What I find amazing is how people are making more and more references to the political atmosphere feeling like the one familiar from 20-30 years ago here, in which honest conversations can only be conducted among friends in the kitchen. That is a disturbing undercurrent in a recent Bol'shoi Gorod feature story on the Russian LiveJournal community - I wish that article were available in English, but it's not, and I don't have the energy to translate it right now.
I did, however, translate the Bol'shoi Gorod article below from the original.
If you'll permit a brief digression here, I feel a strange need to explore my strange compulsion to translate articles which seem significant to me and then submit them to Johnson's Russia List - no doubt I subconsciously hunger for the approval of the Russia-watcher community or want to feel like I have something to contribute. Recalling a previous job where a co-worker and I mocked a job applicant in absentia and eliminated him from the pool for stating on his resume that he was a "frequent contributor to JRL" as though that were an exclusive club, I swore I wouldn't do this, but some variety of that compulsion is making me post links to a couple of my better JRL contributions (here and here).
Anyway, back to the point - this particular article (which didn't make the JRL cut, which explains why I am posting it here) describes an anti-terrorist initiative which might be unremarkable but for the response it generated in the Moscow press for several days after it came out. In the discussion which I saw and heard in the media, a focal point was the potential for officials to profit in various ways from the decree described in the article. What is remarkable about this story, then, is the way it demonstrates, in this particular article especially at the end, the profound cynicism with which many (if not most) Russians view the actions of the authorities, be they local, regional, or federal.
Sadly, this cynicism is often justified; in Putin's Russia, it is the norm for officials to use tragic circumstances to advance their own agendas. This was certainly the case with United Russia's brilliant plan (derided by representatives of most other parties in this article on the Echo of Moscow site) to guarantee that Moscow schoolchildren could be identified in the event of a tragedy on the order of Beslan by issuing them identification cards -- with one entire side of the card covered by the United Russia logo. This must have seemed like a win-win for Soviet-thinking bureaucrats: increase the atmosphere of paranoia and anticipation of an attack by the enemy (which can, of course, only be prevented by "measures" taken by the authorities) while at the same time reintroducing at a low level the sort of from-the-cradle party indoctrination which was ubiquitous in Soviet schools. The Moscow branch of United Russia demonstrates its obliviousness to such concerns by continuing to shamelessly promote this initiative on its website, in a press release which certainly stays on-message, mentioning or quoting people mentioning unspecified "external threats" three times and referring to the party-logo-bearing cards as "security passports."
What is even worse is that repeated cynical invocations of the terrorist threat by officials with their own agendas destroy the chances of success of legitimate security initiatives by reducing the public's propensity to buy into such initiatives. Political observers and even average media consumers scouring the news for the authorities' hidden agenda(s) in Russia is not a new phenomenon by any means, but to see the authorities live down to these low public expectations is especially offensive in the aftermath of Beslan.
"Underground Money" by Marianna Globacheva, Bol'shoi Gorod, Oct. 8, 2004, p. 10.
October 1st is a sad day in the Metro. "We don't know where we're going to move. We haven’t been told yet," a saleswoman at the drugstore kiosk in the passageway at the Teatralnaya station said dejectedly. Her counterpart at the exit to Okhotny Ryad is more direct -- "We’re closing down," she says, and refuses to say anything else. Only the saleswoman at the kiosk selling Russian Orthodox paraphernalia in the vestibule of the Planernaya station is happy. "We're not going anywhere until December 1st," she says with certainty, "we'll wait and see." She obviously has faith that everything will work out, perhaps because of the abundance of godly merchandise surrounding her.
On Friday [Oct. 1], a Moscow city government decree went into effect requiring all booths, stands, and other non-permanent points of sale and fast food establishments within a 25-meter radius of the Metro to be removed. According to the decree, the city will provide displaced traders -- those who have leases giving them the right to do business in the Metro -- with spots to continue their commercial activity aboveground. It's not clear how this will actually be accomplished -- there is an acute shortage in Moscow of commercial real estate, and of course it was no accident that these entrepreneurs located their stalls and stands where it’s convenient for passers-by to purchase some small item, whether a newspaper or an aspirin; in the confines of a tiny druggist’s stall it’s pointless to attempt to compete with a regular drugstore. It appears that thousands of salespeople will lose their jobs.
And it's all because of terrorism. The decree banning trade was based on the recommendations of the Moscow Inter-agency Antiterrorist Commission, which determined that, in this age of terrorist threats, stands and stalls which inhibit the passage of Metro riders create a direct threat to their safety. The merchants with their bales of goods and the people crowding around them are as bad as a bomb. And if, god forbid, that bomb should explode, then those very stalls will impede the passage of emergency medical and security services.
Accordingly, as part of the war on terrorism, all stands except those selling transit tickets are supposed to vanish from the metro by December 1. Newspapers, magazines, and theater tickets will be sold exclusively in specialized kiosks and vending machines. The assortment of publications available in those vending machines will be determined by Moscow city government officials, to their obvious delight. City government minister and head of the Moscow department of consumer affairs and services Vladimir Malyshkov could not conceal a grin at a press conference on the new decree, where he declared that the selection of publications available in the metro will now be radically different. Of course, Malyshkov did promise to consult with certain unspecified public organizations and large publishers of periodicals.
Three weeks ago, the tables selling newspapers, glasses, and other sundries vanished from the underground transfer passages between metro stations practically all at once. The metal carcasses of display racks stacked lonesomely against the wall are the only reminders of the former activity by the escalators to the Pushkinskaya and Tverskaya stations. There aren't even any people illegally trading privately; this time they are even taking that seriously.
The decree states that only stationary kiosks should remain in all underground street crossings and passageways. The many aboveground shops, stores, slot-machine halls and other temporary structures within the 25-meter zone and in any aboveground metro vestibules are to be done away with by December 1. By some measures, clustered in and around Moscow's 170 metro stations are some 15,000 such facilities, but officials count only 965.
That isn't the only point on which there is confusion. When asked at the press conference about what would happen to the famous "pipe" under Pushkin Square, where there actually was an explosion in August of 2000, the city officials said that underground street crossings are outside of the metro's jurisdiction and that everything would stay the same at Pushkin Square. However, according to the decree, all of the kiosks underneath Pushkin Square should be declared nonpermanent trading spots, which are subject to be dismantled and exiled. Here it emerged unexpectedly that on other issues the officials might also back down, for instance an exception might be made for pharmacy stands.
All of this proves yet again that terrorism is an excellent excuse to work out new informal agreements about various things.
Well. This first political post turned out to be a long one. I won't be able to keep up this pace in the days and weeks to come (which I know my many readers are counting on) if I don't get some sleep now, so it's time to sign off for the evening.
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