August
31, 1997
This Date's Issues: 1160• 1161
•
Johnson's Russia List
#1161
31 August 1997
djohnson@cdi.org
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Jacob Kipp (US Army): Generational Perspectives and the Russian
Intelligentsia after the Collapse of Soviet Power. (DJ: This comment
may be incomplete).
2. Fred Weir in Moscow on Chechnya and oil.
3. Vinay Shukla in Moscow passes on press release about "the founding
of the All-Russian social movement The Union of Resistance Forces
'Gamayun'."
4. Outside magazine: Eerin Arvedlund, "FEAR ME, Giant Sewer Rodents,
for I Am VADIM, Lord of The Underground!" Deep beneath Moscow a crew
of urban spelunkers frolics, hunting Stalin's secret hideaway, Ivan
the Terrible's torture chamber, bootleg nuclear weapons, and a little
fame and fortune. (DJ: Obviously, this goes with pictures).
5. St. Petersburg Times: John Varoli, Ladoga Site Might Mark Birth
of Russian Civilization.
6. St. Petersburg Times: Leonid Bershidsky, Paranoia and Carelessness
Make a Lonely Planet Out of Moscow.]
*********
#1
From: "Kipp, Jacob KIPPJ" <KIPPJ@leav-emh.army.mil>
Subject: Generational Perspectives and the Russian Intelligentsia after the
Collapse of Soviet Power
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 97 16:21:00 PDT
David, As someone who has spent over two decades in and out of Russia and
who has had his share of contacts with the Russian intelligentsia I am
disturbed by Mark Ames' review of Masha Gessen's "Dead Again." No, I have
not read the book but plan to this weekend. My comments are about the tone
of Ames' review, which like much Russian literature, has taken to attacking
the "generation of the 1960s" and blaming them for the failure of
perestroyka and reform in Russia. This is a topic worth serious
consideration. But the flip review hardly does it justice. I will tell you
better on Monday whether the book is worthy of the topic. I fear Mark has
gone Weimar on us.
One reference raises serious concerned about Mark's own perspective. Has he
read the many volumes by Aleksandr Dugin ["Metafisika blagoi vesti,"
"Misterii Evrazii," "Tampliery Proletariata (natsional-bolshevizm i
initsiatsiya)," "Konservativnaya revolyutsiya," and "Osnovy geopolitiki:
Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii,"] ? If he has, I suspect he might come
up with a word stronger than "controversial." Dugin's own books bill him
as "philosopher, traditionalist, theorist of the Conservative Revoilution."
The combination of Orthodox theology and German geopolitics is a heady
cocktail. The rhetoric of Dugin's "third path" recalls inter-war
authoritarian ideologies that were anti-liberal and anti-socialist. The
form of his geopolitics is an ideological struggle between the Eurasian
heartland and Atlantism/Globalism, while the content is anti-liberal,
anti-democratic, anti-Western, and Eurasian imperialist. He does like
"Zavtra" and Prokhanov. This a much more sophisticated and intellectually
founded ideology than that of Vladimir Vol'fovich. I do hope that folks
will read "Osnovy geopolitiki" and grasp that this book enjoys significant
patronage from some interesting institutions, including "orientir," the
Ministy of Defense journal that replaced Communist of the Armed Forces. But
then maybe Alfred Rosenberg , Julius Streicher, and "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion" were only "controversial" in the 1920s.
*******
#2
From: fweir.ncade@rex.iasnet.ru
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 20:20:58 (MSK)
For the Hindustan Times
Fred Weir in Moscow
MOSCOW (HT) -- One year after the guns fell silent in
Russia's bloody and futile 22-month war against separatist rebels
in the southern republic of Chechnya, peace still reigns but none
of the conflict's causes has been resolved.
Nevertheless, the two sides might yet find a pragmatic modus
vivendi over the very substance that triggered the brutal war in
the first place: oil.
The truce signed a year ago in the frontier town of
Khasavyurt effectively left the rebels in control of the
mountainous, culturally Islamic republic, but put off any
settlement of the basic issue -- Chechnya's bid for independence
from Russia -- for five years.
Aslan Maskhadov, the rebel leader who signed the Khasavyurt
accords and was later elected Chechnya's president, has struggled
to maintain control of his war-ravaged republic while urging
Moscow to move quickly towards a full-scale peace treaty.
For his part, Russian President Boris Yeltsin has pledged
never again to use force in dealings with defiant Russian
regions. But he refuses to discuss any permanent treaty with a
secessionist-led Chechnya.
Last Fall Mr. Yeltsin fired Alexander Lebed, the Kremlin
security chief who shaped the truce, and has since reneged on
promises of assistance for shattered Chechnya.
Mr. Lebed, now a bitter and impatient presidential
candidate-in-waiting, told a press conference last week that the
great achievement of Khasavyurt -- ending the fighting -- still
stands, but otherwise Mr. Yeltsin has wasted the opportunity to
build real peace in Russia's turbulent northern Caucausus region.
"The Khasavyurt agreements allowed Russia to get out of that
war because it was impossible to win it from the very beginning,"
he said.
"You can say anything you want about the agreements, but at
least they stopped the killing," he said. "At that time we had a
shooting war on our hands, but now we have a cold war."
Russian troops invaded in December 1994 in a bid to erase
the self-declared independent republic of Ichkeria (Chechnya),
which had been thumbing its nose at Moscow since the collapse of
the USSR in late 1991.
There are no clear explanations of why Mr. Yeltsin decided
to launch the fateful war, which ultimately killed 100,000 people
and made refugees of half a million more. Moscow's internal
diplomacy had previously succeeded in peacefully containing
strong challenges from several of the Russian Federation's 20
other ethnic republics.
The answer, some analysts say, is black gold. Vast newly-
discovered oilfields in the nearby Caspian Sea are slated to open
up in coming years. Moscow is very keen that the oil, which the
former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan also have a slice of, should be transported to the
world market via Russian territory.
Western powers, equally bent on keeping that lucrative and
strategic lever out of Russian hands, have planned pipelines that
run southward through Georgia and Turkey to the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean.
The problem confronting Mr. Yeltsin in 1994 was that
Russia's key pipeline from the Caspian to the Black Sea -- its
trump card in this competition -- ran through Grozny, capital of
secessionist Chechnya.
"Yeltsin decided to attack Chechnya to gain total control
over the transport grid, particularly the oil pipeline," says
Nikolai Zyubov, an independent analyst. "He thought that would
put him in a solid bargaining position, as the Caspian oil fields
opened up, to say to the world that no new pipelines are needed,
that Russia can transport all the Caspian oil through its
existing facilities.
"But the war lasted two years and destroyed everything. Now
Western companies are already building other pipelines, and
Russia has fallen far behind in this immensely important game,"
he says.
The first Caspian oil pumped by a consortium of 13 major oil
companies is due to start flowing in mid-September. The pipelines
meant to carry it out to thirsty global consumers are still not
securely in place.
Trapped between the strategic imperative to win control over
Caspian oil, and the total failure of Russia's military attempt
to subdue Chechnya, Mr. Yeltsin appears to be groping toward a
new deal with Chechen leaders.
Last month he met with Mr. Maskhadov in the Kremlin. As he
has throughout the past year, Mr. Yeltsin refused to consider any
long-term settlement of Chechnya's political status. But he did
urge immediate signing of a deal on the Caspian-Black Sea oil
pipeline.
Mr. Maskhadov, who clearly hopes to use Russian oil politics
to further Chechnya's independence agenda, joined Mr. Yeltsin in
publicly deploring the "encroachments" of the United States and
other Western powers in the Caucasus region.
In return, he hopes for guarantees that Moscow will respect
Chechen independence as well as hand over a hefty share of the
oil transit fees to Grozny.
But negotiations have so far stalled between the two sides
over these issues and, with Caspian oil poised to start flowing
within a month, the situation is becoming critical.
Indeed, if Western oil companies succeed in moving Caspian
oil out to world markets by a southern route, both Russia and
Chechnya may be left permanently on the sidelines of what is
reckoned to be the biggest petroleun bonanza of the 21st century.
"There is very little time available for settling relations
between Moscow and Grozny," Mr. Maskhadov warned following his
inconclusive August meeting with Mr. Yeltsin. "Those who think
there are years or even months ahead to do so are wrong."
*********
#3
From: PTI MOSCOW <pti@com2com.ru> (Vinay Shukla)
Subject: New Avengers
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 00:14:49 +0400
Dear David ,
I found something interesting surfing the web, I think it could
be of some use for you.
Regards
Vinay Shukla
P R E S S R E L E A S E
On 19-20 August, a convention for the founding of the All-Russian social
movement "The Union of Resistance Forces 'Gamayun'" was held outside of
Moscow.
The Union as an organization consistently opposes the current
administration and has as one of its principal aims the total lustration of
the existing establishment. To this end, the organization compiles lists of
people who must be brought to justice for war crimes, for the embezzlement
of public funds, and for bribe-taking, as well as those individuals who
must be barred from holding public office and occupying high-ranking
positions in the media, educational institutions, social organizations, and
the business sector.
Many of the names on the lists are given to the organization by people
across the country; others are nationally known. Among them are the
president, the prime minister, the presidents of the chambers, "the team of
young provocateurs", politicians, and retired officials of all complexions,
as well as local functionaries, who have been found guilty of showing
disregard for the life and dignity of their fellow citizens. Also included
are the representatives of the "creative" intelligentsia, which, seeking to
ingratiate itself with the administration, has once again discredited the
idea of lawful government.
The lists include the leadership and the chief correspondents of the
politically engaged media, as well as the equally unprincipled and corrupt
celebrities and stars of the entertainment industry.
A separate list contains the names of clergymen who, relying on the
authority of their denominations, mislead believers by turning their backs
on the amorality of government practices, profit by the sale of alcohol and
tobacco, continue to acquire luxury items and real estate, and interfere in
the operation of State on all levels, from education to defense.
The organization considers it imperative to expose the positions of Western
representatives - be they political leaders or Western media correspondents
accredited in Moscow - who, on behalf of their nations, foist on the public
their opinions about who should be the President of Russia and how to
reform the economy.
The aforesaid will determine the policy of the organization in the
immediate future.
8.23.97
Federal Headquarters
E-mail : gamaun@mail.org
**********
#4
Outside magazine
September 1997
[for personal use only]
FEAR ME, Giant Sewer Rodents, for I Am VADIM, Lord of The Underground!
Deep beneath Moscow a crew of urban spelunkers frolics, hunting Stalin's
secret hideaway, Ivan the Terrible's torture chamber, bootleg nuclear
weapons, and a little fame and fortune
By Erin Arvedlund
Erin Arvedlund lives three floors aboveground in Moscow, where she is a
correspondent for the Moscow Times.
Beneath the onion domes of the Kremlin, at the foot of crumbling
Lomonosov University, Vadim Mikhailov crouches along a sidewalk
ventilation shaft and aims a conspiratorial eye into the void. He wears
a dirty yellow fireman's suit, a storm trooper helmet of chintzy gold
affixed with a headlamp, and a pair of ludicrously oversize rubber
fishing boots that smell distinctly like vomit. Mikhailov grips a
crowbar in his large, pale hands. A worn rope is coiled through his
jacket's metal clasps.
"Here, take one of these," he tells me, handing over some sort of
mystery megavitamin pill. "You'll need this. Your metabolism's not used
to the underground."
As I choke it down, Mikhailov methodically scans the streets for
policemen and, once satisfied that the coast is clear, orders his young
sidekick, Vadik Burov, to pry open the metal grate. Mikhailov pokes his
head inside. There's a whoosh of cool air, a hiss of sewage, and an
ancient, sulfurous stink. "Poshli, poshli, poshli!" he barks
impatiently. Mikhailov and I clamber down a carbonate-encrusted ladder,
down into the cellar of Moscow, with its rats and drug dealers, its
toxic seeps and proto-capitalist gangland thugs, its squatters and
prostitutes and fat albino roaches: untold thousands of miles of clammy
tunnels and underground rivers that Mikhailov has spent the last 20
years obsessively exploring and where he still spends at least a few
hours every day, burrowing into Moscow's past. A native Muscovite with a
bodybuilder's physique, a permanent cloak-and-dagger air, and the gothic
vaingloriousness of a comic-book villain, the 32-year-old Mikhailov is
chieftain of a celebrated band of urban spelunkers known as the Diggers
of the Underground Planet.
Burov hops in last and shoves the grate back into position with a clunk.
Eyes blink, pupils widen. Mikhailov's helmet bobs ahead of us in an
arched brick sewer, our only beacon in the black. "We're in the reverse
world, friends," he says with a grin. "Aboveground rules no longer
apply."
Mikhailov bounds ahead, negotiating sharp corners with SWAT team
precision, hopping over pipes with little Jackie Chan flourishes that
show off his years of aikido training. Suddenly he halts. There's a
suspicious noise, maybe footsteps. "Shhh!" he says. "Could be a
biological!" (Digger slang for "unidentified human being.") We stand
completely still for five minutes or so, Mikhailov staring intently at
the moisture beads on the ceiling — but we hear nothing, biological or
otherwise.
"Before we go any farther, let's check for fumes," he says. He flicks a
butane lighter and inspects the flame for a slight tinge of orange that
might indicate trace levels of natural gas. "No, we're all right," he
says merrily. "Onward!"
We slip and slide along the sewer's slim walkways in the general
direction of the famed Bolshoi Theater, and before long we hit a tunnel
that's layered with a viscous black goo that sucks at our boots and
releases a horrific stench. It's literally the excrement of elite
Russia: spindly ballerinas, government deputies, Maly Theater thespians,
fat-fingered "New Russians" from the Hotel Metropol. We crane our necks
and peer up a thin, 50-foot brick shaft topped with a plastic toilet
seat.
A few tight turns later, we're shambling down a seemingly endless,
six-foot-wide tunnel lined with spaghettilike green cables. "See these
tubes?" Mikhailov says. "All special security service lines, you know."
Property of the FSB, postcommunist Russia's version of the KGB. Then we
hit what appears to be an impasse: a large rusted grill blocking the
passageway. "Not a problem," Mikhailov says. He quickly manhandles it,
and with a "ching" the middle bar breaks loose from its moorings. We
slide through and press on, down more dim corridors festooned with
wires. In a dank corner, behind some rusty pipes, are a pile of human
feces and several vodka bottles, detritus from the large vagabond
culture, thousands and perhaps even tens of thousands strong, that
inhabits much of the city's netherworld, especially in the bitter months
of a Moscow winter.
We edge past a giant turbine and descend two metal ladders, which take
us down to the third level. The heat is intense under our plastic
helmets and crinkly resin coveralls. We round a sharp corner and begin
trailing the network of gas and water mains that leads directly
underneath the Kremlin. I'm thinking, It shouldn't be this easy. A
Chechen terrorist with a fertilizer bomb could practically bring the
nation to its knees. Mikhailov, apparently, is thinking the same, for
he's grown suddenly flustered, tentative, his mischief-maker's face
washing over with solemnity. "Uh, we really can't go any farther," he
says. "Not with a foreign journalist. After all, we're patriots here."
So Mikhailov turns our little expedition around, taking a slightly
different route to the surface. Going on instinct, he hangs a right, a
left, another left. Twenty minutes later we spot a tiny crawl space
above, with shafts of mote-flecked daylight spearing through. We shimmy
up through the hole, pop open a grate, and emerge right at the front
door of the Hotel National, one of the few bastions of European poshness
in this notoriously drab capital. A perturbed doorman in a starched
green gabardine suit and black bow tie swiftly walks over to the grate
to behold us, three suspicious characters in begrimed space suits.
"And who, may I ask, are you?"
"We're the Diggers, at your underground service," says Mikhailov. He
eases the grate back into place. "We'll be leaving now."
But not so fast. Just around the corner we're accosted by three
fuzzy-chinned teenagers who, oddly enough, have been leering at a brass
manhole cover in the street, flashlights in hand, contemplating their
own underground exploratory. They recognize Mikhailov instantly. Yes,
they've heard about the Diggers. They saw him recently on a Moscow talk
show, and in Russian Playboy, and on CNN. And how do they become
Diggers, anyway?
"Why don't you swing by the base later tonight and we'll talk about what
you need to do," Mikhailov says, always happy to indoctrinate fresh
recruits. Burov tries not to look excited, feigns a busy frown, adjusts
his battery pack. Mikhailov nods at the manhole cover and says to the
boys, pooh-poohingly, "That only leads to the first level. You should
have seen where we were just now. We could take a short trip if you
like." The three boys shoot one another gleeful looks. Mikhailov, pied
piper of the underground, strides back to the ventilation shaft we found
earlier by Lomonosov University. The black grate lifts, the golden
helmet descends, and the novitiates follow.
The city of Moscow, which this month is celebrating its 850th
anniversary, was built on alluvial soils along the swampy banks of the
Moscow River. It's the sort of pliable, sandy substrate that easily
yields to a shovel. And so, as the village of Moscow grew steadily
outward over the centuries, it also grew downward. Paranoid czars built
subterranean bunkers, supply depots, and enormous vaults in which they
stored their most treasured maps and books and jewels. In the 1580s, as
he plunged into madness, Ivan the Terrible dug down hundreds of feet to
construct his prized torture chamber and then, as legend has it,
murdered all the laborers who had constructed it, presumably so no one
would know its whereabouts. In the late 1700s, Catherine the Great hired
Italy's finest architects to channel the inconveniently situated Neglina
River into a vast underground network of brick-lined canals. Over time,
sewer systems and subways were installed, not to mention gas lines,
electric lines, telephone lines, the full latticework of modernity. The
Soviets burrowed even deeper, building secret tunnels and subway tracks,
KGB listening posts, and fallout shelters for the political elite,
hundreds of meters below the surface.
"A LOT OF PEOPLE
in the government hate me,"
MIKHAILOV SAYS.
"It's because I know more
about the underground than they do.
I'm the king down here."
Ordinary Muscovites have always had an ambivalent relationship with
their underground. In a country that has for centuries endured all
manner of political tyranny, living atop this maze of hidden passageways
and rumored catacombs has only tended to compound their suspicion that
someone somewhere is surely listening in, that dark doings are afoot,
that the very ground on which one walks is not to be trusted.
But if Russia's extensive underground has spun a climate of dread, it's
also offered ample opportunities for refuge. Samizdat, or banned
self-published literature, passed among literati in subterranean
darkness. Black marketeers have long turned to the catacombs to trade
hard currency. Stalin's infamous midnight purges, which inspired the
sobriquet "Genghis Khan with a Telephone," sent political enemies
fleeing for hidden tunnels and friendly basements.
When Vadim Mikhailov was a child, he spent entire days riding the metro
with his father, a subway conductor. He memorized the configurations and
junctions of all the different lines, came to know every dip and dogleg
in the track, learned the lay of his city from the bowels up. When he
was 12, he began undertaking increasingly ambitious jaunts, innocently
following municipal service tunnels and ventilator shafts just to see
where they led. Stuck in a sprawling gray city, too poor to travel,
where else was there for a restless young adventurer to go but down?
Besides, Mikhailov says, it was in his blood: He claims to be descended
from an old aristocratic family that once owned and ran a gold mine in
the Urals. Burrowing in the ground, he came to believe, was practically
a genetic predisposition.
Mikahilov's fascination for the underground pulled him out of art
academy and then out of medical school. He decided to forsake all
chances for a relatively secure, state-subsidized life; instead he
constantly daydreamed about ways to turn his moleish predilections into
some sort of calling. At first he explored in secrecy, terrified at the
prospect of getting caught by Soviet authorities who, having much to
hide, kept Moscow's underground strictly off-limits and well stocked
with security forces. Slowly, he built up a corps of a dozen or so
comrades who shared his clandestine love for the underground:
bodybuilders, pallid technogeeks, college dropouts with a jones for
urban design, former soldiers from the Afghanistan front, a few former
KGB agents turned karate instructors. They kept venturing deeper and
deeper, until they eventually realized that a cross-section of central
Moscow might have as many as 15 levels, plunging as deep as 700 meters.
The city's jumbled secrets seemed to press on one another like so many
tectonic plates.
In 1985, when Mikhailov was 20, Gorbachev came to power. Then, with
perestroika taking hold two years later, Russians everywhere began to
pick the lid off their history. Mikhailov and his friends were suddenly
emboldened. For the first time they were able to publicize their
underground jaunts while openly seeking more ragtag recruits. Mikhailov
was finally able to invite the Moscow media to join him belowground, to
shine their lights on the waste dumps, the sagging wartime
infrastructure, the Mad Max cast of sewerbound psychotics, squatters,
hookers, and thieves.
While the Diggers were mostly just larking around down there, they
managed to make some fascinating — and in some cases frightening —
discoveries along the way. Last year, Mikhailov and the Diggers stumbled
upon 250 kilograms of radioactive material under Moscow State
University, a discovery that seemed to shed light on the long anecdotal
history of illness, hair loss, and infertility among the university's
students and faculty. Recently, Mikhailov claims to have rediscovered an
underground pond legendary since the eighteenth century as a site of
mass suicides. Mikhailov, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian who takes
great stock in omens, was thoroughly haunted by the place. "We all could
tell something horrifying had happened there," he recalls. "The tension
was palpable." The Diggers turned back from the site and never returned.
In 1994, exploring seven levels down, the Diggers hit upon what
Mikhailov believes is Stalin's much-rumored second metro system, a
"spetztunnel" used to spirit Party officials from the Kremlin to the
underground town of Ramenkoye, some 50 miles away. The train is still
functioning, he claims, and "for merely a few thousand dollars" he'd be
delighted to take international film crews down for an eyeful. Now
Mikhailov dreams of finding the lost library of Ivan the Terrible, a
priceless collection of Byzantine and Hebrew scrolls that is believed to
be stashed somewhere under the Kremlin and that for centuries has been
the subject of an on-again, off-again national search. To do it right,
of course, such an ambitious hunt would require not only considerable
funding and state-of-the-art archaeological equipment, but also official
permission to go rummaging beneath the twelfth-century foundation of the
Kremlin none of which the Diggers have.
If anything, Mikhailov has tended to thumb his nose at local
officialdom. He has a habit of hastily arranging press junkets in which
he'll unveil to the nine million citizens of Moscow the location of some
particularly egregious toxic dump or point out what he feels are the
foundational flaws of certain city-favored construction projects, such
as the giant Christ the Savior Cathedral that's now being rebuilt in the
center of town. Around city hall, he's been known to flaunt his
knowledge of the underground's many secrets, sometimes making vague
you're-in-for-a-big-surprise threats, like the Penguin in a Batman
episode.
At the same time, Mikhailov craves legitimacy like a kid craves car keys
— legitimacy both for the Diggers and for the city's long-neglected
underground, of which he considers himself the one true champion. He
wants the government to certify the Diggers as an official organization,
accord them some sort of status as underground firemen, security guards,
caped crusaders — something. But officials just seem to ignore him.
("Oh, you mean the speleologues?" says Alexander Zavaratov, deputy
director of the city militia's eco-police division. "We don't really
work with them.") Although the city's bald-pated mayor, Yuri Luzhkov,
once accompanied the Diggers on a well-publicized walkabout, he refuses
to listen to Mikhailov's lavish ideas for opening up the underground to
commercialized historical tours, glitzy malls and bistros, even a
cabaret under Red Square. In a metropolis on the brink of bankruptcy and
gripped by organized and not-so-organized crime, theme-parking the
smelly underground is well down on the mayor's priority list.
ONCE MIKHAILOV HAS PREVAILED OVER
criminality and terrorism
HE WANTS TO LEAD
ADVENTURE TOURS down there,
LIGHTING IT UP WITH THE
HOT NEON OF CAPITALISM
Which predictably incenses Mikhailov. "Our bureaucrats don't understand
that the city's future rests on its underground," Mikhailov pronounces.
"A lot of people in the government hate me. And I know why. It's because
I know more about the underground than they do. I'm the king down here."
After a long morning's foray underground, Mikhailov, Burov, and I repair
to the Digger "base," which turns out to be nothing more than
Mikhailov's mother's apartment in central Moscow, a cramped, slightly
dilapidated space just off traffic-clogged Leningradski Prospekt that
she shares with Mikhailov and his 19-year-old girlfriend. We climb the
sour stairwell and enter the stuffy entrance hall, crowded with helmets,
lamps, boots, orange vests, and waders — the de facto Digger dressing
room. Mikhailov gingerly rests his helmet on the hallway table, like a
trophy. Then we take off our skanky fire suits and hand them over to
Mrs. Mikhailov, who halfway-neatly folds them up, trying her best to
ignore the stench.
A busy, solicitous little woman with black hair, the widowed Mrs.
Mikhailov is the Diggers' den mother, press secretary, and, it seems,
greatest fan. "Come in, come in!" she burbles, hustling us toward the
yellow, linoleum-floored kitchen, where a kettle of bouillon simmers on
the stove, fogging up the windows. On a spotless card table, Mrs.
Mikhailov has laid out a spread of piroshki pastries, china teacups, and
a shiny zinc pot of tea.
Mikhailov pours himself a cup, parks himself on a stool, and begins
scribbling a map of some dark nook from the day's wanderings. Mrs.
Mikhailov unties her boy's ponytail and diligently combs his sweaty
chestnut hair, frowning at each snag. "I can't get rid of it," he says,
swishing his rock-star do. "The women think it's sexy."
Young Burov, meanwhile, takes the corner stool, picks up the phone, and
starts calling around, in an authoritative, grown-up person's voice, to
the local khozyayeni, or district landlords. He wants to see if there
have been any fires today. It's part of the daily Digger routine, the
Russian equivalent of checking the police scanner. Mikhailov likes to
keep abreast of the news, partly because he's just incorrigibly curious
and partly because he thinks the Diggers, as volunteer firefighters,
might be able to save the day. "When are your exams?" Mikhailov asks
Burov between calls, momentarily paternal.
"In three days," he answers, embarrassed that his high school age has
now been revealed. "But it's only math."
Hanging out in his creaky apartment, you quickly realize that Diggerdom
is truly Mikhailov's entire life. He has no job, no responsibilities, no
schedule. The dozen or so hard-core members of the Diggers — most of
whom, like Burov, are half his age — are his only friends. At 32, he's
still an adolescent dreamer, and all his dreams, one way or another,
lead underground. He's fueled by ambitions so vast and wide-ranging that
he can barely articulate them, let alone turn them into reality. He
wants to start a safety training center for Digger initiates. He wants
to take a trip to the National Speleological Society in Alabama. He
wants a new Land Rover. He wants new fire-fighting suits and helmets
from France ("$1,700 each, but they're the best"). He wants to set up
sort of a free-market, for-profit security service to prevent people
who...well, people who aren't Diggers from roaming Moscow's warrens. And
once he's prevailed over the forces of criminality and terrorism and
cleaned up the environmental hazards, he wants to lead adventure tours
down there, lighting it all up with the hot neon of capitalism.
In the meantime, all the Diggers really have to work with is their
shared obsession, some seriously antiquated equipment, and their modest
"base" here in this fatigued section of town behind the railway station.
Mikhailov's apartment is both the Digger lodge and the Digger museum.
It's stuffed to the gills with stalagmites and stalactites, fossils and
bones, a miscellany of relics plucked from the depths. There are Digger
scrapbooks, videos of various Digger media appearances, cassette tapes
filled with Digger songs sung at Digger initiation ceremonies (in which
Mikhailov touches the kneeling inductees on each shoulder with a sword,
King Arthur style, and then asks them to recite an elaborate pledge to
protect the underground environment). Hidden away, he keeps a manuscript
of the Digger novel that he's written but can't get published and the
collection of subterranean maps that he has lovingly rendered but can't
sell. Out of a shoebox of photos, he removes a portrait of himself
standing with Hollywood film director Phillip Noyce, whom the Diggers
led underground for the 1997 Val Kilmer movie The Saint.
Which brings up a sore point, actually. "After I took him down,"
Mikhailov says ruefully, "Phillip said he was going to help me make a
movie about my life. I gave him some tapes and, well, I haven't heard
from him since." At that, Mikhailov's bombshell girlfriend, Marina,
swishes into the kitchen in a pink terry-cloth bathrobe and black pumps.
"Vadim," she says, fingering her wavy blond hair, "why didn't you sign a
contract with him? You should have put something in writing."
Mikhailov winces at this noxious intrusion of practicality and lapses
into one of his frequent monologues on Digger philosophy, such as it is.
"The important thing," he says, "is that we've become a part of history.
Diggerdom may have started as children's games, but it's turned into
something serious. We're living in a whole new epoch now, the epoch of
the Diggers. This is no hobby. It's a state of the soul. These places
where we go, they're full of darkness and disease, rudeness and vice,
all collected there like a sponge. But it's interesting! There's a total
civilization down there! When I hear the water babbling in the sewers,
it's as if I can hear our ancestors talking. I hear their whispers
bubbling up, and I'm closer to them."
Marina rolls her eyes and disappears into some back room of the
apartment. Mikhailov takes a sip of tea and goes back to work on his
sketch, laboriously shading in the thousandth brick in what has become a
baroquely detailed drawing of some monumental sewer system. Then he
looks up and says, "People think they are independent of these
underground forces. But they're not. We're all just rats in a big
laboratory. We all depend on the underground. For what has come before
us, determines us."
After a snack, we pull on our boots and fire suits again and head out
for an afternoon sortie. Mikhailov secures his helmet in the hallway
mirror, and slaps on a bit of Harley-Davidson cologne. Then he realizes
his headlamp batteries are dead. He looks at me pleadingly and says, "Do
you have money to buy some at the kiosk downstairs?"
It's late afternoon now, and we're seriously lost, somewhere deep under
a part of town known as Sukharevskaya, several levels below Moscow's
Garden Ring speedway. We're making our way through a cool brick corridor
strung crazily with dripping electric wires, wading through a foot-deep
swirl of sour-smelling chemicals. Two flashlights have already died on
us, and now there's only Mikhailov's headlamp, with its nice fresh
batteries, to guide us to the surface.
We stumble across a threshold and the brick corridor opens up into a
series of chambers. We've wandered into some sort of extensive hippie
hideaway, room after musty room painted with sad, groovy murals: red
guitars dancing with musical notes, rainbows, "Peace," "I Love the
Beatles."
"These date back to the sixties," Mikhailov whispers reverently, as if
we've just stumbled upon some priceless eastern adjunct to the Lascaux
cave paintings. But then the sad-sweet hippie atmospherics darken.
Charcoaled on a gray, square building support, Mikhailov spots some
demonic, if misspelled, graffiti scrawled in English — "satin was here"
and "666" — and instantly falls into a deep panic. "Devil-worshipers!"
he says. "Shhh! Be still!"
We hear some indistinct droning above. Mikhailov is certain it's satanic
chanting, that there's a coven just above us engaged in some sickening
rite. He's breathing uneasily, hunting desperately for a way out before
warlocks descend, his Russian Orthodox imagination running wild. He
brandishes a knife, and we retrace our steps, past an old white stone
chimney and central heating system. A shabby-looking elevator looms up
from the black depths.
After a half-hour of frantically retracing the maze, we take a chance on
a cement crawl space low along a blistered wall. We hurriedly shimmy
through on hands and knees until we come to a rusted ladder. Vadik races
up first and pops the top. Light! Weak light, but light. We grasp the
flaking rungs and follow Burov's lead, emerging, sweaty and disoriented,
into a shadowy courtyard. A babushka sitting on a stoop shoots us a
long, baleful stare; a toddler saunters in a scummy apartment entrance.
It's your typical Moscow tableaux: no satanists, no chanting, just a
television squawking from some unseen apartment.
We wash our hands under a dribbling drainpipe, and Mikhailov throws me a
raised-eyebrowed look of relief, as if to say, "That was a close one."
Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. But it's somehow nice to see that decades
of subterranean exploration haven't dulled Mikhailov's capacity for a
good spook.
"It's a struggle down there, the forces of good against the forces of
evil, " he says as we hail a cab in the late Moscow rush hour. "Yet God
would have shown us a thousand times if we weren't supposed to be doing
this. He protects us, you know. Nothing bad ever happens to the
Diggers."
*********
#5
St. Petersburg Times
SEPTEMBER 1-7, 1997
Ladoga Site Might Mark Birth of Russian Civilization
By John Varoli
SPECIAL TO THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
As academics and intelligentsia struggle to enunciate the "Russian
idea," a local archeologist has announced that Russian civilization was
born some 100 kilometers east of St. Petersburg.
While giving traditional early capitals Novgorod and Kiev their full
due, Professor Anatoly Kirpichnikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences'
Historical Institute of Culture says his work at Staraya Ladoga has
amassed enough evidence to claim that the site was the center of
political power in ancient Russia during the eighth and ninth centuries,
well before Novgorod and Kiev arose as power centers.
"No one is trying to take away the title of Russia's ancient capital
from Novgorod or Kiev, but at Staraya Ladoga Russia saw the dawn of its
state and its urban civilization," said Kirpichnikov, who has spent 25
years excavating in Staraya Ladoga, at a press conference held in St.
Petersburg last Wednesday.
Staraya Ladoga is an ancient Russian city located some 100 kilometers
east of St. Petersburg on the Volkhov River just a few kilometers inland
to the south of the shores of Lake Ladoga. From Staraya Ladoga, the
Vokhov runs to Novgorod on the shores of Lake Ilmen.
Kirpichnikov pointed out that Staraya Ladoga was an important trade and
cultural center well before the Vikings discovered it.
Kirpichnikov showed off some of the latest finds at the Staraya Ladoga
site to back up his claims, the most interesting of which were rare
examples of ancient Scandinavian and Slavic jewelry.
"The specimens that we found were not made by village craftsmen," he
said. "These are artifacts that rank as the highest class according to
international standards of the time."
Kirpichnikov explains that Scandinavian craftsmen had set up shop in
Staraya Ladoga and were doing good business as Scandinavian fashion was
popular among Russian women of the time.
"International contacts were highly developed at Staraya Ladoga. It was
a relatively free society and a commercial city-state. To use a
contemporary term, we might say it was a free economic zone that
attracted merchants from throughout the Baltic Sea civilization.
"There was no Iron Curtain. The city was Russia's 'Window on Europe'
1,000 years ago."
Sometimes labeled the "pearl of the Leningrad region," Staraya Ladoga
was a key commercial city-state in the 8th to 10th centuries, located as
it was on the international trade routes used by the Vikings as they
traveled to Byzantine and other parts of the Middle East. Both Staraya
Ladoga and Novgorod lie on the trade routes that linked Byzantium, Kiev,
Smolensk and the Baltic Sea.
Kirpichnikov's press conference last Wednesday was a rare event for
Russian archeology, which usually keeps a low profile. And as if to
understate the political significance of anything connected to Russia's
history and national identity, he met the public flanked by the
Leningrad Oblast's chief deputy governor and the vice speaker of the
Legislative Assembly.
After all, the stakes here are large - the title of capital of ancient
Russia. Novgorod, located three hours south of St. Petersburg, and Kiev
currently share the title.
But Kirpichnikov says that the Viking Rurik dynasty that founded the
Kievan Rus in the late 9th century first established itself in Staraya
Ladoga.
"Here, in 862, the Rurik dynasty established itself in Russia after
being invited [from Scandinavia]," he said.
According to some historians, the descendants of the house of Rurik also
founded the Muscovite Russian state after the collapse of Mongol rule at
the end of the 14th century, ruling Muscovy and then Russia until the
death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584.
Indeed few subjects arouse as much passion amongst Russian academics and
intellectuals as ancient Russian history. Debates on the origins of the
Russian state and which of the cultural forefathers of tsarist Russia
had the greatest effect on it - Slavs, Vikings or Mongols - rage on with
no end in sight.
Kirpichnkov said the importance of his finds at Staraya Ladoga should
stimulate the government to overcome the lack of adequate funding for
restoration at both the Staraya Ladoga site and at the many other
decaying historical sites in the Leningrad Oblast.
"Maybe the government does not have money. But this concerns our history
and culture and something needs to be done to save it," he said.
"Few people in St. Petersburg know that Staraya Ladoga has a 12th
century church which is a unique example of ancient Byzantine art and
culture.
"In international practice such a site would usually be given the
highest rating as a point of cultural value. But that is not done here."
"The chief problem before us now is to raise the status of Staraya
Ladoga and officially label it as a unique part of Russia's cultural
heritage," he said.
Oblast officials were quick to support the archeology professor.
"Scandinavians today know more about Staraya Ladoga than Russians," said
Georgy Samsonenko, deputy director of the oblast's Legislative Assembly.
"There really is a need to educate our people about Staraya Ladoga and
market it as a tourist attraction.
"This is the only way we can really help solve its financial problems."
**********
#6
St. Petersburg Times
SEPTEMBER 1-7, 1997
Media Watch
Paranoia and Carelessness Make a Lonely Planet Out of Moscow
By Leonid Bershidsky
RUSSIA is a dangerous place. The Lonely Planet guide to Russia contains
this dire warning for the traveler foolhardy enough to consider a trip
to Moscow: "The misdealings of corrupt officials, business people,
financiers, police and out-and-out gangsters (known collectively as the
mafia) have spread into every corner and level of society."
This does not sound like the country I've been living in for 26 years.
There are a few corners - and, one likes to hope, even entire levels -
of this society unaffected by the evil deeds of various bad guys. Yet
when you talk to a Westerner who has never been to Russia, has just
arrived or has been away for a long time, the first thing you are likely
to hear is, "I've heard the crime situation has really gotten out of
hand in Russia."
They haven't all been reading the Lonely Planet guide. They've been
reading their local papers.
Admittedly, these papers' Moscow correspondents have plenty of facts to
work with. The American press had a lot of fun with a recent story of
elite cops moonlighting as bodyguards for a well-known crime figure.
And, of course, the murder of Paul Tatum was front page stuff.
The murder rate in Moscow is twice as high as in the United States, and
more people get killed in Moscow in a year than in all of Great Britain.
But I still feel safer here than I have been in some parts of New York
and Los Angeles. Either something is wrong with me and I've gotten too
careless, or people are getting the wrong signals from the perfectly
truthful coverage of the crime situation in Russia by the Western press.
It may be that reporters writing about the crime situation are by now so
used to it that they generalize too broadly.
A recent Associated Press story about the murder of Vice Governor
Mikhail Manevich, the privatization chief in St. Petersburg, said,
"Dozens of businessmen and government officials have been killed in
recent years, many of them in apparent disputes over state property."
However, as Alan Philps of The Daily Telegraph points out in one of his
pieces from Moscow, "Murders of government officials are very rare in
Russia." In fact, apart from State Duma deputies, high-ranking
politicians have not been victims of mafia-style hits.
And there is also the matter of volume. Russian crime is covered as
extensively as Russian communism once used to be, possibly because
communism is gone now, and crime is the biggest story left.
Crime stories sell newspapers. They are generally more interesting to
read than stories about how quiet and peaceful life is.
The irony is that people who write these stories live here and do not
feel they are risking their lives on the job.
Like most people in Moscow, they are alive and safe because they follow
this simple piece of advice from the Lonely Planet guide: "As in all big
cities, visitors should be neither too paranoid nor careless."
*********
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