Russian Presswatch/Yesterday's Gone
Young, Cathy
Yesterday's Gone by Cathy Young Less than a year after the hardline coup in Moscow, Gorbachev, back from the United States, gives an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda blasting Yeltsin for his...
...Nor are Central Asians and Caucasus natives—other groups traditionally scorned as traders in the old Soviet days—very prominent in the markets that have sprung up around the Russian capital...
...Young people are selling too, "hanging about stacks of beer cases and sipping beer themselves, chatting and flirting with fellow vendors...
...Finally: "If you can't afford a deodorant, you can throw salt or tobacco in the hoodlum's eyes...
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...No one tries to teach them how to live their lives...
...As for guns, "the arguments of proponents and opponents are well-known: 'con'—there will be shootouts in the streets...
...Russian newspapers speculate that this is in retaliation for the interview...
...Stun guns, evidently, are still too rare to have a meaningful market price...
...In the weekly Moskvichka, loyal Leninist Natalya Morozova (see TAS, August 1990) defends the great man from charges of destroying the clergy: "Let's set the record straight: it's not just priests who were shot, but only those priests who collaborated with the White Guards...
...Some officials worry that criminals will be able to get guns through these private agencies...
...Comrade Bushin unaccountably neglects to mention the fact that Lenin also had plenty of people shot and jailed and plenty of newspapers shut down—and don't you think that wasn't hard work...
...Advocates of putting weapons in the hands of citizens are found across the political spectrum: many "liberals" support it as a matter of individual rights, many "conservatives" as one of lawand-order...
...Yeltsin, you see, took some time off to vacation in the Crimea, while Lenin worked indefatigably, chairing meetings, making reports and speeches, giving pep talks to factory workers and so on...
...even here in the boondocks, it's all Western-style, with various "funds" and "associations"—and real power is still in their hands just as it used to be...
...gone is the shamefaced profiteer of yesteryear with his "furtive, guilty look, whispered offers, and stooped shoulders...
...On hand to condemn these doings was our old friend Vladimir Pozner, a great authority on people who manage to prosper under any regime...
...Ninety percent of the letter-writers wanted to test someone else for Bolshevik tendencies...
...Speaking of government limos, the May 31 segment of "60 Minutes" on continuing nomenklatura privilege was quite an eye-opener...
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...Vaksberg notes that, while the writer relies more on feelings than facts, the feelings can't just be brushed off, especially since, judging from readers' mail, the anonymous writer is far from alone...
...Maybe he'll buy himself a Mercedes to replace the ZIL...
...It's all a thing of the past now...
...Now," wrote Masha, "I am afraid to visit the Mausoleum on Red Square...
...It seems that all it took for our eternally victimized, charmingly impractical Russian people to enlist as merchants," writes Bilkis, "was official permission...
...Balkovsky describes various methods denizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States use to protect themselves from ruffians in these uncertain times, including specially trained dogs (a Rottweiler costs up to 15,000 rubles, a German shepherd2,000 to 10,000...
...In the Moscow daily Kuranty, the fervidly anti-Communist columnist Aleksandr Ivanov offered a survey of his mail on the subject of Lenin, awarding first prize to a letter from a retired gentleman who branded Vladimir Ilyich "a traitor to his country, a hypocrite, and a demagogue...
...He points out that gypsies, who used to sell rare consumer goods all over Moscow, have either disappeared or melted into the crowds of ethnically undifferentiated peddlers...
...Meanwhile, the Russian news agency IMA Press reports in Izvestia that Gorbachev is buying a house in Florida—a "standard two-story home" at 16 Senator Drive, Tropical Gulf Acres, Charlotte County, Florida, for $108,350...
...A friend of the writer's was apparently beaten and slashed in the street in broad daylight, after having written a letter to the local paper exposing the ex-manager of a state enterprise who used stolen money to open a private shop...
...Some factories already manufacture test models of Mace-like chemical spray cans and gas pistols, supposedly "more reliable than the imported self-defense weapons that are flooding our markets," and are ready to market them as soon as appropriate legislation is passed...
...An Ode to the Trader On a more optimistic note, in the same "Lifestyles" section a few days later (May 13), Evgeny Bilkis celebrates Russia's new social class: the traders...
...A couple of days in advance, about a thousand of the faithful gathered by the Lenin museum with flowers for their chief, where they were confronted by some protesters, one carrying a poster captured by a Kommersant photographer: "COMMIES REPENT...
...The less well-heeled, says Balkovsky, can make themselves safer by using any aerosol deodorant spray with an "Avoid Eye Contact" label, and hairspray's even better...
...gone are the old flower ladies fleeing in fear...
...A week later, the ex-Soviet president is stripped of his government ZIL limousine and given a Volga sedan instead, the rank-and-file bureaucrat's car...
...Was it cruel...
...The weekly Glasnost describes Lenin as "a man of tragic fate whose soul was illuminated from on high with superhuman wisdom and the highest nobility," a characterization whose mystical overtones should have made the birthday boy turn in his Mausoleum...
...Asimilarly grim image of daily life emerges from a May article in the Independent Gazette by Alexander Balkovsky, "If You Are Scared, Defend Yourself...
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...If you can't even afford salt or tobacco, a handful of sand will do...
...This is the first time, notes Balkovsky, that "the state intends to entrust weapons to people who are not in government 46 The American Spectator August 1992 service...
...By the end of summer, the Russian parliament will consider a draft bill on private ownership of weapons...
...Meanwhile, the tri-weekly Vecherniy Klub or Evening Club, a supplement to the daily Vechernyaya Moskva, reports (April 16) that Chelyabinsk sociologist Dmitry Mityukov has developed a unique method of identifying a Bolshevik type of personality, a secret he sells for just ten rubles...
...The zest with which nomenklatura bosses have been reinventing themselves as democrats and/or capitalists casts a pall over the heartening, if slow, develCathy Young, our regular Russian Press-watch columnist, is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...metal doors (6,000 to 15,000...
...And then there's all the money former Communist bigshots are pumping into private businesses and joint ventures...
...Day of the Living Dead Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, once known as Forever Alive, had his 122nd birthday on April 22, the first since the collapse of his creation...
...tour: How else, he grumbles, could one explain the fact that the Russian press wrote a lot less about it than did the American press...
...CI Want to brush up on a foreign language...
...So far, officials at the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and members of the parliamentary commission on law and crime have only the vaguest notion of what the legislation will entail...
...And in Pravda (April 23), commentator V. Bushin looks at Lenin's first two months in power and compares them favorably to Yeltsin's...
...And then it's full speed ahead—not one peep about honor or conscience...
...According to one official, all that is certain is that "for the foreseeable future, instruments of self-defense will be manufactured and sold to the population by the government, and will be registered and monitored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs...
...Of course...
...The leader and teacher was accorded somewhat more reverential treatment in the moderately pro-Communist former CPSU periodicals surveyed by Kommersant (April 20-27...
...Second prize went to a letter from an eighth-grader named Masha, who had read in some Russian version of the National Enquirer a story about an archeologist raped and impregnated by the 500year-old mummy of an Inca chief...
...After he advertised in Argumenty i Fakty, Mityukov was deluged with mail...
...Meanwhile, Boris Yeltsin recently signed a decree allowing private detectives and security guards to carry guns...
...Special stores where high-level officials can buy food and consumer goods at a fraction of the market price are alive and well...
...Yesterday's Gone by Cathy Young Less than a year after the hardline coup in Moscow, Gorbachev, back from the United States, gives an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda blasting Yeltsin for his handling of economic reform and for allegedly imposing a media blackout on his U.S...
...The correspondent, whose letter is titled "I Am Scared," says that he is more fearful of criticizing local crooks now than he was in the Brezhnev era: Former bosses have transformed themselves into democrats, set up firms, companies, and small businesses...
...No one demands to know why strong, able-bodied young people like them are not welding steel or wielding sledgehammers...
...Besides intermediate and advanced audio-cassette courses — most developed for the U.S...
...pro'—an armed population will be more difficult to dominate...
...Those who protest...
...only five percent wanted to test themselves...
...Call 1-800-551-6300 for FREE 36-page catalog, or write: BUDIO.FORIUF1r Room F823, 96 Broad Street, Guilford, CT 06437 (203) 453-97941 The American Spectator August 1992 47...
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...Mace (400 to 700 rubles a can) and gas pistols (about 10,000...
...The "Ethics and Law" page of the Literary Gazette (May 27) carries an unsigned letter to the weekly's legal commentator Arkady Vaksberg (whose book The Soviet Mafia was reviewed in these pages last month...
...The same "grannies" who used to curse at the damned profiteers have now joined their ranks: there they are, selling their rainy-day stockpiles (coffee, canned foods, even cheese and butter—until the city authorities recently banned street sales of perishables, claiming danger of food poisoning...
...The "necessity" of legalizing Mace and gas pistols, says Balkovsky, "is not questioned by anyone...
...are dealt with very simply, without involving any party committees, police, or prosecutors: a knife in the chest, a bullet in the heart, or something like that...
...Gone are the days of shadowy trading spots where hobbyists traded rare books, radio parts, stamps or coins, always ready to disperse at the command of a militiaman...
...But if you are a man of God, you should keep to religious activities...
...And if you want to learn a new language, we have beginning courses for adults and for children...
...Few Russians will be able to take advantage of private security arrangements: one of the country's best-known private detective agencies (in another sign of the times, they have been around for a while without the benefit of laws or decrees), the Alex Agency, charges between 120 rubles and $15 an hour, depending on the services rendered...
...Private detectives will also be allowed to investigate criminal cases provided that they notify the law enforcement agencies...
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Vol. 25 • August 1992 • No. 8
