Три месяца от выборов в США в начале ноября до первых двух недель президентства Джо Байдена в феврале были очень бурными, с резкими изменениями в балансе политических сил практически из недели в неделю. Некоторые из этих конкурсов проходили в судах или Конгрессе, другие – на улицах Вашингтона и в столицах штатов.

Даже в дни, предшествующие инаугурации Джо Байдена в качестве 46-го президента, штурм здания Капитолия сторонниками Трампа оставил неопределенность в отношении стабильности страны и верховенства закона. Хотя ожидающее рассмотрения дело об импичменте против Трампа в Сенате означает, что страна еще не перевернула страницу и не двинулась дальше, возвращение к нормальной жизни может приближаться, насколько это возможно в любом отношении во время продолжающейся пандемии Ковид-19.

В этом кратком эссе я предлагаю сначала рассмотреть самый важный вопрос, который Дональд Трамп поднял до, во время и после выборов, вопрос, который вызвал восстание в столице, вопрос, который он по замыслу не хочет уходить: легитимность выборов 4 ноября и, таким образом, легитимность пребывания Байдена у власти сегодня. В этом вопросе есть тактические и стратегические стороны.

Тактическая сторона вопроса очень проста: еще до инаугурации Трампа в январе 2017 года Демократы делали все возможное, как законное, так и незаконное, как разумное, так и безумное, чтобы сорвать его предстоящее президентство, поставив под сомнение его легитимность. Эта линия атаки была инициирована предвыборной командой Хилари Клинтон, которая уже летом 2016 года заявила, что Трамп – марионетка Путина. Сразу после ноябрьских выборов послание Демократов сменилось на обвинение в нечестивом сговоре с кремлевским лидером с целью сорвать выборы в ноябре, взломав компьютеры Демократического национального комитета и подпитывая прессу грязью на Хилари и ее союзников. Вся теория заговора «Russiagate», нелогичная и непроверенная, была запущена и расширена в январе 2017 года выпуском не менее безумного и непроверенного «Steele Report», который был призван не только возбудить общественность, разоблачив предполагаемые сексуальные приключения Трампа в Москве во время его предыдущих деловых визитов, но и инсинуировать, что будущий президент будет подвергаться манипуляциям со стороны Кремля, что он стал объектом шантажа в результате своих прошлых проступков на их территории.

Кульминацией этой кампании по уничтожению президентства Трампа стали слушания по импичменту в Конгрессе 2019 года. Трампа нашли виноватым в Палате предстасителей, но не удален решением Сената. Однако до конца своего пребывания на посту он оставался под подозрением.

То, что Трамп делал своей кампанией по дискредитации выборов 4 ноября 2020 года в связи с обвинениями в фальсификации результатов голосования, было ничем иным, как возмездием Демократам за нанесенные ими в прошлом повреждения себе и своему делу.

Стратегическим измерением, которое будет реализовано только в том случае, если Трамп пройдет голосование в Сенате по его импичменту в ближайшие дни и сохранит свою политическую жизнеспособность, будет повторный захват контроля над Конгрессом на среднесрочных выборах 2022 года и, возможно, повторный захват президентства в 2024 году с использованием аргументации о том, что Байден и Демократы являются незаконным “режимом”, пришедшим к власти на основе фальсифицированных выборов.

Есть ли правда в утверждениях Трампа о том, что Демократы “украли” выборы в ноябре 2020 года?

Позвольте мне быть предельно ясным: Трамп в целом прав, а в деталях – мертвецки неправ.  Он никогда не был возвышенным интеллектом и уж точно не такой сегодня. Его мышление мутное, неточное, как и всегда слабое владение английским языком.

Трамп настаивал на том, что имели место процедурные нарушения, связанные с рассылкой по почте бюллетеней для голосования, которые передавали победу его оппонентам. Он ссылался на бюллетени, раздаваемые давно умершим гражданам, выброшены в мусорные ящики и другие ошибки, которые стоили ему победы в ряде ключевых штатов.  Эти обвинения были представлены в соответствующие суды штатов и федеральные суды, и все они были отклонены как необоснованные.

Однако в целом Трамп прав в том, что выборы были переданы Демократам, когда голосование по почте стало всеобщим в ходе голосования 2020 года на основе пандемии Ковида-19, повлекшей за собой ограничения мобильности и социальное дистанцирование, что затруднило бы работу на избирательных участках.  Учитывая, что число зарегистрированных Демократов в стране значительно превышает число зарегистрированных Республиканцев, процедура автоматической рассылки бюллетеней для голосования по почте всем зарегистрированным избирателям обязательно означала предвзятое отношение в пользу победы Демократов.

Голосование по почте является давней традицией в Соединенных Штатах, но по штатам оно всегда ограничивалось только теми, кто просит об этом и обосновывает свою просьбу конкретными причинами, такими как выезд за пределы штата в день выборов или наличие некоторой инвалидности.  Бюллетени для голосования по почте на 2020 год были выпущены без необходимости поднимать палец, что означает, что голосование стало легче, потребовало меньшей, чем когда-либо ранее, гражданской активности.  Это могло благоприятствовать только партии большинства, а именно Демократам.  В этом смысле да, победа на выборах 2020 года была фактически передана Демократам на серебряном блюдечке. Если такие процедуры голосования будут применяться в 2022 году и позже, то Соединенные Штаты рискуют стать однопартийным государством, подобно странам Центральной Африки.

Демократы с 2016 года пытались охарактеризовать Дональда Трампа как психологически неуравновешенную личность, как уродливую, эгоцентричную и младенческую личность. Они умышленно отвергли достоинства политических причин, за которые выступал Трамп, как популистский кандидат, восставший против правления элит в обеих партиях, которые в течение последних 40 лет разрешили резкую концентрацию богатства в руках немногих и обобщенный упадок и падение американского среднего класса и профсоюзного труда. Трамп утверждал, что сопровождающая глобализацию деиндустриализация, кредо элит, привела к национальной катастрофе. Своим хаотичным образом он всерьез занялся всеми этими вопросами за четыре года своего пребывания на посту. Он создал большие разрушения в федеральном правительстве и во внешней политике. Фактически, этот манхэттенский магнат недвижимости действовал как революционер у власти.

Тогда неудивительно, что президентство Джо Байдена представляет собой Восстановление традиционного правления и ценностей. Новый президент приложил все усилия, чтобы подчеркнуть, что “Америка вернулась” как во внешней, так и во внутренней политике туда, где она была до Трампа.  Но это уже невозможно, и продолжающиеся попытки Демократов уничтожить Трампа через импичмент делают невозможным любое возвращение к консенсусу между партиями до 2016 года. В свою пользу Байден, благодаря выборам на два места в Сенате в штате Джорджии в начале января, имеет Демократический контроль над обеими палатами Конгресса. Но большинство в обеих палатах очень слабое, и более спорные левые законодательные инициативы, которые имел в виду Байден, скорее всего, не станут законом в связи с неспособностью Демократов сохранить совершенное единство.

Можно ожидать, что новая администрация добьется большего успеха в установлении нового курса во внешней политике, то есть вернет внешнюю политику от “Америки прежде всего” к тесному сотрудничеству с традиционными союзниками в Европе и Азии.  Европейцы мягко отреагировали на новое приглашение из Вашингтона быть друзьями. Но джинн вышел из бутылки: Европейцы отворачиваются от тотальной зависимости от Соединенных Штатов в обеспечении своей военной безопасности, и эта тенденция не изменится.

В противном случае, в Конгрессе существует полный консенсус в отношении двух главных конкурентов/врагов США в глобальном управлении – России и Китая. Это означает, что новая администрация будет менять внешнюю политику только по отношению к обоим на периферии, в основном в плане атмосферы, с возвращением к идеологическим и “ценностным” действиям времен “холодной войны”.  

Что касается России, то США при Байдене выступают от имени “Свободного мира” против якобы самодержавного и экспансионистского Кремля. 

Что впереди в отношении политики США к России?

Возвращение к личному очернению русского лидера. Возвращение к операциям по смене режима, главным примером которых является дело Навального, поскольку на него сейчас давят американские и дружественные европейские дипломаты, напоминая появление на Майдане Нуланда и других, чтобы побудить демонстрантов выйти на улицы и нарушить повседневную работу российского государства. Двигатели “оранжевых революций”, такие как Freedom House, наверняка увидят, как их бюджет и авторитет публично поднимается Байденом.

Мы уже видим начало пропагандистского шквала с выдвижением на первый план старых культовых личностей – заклятых врагов российского государства. Впервые за многие годы Гари Каспарову дают микрофон для длинных выступлений по телевидению против президента Путина, против коррупции и предполагаемого хищения национального богатства.  Такого отравления атмосферы будет много.  Санкции будут направлены против лиц, которые, как говорят, поддерживают режим Путина, от его доверенных коллег по крупным внутренним проектам, таким как Ротенберг, до просто успешных и очень богатых россиян, у которых есть интересы за границей.

Между тем, мы можем ожидать некоторых очень конструктивных и столь необходимых шагов для восстановления взаимного доверия между Россией и Западом в области стратегического и, в частности, ядерного оружия. Показательным в этом отношении является решение о безусловном продлении на пять лет истекающего нового Договора о СНВ.  За этот небольшой шаг вперед к здравому смыслу в глобальных отношениях мы можем быть благодарны.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

Further to my latest essay excoriating the heads of the EU Institutions for mismanaging the 27 country-wide vaccination program to combat Covid-19, The Financial Times has weighed in today with a very similar critique, though, of course, stepping back into safe territory when looking at what, if anything, can be done to call to account those at the top of the Commission and the Council.

Today’s “Brussels Briefing” email to subscribers has as its lead article and main content “Von der Leyen under fire,” by Mehreen Khan. As is typical of these briefings, which are digests pointing the reader to detailed articles on aspects of the overall question of the day, Khan talks about Friday’s misstep of von der Leyen with respect to Ireland and the EU’s claims to monitor and control the shipment of vaccines from its territory to the rest of the world.  She points to the pending conflict with Japan and Canada that the same rash and highhanded policy of the Commission President has ignited.  And then in the middle of this twaddle, Khan comes to an essential question that underlies the whole failure of the vaccine program and much else in the daily business conducted by the EU Institutions.  We read with respect to Sandra Gallina, the commission’s director-general for health policy:

“Ms Gallina is expected to be quizzed by MEPs over the restrictions and a broader vaccine strategy that is struggling to meet demand. As the official in charge of negotiating contacts with drugmakers since last year, she has won plaudits for securing jabs at competitive prices. But with many EU regions having to halt vaccinations because of shortages, the strategy has prompted questions as to whether Brussels has wrongly prioritised cost over delivery.  Ultimately it is the commission president who will need to do the talking. Liberal MEP Sophie in t’Veld has demanded Ms von der Leyen explain the ‘procurement saga in a full and public session this week.’”

And Khan then goes to the political dimension of von der Leyen’s vaccination management :

“Ms von der Leyen faces a chorus of private criticism from officials and diplomats about how her centralised management was partly responsible for Friday’s mishap [over Ireland].  She has tried to defuse the furore by announcing that AstraZeneca will up its deliveries by 9m in the first quarter, to a total of 40m – still far shy of initial hopes.”

So where does all this lead in the view of the FT?  Nowhere, they say with comforting words: 

“Ms von der Leyen’s position is not under threat, as she retains the support of the powerful member states that got her the job (France and Germany).”

A lovely conclusion, but one arrived at by airbrushing the story of von der Leyen’s nomination and the confirmation process in the European Parliament.  The fact is that the appointment of the European Commission President was carried out in strict violation of the recently established tradition of giving the post to the head of the party that won the greatest number of votes in the elections to the European Parliament. That party was the German partner of the European People’s Party and it had a candidate who was sidelined under pressure from Emmanuel Macron at a time when Angela Merkel was on the back foot due to health and political problems.  Because of the scandals surrounding her mismanagement of the Defense Ministry in Germany, von der Leyen did not enjoy the united support of her own country, Germany, and as a result of that split, she barely, very barely won confirmation in the full voting of the Parliament.  Therefore, the FT’s conclusions about her unsinkability are very easily challenged.

But putting aside the question of von der Leyen’s political future and a possible vote of no confidence in the Parliament, the FT article points to a dimension of the decision making surrounding management of the Covid-19 crisis at the EU level and surely also at the national levels of Member States:  economizing in ways that are penny wise and pound foolish.

Given the economic devastation caused by Covid shutdowns, the only dike till now against uncontrollable replication of the virus, it is simply stupid to have prioritized cost saving in negotiations with the drug manufacturers over secure delivery schedules.

In light of the recent policy decision of Germany to disallow administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine among those over 65 years of age because of its apparent ineffectiveness in raising immunity in the old, who happen to be the most vulnerable group in the general population to serious illness and death from Covid, we have to ask what is the value of von der Leyen’s hammering the company over its failure to meet delivery promises.  Why is the Commission not turning instead to Pfizer, to Moderna and to others whose vaccines have given much more promising results for all age groups as detailed in Phase 3 studies.

Is von der Leyen planning to foist the AstraZeneca vaccine on seniors just because her scientific advisers made the wrong choice in choosing suppliers?  Then again, I raise my question about the whole decision-making process that excluded from consideration the Russian vaccine and other competing vaccines from around the world.

Let us hope that the MEPs in the coming week find a bit of courage to press these questions and put von der Leyen to a vote of no confidence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

In my last essay dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, I spoke about the newly found courage on the part of the Belgian federal authorities to ‘do the right thing’ and introduce a well devised and limited confinement to turn back the Second Wave of Covid infections that struck the country in October and threatened to wreak havoc.  It is reasonable to say that the infection rate, hospitalization rate, ICU occupancy rate and mortality rates have been stable in the country for the past several weeks at a higher level than was hoped for but at a far lower level than was feared.  In my Covid 19 update essay I noted that the immediate problem  of combatting the pandemic in Belgium is the snail’s pace at which the vaccination program has been rolled out, and I pointed a finger in the direction of the European Institutions for letting down Belgium and the other Member States by their incompetent handling of the procurement of vaccines.

I was only a few weeks ahead of others in noting this disgrace. Now our newspapers and airwaves are full of condemnation of EU institutions for fumbling the ball, for falling far behind the United Kingdom, Israel and even…remarkably behind the United States which we all knew was until 20 January run by the infantile Donald Trump and his minders who took no heed of science.

To be specific, Belgium, now declares that 250,000 citizens have received their first jab of the vaccine, amounting to roughly 2% of the population and concentrated virtually exclusively in the population of nursing home/long term care patients and staff.  When the second priority group of over 65s will be invited to the vaccination centers no one can say.  Belgium shares this miserable vaccination to population rate with virtually all other EU States.  Meanwhile the UK has run ahead with more than 10% of the general population vaccinated and 80% of the oldest citizens already served.  The United States is just behind the UK in its success.

As I said in my last essay, the “buck stops” at the desk of the EU Commission President Ursula  von der Leyen who was a failed Minister of Defense in Germany surrounded by scandals and who was promoted for her post by Emmanuel Macron for reasons that not many people understood other than that she was a fluent French speaker and was not being promoted by her boss Angela Merkel.  

The buck also stops, of course, at the desk of Council President Charles Michel, whose tenure as Belgian prime minister was less than impressive, whose ideological stubbornness over the wrong cause – unlimited migration into the EU- brought down the government and whose main claim to his office was that he was his father’s son.    No, Mr. Michel, we do not forget your incompetence and ideological bent now, when competence, courage and pragmatism are precisely what is needed to save lives by daring action.

For those who decried Trump’s lack of appreciation for Science, let me remind them that it is precisely the scientific caution of the advisory body to the EU on approval of vaccines that is behind the present catastrophic shortage of vaccines.  The EU authorities have let the scientists take decisions that are, in the final analysis, political and not technocratic. They have been terribly slow in granting authorization for use of any of the vaccines that are now being distributed in the world.  They have created a non-tariff barrier to importation, distribution and use of these life-saving medicines.

In the USA Trump ran roughshod over the opinion of the FDA, over the office of Dr. Fauci, and the result has been vastly better than the Science-respecting European Union politicians have wrought.

And, in conclusion, I want to add one further dimension to my condemnation of the EU leaders for depriving us of the vaccines that could save lives right now and could prevent the development of new and still more threatening  mutations of Covid-19 by creating herd immunity and shutting down replication. Remember, no replication means no mutations.

The further dimension is once again ideological – the stubborn, self-destructive refusal to cooperate with Russia, and with China, to make their vaccines available to the European public and so speed up greatly the immunization process.  From mass media reports that the Russians had stolen the Astra Zeneca vaccine, which like all such reporting is done in the service of press releases coming from the respective ministries of propaganda, to the reports that the Russian vaccine was not supported by release of technical data on the tests of Phase 3 comparable to data put out by Western producers, there has been a concerted campaign to frustrate any cooperation with the big neighbor to the East that is, in effect, abuse of power by EU leaders to the detriment of the European population.

Now that there is a hue and cry in a number of states, and I think in particular of the latest denunciation of EU practices on the vaccination coming from the Minister President of Bavaria, who happens to be a leading candidate to replace Angela Merkel as Chancellor, I hope that the issues sketched above will be treated with the seriousness they deserve and that the offending leaders will be called to account.  Europe may not have “impeachment” but many countries do have “recall.”  It should be applied to the current top office holders of the EU Institutions.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

In the wake of the first wave of Covid-19 infections, I issued a couple of essays very critical of the way Belgium mismanaged the pandemic so as to arrive at one of the world’s worst levels of mortality. Notwithstanding the replacement between the two pandemic waves of an interim government operating at less than full powers for more than a year by a new multiparty government enjoying the support of a majority in the legislature, Belgium’s numbers early in the second wave were not very encouraging.  Indeed, looking at the more than 20,000 deaths due to Covid that have occurred in this country since March 2020, half were in the first wave, when there was general confusion over testing, over the value of face masks, over treatment of those hospitalized, and half have occurred since September, when the medical profession and the political powers should have learned a great deal from the past errors.

However, at present it would seem that by one measure at least, Belgium is finally headed in the right direction and, strange to say, is doing far better than other Member States of the European Union.  At the very moment when the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Spain and a number of other countries in Europe are reporting levels of infection, hospitalization and death that go well above the same measures in Wave One, Belgium has over the past month recorded a very solid retracing in all of these metrics.  Yes, these same numbers began ballooning out as from August and reached frightful levels in October-November, but then the government slammed on the brakes and installed what might be called Lockdown Lite, which struck at the most dangerous spreaders of the virus and left unfettered most of the economy.  All restaurants and cafes were shut, except for take-out service. Bars were shut. All theaters and other venues of public entertainment were shut. All “contact” services, meaning hairdressers, manicure salons and the like were shuttered. All nonessential stores and services were stopped, but only for several weeks, and then reopened. Most important, all schools from primary through secondary school were left open. Only higher education was put on the remote learning regime. And as regards social life, it was curtailed to a great extent by strict limits on receiving persons outside the immediate household or gatherings outside the home.

At present this has reduced the daily number of hospitalizations to 125, those in hospital number less than 2,000 of which those in Intensive Care are down to 360. This, in a country with a population of over 11 million.  The closely watched R number is now 0,95.  The rate of positives from testing is down to 5%.  And the number of tests conducted daily has been vastly increased to the level of more than 40,000 at present. Talk of increasing numbers of infections detected daily, which we find in the Belgian dailies yesterday and today, fail to mention the surge in tests carried out which fully explain the situation.

Kudos is due to the fragile show of courage and perseverance of the present federal government. Experts hold out the prospect that by mid-February daily hospital admissions may fall by half, bringing the medical situation back under full control.

That being said, the patience of the public over the lockdown is wearing thin and each day editorials in La Libre belgique are giving out doses of solace, balm to the feelings of desperation and depression that abound in the population.

Moreover, lockdown is only a time-buying measure until herd immunity is reached via the vaccine. And that is where Belgian authorities now are in trouble once again.  The immunization program is moving at a snail’s pace.  So far only the Pfizer vaccine is being administered and in medicine drop scale.  The priority population, residents and staff of old age homes and similar long term care institutions, are the sole recipients and the schedule for full vaccination in this limited group reaches into mid to late February. There is no transparency on the likely schedule for vaccinating other groups of the population.

Today’s Belgian newspapers announce the arrival of the Moderna vaccine at a number of hospital centers. However, when I phoned one, Iris Sud in Brussels and enquired about the possibility of receiving a vaccination, I was told to take this question up with my communal administration.  I duly phoned Ixelles, who told me that the convocations to vaccination are being handled by the Brussels Regional government, and of course, no one can say whom to address there.

The bigger and underlying issue is that Belgium has access to only a small fraction of the vaccine doses it needs to conduct a mass vaccination program with any sense of urgency.  And beyond that critical failing is…that bureaucratic monster, the European Union, where the buck stops at the desk of head of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen.  In recent days, as critical voices have been raised in various countries over the miserable pace of allocating vaccines von der Leyen has been talking about only one issue: how to ensure that the entire Union marches in lockstep towards….the abyss.

Let us be frank:  von der Leyen was an incompetent Minister of Defense in Angela Merkel’s cabinet and she is proving to be a thick-headed and unimaginative chief executive of the EU Institutions.

One has to wonder how long will the frayed social fabric of Europe stay in place when the Union’s vaccination program makes such poor comparison with now liberated and “sovereign” Britain and with that paragon of vice and incompetence, the United States, which as of today leads the ‘free world” and “rest of the world” not only in numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths but also in the rate of immunization to population.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

  The Russian Booker

                                  Chapter Seven in Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II

My time serving as chairman of the Russian Booker literary prize extended across the four years covered in the two previous chapters, 1998-2002. But it was an activity quite distinct from the day to day business issues that my jobs and consultancies entailed, and for that reason I have decided to devote this special chapter to the Booker.

To be sure, I was appointed chairman in 1998 ex officio, that is to say because I was the Managing Director of the UDV/Diageo operations in Russia and the company was paying the costs of this competition as general sponsor. However, I was retained as chairman for more than two years after I left Diageo, so long as the company remained general sponsor, at the explicit request of the UK Booker because of what was perceived as my outstanding contribution to the award’s growing renown within Russia. Why this perception was justified I will explain shortly by describing exactly what initiatives were undertaken under my direction to reach out to additional stakeholders in the literary establishment, namely libraries, publishers, book sellers

Before proceeding to recount my experiences running the Booker Prize within Russia, I propose to take a step back and explain what the Booker meant to me and why.

If the reader is at a loss as to what the “Booker” Prize for Fiction was all about, I am forgiving.  More than that, I offer the comforting admission that I had not a clue about this literary competition before I was named to take over its Russian offshoot. The fact is that the Booker Prize occupied a place in British cultural life out of all proportion to its standing in the United States or on Continental Europe.  As regards the USA, the administrators of the Booker had decided from the beginning of its existence to exclude American authors from competing out of fear they would overwhelm British and Commonwealth authors. Consequently the competition attracted only specialist attention there. I note that this has very recently been overturned, and Americans are now eligible for the Prize. As regards the Continent, the prize competition that captured top of mind was the Prix Goncourt in Paris, which was much older and better established among cultural elites.

However, once I was introduced to the concept and procedures of the UK Booker Prize during meetings with the administrators in London, once I participated for the first time in a Prize dinner, when the suspense of waiting for the jury’s decision electrified a very privileged audience of predominantly businessmen and politicians in the prestigious Guildhall in the City of London, I understood that the Booker plc under its chairman Sir Michael Caine had created a brilliant cultural institution that had no equal anywhere.

The history of the Prize is all by itself quite remarkable. The public versions I have seen in Wikipedia and on the Prize’s latest website are incomplete or air brushed in favor of those who have controlled the prize after Booker plc was gobbled up by the Icelandic Group and lost control of its creation to a succession of other corporate sponsors. Here I wish to set down in brief the version I heard from Sir Michael Caine and his assistants, and most especially to record what they said motivated them.

Booker plc traced its roots to the “colonial” trade in the first half of the 19^th century when it estrablished itself as the controlling force in sugar production and export from British Guyana. In the 1990s, it had turned itself into a major food wholesaler in the UK. As from the 1960s, it had used tax loopholes to invest in author’s copyrights. Per Sir Michael, the first success in this vein was its purchase of the rights to royalties from Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, in his final years when he was ailing and in need of cash. The company later bought the rights to the works of Agatha Christie and others.  These investments produced a cash stream well above expectations and Sir Michael decided to return these funds to the literary establishment by setting up the Booker Prize for Fiction at the end of the 60s.

Over time he and his collaborators at Booker set rules for conducting the literary competition which generated public excitement in the process of selecting the Long List, then the Short List and finally the jury vote on a winner announced during the aforementioned splendid dinner event.  The rules specified that the prize would go to a work of fiction in English published in the preceding year and that every year there would be a new jury consisting of literary critics, people in the arts and eminent political personalities named by the advisory committee. The idea was that literary excellence has many dimensions and only by changing the jury could you avoid staleness and partiality to one style at the expense of others having equal or greater claims to talent and originality. Unlike so many competitions in the arts where awards go to friends of friends, or are given for lifetime accomplishments, the Booker Prize sought out excellence in one year’s harvest of literature without prejudice. Indeed, in the 1990s, the juries could show great courage in resisting political correctness. The result was to make the competition suspenseful and socially exciting.

The prize money reserved for the winner of the prize was substantial, but the still greater value to the shortlisted six and to the single winner was the prominence given to their works in every bookstore in the UK upon publication of the Short List. For his part the winner could expect sales numbering in the hundreds of thousands of copies. At the three prize dinners which Larisa and I attended, the top level business executives seated at our table may not have read the shortlisted books, but their wives all did.  To my experience, the Booker Prize in the late 1990s succeeded in generating great interest in contemporary English language literature, far greater than the hoary Prix Goncourt did for French language literature, as measured in book sales.

For that matter, my experience with the U.K. prize changed entirely my own view of modern fiction in the English language. Reading the shortlisted books year after year, I came to appreciate that among them were works in no way inferior to the “classics” from the 19^th century and early 20^th century that I had read in secondary school. Just to name a few of the Booker winners that attracted my great admiration during my time in the milieu, I direct attention to Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999), Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000) and Life of Pi byYann Martel (2002). I had little doubt that a couple of them are works of genius. Whether they become “classics” only time will tell.

The decision of Sir Michael in 1992 to set up a Russian Booker Prize also had a logic to it that I heard from him and his associates but do not see anywhere today on the internet.  Booker plc had business dealings with Russia (Soviet Union) going back decades relating to tinned salmon caught and produced there, distributed in the UK by Booker.  So the country was on the corporation’s map.  But it was also in the consciousness of Sir Michael, the intellectual, who was known to have great admiration for the Russian literary traditions going back to Dostoevsky, Gogol and Pushkin.  Watching the devastation of the Russian economy and the hardship that all of Russian culture was undergoing, Sir Michael and his team decided to lend a helping hand to Russian authors by setting up a Booker prize competition in Moscow.

I did not see very much of Sir Michael in the months following my appointment as chairman of the Russian Booker in December 1998 to his death in March 1999. But I did see his team of prize administrators who were an impressive lot and who spoke very well of the founder.  For that reason, I was pleased to pay tribute to him for his generosity of spirit towards Russian literature by proposing that a bronze bust be sculpted in Russia and donated to the UK.  The bust was duly executed by a very talented and today very prominent sculptor, Gyorgy Frangulian. It is now on display in one of the colleges of Oxford University.

The Russian Booker Prize that I took over in December 1998 had little in common with the original other than the name and worthy ambitions. The impartiality and professional excellence of the administration and jury were questionable.  The advisory committee choosing the jury was very conservative and, I would say, small-minded. They tended to choose juries in their own image. However, the biggest problems were not on our side but lay in the deplorable state of Russian publishing. As I recall, almost all of the novels presented for the prize competition had been published in Russia’s “fat” literary journals, not as self-standing books from a commercial publishing house. Then there was the near absence of authors delivering quality fiction. The field was demoralized by the economic chaos in the country and depleted. The few authors who were exciting, even scandalous, were not recognized by our conservative juries. I think in particular of Victor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin.

Russians had been writing a great deal over the preceding decade that began with Glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev. But they were writing and reading non-fiction. What little fiction was published tended to be in the genre described not very sympathetically as чернуха, which one dictionary describes as “a gloomy genre of Russian horror, everything negative in everyday life (e.g. cruelty, poverty, violence).” Needless to say, this is not a genre which sells many books. Otherwise, the most popular fiction of the time was the series around detective Fandorin written by the author Boris Akunin. Fine literature was hard to find.  Accordingly it was a great task to identify enough published novels for the Long List to appear presentable.

Meanwhile, book distribution was in a parlous state. Books which were being sold in the capitals never made it out to the country at large, not even to the cities with populations over one million.

The first Russian Booker winner under my chairmanship was a case that fits perfectly the situation described above, Strange Letters by Alexander Morozov. The author had just published a novel written thirty years previous but which had remained in his desk drawer all that time because it was a scathing critique of Soviet domestic life.

Over the next several years, the Russian Booker was more successful in identifying currently active serious authors. In my second year, 2000, the jury recognized as winner Mikhail Shishkin, then as now living in Switzerland, for his novel The Taking of Izmail [Взятие Измаила]. The work was truly a credit to the national literature.

In my third year, 2001, I had the pleasure of presenting the award to Ludmilla Ulitskaya for her socially engaged work The Kukotsky Case. A photo of the two of us on the dais proudly hangs on the wall of my Brussels home office. Ulitskaya now lives in Israel, has many friends and admirers in the USA, and visits Russia often. Her winning did more credit to the Prize than added luster to her name.

I tried hard to raise the excitement surrounding the Russian Booker by inviting onto the jury well known and loved personalities from the Russian arts. Over the years these included the actor Sergei Yurski, cinematographer Valery Todorovsky,as well as the director of the Helikon Opera in Moscow and Dmitry Bertman.

To the advisory committee I brought the former dissident and satirical novelist Vladimir Voinovich, who was then living in Germany, and Yuri Belyavsky, editor-in-chief of the influential Kultura weekly newspaper. Belyavsky was the one who put us together with our next sponsors, the Open Russia Foundation of Khodorkovsky, thus providing for financial continuity at a crucial moment. We knew him from Larisa’s publishing some of her music and theater reviews in his paper. I also saw to it that a prominent librarian from one of the larger provincial cities was added to the advisory committee.

Within our budgetary constraints we staged glamorous, socially significant awards dinners in the grand ballroom of the Metropole Hotel in Moscow, inviting in well-known and popular performers, like Bolshoi tenor Nikolai Baskov, and featuring live music by high quality chamber orchestras. We successfully attracted media to our events. To be sure, there was no live television coverage as in England, but we won time on the evening news broadcasts and in the print media.

My work on the Russian Booker included some important new initiatives. One was to take the Booker prize winners to the regions. I accompanied Morozov to several of these remote book presentations, in Yekaterinburg and St Petersburg. Another was to meet with the book publishing trade, which was in formation at the time to see what could be done to get new Russian novels into print and into circulation in book stores, which were badly undercapitalized like all of the Russian economy. We hosted a seminar that brought together industry leaders. Among the booksellers, the lady managing director of the landmark Dom Knigi bookstore on Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg, Samokhvalova, was an enthusiastic supporter of these measures.

I wish to extend a bouquet to the British Embassy which contributed significantly to the success of my initiatives by lending its prestige and physical assistance to Russian Booker activities. Ambassador Andrew Wood and his wife kindly hosted luncheons at their residence for our visiting colleagues from the U.K. Booker. His successor David Gowan also lent a hand to some of my Booker activities.

The total budget of The Russian Booker was $250,000 per year during my time in charge.  Of that $15,000 was given to the first prize winner. Runners-up in the Short List got nominal compensation.  Meanwhile, the jury and advisory committee received no compensation for their time, only reimbursement of travel and lodging for out-of-towners. While Diageo was sponsor, the administrative charges to the Prize were minimal. Our significant costs were the hospitality to journalists and guests at each of the events in the awards process and costs relating to the seminars for booksellers and others that we organized. Then there were typography costs for our printing the novels of our laureates as self-standing books in a retrospective collection

The second half of my tenure as Chairman of the Russian Booker was complicated by administrative and financial problems that had their origin on the British side. We had been receiving a good deal of advice and assistance from the Booker organization which came to a halt when Booker plc was taken over by the Icelandic Group and the ownership of the Prize for Fiction was hived off, landing after some time in limbo in the hands of the investment management Man Group, who eventually carried it forward for several years but had no interest in the Russian Booker. Accordingly we applied our energies to seeking out new sponsors once it was clear that Diageo would not continue its support indefinitely.

We were compelled to set up a Russian legal entity in order to continue to manage the prize ourselves according to our precepts while soliciting new sponsors. Together with our Literary Secretary, Professor Igor Shaitanov, I incorporated the Russian Booker Foundation and assumed its presidency and responsibilities of financial director.

The management of the Russian Booker logically was going to be made fully “native” once the foreign sponsor was replaced by a local Russian sponsor which happened in mid-2002, when Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russian Foundation took over from Diageo. That set the stage for my departure after the awards ceremony in December.

I present in Part Two a verbatim transcript of a meeting that Shaitanov and I went to at the headquarters of the Open Russia Foundation in downtown Moscow in August 2002. The reason of our visit was the sponsor’s withholding of funds that we urgently needed to move on from the Long List presentation to the next stage in the competition, the Short List presentation. These events were costly, entailing rental of hotel premises and equipment for a press conference, as well as sizable catering costs for our generous feed to journalists.

My purpose in including the transcript was less to show how our sponsors were ordering us to falsify expense documentation for their convenience than to show their open contempt for the independence of jury concept that made the Booker such an exceptional and praiseworthy literary competition.

A fish rots from the head, and this contempt for the bottom-up principles of civil society came from Khodorkovsky and his colleague and fellow oligarch Nevzlin. What kind of chap was Nevzlin is fairly clear from my mention of his words of welcome at the given meeting. He did not bother to repeat to us the claptrap about building Russian civil society that Igor offered to be ingratiating. No, Nevzlin talked about his interests in getting to know the new patrons of the Booker in the U.K., the financial advisory group.

I was therefore not in the least surprised when I heard from friends within the Booker advisory committee that in 2003 the Prize was awarded to the winning author on direct instructions from Mikhail Khodorkovsky who overrode the wishes of the jury. Khodorkovsky gave these instructions from his prison cell. He had been arrested for financial crimes in October 2003 and would eventually be meted out a lengthy prison term.

The charges against Khodorkovsky and the scandal which enveloped Yukos led the Russian Booker’s administrators to search for a new sponsor of the prize. Eventually the eminently respectable U.K. firm British Petroleum stepped in and took over the financing of the prize for several years.

Before closing this chapter, I wish to add a word about who was running the day to day operations of Khodorkovsky’s charitable foundation.  Irina Yasina, Maria Orzhonikidze and the other mainly female managers were the offspring of Communist nomenklatura going back to Stalinist times who held on to their privileges and elitist views under the new regime of “democratic” Russia forged by Boris Yeltsin and his entourage.

This brings me to draw attention to an article from the Exile that is also presented in Part II where the author remarks how unfortunate it is that Westerners view the political contests going on in Russia in their elections as a fight between good and evil, between democracy and autocracy, when it is nothing more than a fight between contending interest groups for power. Regrettably from the end of the 1990s to present in 2021 our mainstream media and political classes have not become more enlightened and reasonable in the way they describe politics in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up is now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble.  Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s will go to press in one month]

Excerpt from Part Two, Diaries, Personal and Business Correspondence, Newspaper Clippings in Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s

Meeting with the new Sponsor of the Russian Booker Prize, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s charitable foundation Open Russia, August 2002 following announcement of the Long List by the Jury

A verbatim transcript

“Help yourselves to a soft drink. I’m sorry to tell you that Program Director Irina Yasina won’t be able to see you today. She has been called away to look after another of our projects. But Maria Ordzhonikidze is here. And after she finishes reviewing your materials with our chief accountant, she will join you. That shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. So make yourselves at home.”

The leggy blonde receptionist smiled and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Igor, Natasha Karataeva and I took bottles of Coke and soda water from the center of the conference table and filled our glasses.

This turn of events did not look promising. Yasina had overall responsibility for the sponsorship program after all, and we had looked forward finally to a face to face meeting with her to resolve several issues that had been holding up the transfer of the next tranche of funds for the competition.

Igor was at the end of his patience. “This is maddening. I have been chasing Valentina for two weeks now. If the money does not come through in 10 days, we will not be able to pay for the Short List press conference. The hotel refuses to give us credit. It has to be paid in advance. And the fact that we are using their facilities because of our Sponsors’ insistence does not change anything.”

I was yet again irritated by the professor’s naivete in financial affairs and barely contained myself. “Don’t worry about that, Igor. I’ll speak to them. They will just have to wait for their money till after the event. But the payment procedures of our new sponsor really are very unkind. And it fits together with the very one-sided agreement they imposed on us. It’s just so unfair that they can cancel their sponsorship at any minute without our saying boo. The liquor barons may not have been angels. But they did give us six months of transition and a little dowry to tide us over till new funds came in when they decided to withdraw from sponsorship.”

“There is no sense comparing foreign sponsors to Russian oligarchs,” Igor countered. “Though I am as worried over our future as you. There is the whole mess over the employment taxes. Perhaps we will hear the Foundation’s final decision today. Valentina was not very encouraging. She told me that once the budget is approved, they generally cannot go back to the big boss for more, whatever the reason. Their access to him is very limited. We have all been waiting upon his return from some trip abroad before their board can sit down and review our requests. And we still have no agreement on documentation. We will have to bring our bookkeeper in to speak to their chief accountant.”

“Yes, I am also at a loss,” I chimed in .  “They know we held the long List conference and banquet. They were there eating alongside us. And it is just incredible they refused to accept our payment of the hotel invoice because it had been signed by the Catering Manager and not by the Managing Director of the hotel. If we have to satisfy these requirements we will either have to cheat like crazy or spend more than 10% of our budget on administration. For sure, we are going to lose our qualification as a charitable foundation. There is no way we can stay within the limits on administrative spend.”

I finished my Coke and reached across the table for a Sprite. Igor was just getting into stride. This question of procedures imposed by the new sponsor had aroused his keen sense of irony. The Competition had lurched from the inefficiencies of a Western sponsor with its built in corruption and waste of funds to the inefficiencies of a Russian sponsor with encouragement of fraudulent bookkeeping to meet impossibly stringent documentary requirements. In both cases, it seemed impossible to squeeze more than 6% of the total budget out for awards to Russian authors, which is what the whole exercise of the literary prize was supposed to be about after all.

These reflections were cut short by the arrival of Ordzhokinidze and the chief accountant Ol’ga Bykova.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Maria said brightly. ‘We ask your pardon for the slight delay in our meeting, but we have been consulting with colleagues and now have some ready answers for you. Let me begin with the question of your unplanned for $12,000 in employment taxes resulting from the change in the labor laws. We are very sorry. This is really bad luck. But we cannot help you. You will just have to make cuts elsewhere in your budget to cover the cost. Next, about your expense reports on how you spent the first tranche of the sponsorship grant. It is our hard rule that each tranche of your grant is payable only after the preceding tranche is justified to our accountants.”

“As you know, our Foundation is the private charity of the chairman of Yukos and his close collaborators. It is not paid for by the corporation. However, the tax authorities like to confuse the two and treat us as if we were in fact just an arm of the country’s largest oil producer. We are scrutinized very, very closely. There can be no irregularities in the books of the Foundation. And for this reason, we have to be very hard on the beneficiaries of our charitable grants. We require from you that all expenses not only be documented but that they look proper. For example, we cannot approve your spending three quarters of the budget for the Long List ceremony on food and drink. Alcohol cannot appear on our expenses. And we must not appear to be feasting. So please go back to the hotel and ask them to rewrite the invoice to show only rental of rooms, equipment, telephone costs, etc.”

I enjoyed this absolute victory of form over content. “But then we must ask the vendor to falsify his documents and we run up against objections there.”

“The Foundation really does not care how you persuade them to do what is necessary. Just do it and we will sign off. Then you can get the next tranche of funding without further discussion.”

I swallowed my annoyance. “All right, Maria, we will do as you say. But for your part, please have a word with the hotel management. We are using them upon your recommendation because you say you work with them all the time. So let us leverage that relationship.”

Igor was clearly not satisfied with the implicit criticism in my remarks and hastened to show a more ingratiating face to the sponsor. “We have a lot to learn in these small procedures to meet your expectations. But the big picture is very reassuring. Our objectives and yours are so well matched. We are both serving the cause of an open and just civil society in Russia that we all can take pride in.”

“Yes, and for that reason we do hope you will be attentive to the formation of the Short List. There were several entries in the Long List that could damage the popularity and prestige of the prize if they advanced in the competition. For one thing, we are not happy to see that book on the Chechnya war in the running. Why the jury ever accepted it as a novel defies our understanding. You know as well as we that it is a bit of journalism, not a novel by any means. And then there is that book by Sorokin. The man is a convicted pornographer and should be in prison, not receiving laurels as one of our semifinalists!”

“Don’t worry, Maria. The Chechnya book hasn’t got a chance of moving to the short list. Our jury just wanted to show how open minded they are by admitting it for consideration. I have polled the jury and they are all patriotic on the question of Chechnya. But Sorokin is a more difficult case. Our chairman [Vladimir] Makanin has for some reason taken it into his head that Sorokin is one of the brighter lights of Russian literature. Other jury members see him as a self-promoter, a PR man who used pornographic images just to create a scandal and sell his books in the West.  Makanin is pushing Sorokin down their throats. I cannot say what will happen next. But I will do what I can to push him to the side. It is just that Makanin is so pig-headed. Last year we had a corpse for a chairman. It took his greatest effort just to come to the meetings of the jury and then to get out of his chair and answer journalists’ questions. Two weeks after the Awards Dinner he was already resting on his catafalque. This year we are courting the other extreme. Our Makanin is a real macho who forces his will on the whole jury. No one can stand up to him.”

Maria did not respond. Instead  she looked down at her watch and then proposed that we continue the discussion in the less formal setting of the nearby Armenian restaurant ‘Noah’s Ark’, which she called the Foundation’s very own canteen, it was so popular among senior staff as a place for entertaining visitors.

And so we all left the Foundation offices, passing through the guarded reception area out onto the street, where the shabby façade of their building at the very edge of the Kitaigorod district gave no hint at the modern offices within. A few minutes later we took places at a side table to the back of the main dining room of Noah’s Ark.

I perused the menu while Igor and Marina engaged in small talk about the turn in Moscow’s weather, which had been unusually warm for late August. Notwithstanding who had invited whom, he expected that he would be obliged to pick up the bill as a token of appreciation to the Foundation managers for smooth future processing of the grant papers, and in this context he did not like what he saw. Noah’s Ark was an extravagantly priced venue more suitable for casino operators than for literary fund overseers.

“Please keep one seat free for Leonid [Nevzlin],” Maria instructed the waiter as he put down the bread basket and took out his note pad to take down their orders. She then turned to Igor to explain that the Foundation’s chairman, the second largest shareholder in Yukos, would be honoring us with a visit.

“But let us not burden Leonid with details,” Maria cautioned. “He is interested in the big picture and I know that he is delighted that the Booker brings us into contact with UK society, with your captains of industry and cultural benefactors. Leonid is very Anglophile. When he is not here in Moscow, he is in the London headquarters of Yukos International, where he maintains an office. He has even managed to learn a few words of English. But for him our grants of 100,000 or 200,000 dollars are below the threshold of visibility. So we will stay clear of money issues.”

Just then the waiter directed a tall man to our table. He was wearing a flashy diamond pinky ring and heavy gold necklace, but otherwise was ascetically dressed in black trousers and jacket, black open necked shirt.

Leonid smiled at us broadly as he took the free seat next to Maria. “Good to meet you all. I have heard very positive things about the Booker from Maria and I do hope you are satisfied with our assistance.”

Igor jumped at this invitation for an exchange of courtesies: “Yes, we are pleased to have such a prestigious sponsor whose civic purpose is so very close to our own. Money is, of course, important. But like interests and commitments to the future of Russian culture holds the promise of a long and mutually beneficial partnership. So we are also delighted to be working with you. We look forward to introducing you to our benefactors in the UK, the founders of the Booker. If you will be able to join us for our Awards Dinner in December, then you will meet Lady Emma and perhaps Jonathan. Both have said that they will put you together with their new general sponsor, who is one of Britain’s leading financial institutions [the Man Group].”

“Thank you for the suggestion. I am afraid I cannot promise to be here for your events. As you may know my corporate responsibilities take me frequently abroad on business travel, and indeed it may be easier for me to meet with your English partners on one of my stopovers in London. This dimension of the relationship is very positive. Foreign relations are my hobby. Within the State Council, I am a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.”

Leonid rose from his chair and offered his hand to Igor and then to me for a farewell handshake. Then he purposefully strode away to the door without further ado.

“Now you see how we are run,” commented Maria softly. “The details of the charity’s operation are left totally to us at the operating level. The big bosses sometimes make themselves available to us to resolve budgetary issues, to approve our recommendations. But if they are called away on some business trip to the States or even to our own Siberian operations, then weeks can pass before they find the time to receive us. So please do react quickly when we signal to you that there is a window of opportunity to approve the budget or to draw down the next tranche of your grant.”

NB:  Leonid Nevzlin fled Russia and has been living in Israel since 2003. Professor Igor Shaitanov had been serving as Secretary of the Russian Booker Prize since 1998 while I was Booker chairman over the same period.  Vladimir Makanin, jury chair in 2002, was a Russian novelist and short story writer. Vladimir Sorokin, novelist, enfant terrible. Author of Blue Lard, 1999. “The book became widely known for its graphic sexual scenes between clones of former Soviet leaders Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin (portrayed as homosexual lovers)….” www.britannica.com] In 2005 Sorokin’s libretto for the opera Rosenthal’s Children created a furore at the Bolshoi Theater.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up is now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble.  “Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s” will go to press in one month]

Excerpt from Chapter Four, “Transition Year 1997-98, Consultancies” in Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s

In the context of my various consultancies serving manufacturers, logistics companies and other businesses getting started or expanding their operations in Russia, my seeking and performing consultancy for the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) by assuming the obligations of director of their Moscow office may seem odd. Indeed, within the IREX organization there were those who thought this was nothing more than a cynical ploy to top up my income while I was looking for my next full-time position with a blue chip international company. However, my motivation was no less idealistic …and ill-informed… as was that of most of the IREX executives I met at their Washington headquarters.

First, I had a sentimental attachment to IREX going back to my year as a Fulbright scholar in Moscow and St Petersburg during the academic year 1971-72. At the time, administering the exchange program for senior scholars and doctoral students like myself on behalf of the United States side in a bilateral state-to-state convention was the whole of IREX’s activities. To my experience, they did this very well. They also had responsibility for hosting the Soviet scholars sent to the USA on these exchanges. IREX was then based in Princeton, New Jersey and had an academic, old school tie culture.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of such exchanges proliferated and the monopoly of IREX over academic programs was irrevocably broken.  At the same time, we saw the launch of a great many USIA and USAID programs to help the Russian people prepare for the market economy and smooth their transition to a vital civil society. IREX competed with other NGOs for appointment as administrator of these programs. It had in its favor its Moscow office and experienced expat and local staff.

Reading through the literature I was given prior to signing on with IREX, I could feel great pride in becoming part of this benevolent American mission. As regards my own role, this was defined less in the short contract, which obliged me to visit the office daily and said not much more, but in an oral understanding with the director of IREX, Dan Matuszewski, whom I knew fairly well from the past. I was expected to spend my time mainly on liaison with US embassy and consulate officers to keep them abreast of our activities and to explore possible common interest for additional activities. Secondly, there was the hope that I could help find sponsors for some of the IREX work from among the American business community in Moscow with whom I was in touch at the highest levels. The actual day to day management of the office would be negligible, because the various programs carried out on the premises, such as organizing seminars for journalists, had their well-trained managers in place well before my arrival and had little to do with one another.

In fact there were some very pleasant occasions during my time serving IREX. I think in particular of a dinner event at which I found myself seated next to the newly installed Minister of Culture Natalia Dementieva, who had till recently been the director of the museum of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg rather than some ministry functionary. We engaged in a far-reaching conversation. Or the time I spent with the Cultural Attache of the US consulate in St Petersburg, with whom we discussed creating a possible program to help train directors of Russian cultural institutions to better navigate the domestic market in search of sponsorship. These moments are described in the diaries of Part II in some detail.

And, to be perfectly frank, my vanity was served well by the appreciation that American diplomatic personnel showed for my fluency in Russian when I spoke extemporaneously at public events. This was something I did not feel among my business colleagues

However, there was unexpected unpleasantness that also came with the IREX office and had its origins in precisely who goes into NGOs in general, as opposed to business careers. I saw all too many of my new colleagues were by nature “opposition minded.”  That is to say, they had an instilled distaste for elites – American elites and….Russian elites.  However, like it or not, from my experience you do not go far by disdaining elites, least of all in a country with a predisposition to authoritarianism like Russia.

The feeling of “underground” at IREX Moscow was encouraged by the shambolic condition of the office premises and furnishings. These were needlessly “Soviet” in appearance, at the very time when even Russian private companies were putting in cosmetic improvements to look more appealing.

My colleagues, both in Moscow and in IREX headquarters, lacked professionalism as managers, which is not the least surprising for people coming to administration from an academic milieu. This was the first time since my difficulties at Mustang Bekleidungswerke that I was being drawn into psycho-dramas. For anyone who wonders about that, I refer them to the brief note I received from the HR Director in Washington, presented in Part Two, confirming that life in IREX was never “dull,” meaning that open personal spats and hair-pulling were the routine.

Finally, I am obliged to mention a decisive factor in my decision to resign from my IREX appointment well before my next job in business came on line: I had reason to believe that the office was being used as a base for CIA missions, particularly to the former republics of the Soviet Union at the periphery. There was just too much traffic to the Caucasus through our premises. And so with a heavy heart it was I who brought down the curtain on my IREX adventure. That was my first and last posting with an NGO.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up is now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble.  “Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s” will go to press in one month]

Teaser for “Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s“

Diary notes, Moscow, Monday 3 January 2000

Another bright and cold day, the fourth day in succession that we have enjoyed our cross country skiing at Meshcherskoye. It all started the last day of the old year, on Friday, when I came home from the office for lunch and then we drove out for an hour on the trails, where fresh 15 cm of powdery snow awaited us.

New Year’s eve we celebrated first at the Bolshoi Theater, where I took a pair of $1,000 seats in the first balcony. Just to try it on. This was the first time in the history of the Bolshoi that the seats were removed from the parterre and loges to make way for a ballroom floor and dining tables. All the salons were opened to the public. Here they set up hot and cold buffets. In each salon costumed actors enacted tableaux intended as a backdrop for the guests to photograph themselves.

The theater itself is magnificently decorated and most festive. Regrettably the organizers have lacked imagination to make the event deliver its promise. They have not given much thought to their clientele, only to what they themselves do well.

Accordingly we are treated to an evening of cameo performances just as the Bolshoi has always provided to the Kremlin bosses. The difference, which they seem to have missed, is that tonight the audience consists of many paying guests in addition to the state freeloaders. And at $1,000 to $1,500 a ticket we expect our needs to be catered to.

The whole program is far too serious, far too cultural. They give very little room to the audience to participate. Finally, we are invited to join a waltz and after three minutes on the dance floor, we are reminded that this is an historic moment when the profane have been allowed to dance here, then we are asked to sit down and have a rest! Here is that complacent guardianship mentality of the Soviet school marm.

All the concern over the damage the new Russians might cause was totally misplaced. The audience is very well dressed, mostly married couples, with a fair sprinkling of young children in elaborate formal wear. Not a chance of scandal or misbehavior here.

Our neighbors in the adjacent stall are Cyrill Negré from William Peters/Malesan wines and one of the top managers from Arthur Andersen who is involved in the Bolshoi Theater fund raising work.

Our loge neighbors are both doctors; she is the cardiologist for the troupe of the Bolshoi Theater. Very sober indeed.

At our entrance we meet and shake hands with the outgoing British Ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood. He is here to receive thanks from the Bolshoi administration for his work in assisting their tour of the UK this past season. On the 2^nd he will be celebrating his 60^th birthday and on the 3^rd he leaves for retirement in the UK.

The food is splendid. Catered by the Marriott. Heaps of black sturgeon caviar, lobster, oysters, cold sturgeon, tropical fruits. Hennessy are sponsors, but only at our insistence do we get a bottle of Moet and Chandon instead of the awful Mondoro sparkling wine. Here in this little deception we see the reflection of the bad habits of the past.

This day, Friday, 31^st December was remarkable for the morning announcement of the retirement by Boris Yeltsin. A coup de foudre. Totally unexpected, but in the tradition of this master of surprise.

Yeltsin and his team have shown yet again their brilliant grasp of politics. By this act, Yeltsin is putting in place his chosen successor Putin at the moment when the victory in the Duma elections is fresh, cutting the period for presidential elections down to three months from the previously scheduled six month term, thereby putting the opposition at greater disadvantage. For the whole of the electoral period, Putin will be given the chance to be seen as presidential. And this just after the break-up of the Fatherland/All Russia coalition. It is textbook politics. We are all stunned.

It is the also the best New Year’s present anyone could have given to Russia. To enter the new millennium with a young, 47 year old president, a consolidating constitutional order, a peaceful transition of power from a president still alive and in control of his faculties.  And a curtailed presidential period, bringing forward the clarity that business needs for investment to resume.

We rather expected that the Bolshoi ball would turn out to be a feast of the victors. We anticipated that Putin and his team would be there. However, in the end we were mistaken. There was Seleznyov and a few other Duma politicians, but no one from either the RF or city of Moscow governments.

Instead, the audience seems to consist of business people and others close to the Bolshoi theater. The businessmen probably are involved in sponsorship of the theater in one way or another.

About Putin’s whereabouts there were rumors he had gone up to his native St Petersburg for the holiday. Only on Saturday morning was it clear he had done something far more sensible, actually brilliant: he had flown down to the border with Chechnya to rally the Russian soldiers.

We dance a fox trot, valse anglaise, tango on the floor of the Bolshoi. Then we take another stroll through the salons.

The ballet numbers, especially Aniashvili’s Dying Swan and the Polovetsian dances from Prince Igor, are very appealing. The operatic numbers, distorted by amplifiers, are irritating, really disappointing. The soloists and orchestra sound like a bad recording.

And so, at 10.45 pm with little sense of regret we departed from the Bolshoi and headed over to the Metelitsa casino to join my colleagues at the party we, United Distillers, are sponsoring.

To my disappointment most of my Russian team have abandoned us on this evening. Mike is there with his wife, adopted son and friends. As is External Affairs consultant Dmitri Andronenko and his wife, with whom we share a small table just next to the stage.

Here in the Metelitsa, where tickets cost only $500 per person for this evening, the audience is younger, more lively. We are treated to a brief show at midnight, then it is all music. The audience is swept by the disco fever and all are out on the dance floor. Intolerable noise level. By the time we leave at about 3 a.m., I am suffering, have ringing in the ears. Still it is good to be in the midst of this pulsating throng after the dull formality of the Bolshoi.

It is worth noting that the city is calm, the police directing traffic around the center are relaxed, well displosed. Many streets have been closed to traffic for a large pedestrian gathering.

When we get back to the apartment Larisa exchanges new year’s greetings with daughter Alexa, who is celebrating with her fiancé in the south of Belgium.

On Saturday we rose late. In the evening we drove down to Red Square and join the crowds. A steady snow is falling and the square looks fabulous, a movie setting. Strollers. Glamorous display windows of GUM. We walk up to the newly renovated Gostinny Dvor complex. The surrounding buildings are nearly all also renovated and the ensemble is positively enchanting. Even Larisa puts aside her disdain for the capital and expresses pleasure and admiration at the transformation.

Sunday. A good skiing day. More fresh snow. Temperature at minus four.

Monday. More good skiing. In the evening we take a leisurely supper with Tolya Silin. He has just completed running the city’s millennial celebrations. Says that Luzhkov has earned his defeat. He has surrounded himself with flatterers and yes-men so that he is insulated from political realities. He has stooped to every challenge and detractor. Lacked political judgment.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[Memoirs of Russianist, Volume I: From the Ground Up is now in print and available on all national websites of Amazon.com, as well as from other leading online retailers including Barnes & Noble.  “Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s” will go to press in six weeks]

As the Russians from the time of Chernomyrdin in the late 1990s loved to say: “this time it will be different!” The follow-on, as Kremlin observers know very well was: “but it turned out just as always!” That endeared the otherwise gray prime minister to the people just the same way as Yogi Berra’s contorted English gave everyone a nice belly laugh.

However, yesterday, in a live interview with Russia Today’s Moscow studio that must have reached the East Coast at 6.30 am, too early for even the handful of people who might have been interested to be tuned in, I was given the opportunity to say loud and clear that I believe this time it was different.  Namely, yes, the Russians probably did do the hacking. 

The RT folks may have been shocked out of their skins that a certified “friend” like me could say this, but when they tuned into Euronews this morning they’d have found that my conclusion from this identification of the Russians was right on the money:  there will likely be no sanctions against the Russians over this because the overriding message of the hacking, the purpose of the whole exercise, apart from possibly stealing information about the actual numbers of US warheads in inventory to be used in any upcoming START negotiations, was to demonstrate capability of utterly destroying the United States in any war that Washington might be foolish enough to provoke.

In this sense, it aligns completely with a couple of statements that Putin made in his annual press conference on Thursday which I think not too many people in the West picked up on.   First, when asked if it was true that Russia could obliterate the USA in 30 minutes, he said “No, quicker still.”   And when asked about the alleged poisoning of Navalny with Novichok by Russian agents, he said ‘if our security offices wanted to kill Navalny, they would have succeeded.”

The latter point is most relevant to this hacking.  The allegations of Russian hacking made by the United States in the heat of Russia-gate were frivolous, appropriate to toddlers in a sandbox. Leaving fingerprints all over the supposed theft over the internet to get at Hillary’s communications and tip the election in Trump’s favor.  Only a fool would think that the Kremlin operates at this level.  And, as we know, there are plenty of fools in the USA, though it appears a disproportionate number of them are in the Democratic Party and its thought leaders like Chuck Schumer of New York and Rick Blumenthal of Connecticut.

This hacking was of a different scale and different nature entirely.  It was massive. It had no friendly or other bear tags put on by the Ukrainians.  It went straight for the jugular, the most secret and sensitive corners of the US government.  And it apparently was not destructive, did nothing that could trigger a war, just make a point:  gotcha!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

Further to my recent post ‘Publish or Perish,” my wife’s latest book has just been put up on amazon.com and will be available in a day or two from all their national websites as well as on all leading online book retailers. Larisa Zalesova, “Dacha Tales: Life in the Russian Hinterland.” Enter the author and title in the Amazon search box to arrive at the book’s web page

This book in the travel genre follows the tradition of Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence.” The territory to the south of St Petersburg may not have vineyards or haute cuisine village restaurants, but the local folks are as eccentric and charming as any of Mayle’s neighbors, and on a hot summer’s day the mood and the dress of those making their way to the lake at the edge of town is straight out of a Chekhov play.

Hard bound and e-book formats to be offered shortly.

Also today, a Russian language edition entitled Долгая дорога на дачу has been put on sale by amazon. 

This is in paperback only for the moment.  In a couple of weeks the e-book version will be posted on the sites of many online retailers (though not amazon, for technical reasons). That will have the especially attractive price of $3.99 and is directed to the audience in the Russian Federation.

Have a good read!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020