rubberneck is worth pumping. Besides, I was an American and was supposed to know all about the problems of liberty. “You have had over two-hundred years of democracy,” said one of the Irkutsk men, sighing as though self-rule were something that had to be achieved by Darwinian selection, like an opposable thumb. The Russians did have queries I could answer, however. “Are there really cowboys in America?” (They were delighted that it’s so.) “Do you still use coins in the U.S.?” (The largest Russian coin was, at the time, worth 1/50th of a cent.) And I had something just as naive to ask them. “How is Russia doing ?” I said. “I mean, you know . . . Are people better off? Worse off?” Because I really couldn’t tell. I’d heard disaster stories about the Russian economy, but Moscow and St. Petersburg appeared prosperous. On the other hand, these were the wealthiest places in the country and, as a tourist, I’d spent my time in the best parts of town. Judging Russia by a couple of weeks of sightseeing in its two principal cities would be like judging America by walking up Madison Avenue from Fifty-seventh Street to the Whitney Museum. Irkutsk looked more like the old Soviet Union, shabby and drab, but tokens of economic success were scattered around. Some decent apartments were being built. There were Japanese cars on the streets. The Intourist Hotel offered actual hospitality, and its restaurants served real food. Dozens of privately owned stores had opened, including a grocery next to one of the Martha Stewart log cabins. And that grocery could have been stocked by Martha herself: ten varieties of Hong Kong tea biscuits. As for the Russian countryside, I’m not sure it ever looks different. Genghis Khan probably saw the same things in the Russian countryside that I did, although he stopped to burn them. I was flummoxed. Russia was richer than it was when I’d been there in 1982 and 1988. But experts and statistics said just the opposite. According to the Russian State Committee for Statistics, the gross domestic product was only 61 percent of what it had been in 1989. Russians couldn’t have more stuff and less stuff at the same time, could they? The World Bank estimated that one-third of Russia’s population had an income below the minimum sustenance level: One out of three people was keeling over from hunger. This wasn’t happening. Indeed, three out of three Russians could use some time on a StairMaster.
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