ZVENIGOROD, Russia (AP) - Russia in the summer of 2001 - year 10 of
the post-Soviet world - is a panoply of raw, thrusting consumerism and
newfound wealth jostling with age-old images of ingrained poverty.
In a country where the communist system allocated housing and allowed
virtually no travel abroad, the billboards on the road to Zvenigorod trumpet
the change: Package holidays to Greece. Hugo Boss designer clothes. Fitness
clubs.
Turn off the road and police may wave you back. That's where former
president Boris Yeltsin, now 70, lives in a secluded dacha.
Take another turn and you might come upon a brick mansion, abandoned
in mid-construction, now infested with Russian children in shabby clothes,
smoking cigarettes in the shadows.
It was 10 years ago, on Aug. 19, 1991, that Yeltsin hauled his linebacker
frame onto a tank, faced down a coup by communist die-hards, and gave the
world a defining image of the end of an era.
The following Christmas Day, the 74-year-old Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics disbanded, and those 15 republics spun off on independent trajectories.
It was a cataclysm that changed the way the world works, and the aftershocks
are still felt in sputterings of civil war from Chechnya to Central Asia,
and in diplomatic corridors from the White House to Beijing.
Even now, stripped of its sister Soviet republics, Russia remains the
world's largest country, only 13 per cent smaller than Canada and the United
States combined.
But what was once a Communist monolith stretching across 11 time zones
is now a jarring patchwork whose main contours are a thin layer of very
rich people, a wide swath of very poor and a vulnerable middle class.
It's the opposite of the egalitarian society communism set out to build,
and a very long way from the prosperous democracy Russia yearns to be.
It has been a wild ride, and it's far from over.
Just 10 years after 100,000 people heeded Yeltsin's call to defy the
coup, many look back at the early 1990s as the high point of freedom and
civil peace. Already by 1993, Yeltsin had turned to force, sending in the
army to bring defiant legislators to heel, then into Chechnya to crush
a separatist rebellion.
Meanwhile, a few bankers and businessmen with government connections
became fabulously wealthy, while the new middle class holidayed abroad,
updated their wardrobes and renovated their apartments.
The country was flooded with western imports: clothes, TVs, cars, cell
phones, computers, beauty products.
But few people paid taxes, corruption ran rampant, and western investors
were turned off. The state soon ran out of money.
By August 1998, the Russian economic bubble burst. The ruble was devalued
and thousands lost their money. Banks folded, businesses collapsed and
Russia's credit rating sank. Russians were suddenly discovering the downside
of capitalism.
The stress of these momentous transformations have taken their toll,
particularly on Russian men. Their life expectancy was 59.8 years in 1999.
In the United States it's 74.2. And the population is shrinking - by three
million since 1993, to 145.6 million.
The average monthly wage is 2,200 rubles, or $116 Cdn. Pensions are
half that.
Since succeeding Yeltsin as president in 1999, Vladimir Putin has promised
remedies, and he appears to have made some initial progress. The tax rate
has been slashed to 13 per cent, most workers appear to be paid on time
and Putin is resisting opposition from old-guard communists to support
badly needed land reform.
But Russian liberals worry about their judo-loving president. He's a
former officer of the KGB, the once-feared secret police and extols it
in public.
All this seems a world away from Saidunmaro Rakhmatkhudzha, 57, as he
coaxes his 200 head of cattle across the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, the
busy road to Zvenigorod, shouting "domoi, domoi" - home, home.
But the white-bearded cowherd is a vivid example of how painfully the
Soviet breakup has affected ordinary lives.
He once worked for the water department in Dushanbe, the capital of
Tajikistan. Then the Soviet republic became independent, civil war broke
out and he lost his job. So he moved north to Russia to tend cows for an
agribusiness.
"Things have calmed down in Tajikistan, but there is no money, so I
had to come here," Rakhmatkhudzha said.
Zvenigorod is the oldest town in the Moscow region. It withstood assaults
by Poles, Napoleon's army and the Nazis. Under Soviet rule it stagnated.
It has yet to flourish in the new Russia.
With its wooded hills and rivers, the Zvenigorod area is called "the
Russian Switzerland," but the comparison arouses scorn here.
"They call our region a second Switzerland. Only the prices are higher
here," said Slava Andreitsev, a 50-year-old construction foreman.
"In principle, there have been changes, but things stay the same," Andreitsev
added. "There is no hot water. My grandson is one year old. We have to
wash all his clothes, diapers and things like that in cold water."
There are many who long for the simple certainties of the Soviet period,
when living conditions for most were about the same, except for the ruling
Communist elite.
A poll earlier this year by the Public Opinion Foundation said 79 per
cent of Russians now regret the demise of the Soviet Union, up from 69
per cent in 1992.
Still, today's Russians choose their presidents, mayors, legislators
and governors in elections deemed fair by international standards.
Five major parties and many smaller factions sit in Parliament. When
Putin was elected in March 2000, it was the first time Russia had ever
changed presidents by a free vote.
And though they may sometimes look back fondly to the past, and grow
cynical about the ability of politicians to solve their problems, and wonder
why bother to vote, turnout in last year's presidential election was 65
per cent.
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