It seems especially appropriate in light of Vedomosti's People of the Year picks, which will be on the front page of the December 30 issue. Vedomosti, for those of you new to the Russian media scene, is probably the most respected business daily here, it's a joint venture involving the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. And its people of the year are not bad picks at all:
Victor Yushchenko (do I really need to ID him, even to provincial Americans?) as Politician of the Year;
Maria Sharapova, (Wimbledon champ and the pride of Russia, even though she spent many of her formative years in the US) as Professional of the Year;
Victor Vekselberg (businessman who bought Forbes' collection of Faberge eggs and brought them back to Russia, thus - he hopes - securing immunity from having his business empire repossessed by the State) as Private Individual of the Year;
Vagit Alekperov (President of LUKOIL) as Entrepreneur of the Year;
Igor Sechin (Presidential aide and supposedly one of the powers behind the throne in the Putin administration) as Riddle of the Year;
and the unidentified victims of Beslan as Victim of the Year.
Not to be callous, but that last category is probably an only-in-Russia type of thing. The writers get in a good dig at Putin's administration in every single one of the categories, and they mention the Yukos affair a couple of times, but nevertheless they fail to identify the one individual who, along with Putin, will be most remembered when we look back at 2004, a year when Russia grasped defeat from the jaws of victory and managed to have an underperforming economy in conditions when the opposite should have been expected, all the while turning the screws tighter on free speech, free elections, and freedom in general.
Note that the article below was less enigmatic in its original publication and remains so in Bolshoi Gorod's online archive. The unnamed "Businessman of the Year" was/is pictured alongside.
"Mikhail Kasyanov," by Masha Gessen
Bolshoi Gorod, Oct. 1, 2004, p. 6
If you were asked to name the most important politician, businessman, man of the year, the man whose face will come to mind when you tell your children about the strange and scary year of 2004, who would you name? Mikhail Kasyanov, perhaps? No? Then keep quiet.
GQ, a glossy men's monthly magazine, conducted a poll of its readers to select the "Man of the Year." As always, the magazine invited readers to vote for men in several categories, such as "Writer of the Year," "Producer of the Year," "Restaurateur of the Year," and twelve more categories, including "Businessman/politician of the Year." The person receiving the greatest amount of votes, regardless of the category in which he was nominated, was supposed to become "Man of the Year." Except -- Shhhhh!
When the head of the Conde Nast Russia publishing house, Bernd Runge, found out who the readers of GQ had chosen, he immediately had the results of the survey cancelled; that is, altered; that is, designated. The second-biggest vote-getter turned out to be Writer of the Year Boris Akunin, but the editorial board decided to display its freethinking nature and chose number three, Mikhail Kasyanov, who had also been nominated in the "Businessman/politician" category. In exchange, the publisher allowed the editors to write that one other, that is to say, another, person won in the category of "Businessman of the Year."
Runge the publisher, though a German, is well-versed in Russian realities. This is no coincidence: the 43-year-old publisher graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). In 1981, while still a student, Bernd Runge began to work with the Stasi. In his free time he worked as a journalist. Now he is Vice-president of Conde Nast International, in charge of its German and Russian publications. This May the two largest German magazines published revelatory articles about Runge's past work with the Stasi. The head of Conde Nast announced that he didn't care about the transgressions of a valuable colleague, all the more so as they were committed in a completely different era.
Meanwhile the editors of GQ prepared the issue in which the results of the poll were to appear. The magazine interviewed all of the winners, but as for the businessman, they wrote only that his selection wasn't for nothing, after all, his company remains influential. When the publisher saw the final layout, he understood that it was liberal. The page with the businessman's picture had to be removed in Italy, where the magazine is printed, and replaced by a page with Mikhail Kasyanov's picture.
The awards ceremony for the "People of the Year" was held on September 24. The Alexandrov Ensemble played. The master of ceremonies was Leonid Parfyonov, who was introduced as "uncompromising." He immediately said that "the main intrigue will be the announcement of the one and only hero of our days." The winners received GQ logos made of crystal and mobile phones. When the magazine’s editor-in-chief went onstage to award the "Man of the Year" prize, his hands were shaking, and he even tried to refuse the envelope containing Mikhail Kasyanov's name. It was almost as though he wanted to say altogether another name. But he didn't. He kept quiet.
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