The Deceit of Riches Read online

  “Yes sir, even in the USA nothing is really as it seems. There is always a hidden agenda in everything a politician does and says. I learned that after four years of studying my country’s politics and policies,” I commented with some exasperation.

  “Ah Yes! This is a new discipline here at our university and we’re just starting to publish papers and journals with the study of the current political happenings. In the Soviet Union, we didn’t have politics, we had only policy. With a one-party system, all politics were party politics and writing about that only got journalists arrested and sent to Siberia.”

  Dean Karamzin’s face then lit up and his tone changed from resignation to excitement. “With your academic experience would you like to sponsor an article in our political journal at the end of the spring term? That would really set you apart academically to publish articles before you write and defend your thesis,” the Dean suggested, already wound up with the prospect of making his journal an international collaboration.

  “I think it would be a great challenge. Who do I need to speak with?” I asked in my own excitement.

  “Me! I am the head of the History and Politics faculty and the publisher and editor of the journal.” He looked very proud of himself to tell this fact to other people.

  Dean Karamzin not only went on to agree with all my proposals for my academic agenda in Nizhniy Novgorod but was stacking up resource upon resource for me that would make it almost easy and certainly a source of rich materials for researchers that would follow after me.

  “Would you like to interview Nemtsov?” referring to the current governor of the province, Boris Nemtsov, “He is old friend of mine.”

  “I sure would. I’ve heard great things about him?” I replied like a little boy getting to sit in a fire truck for the first time with wide eyes.

  “I know people in Moscow too. We could travel to Moscow and interview Yeltsin’s people.”

  “Tii-Shto!” (Get out!) I blurted in street slang.

  “Yes, I know them too,” he boasted again.

  “Did you already receive access to the university’s American Library from Valentina Petrovna?” he asked off hand.

  “The what? An American library here in Nizhniy?” I nearly jumped out of my chair on hearing this.

  “Yes, it was gift from American Ambassador Pickering in November last year. There is much data and computers to use for research, in English, Russian and other languages too,” he said as a matter of fact.

  “That would be wonderful if I could get access and an account there,” I agreed.

  “I will ask Professor Strelyenko to go with you tomorrow and enroll you there, to open an account, etc.,” he waved his hand as if he was commanding an unseen aide de camp who would execute his whims.

  He then stopped and looked at me as if surprised I was the only person in the room with him and remarked, “Strelyenko will also be your tutor for the term. He is very involved in the current political events and has written many books now being published in St. Petersburg. We have a free press now you know. He is a bit radical, but it would be good for you to speak with him regularly and balance your western views with his pro-Slavic views. You will then together see the truth in the middle.”

  “Should I limit my focus at all? Is there something I should be careful about? “,I asked with a prompting caution in my intonation.

  “Why? What for? I am not Stalin. Stalin is dead already many years,” he recoiled at my naive idea that the thought police were still knocking on doors in the dark of night.

  “Is there anything you would like me to research that could be published in the journal?” I was feeling out the possibilities and his tolerance, but he didn’t restrict me at all.

  “I just want you to use the data and information from MY library to contribute to the journal. It will be great!”

  “Well, I am very interested in this whole transition from state owned to privately owned businesses. I know here in Nizhniy they are pioneering this process the right way, at least that is what the press says. With some local interviews and case studies and some nationwide data to compare, I think it could make an interesting mix of economics with politics. What is your opinion?”

  “It sounds to me like you just formulated your thesis, Mr. Turner. Please consider using this opportunity to refine it and we can publish the first version of it in June! Agreed?” the Dean seemed pleased.

  He stood up to dismiss me from his office with a handshake. I left him as his telephone buzzed on his desk. “HAALOH?” he bellowed as I pulled the door closed behind me.

  Vitaly was folding his clothes when I returned to our dorm room after a full day. I flopped on to my bed exhausted still from jet-lag and a culture shock. My stomach grumbled disapprovingly from my neglect of it.

  “Vitaly, can ask you something?” I asked sitting half way up on the bed. My roommate, sober this time, nodded silently with his back still to me.

  “Isn’t it illegal from the start of this year to use dollars or German marks to pay in Russia, except when exchanging money for rubles of course?” I asked him a bit puzzled and concerned.

  “Yes, but nobody cares. Everybody still wants dollars,” he commented unconcerned. “Who? Who still wants dollars?” I asked.

  “Everybody. Everybody wants to exchange their salaries for dollars as quickly as possible,” he commented without drama or excitement.

  “To preserve their buying power.” I understood quickly what my new friend was telling me. He explained further, “Nobody has faith in the Ruble anymore. You lose your savings as soon as you put it on your account. Poof! it disappears! Can’t even buy bread. You should talk to my grandma. Her pension is worthless.”

  “Why would I have to pay for my tuition in dollars then do you think?” I asked with caution as I admitted to the morning’s drama.

  “Your dollars will go right to the bankers who are the ones who run the exchange kiosks. No doubt about it! Are you paying for your room and board in dollars too?” he saw right through my agreement with the University.

  “Yes, exactly. So, you don’t think that money will go to the university, eh? So, tell me, what’s the deal there?" I asked unassumingly.

  “From what I’ve heard the university has a patron saint in Nizhniy Novgorod who takes his payoff in dollars,” he said with without any irony in his voice.

  “A patron saint?” I asked confused and puzzled.

  “A patron saint of protection from accidents, arson, and other man-made mishaps. Protection from another patron saint even,” he explained in his mysterious code.

  “So, because the University has a source of hard currency, some mafia boss is muscling in to take a share?” I postulated.

  “You’ll need to be careful not to say it that way! Just a little warning to you because you’re new.” Vitaly said turning to look at me with a serious look in his eyes.

  “What you told me last night, even though you were a bit drunk, about the mafia bosses taking over the government?” I asked carefully.

  “Oh, it’s real. We see it everywhere, but there is a very popular journalist in Moscow, a communist journalist, but a very good investigator. He broke a huge story last weekend just before the New Year. He isn’t afraid of anybody. He named names and gave figures. He must have a source in the parliament, maybe an old communist, an enemy of Yeltsin, who must have given him some real documents. He showed that government ministers are selling Russia’s assets, to turn them over to private hands, but for ten percent their real values and the gangsters are paying them big amounts of cash to do it this way. It's crazy. Completely crazy. If the ministers say no, the gangsters kill their families, blow them up. It is too crazy for words!”

  “What is the name of the journalist?” I asked wanting to research his articles.

  “Bolshakov. Dmitri Bolshakov.”

  The next afternoon I met Professor Strelyenko on Minin Street just up the river embankment from the history department, at the school of Linguisti
cs. The American library was on the ground floor behind very sternly barred windows, hung nicely with white sheers on the inside.

  Strelyenko a junior professor of Dean Karamzin’s faculty, a stern looking young man in his early thirties, was known for being a very vocal Russian nationalist. Some suspected him of and labeled him as an extremist. Strelyenko seemed to make everybody at the university, except the Dean himself rather nervous. I held my breath in his lectures at the foreign students' faculty as he had no problem ruffling feathers and offending those from the former Soviet republics. The tension was at times as thick as the ice on the Volga River in January when he was lecturing. He spoke English very well and didn’t find that to be in conflict with his political leanings. He dressed like the avant-guard academic and intellectual that he was; black high-necked sweater and Russian made blue jeans. We all wore the same looking coats boots and hats in the winter.

  The library was everything that the Dean said it would be; new, sleek, bright and had a wall of CDROMs filled with data from journals, periodicals, magazines and Russian government reports covering at least the last ten years. The computers weren’t state of the art but they were definitely the best collection of computing power in the university.

  With Strelyneko looking over my shoulder I entered a few search words; privatization, economic reform, private enterprises, finance, and finally the name of the Moscow journalist who Vitaly told me about: Bolshakov. Tens of references to recent articles stored on CDROMs from an international archive of dozens of magazines and journals filled the screen. I commented to Strelyenko that it would be difficult to get me to ever leave once I started a serious research topic. He slapped me on the back in a manly way to show his pleasure of having another political junky come to study under his tutorage, even if I was a foreigner.

  Strelyenko introduced me to the head librarian, Olga. She took my student card and copied my name and student number into a ledger and returned it to me together with hand written paper with my user name and password and a nervous smile.

  Stelyenko and I stood outside waiting for the trolleybus in snow and cold. We spoke in English. He smoked a cigarette with indifference.

  “What is your interest in the economic reforms, Pyotr?” Strenlyenko asked with smoke coming out his nostrils, “Are you hoping to invest?”

  “No, I am very interested to watch how a country rebuilds itself,” I replied sincerely. “I hope that Yeltsin learns from what the Soviet system did wrong and makes good changes. I think that privatization is a great step forward!”

  “Boris Yeltsin was only good in opposition. He is not a ruler. He was a good Russian conscience but since he took power, he only blew up the parliament with his tanks and let the criminals run Moscow. So, I would say that he has been slow to learn from the mistakes of the Soviet system. He needs to go back to the opposition and let real Russians run Russia,” was Strelyenko’s commentary to my idealism.

  “Yeltsin is not a real Russian?” I asked curious to understand his point of view.

  “No, he is not. He’s from Siberia, probably descended from Imperial period criminals,” he sneered, ‘We need to have the true Russian bloodline ruling Russia again, looking out for both Russia and her children!”

  “Are you a Tsarist then?” I asked with certainty of his answer.

  “Yes, my position is that the Bolsheviks’ actions were fully unconstitutional and Kerensky should have been shot for treason for deposing the Tsar,” he said politely, as if he was in one of the fashionable parlors of St. Petersburg discussing politics in 1917.

  “I have read some articles that say the same thing. Revolutions though are always unconstitutional, by definition, so it's a weak argument to use the definition of the word to brand it as criminal.” I parried his swipe at the modern situation.

  “True, but it still didn’t make it legal,” he shot back.

  “Did the Tsar abdicate or was he truly under duress?” I asked in my advance.

  “It is not legal nor moral for a Tsar to abdicate his God given duty. Just like God says in the Bible, “what God has put together let no man put asunder.” Just because Kerensky said it was legal for the Tsar to abdicate makes it about as acceptable for man and woman to divorce. Man’s laws cannot override God’s words!” he said well rehearsed.

  “Are you a believing Orthodox man then?” I jabbed at him.

  “Every real Russian man is,” he smiled and took a drag from his cigarette.

  “What is your opinion of Mr. Zhilenskiy in the modern political arena?” I asked slightly changing the subject.

  “Still too soon to know. He has conviction. I just don’t know yet where it will lead to. It could go one of two ways: one, restoring a strong Russian nobility and the virtues that go with it or two, ethnic cleansing due to lack of virtues. He’s a loose cannon that could help win the battle or burn down our own house.” He answered while he exhaled tobacco smoke into the still frozen afternoon air. “We can talk about it further next week during our first session, yes?”

  The walk between the two faculties where I studied was about three kilometers. When history lectures let out on Wednesday morning at lunch time at Minin Square, the walk up the sloping pedestrian district, Bolshaya Pokrovka, was always a fun stroll past shops, flea markets, and cafés. The city’s most interesting and historic architecture is found along this walking street. There is a historic, very Teutonic looking bank, that looks like it’s straight out of Bavaria, made of gray stone and rounded turrets. There is a classical drama theatre in happy yellow with a small square spread out under the entrance staircase, an old mansion of Boyars from centuries earlier brightly painted in the St Petersburg neo-classical style. All this history seamlessly blended with the food busses and currency exchange kiosks to create a relaxed aura of leisurely doing one’s daily chores and shopping.

  It was here on Bolshaya Pokrovka that I discovered the bread called lavash done in the Georgian style, round and thick. This bread would become my staple of existence in a world where most meat was questionable and the cheeses were less than tempting. One bought this heavenly bread, literally, from a hole in the wall on “Pokrovka.” One knocks. The hatch is slid open. One presents three one-hundred ruble notes, one gets three round discs of warm lavash. No words. No faces. Just soft, warm delicious bread at lunch time for a bargain price. The only drawback was the line at lunch time was long and it wasn’t a well-kept secret.

  At the top of Pakrovka stands a monolithic square gray stone building hewn by muscled socialist-realist sculptors: The Post, Telephone and Telegraph building, or the PTT as the locals called it. Here, those without telephones in their homes could reserve a phone booth on a given day at a given hour to make long distance telephone calls all over the world. One would only need to write down the number to be called and hand it to an operator. An operator would then usher the caller to a sound proof numbered booth with a big cushy chair to sit in while talking. After a few minutes, the telephone would ring— and through the wonders of modern technology, my mother would always be on the other end of the line in America. It made making a telephone call into a lavish production similar to going to an opera or an old-time cinema where folks would dress in their Sunday best to watch a “movie.” All that was missing was warm cocoa with marshmallows and an admission charge.

  It is from this gray stone building that the local agents of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) spy on the residents and visitors of the city and listen in comfort to all the international phone calls coming into and going out from the city. It was an unspoken rule in Russia that conversations over the telephone were limited to the weather and one’s health and not much more. My mother just needed a proof of life by hearing my voice once a month. The other details I wrote in letters.

  One afternoon after a group literature lecture for the foreign students with Professor Dashkova, I was introduced to Hans from East Germany. An economics student from Leipzig, he spoke English very well but was struggling to be understood in Rus
sian due to his thick German accent. He was a tough looking fellow, broad, muscular and fit with a nearly bald head with a fuzzy shadow of hair which he kept almost shaved.

  “Hans, why haven’t we met in the dormitories yet?” I asked him curiously.

  “Oh, I don’t stay in the student rooms. I have my own apartment in the old city,” he revealed.

  “Can you do that?” I asked with an exciting start.

  “Yes, anybody can I believe. I have been living there since October last year,” he confirmed.

  “Did you have to ask for special permission?” I pushed for details.

  “No, the police don’t mind. I paid six months in advance so the owner was happy. I receive my own post in the letter box. It is very cozy.” Hans was very pleased with himself.

  “Are the apartments expensive? Do you pay a lot for a place in the old town?” I was desperate to leave the dorms.

  “It’s okay. I pay one hundred Deutschmarks per month, but the German government gives me one hundred fifty per month for a room in Leipzig, so I buy my food with that money too. It’s a big apartment and I can almost see the river from my balcony.” He seemed to be recalculating the deal he had while we spoke.

  “Well, I’ve got to look into that! Just a week now in the dormitory and I feel like I’m a pickled beet,” I moaned.

  Before our weekly support group broke up, Valentina Petrovna asked me to step into her office. I braced myself for another chiding. What could it be now?

  Valentina handed me a folded paper across her desk. I unfolded it and read the name and telephone number. It didn’t mean anything to me. I gave Valentina an inquisitive look.

  “It is the name and telephone number of an American businessman here in Nizhniy who lives in the city center,” she explained, “Maybe you would like to meet him. You have many interests in common. He asked me to pass you his number.”