Twelve Years a Slav — Year 2
Danish Law, Russian Money, For the Love of God
The weather that mid-January evening was cold and foul. An icy rain pelted against the windows. The wind was howling. A strong Baltic front had swept in off the Gulf of Finland announcing the arrival of the “ottepel’ or thaw. A dull yellow glow cast by the sodium streetlights below our fifth-floor office made it seem like we were cruelly trapped in a sleep-inducing half-light somewhere between day and night. I rubbed my eyes and took a big sip of my black tea hoping that this would shake me from my somnambulant state.
It had only been a few days since I had returned to the city to begin the next chapter of my life as a Slav. There had been no easing into my new job. I had been immersed in work from the moment I stepped through the law firm’s door.
One of the first legal documents my new boss Sune had asked me to proofread was the rough English translation of a long charter agreement for a newly registered telecommunications company in St. Petersburg, Russia. The language was mind numbingly dry, full of corporate law verbiage whose original meaning had been twisted, tangled, if not hopelessly lost in translation — “charter capital” had mutated into “founding investment”, “power of attorney” into “strong advocate”, “proxy shareholder” into “powerful agent” and “share dilution” into “weakening of participation.” I spent hours reverse engineering the terms to make sure that our western clients would have some clue about what they were reading. It was eye-crossing, brain-contorting, under-appreciated, and at times, torturous work.
I flipped through the remaining pages to see how much longer this evening’s slog would last. Discouraged by what I saw, I adjusted my desk lamp, took another sip of tea and settled in for two more hours of work. No sooner than I had done so, I felt a cold draft blowing on my neck. It was strong enough that some of the papers took flight from my desk. Seconds later, I heard the heavy bang of the office’s steel entry door as it slammed shut. A chorus of excessively deferential voices struck up.
“Good evening, Leonid Dodozhonovich”… “How nice to see you Leonid Dodozhonovich”… “Please, is there anything at all I can get for you Leonid Dodozhonovich?”
I had no idea who this mysterious Leonid Dodozhonovich was but given the excess of respect and attention he was being showered with, I figured that he must be pretty important. Before I had time to ponder the possibilities, a shadow-cloaked figure with a pasty white face, jet black hair and dressed in a long black trench coat slick with droplets of rain glided into and flit about our large, softly illuminated room. Its dark eyes darted about nervously, first in my direction, then toward the desk of our senior attorney, Igor Borisovich, where the enigmatic figure finally alighted. After a brief exchange of pleasant small talk, it spread its web-like wings and lifted off again, flying into the next room where our firm’s principal attorney and owner, Jeffrey Peter, had entombed himself. Almost silently, the door closed behind him.
Uncertain if what I had seen was real or a dream, I cast a curious look toward Igor Borisovich, hoping for an explanation.
“Who, or rather, what the hell was that?”
“Come on Thor! You seriously don’t know? That’s none other than Leonid Dodozhonovich Reiman!”
The name meant absolutely nothing to me, although I feigned as though it did.
Leonid Dodozhonovich Reiman, I soon learned, had by the mid-1990s achieved no small amount of notoriety in Russia’s fast-rising telecommunications world. In January 1996 he was the deputy director of Petersburg Telephone Network, the country’s second largest telecommunications company in terms of the number of assets owned, services provided, and customers served. He also sat on the boards of the city’s most dynamic and profitable private companies: Peterstar, the city’s first commercial fiber optic land line operator; Delta Telecom, the first analogue-standard mobile phone company in the city and financed by a major American investor (US West); and Northwest GSM, the country’s first mobile phone company based entirely on the GSM digital technology platform and the forerunner to Megafon, currently Russia’s second largest mobile operator with a capitalized valued of around $5 billion.
Leonid Dodozhonovich had been instrumental in privatizing the city’s state-owned telecommunications assets, attracting foreign investors and their capital and creating an entirely new market of western-style companies generating fabulous new services for an ever expanding customer base, healthy revenue streams and spectacular rates of returns and profits for their owners. Next to real estate, the telecommunications business was the city’s most promising industry and Leonid Dodozhonovich was its principal benefactor. I would learn over time that he was also one of its primary beneficiaries.
Leonid Dodozhonovich, to put it plainly, was St. Petersburg’s, and in due time, the country’s telecommunications godfather.
No one could get near, much less touch, any aspect of telecommunications in the city without his knowledge, blessing or personal involvement. Leonid Dodozhonovich, however, understood all too well that when working at the intersection of Russia’s shady worlds of business, politics and crime, it was never a good idea to advertise one’s success. He therefore operated in the shadows, eventually earning himself the nickname, the “Grey Cardinal.” To reach the commanding heights of Russia’s telecommunications world, he took great pains to hide the full extent of his involvement behind inconspicuous job titles and a complex web of offshore holding companies, proxy representatives, trusts and shell companies. At the tip of this phalanx of legal and financial structures was Telecominvest, a London-based holding company that held significant, often controlling or blocking shares of most if not all of St. Petersburg’s new telecom companies.
And the mastermind, arbiter, groundskeeper and pit bull-like defender of Leonid Dodozhonovich’s legal and financial stealth, scheming and burgeoning wealth was none other than the law firm’s founder and owner, attorney Jeffrey Peter Galmond, or Jeff as everyone in the office called him. Jeff’s relationship with Leonid Dodozhonovich, though only a few years old when they met on a family vacation in the early 1990s, was already proving to be extremely lucrative for both men.
Despite his frequent visits to our office where he and Jeff would sequester themselves for hours at a time, my own face-to-face contact with Leonid Dodzhonovich would be extremely limited. I can literally count the number of personal encounters I had with him over my two and half years at the firm on one hand. Whenever we did meet and engage in a bit of small talk, he always expressed surprise, if not outright skepticism as to how it was that a Russian-speaking American ended up working for a Danish law firm in St. Petersburg.
“Are you CIA?”, he once asked me point blank, after cornering me in the office’s reception area. “FBI?”
My repeated denials never seemed to completely convince him, however. I do not recall him ever being totally relaxed in my presence. Then again, he rarely let down his guard in anyone’s presence and always kept things very close to the vest. Given all that he was up to, it’s no wonder. What none of us, except perhaps Jeff, knew at the time was that Leonid Dodozhonovich was busy cultivating what would become his most valuable relationship — one with the then chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee on External Affairs, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and his wife Lyudmila Aleksandovna. For his efforts, Leonid Dodozhonoivch would eventually be rewarded with the position of Minister of Information and Communications of the Russian Federation (1999–2004) and later the Minister of Communications and Information Technologies (2004–2008) in President Putin’s future administrations.
It was only years later, long after I had moved on from the firm, when the dark veil hiding the empire that Leonid Dodozhonovich and Jeff had built in the 1990s was finally lifted in a series of dramatic and highly publicized international legal cases — cases based on allegations that they had been the masterminds of a vast scheme to fraudulently divert ownership of Russian state assets to themselves and launder money in the billions of US dollars. The ensuing scandal and the unwelcome scrutiny it invited would brand Leonid Dodozhonovich, fairly or unfairly, as one of Putin’s most corrupt ministers and lead to his ultimate political downfall. It would in the end also force Jeff to leave Russia and into bankruptcy in 2017.
But it’s not as if their story has a tragic ending. Far from it! Both men continue to fair exceedingly well — Leonid Dodozhonovich is now one of Russia’s principal promoters of and investors in the IoT (Internet of Things) and Jeff has retired in pampered seclusion and sails around the Mediterranean on his private yacht.
Though much of the evidence of their alleged legal and financial machinations only came to light in the mid-2000s, it has been well-documented that the seeds of Leonid Dodozhonovich’s and Jeff’s lucrative collaboration were planted before my arrival in early 1996 and continued to be cultivated throughout my two-and-half-year tenure with the firm.
Leonid Dodozhonovich, assisted by Jeff’s brilliant legal sleight of hand, created his crown jewel, Telecominvest, in 1994. And although I would spend countless hours editing the company’s legal documents and was well aware of the financial shenanigans going on in Russia at the time, I never once had reason to suspect that Telecominvest was not only party to them, but one of their most egregious standard-bearers.
Established as a holding company, Telecominvest was Leonid Dodozhonovich’s principal legal instrument for managing, controlling and financing foreign investment in the privatized assets of the state-owned open stock company, Petersburg Telephone Network (PTN). It was no accident that approval of the holding’s registration was issued by Putin’s Committee on External Relations. Nor was it a coincidence that Putin’s then wife would be appointed in 1998 as the holding’s chief Moscow representative.
Though officially appointed as the holding’s director of international relations, Leonid Dodozhonovich was its de facto kingpin. He controlled all of its external business with foreign investors and as a result had disproportionate sway over its financial affairs. As the deputy director of PTN, he also wielded immense power over the issuance of operating licenses and permits on which the companies held by Telecominvest and its competitors totally depended. The group of companies owned by Telecominvest held a decisive advantage over competitors because they could always count on their “good friend” at PTN.
In the beginning, a majority of shares of Telecominvest were owned by state-owned PTN, but I clearly remember the swirl of controversy shortly after I started working at the law over the mysterious 49% dilution of PTN’s shares. The remaining 51% was transferred to the control of a new Luxembourg-based company, First National Holding, which in turn was reportedly controlled by one of Germany’s largest banks, Commerzbank. The fact that former Russian state-owned assets were now owned by a western private bank was sensational, but in a sign of just how much had changed in post-Soviet Russia, it was not scandalous. This was largely because Leonid Dodzhonovich deftly convinced his bosses at PTN that this move was all part of his larger plan to attract major western private investment to St. Petersburg’s emerging telecoms market and to increase the value of all shareholders. Only much later was it revealed that Commerzbank held the Luxembourg holding in trust until 2002 for an anonymous shareholder suspected of being, but never definitively proven, to be Leonid Dodozhonovich himself.
Subsequent court filings by German prosecutors investigating the true nature of the relationships and ownership structure of these companies disclosed that Jeff, most certainly with Leonid Dodozhonovich’s approval, had in the early 2000s orchestrated the transfer of ownership of First National Holding and its hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian telecom assets to an obscure Bermuda-based mutual fund called IPOC (International Growth Fund Limited). Curiously, its foundation papers listed Jeff as its sole owner.
Had it not been for what now appears to have been a rare strategic mistake by Leonid Dodozhonovich and Jeff, we might never have known the degree to which big business in Russia was conducted “off-the-books” in the 1990s and early 2000s. That mistake was the 2003 decision by IPOC to legally challenge the sale of a large share of one of Russia’s mobile telecommunications giants, Megafon, formerly Northwest GSM. Russian-born American multi-millionaire businessman, risk taker and alleged playboy, Leonid Rozhetskin, agreed to sell this share to Mikhail Friedman, then and still today one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs and currently on the US Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned Russians. The price for Rozhetskin’s stake in Megafon — — a cool three hundred million dollars!
There was just one problem. Rozhetskin had already signed an agreement to sell the stake to IPOC which had paid forty million dollars as a down payment. Veterans of this kind of high stakes brinksmanship and double dealing, Leonid Dodozhonovich and Jeff challenged Rozhetskin’s agreement with Friedman, apparently not anticipating the fierce, destructive and very public legal war that was about to be waged against them.
In an explosive development, Friedman countercharged that IPOC was not in fact owned by Jeff but Leonid Dodozhonovich who by this time was serving as Putin’s Minister of Communications and Information Technologies and that the income IPOC claimed to have earned was in fact the laundered proceeds from Leonid Dodozhonovich’s abuse of power as minister. The allegations held that through his authority to approve everything from new technologies to operator licenses, requests for increased capacity and government fees, Leonid Dodozhonovich intentionally helped his companies and hurt their competitors. This in turn artificially increased the value of his own assets. This added value was then monetized, offshored and ploughed back into Russia to buy more control in the telecom industry. It was a massive self-enrichment scheme, or so the allegations went, that was unwittingly financed by the overzealous desire of other major western investors to get in on the action of Russia’s lucrative telecommunications market.
In their defense, Leonid Dodozhonovich and Jeff vehemently denied these allegations. However, to defend themselves, they were compelled to expose much more of their Russian business than they probably would have liked. Investigators took a hard look at how IPOC, a little unknown Bermuda-based mutual fund, had accumulated over one billion dollars in Russian telecom assets in such a short period and who its real owner was. In 2007, a Zurich-based arbitration tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce ruled that Leonid Dodozhonovich was in fact IPOC’s beneficial owner. Though it was never enforced in Russia, this ruling was a major embarrassment for the Kremlin. Wishing to limit the damage that had already been done, the Kremlin, almost certainly with Putin’s approval, ended its obstruction of Friedman’s acquisition of the Megafon stake. By mid-2008, IPOC was forced to end its operations in Bermuda and pay record fines of $45 million dollars. It was just a matter of time before Leonid Dodozhonovich was ousted as Communications and Information Technologies Minister.
And as for double dealing Leonid Rozhetskin, his fate is at the center of an interesting side story. He suddenly disappeared in 2008 after reportedly partying heavily one night at his villa in Jurmala, Latvia. Investigators, including some from the FBI, discovered blood stains on his overturned furniture and concluded that he had likely been murdered; but without a body, there was no proof. It would take four years before DNA tests proved that the skeletal remains of a body found in a Latvian forest were actually those of Rozhetskin. Given his ties with the cut-throat world of Russian business and politics, Rozhetskin certainly suffered no shortage of enemies with reasons to kill him. Based on what little I knew about him, Leonid Dodozhonovich hardly seemed the murderous type. One of the most powerful, well-connected and secretive men in Russia at the time — without a doubt! But the mastermind of a high-profile international murder? I find this hard to imagine. Then again, in Russia where justice is a privilege of the powerful and injustice is taken personally, rarely forgotten or forgiven, one can never be so sure. Not surprisingly, with so many ends of this story still loose, speculation about the truth behind Rozhetskin’s gruesome demise continues to this day.
These tales of political malfeasance, international conspiracy and bloody intrigue were far in the future, however. Any suspicions we at the firm may have had about the obscene amounts of money documented in the legal paperwork we churned out day and night were explained away as the price and reward for doing business in Russia. Every successful business presumably worked this way, and if this was the case, how could it be illegal, especially if it was being sanctioned by some of the highest public officials in the land?
If there was anything at all that should have rung any alarm bells, it was the increasingly profligate lifestyle in which Jeff indulged. Again though, this was viewed in more of a moral and ethical context, not a legal one. The honest truth is that in these early days of my tenure at J.P. Galmond Attorneys at Law, I was focused on fitting in, adjusting to and enjoying my new, safe, comparatively quiet, professional, and yes, luxurious surroundings. Before I could fully and comfortably engage my new circumstances with a clear conscience, however, I needed to clean up some unfinished business with my old employer, St. Petersburg Properties.
A week after my return, I had a rather uncomfortable talk with my former boss Christopher. He was understandably upset that I had not come back as promised. I tried to sell him the story that I had had a change of heart about a career in real estate and that I had been unexpectedly offered an attractive job that was more in line with my education and experience. As soon as he understood that there was little he could say to change my mind his aggressive tone eased. He still felt the need to remind me that I would never see the money he still owed me. It made little difference. I had already written it off — a small sacrifice given how much I was already enjoying my new station in life. Besides, without a legally enforceable contract, or for that matter, any kind of signed commitment from Christopher’s company, my leverage was nil.
Wishing to depart on as amicable terms as possible, I let Christopher know that I respected his decision and bid him well in his future endeavors. My words hardly mattered. His days in the city were already numbered. Within six months, St. Petersburg Properties’ doors would be shuttered for good. The Doves would pack their bags and take flight for new lands where they could get a fresh start. They became all but forgotten footnotes to Russia’s tumultuous, but often colorful transition to a market-like economy.
Of course, it wasn’t just Russia’s transition to market capitalism that was rocky. Its future political course looked to be equally rough and was fraught with political uncertainty, in no small part due to the hugely unpopular, never-ending bloodbath in Chechnya. The Russian electorate was thoroughly exhausted, if not disgusted by the country’s lack of clear direction, the increasingly imperious nature of Yeltsin’s rule and the endless scandals dogging his administration. At the end of 1995, voters rebuked Yeltsin and handed his main political opponents, the Communists, led by Gennady Zyuganov, a decisive victory in the national parliamentary elections. This was an early shot across the bow of the political establishment just six short months before June’s scheduled presidential election.
The establishment took note. By the time I had returned to the country in mid-January, Yeltsin was polling at just 8%, far behind the leading presidential candidates. Zyuganov meanwhile had nearly three times more support. Many pundits predicted that he would likely become the next Russian president. Fearing that the huge financial gains they had amassed during Yeltsin’s first term would be reversed by Zyuganov and the Communists, robber barons such as media moguls Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinksy, financiers Mikhail Friedman and Pytr Avin, oil and gas tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and metals giant Vladimir Potanin, banded together in an unusual show of solidarity and launched a blistering attack ad campaign against Zyuganov. They also orchestrated the appointment of Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin’s brilliant, but flawed, deeply cunning former deputy prime minister, as the head of the president’s reelection campaign. The methods that he would employ against Zyuganov were torn right from the textbook, “Dirty Politics 101.” They were brutally unfair, deceitful, and in many respects, brazenly and unapologetically illegal.
Despite his vociferous public denials to the contrary, Zyuganov was relentlessly cast as a political extremist whose election would inevitably result in the reversal of Yeltsin’s democratic reforms, the reopening of labor camps and the start of a bloody civil war. While Russian campaign finance law explicitly limited direct campaign spending to three million dollars per candidate, Yeltsin’s oligarchic supporters found ways to skirt the law and bankrolled his campaign with an amount estimated to be north of one billion dollars. Much of this money financed efforts aimed not just at manipulating public opinion, but buying it: grossly manufactured positive press; blatantly untrue disinformation; and lavish public campaign events that included handouts of free food, alcohol, lottery tickets for new cars and apartments as well as live performances by major pop artists. And when these were not enough, outright bribes were paid to key politicians, administrative functionaries, business leaders and Kremlin-friendly journalists to ensure loyalty. The arrest of a Chubais aid as he left the “Belyi Dom” carrying a briefcase stuffed with two hundred thousand dollars was but a drop in the bucket of just how much the Kremlin and its backers were willing spend to keep Yeltsin in power.
Of course, it wasn’t only the Russian establishment whose hands were sullied in promoting Yeltsin’s re-election. The West too played no small part. At US urging, the IMF issued Russia a new $10 billion dollar loan, much of which was used to help Yeltsin pay down massive arrears in unpaid salaries and pensions just days before the election’s first round in June. If public appeals to support Yeltsin were falling on the deaf ears of disgruntled workers and retirees, perhaps, the thinking was, money could change their minds. All this help and skullduggery notwithstanding, Yeltsin’s victory was anything but assured. The greatest threat to it was the disastrous war still raging in Chechnya.
Fighting there had been continuous since December 1994. By January 1996, the conflict had already claimed the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers and tens of thousands of Chechen rebels and civilians. It had now spilled out of Chechnya and into the neighboring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. The war also started taking on some truly dark and disturbing characteristics. Both rebels and Russian troops were guilty of committing unspeakable crimes, including hostage taking, torture and indiscriminate killing of entire civilian populations. Further exacerbating the situation, the chief Mufti of Chechnya had declared jihad. An increasing number of jihadists began arriving not only from outside Chechnya but from outside Russia as well. This one-time local war had become a regional conflict. The worry now was that it would soon spiral into something with far more dangerous global repercussions.
As opposition to the war inside Russia and among its many multi-ethnic republics continued to grow, there was rising concern in Moscow that the federation itself might be torn apart. Yeltsin and his “party of war”, led by his unpopular defense minister, Pavel Grachev, and his head of presidential security, Aleksander Korzhakov, were convinced that nothing short of complete victory would persuade other republics not to secede. At the same time, Yeltsin, who knew how badly the war was hurting his poll numbers and was desperate to wind it down as quickly as possible — well before the election. Efforts to brutally stamp out the rebellion once and for all were intensified, but at devastating human cost. And although this new offensive produced some tangible early successes for the Russian military, including the very public assassination of Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudaev in late April by a missile that homed in on his cell phone signal, Yelstin and his team could rarely capitalize. Each time victory was declared, fighting would inevitably flare up again and Yeltsin’s popularity would sag further.
With no end to the war in sight, Yeltsin’s backers understood that to win reelection he would need the help of “dopolnitel’niye spetsial’niye meropriyatiye” (additional special measures). Chief among these was outright election fraud, including stuffing ballot boxes, buying votes, threatening public employees who might not vote for him, and if necessary, massaging the actual election results in his favor. As time went on, however, it became clear that even these extreme tactics might not be sufficient. It was no secret that Yeltsin’s health was rapidly failing. He was suffering from advanced heart disease. To limit the damage this was having on his image as a strong leader, his campaign schedule was greatly curtailed. When he did appear on TV or at public rallies, his movements were wooden and his speech at times slurred, even incoherent. His face often appeared swollen and his complexion pasty. Had it not been for the cosmetic magic of his make-up artists, he would have looked like a walking corpse.
Given all the personal and professional turmoil I had been through in the previous year, this was the first time in a long time I had the chance to follow and contemplate Russia’s unfolding military and political drama. In some ways, my disengagement from the country’s political news cycle had left me a bit of a walking corpse on current affairs. I had some serious catching up to do. Fortunately, my newfound peace of mind from not having to worry about office invasions in broad daylight by AK-47 and comically large calculator-wielding thugs, midnight home invasions by thugs and their female accomplices and verbal invasions by thuggish talking Cockneys would allow me to do just this. Living in the comparative lap of luxury and professional tranquility afforded to me by Mira, Sune and the law firm certainly did not hurt. What a difference it made to no longer have to rush to make the last “elektrichka” to Pushkin and sit down alone to a dinner of hotdogs and canned Heinz baked beans. All I had to do now was walk down the hallway from my office, exit through one door, cross a stairwell landing, and enter through another after a long day’s work and sit down to a delicious gourmet meal prepared by the family’s hired cook! Although I can’t say that there weren’t plenty of times when I actually missed my quiet Pushkin nights.
Odd as it may seem, I did not at all view this new period as a “reset” of my Russia experience, a chance to wipe the slate clean and forget about all the insane, often unpleasant things I had experienced along the way. Rather, I looked at the preceding year as an invaluable life lesson and a strong foundation on which to build better future experiences and friendships. I had invested much time, energy, effort and heartache in building this foundation. There were more than a handful of times when it had very nearly crumbled under me. Now that it was on standing on comparatively solid ground, I was determined to aim higher, build better, and see what kind of return I might get on my investment.
Quite unlike my co-workers at Am-Rus and St. Petersburg Properties, the staff at the law firm was intellectual, well-informed, analytical, earnest, and with few exceptions, conservative. There were times when they struck me as staid, dispassionate and downright boring. Not to stereotype them, but their personalities were a perfect match for a corporate law firm. As one of the few people on the staff who had not gone to law school and was not steeped in corporate legal culture, I was a glaring anomaly. They probably looked at me as a bit of an eccentric. Yet, with few exceptions, everyone made me feel quite welcome.
In many ways, the firm took on the inherently passive-aggressive personality of its principal, Jeff. On the surface, he was quite extroverted, convivial, and at times, perfectly charming. He seldom passed up on a chance for a little teasing, lighthearted banter with us. And there were moments when he, barely able to control his laughter, recounted hilarious episodes from long, often tense meetings with clients. One that particularly stands out involves a Finnish gentleman who, speaking English with an extremely thick accent and awful pronunciation, delivered his closing remarks to the conferees.
“Tank you Miisterr Chairman! And tank you esteemed fellow shareholders! Now, pardon me for speaking directly, but I believe we must all do a much better job of being DIRTY MINDED (he had meant to say determined), yes ABSOLUTELY DIRTY MINDED, if we are to be successful. So, here’s to us being the MOST DIRTY MINDED we can possibly be!”
Jeff found this so funny he nearly spit out the water he was drinking. He intentionally dropped his pen on the floor to have an excuse for reaching down so that he could hide his giggles under the table.
Generally speaking though, Jeff was all business. To his credit, he was not at all overbearing. If anything, he might have been too lenient and too hands off. He almost always deferred to us for our knowledge and expert opinions. Over time, however, I began to appreciate how much of a master he was at manipulating his attorneys and accountants into being “creative” in their legal thinking and taking approaches that were non-linear, unconventional, and outside their ethical comfort zones. He didn’t explicitly espouse breaking the law, but he certainly didn’t mind stretching it and putting its boundaries to the test. And for those attorneys who were most “creative”, he offered salaries that were far above the market average in Russia while still significantly lower than what western attorneys earned. Despite giving the appearance of deference, Jeff usually got exactly what he wanted, even though it was his attorneys’ legal necks that were on the line, not his. As a foreign attorney, he was only allowed under Russian law to consult his Russian clients, not represent them. Therefore, he could not be held legally liable.
Whatever one might say about Jeff, one thing is certain: he didn’t suffer from a lack of modesty or ambition. He had a preternatural confidence in his ability to get things done. He was not reckless, but he was much more of a gambler than most lawyers I had ever met. You might call him a legal entrepreneur. And when he sensed that someone important either did not understand or objected to his line of thinking, he wasn’t afraid to spell things out in very colorful language. Not that it should come as any surprise, but he was definitely not your stereotypical Dane — calm and reserved. More often than not, he kept up his guard as if no one around him could be fully trusted. The few times he did let down his guard in my presence a darker side emerged. At the very least, his words during these moments demonstrated insensitivity, if not unvarnished prejudice against women and minorities, especially blacks, gays, Jews, and the physically and mentally challenged.
Similar to Yuri Pavlovich at Am-Rus, Jeff spared little expense when it came to projecting his image of success. The only difference was that unlike Yuri Pavlovich, he actually had real money to burn. He wore very expensive custom-tailored suits, shirts and shoes. He brandished the most expensive watches. His colognes conveyed a smoky and exotic sophistication. He meticulously groomed his thinning brown hair, thick mustache and twitching eyebrows. By Danish standards, he lived a very posh life — lavish homes, chauffeured cars, almost all of which were the newest and largest black Mercedes sedans, the finest malt scotches, vacations on his yacht in the fanciest Mediterranean ports or at ski resorts in the Swiss and French Alps.
It’s not that he didn’t earn this kind of lavish lifestyle. His prejudices and less than full commitment to honesty and fair play aside, he was a brilliant mind and an absolute work alcoholic who spent hours upon hours holed up in his office, tugging nervously on his Marlboro Light cigarettes and huddling late into the night with his top lieutenants and his principal client, Leonid Dodozhonovich. Notwithstanding his short stature and rather comical gait that called to mind a penguin in a hurry, he had the vicious and tenacious bite of a pit bull. He could be deceptively calm one minute and, on the attack the next, sinking his teeth into his opponents and not letting go until they capitulated. Someone once described him as a “crying crocodile.” The more I saw of his ways and the trail of tears he left in his wake, it was hard to disagree.
He was a machine of perpetual motion, one that only knew two positions: on and standby. The few times I was able to catch him for a quick word or two happened as he raced from one end of the office to the other. Perhaps this was his way of avoiding being pinned down by anyone on anything. His reluctance or perhaps fear of commitment leaked into his private life. While he may have had a striking Russian wife and two beautiful children, he had a lust for late night trysts with high price escorts and prostitutes. Though he entrusted certain people in the office to safeguard his reputation and keep a tight lid on his indiscretions, they were far too numerous to stop from leaking out.
While Jeff was also intrigued by my presence in his office, I never had the impression that he took much interest in me or what I was doing. After all, I had landed here solely at the initiative of Sune whose stature at the firm was unassailable except by those who saw him as a threat to their own duplicitous, conniving ways. He was a consummate professional who saw real value in my work as the public posture of the firm rose. For Jeff, who was much less concerned about the means than the ends, I was at best enigmatic — at worst extraneous. He occasionally checked in to see how my real estate endeavors were progressing but most of his time was spent brainstorming on legal and financial strategy, meeting with foreign shareholders or gratuitously enjoying the spoils of his work.
Maria, or Masha as she was more familiarly called, was Jeff’s right hand, impenetrable gatekeeper, and as I later learned, his trusty henchwoman who took care of all his dirty laundry, literally and figuratively. As his rotund, toad-like, chain smoking office manager, she tightly controlled everything that went on in the office internally from staffing, financing, security, politics, desk assignments, and most importantly, access to Jeff. Nothing that went on in the office escaped her knowledge. She was his ultimate guardian of secrets, the protector of his reputation. She knew where all the skeletons were buried, and she did everything to ensure that they stayed buried. She ran the office like Felix Dzherzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the predecessor to NKVD and KGB. She hunted for and rooted out potential traitors everywhere and pursued them relentlessly, whether real or not. She was an equally manipulative, cunning and paranoid tyrant who demanded complete loyalty. Anyone who stood in her way, resisted her attempts to control them or merely rubbed her the wrong way would suffer the cruel consequences. If you had any hope of staying at the firm, you did not want to end up on her not-so-secret enemies list.
Simply ignoring her though was not an option as she personally disbursed all employee salaries, and something that was especially important to me, visa invitations. As repugnant as I sometimes found her conduct, I had little choice but to bite my tongue, gratuitously humor her and create the impression that I was bending to her will. To her credit, there were times when she saw through my insincerity, but rather than declaring war, she just gave me the cold shoulder. She saw me as outsider, perhaps because I had been invited to work for the firm by Sune, another outsider whom she could not put under her thumb and under whose wing I was presumably protected. This did not at all stop her from trying to make life difficult for me every chance she had. Undercurrents of mutual distaste for and mistrust of one another remained constant. My friendly relations with everyone else in the office, including Jeff, at least at a superficial level, only seem to heighten her suspicion and resentment toward me.
When I first arrived at the firm, the legal staff was still quite small and consisted of only four people: Sune, the senior managing attorney and only other full-time expat; Igor Borisovich, who, though only in his late 20s, always preferred to be addressed formally with his patronymic, and Dmitry, the two senior Russian attorneys; and Vavara, a paralegal who was studying to get her law degree.
Like Jeff, Sune was anything but a typical Dane, but in contrast, he exhibited far more of the personal qualities of his native land, at least those with which I was familiar and liked, including his physical appearance and comport. He was tall and gangly with medium length straight dirty blond hair. His face was sharply angular, and his deep-set eyes were piercing blue. He impressed many with his very good natured, but earnest disposition, which belied his relatively young age of 33. His language was always measured and economical. I always enjoyed his somewhat halting cadence. He spoke in short breaths as if to accentuate what was most important. He was deceptively quiet. Some might even have thought he was shy. He showed no small amount of self-control and quiet reserve. He was a consummate professional and a very capable attorney who had an awesome respect for the law and its power to do good. He never failed to convey this to his clients who at times might not have shared his same respect or commitment.
But outside the office and around his family, he was quite extroverted, often letting his silly, boyish, sometimes prankster side to come out. He had a wonderful sense of irony and humor and was never one to pass up on an adventure. He was a doting father to his three children, and from what I could tell, happily married to Mira. Despite his many legal talents, I always had the distinct impression that he was a corporate attorney not out of love or even choice but because it paid well enough to comfortably support his young family. His true passions and dreams, however, lay elsewhere. He was an adventurer, creative soul and idealist at heart. He had agreed to relocate to St. Petersburg in large part for his job’s handsome salary but also because he saw it as an opportunity for adventure. He was a lawyer by day, but by night he probably dreamed of traveling, writing, creating provocative art or leading a great humanitarian cause. Though I would live with him and his family for six months, he never really opened up to me. He clearly had stories to tell and secrets to keep, perhaps even dark ones, but he seemed most comfortable locking them up deep inside. As I would later learn, his brother’s suicide some years earlier and his own bouts with depression were among the darkest of these.
Igor Borisovich and Dmitry on the other hand were birds of a very different feather. Igor Borisovich was a particularly intriguing, even if moody, brooding fellow. A brilliant lawyer with a huge ego, he was also a living psychological portrait of someone suffering from deep-seated pessimism and its corrosive effects. He was speaking about “legal nihilism” 15 years before future Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ever uttered the phrase in reference to Russia’s general lack of respect for the law and the need to pull out corruption at its roots. What was happening in Russia under Yeltsin’s feeble watch pained Igor to no end. He was also highly critical of the Clinton Administration and the IMF for their unfaltering and misguided support, coddling and enabling of Yeltsin’s ineptitude.
As far as Igor Borisovich was concerned, the US had an enormous hand in his country’s current ills. He was no Communist, but he definitely believed that Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov was getting a raw deal in the ongoing presidential campaign. He was being unfairly portrayed as someone who would return the country to a dark, stifling and repressive Soviet past in an attempt to whip up anti-Communist hysteria while the real crimes were taking place right under everyone’s noses — the looting of the country’s wealth and its absconding offshore, the unending war in Chechnya and the rise of the Kremlin’s “War Party,” a first iteration of Vladimir Putin’s “Siloviki,” the heads of Russia’s sprawling security apparatus. Adding further insult to his country’s injury was the spate of violent crime and the general disintegration of its social mores and political cohesion. Russia, he often lectured and lamented, was spiraling into a bottomless, lawless, dark pit.
And yet, for all his complaining and pontificating, Igor Borisovich did not seem ready or willing to admit the hypocrisy of his own legal work — that it was in fact largely complicit with the very kinds of activity — the search for ways to legally evade, not necessarily break the law, rapacious privatization, personal enrichment and capital flight — that he so deplored. And as the highest paid Russian lawyer in the office, he was benefitting richly, but not nearly as much as he thought he should. With some justification, he deeply resented the two-tiered system of payment that most foreign companies implemented — one pay scale for expats and one for Russian staff. He thought, and I agreed with him, that there should be equal pay for equal work, but we both knew that most expats, myself excluded, would refuse to come to Russia unless they were enticed with large, sometimes absurdly large financial compensation. This galled Igor Borisovich and constantly ate away at his soul. Over time, his toxic demeanor and insurmountable resentment would start to affect his work, poison his relations with the staff, namely Masha, and prove to be his final undoing at the firm.
Though I would not work with him long, Dmitry was one of my early favorites. At first, he struck me as a bit introverted, withdrawn, even aloof, but once I got to know him better, I found him to be very friendly, droll, conscientious, intellectually curious, hardworking, honest and very humble. At various office functions, his soft spoken but perfectly timed witticisms always received the loudest laughs. He too was upset by much of what was going on in Russia, but he did not let it get in the way of his work or personal relationships. He quietly and methodically went about his job, always making himself accessible to me despite my exasperating requests for clarification and further explanation. When he left us later that year to become the senior attorney of a much larger firm in Moscow, I confided to him that it was people like him who gave me hope for Russia’s future.
Varvara, a somewhat quirky, socially awkward but utterly determined, sincere and very bright young woman, was the office’s sole female legal expert. However, as the least experienced, she was almost treated as if she were an understudy or a research assistant. Part of this was due to the fact that she had not yet completed all of her law degree exams; but even after she had graduated, the bias against her continued. At first, I attributed this to her personality which was excessively formal and serious to a fault. It was only later that I saw here struggle within the context of Russian society’s wider discrimination against female professionals. Women staking out successful careers in law were not immune. Being a private attorney was a relatively new profession in Russia, but one which was unquestionably male-dominated. I would work with many female lawyers over my years in Russia and while they often carried the bulk of the workload, they almost always earned a fraction of what their male counterparts did. While Soviet women had made great advances in certain traditional white-collar professions, such as engineering, accounting, and teaching, positions of power, in particular those commanding large salaries, were reserved almost exclusively for males. Despite her exceptional qualifications and experience, Vavara, I assumed, would have an immensely long and steep hill to climb as her career progressed. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time speaking with her about this, but I had a steep hill of my own to climb, even without having to battle gender discrimination.
As was the case with most of my jobs in Russia, the people I often felt most comfortable with were not the high-flyers, but the under- the-radar support staff, many of whom were vastly overqualified for their jobs but who, due to financial necessity and the severe shortage of quality, well-paying jobs in Russia’s transition economy, had little choice but to take any job they could find. Theirs were stories that always fascinated, inspired and humbled me.
Aleksander, or Sasha as I soon came to call him, was one of the firm’s two drivers. By education and profession, Sasha was a rail transport engineer with a specialization in electric locomotion. He first put his skills to use as an electrical mechanic in the Soviet Union’s “Morskaya Pekhota” (Marines) during a long tour of duty in Angola in the mid- 80s. It was also there where he was taught the finer, excruciatingly painful technique of having to shave with a towel, an act of uncommon brutality practiced by older conscripts against their younger comrades in a hazing ritual called a “Dedovshchina”, or rule of the grandfathers.
After returning from intact from Angola, Sasha eventually found work developing Russia’s first bullet train, but when funding dried up in the early 90s, the project was shelved. It was then that he started working as a private driver. After a long hiatus, he would ultimately return to his electric locomotion work in the mid-2000s when the federal budget was flush with oil and gas money and Russian Railways, the national rail company, resurrected the project.
For now though, Sasha put his many talents to use as a driver, handyman and all-around quick-thinking idea man. Like Jeff, his engine ran on perpetual, high voltage energy. He also had a razor-sharp wit and a sense of humor that was infectious, at times bordering on cutting. His mind though was far too fast and fertile to be merely a driver. This tended to get him into trouble as he often took it upon himself to go well beyond the boundaries of the narrow task assigned to him and do what he intuited would be in the best interests of the firm. He also refused to be corralled or cowed by Masha. Unlike most of us, he not only saw right through Masha’s vindictive phoniness. Yet he wasn’t afraid to call her out on it, at least in a teasing, not explicitly confrontational way. Still, while most of us loved his positive disposition, proactive approach and frequent good-natured hijinks, Masha took serious umbrage and looked for every possible way to sack him. Given that Masha usually got her way when she set her mind to it, it did not take long for her to find grounds for his dismissal. Just weeks after my arrival, he was falsely accused of having misappropriated funds. Everyone understood that he had been framed but there was little anyone could do to defend him without jeopardizing themselves. Fortunately though, my relationship with Sasha was only just getting started and would blossom into a friendship that continues to this day.
Olga was another person with whom I established a really good rapport. Our tenures at the law firm began at just about the same time. She was hired as a translator and interpreter. Her English was superb. She had studied abroad for some time in England. She was hardworking, culturally sophisticated, extraordinarily well-read, wonderfully articulate and highly opinionated. She also had a great sense of fun and a wicked sense of humor. Like Sasha, her tongue could be razor sharp, but her words were always delivered on a silver platter held by a silk glove. Over the years, we would work on many good projects and share many hardy laughs together. My respect and admiration for her would only grow over this time.
Irina was someone else I would develop a very good, even special relationship with. She too was an exceptional translator and interpreter. With a degree from the prestigious Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, she also did a lot of internal office financial administration work. She was a model employee — always on time, willing to work late nights, earnest, fast and efficient, and loyal, perhaps to fault. She was extremely modest, almost ascetic in the way she conducted herself, and at least on the surface, quiet, if not meek. However, she at times displayed a genuine knack for engaging in playful banter with everyone in the office, including Jeff and Masha. She also exhibited a strong inner strength about her — something that I would later learn came from her religious faith. Unlike most new converts to Russian Orthodoxy, Irina was a true believer, and by comparison, made most other newcomers to the Church look insincere and callow. She was never outwardly judgmental, however. She just heard her calling from above and answered it far more often and with more sincerity than most.
In time, I would learn that not all of her achievements could be attributed solely to the grace of God. She also happened to be the daughter of the financial director of Northwest GSM, one of the city’s fastest growing, most financially successful new companies and one of the law firm’s biggest paying clients. As qualified as Irina was for her job, there was little doubt that nepotism had played some part in giving her, one of “God’s favorite children”, a big leg up.
Last, but by far not least, was Elena Aleksandrovna, the firm’s “bukhgalter” (accountant). It was she who first introduced me to the concept of “chernonal” (black cash) and the “chyornaya bukhgalteriya” or black ledger, the two indispensable “secret sauce” ingredients that almost all companies in Russia shared in common at the time.
Elena Aleksandrovna was an unusual character to say the least. For one thing, she was unusually tall standing at nearly six foot one. Her slight frame was crowned by a long mane of dyed blond hair which she neatly tied up in a bun. Her wide dark eyes with deep wells under them were set into a face that looked as if it had been chiseled from stone. Like Jeff and Masha, she was a chain-smoking fiend, perhaps in order to steady her nerves which had to be taut, like a guitar’s steel strings. Unlike most of the others, she commanded no small amount of respect due not so much to the quality of her work but its sheer importance. Without her, the firm would not have been able to navigate the perilous maze of corporate tax and finance regulations for itself or its clients, pay its bills or remunerate its employees.
In Russia, the “bukhgalter” was not simply a quiet, behind-the-scenes numbers cruncher, but rather a beacon of comforting light on a stormy, dark and often perilous sea — the one person, almost always a female, responsible for reconciling a company’s strategic financial goals with the brutal twin realities of Russia’s onerous, vertiginous, and quite literally, indecipherable tax code, and its general hostility toward private business. Because Elena Aleksandrovna and I always sat in close proximity to one another, we had no shortage of opportunities to talk. Russia’s tax code, at the time, she explained to me, was designed to make compliance impossible. In this way, companies would always be guilty of certain infractions, and therefore subject to penalty. The “bukhgalter’s” job was to ensure that the infractions, and hence, any financial liability, were kept to an absolute minimum. She was the one who could guide the company along the precipice separating success and failure.
If Jeff was our ship’s captain, Elena Aleksandrovna was our harbor pilot. And as such, Jeff and Masha entrusted her with safekeeping all the firm’s financial secrets, both good and bad. She knew how to chart a course that would keep us safe from the leviathans lurking just over the horizon or just beneath the surface. One of the biggest perils was burdensome taxes. It was Elena Aleksandrovna’s job to keep these to a minimum. And one of the biggest tax burdens was the state pension fund tax, which at the time in Russia was nearly 100% of an employee’s salary. For this reason, companies did everything possible to reduce their staffs’ official or taxable “white” salaries to a low level that was still legal but would not invite suspicion. For employees of state-owned companies, low salaries were commonplace. However, in new private companies engaged in specialized services, such as banking, real estate and law, especially those with foreign participation, these low rates of pay were not enough to attract the best talent. It was out of this necessity to pay higher salaries without incurring suffocating tax liability that the phenomenon of unofficial or “black” salaries arose.
On payday, which usually fell on the last workday of every month, most employees of new private companies would receive one nominal official salary in rubles and a second unofficial salary covering the remainder. Employees would sign an official ledger confirming receipt of the first official or “white” salary. Once a quarter, this ledger would then be submitted for review to the local tax inspectorate.
As for the remainder, a second untaxed “chernonal” salary was paid. At the law firm and many, if not most firms with foreign participation, it was standard practice for employees to receive an amount in US dollars, either in cash or on an overseas bank account which could then be drawn down at the employee’s convenience. Over time, however, as the ruble stabilized and controls on “hard” convertible currencies tightened, employees began to receive a larger percentage of their salaries locally. Until 2001 when the country introduced a 13% flat income tax, a sizeable portion of most employees’ salaries in Russia was paid completely “off the books.” To confirm receipt of payment, each employee would sign a second or “black ledger.” This was kept in a safe place known only to the “bukhgalter” and top company brass. It never saw the light of day except on payday or when a company settled its internal accounts.
Almost all local salary disbursements, whether “white” or “black” were made in cash — official salaries were always paid in rubles while unofficial ones might be paid in rubles, US dollars or other “hard” convertible currencies, mostly in large denominations such as one-hundred-dollar bills. Most Russian banks were still too new and unreliable to ensure the safety of direct deposits, much less secure savings accounts. More often than not, banks simply acted as conduits for cash, buying and selling “hard” foreign currencies for “soft” rubles which then were used to purchase most goods and services in Russia.
This same two-tier system approach was applied to the way companies, including the law firm, earned the bulk of their income. Company clients would basically sign two service contracts — one “official” and the other “unofficial.” In the case of companies with foreign participation, one contract was usually onshore while the other was offshore. The former would invariably be for a smaller ruble amount that would be subject to full tax while the latter, usually quoted in US dollars, would cover the majority of the goods or services charge, and would be subject to little or no tax. To implement this system, many companies opened offshore dollar accounts. This was not a problem for companies with foreign participation because their shareholders were part of vast financial networks located outside of Russia.
Companies operating inside Russia, therefore, existed in two parallel universes — one small, ruble-based and minimally-taxed by Russia, and one much larger, usually dollar-based and completely outside of Russia’s borders, most often in tax havens with favorable tax regimes. In the 1990s, companies would literally have trusted staff members go on “cash runs” outside the country. These “money mules” would return with bags and briefcases stuffed with dollars to pay “black” salaries, buy all sorts of local goods and services, and no doubt, to pay local bribes. Sometimes these dollars would be converted into rubles. However, it was not at all rare for payment to be made exclusively in dollars, despite being legally prohibited. Due to ruble instability, those who paid for goods and services in dollars often received additional price discounts.
I have many recollections of Jeff and others at the law firm returning from such “cash runs.” This practice comprised a large share of Russia’s epidemic of capital flight and tax evasion. Although the amount of money that left the country has been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, it is also estimated that most of it ultimately returned to Russia, albeit undeclared and undetected.
But money and the art of Russian “bukhgalteria”, however, were not things that particularly captivated me at this particular time.
Of far greater interest to me was our steady march toward spring. By the middle of February, I was warmed by the thought that winter’s dark abyss was behind us and although the promise of spring’s actual warmth was still months away, the thought of its arrival could at least now be reasonably entertained. Giant mounds of dirty snow jutting out into the streets in jagged patterns reminiscent of civil defense measures employed in the city during the Blockade years and evilly long icicles dangling precariously from the eves of all buildings were constant reminders that Old Man Winter was still firmly entrenched. And yet, the steadily lengthening days and more frequent appearances of the sun were more than enough to lift our spirits.
These were the days when I took many unforgettable early mornings runs through the frosty wonderland of “Marsovoye Polye” (Mars Field), “Letnyi Sad” (Summer Garden) and “Mikhailovsky Sad” (Mikhailovsky Garden). Because all three parks were so close to the Neva River, higher humidity levels here often left the bare-boned skeletons of trees and shrubs thickly coated in hoarfrost making it look as though they had been magically powdered with confectioner’s sugar. Once the early-morning sun burned through the frozen fog hanging in the air and glinted off the golden cupolas of nearby “Spas na Krovi” (Church of the Savior on the Spilt Blood) and the needle-like spire of the “Mikhailovsky Zamok” (Mikhailovsky’s Castle), the beauty of this fairytale setting was magical, pure and breathtaking.
One bitingly cold but brilliantly sunny Saturday, Sune invited me to join him and his two daughters, seven-year-old Tess and four-year-old Tara, for a walk down to the Neva River Embankment, just in front of the Hermitage Museum. He had heard that the river had completely frozen over, and that many adventurous, devil-may-care souls were venturing out onto the ice and crossing the river’s entire one kilometer width. With temperatures hovering just above zero degrees Fahrenheit, we bundled up in multiple layers. Taking us by the hands, the girls looked like little red balls cleaved to much larger blue balls.
By the time we arrived at the embankment, a long line of people was already snaking its way over the snow-covered ice to the “Petropavlovskaya Krepost’” (Peter and Paul Fortress) on the far side where, to my utter disbelief, sunbathers were shedding all but their skivvies and leaning with their backs against the former fortress’s, later prison’s tall and canted red granite walls at the river’s edge. The long line evoked eerie images of evacuees traversing the “Doroga Zhizni” (Road of Life), the legendary supply and evacuation route over frozen Lake Lagoda that kept Leningrad alive during the Blockade years between 1941 and 1944.
Contrary to what we had heard, the river was not in fact entirely frozen. A vast snow-covered plain of ice stretched out in all directions but there were a few black patches of open water extending out from beneath the nearby Palace Bridge. In the middle of the river where a shipping channel had been kept open until only recently, massive, elongated shards of broken ice formed an obstacle around and over which the line of people wended its way. For me at least, this made the idea of crossing the river all the more daunting.
Never one to pass up a free adventure, Sune descended the stairs of the granite quay and struck out across the ice. Having every bit of her father’s panache, pluck and derring-do, Tess followed right behind him. I was not nearly as enthusiastic and having Tara who lacked her older sister’s confidence in my custody gave me no reason to hurry. After some initial coaxing, Tara finally made it down to the last step. From there, we gingerly walked out onto the smooth black surface swept here at least of snow. There was no arguing that the ice was solid. No brittle top ice and very few pockets of air. No slushy spots. No ominous creaking or cracking. Other adventurers just setting off or returning assured us that it was safe. Someone guessed out loud that the ice was at least 30 cm thick or about one foot, more than enough to support the weight of a medium size car.
By the time Tara and I gathered up our nerve and began to walk farther out, Sune and Tess had already covered several hundred meters. They had very nearly made it out to the mounds of ice shards. After creeping our way about 150 meters, I realized that we were never going to catch up. As we dropped farther and farther behind, Tara became increasingly agitated, no doubt due to a combination factors: her fear of the unknown; the feeling that her father and sister had abandoned her; the bitter cold; and being stuck with someone who was just as frightened as she. A few more tentative steps later, we hit a slushy patch. It seemed a bit strange given the subfreezing temperatures. Passersby didn’t pay it the least bit of attention. They simply walked around or straight through it as if it were nothing more than a puddle on the street. The fact that the Neva’s notoriously treacherous black and icy current was flowing just centimeters beneath our feet was an afterthought, if a thought at all. Trying to put a positive spin on the situation, I guessed that the slush had been caused by one of the many bore holes that ice fishermen had made along the way, though I don’t know this for certain.
Tara was not impressed with my timid guesswork. She froze in her tracks and refused to take another step forward. I offered to pick her up and carry her, but this only seemed to make things worse. She was now hell-bent on spiraling into the abyss of a toddler meltdown. And she was not about to let me stand in her way. Soon she was sobbing inconsolably. I yelled out to Sune and Tess and motioned that that we were turning around heading back to shore. Disappointed that their journey would be cut short, they too turned around. It did not take them long to catch up. Tess did her best to play the adult in the room and assured Tara that everything would be fine. Tara was still beside herself. Sune then scooped her up in his arms and rubbed noses with her. This immediately brought her crying to an end. She wiped her tears away. Her face then turned very serious. Her brows furrowed. She stared straight into Sune’s eyes and slapped him squarely across the face.
“Far (Father)!”, she said with a scolding voice. “I am angry. Don’t you ever leave me like that again!”
Sune, momentarily taken aback but unperturbed, smiled his usual toothy grin and promised that he would not.
Rarely have I seen a daughter display such moxie when confronting her father. The fact that Tara was only four at the time made it all the more impressive.
A few weeks later, the office celebrated the back-to-back holidays of “Defender of the Fatherland” on February 23 and “International Women’s Day” on March 8. By now I had already become a reluctant veteran of these two popular but inherently sexist days, the first being a day for women to heap praise and thanks on all men, whether they had served or not, and the other for men to ingratiate themselves to women for having to serve and tolerate men the other 364 days of the year. Whereas the celebrations at my previous employers had been far more muted, the law firm held nothing back. The staff prepared lavish homemade dishes, assembled expensive gift baskets, and delivered fawning champagne-paired toasts.
Such was the privilege of these white-collar workers whose monthly incomes were some 10–15 times higher than the average Russian salary. They made far more money, but in Russia where socking away money for a rainy day was not exactly de rigor, the more they earned the faster they usually spent. I also observed that their relative affluence seemed to create a bubble of disconnect with the socio-economic reality most other Russians had to face. It was more than just their advanced material well-being that set them apart from the masses, however. It was also their pervasive, cynical sense of resignation. Maybe they were exceptional in this sense. After all, they were employees of a small, elite western law firm which in Russia in the 1990s was an extreme rarity. Or maybe it was just this peculiar collection of personalities.
Whatever the case, these young, highly educated, well-informed, well-traveled, highly motivated and accomplished professionals who were outspoken in their criticism of the direction in which their country was heading suffered from a paralyzing sort of apathy, and were resigned to accept, if not help preserve the status quo. The very people who I thought were in the best position to help their country build democratic institutions and take a different course were more interested in social rumor, short-term political intrigue, and corporate machinations. The long-term social and political fate of their country did not stir their emotions but only increased their indifference and disengagement. If this is what could be expected from the country’s best, brightest and most influential minds, I worried about what this portended for the country’s future.
It was at one of these celebrations that I also began to look more fondly upon Irina. It had been some time since I had been intimately involved with anybody. Though I now had quite a few good friends in Russia I had not yet enjoyed the companionship of anyone I felt I could be affectionate toward, share my experiences with and open up to on a deeper personal level. As my life had suddenly transitioned from one of constant struggle, madcap adventure and mishap to one of relative stability and predictability, I started to notice the growing emptiness inside me. Perhaps, I thought, a relationship was just what the doctor ordered.
Honestly speaking, Irina was not someone I might have been attracted to in my past. She was quite reserved, introspective, and on occasion, moody, glum, even morose. Yet, as I would quickly find out, she was also very kind, intelligent, genuine, devoted, and at moments very witty and playful. As we grew closer over time and our relationship evolved from subtle flirtation to full-fledged, but discreet romance, I would be introduced to and become all the wiser about courtship à la Russe. This would be a difficult process with much trial and error — one that in the end would deliver me a harsh lesson in life, but about which I have zero regret.
Like everything else in the Soviet years, sweetheart relationships, which were almost exclusively heterosexual ones, went according to a plan. They often began early on, usually in very structured settings: secondary school; Komsomol; the military; trade unions; or the university. This may partly explain why the average age of newlyweds and first-time mothers in the Soviet Union was quite young — the early to mid-20s. By the time most young Soviets citizens entered the workforce, their personal lives were more or less established. Therefore, first-time romances at the workplace between those who were not previously married were far less common. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, however, many of these traditional structures collapsed and disappeared altogether. Add to this fact that social and financial support for young couples all but dried up and you have a recipe for major social change.
While in today’s Russia it is far more common for couples to meet at work or in less informal social settings outside the workplace or through on-line dating services, the situation in the turbulent 1990s was much more fluid and unsettled as society scuttled the old ways and scrambled in search of new ones. As a result, the average age of newlyweds has steadily increased. Despite government attempts to encourage marriage and higher birthrates, the mean age of newlyweds has now climbed to nearly 27 years. The mean age of women at first birth, however, is still less than 26, which means that many couples are opting to have children outside of marriage. Interestingly, this has not adversely impacted the country’s current birth rate which after years of precipitous declines, has finally begun to climb once again. One thing that has remained a constant, however, in both yesterday’s USSR and today’s Russia, is the very high rate of divorce. Well over 60% of marriages fail.
Irina came of age amidst Russia’s social and economic chaos of the early 1990s. She graduated from school in 1989 and from university in 1993. She was only 22 years old in 1994 when she began her stint at the law firm. This was her first official employment. Though she earned a salary that was nearly unheard for a young single woman in Russia, she continued to live with her mother, Tatyana, herself a divorcee, and her stepfather, Aleksander. By scrimping on rent and spending very frugally, Irina had in very short order quietly amassed savings of more than $30,000, which by Russian standards was a fortune unheard of for someone so young. She planned to use this money to buy a new apartment in the nearest future.
At first glance, she maintained a very tightknit, healthy relationship with her family. The more time I spent around Irina and her family, however, the easier it was to see that she led a rather sheltered, even pampered existence that her mother scorned with one hand and gladly indulged with the other. As the divorced mother of an only child, Tatyana had a difficult time letting Irina grow up, let alone encouraging her to set off on her own. In hindsight, it is little wonder that she saw me with complex, even contradictory emotions. I was at once someone who would potentially help her daughter to find happiness, maturity and independence, but one who might also take her away.
For her part, Irina was highly sensitive to, even resentful of the oversized, constraining control her mother had on her life. She felt that she was more than ready to break free. Unlike most of my other friends who still lived with their parents but could only dream of buying their own home, she had the financial wherewithal to do so. And yet, she was so much more emotionally immature, fragile and vulnerable than these same friends. But this was not the whole story. Irina was a very private, ponderous and introverted person at times. I often had the impression that she was hiding her true self, not just from me, but everyone. It would take me some time to realize what she was concealing.
In rather ambiguous terms, Igor Borisovich gave me the first clue. He and Irina had begun their tenures at the firm around the same time. Outside her family and circle of closest friends, he knew her better than most. One day at work he pulled me aside for a little unsolicited advice.
“Tor, I hope you know what you are doing. Be very careful with Irina Vladimirovna. She is unlike most others. She is deeply religious. God is her one true love and protector. She takes everything to heart and is as delicate as a flower. If for any reason things don’t work for you two, she will take it very hard.”
I thanked Igor for his candor but really didn’t take it seriously. How religious could she be? She was hardly an ascetic. She enjoyed certain material and other non-spiritual indulgences no less than the rest of us. And how sensitive could she be? I wasn’t proposing marriage after all. After years of living on my own, I was ready to enjoy the company, attention and affection of this intelligent, sincere and attractive young woman. In retrospect, perhaps, I should not have dismissed Igor’s advice so hastily.
Shortly after International Women’s Day in mid-March, the office moved into its swank new home on Nevsky Prospect, the most prestigious commercial address in St. Petersburg. I remember the day not so much for the move itself but for the short walk over that several of us made together. Ambling our way down Millyonaya Ulitsa and crossing the massive cobblestone expanse of Dvortsovaya Ploshad’ (Palace Square), it was impossible not to be awed by the spectacularly bright, warm mid-afternoon sun as it reflected off the giant majestic golden dome of Isaakovsky Sobor (St. Isaak’s Cathedral) and the Admiralteisky’s (Admiralty’s) sky-piercing needle-like spire. As we navigated our way around large piles of dirty snow quickly melting into wide glassy Impressionistic pools reinterpreting the pastel colors of nearby buildings, the blue sky and gold-tinged puffy white clouds floating overhead, it was easy to believe, if only for one day, that winter’s grip on the city had finally been released and spring’s was taking hold.
Though I knew that the firm had been doing well financially, it was not until I stepped into the new office that I sensed just how well.
Discretely hidden behind the rather plain looking façade of 6 Nevsky Prospect, the very large, immaculately clean, sun-filled and tastefully decadent space was the product of two large former communal apartments that had been joined together. For most Danes who typically pride themselves in modest, functional, understated design, this was the anti-Danish office. With its sponge-painted lemon custard and melon orange-textured walls, clear-varnished butterscotch wooden parquet floors, deep crimson and indigo Turkish rugs, glistening chandeliers, double French doors, single secret doors posing as floor-to-ceiling mirrors, scrolled door trim and ceiling moldings, deep-sill windows dressed in chartreuse drapes and gold-braided cords and tassels, brass escutcheons and enough gold gilding to make the Tsars smile, this office spoke in fluent bombast. Expensively framed replicas of famous classic and modern paintings embellished the walls and imparted a heavy dose of ersatz and braggadocio.
Individual offices were also spacious, suffused with natural light and fully equipped with large modern desks, ergonomic chairs and tall bookshelves. Though these were still the early days for the Internet, especially in Russia where connectivity was the exception, not the rule, the office had its own webmail server, IP address and encrypted Virtual Private Network line, luxuries afforded by the firm’s cozy relations with its advanced telecom and IT clients. Jeff’s personal suite was modestly regal. Though not palatial, it was generously sized, opulently furnished and had more the feel of a nobleman’s private chamber — a businessman’s boudoir. His desk, while not very large, was impressive nonetheless, made of walnut and mahogany and inlayed with gold leaf and leather. Behind it was a long low casement where a bronze statue of a fierce-looking eagle conspicuously perched between a small safe and a minibar. A large mirror in a gilded frame hung on the wall above.
Near the entry to the office were a luxuriant conference room and a smaller, more private huddle room. At the far opposite end of the office was a far more intimate and popular conference room that the staff would use to gather regularly — the kitchen.
The office had all the latest technical gizmos of the day: zoned heating; central cooling and ventilation system; programmable lighting; video surveillance; brand new Compaq personal computers with eye-safe screens; a large Xerox copying and faxing station; intercom and conference calling from any room in the office; a modern computer network with access to a digitized legal database and archive; and the latest digital transcribers for the legal secretaries.
And for a more personal touch, fresh cut flowers decorated the desks of the receptionist, Masha and the legal secretaries.
Perhaps to remind me of my ambiguous, ancillary, even tenuous position in the firm, I was assigned to a nice but small desk squeezed behind a bookshelf in an alcove just off the noisy central corridor. I shared this space with Elena Aleksandrovna, the “bukhgalter,” who sat directly behind me at a sprawling desk with a separate conference table and large filing cabinets. I did not complain. Even without a window, it was the most luxurious workspace I had ever had in Russia. It also gave me a unique and somewhat discrete vantage point — a crow’s nest from which I could observe all who passed by — that others did not enjoy. And there was another big advantage — by being placed in such an open, obvious place, I would become nearly invisible, secretly collecting intelligence on internal office politics. No, I was not a CIA or FBI mole as Leonid Dodozhonovich had suspected, but I would use the next two years to hone my tradecraft and use it to my full advantage.
The amount of money needed to realize Jeff’s opulent vision for this office was not small. Sune confided in me that the cost of acquiring the properties, renovating, furnishing and equipping them was close to two million dollars, an unheard-of sum for an office renovation in St. Petersburg at the time. Where on earth did all this money from? What I would learn over time is that this was all part of the patronage system and mutual “get rich” scheme that Jeff and Leonid Dodozhonovich were putting in place.
In return for guiding, and ultimately hiding Leonid Dodozhonovich’s role in the transfer of ownership of grossly undervalued state-owned assets to a network of offshore holding companies, thereby maximizing their share value and attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in outside investment, Jeff received a virtual monopoly on the right to represent the legal interests of the newly formed local daughter companies. The value of these service contracts was in the millions. As long as the law firm performed its work reasonably well, it was guaranteed a steady income. It was as if it had its own ATM machine from which it could withdraw endless amounts of cash.
In St. Petersburg where the image of success mattered almost as much as success itself, the office and Jeff’s lavish lifestyle did not disappoint. Clients, industry powerbrokers, allies and competitors alike could not help but be impressed, even if they did not always get what they had come for. Jeff used his surroundings to perfection to disarm his guests and nudge them in his direction. And yet, outside of St. Petersburg, Jeff was, for all intents and purposes, a virtual unknown. His home office in Copenhagen was a poor stepsister by comparison and his staff there sensed that they were playing second fiddle. It was no wonder that many of his Danish lawyers were clamoring for transfers to our office. Russia was no longer a hardship post. It was a destination.
That spring passed by in a blur. I busied myself with my legal proofreading work and cultivating my portfolio of real estate services and clients. I had already been contracted to find an apartment for the American head of the law firm, Coudert Brothers. I had also secured the marketing rights to an exclusive Danish-backed residential project entailing the restoration of the 18th century “Kitaiskaya Derevnya” (Chinese Village) at “Yekaterinsky Dvorets” (Catherine’s Palace) in Pushkin. And I had entered into negotiations with Eddie, formally of St. Petersburg Properties, to redevelop one of the most famous hotels in the city — Nevsky Palace — a project financed by his Greek investment partners, Corinthia. Outside of work, I was enjoying spending time with Irina and deepening our relationship.
The only occasion when time stood still for me was during an all-night Russian Orthodox Easter service that Irina invited me to attend at the beautiful “Khram Voskreseniya Kristova” (Temple of the Resurrection of Christ) on Obvodny Canal. In some way, I think Irina saw this as an opportunity to plumb the depth of my own faith — in her and in her church. I, on the other hand, viewed it as a test of my physical endurance. Though I had attended a couple of long services in recent years, I had not yet experienced, nor had any burning desire to experience the entire six-hour marathon celebrating what is by far the most important day on the Russian Orthodox calendar. Oh, but for the sacrifices we make in the name of love! Or what we think is love!
We arrived at the temple just before 11 pm on a cool Saturday night in April. The building was already packed with congregants. After listening to an hour’s long solemn introductory prayer and hymns sung from the cavernous, candle-lighted nave, the priest, dressed in an ornate all-white vestments with gold trim and a funny thimble-shaped gold and white headpiece bejeweled with crosses and the Cyrillic letters “ИХ” standing for “Isus Khristos” (Jesus Christ), together with his acolytes, gathered at the altar. Lifting up a tall staff crowned by a large gold cross, the priest led the congregation numbering in the hundreds on the midnight “krestnyi khod” (walk of the cross), a procession that took us out of the church and around its large perimeter three times while we rejoiced aloud, “Iisus Khritos voskres! Voistinu voskresye” (Jesus Christ has risen. He has risen, indeed!)!
After completing the “krestnyi khod”, we returned inside and took our places among the large crowd. Except at the very front of the nave where there were a few rows of simple wooden pews for the elderly, there was no place to sit. Over the next four and half hours, we stood, or in my case, wavered and wobbled in a near comatose state, mouthing the prayers, ritualistically crossing ourselves, bowing and receiving periodic showers of holy water. While some people left early, I was surprised to see that most remained for the duration — even the little old, crippled babushkas kneeling at the front.
Despite having fasted for six weeks, Irina was wide-eyed and alert for the duration. As the service’s triumphant climax approached, she seemed to gather strength. Her faith and conviction were being affirmed. About the only thing that was being affirmed for me was my need for sleep. Though I did not think I had nodded off on my feet, I was clearly startled when Irina jabbed my side and shocked me out of my trance-like reverie.
At the very moment when I thought I had reached my limit and could take no more without causing Irina some serious embarrassment, the service’s tempo quickened, the chorus’s hymns became less monotonous and more jubilant, and the priest began his sermon. Soon, the nave was flooded with bright light and a line of believers formed for communion. As a “casual” Presbyterian, I hesitated to join in, but Irina insisted. She had a close relationship with her priest and had apparently already told him something about me. When my turn came to receive the sacraments, the priest smiled and made the sign of the cross over me. When I turned around, Irina’s face was beaming with joy. I felt somewhat revived but was still barely able to stand. I took her by the arm for support before mingling a bit with the fellow worshippers and congratulating one another — they for Christ’s rebirth and I for my own.
Soon afterwards, we stumbled out of the church, happily but almost drunken with exhaustion. Standing on the small plaza just off the canal embankment, we took a long moment to breathe in the cool damp air and gaze at the stars winking at us from above. Though it was just shy of 5 am, the sky in the east was already showing the first signs of dawn’s early light.
While my experiential knowledge of Russian Orthodoxy scripture and ritual was scanty and I had not subjected myself to the rigorous privations of the “Velikii Post” (The Great Lent), I still felt a unity of spirit with the other congregants. My faith had not been tested or confirmed as it had been for them, but I was beginning to appreciate the growing importance and power of the church in the lives of a growing number of ordinary Russians. It was rapidly filling the void that the collapse of the Soviet state had left behind. This night had restored at least some of my faith in the kindness and generosity of the Russian people, their collective willingness to sacrifice and their well-intentioned but difficult search for answers in what was still a very troubled world. Had I not been so tired, I might have reflected on this more. As it was, there was nothing more I wanted than to go home and indulge myself with hours of holy sleep.
By late April, winter had finally relinquished its hold on the city for good and spring’s delicious warmth had arrived. It was then that my parents and sister announced that they would be coming to St. Petersburg to visit me for ten days in June, right around the time of the first round of the presidential election. Mira and Brask generously offered that we all stay at their apartment. Mira, who loved my mother as her high school English teacher, was especially keen on rolling out the red carpet even if it meant working us into her already hectic life caring for her three little children. Though deep down inside she probably felt otherwise, she insisted that this would be the perfect time and place for a reunion.
In retrospect, I think she might have been missing her old life in the United States and was feeling a little lonely given Sune’s increasing absence due to what she assumed was his hectic work schedule. Whatever the reason for her magnanimity, I gratefully accepted her offer. My mother was not a stranger to the city as she had first visited Leningrad in 1989 with a group of high school students. For my father and sister, this would be their first visit anywhere inside the former Soviet Union. At long last, I hoped to share with them a bit of the magic of the place and people who had captured my imagination and my heart these past several years.
On a delightfully sunny and warm May Day, Irina and her family invited me to join them for the upcoming May 9th holiday marking the Soviet and Allied victory over the German Fascists. They planned to take a road trip to her grandparents’ home in Luga, a small provincial capital located 140 kilometers south of St. Petersburg. For Irina, her esteemed and highly decorated Second World War veteran grandfather, Leonid Anatolevich, or as I came to know him as Lev Anatolevich, was a living saint — an alternative father figure for the real father she never really knew. She absolutely adored him and looked to him for many things — wise counsel, approval, protection and abiding love. I also learned that he was a vital counterweight to her mother Tatyana who, despite her good intentions, had an unfortunate tendency to insert herself into Irina’s affairs. I also sensed that Irina wanted me to meet Lev Anatolevich so that our relationship would be validated.
Early on the morning of May 9th we piled baskets of food, gifts and ourselves into Aleksander’s white Lada sedan and made the three hour drive to Luga. The town, named for the scenic meadows that are typical in this part of the southern Leningrad Oblast, sits at a strategically important point halfway between St. Petersburg and Pskov, a larger regional capital not far from the border with Estonia. It was along this route that well-armed and well-trained Fascist troops and their Panzer tanks moved with lighting speed in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Had it not been for the valiant but ultimately doomed resistance of regular and irregular Red Army divisions stationed in Luga in the summer of 1941, Fascist forces would have begun their assault on Leningrad at least one month earlier. Had this been the case, the city would have had one less month in which to prepare for the living hell that would be unleashed on it during the Blockade years.
Despite being recognized as one of the Soviet Union’s “Hero Cities,” Luga in the spring of 1996 was a quiet backwater with a dwindling, aging population and crumbling infrastructure. It was best known for its dairy products, “hot spots” left behind by the radioactive fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion and unexploded war ordinance frequently found in its surrounding fields, forests, lakes and rivers.
Though a relatively short drive from St. Petersburg, Luga seemed lightyears away. As I would learn, Luga’s story was the same one being repeated in many of Russia’s smaller provincial cities — impoverishment, steady depopulation, a hopeless hollowing out, and in some cases, terminal decline.
For all of its simple, organic beauty and salt of the earth people, Luga was a place that had been terribly stressed by Russia’s transition to a market economy. Entering the city’s center, I was overcome with a sense of melancholy. The city’s grief was palpable. Buildings were rundown. Roads were pockmarked with gaping potholes, something that Alexander was all too conscious of as he coaxed his car forward as gently as possible. Save for a small handful of people gathered in front of the central gastronome, no one seemed to be around. Of course, it was a holiday that most celebrated at home but to see this kind of emptiness in the middle of the day in a city of 40,000 was disconcerting.
We soon arrived at Irina’s grandparents’ place — a small, neatly cluttered two-room apartment in a five-story brick apartment building constructed in “Luga-style”. After a warm welcome, we all set about preparing a scrumptious holiday meal. Knowing that the availability of food in Luga was relatively limited, Tatyana and Irina had come fully prepared with salads, fresh, cured and smoked meats, cheeses and seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, lovely sweet and savory pies, and of course, a few obligatory bottles of champagne, wine and vodka. Under Tatyana’s strict direction, we managed to get everything ready in a little over an hour. When we sat down to eat, the devoted daughter made a very heartfelt toast to her father in praise of his selfless service to the Fatherland. Not to be outshined, the doting granddaughter followed with a glowing tribute of her own. And thus began a meal of effusive emotion and love, sobering historical insight and record-breaking four hour length. It was an experience that left me at once enlightened, humbled, and totally drained.
It was during this meal that I got my first close-up, vicarious look through the eyes of a veteran at the life-transforming impacts of the “Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyina” (The Great Patriotic War) on Russia’s “Greatest Generation.” It also helped me to appreciate why the current turmoil in Russia was so hard for them to understand, let alone accept.
Lev Anatolevich recited without pause the unprecedented human sacrifice that the Soviet Union had made to defeat the Fascists — more than 26 million dead, millions more wounded, millions of refugees and orphaned children, tens of thousands of destroyed towns and villages, near destruction of the civilian economy and unspeakable crimes against humanity. As he spoke in a voice that was at once solemn and firm, I could not stop myself from thinking of all the crimes against humanity that Stalin and his regime had inflicted during the war upon the Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, not to mention the Soviet people themselves, including its own soldiers. Special NKVD units under the acronym “SMERSh” (short for “Smert’ Shpionam” — Death to Spies) were embedded in army units to ensure discipline and ideological fervor, ferret out and “liquidate” traitors, real or fabricated, and force soldiers into battle at gun point even when they had no weapons with which to fight.
Out of respect for this warm, soft spoken and decorated 75 year old war hero, I kept my silence.
Perhaps sensing my discomfort, Lev Anatolevich then described how grateful the Russians were to the Americans for sending tins of evaporated and powdered milk, canned SPAM meat, warplanes, locomotives, trucks and jeeps through the Lend Lease program. He seemed to go out of his way to thank me for this indispensable aid as if I somehow represented the US government. Knowing that the amount of aid the US provided the Soviet Union was relatively small, only $11 billion unadjusted for inflation, but perhaps decisive in defeating the Fascists, I accepted his thanks. I then proposed a toast to all “Soyuzniki” (Allies) and to continued improvement and mutual understanding in Russia-US relations. If there had been any ice left to be broken between us, my words seemed to melt it all away.
From this point forward, I was part of Lev Anatolevich’s family, someone in whom he could confide, someone with whom he could share his many personal war stories and his many thoughts on the “alarming and insulting” political and economic conditions afflicting his beloved country. As I sat and listened, he regaled us with tales of when he first enlisted in the Red Army as a 19 year old, fought on the front lines in the battle of Luga, was held prisoner for a time under German occupation, escaped to rejoin the Red Army in time to participate in the largest Soviet military offensive in the war, Operation Bagration, and fought his way across Eastern Europe to Berlin to participate in the final defeat of Hitler. Lev Anatolevich had personally witnessed and partaken in some of the most important and fateful historic events of the 20th century. There was much about this incredible legacy that he and the entire country could be extremely proud. Of the moments that were not much cause for pride, we did not speak.
And yet, all of these events had happened more than 50 years earlier. Lev Anatolevich’s was a generation that was now quickly fading into the annals of history, and sadly, at least in some cases, into oblivion. Officially revered and lauded as they were, Russia’s veterans of the Second World War were among the country’s most vulnerable citizens during the chaotic 1990s. What little remained of their pensions after inflation and ruble devaluation was often late in payment. Those who were not fortunate enough to have the support of their families were left on the their own, completely dependent on meager state support, often forced to sell their cherished victory uniforms and medals on the black market just to have enough money for food or their own funerals. Not even the highest ranking Soviet military figures were immune to this kind of desperation and humiliation. There were reports that the medals of General Sergei Akhromeyev, Marshal of the Soviet Union, had been robbed from his grave after his apparent suicide during the failed coup attempt in 1991. Nothing, alas, seemed sacred anymore. The indignity veterans faced was damning. Their heroic past was being desecrated. Most insulting and dangerous, however, it was being forgotten.
Happily for Lev Anatolevich and his wife, they could rely on Tatyana, Alexander and Irina for all the financial, emotional and spiritual support they needed to carry on their lives with dignity. Still, I knew that what was happening in the country — the floundering economy, the upsurge in crime, the decline in patriotism and the new necessity for and obsession with making money, the precipitous decline in life expectancy, the reinterpretation of Soviet history, the tarnishing of the country’s rich Second World War military legacy and the long-unassailable reputations of its venerable veterans — had to be terribly sad, irksome, if not contemptable to him. Nevertheless, he was not about to let pessimism ruin this special day.
“Tor, we have faced and overcome much graver circumstances in our history than the ones we face today. We Russians are nothing if we are not survivors. We will get through these times. I may not be around to see this happen but Russia’s best days are still ahead!”
I marveled at his genuine sense of optimism, indefatigable pride in his country and unwillingness to capitulate. It was not because of Stalin but the actions of ordinary men and women turned into uncommon heroes like Lev Anatolevich that the Soviet Union had defeated the Fascists. It was unclear to me if new heroes would ever rise in time in Russia to defeat the far more intangible and confounding enemies of socio-economic decline, greed, corruption, indiscriminate violence, despair, neglect and indifference.
Finding such heroes would not be easy. At the national level, the one-time liberals had been discredited, fairly or unfairly, as do-nothing idlers, incompetent fools or conniving and corrupt criminals. They were directly to blame for the popular resurgence of the Communists and their large lead in the upcoming presidential election. President Yeltsin, once seen as Russia’s savior, was now emblematic of everything that was wrong with the country. He was physically frail, increasingly authoritarian and propped up and humored by mercenary, self-interested oligarchs and shortsighted, misinformed, if not indifferent western allies. Together with his embarrassing flare for buffoonery, Yeltsin gave ordinary Russians little reason to hope. But Russians’ distrust of and outright contempt for their politicians was not reserved for Yeltsin alone.
Other one-time darlings of Russia’s democratic movement, including St. Petersburg Mayor Yuri Sobchak, were accused of detached arrogance, endemic corruption and self-aggrandizement. In less than a month’s time, Sobchak would lose his reelection bid to his little-known first deputy, Vladimir Yakolev. His loss would send shockwaves throughout the political establishment and serve as a loud warning shot to Yeltsin’s reelection campaign. Sobchak’s defeat would also mark a historically significant turning point — the ignoble end of one of the country’s brightest democratic stars and the swift ascendance from anonymity of his other lesser-known first deputy. Left without a clear role in the city’s new administration, Vladimir Putin, would be quickly summoned to Moscow where he would become deputy head of the Presidential Property Management Department. With “old guard” political heroes being maligned and sent packing, and their “furniture” simply rearranged for their former deputies, Russians were quickly losing patience with the country’s so-called “democratic” status quo. They no longer wanted weak heroes. They wanted strong leaders.
Sadly, outside of St. Petersburg, one of the few places left in the country that still had a working independent municipal political process, all but a very few Russians believed that they had the requisite political muscle to change things for the better. The entire political system and election process, they were certain, was rigged against them. It was hopelessly broken and served only well-connected and well-financed. In response, most people simply disengaged politically.
To escape the daily drumbeat of bad news and express their general disgust for politicians, most people simply tuned out on everything outside the immediate welfare of their families and friends. There was no shortage of problems with which to contend. In Russia’s past and present, it was never wise to stick one’s head above the crowd, make a lot of noise and attract unwanted attention. Heroic acts seldom went unpunished. This is not to say that there no exceptions. Ordinary folks often stepped forward to perform heroic deeds for others truly in need.
More than once I witnessed such brave and selfless acts. Once while waiting on the platform for my morning metro, I saw a young man, apparently intoxicated, lose his balance and fall onto the tracks where he lay motionless. A rush of wind coming from the tunnel told me that a train was fast approaching. A number of bystanders risked their own lives and jumped down onto the tracks and hoisted the drunk back to safety with just seconds to spare. It was a hair-raising moment but one that reaffirmed my faith in Russians’ basic humanity and their selfless desire to help those in distress.
At one moment of particularly acute personal distress, I too was the direct beneficiary of help from some “good” Samaritans. Or so it seemed at first.
A couple of days before my family’s arrival in early June, Irina and I joined Mira and Sune for a nice dinner. Afterwards, Irina and I decided to take a long, relaxing stroll across the “Troitskiy Most” (Troika Bridge) to Gorkovskaya Metro Station on the opposite side of the Neva River. It was a magnificent evening — warm, breezy, low humidity and a deep orange sun still hanging high above the horizon, even though it was well past 9 pm. Though the hour was late, the small plaza in front of the station was full of evening commuters, casual strollers and ubiquitous vendors proffering their usual sundry items -beer and vodka, cigarettes, flowers, pirated videos and ice cream. The low sun cast long shadows of the trees across the plaza’s well-worn cobblestones.
After seeing Irina off, I turned for home. Though I easily could have gone back the same way we had come, I was in such high spirits and the weather was so fine that I decided to take a more scenic, meandering route through Aleksandrovsky Park, famous for being one of the city’s first public green areas and its first on the “Petrogradskaya Storona” (Petrogradskaya Side).
I entered the wood thick with tall birches, poplar, linden and pine trees. I was struck by how dark and gloomy it suddenly became. Here and there streaks of yellow sunlight penetrated the canopy and cut jagged shapes across the fine pebble pathway below. Most of the park though was suffused in a murky green twilight. I passed by a few people hurrying in the opposite direction, presumably toward the metro station. Ghostly silhouettes of others slipped in and out of the creeping darkness on parallel paths. Voices, at first clearly audible, became fainter as I moved deeper into the park. Soon, none could be heard at all. I seemed to be totally alone.
Sensing the potential for trouble, I quickened my pace and edgily sought the fastest way out. It was with some relief that I finally caught sight of another lone soul emerging from the shadows on the path ahead. As we approached one another, I could see that he was a rather squat fellow dressed in the fashion of the day — a royal blue Adidas warmup with red stripes down its sleeves and white Adidas sneakers. Though the light was dim, I could see that he had black hair and a swarthy complexioned face pockmarked with acne. As we were about to pass, we glanced at one another. He flashed a shifty, menacing smile revealing what appeared to be several gold teeth. He then pointed at his wrist indicating that he wanted to know the time. He stopped in his tracks.
“Molodoi chelovek! Skol’ko vremeni seichas?” (Hey, young man! What time is it now?), he asked again jabbing at his wrist again and again.
I did not wear a watch at the time. I still don’t. I shook my head and answered that I did not exactly know but guessed that it was around 10 pm. Unsatisfied, the man again stabbed at his wrist. By this time we were standing only a meter or so from another. I pointed to my own bare wrist to convince him once and for all that I was not wearing a watch. As I did so, the man, without warning, lunged forward and grabbed me by the arm with one hand and seemingly out of nowhere produced a thin dagger about six inches long in the other. He held the knife at my side leaving no doubt that he expected me to cooperate. Because I stood more than six inches taller than him, I thought that I might be able to wrest myself free but before I had a chance a second taller man also of dark complexion appeared out of the darkness and grabbed me from behind. At this point, both assailants forcibly dragged me off the path and into a thicket of smaller trees and bushes. Try as I did to resist, I was no match for these two goons. I was also all too aware of the dagger jabbing into my side.
Once we had gone off the trail the squat man ordered me in a very heavy southern Russian accent, probably from the troubled Caucasus region, possibly from Chechnya, to empty my pockets. There wasn’t much — a few ruble bills and loose change worth little more than ten dollars and my apartment key. Fortunately, my most valuable possessions, my US passport and Russian visa, were tucked safely out of view in the pocket of my t-shirt which was under my long sleeve white dress shirt. When they saw the scant contents of my pants pockets, they grew angry and accused me of trying to deceive them. They then began to drag me even further into the sylvan abyss.
Fearing the worst, I yelled out at the top of my lungs for help at which point my second attacker wheeled around and decked me squarely in the nose. After the immediate pain, I felt the warm flow of blood running over my lips and off my chin. I was stunned at first, but my fear quickly turned into a raging fury. I momentarily forgot about the knife at my side. They had drawn first blood and as far as I was concerned, this was now a life-or-death struggle. Without thinking through my options and the likely consequences of each, my animal instincts kicked in. I began to flail about like a wild beast fighting for its life and literally dragged myself and my muggers back up onto the path where I hoped that someone might notice us and come to my aid.
Once we had reached the path, I saw that my shirt, untucked and half torn, was covered with big red blotches. The blood was still pouring from my nose. I could also feel it running down my throat which was causing me some difficulty to breathe as I gasped for air. I continued frantically trying to free myself from their clutches, but my strength soon began to ebb. My adrenalin would only carry me so far and I worried that I would not be able to battle for much longer. Just when I thought that my number might be up, I spotted a group of young men heading our way. Without hesitation, I screamed for their help.
“Molodiye lyudi! Radi boga, pomogitye mnye pozhaluista! Pozhaluista pomogite!” (Young people! For the love of God, please help me! Please help!).
The group, consisting of 6 to 8 well-dressed, apparently Slavic men in their mid to late 20s, swung into action and rushed up to us. Now surrounded and far outnumbered, my assailants released me. Doubled over and trying to catch my breath I wiped my nose with my torn sleeve to try to stanch the bleeding. One of the young men in the group, the apparent ringleader, stepped forward and asked what the all the trouble was about. Fumbling for words in my semi-crazed state, I tried to explain in barely coherent Russian that these two total strangers had viciously attacked and beaten me without any provocation and were attempting to mug me.
The young man frowned. His face told me that he was not 100% convinced.
Sensing that the tables might be turn against him, the first attacker interjected in his defense.
“Listen fellas, he’s just kidding. Don’t listen to this young man. He’s not himself. We’ve all been out drinking. We are friends. We’re just having a little drunken squabble. You know what I mean? There’s nothing at all going on here. No trouble whatsoever. Please leave us to sort out our own affairs.”
The young ringleader seemed satisfied and gestured to the others that it was time to move on. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. Petrified that I was being mistaken for a drunk in the midst of a friendly fisticuff and about to be left to sort things out on my own, I violently shook my head. My mind and mouth then went into overdrive.
“Ne slushaite etikh yobannikh mudakov” (Don’t listen to these fucking assholes)! “Ya klyanus’, chto eto pervyi raz v zhizni ya etikh podonok videl” (I swear that this is the first time in my life I have ever seen these lowlifes). They were trying to mug me. Do friends in Russia beat each other up like this? Look at all this blood! Do you see any blood on them? And he pulled a knife on me. Since when have friends in Russia pull knives on one another?
The expression on ringleader’s face told me that he might be having a change of mind. He barked orders to the others to check us for weapons. It only took a few seconds for one of them to find the knife which had been discretely dropped into the grass on the side of the path. At this point, the situation unfolded with incredible speed.
The young man whipped out what was apparently an official ID card and announced that he and the others were all off-duty “militsiya.” I had no way of knowing if this was actually true but judging by how well-organized they were, their clean shaven faces and short-cropped hair, I didn’t have much reason to doubt them. All these years later, I am still not certain who they really were. Were they a gang of young clean cut thugs or vigilantes? Possibly, but I’ll never know.
My assailants were quickly apprehended and forcibly restrained with their arms wrenched painfully behind their backs. The young ringleader then took me by the arm and escorted me away from the coming fracas. After taking a few steps, the others under his command began to brutally attack, first with fists, and then, once the two detainees had fallen to the ground, with their feet. The pleas for mercy still ring painfully loud in my ears to this day.
As the young man led me farther away he looked me straight in eye and said that unless I wanted more trouble, I should clear out and not look back. The situation was now under control, he assured me, but things might get a little ugly. He warned me never say anything about this to anyone. I nodded, thanked him for his help and made a dash for the closest park exit. All the while I could hear the desperate screams of the two men who were being pummeled with just as many racial slurs as body blows.
Once I got far enough away, I took a chance and glanced back. What I saw made me sick to my stomach. The two men were no longer visible. They were apparently in the middle of a small delirious mob of young white men viciously and relentlessly kicking and trammeling the human objects of their malice-laced fury. My attackers’ cries for mercy became more muffled and intermittent. Soon, the only thing that could be heard was the primal, jubilant roars of the young lions.
I turned back around and made for home. Exiting the park, I once again found myself bathed in gloriously bright sunlight and surrounded by regular people wholly oblivious to the bloodbath going on just 100 meters away. I took off the tattered remains of my blood-stained shirt so as not to attract any more attention. My nose by this time had stopped bleeding. It hurt like hell but did not seem to be broken. I had miraculously escaped serious injury. As I walked back across the Troitsky Most and to the privileged neighborhood on Millyonaya Ulitsa, I watched as passersby paid me not the least bit of attention.
How lucky I was to be alive, I thought. And yet, in a strange sort of way, I felt guilty for naïvely thinking that I could walk through the park alone at such a late hour without inviting trouble. Though a bit bloodied and frightened, I had gotten off relatively lightly. As for the fate of my attackers, I feared the worst. In a matter of minutes, they had gone from being willful perpetrators of petty villainy and assault to becoming helpless victims of the sort of racially motivated vigilantism I would bear witness to more than once over my years in the city. In these politically and emotionally charged days of the First Chechen War, many Russians harbored growing fear, resentment, and in some cases, outright hatred toward Chechens and anyone who looked like them. I could not deny the fact that the only thing standing between my fate and that of my attackers was skin color. For all I know, they may have been permanently maimed or worse. The line between light and right and dark and wrong in Russia was becoming especially sharp and dangerous, with increasingly fatal consequences.
It was with these grave thoughts filling my head and a still tender nose that I welcomed my family to St. Petersburg. After nearly five years of living on the edge Russia, I was more than happy to see them. We would spend the next ten days savoring the best, and at times, less than the best that the city had to offer. Though these days would pass in the blink of an eye, the impressions they left on us would last a lifetime. And the atmosphere in which we experienced them was fraught, headlined by the nation’s looming political battle royale. The first round of the presidential election was just days away. Yeltsin and Zyuganov were now running neck and neck. The others were still in the race but falling behind. It was much too close to call.
One particularly memorable moment came when we stumbled on Yeltsin’s only major campaign rally. For the crowd of 10,000 gathered on “Dvortsovaya Ploshad’” (Palace Square) that cool and cloudy June evening, it was a cringe-worthy performance. After a short, somewhat inarticulate speech in which he promised everything under the cloud-obscured sun if reelected and warned of dire consequences should Zyuganov come to power, Yeltsin, looking somewhat bloated and wobbly, struck up the band and did a small jig while flanked by young women scantily clad in frilly white, blue and red outfits more appropriate for an adult circus or a strip club. The simultaneously bemused, befuddled and concerned expression on my father’s face didn’t require any translation.
Yeltsin’s pitiful, pitiable effort also helped explain why one of the most popular programs on Russian TV at the time was a weekly show called “Kukli” (Dolls or Puppets), a wickedly funny political satire written and directed by Viktor Shenderovich. No politician, including the president, was safe from his program’s harsh ridicule and grotesque caricature. Yeltsin with his swollen face, bulbous red nose, feeble-minded phraseology and permanent state of inebriation had all the markings of a drunken, well-meaning fool. Of course, everything was grossly exaggerated, but this is what made it so damn entertaining. However, when we saw Yeltsin at his rally, fumbling his way through his speech and looking pathetically out of step, if not out of time with his lithe female accompaniment, I understood that life in Russia often imitated art, and not the other way around.
Days later, we journeyed to Pushkin to visit the summer palaces and parks. At the end of what had been a pleasantly sunny, warm afternoon punctuated by a drenching thundershower, we boarded a packed city-bound “electrichka.” With no standing room left inside our wagon, we had no choice but to cram into its steamy, ripe smelling vestibule. Whether we liked it or not, this brought us physically closer than we had been in many years. And whether they wanted to or not, my parents and sister finally had a chance to experience firsthand what I had endured on my daily commutes for nearly two years. At the ride’s end, I’m not sure if everyone was more impressed by Russians’ extreme patience and civility in such appalling conditions or concerned for my own welfare and apparent willingness to subject myself to the same appalling conditions.
Never shy about saying what was on her mind, my mother, looking a bit whiplashed, rhetoricized.
“You do know Thor that you really don’t have to do this to yourself?”
Of course, I knew this, but I also knew that my decision to live in Russia had never been about ease or comfort. For all but a relative few, ease and comfort were two words tragically absent from Russia in the mid-90s. No, my life in Russia had always been more about a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live through the country’s attempt to remake itself into something better. In June 1996, it was impossible to predict where exactly the country was headed. While possible, I never thought it was likely that the Russians would turn to a communist and make him their new president so soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But even if they did, Zyuganov was hardly old school. There was a time in Russia’s not so distant past when vows such as his to continue market reforms and protect private ownership, albeit with more state regulation and control, would have been labeled treasonous and bought him a one-way ticket to the GULAG, or worse. Despite all the bumps along the way, Russia had changed a great deal since those days, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Once again, however, it stood at a critical crossroads and I was determined to stay on to see which direction it would choose to go, even if it did not make this choice freely.
As a certified tennis nut, my father had brought along his clutch of rackets fully expecting that I would sleuth a good place to play. A friend of mine, Andrei, who I had met during my days at St. Petersburg Properties, was another fanatic of the game. In fact, we had already played several times on the red clay courts in “Sosnovka”, the large park on the city’s north side, not far from Camp Commissar Julia Stepanovna. I told Andrei that it would mean a lot to my father if we could organize some doubles while he was in town. Andrei was game. I just needed to find a fourth. I asked around at the firm. Sune signed up as did our newest, and coincidently, youngest lawyer, a tall and lanky 21 year old Siberian named Daniil. He was more than interested. It turned out that he played quite regularly, even competitively when he attended secondary school. With five players in the fold, we would all take turns rotating in and out.
These were still early days for tennis in Russia. In Soviet times, the sport was often portrayed as elitist and bourgeois. However, the professional success and popularity of former Soviet, now Ukrainian player, Andriy Medvedev, and the spectacular rise of Russian phenom Yevgeny Kafelnikov marked the beginning of a tennis frenzy in the country. New clay, synthetic and even wood courts, while somewhat primitive, were opening up on a daily basis, and Russians of all ages, especially the very young, were training with impressive vigor and passion. The game was quickly becoming a symbol of the country’s newfound interest in individual as opposed to collective success. Russia was well on its way to becoming a tennis superpower. In fact, by 2010 seven of the ATP’s top 25 female players in the world would be Russian.
Unfortunately, the level of our match play never approached such heights. Yet there was still much to remember: my laughably consistent gaffes and whiffs at the net; Daniil’s blazing serves and returns; Andrei’s Agassi-like tenacious two-handed backhands; Sune’s catlike agility; my father’s beguiling hard slice serves; and the large group of brightly-clad Roma who mysteriously appeared out of the forest and stood spellbound watching our circus play from the other side of the fence. Many years later, the experience of playing on that beautiful early summer evening on crushed red brick clay set against the dark green backdrop of towering Karelian pines was one on which my father and I fondly reminisced.
Another fine memory we shared was the grand dinner and private ball that Tatyana, Aleksander and Irina invited us all to at a new and exclusive private club set up by the city government to commemorate St. Petersburg’s upcoming 2003 tricentennial. Appropriately enough, it was named the 300th Anniversary Club.
Sequestered in one wing of what for St. Petersburg was a comparatively ordinary building just a stone’s throw from the exquisitely designed Smolny Institute, the first official seat of Bolshevik power in Russia and the place from which Vladimir Lenin declared the Russian Revolution in October 1917, the club epitomized the extraordinary wealth of the country’s tiny but increasingly visible class of super rich. The irony was delicious. A mere 79 years after the revolution that “shook the world”, former communists turned capitalists had created an exclusive enclave where they could savor the bourgeois pleasures of creamed mushroom-stuffed pastries, flutes of champagne and caviar canapes, poached salmon bathed in creamy lemon sauce, chocolate mousse and strawberries and slow dance to live music. And that I, one of John Reed’s fellow Americans, albeit several generations removed, would be indulging in all of this with them.
One worry that was constantly on my mind for the duration of my family’s visit was their safety. The city was no more dangerous than most large metropolitan centers of the world, but it was in the midst of a particularly bad spree of high profile, violent crime. Though most of this violence was associated with organized crime and politically motivated assassinations, and therefore not a direct threat to most Russians or foreign tourists, there was also, as my own recent experience had clearly shown, an element of petty crime and street thuggery.
My busy schedule at the firm did not permit me to spend a lot of worktime hours with them. They had little choice but to venture off on their own. Their limited knowledge of Russian was further cause for concern. I feared that they could be easily confused and duped by the city’s many grifters. Fortunately though, my worries proved totally unwarranted. With decades of international travel experience under their belts, they managed to do just fine without me.
The only time they flirted with anything close to personal jeopardy came during a visit to the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum in the city center. As a professor of world literature, my mother was a big admirer of Akhmatova’s work and her defiant stand against Stalin’s brutal repression. The museum itself was quite small and a little off the beaten path, tucked inside a leafy interior courtyard shared with the “Fontannyi Dom” (Fountain House), the former Sheremetov family palace where Akhmatova later lived.
After their tour, my parents settled down on a bench outside the museum to plan their next stop. When they moved on, my mother forgot her purse and all its contents, including her wallet, US passport, Russian visa and camera. Much to her horror, she only realized her mistake 15 minutes later. She and my father hurried back to the bench. Her purse was nowhere in sight. They anxiously assumed that someone had found it and walked away with it. Before giving up for good, they decided to check with the museum just in case a Good Samaritan had turned it in. Sure enough, the woman at the front desk had some excellent news to report. Someone had passed the bench, spotted the purse and brought it in. She handed it to my dumbfounded mother. Amazingly, everything was still inside.
Greatly relieved, my mother thanked the woman profusely with one of the few Russian words she knew.
“Spasibo! Spasibo! Spasibo” (Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!)!
This story ended happily. No crime and no punishment, only reward. This was another in a long line of surprising examples of how St. Petersburg never ceases to defy expectations and always challenges assumptions.
A final poignant memory from my family’s visit and another that I did not get to enjoy with them arose from a loaf of bread. For my parents whose limited knowledge of Russian was a major hindrance, finding and purchasing food as they made their way around town was never easy. Identifying food that they thought they might enjoy was difficult enough, let alone negotiating the three-queue system of first picking out the food in stores, then paying for it and at last receiving it. The customarily gruff, “service-unfriendly” clerks whose interest in and patience for walking non-Russian speakers through this gastronomical maze did not help matters. More often than not, my parents would simply give up and walk away empty handed and hungry, until someone like myself could help them.
One day though, they were at the receiving end of some good Russian food fortune of their own.
Prowling Millyonaya Ulitsa near Marsovoye Polye (Mars Fields) with growling stomachs, they were greeted with and then treated to an unexpectedly pleasant, but at first perplexing surprise. As they approached the corner of a grand-looking 19th century building, they noticed a line that had suddenly formed at a low street-level window. Those at the front of the line bounded away from the window with broad smiles on their faces. My parents could not for the life of them figure out what people were lining up for that was making them so happy. Curious to find out, they too got in line. The line moved quickly. Soon, the mystery was solved.
Apparently, there was a kitchen on the “tsokl’” (socle) floor of the building and it was selling some extra loaves of fresh bread it had just pulled from the oven. But with no proper storefront and, almost certainly, no permit to sell, a woman standing inside, dressed in her baker’s best, simply thrust the warm loaves out of the window with one hand and took payment with the other. Seizing on this rare opportunity, my parents handed the woman a fistful of rubles, received their bread, and like everyone else, bounded away with smiles on their faces. Later that evening, after they recounted their wondrous tale, l told them that they had been unwitting participants in one of the city’s earliest experiments in western-style direct consumer retail food sales, a method that in just a few years would largely replace the tradition of indirect multi-step customer sales. Whether this fact, the tale itself or the taste of the bread made up for all the days my parents hungrily wandered the city’s streets, I never thought to ask them. Now, all these decades later, I think I will.
On June 15th, one day before the climactic presidential election, my family returned to the US. By the time they had awakened the next day, the election results had already been announced. Yeltsin had won enough votes to advance to the second round scheduled for early July. Notwithstanding all of the dirty tricks deployed to ensure his victory, Yeltsin was eked out a narrow 3% margin of victory over Zyuganov in the first round. While final victory would have to wait, Russia’s political establishment, western powers and foreign investors alike breathed a giant collective sigh of relief.
However, no amount of political handouts, media spin, election fraud or makeup for that matter could cover up the serious heart attack Yeltsin suffered just days later. Now, victory in the second round, once thought to be “in the bag”, was anything but. Yeltsin was kept completely out of public view. Rumors about his physical condition ran wild. There was speculation that he was incapacitated or had died.
Faced with the very real possibility of a second-round defeat, his administration orchestrated some major personnel changes, including the dismissal of his unpopular defense minister, Pavel Grachev, and the long-time head of presidential security, Aleksander Korzhakov, the very same person I had seen standing atop of the tank aside Yeltsin at the Belyi Dom in August 1991. In a smart tactical move to divide the political opposition, General Aleksander Lebedev, the popular hardliner who had placed third in the first round, was appointed the administration’s new national security advisor. These changes together with the decidedly one-sided support of mass media were enough to hand Yeltsin a rather pedestrian second round victory over Zyuganov.
With Yeltsin’s reelection to a new four-year term now secure, the heavy cloud hanging over the country’s political future lifted a bit. The future of the First Chechen War, on the other hand, showed no such clarity. In August 1996, just three days before Yeltsin’s inauguration, Chechen rebels launched a surprise attack on Grozny and sent tens of thousands of new refugees fleeing from the burning city. Only after the commanding Russian general, Konstantin Pulikovsky, issued an ultimatum to the rebels that they had 48 hours to leave the city or else face bombardment by strategic bombers and ballistic missiles, did General Lebedev intervene and negotiate a cease fire. This opened the door to a peace accord calling for the withdrawal of all federal troops from the republic by December 31 and a formal peace treaty in early 1997 — one that would unravel just two years later.
Late in the fall of 1996, Yeltsin underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery. He would be out of commission during the early months of his second term. During this time, it became a widely accepted fact that Yeltsin and his enablers had essentially stolen the election. Suspicions about systemic corruption persisted and the smoldering conflict in Chechnya resisted final resolution. Both seriously undermined Yeltsin’s political legitimacy and eroded his ability to introduce any substantive policy initiatives. Together with his declining health, Yeltsin’s presidency was dealt blows from which it would never recover. They would also be instrumental in catapulting Vladimir Putin to power.
No longer preoccupied with my family’s stay in the city or the stay of execution on Yeltsin’s presidency, I was left to take on some new challenges, namely my move to a new apartment. Mira and the children were returning to Denmark to spend the summer at their garden house on the Baltic Sea. It was not clear when or if they would be coming back. Life in St. Petersburg was proving to be more of a strain than Mira had bargained for. Sune would remain in the city but he too would be taking frequent trips back to the “little kingdom.” It had always been our mutual understanding that I would find my own place to live by July 1. It was a little difficult to say good-bye and part with all the pleasant perks that came with living with them. I had in very short order become a small part of their family. Yet, there was also no denying that I was ready to move on.
With Irina’s help, I rented a nice two-room furnished apartment on the north side of the city on Prospect Engelsa (Fredrick Engels). It was on the second floor of a white panelized concrete building popularly called a “korabl’” (ship) due to its super long and very narrow profile. Although my commute to the office would now take nearly an hour, the building was clean and its neighborhood was relatively safe, quiet, leafy green and only a ten-minute walk from Sosnovka Park where I would walk, run and ride regularly, and play some occasional tennis.
I was excited to learn that the apartment also came equipped with a rare convenience that I could not pass up on — a washing machine. Despite having always washed my clothes by hand in all my previous apartments, I had been thoroughly pampered by the laundry facilities in Mira’s and Sune’s palace. I was tired of getting blisters from ringing out water and wearing clothes that looked and felt more like stiff, warped wooden boards. Though this clunky Belarussian-made appliance had been churned out by a tank factory, it more than made up for its unsightliness with flawless performance, at least that of its ”tsentrifuga” (centrifuge). No amount of use or abuse could stop it. It was virtually indestructible. And its ability to spin soaking wet clothes semi-dry in seconds was second to none. I so admired this dinosaur of Soviet domestic technological design and was so enamored of its simplicity and durability that I would eventually buy it from my landlord for twenty five dollars and tow it around with me for years as I moved from one new address to another.
The rest of that summer passed by in the blink of an eye. With the fabricated “Red threat” of resurgent communism behind us, life became far less dramatic, almost routine. Legal proofreading and small real estate deals kept me busy during the week. I spent most weekends relaxing with Irina and her family in the city and her grandparents in Luga, meeting up with old friends like Aleksei, Sergei and Olga and making new ones like Klamer, an exceptionally tall, thin, pale and gawky looking German attorney who arrived for a six-month paid internship organized by one of Jeff’s biggest financial partners, Commerzbank.
Klamer exhibited rare qualities — a command of international finance law, an easy going, friendly disposition, a gift for gab and wacky sense of humor that even I could not match. He also happened to love the music of American pop divas, in particular Toni Braxton and her mega hit, “Un-Break My Heart”, which was sweeping the charts that summer. Whenever we found ourselves at the raucous expat watering hole called the Tribunal Bar, located in the low-ceilinged basement of the historic Senate and Synod building, the former home of both the Russian Empire’s highest legislative body and the governing council of the Russian Orthodox Church, Klamer could not resist belting out his best off-key impression of Braxton’s smooth and husky croon. If I was not singing backup vocals for him late into the night in the beautiful half-light caressing the flying decks of the drawn “Dvorstovyi Most” (Palace Bridge), I was alone, tirelessly spinning my bike’s wheels through the brilliant full light bathing the beautiful rolling hills and lake country north of the city.
While the summer may have been flying by, it did not do so entirely without incident. Around midnight one late Friday night in late July at the conclusion of another fun installment of “Crooning with Klamer”, this time at an outdoor music festival on “Dvortsovaya Ploshad’” and “Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya” (Palace Embankment), I shuffled along with thousands of other revelers to the nearest metro station on Nevsky Prospect. Though the sun had set, the sky was still flush with the lovely pale blue watery light so typical in the city in the wake of “Beliye Nochi” (White Nights). As I neared Nevsky Prospect, a couple of young men appearing to be in their early 20s slithered up to me to bum a cigarette. They carried open bottles of beer in their hands. Fortunately, I had been in this situation so many times before that I had a well-rehearsed, even if somewhat stiff response.
“Prostitye rebyata no ya ne kuryu” (Sorry guys, but I don’t smoke).
After delivering my line, I usually just moved on without having to say another word. I had literally used it hundreds of times. This time though would prove to be very different.
“Nu ladno paren’! Togda dai nam deisyat’ tyisyach (Whatever buddy! Then give us 10,000 (rubles)!”
I was struck as much by their use of the informal “you” as I was by the brazenness of their request for the equivalent of two dollars. Not exactly prepared for their curve ball, I fumbled my words.
“Izvinite… no u menya net stol’ko deneg na sebya.” (Excuse me but I don’t have that much money on me). In fact, I had about 25,000 rubles in my pocket which was just enough to get me home if I missed the last metro and needed to take a taxi.
I turned to leave but before I could one of the men reached out and latched hard onto my arm.
Yes, it was “déjà vu all over again.”
I swung around fast trying to free myself, but the bloke held on tight. Almost immediately he started yelling out that I must be a “zhadnyi inostrannyi sukin syin’” (greedy foreign son-of-a-bitch).
I again spun around and this time actually managed to shake the guy loose. No sooner had I done so, however, the second drunk leaped up onto my back from behind. With his arms wrapped tight around my neck and his legs around my waist, I felt as though I was giving him a wild bull ride, first spinning one way, then another. This gave the first cretin a second chance to come at me, this time from the front. He grabbed me again, only this time with both hands. He tried to wrestle me down to the pavement, but when I refused to buckle, he took a step back and threw a vicious foot kick that landed squarely on my lower right jaw. I was briefly stunned, partly by the pain and my compete disbelief of what was happening, but mostly at the sight of a piece of my back molar flying out of my mouth, arcing through the air and landing on the pavement, all in slow motion. Once again, the sensation of warm blood pooling inside my mouth was unmistakable.
Now keep in mind that this was all taking place on a bustling pedestrian plaza in the historic center of Russia’s cultural capital and its second largest city. It was as if I was being attacked on New York’s Times Square right after the Broadway theaters let out. And yet, as totally bizarre a spectacle as this must have been and as loud as my pleas were, not a single person came to my aid. Most people steered well clear of us, probably concluding that we were a few drunken hooligans duking it out. At this point, I didn’t think there was any way I was going to free myself of these contemptible clowns without first creating a circus scene that would be impossible for anyone to ignore.
Eerily similar to what I had done just six weeks earlier, I stiffened my spine and literally dragged my attackers out into the middle of the approach road of the Dvortsovyi Most (Palace Bridge) and its eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. As foolhardy as this may sound now, I truly believed that if I could draw our fracas out into the open that one of two things would happen: either my assailants would get cold feet and realize that they might not be quite as crazy as I and would back off; or someone driving by would stop and intervene. Most Russians, as my personal experience had shown, are generally quick to respond when others are in a real scrape. Although it took longer than I would have liked, my intuition proved right again.
As we tussled our way across the first few lanes of traffic, horns blared, cars swerved, brakes squealed and irate voices bellowed, but still no one stopped to help. Drivers just maneuvered around us and continued along their way. It was only after I managed to carry both morons kicking and screaming into the path of an oncoming cab that its middle aged but sturdily built cabbie jumped out and started verbally accosting them. It did not take much for him to peel them off my back, whaling away at both with his fists. As soon as they understood that this fight was no longer worth its two-dollar purse, they turned tail and tried to escape, but not before my savior gave the first attacker a massive kick in the ass, which threw him to the ground and earned a loud yelp.
The driver then put his arm around me and helped me over to the passenger side of his cab, opened the door and eased me in. By this time, many cars had stopped in their tracks. Drivers cheered his heroism. After retaking the wheel, he asked me how I was and where I wanted to go. My mouth was pretty swollen by this point and my words not exactly clear. I said that I had had much better days and just wanted to go home. He handed me a small towel to wipe away the blood. I stuck my finger in my mouth and felt the hole left behind by my only partly missing tooth. Much to my relief, the rest of it was still in place and did not seem to be loose.
The cabbie turned up the music on his colorful, LED-illuminated radio. I noticed that he had distinctly Caucasian features. I wondered if he was Chechen. The irony that this evening’s events had followed a script that was the mirror opposite of what had happened just six weeks earlier was not lost on me. We set off for Propect Engelsa and for the next half hour did not exchange a single word. In the gloaming, the day’s last remnant light continued to brighten the sky to the southwest but everything at ground level was silhouetted in various menacing shades of grey and black. I drifted off to sleep. By the time we arrived at my building, it was well after midnight. I pulled out my wallet to pay but my cabbie-savior waved me off. He was adamant about not taking any money. He confessed that he felt ashamed for his city and for what had happened to me. He only hoped that his selfless gesture would convince me that most people in St. Petersburg were good at heart. I assured him that I already knew this but like everywhere there are a few bad apples in every crop. We both agreed that this was a good reason for the majority of us good apples to stick together and help those in need whenever possible.
I thanked him for being the Good Samaritan, climbed out of the cab and walked to my stairwell entrance. He did not leave until he knew I was safely inside. I never asked for his name and number. I regret that I did not.
By the time fall arrived, my relationship with Irina was becoming more serious. While I still had questions about her emotional immaturity, sullen moods and growing dependence on the church for answers in her life, we had become closer and were spending much more time together. It was at this time that I suggested she move in with me so that we could see where things might lead. She was hesitant at first but with our plans to travel to Copenhagen in December for the firm’s Christmas party and then on to my family’s home in New Jersey, the idea seemed to grow on her.
Though public acceptance of unmarried couples living together was rising in Russia, it was still far more the exception than the rule. Most couples lived separately until after they wed. And until I entered her life, Irina had no intention of acting any differently. Moreover, the Orthodox Church, whose embrace of tradition and conservative views was gaining traction in society at large, generally frowned on such cohabitation. However, after consulting with her unusually progressive-minded priest, she decided that as long as we loved one another a merciful God would not object. It certainly did not hurt that Tatyana and Aleksander were very supportive of the idea. And those at the office who knew of our plan were as well.
By November we had moved in together.
I have to credit Irina for taking this bold courageous step. For a young single woman who up to now had lived a very sheltered life, she was taking a big gamble. There was no guarantee that this would all work out. And yet, she set aside her doubts, put her fate in God’s hands and took a leap of faith.
As the end of the year festivities neared, I had time to ponder not only the major changes in my personal life but those at the law firm as well. Sune had since departed the city and was now commuting from Copenhagen only when necessary. In fact, he recently confided with me that he planned to leave the firm at the end of the year to take a new job with a Danish non-profit organization advocating for human rights in Africa. Mira and the kids had in the meantime comfortably resumed their more relaxed and familiar Copenhagen lives. Their final departure would not be easy for me, but I knew that life in St. Petersburg was hard enough for natives and veteran expats, let alone for a young family living in a virtual isolation inside a strange, enigmatic, sometimes harsh foreign land. But with the departure of some old familiar faces came the arrival of some news ones, including Anita, a young, warm, genuine and exceptionally talented legal secretary and translator I had helped to recruit. We had first met one another at St. Petersburg Properties, which by this time was a distant memory.
The firm’s Christmas party in Copenhagen was terrific fun. Amidst good company, we enjoyed fantastic traditional Danish holiday cuisine, including more kinds of herring and schnapps than I thought were possible, and let loose a little in the Danish capital better known for its reserve and understatement. The city was tastefully ablaze with scintillating lights that made it much easier to forget about its pervasive winter gloom. Amalienborg Palace, Tivoli Gardens, the Strøget and The Little Mermaid all looked their stunning best. Compared with St. Petersburg’s grandiose, self-possessed, imperial style, Copenhagen was so preciously petit and deliciously sweet one could almost imagine eating it. This trip marked the first time I had been outside of Russia in nearly a year and the first true chance to let my guard down and exhale, even if just a bit. It was also the perfect opportunity to see how Irina and I would manage our blossoming relationship outside of her usual comfort zone. But for a few moments that I chalked up to the normal stress of foreign travel, everything up to this point had gone exceedingly well. I was genuinely looking forward to our upcoming trip visit to my family home New Jersey and introducing her to my American world.
I was in no way prepared for the puzzling, trying and heartbreaking ordeal that was about to unfold.
