Horseman captured her husband’s imagination, but she recalls him reading it at least three times. “Soon, you will know it by heart,” she told him.
The 1980s were good years for Markov: the work was steady and he led what some might call a balanced life. His wife adored him. But when he was off hunting and trapping in the taiga, she worried. Sometimes, he would be gone for weeks at a time. “He would come home and tell me he had seen tiger tracks,” Borisova recalled in her kitchen, next to a monolithic Russian stove made of crumbling concrete. “I would say, ‘You have to be more careful out there,’ and he would say, ‘Why should I be afraid of her? She should be afraid of me!’ ”
* After studying the files of Stalin’s political prisoners, historian Roy Medvedev concluded that 200,000 people were imprisoned for telling jokes.2
* When addressing or referring to elders and other respected persons in Russia, it is customary to use the patronymic without the last name, e.g., “Boris Ivanovich”—literally, “Boris son of Ivan.”
7
Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: “A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.” She answered, “Indeed it is so. My husband and his father have both been killed by tigers, and now my son, too, has fallen prey to them.” Confucius asked, “Why do you remain here?” She answered, “No callous government rules here.” Confucius said, “Remember that, my students. Callous government is more ravenous than tigers.”“The Book of Rites”1
BY THE MID-1980S, THE SOVIET UNION HAD BEGUN TO UNRAVEL AS THE gross inefficiencies of central planning began manifesting themselves in painfully obvious ways. However, the country was far too unstable and encumbered by its own history to allow a gradual transition toward a market economy, or the democracy such a transition was supposed to bring about. Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to open the Soviet Union resembled Pandora’s attempt to open her box: there was simply no way to do it gradually. Once that lid was cracked, it blew off altogether. In Russia’s case, the walls fell down, too. As the Communist Bloc disintegrated, decades, generations—entire lifetimes—of frustration, discontent, stifled rage, and raw ambition came boiling out, never to be contained again. The vast majority of Russians were completely unprepared for the ensuing free-for-all.
But Armenian Radio kept up with the times:
Our listeners asked us:
“What is chaos?”
We’re answering:
“We do not comment on economic policy.”“What is ‘Russian business’?”
We’re answering:
“To steal a crate of vodka, sell it, and drink the money away.”
Many Russians blame Boris Yeltsin for “breaking everything,” but he had plenty of eager assistants. In an eerie parallel to the Bolshevik Revolution seventy years earlier, a wholesale looting of the country took place as the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme. Entire industries were commandeered and privatized, and vast territories were transformed into virtual fiefdoms. While there was a halfhearted attempt to include the public by issuing shares in these new private companies, most Russians had no idea what they were and sold them immediately, often for a pittance. On Yeltsin’s watch, the ignorance of many, combined with the cleverness of a few, allowed for the biggest, fastest, and most egregiously unjust reallocation of wealth and resources in the history of the world. It was klepto-capitalism on a monumental scale, but it wasn’t the first time. The Bolsheviks had done something similar under Lenin.
The scale of theft following the October Revolution of 1917 was equally grand for its time, but the motives and methods were even more ruthless. During the heady and
The 1980s were good years for Markov: the work was steady and he led what some might call a balanced life. His wife adored him. But when he was off hunting and trapping in the taiga, she worried. Sometimes, he would be gone for weeks at a time. “He would come home and tell me he had seen tiger tracks,” Borisova recalled in her kitchen, next to a monolithic Russian stove made of crumbling concrete. “I would say, ‘You have to be more careful out there,’ and he would say, ‘Why should I be afraid of her? She should be afraid of me!’ ”
* After studying the files of Stalin’s political prisoners, historian Roy Medvedev concluded that 200,000 people were imprisoned for telling jokes.2
* When addressing or referring to elders and other respected persons in Russia, it is customary to use the patronymic without the last name, e.g., “Boris Ivanovich”—literally, “Boris son of Ivan.”
7
Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: “A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.” She answered, “Indeed it is so. My husband and his father have both been killed by tigers, and now my son, too, has fallen prey to them.” Confucius asked, “Why do you remain here?” She answered, “No callous government rules here.” Confucius said, “Remember that, my students. Callous government is more ravenous than tigers.”“The Book of Rites”1
BY THE MID-1980S, THE SOVIET UNION HAD BEGUN TO UNRAVEL AS THE gross inefficiencies of central planning began manifesting themselves in painfully obvious ways. However, the country was far too unstable and encumbered by its own history to allow a gradual transition toward a market economy, or the democracy such a transition was supposed to bring about. Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to open the Soviet Union resembled Pandora’s attempt to open her box: there was simply no way to do it gradually. Once that lid was cracked, it blew off altogether. In Russia’s case, the walls fell down, too. As the Communist Bloc disintegrated, decades, generations—entire lifetimes—of frustration, discontent, stifled rage, and raw ambition came boiling out, never to be contained again. The vast majority of Russians were completely unprepared for the ensuing free-for-all.
But Armenian Radio kept up with the times:
Our listeners asked us:
“What is chaos?”
We’re answering:
“We do not comment on economic policy.”“What is ‘Russian business’?”
We’re answering:
“To steal a crate of vodka, sell it, and drink the money away.”
Many Russians blame Boris Yeltsin for “breaking everything,” but he had plenty of eager assistants. In an eerie parallel to the Bolshevik Revolution seventy years earlier, a wholesale looting of the country took place as the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme. Entire industries were commandeered and privatized, and vast territories were transformed into virtual fiefdoms. While there was a halfhearted attempt to include the public by issuing shares in these new private companies, most Russians had no idea what they were and sold them immediately, often for a pittance. On Yeltsin’s watch, the ignorance of many, combined with the cleverness of a few, allowed for the biggest, fastest, and most egregiously unjust reallocation of wealth and resources in the history of the world. It was klepto-capitalism on a monumental scale, but it wasn’t the first time. The Bolsheviks had done something similar under Lenin.
The scale of theft following the October Revolution of 1917 was equally grand for its time, but the motives and methods were even more ruthless. During the heady and
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