Lost and Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland (3 page)

1992–1993

C
OMMUNIST RULE HAD ONLY JUST ENDED WHEN I SET OUT ON
my travels. For the next few years, the overriding goal of President Yeltsin’s government would be the dismantling of the massive planned economy. Yeltsin had banned the Communist Party and implemented a program of “shock therapy”: price controls were relaxed, the currency was floated, and a mass program of privatization had begun.

Prices shot up twenty-six-fold in a single year. Russia’s colonies taking their independence had already served to dismember the old economy. Economic activity had halved and inflation was taking off. Since the Central Bank kept printing money and offering cheap credits to industry, it quickly rose to 2,000 percent, leaving the ruble worthless. By mid-1993 over 40 percent of Russians were living in poverty—as opposed to 1.5 percent in the late Soviet period.

Almost at once, the old party elite and the factory bosses started privatizing the institutions they managed. Within three to four years, 60–70 percent of state enterprises were privatized. The bosses siphoned off money and raw materials from state enterprises into co-ops, private banks, and out of Russia, into offshore companies. This was not illegal, for there was no procedure in place for transferring assets into private hands. Between 1991 and 2000 it is reckoned that $1 billion was secreted out of Russia every month.

The public were issued with vouchers worth 10,000 rubles (around $20) with which to buy a stake in this giant sell-off of state assets. But there was no framework of laws or financial institutions to regulate financial activity; so companies appeared out of nowhere, promising fairy-tale dividends to those who invested their vouchers, then disappeared with the money.

Could radically different intervention by the West have changed things? Certainly, the architect of the reforms, Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, and their implementer, Anatoly Chubais, were heavily reliant on Western advice. This came from two quarters. There were the free marketeers (the International Monetary Fund, Jeffrey Sachs, and his Harvard clan) who believed that economic man behaved the same in any circumstances: as soon as the centrally planned economy was dismantled, a free market would spring up in the space, like willow herb in a bombsite. Others argued that nothing in Russia’s culture and history had prepared its people for the marketplace. It was not just that Russia was emerging from seventy years of communism, they protested, but there was no prerevolutionary tradition to graft onto either. For under tsarism the culture of private ownership and the independent business sector were both weak. Besides, they pointed out, Russia had no institutional infrastructure to handle these changes—no legal framework, stable banking system, checks and balances. Reforms had to be introduced gradually, as in Poland, and they had to be backed by massive long-term aid and assistance from the West.

However, free market fundamentalism was at its height. Besides, Yeltsin’s economic team was driven by the need to prevent the return of communism. Any strategy of gradual reform would be subverted by the old Soviet bosses, who were still in charge. Yeltsin’s colleagues saw themselves as kamikaze pilots, whose mission it was to break the tradition of Russian autocracy and introduce Russia to the marketplace and democracy. They were indeed attacking the vested interests of everyone with power, from the old Party bosses and officials to the army and security services. By December 1992 opposition to the reforms was already so fierce that Gaidar had to resign as prime minister.

Three features of this period would throw long shadows over the future. The failure to establish the institutions of an open society would discredit the notion of liberal democracy before anyone in Russia had experienced it. The presence of Western advisers laid the seeds of bitter resentment. Finally, a collective fear of anarchy rooted in living memory generated such intense anxiety that order and stability became precious above all else.

On the political front, Yeltsin had missed the opportunity to call fresh elections after the Communist Party’s coup attempt in August 1991, when he was viewed as a national hero. So he was saddled with a parliament dominated by former Party officials and powerful Soviet-era factory managers. A coalition of communists and nationalists had united to oppose all change aimed at introducing market reforms and a liberal democracy. With every month, rumors of another communist coup grew stronger. When the courts lifted Yeltsin’s ban on the Communist Party, it made a strong comeback under its effective new leader, Gennady Zyuganov.

By the autumn of 1993 Russia appeared to be on the brink of civil war. Yeltsin and his parliament had reached an impasse. The president decided on drastic action to save his reform program. In September he banned parliament and called fresh elections. That speech triggered a bloody showdown. Armed crowds marched on Moscow’s Ostankino television center. While the “democrats” manned the barricades, nationalist and communist deputies holed up in the parliament building with their private militias. Yeltsin ordered the army to intervene. Reluctantly, it obeyed. Tanks surrounded the Russian White House and opened fire. They bombarded the deputies and their gunmen into submission, at the cost of 187 lives.

Yeltsin then implemented his plans to win a mandate for a new legislature, as well as a constitution giving him broader powers. In the elections for the new, weaker parliament (now called the Duma) voters endorsed Yeltsin’s new constitution, while punishing the more democratic candidates.

When the White House bombardment was over, a mood of suppurating resentment set in. “Freedom” had brought nothing but poverty, corruption, confiscatory privatization, and criminality

1992

THERE BE MONSTERS

I had an appointment in Samara. The sun was high and there was no shade on the dock. I was getting anxious. I had been offered a lift to the Russian German homeland in a boat, two days’ sail down the Volga. My friend’s instructions, written in her neat Cyrillic hand, were clear: “12:00 a.m. sharp. 2 August. Samara riverfront—N. Gastello.” If I was late, she warned, the boat would not wait for me. It was now 12:30. I scanned the empty river for a glimpse of Zhenya’s boat. He had promised to take me to the area of the Russian German homeland, two days’ sail south down the Volga.

It was high season, and the railings, kiosks, flowerbeds, and crowd control notices suggested the place should be teeming with people and boats. But the mooring was empty, apart from a triple-decked Soviet cruiser whose white hull loomed over the orderly promenade. There was not a soul to be seen.

No one was taking holidays that year. The Soviet Union had been dissolved seven months ago. With inflation at 20 percent and rising, a mood of apocalyptic gloom had set in over Russia. The country had lost its colonies and the Communist Party, which ran everything in the empire, was banned. During that last terrible gasp of communism shops were empty and food was rationed. Yet the minute prices were freed, the shops filled with food. Few people could afford to buy.

Traveling anywhere that summer was hard. I had arrived from Siberia the night before, after spending weeks tracking down exiled Russian Germans. With prices rising day by day, transport was in chaos. Twice my journey had ground to a halt. In one town the buses had been “privatized” by their drivers in lieu of wages. Then my flight was grounded for lack of fuel. It only took off because a bull-necked man with a phalanx of bodyguards had a word with the pilot, and the fuel was found. I was lucky to have arrived at all. But getting to the region where I was heading would be even more of a challenge, a fact I did not yet appreciate in the general confusion.

It was one of many things I failed to grasp. When a society starts falling apart, the surface of things remains deceptively tranquil. Overprotected as I was by my Russian friends, I had not yet realized how rapidly the mood of the country was going from sweet to sour. In the euphoria of the late 1980s I had traveled freely across Russia, passed from hand to hand by welcoming new friends. Now Russia was unraveling, and it was no time for foreign travelers. I was trying to get to Marx, a small town near the city of Saratov. That was suspicious in itself, as I would soon find. But I was looking for something particular—for reasons to be hopeful.

As I stood on the empty promenade, I was not actually sure whom I was waiting for. I had never met Zhenya, just caught a glimpse of him in one of the films he had financed. He was one of a new breed in Russia, a businessman. Elena had talked a lot about him. She was the woman who adopted me as family when I wrote my first book about Russia.

One day Zhenya had walked into Moscow’s Cinema Center, where she worked, declaring that it was his mission to save Russian cinema. In one of the films he went on to fund, the director had given him a walk-on part. Elena had shown me the film. She stopped the video to point him out: “Look—that’s him! That funny little figure.” He was in the back of the shot, barely visible. Now, months later, all I could remember was that he had a straggling beard that reminded me of one of Chagall’s Jewish fiddlers.

When I told her my plan, Elena made it clear she thought I was mad to be traveling anywhere that year. But she knew I had set my heart on going to Saratov. All I needed was a few contacts there. This time no one had been able to help. Only later, when I learned that it had been a closed town, did I realize why the usual network of friendship did not extend there.

Then, one day she came home from work bursting with news. “Your trip to the Volga—it’s sorted!” she announced. Zhenya had dropped in to Elena’s office and told her he was sailing down to Saratov. She asked if I could go, too. He not only agreed, he even offered to introduce me to people there. This was one invitation I was not going to miss.

But one month later, on Samara’s empty dock, it seemed as if he had stood me up. I was hunting around on the promenade looking for someone who could help when a woman appeared on the deck of the huge cruise liner. Why not ask her? As I walked up the gangplank the ship’s name caught my eye:
N. Gastello
. I froze. So this was it, the boat. There in front of me all the time.

This was not all right, not at all. It could only mean that Zhenya was a mafia boss, and a big one. I had been expecting something so different, a little gin palace, perhaps, but not this. It was vast, the sort of ship that used to ply up and down the Volga, entertaining Soviet holidaymakers to the strains of martial music.

A man in a white uniform and cap had now appeared as well, and was saluting me. “You must be Susan,” the woman shouted, “I’m Olga—the cruise manager, and this is our captain, Boris Nikolaevich. We’ve been waiting for you!” I pulled myself together, shook hands, and followed Olga to my cabin. Plump and motherly, she was hardly my idea of a mafia moll. Maybe the
N. Gastello
was just a business venture? But no. That year no one could afford holidays.

The cabin was luxurious, with starched white sheets. Out of the porthole I watched the crew casting off. There was no going back now. When lunch was announced, I realized how hungry I was. On my travels I had been camping on floors, eating out of tins.

In the dining rooms, which were supported by gilded Corinthian columns, Olga ushered me to a seat of honor at the captain’s table. Opposite sat a young man with tattoos, a scarred vulpine face, and stubs for teeth. A dandy with a brutalized face and plucked eyebrows sat beside me. That decided it: those faces belonged to the criminal underworld. Smiling waitresses were heaping our plates with delectable food, but I had lost my appetite.

The problem was that, along with the invitation, Elena had given me something: “Zhenya said you were to take this.” Wrapped in newspaper, the brick-sized package contained stacks of rubles fresh from the bank. They were worth $100, a fortune in Russia that year. I refused the package, but Elena could be very obstinate: “I’m not taking it back! If you want to go, you’ve got to take it! Anyway, it’s nothing to him.” In the end I gave in, resolving that when I did meet Zhenya I would return his money, and we would have a laugh about it. I had been carrying it around my waist for weeks. Now I was gripped by anxiety: in Russia, accepting hospitality incurs serious obligations. A Hogarthian image flashed into my mind of Zhenya and his thuggish cronies in my London house, feet on the table.

The powdered dandy interrupted my thoughts.

“How do you know Benya then?”

“What?”

“Benya—your host!” he repeated, looking surprised. Yes, he did say Benya.

“Are you all right?” asked the powdered youth.

Well, no. In Russia the name Benya is not like Tom, Dick, or Harry. It is what the writer Isaac Babel called the Jewish gangland prince in his stories of prerevolutionary Odessa. As Scrooge is to English misers, Benya is to Russian gangsters. Benya, the great extortioner, waltzes through them in multicolored clothes, splashing money around, a rogue with panache. So Elena’s friend was a literary gangster. How very Russian.

A man with yellow eyes sat down opposite and smiled, or rather leered at me. His face was long and he had a straggling beard. I smiled back politely. Then I remembered the bearded figure in the film Elena showed me. I looked again. This must be Zhenya, or rather Benya. It had to be.

How to describe what happened next between that man and me? It felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff, being pulled toward the edge, though Benya did no more than fix me with a pair of dreadful yellow eyes. I was spellbound, falling. The prospect was terrifying, but I was powerless to resist the pull of those eyes. It was irresistibly sweet. I came to and started to struggle. How long we battled it out I have no idea. I did pull back from the edge, but the effort left me shaken and horrified.

I got up and hurried back to my cabin. Behind I heard footsteps and a man’s voice saying “Syusan, Syusan.” There was a glimpse of those yellow eyes as I slammed the door. I sat on the bunk, thoroughly frightened, and furious with myself. What was this? I was an experienced traveler. I loved nothing better than traveling on my own. What was I frightened of? So what if the man was a mafia boss? I was in no danger on this boat. But I was not just frightened. There was something here that I could not name, something worse than that.

I had a lot to learn. The man was just a minor monster, but I came from a world which was properly mapped, where travelers ran across real dangers, not from monsters. I did not yet understand that I had left that world behind.

I must have dozed off after that. When I woke, the light through the porthole had softened. It was late afternoon, and the cabin walls were thrumming to the syncopated beat of live jazz. I lay there, watching reflections of the water playing on the ceiling, mortified by my overreaction, packing my fears away, yet reluctant to venture out of the cabin for fear of seeing Benya again.

Finally, the beat of the music lured me out, down a spiral staircase. On the landing below, a wiry suntanned American couple stood admiring the theater designs on the walls. “Great music, isn’t it? We do Dixieland, but we’re nothing compared with this lot,” said the man. A trumpeter, he had been invited to St. Petersburg for a jazz festival. When they arrived, they found the event had fallen victim to the chaos. Hearing of their plight, Benya offered them a place on his cruise. “Did you hear last night’s concert? Night after night there are these amazing musicians playing! Last night was the greatest—this singer, she’s a sort of Russian Edith Piaf. I’ve never heard anything like her …”

“So what do you make of this Benya?” the trumpeter went on.

“He’s quite a character,” the trumpeter’s wife chipped in. “Every now and then he turns up in this white Mercedes, chauffeur-driven—”

“With one hubcap missing,” added the trumpeter.

“Is he on board now?” I asked.

“Well, he was last night. You can tell when he’s coming. His girlfriend gets all dressed up. Then it’s party time! He’s quite a guy—climbs onto the car and dances on the hood, wearing these wild clothes—yellow shirt, red trousers, and green socks.”

“D’you suppose he’s mafia?” the trumpeter’s wife asked, as we walked down toward the music. I let the question go. Whoever our host was, the costume made it all too clear that he was modeling himself on Babel’s king of thieves.

The main deck was packed with people, listening to the music. Pale, plump, and dowdy, they looked reassuringly ordinary. A trombonist stepped forward and began a solo. He had the face and body of a clown. He played with an intensity that made even the babies in their sunhats stop and stare. Sleepy middle-aged men emerged from their cabins and their pudgy wives dropped their knitting.

We were held in the skein of the music. The man’s playing was as effortless as breathing. It touched something in his listeners, transmuting the pain of living in the rubble of the great socialist experiment that had been inflicted on them, their fathers and grandfathers. He played to them of the happiness which no one could take away, the happiness of this moment in the sunshine, floating down the Volga. My own anxiety ebbed away, absurd.

When the trombonist finished his solo I turned to leave and saw Benya threading through the crowd toward me, yellow eyes fixed on me, leering. He was wearing only the briefest of red trunks and a gold chain around his neck. I lost my head and dashed up the stairs, making for the cruise manager’s cabin. As I pounded on the door I heard Benya’s footsteps on the stairs. After an interminable wait the door opened: “Susan! What a lovely surprise!” Olga was standing in a large, light cabin lined in paneled, pale wood. I slipped inside and closed the door. The cabin was dotted with bouquets of dying red roses. Olga had company, two women friends.

“Is everything all right?” Olga asked. “You look, well—flustered.”

“I’m fine.”

“Come on now, don’t be so English. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” said a woman with a boyish face.

“It’s nothing, really …” I could hardly say I was running away from our host.

“Has someone been bothering you?”

“No, no …”

“I’ll deal with him,” said the boyish one.

“No, no, please.”

“Oh, I bet it’s Boris,” Olga said. “He was ogling her at lunch. He’s incorrigible.”

“You mean the one with the straggly beard? So that’s not Benya?”

The three women burst out laughing. They laughed extravagantly, holding on to one another. “Benya! She thought he was Benya!”

“He’s not on the boat at all,” Olga explained kindly.

“Well, what did I say about Boris?” the boyish one said triumphantly.

“She’d better stay with us,” murmured the third woman. “It’s funny—Westerners can’t usually tell these things.”

•  •  •

Boris was Benya’s
extrasensor
, his healer and spiritual adviser, they explained. The boyish woman assured me fiercely that he “wouldn’t bother me again.” He did not. For the next two days she insisted on collecting me from my cabin and chaperoning me back again. I had no idea why I needed this protection. But I was grateful to her. “You were quite right about that fellow,” she confided. “He’s bad news—seriously spooky. We were only just talking about him, before you came in. Can’t think what Benya’s doing keeping him around.”

As I knew from my earlier travels, the transition from communism had brought to the surface all sorts of spiritual quackery. People were always talking about “energy fields,” “biorhythms,” dowsing, and long-distance healing. A hypnotist called Kashpirovsky became a popular idol because of his mass-healing séances on television.

If this were a novel, the fleeting appearance of Benya’s
extrasensor
would serve as a warning of monsters ahead. But this is not fiction. Life’s little joke is that we are equipped for experiences only when they are over. The warning was one I would understand later on—too late to turn back.