Russia has received a lot of attention in the past month. This was mainly due to two events: Dmitry Medvedev succeeding Vladimir Putin as President, and Moscow hosting the Champions League final between two English clubs, Manchester United and Chelsea.
Ok, it would be churlish not to mention a third event: the triumph of Russia’s Dima Bilan in the Eurovision song contest. The ‘Karachay-born heart-throb’ wiped the floor with Britain’s Andy Abraham – who came joint last – amid widespread complaints of politically motivated back-scratching among the former Soviet bloc. Our beloved Terry Wogan has gained something like infamy in Russia for threatening to give up commentating on Eurovision.
Russia and Britain seem to have been constantly bickering since a much darker happening, the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London in late 2006. Moscow refuses to extradite his fellow former spy, Andrei Lugovoy, on suspicion of the murder. The circumstances are well-rehearsed: the killing was seemingly a classic example of the Russian security services’ modus operandi.
This modus operandi is summed up perfectly by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which Lugovoy has, since last December, represented in the Duma (conveniently granting him immunity from extradition):
‘Any traitor must be eliminated using any methods. If you have joined the special services to work, then you should work, but to betray, to run away abroad, to give up the secrets you learned while working – all of this looks bad.’
So these were interesting times for 50,000 English football fans to visit Moscow in mid-May. I was among them, if in a kind of semi-detached way: I had the pecuniary advantage of having booked my plane ticket months before and of staying with an English friend working out there. Before my trip I attended a conference in London addressed by Litvinenko’s wife, Marina. She expressed the hope that the next US President – from either party – would campaign for Russia’s expulsion from the G8 and so force Lugovoy’s extradition.
A tourist trip to Moscow was, of course, never going to shed much light on the higher echelons of Russian politics and security services. Countless Russia-watchers point out the weakness of Russian civil society in a place so inured to autocracy. Most Russians reportedly take little interest in politics. Those that do can pay a price: at least 15 journalists have been murdered since Vladimir Putin became president on the final day of 1999.
Moscow, a massive city of over 10 million, seemed to have little problem absorbing tens of thousands of hard-drinking English. Fans dressed in red and blue simply melted into the crowds travelling the metro system, which transports more people than the London and New York systems combined.
Moscow has many, many police and army officers wandering around – and not just to control football fans. The city’s excellent English language freesheet, the Moscow Times, reported on the day of the match that police were ‘keeping a low profile’.
But to ordinary Muscovites, these obvious symbols of state power are a common sight: on the tube, in parks, in quiet streets in quiet neighbourhoods. The impression that Russia is still a militaristic society was borne out on 9 May, for the Victory Day parade. This gained a lot of international media coverage because the big guns were wheeled out – literally – for the first time since the cold war. (It was also Medvedev’s first outing as president.) And the figures show that while numbers in the conscript army have declined in recent years, spending on military hardware has grown, even if defence analysts remain unimpressed.
Very few Russians are able to speak much – if any – English, but most seemed more than willing to help with directions, if only through gestures. But viewers of Jonathan Dimbleby’s recent BBC films about Russia would conclude that this is not a universal experience for tourists. Nina Kruscheva (granddaughter of the former Soviet leader and a US-based academic), speaking at the London conference, spoke of the ‘anti-foreigner’ feeling that had taken hold in Russia. Attacks on those apparently from the Caucasus or with a ‘swarthy’ complexion were commonplace, she said, often with tacit official support.
Immigration to Russia is virtually nil: I saw few black faces in the streets of Moscow, and certainly none on Russian MTV or billboards. Combined with a falling birth-rate and an alcohol-ravaged male life expectancy of 59, the population has fallen by ten million since the end of communism.
A number of speakers at the London conference listed Vladimir Putin’s deliberate stoking of nationalism as one trend that might come back haunt the regime, as well as inflation and an over-reliance on oil and gas wealth. But no-one was predicting imminent change. And, during my visit there, Moscow was clearly transforming socially, and economically – but not politically. At least not yet.
Tom Brooks Pollock is website and communications manager at Progress. Alan Johnson is away