Read Online Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Pomerantsev
Tags: Social Science, History, Europe, Political Science, World, Russian & Former Soviet Union, Popular Culture, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
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everywhere, shopping malls and sushi bars. P is now a minister. He wears Italian tailored suits and a Rolex; rumor has it he asks $10,000 for his signature to greenlight local deals. Kaliningrad is sealed off from the EU states around it, but local bureaucrats have made that into an advantage: there is great business to be made from bribes at border crossings. From their point of view it’s more profitable for Kaliningrad to be sealed off. The border-bribes business is carefully organized on principles of effective management and cash flow, with every layer of bureaucrat taking an agreed upon cut, all the way up to the customs headquarters in Moscow. Russia has taken on the business lessons that development consultants like Benedict had come to teach, but applies them like gross carbuncles to state corruption.
Benedict has stayed on in Kaliningrad after his last project. It is Marina’s home, and there is little to connect him any more to Ireland. He is in his sixties now. He has spent well over a decade in Russia. He teaches a little English on the side.
In the evening he walks his dog through the new Kaliningrad. New-builds are coming up everywhere. The old waterfront with its sailor bars has been replaced with a replica of a seventeenth-century gingerbread German town, all merrily colored in pastels. At night the new houses are largely dark and empty. As he strolls along the waterfront, Benedict raps his knuckles on the pastel houses. They are hollow to the touch, painted Perspex and plaster imitating stone, timber, and iron.
HELLO-GOODBYE
I met Dinara in a bar near one of Moscow’s train stations. Girls would come from all over the country to be in that one bar. They would take the train into town, go straight to the bar, and hope to pick up a client. There were all types of girls: students looking for a few hundred bucks, Botox-and-silicone hookers, old and sagging divorcees, provincial teens just out for a good time. It could be hard to tell between the girls who were working and those who were just hanging out. Once you get in it is basically an old, dark shed with one long bar running the whole length. The girls sit in one interminable row along the dark bar, staring hard at every man who comes in. Above the row of girls is a row of televisions, which if you come early in the evening might be tuned to the hysterical neon pinks and yellows, the hyperactive bursts of color, the canned laughter, the swelling, swirling logo “Feel our Love!” of my entertainment channel, TNT (later in the evening it’s tuned to sports). The girls at the bar are TNT’s target audience: eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old females with basic education, approximately $2,000 a month salary, and a thirst for bright colors. When I tell the girls I work for TNT, they drop their stares and become excited groupies. They crowd around me asking for autographs from our stars. Their favorite show is a sitcom called Happy Together , a Russian remake of the US show Married with Children , in which a wife with bright red hair and bright high heels dominates her slow, weak husband. It’s the first show in Russia in which women are stronger than men, and the girls in the bar love it. They’re less crazy about the show I’m working on: a reality series called Hello-Goodbye , about passengers meeting and parting in the Moscow airport. It’s an emotional affair with lots of tears.
“There are so many lovers saying good-bye in your show. You should have more happy stories,” advised one of the girls.
“Are all the people in your show real?” asked another.
The question was fair. Russian reality shows are all scripted—just like the politicians in the Duma are managed by the Kremlin (“the Duma is not a place for debate,” the Speaker of the House once famously said), just like election results are all preordained—so Russian TV producers are paranoid about surrendering even a smidgen of control. Hello-Goodbye was an experiment in a real
Benedict has stayed on in Kaliningrad after his last project. It is Marina’s home, and there is little to connect him any more to Ireland. He is in his sixties now. He has spent well over a decade in Russia. He teaches a little English on the side.
In the evening he walks his dog through the new Kaliningrad. New-builds are coming up everywhere. The old waterfront with its sailor bars has been replaced with a replica of a seventeenth-century gingerbread German town, all merrily colored in pastels. At night the new houses are largely dark and empty. As he strolls along the waterfront, Benedict raps his knuckles on the pastel houses. They are hollow to the touch, painted Perspex and plaster imitating stone, timber, and iron.
HELLO-GOODBYE
I met Dinara in a bar near one of Moscow’s train stations. Girls would come from all over the country to be in that one bar. They would take the train into town, go straight to the bar, and hope to pick up a client. There were all types of girls: students looking for a few hundred bucks, Botox-and-silicone hookers, old and sagging divorcees, provincial teens just out for a good time. It could be hard to tell between the girls who were working and those who were just hanging out. Once you get in it is basically an old, dark shed with one long bar running the whole length. The girls sit in one interminable row along the dark bar, staring hard at every man who comes in. Above the row of girls is a row of televisions, which if you come early in the evening might be tuned to the hysterical neon pinks and yellows, the hyperactive bursts of color, the canned laughter, the swelling, swirling logo “Feel our Love!” of my entertainment channel, TNT (later in the evening it’s tuned to sports). The girls at the bar are TNT’s target audience: eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old females with basic education, approximately $2,000 a month salary, and a thirst for bright colors. When I tell the girls I work for TNT, they drop their stares and become excited groupies. They crowd around me asking for autographs from our stars. Their favorite show is a sitcom called Happy Together , a Russian remake of the US show Married with Children , in which a wife with bright red hair and bright high heels dominates her slow, weak husband. It’s the first show in Russia in which women are stronger than men, and the girls in the bar love it. They’re less crazy about the show I’m working on: a reality series called Hello-Goodbye , about passengers meeting and parting in the Moscow airport. It’s an emotional affair with lots of tears.
“There are so many lovers saying good-bye in your show. You should have more happy stories,” advised one of the girls.
“Are all the people in your show real?” asked another.
The question was fair. Russian reality shows are all scripted—just like the politicians in the Duma are managed by the Kremlin (“the Duma is not a place for debate,” the Speaker of the House once famously said), just like election results are all preordained—so Russian TV producers are paranoid about surrendering even a smidgen of control. Hello-Goodbye was an experiment in a real
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