The Deceit of Riches Read online

  “Who do you think did it?” I asked to keep her talking.

  “The government, the criminals. They’re all the same. Does it matter who actually shot the man?” she ranted, “The gangsters pay the civil servants, the civil servants protect the criminals and they all get rich together while they rob us all blind!” Yulia’s feisty spark was warming up her pale cheeks.

  “I heard that Bolshakov broadcast a very damning news report in late December. Vitaly from the dorms was telling me about it before I moved out. Wasn’t it about how the government ministers were giving away very valuable state assets, like oil fields to the criminal groups in Moscow and Siberia?” I prompted.

  “Yes. It was a masterpiece. A wonderful piece of journalism. He proved everything with government documents and witnesses. There was no second guessing what he had compiled. How he got all his materials is a mystery, but we all know the real thing when we see it. Bolshakov really exposed a lot of people, in and out of the government who have become very rich by scamming the new programs for privatizing the country’s natural resources and factories,” she explained in increasing detail and anger.

  “What are Bolshakov’s politics? Who is he trying to expose?” I asked, only having read a few of his articles to date.

  “He is a communist. He was always against the corruption in the Communist Party and he wrote a lot during Perestroika that helped Gorbachev clean up the back handed deals within the Communist Party, you know the nepotism and people scratching each other’s backs, in general, the abuse of their office for personal gain, ” Yulia explained further, “but ever since Yeltsin started giving away oil companies and selling the mines with precious metals for ten percent their value, Bolshakov has become even more important because he was the only one telling us the real story behind the headlines.”

  “A communist who loves a free press…that’s ironic don’t you think?” I muttered to myself.

  “Why not? A free press means that even a communist today can write what he chooses. It's the principle, Peter. Besides all that, it’s possible to have an honest communist who is for treating the people fairly. It’s the corruption that he is fighting against.” Yulia stopped herself and corrected her description of Bolshakov to the past tense, “It’s the corruption and the criminals he was working against.”

  “What effect do you think this will have on journalists going forward?” I asked with concern for her and her studies in particular.

  “I really don’t know. Bolshakov had developed a cult of personality at our school. There are many of us who are very inspired by his use of the press to expose the scams and back-handed deals in Moscow. I really don’t know what my class is going to do with this news. We read his pieces every week and debated them,” her thoughts trailed off as she stared outside into the bright afternoon sunshine.

  “What types of deals was he exposing recently? Who would have wanted him dead?” I queried further to keep her talking.

  “He had just uncovered a huge deal between the government and a number of bankers, and of course behind the money in the bank were some very, very bad people who are career criminals since even before Gorbachev started his reform program. It turns out that the government has leased the rights to our most valuable natural resources for about ten percent their real value! For all the talk they do about market reforms, they certainly didn’t let the market work on these deals. It was all rigged. It was just a show for the public and the western newspapers. Somebody certainly got a very nice back scratch!” she exclaimed as her thoughts focused on the swindles the Bolshakov had exposed. “They call this type of deal a ‘shock reform’. Yes! it is a shock to us all that they are giving away our country!”

  “Makes you wonder who really has the power in Moscow, doesn’t it?” I muttered again.

  “Just as long as the old communists aren’t calling the shots, the western governments don’t care and they just keep supporting Yeltsin, even though they are making these types of corrupt and illegal deals,” Yulia said with some exasperation.

  “Is Yeltsin in control, do you think? Or is he just a figurehead, the acceptable face to the world right now?” I asked with skepticism as I listened to Yulia explain the most recent events that we were not even yet in the archives I was searching in at the university.

  “The public in Moscow love him. They voted for him again even after he blew up the parliament with his tanks. People in Moscow are very happy with the new freedoms they have in their personal lives, but they are looking only at the short-term effect. Yeltsin’s advisors are selling all of our futures away to the crime bosses. They will get richer and richer and keep all the money from the oil while we can’t get medicines here in the provinces,” she moaned.

  “Don’t you think Bolshakov’s television exposé will help people see that? I heard it was very specific,” I questioned.

  “Maybe. Only maybe! Russians only believe when they want to believe something, nothing can change their minds. If they believe in Yeltsin and Chubais then they’ll believe them while they are being buried alive that it is for their own good,” she was spitting fire now at this point. “They all need to wake up!”

  “Yes, I did read some statement from Chubais that he thought that mafia money being used to buy legitimate businesses from the government was a good thing. He liked the idea of being able to tax their illegally earned money. Ridiculous!” I added, “They need to confiscate it and stop the joyriding, not legitimise their status and give them a seat at the table. Makes me wonder who is really being served here.”

  “What, does Chubais think that they’ll just stop doing what they’re doing, earning lots and lots of money by exploiting and hurting other people because they are waiting to do an ‘honest days work’? He is crazy.” Yulia was pacing around the room now, “They’ll just keep doing what they’re doing but with more money and influence just to grind us down further as their slaves.”

  “What can we do to fix this?” I asked seeing the downward spiral in front of me, opening up on the floor under the sofa ready to swallow us all up.

  “What can we do to fix it? Ha ha ha. There is nothing that you or I, or my entire class of future journalists can do! They’ll just shoot us on Sunday evening after a family outing, or blow up the bus we ride to work every day. Peter, there is nothing we can do about it.” She looked at me as if I was a complete idiot, a naive American idiot.

  “You can’t just let Bolshakov be buried and forget about what he’s done. You’ve got to fight on!” I said in my best inspirational voice.

  “Peter, if you think it’s so horrible, you do something about it! As for me, I think I’m going to become an entertainment critic and write glowing reviews about this year’s upcoming Victory Day concerts in May and keep myself from getting shot. It’s not a time to go sticking your head up. if they’ll kill somebody as visible as Bolshkov, it means that they can and will kill anybody that they want to,” and with that, she refused to speak with me any further on the topic.

  I was very saddened to hear and see how defeated Yulia was. The young idealist I knew had also been shot, it seemed, and killed next to the famous journalist that horrible Saturday night in Moscow. I didn’t press the matter with her any further and, sensing her wanting to be alone again, I excused myself and headed home before it got too dark on the street.

  Outside on the square across the street from the Zarachnaya metro station, the weekend bazaar was just wrapping up with the setting sun. Merchants lugging their goods in huge plastic sacks were standing together at the bus stops to head home for the night. I climbed aboard for the short ride back to my apartment and quickly took a seat behind the driver.

  As the bus pulled away from the curb a middle-aged woman began demanding something from me that I didn’t understand. Her stern approach led me to believe she was a transit controller who was asking to see my bus ticket.

  The transit systems in Russia are systematically abused because one can board the bus without buying a tick
et first, and without paying the fare if you get off quick enough. Many times, during very crowded bus rides one is requested to pass money forward to the driver’s cabin while the bus is moving in order that a ticket can be purchased for you and passed back. It happens often that passengers must get off the bus before their tickets are able to find them. On the night buses, from where the money comes, and to whom the tickets belong can sometimes remain a mystery.

  Taking this babbling woman for a plain clothes transit controller, I quickly reached for my monthly bus pass along with my student card and flashed it confidently at her with a slightly defiant attitude. She apologized in a very humble voice and turned to grab a hand-rail as the bus lurched from the curb. She did not go on to ask anybody else for proof of payment. Her quiet apology was also very odd as most controllers usually just look and move on to the next passenger, who is usually hurrying to get out his money to look as if he is passing it forward to buy a ticket by proxy.

  It became evident to me that I had misunderstood this woman and what it was that she was asking of me. Wanting to know what had just happened I leaned over to the white haired older woman sitting next to me and spoke in a low voice,

  “Excuse me please, Babushka, I am a foreigner. Can you help me understand why the controller was so angry at me?”

  “She’s not a controller. She just didn’t want to stand with her groceries She’s healthy enough. She can stand for five minutes,” the grandma smirked as she looked the other woman, in her mid-forties up and down with a dismissive eye.

  I still looked puzzled and followed up, “Then why did she stop yelling at me when I showed her my bus pass and student card?” I held up my documents to show her what I had in my hand.

  “She must have mistaken your student card as an invalid’s pass,” she assumed and dismissed my question.

  This explanation puzzled me even more and I just couldn’t let it go. “Excuse Babushka, I look twice as healthy and strong as she does, why would she think I would be carrying an invalid’s pass?”

  “Oh, young man, our boys from Nizhniy are now starting to come home from the fighting in Chechnya, some of them dead, God rest their souls, and many of them are badly wounded and have been given invalid papers and an army pension. She must have mistaken you for one our boys,” the grandmother said in a grave tone.

  “Oh, well, I will give her my seat then!” I said determined to clear up the misunderstanding.

  “No, No, you just sit here,” she took my hand and held it the rest of the ride until my stop,

  ”My youngest grandson has just been drafted into the army and he will soon go fight in Grozny. We said goodbye to him ten days ago and I fear that this was the last time that I will see him alive. My father died in Stalingrad. I understand that sacrifice against the Nazi fascists, we all did then, it was a matter of life and death for us, for Russia and our children and grandchildren. Nobody understands why we are sending our boys to fight our own people. Why should we fight each other? I can’t understand it. It will be the end of us when we send our own boys to kill the boys of our neighbors. Young, man, leave Russia before it’s too late! Don’t stay here. Nothing good will come of this.”

  Between my afternoon discussion with Yuila and this encounter with a shriveled gray grandmother on the bus, I started thinking that perhaps it was better to leave Russia and go home while the going was still good. Once inside I collapsed on my bed a mess of emotions and worries. Bolshakov’s body in the blood-stained snow and Chechen soldiers filled my dreams that night.

  6. Strelyenko

  Strelyenko, a junior professor, had only a cramped, poorly furnished room for an office that was eternally hazy with the cigarette smoke of an anxious and pensive chain smoking intellectual that he certainly embodied. The smell conveyed a sense of troubled thoughts. His ash trays seemed not to have been emptied since the last October. His desk was made of cheap pressboard as well as his bookshelves which were overflowing with books in many different languages. His desk top was not visible, covered in exercise booklets filled with students’ essays, his own notepads and hand scribbled thoughts and an ancient type writer. On the wall behind him hung a historic imperial Russian flag and by the door a framed photo of the late Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs to sit on Russia’s throne. It seemed he wanted nothing to do with the modern era. I was startled to spy a telephone in the room. It seemed very out of place.

  “Russia is indivisible and not even the Chechens should doubt that!” Strelyenko proclaimed at my questions about the Chechen rebellion and hope for an independent nation from Russia.

  “Why shouldn’t Chechnya also ask for its independence just like Russia and Kazakstan did a few years ago, leaving the USSR?" I asked inquisitively.

  The professor retorted, “Because, Russia and Ukraine and Byelorus were in fact different republics making a union. Constitutionally these were sovereign republics and could decide their own fate. Chechnya is not a sovereign province, not even an autonomous province like Tatarstan, you know, around Kazan. Chechnya is an inseparable part of the Russian Federation and has no constitutional prerogative to secede.”

  “So the only way to do that then is by armed struggle,” I concluded.

  “Which they will lose! They can’t take on the whole of the Russian army with a thousand guerrillas driving Ferraris and hope to win,” Strelyenko predicted with resentment in his voice. “Russia will never let itself be divided again and the world needs to understand that what was also once Russia will be reclaimed. It may take some time, but what the Soviet Union took from Russia will be restored, through armed conflict if necessary.”

  “And how far back do you propose to go in history for your definition of greater Russia?” I asked alarmed.

  “From 1917 of course, when our last rightful monarch was deposed, as we discussed already last week,” he stated with no hesitation.

  “That’s a lot of territory to take back,” I said with a surprise on my face.

  “Well, my friend, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Kiev won’t be regained in a year, but we will be patient and rebuild what was lost to the republicans and then to the communists,” he calmly assured me.

  “And Poland then?” I feared his answer.

  “That is an interesting question. One should answer that first by answering the question of whether or not Poland has a historical right to exist as an independent country. When did it really come into existence and how? To whom does Danzig belong?” The professor postulated.

  “Danzig?” I queried unsure of the geography he was referencing.

  “You would know it as Gdansk in Poland, but under the Prussian Keiser it was called Danzig,” he clarified.

  “So, eighty years of existence since the end of the first world war for you isn’t historical enough?” the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up.

  “Neither Stalin nor Hitler recognised this in 1939 after only thirty short years of its existence. Everybody could see that they couldn’t remain an independent nation and had to be taken into protection.”

  “Protection?” I gasped, “You call that protection?”

  “It’s all how you look at it, my American friend,” he said haughtily.

  “Well, let’s agree to disagree then,” I proposed, “because what the Nazis and the Communists did in Poland cannot be called protection from my perspective.”

  “Fair enough, but for the record, I have not decided my position on Poland personally. It’s a difficult question,” Strelyenko clarified.

  “For some of us, maybe,” I remarked with a sneer.

  “Yes, and that’s why we have dialogue,” he replied to my youthful disgust.

  “Oh, yes, dialogue, like the kind going on now in Grozny with rocket launchers and artillery?” I rebuked him.

  “It was the Chechens who refused to talk and took up arms and blockaded the province. They are violating the rights of Russian citizens enforcing their muslim traditions on people who are not muslims. Those peopl
e have the right to be Christians if they choose and this must be protected. The President will clean this up quickly with a strong police action and bring law and order back to Chechnya after too many years of letting the criminals and mafia take over the local economy there.” Strelyenko’s reply made me rethink my position.

  “So, this is a fight against criminality in your mind, and not the suppression of national and ethnic identity?” I asked with some unsureness.

  “Yes, and the President would do good to use the army to clean up Moscow as well when he is done. The criminals from Grozny have moved into Moscow trying to secure their position to control different industries and trade. A gang war has erupted in Moscow and the Chechens are in the middle of it, but the government needs to act now against all the mafia groups in Russia, not just the Chechen thieves. These groups are the single most dangerous threat to Russia’s future. The people must get together now and demand the President takes action against the profiteers and thieves who are robbing our country blind of our God granted resources and territory!” he said while slapping his table with his open palm, rather worked up.

  Somehow, from between the lines of Strelyenko’s extreme nationalistic rhetoric I concluded that his call to action for the long-term health of Russia and its citizens whether it was in Chechnya, Moscow or Siberia wasn’t too far off the mark.

  Stelyenko didn’t stop, he continued slapping his desk top. “Law and order has to be restored! If not, then those ready to use violence to trump the rule of law could stunt the future of our entire country for good! It must be stamped out!”