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A Gogolesque journey in Dagestan The smell of fresh coriander and the scurry of live chickens, the oppressive heat of a bazaar and the hills of sand for construc- tion schemes that will never be finished. Girls wear hijabs, men pack guns and ride in foreign cars. These are the sights and sounds of Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan in the Caucasus, and they provide the exotic backdrop for one boy’s ill-fated journey through the chaotic and violent city. “Salam, Dalgat,” (Hello Dal-


gat) a short story translated in this first collection of young lit- erary prizewinners, is a power- ful glimpse of a generation of young Dagestanis who live on a tightrope in a region torn by violence. Survival is based on a set of skills, mostly skills of evasion to avoid the worst fate. The worst fate seems unknow- able, but could involve crimi- nals, the police, prostitution or the Imam and his devotees pro- claiming violent jihad. The story, written by a 25-year-old Makhachkala na- tive, Alisa Ganieva, won the Debut Prize, Russia’s prestigious prize for young writers, in 2009. Ganieva wrote the story under the pseudonym Gulla Khirachev: Gulla is an old Avar name; translated as bullet, it has not been used much in the past century. Khirachev is a man’s last name. “People who live in Dagestan certainly understood that Gulla is not a real name, but they did think it was a man who wrote the story,” Ganieva, who recently moved to Moscow, said in an interview. “After my unmasking, some felt offend- ed that I deceived them…most


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Clean Slate Writers


"The Debut Prize prompts writ- ers to commit to literature their unique experience, what might be described as their first encounter with grown-up life," writes Olga Slavnikova, the director of the Debut Prize and winner of the Russian Booker Prize. The Prize began a decade ago without much fanfare, and it has since be- come a significant springboard for young writers who come to Moscow for "Debut Week."


Alisa Ganieva rides a horse in the mountains of her native Dagestan.


of my countrymen disapproved of my story; they say I am wash- ing dirty linen in public, or that the wounds of society should stay in the Caucasus.” Ganieva did receive some hate mail and not-so-veiled threats from her peers, but she said a few grate- ful emails also made their way to her.


“Squaring the Circle” in-


cludes original stories by 12 tal- ented young Russian writers. The title seems an odd choice to describe them, unless it is ironic in tone. The strength of this collection is the diversity of the texts and the writers’ in- difference to fitting in with ex- pectations.


“The Debut is the only prize


for young writers,” said Pero- va, a longtime, relentless ad- vocate of Russian fiction. “The literary world is so dissipated and scattered but this offers a chance to young writers. Oth- erwise you would never hear of these writers. “ Up to 50,000 writers com-


pete for the Debut Prize, which is funded by a medical charity created to help provincial clin- ics. This year, Debut prizewin- ners are being introduced to foreign readers. This collection is available in English and Chi- nese and will be published in French, German, Italian, Span- ish and Japanese by 2011. The


History Last royal family still at the center of debate What did the Romanovs do?


The recent death of the last Romanov born before 1917 brings Russians to more soul searching about the family and its impact on Russian society.


ANNA ARUTUNYAN THE MOSCOW NEWS


Monty Python comedian John Cleese, playing a revolutionary leader in the film “Life of Brian,” was shocked to receive a flurry of positive answers to his rhe- torical question: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Russian scholars have tradi- tionally been less flattering about the Romanovs’ record. Amid the recent death of


Grand Duchess Leonida Geor- gievna, the last Romanov born before the 1917 revolution, Rus- sian historians are once more searching their souls and ask- ing, "What did the Romanov family ever do for us? The dynasty was at the height


of its European power after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. Yet barely a century later–after botched attempts at econom- ic, political and military reform– the last czar, Nikolai II, left be- hind a largely feudal country lagging far behind its European counterparts. If the end was far from glo-


rious, the dynasty’s beginnings were more auspicious. The Romanovs hailed from Anastasia Romanovna, the first wife of Ivan the Terrible, whose death in 1560 is believed to have pushed him over the edge into psychosis. The family got its chance for


power half a century later, when the boyars elected 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov after a period of anarchy known as The Time of Troubles.


ITAR-TASS


that the Romanovs after Cath- erine the Great carried just a few drops of Russian blood. The schism with the people arguably began with Peter the Great, who scandalized the bo- yars with his modernising ways–and his notorious order to ban beards. “Society was understood to be a passive ob- ject to be managed but under no circumstances as a partner to be negotiated with,” wrote Russian historian Semyon Ek- shkut. “The government saw dialogue as a danger not only to its own prerogative, but to society itself.” Czars allowed direct access


for a limited number of their subjects. In a modern setting, this practice continues to this day with the live TV call-in shows that Vladimir Putin has hosted, first as president and now as prime minister. “We can’t say that there was


1893: Czar Nikolai Romanov with fiancee Alexandra (upper left), future Czarina of Russia. “They needed to pick some-


one young, quiet and reliable,” said historical novelist Vladimir Sharov. The boyars felt they could easily manipulate Mikhail, and he ended up ruling in tan- dem with his more powerful fa- ther. It was Peter the Great who offered the best of the Ro- manovs. Besides building St. Pe- tersburg, he also drove the Turks out of Azov, built a fleet and es- poused a harsh form of state capitalism and free trade. But if the Romanovs did quite


a lot for their country, they also did a lot to it.


Consistently more European


than most of their subjects, the Romanovs for three centuries tried to impose a system of top-


down modernization that was unpopular at best and violent at worst. A prime example of this ap-


proach can be seen from an exchange between the arch- conservative Czar Nikolai I and his secret police chief, Count Alexander Benkendorf, in the aftermath of the 1830 French Revolution. “Russia is protected from the


calamity of revolution because, ever since Peter the Great, the monarchs always stood ahead of the nation,” Benkendorf told Nikolai. The secret to staying in power


was not to enlighten the peo- ple in the first place, Benkend- orf said, “so that the people do not attain the same level of un-


derstanding as their mon- archs.”


Nikolai I, or Nikolai Palkin


(‘The Stick’) as he was called in folklore, oversaw a brutal mili- tarization of society, where hap- less peasants were drafted into the army for life and often beat- en to death for minor offens- es.


But Nikolai was also Russia’s


“only European,” according to Alexander Pushkin, whose fond- ness for his patron was appar- ently undimmed by his wife, Natalya Goncharova, reputed- ly having an affair with Niko- lai.


The “European” character of


the Romanovs was literally true, since frequent intermarriage with European royalty meant


a complete alienation between the monarch and society,” said Sharov, the novelist. “There was a cult around the monarch, and the blame for many things was widely pinned on [those who] surrounded him." “The idea that only the head


of state can solve your person- al problems is genetically in- grained,” said Dmitry Babich, a political commentator at RIA Novosti. This accessibility proved fatal


for the reforming tsar, Alexan- der II, who abolished serfdom in 1861. In 1866, Alexander sur- vived his first assassination at- tempt in St. Petersburg’s Sum- mer Garden. Yet years later, he was still making himself avail- able to disgruntled citizens–and one of them finally succeeded in killing him on a city street in 1881.


publishers could strongly con- sider hiring a single, top-tier translator to create a more co- hesive collection. The English- language edition is extremely uneven in translation quality, with baffling sentences and strange word choice. Yet the quality of the work


shines through. Ganieva’s “Salam, Dalgat” is an odyssey of conscience, a plea for sanity and reason over the extremes of Dagestani survival. The collection's opening


story, Aleksei Lukyanov’s “High Pressure,” reveals Italo Calvi- no-style whimsy, an industrial magic realism. The setting is a factory of pipeline welders,


and the story is amusingly an- ti-government in tone. In Igor Savelyev’s light, atmospheric “Modern-Day Pastoral,” a gov- ernment ministry issues a de- cree to allow passengers to ride on the luggage rack above the seats. The idea that these writers


are free of Soviet ghosts is only somewhat true. The writing is fresh and present in the social upheaval of this moment in Russian time. But it is neither unburdened nor unknowing. The clamor of the past is in their stories much the way a dance is remembered in your arms and shoulders, informing your next move.


Gambling Will Russians go this far to gamble? Don’t bet on it!


A Far-Flung Gamble


Could gambling in exile pay off? Kevin O'Flynn explores the special gambling zone on the Azov Coast, and finds there are signs of positive growth. But it's not exactly Las Vegas.


KEVIN O’FLYNN RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY


It takes a bumpy, three-hour drive along crumbling roads to travel from the nearest city to this lonely outpost in the mid- dle of a barren field. Visitors walk across wooden


planks laid down over dug-up earth, as fluorescent-lit palm trees glimmer nearby. The build- ing, squat and ugly, is festooned with blazing lights. Two stray dogs curl up by the entrance, hiding from the howling wind that sweeps in from the nearby Azov Sea. Welcome to the Russian Las


Vegas. Yury Pozharov is the director


of the Oracle, the first legal gam- ing site built since a Russian gambling ban last year restrict- ed casinos and slot machines to four special zones in far-flung locations. Since it opened in February, he says the Oracle draws between 150 and 400 people a day, both locals and out-of-towners. Last year, Russian gamblers


were shocked, shocked to find out that gambling would no lon- ger be legal in most of the coun- try. The ban put hundreds of thousands of casino workers out of work and threatened to drain as much as $1 billion in tax rev- enues from state coffers. It also put an abrupt end to


a culture of entertainment and excess embraced by the coun- try’s oligarchs and high rollers. (There are signs that illegal gam- bling is flourishing, however: a large underground casino was closed down in Moscow earlier this year, and as many as 40 criminal cases connected to other operations are currently pending in Moscow alone.) Prime Minister Vladimir Putin,


who first proposed the step while president, said the ban was a moral imperative that would save families of modest means from losing their last ruble. Instead, the Kremlin des- ignated legal gambling zones in the Far East, Kaliningrad, Si- beria’s Altai Krai and the Azov Sea coast. The plan, it was hoped, would funnel new in- come into economically slug- gish regions while keeping the bulk of Russia vice-free. Nearly a year into the exper-


iment, however, foreign and Russian investors remain ex- tremely skeptical. Azov City, near the mouth of the River Don in southern Russia, is the only zone to have successfully launched a casino. Royal Time says a second ca-


sino is expected to open by summer, and a third by year’s end, with hotels and an aqua- park to follow. The plans have sparked eager claims that the Azov City complex may even- tually draw in as many as 25 million tourists a year. For some visitors, it’s hard to


imagine a boomtown rising from what essentially remains an empty lot. But locals are cau- tiously optimistic. Lyudmila, a resident of the neighboring vil- lage of Molchanovka, said her home would still be without heat if it weren’t for the Oracle and the infrastructure it demands. “For us, of course it’s good,”


she said. “They gave us gas, electricity, water. We have gas heating now, so of course it’s good for us. My sons don’t go there; they say they’ll never go. They’re scared because it sucks you in.”


Perhaps the greatest chal-


lenge facing the Oracle is the amount of time it takes to get there. The two nearest cities are hours away by car, and the con- ditions of roads leading to Azov City can be treacherous. (A Kras- nodar lawmaker and his driver were killed in a late-night crash after visiting the Oracle.) The casino has tried to sweet-


en the deal by offering free mini- bus service, but it hasn’t been enough to draw in the crowds. David Semelnikov, a 26-year-old fitter, may be the image of the Oracle’s ideal cli- ent -- a die-hard gambler who doesn’t let a road trip stand in the way of his fix. He arrived at Azov City in his car at 11 a.m. for his fourth trip to the Oracle in a week.


"For us, of course it's good," said one local resident. "They gave us gas, electricity and water."


Semelnikov says he has al-


ready made 5,000 rubles ($165) on the slot machines, and has winnowed the trip down to a relatively speedy 2 1/2 hours. He plans to spend four or five hours on the slots before head- ing back. “They’ve banned it in the city,


taken them all away and made a special entertainment center, where you can calmly, legally play,” Semelnikov said. “It’s the first legal club. So we’ve come from Rostov to try our luck.” Andrei, a local taxi driver who


refuses to give his last name, is among those who has seen his fortunes improve as a result of the casino, enjoying a busy trade shuttling clients back and forth between the Oracle and various cities. But after losing several thou-


sand rubles on the slot machines and watching other people fall into despair after losing even more, Andrei says he has per- sonally lost his taste for gam- bling.


“The poor people come and


end up with nothing,” Andrei said. "And these oligarchs who come with money, they just go on and on. They come, have their fun, then get in their Jeep and go on their way.”


Copyright (c) 2010 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of RFE/RL 1201 Connecticut Avenue, WA DC 20036


MIKHAIL MORDASOV_RIA NOVOSTI


The Oracle Casino is currently the only such legal establish- ment operating in Russia.


Catch the vibes of Moscow www.rbth.ru/blogs


“You don’t have to be a millionaire to live a decent life in Moscow”


“...I understood about 5 percent of what he was saying and he understood about 10 percent of what I was saying. After about 20 minutes he whips out a St. Petersburg scarf and hands it to me...”


“The only people in Russian films who have vaguely threatening accents are non-Russians.”


To


advertise in this supplement


contact Julia Golikova golikova@rg.ru


or Lois Segel, International Sales Manager


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GADZHIMURAD SAGITOV


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