Game Over

President Vladimir Putin is worried about Russians gambling their lives away, and this may spell trouble for casinos across the country.

“The state should have paid attention to this business a long time ago,” Putin said during a “direct line” call-in program on October 25, 2006 (see page 14). “Sadly, it’s not only the young people, but also pensioners who lose their last kopeks there (in slot machine halls).” 

Putin also likened gambling to Russia’s perennial alcohol problem, and shortly afterward submitted a draft bill to the Duma on regulation of gambling businesses. The bill passed through the first reading by a vote of 440-0 on November 15. If the bill becomes law, Russia will get a Las Vegas in Siberia and a tightly concentrated gambling business. 

On July 1, 2007, all casinos with less than R600 million in net assets and fewer than 45 slot machines and 15 gambling tables will have to close down, according to the new bill. 

But the biggest change will come in 2009, when casinos will be exiled into four special archipelagos: two in European Russia, and one each in Siberia and the Far East. Some casinos will still be allowed in residential areas by special governmental permit.

Owners of gambling businesses say the bill does not give them enough time to develop gaming centers in the specially designated zones. The shift will require colossal investment and at least five years, the business daily Vedomosti reported. Twelve Russian regions expressed interest in hosting the new gambling zones.

The bill also outlaws gambling on the Internet and sets a minimum gambling age of 18 years.

Although gambling was banned in the Soviet Union, it is nothing new for the risk-seeking Russian soul. Some of the country’s greatest writers, including Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky, were gambling addicts. Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades and Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler drew heavily on the authors’ personal experiences.

Some of the bill’s critics say its effect will be akin to Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-fated anti-alcohol campaign. Those measures failed to mend the problem, but devastated wine businesses across the country and gave rise to massive bootlegging. A ban on gambling, they say, will just send the business underground. 

Meanwhile, others have called it an ‘imitation campaign,’ which will clear the field for Moscow’s major gambling chains by eliminating regional competition.