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

You’ll wait a long time to hear him to say, “In the olden days, everything was better.” The best time of his life was when the “fuckin’ Commies” had just left the field, between 1991 and 2000. At that time he was hired by American foreign correspondents as an interpreter. The U.S. press sent their best people—the end of the Cold War was a major topic—and suddenly Vladimir was earning US$500 to $1,000 a day as an interpreter, sums that would have meant months of hard work in the Soviet Union days. Gold-rush fever.

We sit in his living room in the northwest of the city and drink Žatecký Gus out of cans. “Do you know what is to blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union?” asks Vladimir, fixing me through his rimless glasses. It doesn’t matter whether he is speaking or silent; the hint of a smile always seems to be there—derisive, certainly, but not without a touch of bitterness. “Fucking TV pictures of German supermarkets.” He takes a deep swig of beer, enjoying the tension created by his pause. “People didn’t have enough to eat, mothers were having to queue for two hours a day to get food for their children. That’s supposed to be a fucking superpower? At the end of the twentieth century? Ha, ha, ha! We had lost the race. Then there were suddenly pictures of German supermarkets on TV. Full shelves everywhere. Incredible!”

Vladimir gets up and shuffles off to the kitchen, which gives me the chance to inspect his book collection. Winston Churchill’s Second World War , directly next to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus ; the Bible next to Victoria Beckham’s autobiography. War, love, God, and pop. Four books, four worlds; a man of wide interests. In front of the DVD collection above the TV there is a framed photo of his ex-wife, topless on some beach at sunset. The most striking decorative object, however, is an olive-green helmet with the inscription Ne ssy, prorvomsya! which means something like, “Don’t piss yourself, push forward.”

Vladimir returns with dried fish, which he places on a paper napkin on the tablecloth. With deft movements of his hand he begins to skin the fish while talking about the Chechen wars. “I was working there as interpreter for Newsweek , the Los Angeles Times , and the Philadelphia Inquirer . Looking back I wish I’d kept a journal or had a camera. It was unbelievable. They completely flattened Grozny. Like Stalingrad. Like Dresden.”

He tears a large piece of filet from the dried fish and I follow suit. The consistency is like leather, but it’s so salty that you quickly need that last sip of beer. With dishes like this, it’s hardly surprising Russians drink so much.

“During the First Chechen War we could do what we liked; the Russians didn’t give a shit about the media. In the Second Chechen War they were more cautious. Working there was very interesting. You experience suffering and horror, so many emotions.” At one point he says he liked the job a lot; the next moment he claims he couldn’t sleep the whole time. The press corps were accommodated in Nazran, the then capital of the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia, a three-hour drive from Grozny. “Luckily there was a sauna there that was open around the clock. I used to go there in the middle of the night, sweat a bit and drink some beer, then I could sleep.”

He knew the Caucasus region beforehand; Vladimir grew up in Baku, in what is today Azerbaijan. His father was the head of a huge chemical company with four thousand employees and still not a rich man; only in a capitalist system does such a job mean a salary of millions. But still Vladimir was able to go to one of the best translator schools in Moscow. On his second attempt he managed to pass the entrance exams.

English slang word for “Khruschoba” buildings: low-cost, concrete-paneled, five-story apartment blocks from the ’60s and ’70s that are found in many cities. At the time, head of state Nikita Khrushchev wanted a cheap solution to the lack of accommodation in Russia; aesthetics were secondary. Today many of the buildings are in need of repair and not a pretty sight. Thus the nickname “Khruschoba”— truschoba means “slum.” Behind the front door, however, there can be surprises; often the apartments are considerably more comfortable and modern than you’d assume from their facade.

The sound of a key can be heard at the front door. Vladimir’s roommate, a New Zealander named Nick who works as an English teacher, storms in. He seems fired up. “Such a shitty day!” he blusters. He had to teach “irrelevant bullshit” today as the stand-in for a sick colleague. “Sentences that start with ‘you’d better…’—nobody speaks like that anymore!” Theatrically he tears apart two copied pages of a grammar book.

“Bastards!” agrees Vladimir. Exit New Zealander.

“Where were we? Oh yes, Chechnya. It is still a bloody key issue in Russian politics,” says Vladimir. “Putin has poured a lot of money into the region, but now he doesn’t have as much because of oil prices. It’s a ticking time bomb about to explode. Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader, has a private army of twenty thousand men. They could suppress any rebellion. We will see. Nobody really knows what will happen.”

He goes to the fridge to get another beer. I look on my cell phone, wondering whether there are any couchsurfing hosts in Chechnya. One hundred sixty-five are listed in the capital.

“The end of the Soviet times has proved that Russia is totally unpredictable,” says Vladimir, opening the next can of beer. “I thought it would just go on for another couple of centuries or millennia. And then? A collapse within three days! Three days!”

What he means was the quashed attempt at a coup d’état in August of 1991. Communists and the KGB wanted to depose Mikhail Gorbachev, the then president, because they didn’t approve of his democratic ideas, so they held him under house arrest at his dacha in Crimea. At the same time, supporters of the “State Committee on the State of Emergency” besieged the “White House,” Russia’s parliament building. The future first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, an anti-putschist, climbed onto a tank and gave a historic address to the people and military urging them not to associate themselves with the “irresponsible and adventurist” attempt. The putsch was thwarted; the collapse of the Soviet Union could no longer be held back.

“And in 1917? The February Revolution? That was also only a couple of days! The Russian Empire destroyed in the blink of an eye! Un-fucking-believable! Many Russians believe that now, one hundred years later, something is about to happen again. I, too, feel that we are standing on a precipice.”

I ask him about the basis of his supposition. He tears off the last edible bit of the fish, takes a large gulp of beer, and says: “Eighty-six percent.” This is Putin’s approval rating in a recent survey. “Eighty-six percent of the people are crazy. Okay, most of them, maybe eighty percent, are plain stupid and uneducated. They would believe anything. But I’m more worried about the clever ones, the ones that have studied in the West. They now call themselves patriots and people like me traitors. Come on! ”

“Why is Putin so popular?”

“Russians long to be a superpower again, as they were in the Soviet Union days. At the moment we are crap. But Putin and his press give the people the feeling that we are great, that others are scared of us. It’s really incredible.” He crumples the beer can and empties the fish bones into the garbage. “I have to hit the sack, I’ve got an early start tomorrow. Good night!” He trots off to his room, leaving me in the living room; a few sheets have already been placed on the couch for me.