use deodorant or change their underwear. Several Russian women commented that they had originally been attracted to their American spouses because they were so incredibly "clean" compared to Russians.

Russian women spend hours primping in front of the mirror, styling their hair and freshening their makeup.

Today much has changed, but high prices mean that many Russians still have relatively few clothes. Laundry and dry cleaning facilities are still poor, expensive and inconveniently located, and Americans are often surprised to see their Russian business associates wearing the same clothes day after day

When the laundry lost an old and ragged undershirt, Pyotr was convinced that this cherished piece of clothing had been deliberately stolen.

Russians often find American women badly dressed. "With all the stores bursting with clothes, they run around in torn jeans and Tshirts with those silly advertisements on them!" Svetlana exclaimed. "I don't understand them."

Regardless of the pressures of housework, jobs and standing in line, Russian men expect their wives to be well groomed, their hair perfectly set, their nails manicured and polished.

“All you American females yapping about liberation, always in a rush-you look as if you came off the garbage heap! No wonder you couldn't find an American husband!"

Fyodor could not understand why Carol refused to paint her toenails bright red the way many Russian women do. "It makes me look like a whore," she said.[3]

Walking barefoot and sitting on the floor

Sergei and Pyotr disliked their wives' habits of kicking off their shoes, walking around barefoot, and sitting on the floor. Aside from being "unaesthetic," walking barefoot meant catching cold, and sitting on the floor was guaranteed to produce all kinds of feminine pelvic problems alluded to in somber whispers.[3]

Table manners

At dinner the Russians did not wait for the hostess to start eating before diving in.[3]


Perceptions of time: Russians are always late

Being late seems to be part of the Russian makeup. The anthropologist Edward Hall has described two types of time, monochronous and polychronous, each true for one culture but not for another. The United States goes by monochronous time, meaning that an American gives his undivided attention to one event before proceeding to the next. He takes deadlines seriously, values promptness, and attaches importance to short-term relationships. Russians basically live in polychronous time, in which a person deals simultaneously with multiple events and is very flexible about appointments. He is always ready to change his schedule at a moment's notice to accommodate a friend or relative, since he attaches more importance to long-term relationships than to shortterm ones.

Muriel would make lunch appointments with magazine editors three weeks ahead. Sergei would call up a busy executive in the morning hoping to see him that afternoon. Who knew what might happen three weeks hence? Fyodor thought it was ridiculous for Carol to invite guests to dinner two weeks in advance; Carol found it odd when his Russian friends called up late Friday night to invite them to dinner the next evening. As Ronald Hingley observed, "To the excessively time-geared Westerner, Russia still seems to operate in an atmosphere relatively emancipated from the clock."' Fyodor hardly ever wore a watch unless Carol reminded him that he had a very important appointment. He canceled a promising job interview because his best friend from Russia, whom he had been seeing almost every day during the man's month-long visit to America, called up that morning and said he needed to talk. If a friend or family member needs something, appointments and business commitments go by the board. Such an attitude does not go over well in American offices. Fyodor's boss threatened to fire him because of his chronic tardiness, and only an alarm clock set forty-five minutes ahead forced him to change his behavior.

Americans naturally quantify time. They will meet a friend in ten minutes, finish a project in five months, and apologize if they are more than five minutes late." The Russian concept of time is porous. Joyce finally figured out that when Pyotr said "I'll be ready in an hour" he meant two hours; "in twenty minutes" translated into forty-five; "right away" or "immediately" meant in fifteen minutes. The vagueness of Russian time expressions can drive American spouses crazy. "He'll come during the second half of the day" means anytime between 1 P.M. and 6 P.M., while "around seven o'clock" covers the period from 6:10 to 7:50.[3]

Section 5: Russians in business

'"Rob" in Robota (work) is "slave" in Russian

Russian and (American) business cultures both:

  1. both value flexible scheduling rather than organized scheduling (scale 8),
  2. both accept and appreciate open disagreement (scale 7), and
  3. both approach issues of trust through a relationship orientation rather than a task orientation (scale 6).


LEADERSHIP

But there’s a big gap between the two cultures when it comes to leading (scale 4):

  1. Russia favor a hierarchical approach (high power distance)
  2. Americans prefer an egalitarian one (low power distance)

Power Distance of Russia

Russia scored incredibly high on Hofstede’s scale on the Power Distance dimension, with a score of 93. This number clearly shows the difference between the people, and the inequalities between finances of the Russian population. “The huge discrepancy between the less and the more powerful people leads to a great importance of status symbols”.[16]


NEGATIVE CRITICISM

The Evaluating scale provides a bird’s-eye view of just how direct people in different cultures are with negative criticism.

Most European countries fall to the direct side of the scale, with the Russians, Dutch, and Germans tend to offer frank biting criticism.

The French, Spanish, and Russians are generally stereotyped as being indirect communicators because of their:

High-context communication style.
Implicit communication style.

....despite the fact that the French, Spanish, and Russians give negative feedback more directly.

Americans are stereotyped as direct by most of the world, yet when they give negative feedback they are less direct than many European cultures.

Russians
  1. Often pass messages between the lines.
  1. Russians are very subtle communicators. Russians use irony and subtext.
  2. British and Americans speak transparently.
  1. ...but when it comes to criticism Russians have a directness that can startle their international colleagues.
  2. In Russia there is no reservation about expressing your negative criticism openly.
  3. Russia is a very hierarchical culture. (The highest Power Distance in the world).
  1. If you are a boss speaking to your subordinate, you may be very frank.
  2. If you are a subordinate speaking to your boss, you had better be very diplomatic with criticism.
  1. If Russians are speaking with strangers, Russians often speak very forcefully.
  1. "Under Communism, the stranger was the enemy. We didn’t know who we could trust, who would turn us in to the authorities, who would betray us. So we kept strangers at a forceful distance."
  1. Russians are also very direct with people they are close to.
Examples
  1. As an American, if you are walking through the street without a jacket in Russia, little old Russian ladies may stop and chastise you for poor judgment. If you have a screaming baby on the metro or a bus, you maybe chastised to keep the baby quiet.
  2. As a Russian, if you are displeased with the service in a shop or restaurant you can tell the shop assistant or waiter exactly what you think of him, his relatives, his in-laws, his habits, and his sexual bias.
Example

Sandi Carlson called and said a young Russian woman named Anna Golov had recently joined her team and was upsetting a lot of people whose help she needed to get her job done.

Sandi Carlson explained: “This is the fourth Russian coordinator we have had in the group, and with three of them there were similar types of complaints about harsh criticism or what has been perceived as speaking to others inconsiderately.”

Anna Golov herself was in the room with me setting up the classroom checking the IT equipment which was not working properly. Golov on the phone with someone in the IT department.

“I’ve called IT three times this week, and every time you are slow to get here and the solution doesn’t last. The solutions you have given me are entirely unacceptable.” Anna Golov went on scolding the IT manager, each sentence a bit harsher than the one before.

American complaints about Russian staff:

  1. They call me Mr. President
  2. They defer to my opinions
  3. They are reluctant to take initiative
  4. They ask for my constant approval
  5. They treat me like I am king
Example
“Week two into the job, our IT director e-mailed me to outline in detail a problem we were having with the e-mail process and describing various solutions. He ended his e-mail, ‘Mr. President, kindly explain how you would like me to handle this.’

This was the first of many such e-mails from various directors to fill my inbox.

All problems are pushed up, up, up, and I do my best to nudge them way back down.” After all, as Jepsen told the IT manager, “You know the situation better than I do. You are the expert, not me.”

The Russian management team were equally annoyed at American's apparent lack of competence as a leader.

Here are some of the complaints they offered during focus group interviews:

  1. He is a weak, ineffective leader.
  2. He doesn’t know how to manage.
  3. He gave up his corner office on the top floor, suggesting to the company that our team is of no importance.
  4. He is incompetent.

Section 6: Dating Marrying, Divorcing a Russian

Dating

The biggest fear of a Russian girl is not to be married by the age of 30.
Excerpts from Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.

Russian people marry early -- by the age of 22 more than 50% of people are already married. By the age of 25 about 80% of people are married. Since there are less men than women in Russia (10 million more women of marriageable ages than men, according to the latest census), and even less men who are worthy, the competition for eligible men is extremely harsh. As a result, the men become spoiled and promiscuous.[17]

Attractive women in Russia do get many dating offers from Russian men. But those men are seeking only casual sex. They are either already married, unwilling to commit, or they are not worthy of marriage because they cannot provide for a family. A normal man who has a stable job (being able to solely provide for his family), is career and health conscious, and willing to commit are rare. Guys like this are scarce in Russia and not available for long.

In contrast, good-looking women are in abundance in Russia, since the tough competition drives women to perfect their looks.

Historically, during the 20th century, Russia has had many wars, with World War II alone taking 20 million lives, along with another 20 million people dying in Stalin's concentration camps. Nearly 90% of those victims were men. After the war, simply having a man was a blessing. Then there was the 14-year Afghani conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of young Russian men died. Throughout the entire 20th century Russian women had to compete to ensure they had a husband. Now they've got Chechnya - since 1993, just a few years after Russian troops left Afghanistan.

It is scientifically proven that where there are many more women in society than men, men tend to pursue short-term sexual strategies and are unwilling to commit.[17][18]

Generally, most women prefer their husbands to be 5 to 10 years older than themselves, but the younger the woman is, the less of an issue a wider age difference will matter to her.[17]

Many Russian women seeking marriage abroad have advanced careers and live well even according to western standards. The conditions of life in a major Russian city such as Moscow or St. Petersburg are comparable to any European capital. The pace of life in Moscow is similar to the one of New York City.[17]

Online dating

Gift giving

A man must always bring gifts when visiting your girlfriend for the first time, and not just for her but for her family as well. Gifts are very important in Russian courting etiquette. Gifts show that the man is "generous". It is not only about spending money on a girl. Gift giving shows the quality of the soul. It shows a person who is not selfish, a man who enjoys giving and receiving.

Giving generously, without expecting anything in return, was the traditional quality that was the pride of Russian character. Historically, Russians were always proud of their non-materialistic nature, and this included giving generously (if you had something to share). Since you are financially secure, it would be perceived as stinginess, if you did not make occasional gifts when dating a woman. It would mean that you are not generous. That you have something to share and do not share it. She would think that you want everything only for yourself. In the end, she would consider you selfish.[17]

Talking about money

The biggest turn off for Russian women is when men talk about money. Money talks are a big "no-no" in Russian courting etiquette!

Talking about money in the Russian courting stage is as bad as chewing with your mouth open. She just cannot help feeling disgusted.

Being frugal when you are dating equals being cheap. You might accidentally say, "Wow, that's expensive!", and "bam", you may have just blown your chances. Russians call it being greedy, which translates to mean stingy.

According to Russian courting etiquette, men should pay for everything on a date - and do it with a smile. Even if this means he must spend to his last ruble.

If you say that something is expensive, what your woman hears is that you don't think she is worth this money! For example, if you say, "Wow, $5 for a glass of Coke, that's expensive!"; what she hears is that you don't consider her worthy of those $5!

In Russian, the meaning of the word expensive is rather absolute, it means "I cannot afford to buy this item", as opposed to the relative meaning, "this item is overpriced".

Sometimes, men erroneously start explaining the details of their travel arrangements to their woman. An example would be that they need to book tickets at least two months in advance because it is 10% less. For Russian women, this sounds cheap. Of course, one would assume that if she is making $100 a month, for her saving 10% from $1,000 ticket would be equivalent to her monthly salary, which is a lot of money. But women don't think that way. They consider it relative to the size of your salary. Let us say that you make $3,000 a month and move your meeting with her off for another two months just so you can save $100 (3% of your monthly salary). This will sound completely out of sync to her. She would not care about 3% of her monthly salary to meet you sooner. And since you can afford to spend that extra $100, you just don't really want to see her, or you just don't like her that much.

Put it simpler, remember as the rule of thumb: mentioning money matters is taboo in the Russian courting etiquette. You pay or you don't pay, and that's it. If you don't want to pay, just tell the woman, "No, we are not buying it", or "No, I don't want to buy it", but NEVER tell her you are not buying something because it is "expensive". If you have the money in your pocket to buy it, then it is NOT expensive. Otherwise, your remark is just disrespectful, nothing more, nothing less. If you just say, "No, we are not buying it", you show you are the man, and since it is your money you can spend it the way you want. This is perfectly acceptable.

If there is any problem at all in your relationship, and you tell your woman how much money you spent on her, you are signing your own death warrant in her eyes. This action is an unforgivable offence. There is now no possibility of recovery, you have lost her forever.

Never, EVER tell the woman how much money you have spent on her. You would not tell such things to a western woman you have been courting, so don't do it with a Russian woman either, or it sounds as you were trying to buy her. No matter how much money you spent on her, she does not owe you a thing.[17]

Refusing an offer the first time

From time to time, you need to ask her if she is hungry or thirsty. If she says she is not but you are hungry or thirsty, most likely she is just being shy. Russian custom insists that a person should refuse a kind offer the first time. It is also considered polite to refuse a second time, so offer it at least 3 times. This means, that even if she is dying of hunger and you ask her if she is hungry, she will answer, "No, I'm fine". She will then be offended that you did not offer it again, and consider you stingy. Why? Because you just jumped on the opportunity not to buy her something, since you did not offer it again. Therefore, your offer was not genuine. If your offer was genuine, you would insist.

So, even if she says she is not hungry or thirsty, but you are, go and buy some food and/or drink, and ask her what she wants. Most likely she will also choose something. If she does not choose anything, suggest to buy her the same thing as you are buying for yourself.

If you allowed a woman to buy something with her own money, you MUST reimburse her for what she bought. The woman might not accept your reimbursement, but you must offer it (at least 3 times!). It is a disgrace when a woman pays for a man. You lose your "manly" image in her eyes. This is why most women will starve, but won't ask you to stop and eat something. You, as a man, are supposed to offer it yourself.[17]

The man is in charge

The man may ask her suggestions, but only in the way, "I know there is this attraction, would you like to see it? Or would you like to go somewhere else?"

The man should be the leader. Once you accept this assertive position, your personal communications will go much more smoothly with her. This might be not the style you are accustomed to, but this is the style that works with Russian women.[17]

If you are in her home city, the woman will be looking after you, after all, you are her guest. She will look after you, even if she does not like you, just because you are a guest. In Russia, every guest is precious and will be treated with the utmost respect. From your side, you will be expected to agree to her suggestions, even if you are not very excited about them. For example, if a woman takes you to a theme park, and you don't really enjoy rides, you still should go on some of the rides. You will hurt her feelings if you say, "I hate all those things". If you don't enjoy something, you should offer a different activity, but do not reject the activity she offered. After all, she is making the offer with an open heart. For example, instead of rides you could suggest to stop at a café and sit down and talk. If she suggests going on the rides again, you could just smile and say that you enjoy talking to her more than going on the rides.

Weddings in Russia (Under construction)

Marriages are registered at the local Citizen's records and Licensing Bureau. No marriage ceremony is required. Couples today marry much later than they did in the Communist era. Many wait until they have good jobs, are relatively financially secure and have a decent place to live. Urban couples tend to get married later than rural couples.[11]

Marriage

90% of women are married by the time they are 30, and few had children after that age.[19]

With Russians suddenly free to emigrate after the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign men offered another route to prosperity. Love was optional. An American who taught English in Moscow tells me that during a class presentation a young woman recounted how her friend Maria married an American man, had a child with him, then turned around and divorced him. In the class discussion that followed, the storyteller’s classmates praised Maria for her “cleverness” and castigated the American husband for allowing himself to be duped.[12]

Since it is a part of Russian culture, all Russian women want children in their marriages. So, Russian women seek men who will be able to support their family while they are unable to work during the child caring years. Most women in Russia will take full care of their children through age three. This tradition was inherited from the Soviet times when their work position was preserved for 3 years after childbirth, with fully paid maternity leave for 18 months and unpaid leave for an additional 18 months. Nowadays, maternity leave is not paid, but women believe it is proper to stay home with their baby while it is small, and seek men who are able to provide for their families.[17]

Because of the economic collapse, the institution of marriage is in a deep crisis. In 1992, there were 20 percent to 30 percent fewer new marriages concluded in Russia than in 1990. In the same period, the number of divorces has risen by 15 percent.[11]

Divorce in Russia

In the 1990s, approximately one marriage in three ended in divorce, with the rate increasing 20 percent in the early 1990s after the break up of the Soviet Union. About 60 percent of Russian marriages now end in divorce.[11]

Section 7: Soviet Mentality Muscovites and Russians

https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/sovok/

"Suvok" is a dustbin and dustpan

Background

In its simplest form, "Suvok" means to be a Soviet Citizen.

The Soviet Union is "Советский Союз", Sovetskiy Soyuz "Советский Grajidin" (Soviet Union) what they used to say, a lot of old Russians took pride in that.

They old mentality Russians today say:

"Look what is going on, everyone is at everyone's throats, the Ukrainians, the Kazaki, the Russians. In the former Soviet Union we were all together, we were all in one boat, maybe it wasn't all that rich, but we were all in one boat."

This is a classic line by the elderly.

There were two concepts that emerged from Советский Grajidin (Soviet Citizen).

One is the intelligentsia. This is somewhat contentious Homo Sovieticus, written by dissident author Aleksandr Zinovyev.

Homo Sovieticus is an effort to define a certain type of person. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Stalin said he was going to be the "engineer of human souls" to justify the deaths of millions. In large part he was successful. Stalin created a certain type of man.

Later on with a touch of bitter humor, Homo Sovieticus came to be known in a wider circle outside of the intelligentsia as "Subor" - which is a potter.

Subor was a group of people united with one goal, a collective mentality wrapped around a particular idea of a Soviet citizen. Troskti said "we will all be in the dustbin of history" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_heap_of_history

Suvok leadership personalities today

Suvok are heartless Muscovites.

They will never say,

  • I am sorry,
  • they will never admit they are wrong.

...They can't because it is a sign of weakness.

  • They don't smile. Because there is nothing to smile about.
  • Endless suspicion. There is the sense that nothing is what it seems. You have to keep digging until you find out where the person's real interest is.
Reasons behind the Suvok mentality

This suspicious mentality is understandable because most of the Soviet period everyone was against everyone. A Soviet citizen couldn't say anything in front of your children because they would blurt it out in school and that would be at best 25 years in the Gulag.

Russian's superiority complex (under construction)

This is the quote from Yezhenedelny Zhurnal that interviewed Alexander Golts, a top-ranked Russian military specialist (in connection with a failed launch of two intercontinental missiles): "All Russians, have a superiority complex, that we're still equal to the United States".[17]

Section 8: Further differences between Americans and Russians

>>>>> At what age does an American leave his parental home?

In America, 69% of young adults move out of their parents' home when they turn 18. Many go to college.

There are a couple of reasons why Americans move out from their parents' home.

First, there is a huge social stigma especially for men who stay at home. In dating relationship, women think they are a person who cannot support themselves.

America has the highest individuality of any country. On a scale of 1 to 100, Russians are rated at 43 for individualism whereas Americans are rated as 91. Young adults feel like there is freedom from moving away from home, that their parents are stifling them. They can make their own rules. Many move from home to apartments and dorms.

>>>>> When did you move from your parental home?

I moved from my parent's house when I was 18. I was very excited to be free and be able to make my own rules. I went immediately to college and lived in an apartment with other students.

>>>>> How many times does an American move in his life?

America is one of the most geographically mobile countries in the world. The average American moves once every 5 years, more than 11 times in a lifetime. As a result community connections are weaker. American friendships are non-committal compared to Russian friendships. Russian friendships are all encompassing, involve mutual sacrifices and are more intimate.

>>>>> What is the reason for Americans move so much?

The biggest reason Americans move is for work. The average U.S. employee works for a company for 4 years, compared to 10 years in the European Union.

The last move that Americans have is to an assisted living facility or nursing home. It is common that pensioners are put in nursing homes by their children instead of living with them. Only 10% of pensioners live with their children.

It is incredibly easy to move in America. You can rent a truck for $20 for one hour. You can rent a large two bedroom van which anyone can drive for a few hundred dollars.

What is so different in America is how most apartments are completely unfurnished. Whereas here apartments are like museums. With old items from previous tenants.

>>>>> What states did you live in?

I have lived in around 15 different cities and 6 states. I grew up in rural Idaho. I have lived in Mormon Utah, desert California, and beautiful Oregon. I earned my Law diploma in Latino Texas. I lived in Maryland just outside of the country capital, Washington city in a gentrified black neighborhood with a lot of crime.

>>>>> Does everyone have a house, an apartment in the property? How does this relate to rental housing?

65% of all Americans own a home. Unlike Russia, Apartments are usually only for renting. Houses are much bigger in America than in Russia and Europe. New American homes in America are twice as large as houses in Europe and Japan.

Homes have 30 year mortgages.

What I miss most about America is there is only one key and one door to get into my house. It is very complicated all the steps that a person must take to leave and enter their apartment in Moscow.

>>>>> What does an American smile mean? <<

The American smile is habitual. In jobs, Americans are required to smile. More smiles means happier customers means more money for the owner.

"social distance" is the amount of privacy expected in a culture. Americans have a high social distance. Whereas Russians do not even have a word for privacy. Russians are much more collectivist than individualistic Americans. In cultures that prize individualism, there is no predetermined social links. In these cultures people smile more because they need to build social relationships. Russian rely more on mutual understanding. Therefore, Russians express their emotions and attitudes more freely and don't feel like they have to smile.

My ex-wife was asked at her first job interview for "KFC" if she would try to be a friend with her customers. She said no, because she thought it was a stupid question. She did not get the job. This is partly because Americans ideas of "friends" is very low. They call someone friend very quickly.

>>> What could be hidden behind a smile? <<<

For the average American, there is nothing behind the American smile. It is a habitual form of communication.

Americans have a term called "PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE" Пассивно-агрессивное поведение – people from the capital of America, where I worked for 8 years – are very Пассивно-агрессивное. They will smile as they stab you in the back.

[TAKE OUT] You have to remember, When you meet an American in Moscow, these are not average Americans. Americans in Russia are more wealthy Americans. They tend to be from the wealthiest coastal cities. Just like Moscow people are much different than the average Russian, an American in Moscow is not like an average American. [TAKE OUT]

AUTOMOBILES AND OBESITY 88% of Americans have a car, second in the world only to Italy. Outside of New York which has a metro, the sidewalks are very empty because everyone drives. The average person drives 30 minutes to work. It is nearly impossible to get around without a car. The distances between cities is very very big Only the very poor do not drive. This lack of exercise means that Americans are very fat. In addition 37% of Americans eat fast food every day. As a result of this 40% of Americans are obese. .


>>> Is it true that in the USA you can buy a very inexpensive used car? <<<

Yes. Cars are significantly cheaper in America because of fewer taxes.

People can get used cars on credit also.

I had a Russian friend from Moscow who bought a car in New York for $1000 and traveled across America with the car. He kept it for a year.

>>> But how much will its service in a car service cost? <<<

You can buy a bad car in America also. But in America laws are enforced more strictly in Russia so many of the illegal things that people do when selling cars happens less.

>>> What does a personal car mean in American life?

The car is seen as freedom in America. It is an economic necessity for the majority of Americans.

>>>> How does the number of cars affect the look of cities?

For Americans, aesthetics is must less important than Russians. America is a new country with newer buildings with no history, which are torn down easily. This means that there are wider streets and large highways through cities.

>>> Where do Americans go on vacation?

Americans overwhelmingly go on vacation in America. Because of this, Americans are very ignorant of the rest of the world. 64% of Americans have no passport. Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset stated “To know one country is to know none" – so Americans have no way to contrast their country with others. Part of the reason is America is so diverse and enormous.

Americans don’t take as much time off as Europeans and Russians from work. 25% of Americans don’t have any paid time off. 41% of Americans who have paid vacation days don't use them. Vacations are not a big part of Americans mentality.

For example, when I was working for the federal government, I never took time off, because I was able to cash in my vacation time at the end of the year for more money.

>>> How do they travel?

The majority travel by car or plane. Buses are only for the very poor. Trains are very uncommon and not used very much at all. The highways between cities in America are very large and in good condition.

>>>> How do national immigrants live in the USA?

Immigrants in America are treated well. Americans care most if a person can make money, not where they are from. Money is very important to Americans. The racism in America is much less than in Russia.

>>> Are there any unwritten laws in those territories where Latinos, Chinese and other peoples live?

No.


>>> Do all Americans have a passport?

There is no internal passport in America. People usually use their drivers license as identification from every state.

>>> Which country do Americans consider the best in the world and why?

Other than America, Americans really love Europe. If there is one place an American wants to visit, it is Europe. This is because of the shared history that Americans have with Europe. Americans definitely feel like America is the best country in the world. They feel that anyone can work hard and become rich (which is untrue) they feel like America is the "land of opportunity"

>>> What is the American dream?

The American dream is to own your own house and two cars. To have a better standard of living than your parents did. Most Americans believe that America is the best country in the world, despite never being in another country. America is the second most patriotic country in the world after Thailand.

American soft power and propaganda is the best in the world, at least 20 years ahead of Russia. I have always wondered why there is an American dream, but why Russia has never developed a Russian dream.

Americans are very patriotic. At the beginning of sporting events all audience members and in elementary school every morning children stand up and put their hand on their heart and pledge allegiance to the American flag. When I first moved to America with my ex-wife she said it reminded her of German fascist movies.

>>> Are there any things that you are used to in the USA and which you lack in Russia?

Strong landlord laws that protect renters.

Russians are very different from Americans. I grew up in rural America, which has few people come to Russia. I miss being able to really talk to people and have them understand me. There is a cadence in speech which you never have with a Russian. A shared understanding of culture that is unsaid but understood.

A good postal system. Russia's postal system is terrible. A good postal system allows for Amazon.com, a very popular website in America. In America huge numbers of people buy everything they want online and have it shipped to their homes, in one to two days. It is very convenient. You can return anything within a month and get your money back if you don't like it. Moscow has couriers instead.

Mexican food. There are many Latinos in America and so there are American versions of Mexican food.

Fewer stairs.

>>> Some differences between Americans & Russians? <<<

Americans are more willing to take risks. This is partly because of the ease of moving to another location and starting over. Americans are more tolerant of failure. Russians are more risk averse.

Because of the unstable history of Russia, as late as the 1990s, Russians are more careful with their money. They are less philanthropic. They hoard. They have a castle mentality – afraid that someone can take what they have. There is the Russian saying "don't bring your regulation to another monastery".

AMERICANS ARE PEACHES AND RUSSIANS ARE COCONUTS.

In America, friendliness does not equal friendship.

Cultures like Americans and Brazilains:

1. They smile frequently at strangers, 2. move quickly to first-name usage, 3. share information about themselves, and 4. ask personal questions of those they hardly know

But after a little friendly interaction with a peach person, you may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self.

In coconut cultures such Russia and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with. They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately. But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier. And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer…

AMERICANS ARE MORE DIRECT

In general, Americans are very direct. Whereas Russians focus more on nonverbal behavior. There is very little subtly in what Americans say. I called Muscovites sneaky and my Russian/American friend corrected this as Russians being subtle.

Russians talk in long uninterrupted monologues.

AMERICANS ARE LAW ABIDING Americans follow the rules and follow the law. There are two reasons for this. American laws are strictly enforced and Americans are religious, 80% of Americans believe in God. Because of the religious beliefs and weaker relationships, Americans are willing to snitch on each other.

AMERICAN COMMON COURTESIES

Americans say please and thank you much more than Russians.

OTHER DIFFERENCES 1. Freedom to say what you want. You are more free to express yourself in Russia on social issues such as race gender and sexual preference. 2. Americans don't believe that breezes in the winter can cause someone to be sick. (This caused huge arguments with my Russian ex-wife) 3. Unlike Russia, in American romantic relationships Americans expect total honesty. Americans will share about their past romantic relationships with others. 4. Americans wear shoes in the house. 5. Many homes are fully carpeted in all rooms except the kitchen and bathroom. 6. Americans are infatuated with "professional help" and "mental health". Americans love to engage in detailed analysis of their feelings towards each other with their spouse or lover. Many Americans have therapists. 7. American men do housework along with women. 8. Americans don't commit adultery as much as Russians.

>>> Why did you decide to leave the USA? <<<

Internationally the United States is the most violent country in the world today. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has conservatively killed 6 million people, the same number of Jews that Hitler killed in the Holocaust. By living in America with its high standard of living I was benefiting from this violence. Americans are willfully ignorant of what their country does overseas. As Martin Luther King said, The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. I cannot be silent. For 30 years I have attempted to find a career which speaks out against such international violence. I came to Russia because I have a voice here and Russians support my viewpoint. My visa expired in July, afraid to be prosecuted for the state and federal material that I brought to Russia, I applied for temporary refuge status from the United States, which is still pending.

>>> Other information <<<

FRIENDSHIPS IN AMERICA TEND TO BE MORE SHALLOW THEN IN RUSSIA. Russians help out their friends much more than Americans. Russians are more willing to lend money for example.

Women are very independent and feminism is very strong in America. It is common for women not to wear makeup (only 41% of women wear makeup every day). Unlike American television and movies, Americans dress really badly compared to Russians. Women don't need men to support them which make them more independent. Family ties are not as deep. People in individualistic countries like America tend to smile more. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19409419.2016.1262208 My Russian friends complain about how their children come to America and are very rude as pre-teen and teenagers. 84% of American teenagers have a smartphone.


In the past ten years political correctness is very strong and therefore freedom of speech is threatened. People cannot share how they really feel about different races, genders, people's appearances or age.

GENERIC NEIGHBORHOODS Unlike Russia, the standard of living in America is similar everywhere. Whereas in Moscow people have a higher level of living like Europe, but in the Russian village they are very poor. Like Aschan and Leroy Merlin here in Moscow, there are "big box" stores throughout the country, in every city. This means that every city looks the same. Russia has unique small stores owned by local people, whereas America has much less.

My first year in Russia: One American's random observations about life in Moscow

Russians/Old

Youtube: Why Russia is better than America - Why people are moving to Russia

Why Russia is better than America

The next thing reason why Russia is better than America going to shock you - freedom. Do we have more freedom in Russia than you do in America? Do you have the freedom of speech saying that you don't want to serve the gay person, do you have the freedom to say what you feel about dating and women? Do you have the freedom to share how you feel about many of the deep culture war issues in America? There is no political correctness in Russia. There are no *snowflakes*. Freedom of speech is quite restricted in America. Come to Russia and see for yourself.

Snowflake (slang): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_(slang)

Why Russia is better than America
  • Healthcare is free in Russia
  • Russia is the country that has their highest rate in literacy
  • Holidays - Russia is entitled to 28 calendar days - American people they don't travel they don't have even days off. Americans would tell us that they hadn't had a day off for vacation for ten years
  • Very traditional Christian values
  • We have more freedom in Russia than you do in America! More freedom of speech.


Why people are moving to Russia

Russia has been the mystery for a lot of people - for a century or so it was closed for a while and nobody could visit it and now it is open. it is completely different for many European countries

It is very difficult to live in this country for a normal American person or a European you are deprived from a lot of things

Russia are conservatives about everything the young still believe in God

Russian women in their beauty and they take care of themselves very well and they are very feminine feminism hasn't penetrated our country

Cultural heritage

Culture differences matter

Excerpt from The Culture Map:by Erin Meyer

One reader commented, “Speaking of cultural differences leads us to stereotype and therefore put individuals in boxes with ‘general traits.’ Instead of talking about culture, it is important to judge people as individuals, not just products of their environment.”

At first, this argument sounds valid, even enlightened. Of course individuals, no matter their cultural origins, have varied personality traits. So why not just approach all people with an interest in getting to know them personally, and proceed from there? Unfortunately, this point of view has kept thousands of people from learning what they need to know to meet their objectives. If you go into every interaction assuming that culture doesn’t matter, your default mechanism will be to view others through your own cultural lens and to judge or misjudge them accordingly. Ignore culture, and you can’t help but conclude, “Chen doesn’t speak up—obviously he doesn’t have anything to say! His lack of preparation is ruining this training program!” Or perhaps, “Jake told me everything was great in our performance review, when really he was unhappy with my work—he is a sneaky, dishonest, incompetent boss!”

Yes, every individual is different. And yes, when you work with people from other cultures, you shouldn’t make assumptions about individual traits based on where a person comes from. But this doesn’t mean learning about cultural contexts is unnecessary. If your business success relies on your ability to work successfully with people from around the world, you need to have an appreciation for cultural differences as well as respect for individual differences. Both are essential. As if this complexity weren’t enough, cultural and individual differences are often wrapped up with differences among organizations, industries, professions, and other groups.

But even in the most complex situations, understanding how cultural differences affect the mix may help you discover a new approach. Cultural patterns of behavior and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do).

Further Reading



Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin

Russian inventions that changed the world

Wikipedia articles I wrote

Notes

  1. Erin Meyer. One Reason Cross-Cultural Small Talk Is So Tricky – Harvard Business Review.
  2. The Culture Map - Erin Meyer
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 Excerpts from Visson, Lynn. (2001). Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages FULL BOOK.
  4. Samuel Putnam, June 27, 2018, Why are Russians so stingy with their smiles?.
  5. Why Americans Smile So Much
  6. Abortion Remains Top Birth-Control Option In Russia, Radio Free Europe, (June 28, 2008).
  7. The Sociocultural and Political Aspects of Abortion: Global Perspectives
  8. Russian Survey Highlights-Results of the 2011 Russian, CDC, (2011).
  9. Yale Richmond, (2003) From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia.
    Source: Feshbach, in a talk at the Kennan Institute, Washington, DC, November 1, 1994, and in a conversation with the author.
  10. Putin’s Next Target Is Russia’s Abortion Culture, Foreign Policy, (October 3, 2017).
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Marriage in Russia, Facts and Details
  12. 12.0 12.1 Druckerman, Pamela, (2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. Penguin Books
  13. Druckerman, Pamela, (2008). Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. Penguin Books Found in Lust in Translation: Which Country Has the Highest Rates of Infidelity? Infidelity is universal. But which country boasts the most cheaters? (2008). Alternet.
  14. Masha Gessen, (2017). The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
  15. Julia Ioffe, The Cheating Cheaters of Moscow How infidelity has become accepted and even expected in Russia., (2010), Slate.
  16. Power Distance of Russia. (March 31, 2019). Megan Andrews. Pennsylvania State University. Quoting Hofstede, 2019. https://sites.psu.edu/global/2019/03/31/power-distance-of-russia Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Power Distance - James Madison University https://jmu.edu/global/isss/resources/global-campus-toolkit/files/hofstede-power.pdf Wikipedia: Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory
  17. 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 17.7 17.8 17.9 Elena Petrova, (2006) How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me.
  18. See David M. Buss, "The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating", where a research was run across 37 cultures.
  19. Masha Gessen, (2017). [The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia]

Further Reading (General Culture Communication Books)


Why Don't Russians Smile?
Why dont russians smile astronauts cosmonauts no title.jpg
VIDEO * PICTURES * BOOK * LINKS e

I have never met anyone who understood Russians. — Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich Romanov (1866–1933).

1️⃣ More than 50 books on Russia and the differences between Russians and Americans on Google Drive: https://bit.ly/2Lncikl

2️⃣ New Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WhyDontRussiansSmile

3️⃣ E-mail us: MoscowAmerican@gmail.com (primary) * whydontrussianssmile@gmail.com