Mother Russia's "Difficult Kids"

Russian folk wisdom has it that, the more difficult the child, the stronger you love him (or her). And so, in honor of International Children’s Day, this year’s first summer issue is dedicated to Russia’s difficult kids, greatly loved.

Interestingly, this bit of folk wisdom does not seem to apply to Sergei Stankevich, who the Russian press has christened “the sick kid of Russian democracy.” Once loved by millions, the recently arrested Stankevich will now be despised and — if Russia has its way in negotiating his extradition with Poland — tried for bribe-taking (see page 5).

Of course, the $10,000 this former deputy mayor of Moscow allegedly accepted for facilitating the 1992 Red Square Moscow Opera Festival is peanuts when compared to Russia’s multibillion dollar capital flight, or to the ‘going rate’ of today’s apparatchiks. But the moral damage Stankevich inflicted on Russia’s fledgling democracy can’t be measured in dollars. For such impropriety (or even the impression of impropriety) is grist for the mill for those who say that Russia’s new democrats are only good at destroying things and taking bribes — that what we need is an iron hand, a Stalin.

For his part, Stankevich, the golden-tongued, intellectual poster boy of late 1980s Russian democracy (he once urged supporters to only seize power “with clean hands”) went into hiding in 1995 (first to the US and then to Poland). His immunity from prosecution as a Duma deputy had expired and Russia’s Prosecutor General demanded his arrest. If he did nothing wrong, why hide? Stankevich is reportedly telling Polish authorities that his life will be in danger if he returns to Russia; these accusations, he says, are a political plot against him.

This is implausible. Many Russian public figures who have faced much more serious accusations have weathered the storm. Suffice it to mention another ‘difficult child’ of Russian democracy, former vice-president and present Kursk Regional Governor Alexander Rutskoy, who ordered the bloody storming of Ostankino Television Center in 1993. Recently ousted Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, who allegedly operated with much heftier sums than $10,000, was never arrested. Stankevich’s bad luck stems from the fact that his may become a modern show trial, a test of  President Boris Yeltsin’s new crusade against corruption, for, in the early 1990s, Stankevich was a close adviser and confidante of Yeltsin.

Yeltsin’s crusade is not misplaced. Corruption and embezzlement — among other plagues — are to blame for Russia’s unconscionable wage arrears. And it is the corrupt bureaucracy which, as you will see in our lead story (page 6), deprives Russian children of needed state funding and foreign humanitarian aid.

There could be few better contrasts to Russia’s corrupt bureaucrats than Vasily Shukshin, whose stories are excerpted in this month’s issue (page 21). When many of today’s bureaucrats were still children, Shukshin, a gifted writer and film maker, was an uncompromising artist whose soul was as clean as the nature in his native Altay region (where travel writer Gary Wescott will take us next month — this month, he and his wife Monika pass through neighboring Tuva, see pp. 31-34).

It is interesting to consider what Shukshin would say if he were alive now, when Russia’s ‘orphans of reform’ are sucked into massive criminality, begging or drug addiction. He would probably rail on the ‘sick’ children of Russian democracy, just as he railed on Soviet ideologues who did their utmost to prevent his truthful books and films from seeing the light of day. He would also surely call upon the younger generation — as he did then — to not forget its history, its “Russian songs and Russian fairy tales . . . to believe that it was not all in vain and not to sell it for peanuts.” This is why Russian Life continues to give ample focus to Russia’s history. As we do this month in celebrating the 600th (!) anniversary of Cyril-Belozersk Monastery (page 16).

By hook or by crook, Shukshin’s masterpieces made it pass censors and to the public. And those who read his honest account of life in the Russian countryside would enjoy his ability to portray Russia’s unique nature and gifts — just as the young boy pictured above is enjoying a very typically Russian basket of mushrooms. Let’s hope this child of the New Russia won’t have to go through the trials and tribulations other children of his age in Russia do.

So, a happy Children’s Day, and may yours always sleep as soundly as this child!