Date: 03/09/22
Author: Kent Moors, Ph.D.
As the invasion of Ukraine continues to center world attention, the state of the Russian economy is bringing back some unsavory memories. In the last Classified Intelligence Brief (“The Economic Crisis Emerging in Moscow,” Classified Intelligence Brief, March 7, 2022), I addressed problems unprecedented economic sanctions are causing for the Russian economy.
But the real human impact is unfolding below what the media is showing. Unfortunately, that is also becoming problematic after the upper house of the Russian legislature effectively ended objective reporting. In a unanimous example of licking Putin’s boots, the Federation Council passed a law threatening up to 15 years in prison for publishing or airing “fake news.”
To nobody’s surprise, the targeted journalism is anything that goes against the Kremlin’s line and virtually guarantees that the only news making it out to Russians on the battles in Ukraine is heavily censored by the government. That is one way of spinning the news cycle. For those of us who served in the last Cold War, it seems like déjà vu “all over again.”
CNN and the BBC have shut down their operations in the country rather than complying, while US network TV and major newspaper offices in Moscow are significantly curtailing activities. Even Radio Moscow, a popular local station in the city, has decided to close operations. Some opposition press has been emerging from a few newspapers, including a syndicate in the Urals that had adopted an unusually harsh line against the war. But the authorities have been quick with the police raids and closures of operations.
As a very small contribution in protest, I have severed my connections with Russian TV networks that would upon occasion run my economic commentary.
Government-controlled TV is the only source of any commentary remaining. These days, the daily broadcasts are of almost non-stop talk and discussion shows still addressing injustices done to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, providing ready outlets for the latest statements from the Kremlin and generals, highly critical or demeaning stories about the Ukrainian leadership, effusive praise for Putin, and largely cosmetic treatments of the army’s actions in what is euphemistically called a “special military operation.” (Journalists are not allowed to use the words “war” or “invasion.”)
This is blatant propaganda. And it has had a larger impact.
You see, we until recently had eight Moscow channels on a cable package at our house. I say “had” because our US provider deleted them a few days ago paralleling actions by other outlets nationwide. Some of this content is still available online, but that is also becoming more difficult to find.
The Moscow feeds were the way my wife Marina would follow what was happening back in her native city and also watch a Russian movie now and then. Yet even cinema has also fallen victim to a drive aimed at control of everything seen on the tube in Moscow. As it is, most of the movies being shown were nationalistic renditions of resistance in World War II. That Putin is referring to the Ukrainian government as Nazis is hardly unintended.
Perhaps most significantly there is also what has become the signal that something is happening below the public eye. Suddenly, without notice in the published TV schedules, episodes of the most popular and hailed patriotic series ever made began appearing on Moscow television.
It is a 12-part dramatization of Julian Semyonov’s “17 Moments of Spring,” a 1973 fictionalized work about a genuine historical Soviet spy working within the Nazi high command toward the end of World War II. Semyonov, who died in 1993, was the Soviet answer to John le Carré.
The broadcasted series is exceptionally well done, features some of the best-known Soviet actors of the period and is well worth your time (it is available in the US on DVD with good English subtitles).
These days, when “17 Moments” starts appearing out of nowhere, viewers expect that what is about to happen in real life demands public support. It started its latest run shortly after tanks moved into Ukraine.
Elsewhere, RT, the international network whose operating budget comes from the Russian Foreign Ministry, is being closed throughout Europe and Canada. The US access is still available in some major cities but is under heavy pressure. RT closed its head offices in Washington over the weekend, leaving what remains on air a recycling of what the Kremlin is cranking out back home.
All of this means that with each passing day it is becoming more difficult to see what is really happening on the streets of Moscow. With Western outlets packing up and leaving, the descent of life in the city is being shielded from view.
I have noted before in CIB that economic sanctions, even the heavy ones applied over the past several weeks, do not bring a nation to its knees very quickly. History has shown us that emphasizing domestic production and commerce combined with import substitution of what had been arriving via foreign trade with local alternatives, will offset outside moves, at least slowing down the economic impact.
Those who expect Russians to “Cry Uncle,” therefore, are going to be disappointed.
Nonetheless, there are already indications that the callousness evidenced back in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union is finding its way back into what Muscovites can expect from fellow citizens.
Today’s Spy Tale is recalled by a cryptic comment in a long missive sent by a Moscow contact on Monday. In a free-wheeling email that took far longer to arrive than normal (Big Brother is starting the delays again), the contact provided a verbal description of some unusual developments witnessed in the city.
After describing shortages and rising of prices, he said that more providers are now requiring payment up front for services, using a sliding scale of charges that anticipate a further decline in the value of the ruble.
That was expected. What was not and prompted my recalling the poignant story I am about to present was this line: “There have been two bodies found on benches in a nearby park. Seems somebody just left them there.”
The line jolted me back over two decades to one of the more difficult episodes experienced during my time living in Moscow.
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It goes like this:
Nikolai T., age 53, had died a little more than a week before I arrived back in Moscow. His daughter lives nearby and told me the story. It appears that such things are happening again, at least according to my email contact on Monday, as Russia stares into an uncertain financial decline.
It is a sad commentary on human nature and it hurts even to write about it. More so because, after living there off and on for years, I foolishly thought I was coming to understand Moscow.
Nikolai had been on disability following a 1995 boiler explosion at the factory where he had worked since leaving the army years ago. The official cause of death was listed as “pneumonia,” but his declining health had advanced in the last year and the actual culprit could have been just about anything.
His wife Lyudmila, three years younger, still works at the same plant where the accident occurred. She needs the job more than ever and the company had no intention of admitting responsibility for her plight.
Russian employer liability law then (and now) remains very weak. The widow will get no compensation, no assistance, and no consideration from her bosses.
Her husband’s death means that she will have to make do with less. His small pension was subject to delays anyway, but it will not be there at all now to supplement her salary. But it was before the mourning even started that she was confronted with how much things had changed in this city, how unfeeling people had become in this age of private profit. That such stories are told with more frequency of late is the most depressing indication yet that human decency is hardly guaranteed.
Nikolai was pronounced dead by a medic from the area clinic. If the death had taken place in the street, a public ambulance would have been provided.
Since his death took place at home, Lyudmila was advised that she had to call a private “removal service.” The medic offered to help for a fee. She paid. When the three men finally arrived, they told her she had to pay for their service upfront, arrange to have the body moved to a mortician, and purchase a burial permit.
She knew no undertakers, so the “service” representatives charged her the equivalent of one month of her salary to make the arrangements for her. With her dead husband still sitting in his living room chair and leaving three strangers in her apartment, Lyudmila walked to the bank and withdrew the cash.
The ordeal, however, was hardly over. While there was to be no vigil, wake, or religious observance, Nikolai did have the right to be buried either in a small cemetery reserved by his labor union or in a military burial site. The first was guaranteed by his work contract, the second supposedly by his honorable discharge from the army.
But for years normal folks have found it impossible to obtain a plot in the military cemetery and only a tearful pleading to her “shop steward” back at the plant got Nikolai a small place at the union location.
The body arrived at the cemetery in a closed wooden box. A thin mixture of fellow workers, a few relatives, and neighbors were all that was there to greet it. Unless you count the grave diggers. At this point the callousness reached new lows.
At her most vulnerable time, Lyudmila was told no burial would happen that day unless the diggers were paid…in advance, of course. Some in the gathering were outraged. So, the fellows with the shovels simply walked away. A widow was left with a cheap coffin and no place to put it!
An ad hoc collection took place on the spot, promises of “another payment sometime this week” were made by the daughter, and a negotiation commenced – right in front of a tired woman who just wanted to buy her husband. An agreement was finally reached and Nikola was laid to rest.
The Moscow I returned to shortly after all of this had transpired seemed an unusually cruel and hostile place. I gave Lyudmila some money the first time I saw her. Even then, however, I had to be careful. As a foreigner such a transaction, even if nothing else than to help somebody in need, could be construed by the authorities to be a more sinister act.
Upon hearing of Lyudmila’s ordeal, one of my neighbors offered a response and some morbid nostalgia along with it. “Bring back the communists,” he muttered. “At least they buried their dead.”I remarked back then that the local militia (police) were probably finding more bodies on park benches. Moscow, you see, was encouraging people to die in public. It’s cheaper.
From what I read in Monday’s email, some things about bodies and park benches appear not to have changed. I tried to get additional info. But for “strange reasons” the transmissions no longer can get through.
Yes sir, seems like déjà vu all over again.
Dr. Kent Moors
This is an installment of Classified Intelligence Brief, your guide to what’s really happening behind the headlines… and how to profit from it. Dr. Kent Moors served the United States for 30 years as one of the most highly decorated intelligence operatives alive today (including THREE Presidential commendations).
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