Ten ‘Only in Russia’ Stories

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 14 – Every day features at least one news report that deserves the epithet, “Only in Russia.” Sometimes these are small developments that are just amusing in and of themselves, but more often, they provide insights about far larger issues than those who write them up often appear to recognize.

            The last 24 hours, in the midst of the quiet in news terms month of August, have brought an especially rich harvest of these stories. Below is a selection of ten that seem especially instructive as to the nature of Russian realities now:

·         Siberian Town Wants to Rename Itself ‘Syria’ in Hopes of Getting Moscow Money. Because the Russian government is more willing to send money to Syria than it is to Russia’s regions, a town in Siberia is seeking to rename itself after that Middle Eastern country in the hopes that the Kremlin will help the town’s residents as well (ura.news/news/1052346560).

·         Russians Having Open Air Sex Near Kremlin to Make a Freudian Point.  A Russian psychologist says that Russians have been engaging in open-air sex near the Kremlin wall not because they couldn’t find anywhere else but because they are engaged in a working out of a Freudian relationship with their governors (svpressa.ru/society/news/207860/).

·         Russians as in Soviet Times Now Say Some Subjects aren’t for the Telephone. Government monitoring of private telephone conversations in Russia has reached such a point that residents are now saying as they did in Soviet times that some subjects “aren’t for a telephone conversation” but only face to face (rosbalt.ru/posts/2018/08/13/1724386.html).

·         Russian Designers Now Offering Fashionable Straitjackets.  The use of straightjackets in Russia has become so widespread that a fashion designer has come up with stunning models of straightjackets that could be worn on all kinds of occasions (tv2.today/News/V-tomske-proshel-pokaz-modnyh-smiritelnyh-rubashek).

·         Gigantism Returns to the Center of Russian Life. One of the most unfortunate revivals of Soviet practice is the government’s willingness to engage in giant projects even though it routinely says it has no money to fund basic infrastructure costs or even to pay for ordinary services for the population (lenta.ru/articles/2018/08/14/megastroyki/).

·         Almost Half of Russians Say They Don’t Work Anywhere. More than 40 percent of Russians when asked where they work say nowhere, apparently because they are working off the books and not paying taxes. Others in the same survey say they would willingly work “na levo” if they would be paid more by doing so (thinktanks.by/publication/2018/08/13/v-oprose-o-zarplate-41-rossiyan-soobschili-chto-ni-gde-ne-rabotayut.html).

·         Back to the 1990s: Armed Russian Gang Siphons Off Fuel from Pipeline Going to Europe.  The Moscow Times reports that an armed Russian gang has been caught stealing 900 tons of fuel out of a Europe-bound pipeline, something that happened often in the 1990s and that Moscow has accused Ukraine and Belarus of doing more recently (themoscowtimes.com/news/armed-russian-gang-caught-siphoning-900-tons-of-fuel-from-europe-bound-pipeline-62516).

·         Yekaterinburg Official Says Presence of Bums Shows How Good Life is There.  In what the media are describing as “the latest pearl” of wisdom from a Russian official, a city manager in Yekaterinburg points to the growing number of bums in public spaces there as evidence that the city has become comfortable to live in (rusmonitor.com/ocherednojj-perl-ot-rossijjskojj-chinovnicy-chem-bolshe-bomzhejj-tem-komfortnee-gorod.html).

·         Officials, Ethnic Gangs and Organized Crime Compete to Control Cemeteries. Because Russian cemeteries are both poorly governed by Russian law and extremely profitable – more than two million Russians die each year – they are currently the object of intense and often violent clashes among officials, ethnic gangs and organized criminal groups (meduza.io/feature/2018/08/14/grob-kladbische-sotni-milliardov-rubley).

·         Russian People Even More than Putin Want a New Cult of Personality.  Many commentators have blamed Vladimir Putin for the rise of a cult of personality around him, but a new study concludes that the main demand for such a cult originates not from the Kremlin but from the Russians who want to participate in such leader worship (publizist.ru/blogs/4796/26453/-).