An extraordinary white elephant, those Winter Olympic Games
(which in Russian are called the White Olympiad) held in the subtropics had
echoes of the Soviet dream encapsulated in a quote by a 1930s agronomist who
declared: “We can’t expect charity from nature; our goal is to force it out of
her,” and expressed in plans to reverse the flow of the great Siberian rivers
in order to irrigate Central Asia.
Leonid Brezhnev failed in that grandiose, if hare-brained, undertaking,
whereas Putin actually succeeded – albeit on a much smaller scale.
Sochi was the last gasp of his “energy superpower.” There was
plenty of money for his cronies to skim off building contracts – and they did
steal billions, as Russian opposition politicians amply documented – but in the
end a world-class winter resort emerged from that Bacchanal of graft and
corruption.
The games themselves were a smashing success. Lots of foreign
guests, great competition and no incidents – and Russia even managed to come
from behind to win the final medal count. Even the fact that some of its gold
was won by expats hastily given Russian passports could be seen in a positive
light: the willingness of some of the world’s top athletes to accept Russian
citizenship was a sign that Russia had arrived.
But the high point often contains the seeds of its own demise.
In Russia’s case, the fall from the top has been especially precipitous, even
head-spinning.
It actually began just prior to the Olympics, in late January
2014, when the rouble suddenly dropped. Now its depreciation from 33 rubles per
U.S. dollar to 36 rubles looks like child’s play, but at the time it caused a
kind of panic. Then, before the Games closed, the standoff in Kyiv came to a
head, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich fled to Russia and
Putin’s “little green men” started to move into Crimea.
It has been downhill ever since – morally, politically,
militarily, economically and reputationally. In just two years Russia has
become a very different place and Putin, the gracious host of Sochi, has been
transmogrified into a monster in the perception of many people around the
world. And there is still a lot of time left before the start of the Soccer
World Cup.
There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it lately. Let’s assume
it’ll take place, even though it is by no means a safe assumption: after all,
corruption investigations at FIFA are ongoing. Even more likely, however, are
unpredictable developments within Russia itself, which could range from Putin
changing his mind about hosting the world’s most important sporting event to
Russia exchanging Putin for someone else – possibly violently.
Still, the 2018 World Cup is likely to happen. The question is
what will it look like?
Natually, the luxury of Sochi will not be matched. It would have
always been difficult to do, since instead of one small town World Cup games
will be held in 11 cities spread out over great distances, most of
which are in many ways Third World. At
the very least, they will need modern sports, tourism and transport
infrastructure.
Faced with an economic catastrophe, partly resulting from a
huge drop in world oil prices and partly of its own making, the Russian
government has already been forced to cut spending on the project several
times, and it is only the beginning. Besides, the economic crisis is reducing
the value of the budget in dollar terms. It has gone done from $9.9 billion
last summer to $8 billion now without any additional cuts, thanks to the ruble
depreciation.
Money, or rather lack of it, is only part of the problem. Even
if oil prices bounce back, given the persistence of international sanctions,
Russia will find it hard to get access to financing and technology it will need
to build stadiums and hotels and to modernize airports and rail links. It won’t
get Western hotel, restaurant and transportation partners to participate and
won’t be able to interest advertisers.
An additional problem in terms of advertising has arisen
because of Putin’s misguided sanctions on his own people. Hoping to inflict
economic damage on the West and turn EU farmers against their own governments,
he banned the importation of food from countries that had imposed sanctions on
Russia. So now International food conglomerates no longer advertise in Russia,
and this has already caused a crisis for the Russian advertising industry and
mass media.
A quarrel with Turkey since it shot down a Russian military
plane last year has deprived builders of the frequently used contracting firms
and skilled, reliable construction labor.
And if you think that there will be any less stealing from
World Cup construction now that the budget has been cut – think again. There’s
a definite sense of the end of an era in Russia, and the Putin kleptocracy has
thrown off all pretense at decency. All who can are stealing whatever they can
lay their hands on like there’s no tomorrow – which they actually believe to be
the case.
As a result, whatever is built for the World Cup is likely be
shoddy, dangerous, costly and will probably not be finished in time.
Even in the Soviet era, when there was no private enterprise
and small, independent cafes and restaurants with a local flavor were
nonexistent, the government built a few glass pavilions for the Olympics,
realizing that this was what most visitors would want: small fast food joints
rater than overpriced restaurants at their hotels. In today’s Moscow run by
Putin’s appointee Sergey Sobyanin, over 100 small independent shops and
restaurants have just been brutally, wantonly and illegally torn down, with
bulldozers arriving in the middle of the night.
Then there is the question who’s going to come when the games
actually start. A number of countries whose national teams are very likely to
qualify for the World Cup may decide to boycott it. Over the past two years
Russia has made enemies of Ukraine, the Netherlands, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Poland, and who knows how many it will antagonize and irritate in the next
twenty-five months.
In any case, Russia may actually wish that fans from those
countries stay home. Protecting them in the climate of aggressive, aggrieved
xenophobia that the government and its TV propaganda has been fostering may
prove difficult.
Other countries’ fans had better beware, too. Russians are
becoming impoverished and angry, and the Russian police is corrupt and
ineffective when it comes to everything except harassing peaceful protesters
and collecting bribes. Cities outside Moscow and St. Petersburg may not be
particularly safe to visit by foreigners. Certainly it would not be advisable
for fans to bring their families. And let’s not forget about the collapse of
Russia’s health care outside a couple of major cities.
And now about the performance of the home team. Brazilian
goaltender Guilherme Marinato became Russian citizen late last year. FIFA is
stricter about juggling passports than the international Olympic Committee, but
there have been report of Brazilian, German and Italian players who want to
become Russians, at least some of them in the hope of having an easier road to
the World Cup than in their native countries. Russia will certainly need
reinforcements, since it lacks world-class players with solid international
experience who could lead the national team to a respectable showing.
But this too may become difficult. Of course soccer players are
totally apolitical, and in any case they will never be regarded as quislings on
the par with foreign journalists still working for Russia Today or a couple of
Americans living in Russia and acting as stooges for Putin’s regime. Still, as
Russia becomes a pariah state, playing under its flag may cause a reputational
damage even for soccer players.
