Nuclear non-proliferation can be funny, if discussed properly. 

Sizing up a shot before giving a toast. 

The president of Chuvashia answers my question. 

I Love You, Man.

My home internet travails have finally come to an end. But, as with a lot of problems in Russia, they ended with a little bit of a bang.

An unidentified man called at 10:30pm on Wednesday and agreed to come over and hook up the internet at 6pm the next day. I didn’t know who he was, but he had enough details about me to lead me to believe that our office had put him up to it.

Well, 6pm came and went. At 7pm, he called to say he’d be another 20 minutes. At 8:10pm, he buzzed the apartment. When I retrieved him from the street (the security buzzer in my apartment doesn’t work, which is another huge issue) I couldn’t help but notice the heavy smell of alcohol and cigarettes. He wasn’t exactly wasted, but he was well on his way.

I interrogated him a bit in the elevator. It turned out that he is Lev’s brother (one of our staff) so I figured he was trustworthy enough to let in. In the apartment, he examined the hardware I had hooked up to the computer and the phone line. He did a couple of things and within a few minutes the Internet was up and running.

Apparently, I had plugged the modem in backwards and chosen the wrong settings on the software. I felt about 2 inches tall, since I was quite sober when I attempted it, and a drunk guy was able to fix it in a matter of moments.

After that, his whole tone and speed changed. He went from speaking normally to using that voice you reserve for retarded foreign children. “You see,” he said “you have to put the arrow over the little picture before you click. BEFORE.”

I’d have objected to this type of treatment but I really didn’t have a leg to stand on. I got unrighteously indignant, but I kept it to myself.

Moscow Orientation – Day 18 – Culture and Politics

Our first meeting today was at the Bolshoi Theater, Russia’s premier performing arts space. It’s hard to translate the importance of the Boshoi into American terms – think of it as the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center combined, with all the best musicians and singers/dancers under contract in one place.

We got a tour of the New Stage across from the 150yr old main theater that is undergoing extensive renovation. We had attended a ballet here a few weeks ago, so the hall itself was nothing new – still beautiful. The backstage scene was really interesting, though. We talked about the pitch of the stage and seats, and the challenge of using much bigger sets from the much bigger theater across the street.

Then we met with Gennady Iskanov, the executive director of the Bolshoi, a short sort of roundish man with a wonderfully friendly personality. He took our questions and answered very honestly and directly in his slightly raspy, wheezy voice. He came across as a very professional and able administrator. I asked how much the reconstruction project would cost, and how that tally compares to similar projects around the world. He gave me 4 solid, detailed reasons why it was going to be more, and attached a percentage of total cost to each. I have a feeling he’d been asked the question before. Anyway, I was satisfied with the answer.

I also asked what would be the biggest change visible to theatergoers. He identified comfort as the #1 change. Fewer and better seats; now that’s my kind of executive director of a theater!

Next, we walked to the executive office building of the Russian parliament. We went through extensive security before meeting with Konstantin Kosachev, a senior member of the committee on foreign relations. He has degrees in international relations and long experience in both Soviet and Russian diplomatic posts.

This guy is a real professional. He answered our questions very diplomatically and still gave the impression of being very honest and open. It was the first political conversation I’ve had in Russia that didn’t involve hysterical ranting. By some one other than me, that is. And I did my best to bait him, too. With recent events in Syria and Iran, I said, Americans are beginning to believe that Russia isn’t a good partner in the war on terror. Are Syria and Iran connected to this issue, and what role does Russia play in the Middle East? He got a little animated, but gave a studious answer on how the US’s selective enforcement of the non-proliferation treaty and creation of chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan actually makes the US an unreliable partner.

He told a funny story about US-Russia relations. One US senator came to Moscow and met with him. He said that he, as a good friend of Russia, was one of the people who could legitimately criticize out of respect. After all, he said, only a close friend can tell you that you’re getting fat. Ah, Kosachev agreed, but a close friend doesn’t point at you in public and scream out loud about how fat you are getting. That’s basically our relationship in a nutshell. The Russians are the first to admit that they have problems. They don’t mind you criticizing them, either. They’d just rather not have you do it front of everyone else.

He thanked us and promised us that Russia would become “a normal, democratic country". I hope it doesn’t become too normal, though; there wouldn’t be any fun in coming here in that case.

Moscow Orientation – Day 17 – Back to Russia?

We returned to Moscow early this morning. Despite getting plenty of sleep on overnight trains for some reason I still emerge from them completely spent. I went home and crawled into bed for a couple more hours of sleep. The rest of the day was free, so I had plenty of time to reflect on our trip.

Everyone kept saying that Moscow isn’t Russia – it’s an international center of so many things, with so many foreigners, that it’s closer to London and New York than to the rest of the country. In some ways I suppose that theory is accurate. In my opinion, though, you can take Moscow out of Russia, but you can’t take the Russia out of Moscow. All the modern advantages and problems of the country are writ large here; wonderful culture, hospitality, corruption, disparities in income, economic development, the precarious balance of history and development. Whatever you call Moscow, it’s a bustling, exciting city of people hustling and hurrying to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it’s a little further than where they are now. I’m pretty happy to be back in the un-russia.

Even in Cheboksary, we ran up against that attitude. “Ahhh,” people would say, “Cheboksary isn’t representative of Chuvashia.” And in some ways, the economic success and stability of Chuvashia isn’t representative of life in the regions of Russia. I think its kind of like the weather; wherever you go in the world, people always tell you that the weather was beautiful the week before you got there.

Our trip was a fascinating experience, and we met with interesting people at every step. At every step, however, out official delegation was carefully monitored and managed. Two handlers ushered us from place to place, and a photographer documented everything. The problem is that I began to chafe under so much control and began to see some real problems with the reasons behind our close stage managing. For instance, after giving an interview with a local television station, my colleague Nathan began to chit chat with the reporter – one journalist to another. Our handlers interrupted the exchange and gave the reporter a dressing down for the conversation. In addition, our photographer was actually an official from the presidential press agency, and I think that had some bearing on the conversations that we had with other people.

For that matter, there weren’t really any other people. Our schedule didn’t permit any free time to even go into a café and have a cup of tea. Granted, we only had limited time in the Republic, but perhaps they didn’t want us to meet up with anyone else. By the end of 3 days of such sneaking suspicions, the police escorts felt like they were there to prevent us from doing anything unscheduled rather than ease our path to somewhere else. In sum, after 3 days in Cheboksary, I have absolutely no feel for what life is really like there.

In the evening, I attended a symposium on corruption at the Higher School of Economics. The speaker was the head of the INDEM foundation, a think tank that did a huge study on corruption a few months ago. I had read the paper, so the presentation wasn’t too new. Still, there are some surprising findings; the highest growth in the volume of bribes was in two areas. One is avoiding the universal conscription into the army, and the second is gaining entrance to higher education institutions. That second one caused some squirming in the audience among administrators and students alike.

Reaction to the study was a bit strange. Some people took the massive volume of bribes as a positive; if bribes are increasing, then the unrecorded part of the economy must be growing at a very past pace – which is good for the country. Also, several people were willing to add the foundation’s estimate of total corruption back to the Russian official GDP tally and then compare that figure favorably to Germany and France. The first is fooling yourself that corruption doesn’t choke out legitimate and illegitimate business activity equally effectively. The second is intellectually dishonest and self-aggrandizing.

Intellectually dishonest and self-aggrandizing, huh? I think I’d be better careful here in my glass house.

Moscow Orientation – Day 16 – Regional Trip

Today, our first meeting was with the local party leadership of the United Russia party, the largest political organization in Russia, and basically the ruling party. It was created to support the policies of the state, so it enjoys a strange relationship with the official organs of power; many leaders are supported by it and support it in turn, but are not necessarily members. For example, it’s rabidly pro-Putin but the president himself is not a member.

We got a warm greeting in their offices that share a hallway with a judo club. They were very cordial and warm, and our host explained some of the local organizations structure and its goals regarding living standards, youth, education, etc. And then things started getting strange. In response to nearly every question, the local chairman of the party went of on a neo-fascist tirade of invective against nearly everything you could imagine. In particular, though, he went on and on about the need for Russia to be a strong state in response to the fascist states on its borders, including but certainly not limited to Estonia and Ukraine. His own party members in the room were groaning and gasping in response to his statements. I wanted to get the hell out of there faster than I’ve ever wanted out of a meeting.

Next, we went to the parliament building where we were scheduled to meet with the local media. We were greeted by the minister of culture and press, who escorted us into the city council chambers. The room was set up like the house of commons, and on one side sat about 20 reporters. We sat on the opposite side, and listened attentively to the greeting from the speaker of the chamber. The media began asking us questions and we answered. Some questions were strange and excessively broad – what do you think of globalization? But most questions were quite good – what impressions do you have of Russia, good and bad?

I leaned forward, clicked on my microphone, and enthusiastically noted that we all have positive impressions of Russia; the image we get in the US differs substantially from the image you learn when you arrive. But, It’s a question that I turned back around at the journalists. I noted that I had lived in Kaliningrad, where everyone said that it wasn’t the real Russia, more like former Germany. Now, I live in Moscow where everyone says that it differs too much from the rest of the country to be considered Russia. I know the phenomenon well, I said, since I live in Manhattan; a small island in the Atlantic Ocean not far from America. That got a big laugh. So, I asked, have I finally found the real Russia here in Chuvashia? A big difference of opinion – the senior aide to the minister, who had been sitting behind me shouted out that Chuvashia is the heart of Russia. But a journalist across from me told me that I needed to keep looking.

Time ran out just as things were getting good, and we were ushered off to lunch and then the mayor’s office. As we entered the large official conference room, Nathan asked me to join him in the hallway. He introduced me to a reporter for the local television station, and told me that she wanted to ask a few questions. I agreed, but only if he stuck around in case I got myself into trouble. On went the camera and the floodlight, and I was on TV. What did I think of the investment climate in Chuvashia? What advantages does the Republic have?

In general, I was positive about their chances. The region is tops in education, has high tech industry, good infrastructure, responsible leadership, a lack of ethnic or religious strife, etc. Anyway, she thanked me and then asked for my name and background. When I told her the whole equity analyst profession, she got really excited; she was quite happy that she stumbled across what could be construed as an informed, professional opinion. I guess my odds of getting on TV increased.

The meeting with the mayor was quite good. He told us about their efforts to support small business in the city, as well as clean up the town. They decided a few years ago to eliminate kiosks and force all businesses inside. It’s worked pretty well, the town is clean and neat, and many buildings have been renovated to supply retail space. Anyway, a great conversation.

That about wrapped up our stay in Cheboksary. We checked out of the hotel, and had dinner near the train station before our trip back to Moscow. But just when you think things are going to be uneventful in Russia, they begin to take strange turns.

The senior aide to the President of the Republic was on the train and came and greeted us. He’s probably in his late thirties, short but powerfully built, blond hair with strange glasses frames that look like a Russian attempt at hip german eyewear. He’s a really
friendly guy, and a hell of a character. He was our host on our first vodka-soaked night. As tamada, or toast master, he dictated who would give the next toast. At one point he did the Cossack dance, and at another point he did his impression of a “human beat box” in rap style. For several minutes. Hilarious and strange.

He had that day’s paper with him – and there was a front page article about our delegation to Cheboksary. The facts were correct, but two quotes they used were completely fabricated. One guy who supposedly said one statement had to ask other people what it meant since it had several words he didn’t understand. Another quote was attributed to one lady who hasn’t opened her mouth in an official meeting since arriving in Russia. Still, we all agreed that the sentiment was largely correct even if the journalistic ethics were abhorrent.

Well, we treated Dima (the Advisor) to a few beers. That’s when somehow we stumbled across the knowledge that he’s a, well, folk chiropractor - for lack of a better term. He cracked everyone’s back and neck, and then healed Jim’s long-aching arm. I immediately felt better after the treatment. He invited us back to Cheboksary for any necessary follow up adjustments.

Moscow Orientation – Day 15 – Regional Trip

Our first meeting today was with the staff of the Chamber of Commerce. It was interesting to hear their assessment of the regional economy and what they identified as business issues. Truth be told, though, a lot of the long presentation was eminently forgettable. Their legal director, for example, cited chapter and verse of the Russian law that established arbitration courts.

After lunch, we transferred by van over to the main government offices of the president of the republic. We waited, seated, in a formal conference room until he entered from a door in the back of the room.

His opening remarks focused on the role of the president as the preserver of Chuvash culture and language, and then progressed to some of their projects and accomplishments.

Somehow, without natural resources to speak of their economy has grown quickly and transitioned into an information-based high-tech economy. I asked him how he did this, and why Chuvashia has had a higher investment rate than the national average since 2001. He joked and said that that was very valuable information, but he agreed to answer when I said that I wouldn’t tell anyone else – besides the 10 of us in the room, there were TV crews and reporters, too.

His answer boiled down to good governance, responsibility, and transparency. For example, all of these have combined such that the republic can borrow directly from the WorldBank without a federal guarantee. That’s unique in Russia.

The president was elected to the post 3 times since 1993. President Putin recently took back all that power, though, and now has the authority to appoint all regional heads. Given the success of the Chuvash economy (and perhaps some other assurances), he appointed him for another term.

Down the hall from there we had a meeting with the head of the parliament and about 10 deputies. We got to ask all sorts of questions and they asked us a few, too. The conversation was just getting going, however, when our 2 handlers appeared and whisked us out.

We traveled out of town to the local tractor factory. By now, we had become an actual motorcade – our minibus, 2 black Volga sedans, and a police escort.

At the factory we met the minister of trade, the deputy director of the factory, and the chief engineer. Unfortunately for them, I’m quite adept at the plant-tour format of rolling conversation and I peppered them with questions the whole time. Also, I’d done some homework on the financials and asked questions about them, too. They were pretty surprised by that line of questioning.

PromTractor is an absolutely vast complex of enormous buildings. 100% of the tractor is built on premises (except for a few imported engines) – from foundry operations right through final assembly. The legacy of a centrally planned economy is that there isn’t much opportunity to outsource. We then got a chance to drive the tractors in the parking lot.

It was a bit scary, frankly. The parking lot is metal tile to protect from the treads of these giant tractors, and these rumbling behemoths slipped and skidded all over the place. Especially when they did doughnuts; that’s right – the driver put a 63 ton tractor into a spin.

Part of the demonstration was the precision nature of the machinery. They set an egg in a champagne glass on the ground. The tractor lumbered up and gently lowered a weird blade appendage backhoe just until the egg broke. We clapped as they proudly showed us a gently cracked egg in an unscathed champagne flute. Impressive, but I thought the real purpose of a 63 ton tractor was to do serious damage to something. Regardless, I’ll save the $350k and continue to use the edge of a frying pan to crack my eggs.

We loaded back into the motorcade and sped off to dinner. The police escort allowed us to blow through traffic lights, cut other drivers off, and generally disrupt the evening commute. I felt a bit embarrassed looking out the window at people waiting at bus stops in the rain. “Out of the way, you peasants, it’s time for my dinner!”

Dinner was, of course, another marathon of courses and toasts. I avoided the vodka completely and felt much the better for it.

Moscow Orientation – Day 14 – regional trip

On arrival at the Cheboksary train station we were met by a delegation of high-ranking aides to various governmental figures. We met two women who would be our handlers throughout our visit. It was all very nice, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit self conscious of my appearance after the long train trip.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we toured the city; a tidy place perched on the edge of the Volga River. We went to the 10th annual Festival of Languages at a local institute where, it turns out, we were honored guests. They ushered us directly onto the stage of a packed auditorium and asked us to say a few words. That was a surprise. We shuffled our feet a bit and looked at each other for a moment; for an instant, I swear I heard crickets chirping. Then, Jim stepped up to the microphone and into the breach.
“I hear you have an English club here, so I’ll say this in English…”
Brilliant!

As it turns out, the school is renowned as a center of Esperanto. Such is the state of Esperanto, I guess, that a world renowned center of it is located 700 kilometers past Moscow. I suppose its like one of those Eskimo languages that survives thanks to its isolation and weird adaptation to a unique environment. Of course, globally, more people probably speak Klingon than Esperanto.

Then we headed off to Novocheboksarsk, a recent suburb of the city. We pulled up to the town hall and there were several high-ranking officials and a group of reporters and TV crews waiting for us. Another big surprise. A quick greeting and we headed off to the war memorial to lay flowers. Our host, the head of the regional administration, gave a speech about US-Russian relations. Well said, and then off to the adjacent Afghan war memorial.

Things got a little odd at this next memorial. There, he equated the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan with the war on terror and Chechnya and noted how both the US and Russia are engaged in the same battle. His speech was so replete with the long-dead propaganda phraseology of the Soviet Union that later we asked if he had seen “Ninth Company”, the hit movie about that era. He hadn’t. The phrases and the lumping of different conflicts under the heading of terror was all his idea.

We had a police escort to lunch, us in a minivan and our hosts in a shiny Mercedes, and our handlers in a white Volga sedan. Lunch was a feast with the Mayor, Minister of Justice for the Republic, and the head of the administration. We had an interesting conversation about the most recent elections in their region.

Next, we rocketed out into the countryside for a visit to a museum honoring a local cosmonaut. First, though, we laid flowers on his tomb in a chapel. When you put flowers on a grave in Russia it has to be an even number, but any number for a regular monument. No one, however, could explain why. We went through the little museum and then toured the small, wooden hut where he was born in the 1920’s. This fellow went from a one-room cabin to being the 4th man in space. No wonder he’s such a local hero.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t help reflecting on his ultimate situation. He left a small cabin, had an amazing life, launched into space twice, and still – he’s buried only a few feet away where it all began. Maybe you can go home again.

Next we raced off to the riverside to catch a tour boat cruise on the Volga. When we got cold on the open deck, we went inside and discovered the huge dining table covered with food. Another huge meal, and this one had lots of vodka. Lots. The MC, or tamada, organized the toasting and singing. I gave a toast that said something to the effect that I was so happy to find such wonderful people in a place I’d never heard of. There was, as I may have mentioned, quite a good deal of vodka present. Anyway, at the end of the toast I quoted Yuri Gagarin – the first cosmonaut – and that was a big hit.

Moscow Orientation – Day 13 – All about Travel

I made arrangements for one trip today and got ready to set out on another.

My first stop was a travel agent in my neighborhood. The security guard in the lobby eyed me suspiciously when I walked in. He turned down his television set and asked me where I was going.
“I’m going to the travel agency,” I answered.
“Do you need tickets?”
“Yes.” I said.
“Railroad or Airline?” he asked.
“Airline” I answered.
“To where?” he queried.
“The US,” I said.
“Upstairs to the left,” he directed.
All this was odd, since the travel agent is only upstairs to the left. No other choice. And since only one person was working on this Saturday, there was no other choice than to talk to the one person handling all ticket requests. Still, procedure is procedure and I had to go through this screening.

Anyway, I secured tickets and left. My next stop was a huge, open air market to get a heavy fall/winter coat long enough to wear over my suits. And warm enough to get me through some undoubtedly nasty weather.

The Izmailovsky market is a vast space crammed with stalls selling every imaginable good – and plenty of unimaginable goods as well. For all the nice new retail stores in Moscow, this is still the kind of place where the majority of muscovites do their shopping.

I found a nice leather coat, and had a nice experience buying it. The vendor was extremely courteous, solicitous, polite, and shared advice and opinions. In short, a pleasant retail experience is a rarity in Russia. Normally, one has to flag down a salesperson who will frown and be generally uncommunicative during the entire transaction. But not in the bazaar, populated as it is by central Asians and “Caucasians” – people from the Caucasus countries like Georgia and Armenia.

Unfortunately, they have a terrible reputation for both organized crime and unorganized one-on-one swindling. Russians call them “blacks” and uniformly distrust them. But if the “blacks” can instill even a little bit of a consumer culture here, than whatever their transgressions cost will be a small price to pay in the long run.

The fellowship group collected at the office and went to Kazansky Station for the train to Cheboksary, the capital city of the Chuvash Republic. We had nice accommodations, and I shared a sleeper compartment with Jim. Well, not much since the group all crammed into two compartments. Luckily I was not in the one with all the vodka – just a few beers and snacks instead.

The train was as hot as a sauna, and at one stop I got out for some air. There’s a crystal factory nearby and the platform was crowded with people selling all manner of crystal goods. They ranged from small trinkets to huge chandeliers carried on poles overhead.

One colleague was standing somewhat cluelessly in the midst of tinkling crowd of chandeliers. People were freely going through his pockets until we stopped them and ushered him back onto the train. That’s when I realized the full extent of what was going on in the compartment with all the vodka; he neither knew nor cared that he was being pickpocketed.

It was a 12 hour train trip, so there was plenty of time for chatting and sleeping. I did plenty of both.

Moscow Orientation – Day 12 – Getting Juiced

Today the group went on a site visit to a fruit juice factory near Moscow. It was an interesting visit, and all the more fun to go see something concrete for a change – so far, a lot of our orientation has been more esoteric conversations in conference rooms. I learned a lot about juice manufacturing, and some more about Russian humor on the ride back.

The factory is operated by Wimm-Bill-Dann, the leading fruit juice producer in Russia with nearly 40% market share. Its bigger than it sounds – Russia is a huge market for juice, and grocery stores routinely stock several brands of flavors that are more difficult to find at home. The company is also listed on the NY stock exchange and routinely wins all sorts of prizes for corporate governance and transparency. Laudable, indeed; it also covers up a connection to organized crime that is slightly less well publicized. But then, business in and of itself is a form of organized crime in Russia.

We met with the director of the factory and the public relations person. They described the company a bit, and then went into the production process for juice, with special emphasis on raw materials and quality. None of their products has any artificial additives of any sort.

The factory is a modern, sparkling example of efficiency and technology – even though the entrance is through an old milk factory with low ceilings, soviet murals, and dingy floors. The process is highly automated, and spurred along by german machinery from Tetra Pak, the global packaging conglomerate. The facility produces 1 million liters a day, and is one of 25 such facilities in Russia.

It’s an impressive setup and, frankly, a bit mystifying. I stared at the filling machine for nearly 5 minutes but was still unable to figure out how the juice actually got into the cartons. A continuous tube of cartons streams down filled with juice. The tube is crimped at intervals corresponding to the packaging and then sealed. All this happens in a blink of an eye. Then, the caps are glued on – which simply didn’t seem to square with my experience as a consumer of their products.

Anyway, they let us take a carton off the line for ourselves. I had the pleasure of selecting a grapefruit juice that, as the time stamp shows on top, had been manufactured only moments before. Neat. Jim and I lagged behind to ask the warehouse foreman a couple of questions, and ended up getting lost on the factory floor. We had to be retrieved by our handlers.

We piled back into the van to return to Moscow and I ended up sitting near Sergei, our driver. He’s a very nice person, and a real character. He provided rolling commentary as we pulled out of the little town. Sergei noted that the factory on the left produced fighter jets for many years, and that the town was closed to all outsiders for many years.
“What is the name of this town?” I asked.
“I’m not telling!” he shouted back.

They also apparently produced parts for the space agency. That led to how the Americans faked the moon landing with doctored pictures.
“Listen,” he said, “Soon the Chinese will be living on the moon and they’ll prove that the Americans were never there.”

He also lamented that New York has a Russian neighborhood but Moscow has no Little New York.
“But 3 Americans live on Nikitskaya near the office,” I remarked, “that’s kind of like a little New York.”
“No,” he retorted, “that’s more like an invasion than a settlement.”

I was getting the gist of the banter at this point. When we got into the center of town, he baited us once again. Looking at the Kremlin, he asked if the White House was as big.
“No,” I said, “but it’s more beautiful.”

He got a huge kick out of that.

Moscow Orientation – Day 11 – Telling it Like it Is

I went to work in the morning today, as our official program didn’t start until the afternoon. It’s nice to get back into the office and a nice contrast to the orientation days of traveling around town and having meetings.

My colleagues at work were interested to hear about our travel plans – the Alfa group is leaving Saturday for Cheboksary, a city of 500k people outside of Kazan. It’s on the Volga, and I’m hard pressed to say much more about it. The guys helped me do a little research, and we turned up a tractor factory called “PromTractor”; prom is an abbreviation for “industry” in Russian. We did some data collection and back-of-the-envelope financial analysis on their most recent annual report. This is what passes for fun in an asset management office, by the way. That was a good time until we discovered that Cheboksary also has a highly regarded museum of the history of beer. Why there, of all places, was hard to figure out but I resolved to try get it onto the official schedule. It seems more interesting than, say PromTractor, which did make it onto the official schedule.

Sasha then asked me when I had scheduled my next trip to Langley (Virginia, where the CIA is headquartered). It was a very clever and ingenious way of making the standard joke that Americans here are up to no good, or at best have a hidden agenda. I doubt very much that I’ll find very much there that will interest my dark masters in Washington, but I’ll file a standard report nonetheless. Ooops, I mean…

The group met for lunch around the corner from my office, and then we traveled off to a meeting with Boris Nemtsov. He was one of the first democratically elected government officials in Russia about 15 years ago, and was tapped by Yeltsin to become a high-ranking official until some economic crisis wiped out that whole layer of government. Now, he’s the head of a bank specializing in oil financing and an advisor to the Ukrainian government.

He came across as a genuine fellow, and pulled absolutely no punches in his analysis of Russian-Ukrainian relations, Putin’s regime, oil, the color revolutions, Russian society, or any of the other topics that we discussed for more than 90 minutes. All of this was peppered with some, well, earthy language and rather risqué anecdotes. All of it was very funny, though, and he gave the impression more of someone you’d meet at a sporting event than of a powerful person in both politics and business.

He asked about who else we’d met with in the past few weeks. Then, he lambasted most of them for their views. Again, very on point and very funny stuff. He went after Medvedeev for being an apologist, Posner for buying into media censorship, Lozansky for being more American than Russian, Arkady for being an idealist, us for not going to his home region of Nizhniy Novgorod, Russians for their lack of work ethic, the government for its paranoia and resulting policies. He assailed all these liberally and equally.

In response to the question “Do you consider yourself a radical?” he answered with a straight face – “No, I’m a completely normal person.”

It was nice to speak to someone who didn’t choose his words so carefully. At times, I’ve felt like we’ve been presented a packaged presentation. But our meeting with Nemtsov was more conversational, realistic, and with no real agenda to propel. He admitted that now he lives “very well”, and has no interest in going back into office.

More power to him. Of course, when the word “oil” is in the name of your bank, it’s hard not to feel like everything is alright these days.

Greetings from Sergiev Posad!

Testing connectivity issues. Actually, it's just gratuitous posting of my own picture!

Moscow Orientation – Day 10 – Press and Circumstance

Today we met with Vladimir Posner, the host of a popular Sunday talkshow and president of the Russian Academy of Television. We had attended a live broadcast of his show on Sunday, but got to sit down with him today and discuss press, journalism, and politics in Russia today.

Vladimir Posner is a fascinating guy. He was born in Paris and raised in New York by his communist- sympathizer parents. The family fled the United States during the McCarthy era and was offered citizenship by the USSR. It seems that the father was not only a card-carrying communist, but quite literally on the payroll of the USSR. Vladimir became a journalist and lived in the US for many years. During Glasnost, he hosted a live satellite show with Phil Donahue and audiences in Leningrad and New York. Later, he and Donahue had a show together for 6 years on CNBC.

He was very open with us, and answered our questions directly and frankly. He outlined press relations with the government. Print media is very free in Russia, but television is tightly controlled, and he gave a short history of the 1990’s explaining why. But state control of media has its problems, and one is that people stop listening. So, he expects the government to get out of the media business soon. But certainly not before the next presidential election in 2008.

He gave practical experience based examples of the rules that a journalist has to live with – and Posner is unique in that he’s had widely varying experience in the US and USSR/Russia. He noted that the controls are definitely in place in the US; it’s just that there, the mechanisms are quiet, efficient and largely market-based. Here, there made up of angry phone calls from the Kremlin to his boss. He knows full well what’s fair game and what’s not. He admitted fully that Chechnya is simply out of bounds. It is not a topic for discussion by the independent media. End of subject.

He was interested to hear about us, too, and gave us his cellphone number; in case any type of problem arises, he said, he could use whatever influence he has to help out. Very generous of him, I thought.

In the evening, I attended the 15th Anniversary celebrations of the Democratic Russia Movement. Movers and shakers from the early days got together to reminisce about yesterday and lament their absence in the power structures today. A lot of the speeches amounted to angry ranting by old people quite disaffected with the way the past 15 years have turned out. But there was plenty of analysis of what may have happened had these people not stood up in 1990 during the Soviet Coup. A very interesting evening; just don’t ever underestimate the ability of Russians to sit through an evening of speeches. I left after 2 and half hours and the program wasn’t even halfway done.

Moscow Orientation – Day 9 – Crime and Punishment

Sometimes temptation is just too great to resist. And sometimes, the ensuing sin is so pleasant that half way through it commission, a sinking sensation sets in; behavior this bad, that feels this good, won’t go unpunished. I just didn’t think I’d have to do such heavy penance for lunch.

On Sunday after the TV show we attended, a few of us went to the Starlite Diner - a retro American-style restaurant patterned after a 1950’s greasy spoon. There aren’t many real places like that left in America, so this one in Moscow is a very faithful reproduction of all the lame retreads that populate malls in the US. Lots of Texaco signs, US Route 1 signs, weird ads for familiar consumer goods with strange slogans - like “Pepsi makes you Sparkle”. In fact, the effect is so authentic an interpretation of the modern interpretation of what the 1950’s restaurant scene was like, that the founders of this place in Moscow returned to the US and opened many more franchises.

There are parts of Russian cuisine I enjoy, larger parts that I don’t. But I really do like diners. I especially like cheeseburgers and milkshakes. So lay it on me, I said. Of course, ordering it in Russian took some of the nostalgia out of it; what I really wanted to say was “cheeseburger deluxe, medium, and a chocolate milkshake.” In Russian, I ordered by saying “cowboy burger, with blood, and a chocolate milk cocktail.”

It was good - really good. About halfway through the bliss I began to realize something; that my digestive system had become acclimated to Russian food. And then I began to remember some of the digestive – ahem – “travails” related to becoming acclimated to Russian food. And briefly, ever so briefly, I theorized that returning to American style food with a massive cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake, may entail a reverse transition period. Or shock. Well, I said, I’m enjoying this meal immensely. And when the bill comes, I’ll pay. And when any other bill comes due, I’ll pay that too.

I just didn’t think I’d be paying until Wednesday. I’m sick as a dog, and I’ve resolved not to eat at all until I can no longer fear a massive negative physical reaction. I’m so sick that I’m not hungry, and the sight of food is repellent.

Sometimes the absence of something allows you to think clearly about it for the first time. Now that I no longer eat, I’ve noticed how much time I spent eating and procuring food. I’ve also noticed how much money it costs to eat on a regular basis. Granted, this isn’t a sustainable long-term strategy, but think of the implications of a “lose weight and save money” diet. It’s a million dollar idea. After all, people bought into the Atkins diet and that’s at least as personally self destructive.

Sounds a little crazy, I guess – which leads me to my last observation; delirium is a side effect of not eating for 3 days.

Moscow Orientation – Day 8 – Theater for the Masses

Our meeting with a deputy from the Duma was cancelled at the last minute, so I headed off to the office for the rest of the day.

The group reconvened around 7pm, as we had tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of Raimonda. The main Bolshoi Theater is closed for renovation until 2008, so the performance was held at the New Stage, an impressive new facility just across the street. The reception hall is all marble, brass, and gilt. It’s all very opulent and formal in a very Russian way. It resembles a lot of later Romanov palaces. That is to say, it’s damn near over-the-top gaudy in its exuberant decoration.

But theaters are a pretty good place to reflect on modern construction, cultural heritage, the role of the arts and society, and, this being modern Russia – corruption.

The main hall was supposed to have four massive columns of marble framing a center court of benches. And while the rest of the marble seems to have made it into its designated places, one can’t help but notice that the four main columns are just a bit off. Closer inspection reveals that they’re wood, painted to resemble marble. The story going around Moscow is that the choice building materials didn’t make it into the final installation – they were looted by the connected and powerful for their own uses. Probably quite a few dachas (vacation homes) around the region with beautiful marble trim thanks to that maneuver.

Which brings one to the massive restoration of the main theater across the street. When it’s completed, Russia’s premier arts hall will be a totally modern facility for the 21st century. Ambitious plans for backstage technology are elegantly coupled with a historian’s attention to detail for the appearance of the public areas of the theater. But the price tag as proposed by the city of Moscow is somewhere in the billion dollar range. Critics point out that the brand-new opera houses of several major European capitals combined didn’t total that much.

So it seems that the beneficiaries of the building plan, emboldened by their success in looting the construction site across the street, went right to the source and inflated the actual price tag instead of just stealing the materials once they arrived. That should mean a lot of nice new dachas over the next couple of years.

The ballet was fantastic, by the way.

Moscow Orientation – Day 7 – Live from Moscow!

On Sunday, we attended the broadcast of a morning television talk show at Ostankino, the main studio in the city. The program was “Vremena” hosted by Vladimir Posner, a roundtable discussion with 4 guests.

We didn’t know the topic or who the guests were when we arrived. But there was plenty to entertain us in the interim. We were all in suits and looking business like as instructed. The rest of the audience was mixed - except for the dozen young girls from some university, with their tight clothing and midriff baring outfits. They all decided they wanted coffee at the same time I did, and stood in line debating the merits of various beverages while scrubbing up money from each other. It was a tedious ordeal to wait through despite the fact that, I may have mentioned, they were a dozen young girls from some university with tight clothing and midriff baring outfits. Coffee, after all, is coffee.

A tiny old woman with enormous round black framed-glasses came out of nowhere and ordered us into the studio. She snapped and snarled at everyone in turn, in groups and individually. She was a real pitbull. We were ushered in first, and she told every one to stand aside as she took the foreigners in. “Ladies, stand aside. I’m not going to repeat myself.” Then, she seated each person individually in the studio, matching heights with camera placements and some sort of secret, indecipherable code of aesthetics. Snapping and snarling continued all the while. It was so vicious that the audience members all began to see the humor in it and got a big laugh when she attacked one guy who muttered under his breath: “I prefer to be addressed face to face, so if you have something to say, don’t turn your head to the left and then talk. Thank you.”

Vladimir Posner came out and started the show. The panel was charged with discussing the problem of attacks on foreigners in Russia – a hot topic in light of several murders of students in various cities across Russia. There were interesting opinions all around the table, except for one guest who noted that we never hear about the thousands of Russians being killed by foreigners all the time. The rest of the panel attacked him on that one, since it was complete nonsense, and then proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the show. Many of the proposed solutions sounded like similar solutions to different problems: better education; reform of the police force, judicial reform; more comprehensive laws.

The show was well done, with very high production value. It was an enjoyable and interesting discussion to watch, even though I’m not much of a fan of the Sunday morning format. We have a meeting scheduled with Posner on Tuesday, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Moscow Orientation - Day 6 – Wasted Opportunities

We met at the Center and headed out to Sergiev Posad and the Trinity-St.Sergius Monastery. I had been there only a month or so before with Mom and Dad and Chaz and Claire, but decided to go again. Mainly for the group activity, and a little bit because it’s such an amazing place to visit.

On the whole, it was a bit of a disappointment. We had a tour guide again. When she asked if we wanted to her speak Russian or English, we answered that we preferred that she speak Russian. She, instead, thought that English was easier and then spoke English the entire rest of the day. When we got to the monastery, we were handed off to a local guide who looked as though she couldn’t really tell that we were in front of her. She paid nearly no attention to us, and was looking off into the distance in one direction while describing something in a completely different direction.

So this monastery has a nearly uninterrupted history since the 14th century. It’s one of the holiest places in Russia. Also, its historically significant – it resisted a Polish siege for 16 months in the 17th century. It enjoyed royal patronage, and as such was incredibly wealthy. There’s a fantastic museum of religious paraphernalia encrusted with gems, and the most significant collection of church tapestry work certainly in all of Russia, and probably the world.

Instead, our tour guide told us how high the ceilings were in each church we entered – and lots of other trivial crap. We skipped the museum entirely, and instead endured a very long lunch at a restaurant across the street from the monastery.

Of course, I had already been to the museum. And I had fun despite the low-quality tour guides.

Movie Night

When you’re a stranger somewhere, everything turns out to be a learning event. It can be pretty taxing at times, and downright exhilarating at others. Actually, in Russia it can be both at the same time. And sometimes they happen when you least expect – like during a simple trip to the movies.

I went to the recently renovated October Theater on Novy Arbat with my colleague Nathan. Our goal was to see the new movie sweeping Russia, a massively successful and lauded film that’s yet another statement that the Russian entertainment industry is finding its own voice. The movie is called Devyata Rota – or Ninth Company. It centers on one small group of soldiers’ experiences from training to battle during the Soviet Union’s Afghan war.

It was a somewhat standard war movie. As such, it had the expected haircut scene, the drill sergeant’s speech, the anguished weeping in the field, the transition from youth to man in the context of what may become an abbreviated life, etc. It was all well done, mind you, with touching moments of humor and cringe-inducing violence. It’s just that there wasn’t much of a groundbreaking statement on the nature of war like many earlier, Soviet movies. World War II movies like Ballada Soldata had a heartrending combination of duty and sacrifice and doom and sorrow that leaves you an emotional puddle by the end.

Nathan was a particularly good partner to see Ninth Company with, since he covered our Afghan war as a journalist. Also, he’s highly fluent in Russian and I figured he’d be able to explain what I missed. I missed plenty, as expected, and we both struggled mightily with the slang and soldier’s jargon.

But I think we both learned a lot of other things during the evening. For example, where you sit is no random exercise; seats are assigned by row and place. The ticket agent asked if we wanted VIP or regular seats. The difference is 50 rubles, and VIP seats are in the center of the theater while standard seats are on the fringes of the seating area. All told, the ticket came to 250 rubles, or about $9 and not much different from the US.

There were other big differences, though. Patrons are allowed to bring their own refreshments as well as buy from the concession; which means that most people brought in beer from the kiosk just outside the theater doors. There are a few previews before the movie, but no public service announcements – most notably, no reminder to turn off cellphones. Out of habit, I flipped mine off. I must have been the only one. Not only did cellphones ring throughout the movie, but it’s apparently perfectly acceptable to answer them! My neighbor to the left answered his phone several times.
“Hello? I’m at the movies. Devyata Rota. Yeah, it’s really good. There’s a great scene in basic training when…”
BOOM!
“…oh, cool. Listen, call me back in a few minutes.”
And his friend did call back to hear about what was so cool that it interrupted their conversation.

I suppose I could have told him to quiet down, but in general you don’t really cast sidelong glances at a guy who brought 5 beers to a 2 hour movie.

Moscow Orientation – Day 5 – Business and Politics

Today we met with Andrew Summers, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, and he described the organizations mission and its place in the business firmament in Russia. Very interesting discussion about what makes business either difficult or attractive to American companies and what is happening on the ground here in terms of investment. This was all very conversational and heavily laced with anecdotes about actual experiences that “member companies” have had – in effect, names had been changed to protect the innocent. His take away from his members – Russia is a great market and all the risks and difficulties are proportionately small and manageable.

After that, we met with the head of Echo of Moscow the leading independent radio station in Russia. Actually, its kind of in its own niche with no real competition. Anyway, the head of the station founded the company in 1990 and holds radio license #1. Ownership has gone through several incarnations, and at this point Gazprom – the state-owned energy giant – owns 66% of the shares.

Vennidiktov, the chief, is a high-energy fellow. Bordering on maniacal, perhaps. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. His hair was long, and sticking straight out from his head in every possible direction. He has a beard that sticks out in every possible direction available to it, too. The effect is a graying lion’s mane, a corona of hair surrounding his bespectacled face. He speaks very quickly, but clearly and purely – that is, intelligibly.

We spoke about government involvement in the media in Russia. He noted that Gazprom calls only to find out when to expect the dividends. All the same, there is a degree of censorship. In Russia, broadcast licenses can only be pulled by the courts and not by government fiat. That’s good, he noted, except the soviet-style court system does exactly what ever the government wants. Two complaints from the state – ratified by the court – and a station can be taken off the air. So in answer to a question of whether he would interview Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord, he said emphatically “No. But bin Laden I could do.”

In general, Russia’s a tough place to be a journalist. Officialdom is highly skeptical of a generally toothless press (witness Putin’s decision to create a press oversight board and purchase of Moscow News by a businessman who says that its not in the interest of society to criticize the government.) Journalists are murdered in Russia with shocking regularity, and not one case has led to a conviction. Neither has any journalist prevailed in any court action, something like 40 cases at this point. The station also writes out additional press passes for their journalists – not only do you need press accreditation, but a piece of paper saying specifically what you’re covering in order to appease the police.

Still, they soldier on pretty bravely. Each story may be small, but the work is important for Russia’s development as an open, civil society.

Moscow Orientation – Day 4 – Political Attacks

I arrived at the Center today and stumbled into the middle of contemporary Russian politics. The front of the building had been spray painted with graffiti in what amounts to the latest political attack on the oligarchs here. And I got to see it first hand.

The paint job was clear, in multiple colors, large, and apparently unrushed – it said “We sell power to oligarchs cheaply.” An arrow pointed to the front door that also serves as the entrance to the private club that Arkady founded. The door itself was covered in a caricature of a chess Knight – perhaps a reference to Kasparov and his outspoken criticism of the Putin government?

So does something like this happen in Russian without official imprimatur? One, the club is very low key and unobtrusive – this is certainly not a random act by someone taking a wild guess. Someone has done their research. Two, there are two embassies directly across the street with 24 hour police protection. It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t notice someone carefully spray painting such a large statement.

We traveled just outside of town to a dacha, where we met with Roy Medvedev, an eminent historian and biographer with a fascinating history of his own – his father was purged by Stalin, and he himself was thrown out of the communist party for criticizing Stalin too harshly. His thesis was that economic development isn’t dependent on democracy movements in the former soviet states. He cited industrial production figures and agricultural export totals to support his argument. So by his methodology, Ukraine and Georgia are the most democratic but lag far behind Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which are totalitarian states.

He didn’t really convince me. He mentioned that a tv crew in Turkmenistan is paid 1/3rd of what they are paid in Russia. But a special services soldier is paid 3 times more than a Russian counterpart. He cited Terrorism as the reason. Not likely. It’s a classic dictator tactic to make sure that the army is fat and happy – it makes it a lot easier to retain one-man rule that way. That’s just one example where he compared sums of money across borders without adjusting for any economic factors like cost of living.

He was an interesting character nonetheless. We all packed into his tiny study, jammed with books in many languages – many of which he wrote. The shelves were positively groaning under the weight of them all, and were fronted by souvenirs from places he had been – Eiffel tower, postcards, statue of liberty, samurai sword, etc.

On the way out, I bought a biography of Andropov from him and had him inscribe it to me. He told a funny story. One day, the FSB (previously better known as the KGB) called. They said that they wanted to present a copy of the Andropov biography to their director on his birthday. Fine, he said. He agreed to inscribe it to him. So a driver and an escort from the security organ came to his house. But there was a misunderstanding – they wanted Medvedev to present the inscribed book in person. So he hopped in the car and went to the FSB headquarters. There he met for 10 minutes with the director – Vladimir Putin! Humbly, Medvedev admitted that he remembers absolutely nothing of the conversation since he didn’t consider it very important – he had no idea that Putin would turn out to be president a couple of years later.

Our driver Sergei asked which dacha he lived in. We pointed it out, and he registered his surprise – I didn’t think someone so famous would live in such a dumpy place, he said. Then he went in a got a book signed.

Moscow Orientation – Day 3 – Politics and Oil

I attended a speech given by Henry Kissinger today. He spoke at the behest of a Moscow political think tank for about 30 minutes, and then took questions. I really appreciated his background as a professor – he speaks very clearly and packages his thoughts well. Even if he does have a bit of monotonic droning going on at times.

Things I learned – the changing nature of the nation-state as envisioned by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and how private actors (terrorists and multinational companies) are threats to that old order. The distinction between prophets and statesmen; the former have a messianic vision and a violent urge to change in the short term, the latter understand the evolutionary nature of diplomacy. How to think about the difference between peace-keeping and peace-making. The old cost-benefit analysis of making war, and the new nuclear-age analysis, and how it has changed as more rogue states are on the verge of attaining nuclear weapons. And more.

It was a thought-provoking exercise. I absolutely loved listening to him – theoretical frameworks explained with ease, interspersed with factual examples, and personal anecdotes.

After that, we traveled to the Moscow office of Baker Botts, an international law firm. The Baker in Baker Botts is James A. Baker, the former secretary of state. The firm was founded by his ancestor in 1840. We met with two partners of the Moscow operations, and they gave us a rundown of what the legal environment is like in Russia. The bulk of the conversation focused on their main franchise – oil. We talked about government attitudes toward oil players, both foreign and domestic, and how domestic political concerns are represented in taxation policy, etc. It was an interesting conversation, but again one of those experiences that illustrate how precariously things are balanced in Russia right now – on the head of a pin slick with oil.

I put together this scary scenario. Imagine that its late 2007. Putin wants to hand off the presidency to his chosen successor. But the economy has stagnated, oil prices have stabilized or retreated a bit, and the state control of YUKOS and Sibneft isn’t panning out too well – production has flattened overall with a few assets in decline. In order to keep everyone complacent enough to vote for his man, Putin needs to buy the population off by freely distributing some more oil money – the $4 billion in 2006 has already worked its way through the system. Where does it come from, or how does the government increase its income in the light of declining oil production? Does it partner with western oil companies to attract capital investments and make its oilfields more efficient – thereby splitting profits and control? Or does it make veiled threats and, in effect, invite private players to sell to the government at a discount (a la Sibneft in 2005) in order to increase revenue just by gobbling up more of the pie?

Moscow Orientation – Day 2 – Win Friends and Influence People

We met again at the Center, and had a brief meeting to go over some of the logistics of the program over the next couple of weeks.

Then, we headed over to the Carnegie Foundation offices here in Moscow. We met with the director, and he spoke about the mission of the foundation and how it goes about its business.

Then we moved on to what he considered the important topics of the day in international circles. From their point of view, nuclear non-proliferation is paramount. He detailed some of their thinking, and what sort of seminars and symposia they’ve held to shed more light on the topic. We discussed Iran and North Korea, and the development of civilian and military nuclear programs in shady countries.

Moscow Orientation – Day 1 – The Refuseniks

We met at the Center this morning. Arkady showed us a film about Andrei Sakharov, the last days of the Soviet Union, and we discussed it afterwards with him.

Sakharov was the father of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and as such a major hero. However, he turned against the Soviet regime and got himself into hot water with the authorities, including several years of internal exile and house arrest. During Gorbachev’s liberalization in the 1980’s, though, he was rehabilitated and brought back to Moscow, where he in effect became the central figure in a democratic movement. He died in 1989 just as the sun was setting on the system that he so despised.

It was an interesting post-film conversation because Arkady was there during those days and worked closely with many people in the film, including Gorbachev and Sakharov himself. In fact, many of Sakharov’s papers were in Arkady’s possession until the establishment of a Sakharov museum a few years back. We discussed whether or not Sakharov’s vision of the future was realistic or not, and whether Gorbachev could have held things together if he had done things a little differently – like stand for election instead of putting Yeltsin into a powerful position.

After lunch, we met with Edward Lozansky, head of the American University here. He was also a dissident during the 1970’s, and was exiled to the US for about 8 years. Again, Gorbachev’s liberalization allowed him to return to Russia. He told us a fascinating tale of how dissident organizations work in a totalitarian state, and how on his return he began to recognize that the USSR was crumbling.

We also got into contemporary political discussions with him since he is a frequent commentator in the papers and on TV. He is slightly critical of some of Putin’s policies, but on the whole not nearly as alarmist or critical as those who say that Putin is establishing some sort of dictatorship. In fact, Lozansky often criticizes those people in the press. His point – after all, things are way better than they were during the days of the USSR. And he means that in many ways – freedom of speech, access to government, ability to comment on policy before it is implemented, etc.

Political discussions here are fraught with difficulty. Russians assume that Americans will immediately begin lecturing about democracy, and they really don’t want to hear it. In order to forestall that, they’ll say some pretty incendiary things generalizing democracy in the US; the rich are in total control of your country, minorities are treated badly. Certainly, these are continuing issues in the US, but they’re not nearly as bad as the Russians think they are; they border on thinking that rich people can kill minorities in the streets with impunity. The real problem with these arguments is that they’re exactly the same ones the Soviets used all during the Cold War.

In terms of developing democratic institutions, the Russians also often point to the political history of the US. After all, they say, it took several years to adopt the first amendment to the constitution. True, but the delay was a reflection that the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were adopted all at once. And it was a revolutionary statement about what the role of government should be in the lives of ordinary people.

Of course, the Constitution had things like slavery in it. That’s another point you’re likely to hear during a conversation like this. Certainly right – it reflected the political and historical realities of the time. But that doesn’t excuse any country nowadays from not paying heed to the intervening 200+ years in the development of the theory of the rights of man, codified elequently by the UN in 1948.

Also, the Russians point out that the US has had more than 200 years to develop its democratic institutions and civil society. Agreed – and it hasn’t always been a pleasant process. But I reject that argument in that it presupposes a permanent second place for Russia. It’s as if you resign yourself to always been 200 years behind when you make that argument.

Now, that being said, I don’t lecture people on democracy. There’s more than one model for the development of a civil, law-based, society. And hopefully Russia will come up with one for itself.

The Russian Countryside

The rest of the fellowship group arrived at the end of the week, and our first official function of our two week program of events was a splashy dinner at the restaurant run by the director of our organization.

Arkady is a charismatic and charming fellow, eloquent in both Russian and English. He’s a bit of an entrepreneur, and has established something called “The Center for Liberal Conservative Policy.” It consists of a private membership and a private restaurant in the building where the offices are located. One wall of the lounge area is particularly impressive – it’s all photos of Arkady and various luminaries. The centerpiece is a large photo of Boris Yeltsin giving a speech from a podium during those uncertain last days of the Soviet Union. Sitting on the floor at the base of the podium is Arkady, both attentive and vigilant at the same time.

We also received our schedule for the next two weeks, and that’s when I received first notice of the next day’s trip to Suzdal, a golden ring town outside of Moscow. Well outside of Moscow. Like 5 hours. And we were scheduled for a day trip. Ouch. That wasn’t going to be easy, and I was right.

We struck out from the office at 8:30 the next morning in a bus with a tour guide. She began talking over the speaker system and did not pause for 50 minutes. Not once. Again, it was the typical level of detail one comes to expect from a Russian tour guide – highly detailed and precise and excruciatingly minute. I desperately wanted a nap on what would be a long trip, but didn’t get much chance. As we passed through little villages in the middle of nowhere, she chimed in with the entire family history of whatever important personage had been born there, or lived there, or as in the case of Pushkin – even stopped over for a night on the way to somewhere else.

Anyway, as a result, I have a better appreciation for medieval Russian history with an emphasis on Yuri Dolgoruki and Andrei Bogolubovsky. Maybe appreciation isn’t the right word, since I learned all of this from her very grudgingly at best.

Suzdal took nearly 5 hours to reach – 4 hours and 40 minutes to be exact. It’s a small town, compact, but chockablock with churches and monasteries and a kremlin, all in wonderful condition. It may be as close to a fairy tale location as one can get. We ate lunch and then toured a handful of the most important sights with our guide on this incredible autumn day.

On a day like this, in a place like this, you begin to get an appreciation for why the birch tree holds such a storied place in the Russian psyche. The white trunks blend into a hazy mass in the distance, feathered with rustling golden leaves. It really is a beautiful sight to see a stand of them isolated in a harvested field. Suzdal was a feast of culture, art, history, and landscape.

But we had to turn around and head back. After a very brief stop in Vladimir we struck back out on the road to Moscow. We made occasional stops for provisions and comfort, with varying levels of success. One LUKoil gas station didn’t have the right fuel for the bus. Another did, but wouldn’t let us inside to buy things until we pleaded our case at length. Still, all they had was gas station food and we had to take what we could get. We also did enough research on pay toilets to write a doctoral dissertation. One effort to get into a restaurant was frustrated by a gypsy wedding taking place there – the men wanted us all to come in, but the women were quite adamant that the restaurant was closed.

We got back to Moscow at around 11pm, thoroughly wiped out from the long trek. I remain convinced, as I said when I first saw the schedule, that Suzdal is too far away for a day trip. We spent twice as long in the bus (10 hours!) than we did at our destination.

My Russian Haircut

When you have difficulty communicating in a foreign language, it can be daunting to deal with service personnel who are waiting for your specific instructions. Its nerve wracking enough when you’re talking about things of some importance – train tickets, reservations, etc. But the things that have most intimidated me are those few things which can go really wrong and have a certain degree of permanence. In particular, I’m talking about getting a haircut.

Moscow is a cosmopolitan place, with more than its fair share of beautiful people in beautiful clothes. Like residents of most big cities, citizens of Moscow take some pride in their appearance; even if they can’t afford to shop at Armani, they make some effort to look neat and presentable. It’s entertaining, in that respect, to see high-heeled women struggling down a dirt path in a park, or a pensioner with war medals on his well-worn – but well-kept – blazer. So I have a lot of respect for Muscovites.

On the other hand, Moscow may very well be the world capital of bad hair. Things you see are truly shocking. Orange hair, purple hair, ice blue, port-wine hair, and the even more ubiquitous peroxide blonde bottle-job are all common on women here – women of any age and nearly any socio-economic position. Some even strike out in new directions by combining colors. Witness my fellow metro traveler yesterday; short hair, pitch black to the tops of her ears, bright red the rest of the way. Not the same hairs dyed two colors, but two separate, distinct dye jobs on one head. Anyway, those relative few women who don’t participate in this madness tend to wear their hair straight, slightly longer than shoulder length, and tied back simply in a barrette.

Men’s hair tends to remain naturally colored, but subject to horrendous haircuts. Strange things long dead elsewhere have persisted in certain pockets here – like the Pleistocene coelacanth that still occasionally shows up in fisherman’s nets. Things like the rat tail, the duck’s ass, etc. And that’s on men who don’t have the traditional Russian look of a crew cut. Some local combinations are even more frightening; the crew cut with long bangs, the crew cut side with long top, the emergence of a peculiarly Russian mullet.

One American colleague came to class the other day with a new haircut. He was quite proud of it, how he acquired it, and especially how little it cost. That’s when I decided that I was definitely not going to go for the economy option. Not that he looked ridiculous, mind you. It’s just that it’s difficult to use the word “hairstyle” when each and every hair on his head had been sheared off at exactly the same length; Unfortunately, at exactly the length at which his hair stands straight out. So he’s been walking around as though he has a Vandegraaf static generator hidden in his pocket.

I resolved to go somewhere nice, lest I end up like him. I did my best to brush up on all the words I’d need for this. I made a little vocabulary list, and studied up a few verbs to prepare. Bravely, I went in for the cut.

Pleasant greetings, friendly faces, offers of tea and a magazine to read while I waited; I had a feeling that this was going to be a nice, albeit expensive, experience. So I sat in the chair while Sergei prepared his station. He looked at me in the mirror and asked what I wanted. Out came my new vocabulary in a torrent of directions and directives and desired outcomes. I even used hand gestures and tugged at my hair in the appropriate places at the appropriate times. When I finally stopped, I noticed Sergei looking at my head with a bit of a perplexed expression, scissors at his side. Then he looked up at me in the mirror and gave me a rather blank look with a bit of a shrug. That’s when I realized that I had just given him a cogent, fluent description of every haircut ever done, i.e. longer on top and short on the sides.

We looked at each other helplessly for another few seconds – he not knowing what I wanted, and me out of words. I grasped at the only thing I had left that he might understand; “Like George Clooney.” It worked. A relieved “Ah hah” from Sergei and he happily set off to work.

It went well – if I may say so myself. I paid a NYC price, but I got the quality and outcome that I would have expected in NYC. That is to say, somewhere where I have the language capability to get what I want.

Master of Ceremonies

On Tuesday, I went to the annual dinner for the US-Russia Business Council. It was held at the Armed Forces Cultural Center, an imposing neo-classical building with even more imposing security. The compound and the building itself were bristling with armed, frowning men demanding to see invitations. Even the cocktail party on the second floor was surrounded by such security agents.

The keynote address was given by Yuri Primakov, former prime minister of Russia, and a longtime Soviet diplomat. He didn’t really break any new ground in his speech, but did a thorough job of explaining the major issues in the US-Russia relationship. He spoke for about 45 minutes.

Dinner was catered by Marriot, and while good, was probably more designed to reassure the visting American business people than anything else. It was standard, hotel banquet room food available at any business conference anywhere in the world. There must be one gigantic factory for this stuff somewhere, churning out frozen “medley of vegetables” next to a dollop of mashed potatoes gluing down a fillet of either beef or fish. I’ve noticed that in the fancy versions, the food is simply stacked a little bit higher than in the mid-market versions.

I sat with some people from the Sesame Workshop, creators of Sesame Street. They broadcast in 125 countries and produce local content in 55 of those. We talked about some of the topics specific for Russia – hygiene being a big push in concert with the UN this year. Also, how they have teamed up with Merrill Lynch to introduce financial concepts to youngsters. Good move. Research indicates that children who watch Sesame Street consistently outperform their peers academically, and can expect to earn more as adults. The show is probably the most studied thing ever put on television, including the Zapruder movie, and has data going back to the early 1960’s.

Entertainment at dinner consisted of ridiculously talented children performing classical and folk music. One 11-year old kid played 2 selections from the Nutcracker on the piano. It was unbelievable – close your eyes and Van Cliburn was sitting at the keyboard. The ridiculously cute and talented award went to 6 and 8 year old girls in matching dresses and bows in their hair who played a violin/piano duet. Amazing talents. Business men tapped away on their blackberries in time to the music. That’s as much of a rise as you could possibly get out of this crowd.

Later that evening, a couple of colleagues and I met up with a departing fellow. We managed to stumble our way through a beer and a farewell shot of vodka. It wasn’t the best timing in the world – he was packing for his 5 am flight the next morning. But it was necessary to send him off in the best way we knew how.

The Human Constant

I spent most of Sunday at a monastery here in Moscow. Monasteries are great for a visit. Outdoors, culture, religion, walking around – it’s the quintessential way to spend your time as a tourist in Russia. But sometimes, when you’ve got one almost all to yourself, you border on learning something really profound. Something bordering an eternal truth. And sometimes, it’s pretty funny.

This may be one of the more beautiful places in Russia – or anywhere, for that matter – and the whole site is exceedingly well-kept. The Saviour Andronikov monastery is beautifully situated on a bluff over a branch of the Moscow River. The gates of the monastery are set back from the boulevard by a charming park; the grounds themselves are surrounded by white walls, the corner towers crowned by wooden peaked roofs. There’s a spacious lawn inside, dotted with birches that are rapidly changing colors and shedding leaves at this point in the fall.

This was once distant countryside in the 14th century, but now ranks pretty close to being in the city center. But you wouldn’t know it from the people. Or lack of people. Three young couples pushed prams around, while toddlers laughed and played on the grass. The only thing that hinted at the bustle of Moscow was the distant whisper of trains. And two old ladies planting bushes who had to keep chasing a curious kitten away from their work.

The main building houses a stunning collection of icons gathered from across Russia. Some are frighteningly old – like the ones from the 13th century. Some are imposing and grandiose – like the ones from the 17th century. All are beautifully presented in a wonderful, heavily guarded museum.

Of course, what would a monastery be without a church? The Andronikov’s claim to fame is that its church dates from around 1390. Which, in the opinion of historians who accept that date, makes this church the oldest stone building of any kind in Moscow. Impressive.

It was when I was sitting in front of this most ancient of buildings when I had an epiphany. I was reading about the founder of the monastery, and why he founded it at all. Seems this church leader was on a ship on the Black Sea, sailing from Byzantium, when he got stuck in a storm. One tour book said he built the monastery on this bluff, where he first glimpsed Moscow in the distance, as thanks for his safe return.

But the Russian tour book said something a little bit different. It said that during the storm, he promised to build a monastery glorifying God. A little bit different, and a little easier to relate to. Somewhere on the Black Sea, sometime during the 13th century, a sea-sick guy in the bottom of a ship, fearing for his life, makes a deal. “Get me through this, Lord, and I’ll build you the nicest damned monastery you’ve ever seen. I swear it.”

How old a story is that? The imploring of the Lord, bribing God with all sorts of actions or inactions or stopping or starting of things? So, I sat there some 650 years after the fact and felt a certain kinship with the founder of the monastery – after all, we’ve all pulled something like that. Mostly those empty promises come to naught once the crisis passes. But not for the guy who built this place. Thankfully, for the sake of my Sunday afternoon, he made good on his bargain.