Streams From My Russian Intermission (2):

St. Petersburg:

Rules in front of Peter the Great (or is it Christopher Columbus?):

w/ Coburn (center); and Rules (right) in Arbat District:


Worlds within worlds. That seemed to be Russia. And maybe that’s the way it is in other countries too. Police within the police. Everyday life imbibed with a kind of politics we see only in the most contentious election years here in the States.

In Moscow we saw fiery, Soviet-era statues displayed in the subways to remind us that the old days weren’t entirely gone. Rifles in hand, arms raised. We saw Lenin statues too. In St. Petersburg.

It was there I met a restaurant owner. Armenian. We sat together at a blackjack table inside the hotel’s casino. He had hairy arms and a Rolex watch. He said his restaurant was the best Armenian restaurant in St. Petersburg. Famous even. Everyone went there. Yet he had to pay bribes to keep the restaurant from being vandalized; and just two days before our conversation his brother had been badly beaten as he walked home. Car pulled over, two guys got out. Beat the shit out of him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” The Armenian asked as he recounted the story.

“No reason,” I answered as we looked at each other. What’d the police say?”

“They were police. The guys who beat him up. You see how things are here?”

Course that was just his version, the guy may have his own agenda. Yet even before our visit we were constantly warned of ethnic intimidation and skinheads. You’d think Russia’s huge losses in WWII would result in a repudiation of anything that smacked of Naziism, but there are worlds within worlds. Tribes within nations.

A big economic summit was to take place in St. Petersburg the week after we left. We were told that was why Putin and the police were cracking down. To put a little fear into the populace to be on their best behavior. The Russians respect that kind of thing. Strong leaders. They remember when the Tsar emancipated the serfs and how soon thereafter the royal family was murdered. Can’t show weakness. The people expect a little oppression or surveillance as indicative of a leader’s power. They’ll accept it for political stability. "Putin--what do you expect?" our tour group leader asked us without apology. "He’s politician."

In Moscow we had a guest guide for a day. I can’t recall her name, but she was probably 40 years old. She wore a bright pink pant-suit that fit tight round her ass and smart red lipstick. Her stylish, wire-rimmed glasses bordered on being cat’s-eyes and her lips were constantly pursed when not speaking. For some reason she held a clipboard in the crook of her arm to which she never referred. She was attractive in a dirty-professor kind of way. Adriana I think her name was!

Adriana guided us thru the Arbat and the new Russia. The money Russia. Condominiums that were still being built (for people with connections of course) and a floating restaurant where “People spend as much money on one meal as others make in a whole month.”

Adriana dropped many such comments as our bus wended its way thru the Arbat District's tight streets. Initially it was hard to tell if her intent was to impress us with the frivolity of the expenditure the way a game show host will tantalize the audience with material goods; or if she meant to highlight a perceived gluttony. But as the tour continued her leanings became more evident:

“And here you can find what are now very expensive apartments. In the past these would have been for government officials. Or professors at university. People would spend decades in these apartments and raise their families. Pass them along to their children. But now they have been forced to move for the new people. The people who work for oil companies, or who used to work for Yeltsin. When Yeltsin de-valued the ruble (here Adriana took a deep breath), people lost everything. You thought you had money in the bank, but now it was nothing. Paper! Because of Yeltsin. Only his people did well. His people and the foreigners. They divided all the industry. Most of us didn’t understand Capitalism. We weren’t raised...”

“Adriana,” our tour guide suddenly interjected. The two women exchanged words in Russian. Words I didn’t understand since it was their world--not mine. But momentarily Adriana did an about-face and directed our attention out the bus windows:

"And to the right you can see the statue of Peter the Great. Some say its really Christopher Columbus--that the artist tricked us with an old statue. It is sometimes hard for us to know the truth even on simple matters. But they says it is Peter the Great and now (heavy sigh) it is ours. In a few moments, you will see another famous landmark...”





* NOTE: The photograph of Vladimir Putin seen at the top of this post was taken off Google Images. All rights reserved on the rest of the pics displayed.