Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia by Luke Harding

Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia by Luke Harding

Author:Luke Harding [Luke Harding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Espionage, history, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, political science, Corruption & Misconduct, geopolitics, Intelligence & Espionage, Political Process, General
ISBN: 9781783352531
Google: jo0rEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-07-01T23:29:55.176800+00:00


During my four years in Moscow I spend less time than I would wish reporting on the country’s social problems, and the stark divisions between the haves and the have-nots. The disparities are bigger than in any other country I have worked as a foreign correspondent, including India, where I lived from 2000-2003, and other poor nations of south Asia.

In 2009 Russia overtakes Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil exporter; it is already the largest exporter of natural gas, and supplies a quarter of the EU’s gas needs. In the same year official figures show six million Russian families sliding into poverty again – defined at an adult income of less than 5,497 roubles or £115 a month – with the gains in fighting poverty during the period 2000-2008 utterly wiped out. There are wide regional differences in income. The elite, living in Moscow and St Petersburg, and those in crumbling villages and single-factory industrial towns, inhabit vastly different worlds.

There are also plenty of ironies, in a rich country full of poor people. During a visit to the provincial town of Oryol, 220 miles southwest of Moscow, I meet Tatiana Shcherbakova, a 68-year-old pensioner. When I visit her tiny flat, Tatiana is sitting in the living room. It is incongruously decorated with a giant photo of a sun-kissed tropical beach. It shows shimmering palm trees, islands and a yacht. She tells me the picture pasted to her wall is of the Canaries, one of many exotic destinations Shcherbakova would like to visit but can’t. “I don’t have the money to travel,” she explains. “It’s my great passion. I’ve always wanted to see Vladivostok. But the train ticket is too expensive.”

This is one of the strangest aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet journey. Thirty years ago, when the world was divided into two rival camps, Shcherbakova wasn’t allowed to travel to the west. But she took advantage of cheap internal fares to roam across the vast Soviet Union – holidaying in Moldavia, swimming in the Black Sea, dipping in the Danube and hiking in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Now Shcherbakova is free to travel anywhere. But on a meagre state pension of just 5,600 roubles a month she can’t afford to. Even a trip to her local spa looks unlikely. Most of her pensioner friends survive on even less. (Shcherbakova is entitled to a top-up because, back in 1943, the Germans seized her and her family when they overran Oryol, the scene of a famous second world war tank battle. They spent five months as slave labourers before the Red Army arrived.) “It’s enough to buy food. I’m not hungry,” she says. “But I don’t ever think I’m going to make it to the Canaries.”

The week before my trip to Oryol, Russia’s orthodox church had taken the highly unusual step of warning that the gulf between rich and poor was growing wider than ever. Some 20% of Russians lived below the poverty line, the church said. The richest 10% were now at least 25 times wealthier than the poorest 10%.



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