It is a sweltering July day: the Russian weather, like the Russian soul, is a creature of passionate extremes. Natasha and I are sitting in the garden of her dacha in the abundant countryside, just a half hour drive from her flat in the centre of St. Petersburg where I have been lodging for the past month. We get on well: we share interests in travel, literature and music, we make each other laugh (Natasha has a sharp sense of irony). She makes allowances for my faltering Russian; I know how to make the right noises when she produces a jar of home-made, home-grown, utterly disgusting fruit kampot (translation: sludge). Natasha is intelligent, well-educated, and well-travelled. Under the USSR, she trained as an engineer; now she is a journalist for a local newspaper.
We are discussing the recent diplomatic furore over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko; tentatively, I suggest that the Russians and the British have two very different ways of looking at the issues – it all depends on your point of view. Natasha explodes:
“It is double standards – British imperialism. You want us to give Lugovoi to Britain, but you refuse to give the criminal Berezovsky to Russia. It is an insult to the Russian nation. So please tell me how there can be another point of view!”
I hesitate. Suddenly I am not so sure… what is the other point of view?
On November 23rd last year, Alexander Litvinenko died after three weeks of media frenzy at his bedside. Litvinenko (author of articles such as Is Vladimir Putin A Paedophile?) had been an outspoken critic of the Russian government and Putin in particular. After his death it was discovered that he had been poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope, polonium-210. On the day he fell ill, he had lunch with a pair of former KGB agents.
Litvinenko’s murder was the stuff of spy novels. The six-month investigation followed a radioactive trail through London’s restaurants and hotels, on to British Airways planes, and finally to a reactor in a Russian nuclear power plant. On the 28th May, the Foreign Office issued an official request to Moscow for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, in order to try him in Britain for Litvinenko’s murder. Moscow refused. Britain responded by expelling four Russian diplomats from London; a week later, Moscow expelled four British diplomats. Russo-British relations were the chilliest they had been since the cold war.
The British and Russian sides have since found themselves in mutually uncomprehending deadlock. The British were appalled that a British citizen could be murdered in Britain, and his assassin walk free. One outraged contributor to the BBC website wrote: “For foreign assassins to murder someone on the streets of London using a radioactive device which has infected goodness-knows how many other people is completely shocking.”
Russians see things rather differently. First of all, it would have been contrary to the Russian constitution for Russia to extradite Lugovoi, since Russia has no extradition treaty with the UK. But anyone familiar with Russian politics knows that that is no real obstacle: Russian law is so full of ambiguities and loopholes that, with a bit of political will, most things are possible. The real sticking-point for Russians is the double standards which Britain seems to have applied when dealing with the matter.
Natasha explains it to me: Russia has submitted numerous requests for the extradition of Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire oligarch and political dissident who is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud and corruption. Why should Russia hand over Lugovoi to Britain when Britain refuses to extradite Berezovsky?
What’s more, she says, Britain’s actions in the whole affair show a fundamental disrespect for Russia, what she’s so fond of calling ‘British imperialism’. Russia offered to try Lugovoi in a Russian court, but Britain declined the offer. This, she says, is indicative of Britain’s patronizing and offensive attitude towards Russia.
Unsurprisingly, the Russian media agreed with Natasha’s version of events. Lugovoi was presented as the victim of slanderous allegations; people came forward to tell how they had been approached by the British secret service to spy on Russia. Nearly everyone I talked to felt that Russia’s pride had been insulted by Britain’s actions, and that standing up to Britain was the right thing for Putin to have done.
To us, Russian allegiance to Putin often seems incomprehensible. In the western media, Putin is characteristically portrayed as a rather shady character, a power-hungry former KGB agent. His record on human rights is appalling. Russia is second only to Iraq in terms of the number of journalists killed there. The press is notoriously biased, with all three of the major television networks linked to the Kremlin. The Russian military policy in Chechnya is equally dubious, with reports of torture and murder of civilians by the Russian army. Corruption persists in Russia’s institutions.
With all these problems, it may seem hard to understand how Russians can still have affection and respect towards Putin, but they really do. He commands around seventy percent of the vote. His recent announcement that he will consider standing for Prime Minister when his term as President comes to an end was greeted with widespread celebrations.
At his annual live phone-in event, in which Russian people are invited to send in questions which he then answers on a live TV show, Putin was seen laughing and smiling, at ease with his adoring public. Here is one exchange:
Caller: I don’t want to speak to you, presenter, I just want to speak to the President.
Presenter: If you ask your question, the President will answer…
Putin: I’m listening.
Caller: Is that you?
Putin: Yes, it’s me.
Caller: Is that really you?
Putin: Really.
Caller: Oh my goodness, thank you so much, thank you so much for everything!
And with that she hung up. Such adulation is not uncommon in Russia. So why do Russians feel this way about Putin, a man who to many western eyes is corrupt and dangerous?
When Putin came into power in 1999, Russia was going through one of the harshest economic crises in its recent history. Now the Russian economy is among the strongest in the world, and still growing. This has had a huge effect on the lives of ordinary Russians. The average monthly wage has risen from a paltry $65 in 1999 to $540 in 2007. Foreign luxury goods are now commonly available in Russian cities, and not the preserve of the super-rich. Poverty levels have almost halved; unemployment has fallen by 3.5 million, or around 40%. All in all, life in Russia is (economically speaking) overwhelmingly better now than it was eight years ago.
But that isn’t all. What matters to Russians as much as – if not more than – Putin’s economic reforms is that he has restored their pride in Russia. When they see Putin refusing to extradite Lugovoi to Britain, standing up to American proposals to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, or defying threats against his life to travel to Iran, they feel that he has forced other countries to give Russia the respect it deserves once again. Russians have a fierce love for their country, and in putting Russia back on the world map, Putin has won their hearts.
It is often surprising for a foreigner to hear Russians say that life was better under the communists than it was in the years following perestroika (Gorbachev’s program economic reforms in the late 80’s). In some countries of the former USSR where life is still hard – and in the poorer parts of Russia – people are still saying it. The reason they give is that in those days, it was easier to get by, and that is what is important. It is surprising for us because, according to the moral bran we have grown up eating for breakfast, a free and democratic political system is the only kind of political system worth having: it is from this point only that any other ideas and hopes we might have can grow.
But on what basis do we believe this? Putin is often criticized by western analysts for reversing many of Yeltsin’s democratic reforms. This is denounced by those campaigning for democracy and freedom of speech, but, for the majority of Russians, it has not been a negative step: they don’t mind what Putin’s politics are – however abhorrent we may find them – because life is getting better. Who are we to tell them how they should want their country run?
Natasha tells me: “You don’t understand Russia. We do not care about politics – we care about Russia. All I know is this: Vladimir Putin has made the word ‘Russia’ mean something again.”
