#36 | April 9 - 22, 1998  

By Mark Ames

So, it's that time of the year again when the eXile heads out for its annual "Girls of the ?" Spring Spread. Last year, if you'll remember, we met six stunning beauties in our special "Girls of the Delayed Wages" issue, while the year before that we ran our still-popular "Recently-Privatized Girls" number. The idea was to get out there beyond Moscow and into the Real Russia, to see how the people of the land hold up in those vast, majestic regions. Sadly, we have to report that all of the lovely women from our "Girls of the Delayed Wages" issue have since died from natural causes, while the "Recently-Privatized Girls" are all sterile, although there is a bright side to all of this: at least their families are dead too, meaning... hey, who's grievin'!

This year we really wanted to celebrate beauty and womanhood in the regions, so our team of beauty experts, which include litterateur-cum-exploiter-of-desperate-naked-girls consultant Artemy Trotsky, conceived of this issue's theme: "Girls of the Industrial Decline."

When we met these lovely beaus of the industrial decline, we were in for a little shock therapy of our own. Wow! We all knew that in Russia, industrial production collapsed by more than half this decade, and we also knew that the average life expectancy has fallen more precipitously than even during World War Two and Stalin's Terror (hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, folks!), but what we didn't expect was how frighteningly quickly these young knock-outs in our spread, who range from a tender 16 to a slightly less tender 19 would, er, blossom. In their hearts, these young girls bubbled with the enthusiasm of Youth, but on the outside, these girls were no girls-these were fully-matured women!

Our search for the Girls of the Industrial Decline led us to all corners of the Russian Federation. Our first stop was Ivanovo, formerly known as the "City of Brides," but recently renamed "City of Scurvy." Large bunting-posters stretch across the main avenue, welcoming the newcomer with slogans such as "Why Are You Here?!", "Kill Me," and "Welcome To Ivanovo, City of Scurvy!" After that, we headed deep into the heartland of European Russia, to the Vyatskaya Oblast, where industrial decline got such a healthy dose of shock therapy that some people resorted to forcing slave-girls to sew oven mitts for a living. Who would have thought, just a decade ago, that Entrepreneurship and Eros would meet in the heart of Lenin's Communist paradise? Ah, the times, they really are a-changin... Then it was off to Norilsk, where baby billionaire Vladimir Potanin has recently succeeded in convincing the Russian government to take a loan out for him so that he can fire and resettle thousands of workers in one of the single largest population transfers since Uncle Joe fired and resettled the entire nation of Chechnya! Whoah-daddy! We knew we had to get thee quickly to Norilsk before the girls literally vanished! After that, it was off to warmer climes in the industrially declined metropolis of Rostov-Na-Donu, which recently made a name for itself by letting accused CIA spy Richard Bliss go home for Christmas (last Christmas, this coming Christmas, and every Christmas!). Sources say that the gesture was a sign of thanks for the American-inspired industrial decline in Rostov that has left nearly everyone-women most of all-without a meaningful job. Hey, who wants boring old work when you've got a body that can be stripped, photographed, and sold on the cheap to a men's masturbation manual, huh? Last, we headed to the far end of Russia, to Vladivostok, which has bravely defied Western predictions of becoming the "Tiger of Russia," instead proudly holding the mantle of the "Dung Beetle of Russia" offering up young Katya Satlyokova as our final "Girl of the Industrial Decline."

You have to really credit Anders Aslund and Yegor Gaidar for their bold foresight: back in 1992, they predicted that by opening up Russia's markets, local industry would be forced to "adapt or die." So it "or died." Completely. And that was exactly the kind painful medicine Russia needed... if it wanted to feel pain. Ooch! That hurts! The transformation has been nothing short of stunning, and you can see it on the faces of the people, in whom hope for the future and the chance to finally live free from the shackles of the all-powerful State has inspired them to take chances-and vitamins, when available-like never before. For this issue, the girls were so eager and excited about their free choice to pose for the eXile that all they really wanted in compensation was, and we quote, "Something to eat." So here they are, the Girls of the Industrial Decline. And thanks again to everyone!