Victory day 05

9 May, Victory day. 2005

On the TV a group of goose-stepping Russian soldiers carry a soviet hammer and sickle flag past a stern looking Putin. In the background the soviet national anthem blares out. This sort of idiocy is less and less remarkable with each passing year. Some worry about this, Max, fears it all amounts to a kind of creeping dictatorship; things that we all said couldn’t happen a few months ago, slip by almost unnoticed. No one really cares. I don’t really care to be honest, despite occasionally having a rant about it all. I guess I just feel, like most Russians, that they can do whatever they want as long as they leave us alone to make money. The fact that they themselves are so busy making money hand over fist is actually quite reassuring. Corruption is just another way of doing things; your dollars go straight to the cop rather than through a tax system. Any taxes you do pay will only go into the pockets of the civil servants, so why fuck about doing things legally? When everything is fucked only an idiot plays it straight.

Corrosive cynicism yes, but am I gonna change the world or look after my family?  I used to worry about this passivity that the Russians exhibit, but time has passed now and I feel that it might well be the wisest reaction to the world that faces them.

The other week some radio station encouraged people to hang a white cloth on their car radio antennae as a protest against high insurance costs, and the huge politicians’ motorcades that bring the city centre to a grinding halt every other hour. I’ve seen them once or twice, with cops blocking every street for half a kilometer around and for half an hour before the bigwig has even left the office.

 The reaction to the protest seemed to include about a third of drivers, and I wondered if maybe this sort of thing might represent more of a democratic impulse than the liberals and their compromised ilk. Like those countryside protesters, or petrol price protesters in England; I dislike the cause and most of the people involved, but it has more to do with democracy than any noble rhetoric. Of course one regrets that it is only naked self-interest that prompts such action, but in a place such as Russia, where the powers that be look after none but themselves, the meeting of the self interest of even 30% of the people would be a major step forward. “I KNOW MY RIGHTS”, being far better than “what to do?”

 More and more these days I begin to feel that I’d like to live in some other country one day. I still love this idiot-haunted land, and, through the kids, I am tied to it forever. Still, when I hear radio reports on the enlargement of the European Union, I feel a yearning. Civilization: a good thing.