Russians didn’t know, and, busy as they were trying to make a living, they weren’t that eager to find out. If Zyuganov and his ilk got in, the corrupt bureaucratic Soviet holdovers , the so-called dingycrats, would continue to run things. And if Yeltsin was returned to power, the dingycrats’ partners in corruption, the crime-and-business parvenus called New Russians, would continue getting rich. The New Russians are an amazing bunch. The men wear three-piece suits with stripes the width and color used to indicate no passing on two-lane highways. Shoulder pads are as high and far apart as tractor fenders, and lapel points stick out even farther, waving in the air like baseball pennants. The neckties are as wide as the wives. These wives have, I think, covered their bodies in Elmer’s and run through the boutiques of Palm Springs, buying whatever stuck. Their dresses certainly appear to be glued on—flesh-tight, no matter how vast the expanse of flesh involved. Hair is in the cumulonimbus style. Personal ornaments are astonishing in both frequency and amplitude. There was a David Bowie concert in Moscow in June 1996, and according to the Moscow Times, the loudest sound from the expensive seats was the rattle of - jewelry. Most of the New Russians, like the dingycrats, had government connections in the old Soviet Union. They were at the heart of the socialist beast, and when it collapsed, they found themselves in perfect position to feast on the carcass. Drinking with Dmitry Volkov one night, I said, “Maybe you should have cleaned house in Russia. Maybe after the attempted coup in 1991, you should have hanged the Communists.” “No,” said Dmitry. “What would it have mattered if Goebbels had hanged Himmler?” Like many other places in the world, Russia is a land of contrasts between old and new. But these are not the cute contrasts between old and new that telecommunications companies love to use in TV commercials—Zen masters faxing each other blank pages. In Russia, the contrasts are all scary. I visited a radio station on election night, a radio station still using vacuum tubes in its broadcast equipment. There was a Toshiba laptop in the studio. And this ordinary piece of journalistic equipment was alarming. The laptop, with its crisp design and neat finish, made the whole building look like it had been built by
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online