Stephan Orth - Behind Putin's Curtain - Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia [aka Couchsurfing in Russia]

Truth No. 20:

The vast majority of passengers and crew members on internal Russian flights reach their destination alive.

A PROFESSIONALLY INDUCED VODKAintoxication differs from other intoxications in that there are long-lasting moments of unusual clarity. It lacks the dullness of beer drunkenness, the dizziness of whiskey, the excitability of Cuba Libre, or the knockout effect of randomly drinking everything possible.

The “most honest of all drinks” is how Russians describe their favorite spirit, because it has no taste and has never been romanticized like whiskey or wine. There is no excuse to consume it other than wanting to get drunk. As an experiment, U.S. researchers served study participants either whiskey or vodka until they reached a blood alcohol level of 0.11 percent (I would love to have seen the “Test subjects wanted” ad in the newspaper). The next day the whiskey drinkers not only felt worse than the vodka drinkers, but they were not as good at solving concentration problems. The West vs. Russia, 0:1.

What would the findings have been if the participants had obeyed not only rule number one of Russian drinking pros (no mixing), but also rule number two? This stipulates a strict intake of food while boozing. Grandma’s porcini mushrooms doused in sunflower oil, cold smoked pike, boiled potatoes with dill, caviar. Some people swear by mini rituals that are “dead certain” to prevent a hangover the next day—sniff a piece of rye bread, exhale heavily, drink, then eat the bread, or eat a third of a pickled gherkin before drinking and the rest afterward.

I experiment with different variations on the formula but don’t reach an empirically clear-cut conclusion. What else happened in Khabarovsk, who my host was, and what I was actually doing there I have forgotten, which is pretty strange as in between I had a number of moments of clarity.

The next thing I remember is that after three days someone with a large Jeep brings me to the main station and directs me to a train to Vladivostok.

Name of the first internet search engine to offer services in Cyrillic, beginning in 1997. With 57 percent of the market today, the company still has a greater proportion than Google (35 percent), even though the American company has recently been gaining on it. Both business models are similar: Yandex also offers maps, advertising, translations, an email program, and a browser. Its cab app is very successful; with it you can often get from A to B in Russian cities much more cheaply than if you deal directly with cab drivers.

IN THE MONTHSbefore and after my travels in Russia quite a lot has happened on the political front. The British voted for Brexit in a referendum. Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S. He began treating European allies like enemies, creating a divide between Western countries. Two other changes received hardly any attention in international news: Igor Dodon became the new president of Moldavia and Rumen Radev the new president of Bulgaria, which took over presidency of the Council of the European Union on January 1, 2018.

The news has a noteworthy common thread—everything has happened exactly as Russia would have wished. If world politics were a sporting event, you would have to say that Putin is the athlete of the moment, as all the abovementioned politicians are, compared to their predecessors or competitors, on a Russia-friendly course.

And then there is Aleppo. Syria’s President Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies have managed to regain control of the city from the rebels. Both sides have been accused of violations of the laws of armed conflict. Up to now Russia has succeeded in fending off the most severe accusations, even though Amnesty International has provided credible evidence of many civilian deaths from Russian air strikes.

The situation in Syria has strengthened Putin’s military position. And it has gained him much respect—even Barack Obama, a declared opponent of Putin, classified Russia as a “military superpower,” which, behind the scorn, was received in Russia with hidden pride.

Donald Trump’s election victory was greeted with spontaneous applause in the national Duma parliament; possibly the jubilation had to do equally with the defeat of the much-hated Hillary Clinton. Even if a bare-chested Trump doesn’t ride off into the sunset with Putin, as depicted in online photo montages, Russia can only win with this president. As far as foreign policies are concerned, Trump acts impulsively and not ideologically, is less insistent about “Western values” than his predecessor, and is open to making deals with leaders who, although not big fans of human rights, are nice to him. Russian propaganda always presented the U.S. and the whole “West” as hypocritical and manipulative, and now the most powerful man in the world is a perfect and obvious example for that. The current U.S. president comes across as a dubious dictator, making the Russian president seem like a beacon of reliability and clarity. From interviews, it is obvious which of the two is intellectually superior. It was clearly not a good idea to arrange a meeting between them with no advisers present, as happened in July of 2018—the result being a historic disaster for American diplomacy.

There’s another thread in the abovementioned news. In each case there has been evidence that Russian manipulation played a role in shaping outcomes, either through propaganda, hacking, internet trolls, or all of them together. Whether the results were really influenced in every case is hard to say, but it is possible.

No world leader knows more about the workings of the security service than ex-KGB man Putin. A number of years ago he began devoting a significant part of the military budget to information warfare, and it’s possible this is now proving to be a stroke of genius. Who needs to deploy old-fashioned soldiers and initiate regime change operations with its secret service when it’s much cheaper and simpler to influence opinions on elections in other countries?

RT claims they just try to popularize their own culture and points of view abroad, like Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, or the Chinese CCTV International. But the Russians do it far more aggressively and steadfastly. And they reflect the zeitgeist—the discussions about fake news and a post-fact society ironically play right into the hands of those who have broadcast long and loud to trust no one.

During the U.S. election the Clinton camp sometimes played the old Russia-is-to-blame card a bit too readily. Familiar bogeyman, easy to explain, an ever-welcome excuse.

But since then even Trump has admitted that Russian hackers with links to the government sabotaged the Clinton campaign by, for instance, accessing the emails of her campaign chairman, John Podesta. Such an intrusion in a foreign country’s election is a success in a métier in which the U.S. has been the world leader for decades.

It’s interesting how Russia is on everyone’s lips again. If world-power status can be measured by how often your country appears on the news, then Putin is on the right path. And when fears in the West are stoked a bit more than is actually necessary, from a Russian standpoint there’s no harm done; this merely allows Russia to appear more powerful than it really is. In the world of attention, the same rules apply to politics as to rock stars who manage to come up with a new scandal every week. Putin knows this, and he’s learned a lot since stepping into office for the first time.