August 26, 2004
middle-class russian wealth
Volodia, a Moscow business man of about five feet two inches, and Ioulia’s uncle, was angry. He did not greet us with a smile. He business is not commercial tents as I first understood it to be. Rather his business is industrial-strength textiles of all sorts including material to make everything from commercial tents to armored vests for police and army personnel. Far more furtive, far more lucrative, THIS industry, yes?
First thing he said was in Russian to my wife: “I’ve been waiting three hours”. Mmmmh, good start to our one week with them in Moscow, thought to myself. Wifey, the evanescent diplomat, had him laughing in fifteen minutes after he went and got the car – a 2004 Toyota Corolla. After Gorbachov and perestroika, it became permissible for people to own their own land. Volodia, made the most of the new laws and within several years of perestroika had bought himself a Dacha, thirty kilometers out of Moscow, almost directly on the bank of Rika Gorka (Small Mountain Creek).
It’s a two-story chalet with three bedrooms and two bathrooms sitting on a big chunk of Russian land in amongst other developed acreages with similar big chalets on them. About two acres large, Volodia’s chalet is as peaceful and idyllic a setting a post-perestroika Muscovite could ever want, considering what years of communism has wrought in Russia and on her citizens. If Volodia’s life and dacha purchase are anything to go by, I would say that middle-class Russians could probably be considered some of the wealthiest people around.
First of all it seems that post-perestroika Russians know or care little (yet) about the severe and debilitating dept that living on perpetual credit, North American style, brings. Volodia paid $150,000 Am. cash for his dacha five years ago. His place is now worth over two hundred thousand dollars. Most North Americans that I know, regardless of their age, wouldn’t be able to fathom saving $150, 000 Am. cash for any purpose what so ever. They, I, couldn’t do for sake of a huge dept load. Huge & burdonsome. Russian wealth is real, the result of working and saving, then buying things of value, rather than financing everything and making banks rich; ourselves poor, through high interest. Sometimes I wish my observations weren’t so gosh darn condemnatory of such large masses of people.
Actually, to tell the truth, what it looked like to ME: these were fancy houses from a time before that were abandoned by folks perhaps made government rich but now post peristroika folks with fledgling inititative came by and occupied them and began renovating piece by piece. As in, no money down, no money ever.... I'm just sayin', that's what it looked like to ME.
The rain has just stopped after a steady two hour sprinkling here in Moscow. I am sitting out in the back-acre garden pagoda of middle-class Russian wealth contemplating how huge the world the unborn son is about to become a part of is, and writing about it all. Simultaneously, I’m Drinking a 30-cent Botchkarov beer. Very good.
First thing he said was in Russian to my wife: “I’ve been waiting three hours”. Mmmmh, good start to our one week with them in Moscow, thought to myself. Wifey, the evanescent diplomat, had him laughing in fifteen minutes after he went and got the car – a 2004 Toyota Corolla. After Gorbachov and perestroika, it became permissible for people to own their own land. Volodia, made the most of the new laws and within several years of perestroika had bought himself a Dacha, thirty kilometers out of Moscow, almost directly on the bank of Rika Gorka (Small Mountain Creek).
It’s a two-story chalet with three bedrooms and two bathrooms sitting on a big chunk of Russian land in amongst other developed acreages with similar big chalets on them. About two acres large, Volodia’s chalet is as peaceful and idyllic a setting a post-perestroika Muscovite could ever want, considering what years of communism has wrought in Russia and on her citizens. If Volodia’s life and dacha purchase are anything to go by, I would say that middle-class Russians could probably be considered some of the wealthiest people around.
First of all it seems that post-perestroika Russians know or care little (yet) about the severe and debilitating dept that living on perpetual credit, North American style, brings. Volodia paid $150,000 Am. cash for his dacha five years ago. His place is now worth over two hundred thousand dollars. Most North Americans that I know, regardless of their age, wouldn’t be able to fathom saving $150, 000 Am. cash for any purpose what so ever. They, I, couldn’t do for sake of a huge dept load. Huge & burdonsome. Russian wealth is real, the result of working and saving, then buying things of value, rather than financing everything and making banks rich; ourselves poor, through high interest. Sometimes I wish my observations weren’t so gosh darn condemnatory of such large masses of people.
Actually, to tell the truth, what it looked like to ME: these were fancy houses from a time before that were abandoned by folks perhaps made government rich but now post peristroika folks with fledgling inititative came by and occupied them and began renovating piece by piece. As in, no money down, no money ever.... I'm just sayin', that's what it looked like to ME.
The rain has just stopped after a steady two hour sprinkling here in Moscow. I am sitting out in the back-acre garden pagoda of middle-class Russian wealth contemplating how huge the world the unborn son is about to become a part of is, and writing about it all. Simultaneously, I’m Drinking a 30-cent Botchkarov beer. Very good.
