| by Christopher Rutty.|

It took roughly 72 years for the Soviet State to fail; it took 8 years for the Capitalist economy to do likewise. However, after the 1998 financial crash, this was rarely ‘observed’ by Western observers.

In 1998, then Vice President Al Gore said, "Optimism prevails universally among those who are familiar with what is going on in Russia."

As a forty-something year old Westerner living in Moscow, I am reminded daily of a cruel joke. Russians say, about the Soviet era, "We thought we were being lied to about Communism and Capitalism, it turns out we were only lied to about Communism."

The ‘New Russia’ has become a caricature of all that is ugly about Western culture. It is the archetypal deregulated capitalist economy. The definitive example of the economic fraud and social instability that results from the ‘less government’ school of economics. The new Russian economy is not so much deregulated, as unregulated. Western economic advisors failed to instruct the Yeltsin regime on how to regulate for a civil society, instead, indoctrinating them with the self-regulation ideology, inherent in the ‘Privatization is God’ economic model. The ‘greed is good’ psychology married to trickle-down-economics has exploited all Russians and confused the over thirty age group. Soviet propaganda for decades echoed a familiar tune –‘Beware the evil decadence of Western materialism’- Now, we are seeing the evil manifest.

Thanks to tacky commodities and a highly sophisticated Western marketing strategy, the evil is born, like a horror movie, in the guise of young Russians. They have lost the high level of cultural awareness the older generations possess. A Russian woman told me of her education compared with her 12-year-old daughter. The woman could recite Russian literature; if given a fragment she would continue the story or poem with the following line, or name the author and title. She was not a scholar, but an ordinary woman in her forties. Can we do that with the hero’s of English literature? Maybe Shakespeare and Whitman, but with Faulkner, Melville, Frost, Lowell, Langston Hughes? Her daughter only wanted MTV; a familiar Western problem maybe, although here, youth follow a monoculture.

There are no alternative sub-cultures, as in the West, where teens are open to many intellectual and positive roll-models. Young Russians have little to aspire to other than cold materialism, i.e. the ‘Bandit’ with the big Mercedes. The under thirty year olds have been dispossessed of Soviet culture, only to be confronted with one that probably sacked their father during the sell-off of Russian state enterprises. Young teens are a rudderless ship because some former administrator stole the rudder.

The selfishness inherent in the Western commodity culture plays into the hands of past Soviet conditioning. Further, honesty and compassion for others, are not virtues here. Soviet culture erased these values: if you represent such values ‘New Russians’ think you are foolish. If you don’t take advantage of everyone and every situation, you are thought to be weak and of little character. Russian bravado and self-worth comes from exploiting your situation. This psychology is behind the massive corruption that the new Russian culture has given birth too.

It sounds like an exaggeration to say all males dress alike. They dress invariably in all black, with shapeless black leather coats. They all smoke-$0.30 per pack and drink beer on the street -$0.30 a half liter bottle. Local beer commercials feature teens with their baseball caps on backward, in a group, walking the street laughing at an older man with his old-fashioned hat. It makes you wonder if the government is receiving counseling on the social ramifications of this type of conditioning? –As they did installing a capitalist economy. Tobacco companies give away cigarettes at popular Metro stations, although they are conspicuously absent from tourist spots: Understanding no doubt the prevailing Western anti-social attitude surrounding their product.

Russians are paid a minimal wage, and with no effective loyalty guarantee by the employer; you are out the door without pay, if you do not go along with the corrupt practices of your boss. Consequently, a stable and honest income is difficult to come by. In fact, workers are encouraged to steal or to engage in some minor fraud for their own benefit. How can this be true? Russian logic and cunning, born of a Soviet mother, says that if all workers are stealing they are less likely to call the boss a thief; self-regulation Russian style!

The derogatory term ‘New Russians’, relates to the crude, unsophisticated, uncultured, arrogant Russian who, through corruption and theft, has made a financial killing. The closest Western analogy would be an uncultured Wall Street Yuppie. It also represents cultural ignorance in the form of the fashion-challenged woman, who attends cultural events for the purpose of parading her electric-blue fox fur, tight black leather pants and spike-heeled Italian leather shoes –in the snow- while chewing gum. This was the fifty-something year old conductor’s wife at a recent concert.

The Faustian bargain that Yeltsin made, with U.S. economic advisors, expired early and Mephistopheles is driving around in a Mercedes 600, while his Lexus, Chrysler Jeep and BMW sit in the garage of his Dacha. In the late nineteen nineties, children were warned about playing near a Mercedes 600, as this was the car of choice for the serious ‘bandit’ and regularly blown up.

The euphemism ‘Bandit’ means someone who is registered at the tax office with a $200 per/month income, a house in Spain, the above mentioned cars, and a large sum in a Swiss bank. A thief, in Western terms.

If you drive one of those vehicles, you are a ‘bandit’. There is no system of credit, so expensive toys must be paid for in cash! Unlike Western countries where it is common for decent, honest, hard working people to own such cars, here it is simply not the case.

The arrogance of these drivers mirrors perfectly their contemptible attitude toward society. They drive on the footpath as normal behavior; if you are crossing the road, they will nudge you if the traffic slows. They park literally on the apex of a street corner to go shopping at the local kiosk. It is a sight indeed to see an overweight man in black, alight from his vehicle, disconnect the hands-free mobile telephone, engage the central locking as the car alarm blares, then walk away: as the traffic readjusts itself, as if guided by an unseen hand, to avoid hitting him.

I live on the leafy and civilized, Shabolovka Street. In winter, I stepped out of a shop concentrating, trying not to slip on the ice patches, when a shinny new Lexus whizzed along the wide footpath. Russians seems to take this extra danger in their stride.

New Russians are like underprivileged children in a F.A.O Schwartz toy store. They all have mobile telephones, pagers, car alarms. Although car theft is almost zero compared with Western countries. Even the Russian produced Zhiguli, the aspiring bandit’s car, not worth stealing, will blare with its anti-social noise in the middle of the night. The alarms sound as often as New York taxis horns. Karaoke machines are advertised on television with blonde Anglo looking women dancing in spacious lounge rooms, something that does not exist in Russia - people just don’t live in detached homes with large rooms. The media is full of unattainable Western ideals.

The decades of Soviet conditioning bred a unique species, Homo-Sovieticus, a creature with no compassion for his or her neighbor, a cold, hard, selfish individual who survived via cunning. When Homo-Sovieticus oversees the exploitation inherent in a naïve, unregulated capitalist economy, you do not have to be a psychologist to predict the social outcome. As Harrison Salisbury says of Muscovites: they are "rude peasants". This (seemingly unfair) demonstrable statement can be seen all over town, in fine restaurants and the theatre; crude, unsophisticated, over-weight, middle age men, with unusually tall prostitutes at their table, as icons of success -The movie ‘Pretty Woman’ is a favorite here.

Of course, most Russians are very friendly once you get to know them. As friends, they exhibit that famous European hospitality of feeding you until their cupboard is bare. This makes the wholesale exploitation all the sadder from my perspective. I know many wonderful, honest Russians

As Stephen F. Cohen says in his book, ‘Failed Crusade: America & the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia’. Russia lost a lot of blood while the U.S. doctors performed the economic transplant. Total capital flight is between $150 billion - $350 billion; the number living in poverty in the former Soviet Union up from 14 million in 1989, to 147 million nine years later. The life expectancy for a male has fallen below the age of 60. In short, " the literal de-modernization of a 20th-century country."

Mikhail Delyagin, from the Institute for the Problems of Globalization, says capital flight in 2000 amounted to $24.6 billion, compared to $18.6 billion in 1999.

Moscow is full of beggars; the old women are most disturbing as they kneel on cardboard in the snow, with their hand out. In the metro, the limbless in wheelchairs, are pushed down the crowded isle with plastic cup in their lap. Mothers beg with a sick child in her arms. Some have a tattered piece of paper to prove the child’s illness. The new economy has thrust this country backward. A unique economic experiment, a game of monopoly that economics students, the world over will be toying with. No doubt, sighting the first ten years as too short a term for the economy to improve the quality of life.

If so, what about Asian poverty? How many decades has a free-market economy been behind Asian poverty? In fact, poverty (in Asia), along with a twelve-hour workday, lame-duck unions, anti-ecological policies, archaic media laws, nepotism and cronyism, are the very reasons for the oxymoron ‘Asian Economic Miracle’. -An odious term insulting the poverty and suffering of millions. Correspondingly, the ‘Russian Economic Miracle’ must be the story of how so few generated so much wealth, and took it out of the country?

It is hard to see the ‘New Russia’ being anything more than an Asian autocracy. The similarities are intriguing at best. An apparent stoicism in the face of suffering, never having known social democracy and a utilitarian cunning that does not require formal university training. In the same week, the former head of the Kremlin’s property empire, Pavel Borodin, was arrested in New York on behalf of Swiss authorities, on money-laundering charges, (whose banks are happy to take billions first). While Philippine’s President Estrada resigned over charges of massive theft.

Unfortunately, Russian citizens’ lack the militancy found in Asia. The ‘People Power’ that brought down another corrupt Asian leader is sadly lacking. In fact, the opposite prevails. A disturbingly large number of people want an authoritarian leader: Apparently blind to the historical precedents and repercussions. (Soviet era citizens had no real control over their existence, they were told what to do and think. This is no small psychological weight to bare now that survival literally depends upon their own initiative.) Many educated Russians have surprised me with their laissez-faire attitude toward authoritarian rule. The high profile Independent television station N.T.V, recently lost its freedom and is now control by the government. N.T.V employees, who were the familiar public face of the station, brought the people into the street. Unfortunately Russians find it harder to rally behind an impersonal concept or ideal.

While in St. Petersburg in March, I happened upon a Communist Party demonstration marching down Nevski Prospect. Several old men were carrying poster-size images of Stalin, while the babushki were huddled together, arm in arm, singing the International: in below freezing temperatures with driving sleet. The older generations want security, not electrical goods; expensive German and Italian appliances, flat-screen computer monitors or overpriced foreign owned supermarkets with imported frozen vegetables from Scandinavia. They want their job back .

It is clear to many unbiased Western observers living here, that Putin’s path is ‘back to the future’. His so-called reforms are those re-establishing totalitarian rule, not social democracy. Many day to day ‘reforms’ do not make news in the West, however, for most foreigners here it is easy to see where his rhetoric is leading.

In this situation, World leaders and international capitalism are sadly predictable, with self-interest at the heart of social, ecological and humanitarian issues. This was evident in past decades. The most obvious examples Apartheid in South Africa, torture and murder in Pinnochet’s Chile, the cultural genocide of the East Timorese by Indonesia, the decades of rampant economic rape by the power elite in Asia and puppet regimes in Latin America. Not too mention the first half of the twentieth century.

The U.S. economic advisors are like the arms industry selling an unstable third world country weapons of mass destruction, then crying Terrorist!, when they use them.

The New Russia is a unique example of the failure of a capitalist economy to deliver on decades of Western propaganda. That is, the failure to produce a civilized, humane, and equitable society based upon a justice system, regardless of class or social status. Or, have I read too much into decades of Capitalist propaganda?

As a Westerner living in Russia: Al Gore’s comment is truly offensive; the reality of "…what is going on in Russia", is a crime against humanity.

That is what is going on in Russia.

As Solzhenitsyn said. Now Russians have the choices they longed for. The choice to be a beggar or a thief.