| Issue #27, September 29, 2006 |
YOU’RE THE NEW GOVERNOR OF CHUKOTKA, OR ELSE
By Dan Rattiner
I had dinner with a Russian friend of mine and his wife the other evening. Once a month, I need my Mischa and Natasha fix. We were at Mirko’s in Water Mill.
In the late 1980s, as the old Soviet Union was falling apart, I had gone to Moscow with my wife, met Mischa and Natasha at a party and subsequently helped them get to America. They stayed with us in East Hampton for a while. Now they are in Manhattan and prospering, one a lawyer, the other a software company vice president, and they are looking for a house in the Hamptons.
Anyway, we talked about the race for governor. Spitzer had just defeated Suozzi for the Democratic nomination. Now he was going up against Pirro and it would be quite a fight.
But as things sometimes happen when we have dinner with Mischa and Natasha, thoughts tended to drift in a slightly other direction. We were no longer talking about the governorship of New York, we were talking about the governorship of Chukotka in northeastern Siberia.
“Abramovich has decided to go for a second term,” Mischa said. “It’s important news.”
Chukotka holds a special place in Mischa’s heart. Twenty years ago, during the Cold War, he was an officer in the Soviet Navy, and was third in command of a big warship. They were part of the ten thousand man, one hundred ship war fleet based on the Pacific Ocean in the northern city of Vladivostok, there to give strong support if war broke out and the Americans invaded Siberia from Alaska.
It was brutal. And I am talking not about the war, but the weather. The snows were fifteen feet deep. The government tried to keep the Navy busy by sending the ships on maneuvers to one Chukotka port or another in this most remote province in the Soviet Union.
“It’s a big deal that Abramovich is going for a second term,” Mischa said. “It means that it will be business as usual.”
For those who want to make the case that American democracy is better than, say Russian democracy, you ought to read what comes next.
Roman Abramovich lives in London and has hardly ever set foot in Chukotka. He is 38 years old and suddenly appeared on the scene in Moscow six years ago as one of Russia’s newly minted billionaires. He flies around in private jets. He has holdings in coal and oil. No one knows where he got the money for all of this.
In 1999, another young Russian billionaire, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, began making speeches criticizing Prime Minister Putin, and suggesting that at the next election he ought to contest that spot against the incumbent. The thrust of his criticism was that Putin was not doing enough for the billionaires. When he got in, things would be different.
Alarmed, Putin had Khodorkovsky arrested and put in jail for tax evasion. Khodorkovsky is there today, rotting away, stripped of all his stock, and with his oil company now in the hands of the government.
This development was not lost on Roman Abramovich, and so when Putin phoned him in early 2000 to say that he thought Abramovich should be the governor of the coldest, poorest, most miserable, most remote province in Siberia, he said yes.
Soon a passport arrived indicating that Abramovich was now the newest resident of Chukotka, something that would allow him to assume the reins of the governorship. And of course, as the province’s newest resident, he would have to be taxed accordingly. A few hundred million dollars would be just fine. Abramovich sent it.
And thus, beginning in 2000, prosperity came to this province, such as it is.
“We visited there often,” Mischa said, remembering his trips there long ago fondly. “We ate fish, we played cards, we drank a lot. The Chukotkas are like your Eskimos. They go whaling. They raise reindeer. They speak an Eskimo language. But we couldn’t understand them. So we had our military grub. Plus reindeer and fish. And fish and reindeer.”
“Desserts?” I asked.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Mischa described the problems the Chukotka had with alcohol. “This was twenty years ago, so I don’t know how it is now. But the army brought them Vodka. And they couldn’t handle it. They were drunk all the time. They stopped fishing and hunting. It was awful. I think it had something to do with their inability to process sugar. They’d never seen sugar. They’d never even seen a vegetable. Scurvy became a problem. A white man’s disease.”
“Sounds great.”
“A thrill a minute. We’d hear we were going on maneuvers up to Providenya or one of the other ports. There were no cheers.”
Abramovich, when he assumed the governorship of Chukotka in 2000, decided his money could best be spent in three different ways. It could be used to provide medical help for those addicted to Vodka. It could be used to revive the whaling and reindeer industry, and it could be used to create a new industry for Chukotka: tourism.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I told Mischa.
“There’s a month of white nights in Chukotka,” he said hopefully. He was not talking about chivalry. He was talking about the month when it isn’t dark. During that month, June, the sun hangs low on the horizon, and it is daylight 24 hours a day.
Abramovich has used his money to build museums. You can visit one in Anadyr. Other things you can do in Anadyr or in the villages of Chuvantsi, Yugagir, Chukchi and Eskimo — yes they’ve got a town called Eskimo — is to be entertained by native Chukotka dancers, in their native costumes, visit a whale blubber factory, or just engage in conversation with the natives about current affairs over fish and reindeer. To book this trip here in America call the World Wise Ecotourism Network in Seattle. 3 days/2 nights is $1,250 per person.
“How do they cook reindeer?”
Natasha, who is Mischa’s wife, asked this. He had apparently not shared with her this pre-marriage days story.
“You don’t cook it. You dry it on poles in the wind for three days.”
Mischa told us that he read about an annual Baby Carriage Parade that’s now held once a year in Providenya. The population has been in decline. Once a year the new mothers put pretty bows on the baby carriages and march with the children in them through town.
“Another thing you might encounter,” he said, as if we were going, “is long wooden poles. There are usually two of them, six feet long each, that are leaning against a wall. The biggest danger in Chukotka is black bears. But the black bears fear walruses, which are stronger than they are. So if you see a black bear, you grab these poles and bang them on the ground. The bears think they are walrus tusks, and a challenge is being issued. They run away.”
“Nice.”
In 2002, Abramovich moved to London and bought Chelsea, one of that nation’s most famous soccer teams. People in England — rabid soccer fans all — were stunned. It would be as if a Colombian poppy grower bought the New York Yankees from George Steinbrenner. They howled in outrage. It could not be allowed to happen. But it had happened, and there were no laws whatsoever to prevent it.
Abramovich was in the owner’s box, on the practice field, in the locker room. He made speeches. Here’s one.
“I hope to carry forward in the true blue tradition of Chelsea but also to build even stronger foundations to last us for the next 100 years. When I first became involved in Chelsea, I had little idea of how much joy and excitement it would bring me and I can think of no more fitting tribute to our centenary season than to enter it as Premiership champions.”
And then, this month, the term of his governorship was about to come to an end. He made a speech in which he said he was no longer interested in the job. But then, apparently, there was a phone call. And the day after the Spitzer victory, he announced he would join with some six others on the list of candidates running for office. And then just this past week, he was sworn in, by phone, for another six-year term.
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