But Potemkin village, another distinctly Russian concept that
has also entered foreign languages, reflects Russian reality and describes
Putin’s Russia a lot better. A Potemkin village – which denotes any fakery used
to deceive or impress – is named after Prince Grigory Potemkin, the 18th
century Russian courtier and Catherine the Great’s lover, who during her visit
to Ukraine and Crimea had wooden facades constructed along the way to convince
her that her newly conquered territories were densely settled.
I was recently on a three-day trip to Moscow and I came away
very impressed. Under its current mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, the center of the
Russian capital has become a pleasant Northern European city. The streets are
green and quiet, the sidewalks are wide and free of parked vehicles. Instead of
cracked and uneven asphalt they are paved with tiles. Cars obey speed limits
and pedestrian crossings are no longer death traps, thanks to ubiquitous
traffic cameras. There are many pedestrian streets and bike lanes. Major
intersections have flower beds and hokey sculptures.
However, while great for tourists and a handful of those who
can afford central Moscow, for the average Muscovite the city has become living
hell. Recent improvements have been mostly cosmetic, while the city’s
infrastructure remains poor: for instance, every major downpour reveals severe
flaws in storm drainage. The city is clogged with traffic, there is no parking
and public transport is overburdened. The sidewalk tiles are treacherous in
winter and shoddily laid. Moreover, since the ultimate purpose of all this
beautification is to steal money from the municipal budget and to enrich the
mayor and his cronies, recently paved streets are being repaved again and
again.
In short, the Russian capital is a Potemkin village and as such
it is a symbol of modern Russia. And not for the first time, either. In the
1970s, Brezhnev declared Moscow “the exemplary Communist city” – meaning that
undesirables were regularly expelled and food and consumer goods were
relatively plentiful – whereas store shelves across the country were pretty
bare.
Vladimir Voynovich in his dystopian novel Moscow 2042, written in the dying years of communism, imagines a
Moscow of the future that is an ultimate Potemkin village. It is a biting
satire, but the writer hit the nail on the head: fakery was at the core of the
Soviet political and economic system. The Marxist-Leninist theory promised
extraordinary achievements and huge prosperity under communism. It was supposed
to occur automatically once capitalism and private property were abolished.
Since those theoretical achievements usually failed to materialize, they had to
be manufactured. Deception went from the bottom up, as lower level officials
were under pressure to come up with fabulous successes to report to their bosses.
Lies were amalgamated and exaggerated further on the national level and were
promulgated from the top down.
Stalin’s industrialization was a classic Potemkin village, and
so were numerous five-year plans which were habitually completed in three or
four years. Slave labor by Gulag inmates was glorified as heroic tool by the
liberated working class. So was collectivization, too, as the reality of
starving and displaced farmers and grotesquely mismanaged government-owned
latifundias conflicted with bright descriptions in the newspapers and socialist
realist works of art.
The Soviet economy never functioned properly. It was never able
to provide enough food and consumer goods to meet demand. Moreover, the fact
that it functioned at all was the result of bribery, corruption, black market
and small-scale, stunted private enterprise, such as vegetable gardens and
farmers’ markets. The system collapsed instantly, like Potemkin’s wooden
facades, the moment it was opened up to market forces.
The Moscow metro is a Potemkin village all its own. It is a
series of marble and bronze palaces built underground without a thought for the
people who use it. The lavish stations are built too deeply, there are too few
of them and they are placed at a great distance from each other. Today’s Moscow
is paying the price for that harebrained bit of grandiose urban planning.
Putin’s regime has been called neo-Soviet and today Potemkin
villages are popping up anew all over the place. The Sochi Olympics was a
multibillion dollar Potemkin village painstakingly designed to show Russia as a
modern, prosperous nation. Too bad those Ukrainians staged a revolution,
forcing Russia to reveal the ugly face lurking behind the Olympic facade. And
too bad the wholesale government-run doping that had underpinned Russia’s
victory was eventually uncovered.
There is a major difference, however. The Soviet system that
collapsed 25 years ago was embellished by lies and exaggerated claims, but
there was at least a serious attempt to make it work: to produce goods and
services, to develop science and technology, to build a health care system, to
create a transport infrastructure and to advance education. In post-Soviet
Russia, in a typical postmodern way, sham replaces the real thing in its entirety.
It extends not only to social services and life support systems but to
government institutions, which have been privatized, pilfered and hollowed out
behind the facade of lies.
Even Putin’s favorite institution, the Federal Security Service (FSB), has lost its
professional skills. The British easily got to the bottom of its plot to murder
Alexander Litvinenko in London and traced it all the way to the top of the
Russian government. Agents involved in terrorism and assassinations abroad are
regularly caught red-handed. Russian hackers who breaching servers at the
Democratic National Committee were promptly identified. A ring of Russian spies
arrested in the United States a few years ago was useless; they had not even
done anything for which the American authorities could charge them.
And even the Russian military, the only institution the Soviets
cared about, is a joke. The occupation of Crimea was a show of strength, but it
was accomplished by a tiny Potemkin village unit that was well-trained,
disciplined and equipped with modern weapons. Behind this facade, the rest of
the Russian military is a demoralized horde of starved and abused recruits or
out-of-control kontraktniki, or
mercenaries. It is not a modern army and it is armed with obsolete weaponry.
Its real face can be seen in Donbas, and it isn’t a pretty sight.
Meanwhile, the government regularly announces some new
breakthrough: an invincible Armada tank, a ballistic rocket or some other
Potemkin miracle weapon.
In the Soviet era, socialist realism was working hard to
embellish reality, but after Stalin’s death it at least tried to appear
plausible. Today’s television is the only real industry in Russia and it has
manufactured a world all its own, an alternative reality that was produced in
the TV studios in Ostankino and stuffed into the heads of Russian citizens. Now
not only the Russian economy but its political system is sham, a house of
cards, and any change at the top – such as the removal or death of Putin – is
likely to trigger its disastrous collapse.
But not before it gets a chance to export its model. Last week,
U.S .media uncovered several new links between Donald Trump and Russia. Paul Manafort,
who just got fired as Trump’s campaign manager, had been paid nearly $13
million by the government of Viktor Yanukovych. Meanwhile, Trump’s daughter
Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who continues to play a major role in the
campaign, are buddies with Wendi Murdoch, rumored to be involved with Putin
romantically – if it’s a word that can be applied to the Russian president.
But Trump’s strongest link to Putin is their embrace of
alternative reality. Thus, the United States now has its first alternative
reality presidential candidate to match the Russian president.
Trump is a political figure built entirely from the thin air of
reality TV. On his show, The Apprentice,
he pretends to be a wealthy, successful businessman, highly competent and fully
in control. In reality, however, his business empire is a Potemkin village. He
doesn’t build anything and his business consists mainly of licensing his name
to often unscrupulous ventures who use his sham reputation to snare customers.
This is the real reason Trump refuses to release his taxes returns: unlike the
propaganda-befuddled Russian population, most Americans are still capable of
distinguishing between fact and fiction.
But don’t get too complacent about it. Americans are also being
poisoned by alternative reality lies. Trump was one of the greatest promoters
of the birther movement, which forms the foundation of his political career. A
substantial percentage of Republicans believe that Barack Obama wasn’t born in
the United States or that he’s a secret Muslim. Trump’s never-ending flow of
lies on the campaign trail fall onto receptive American brains richly manured
by Fox News and AM radio talk shows.
I have long ago noted that the two former Cold War rivals,
Russia and the United States, are like Siamese twins linked at the hip.
Whenever you see some craziness happening in Russia, wait a few years and
you’ll see it pop up in these shores.
