Issue #02/57, January 28 - February 10, 1999  

by Genghis Goldberg

Well-known Georgetown University demographer Murray Feshbach recently released a report which said that, due to the rapid transmission of AIDS and several virulent new forms of tuberculosis, Russia may well be on its way to becoming "the next Central Africa".

Well...thank God. At least this country has something to look forward to.

It's become a cliche among Russians to complain that this decade's group of political leaders has turned their superpower nation into a zoo as screwed up as any backwater republic in Africa. That's actually putting it mildly. As long ago as 25 years back, when the Russians were still guardians of the largest empire humanity has ever known, when worker salaries here were still being paid on time, when things like soap and toothpaste and socks were still produced domestically, when those shitty Ilyushin airplanes were new and still being serviced after each flight--even back then, Henry Kissinger, a man whose business it was to fear and respect America's enemies, called the Soviet Union "Upper Volta with rockets".

That was then. Now we're all flying those exact same Ilyushin airplanes, i.e. those same individual planes, which haven't been serviced since Andropov was alive and whose pig iron (yes, that's right, Russian airliners use pig iron parts) bolts are rusting; the money Aeroflot might otherwise use to fix the problem is sitting in the personal Swiss bank account of a bald Jew named Boris Berezovsky, who has other plans for its use. That vast empire is in shambles, and the nation which in the mid-1800s was annexing territories roughly the size of France on a yearly basis is now, following its economic collapse and a military defeat at the hands of a miniscule band of Caucasian mountain warriors, plagued by separatist movements and threatened with widespread anarchy as its population steadily declines. Russia is also about to default on its sovereign debt, a feat which has so far eluded even the poorest African countries, right down to a tiny, disease-ridden, ethnic-violence plagued nation called Burkina Faso, a place which lately sent all of two athletes to the Atlanta Olympics, neither of whom contended for medals. They were just happy to be there.

Africa	Russia
Sand	Ice
Widespread subsistence farming	Widespread subsistence farming
Infectious disease and poisonous vermin repelled invaders and allowed natives to remain isolated for centuries	Long winters and unnavigable roads repelled invaders and allowed natives to remain isolated for centuries
Native women would rather have a sack of free cornmeal than sleep with a Russian man	Native women would do just about anything to sleep with an African man
Home to Nigeria, the second-most corrupt country in the world	Named the most corrupt country in the world
Surrounded by warm water and fresh fish	Surrounded by NATO, Islamic extremists, and nationalist China
Archeologists remain baffled as to how ancient Egyptians managed to move the building blocks for the pyramids	Entire world since 1991 baffled as to how Russia managed to pass itself off as a superpower all those years
Nelson Mandela became President	Solzhenitsin television show canceled
Threw off shackles of colonialism in mid-20th century	First colonized by the West in mid-1990s
Unfathomable variety of fruits, vegetables and game	Cabbage
Elephants	Women over 30
In spite of war, famine, and mass epidemics, population rapidly increasing	Women couldn't be looser, but population declining
Hakeem Olajuwon	Yakov Smirnov
Kicked Belgians out	Economy just this year dropped below Belgium's in size

Burkina Faso is a new country. In the 1970s it had another name. It was called Upper Volta.

Yeah, it's become fashionable to say that Russia is "in trouble". But it's not "in trouble". It's fucked beyond comprehension. It's Africa on a good day. It's time we all got used to that fact: we live in the worst place in the world. That thing in Sierra Leone will blow over. But the only thing here that's changing is that soon there won't be anything left to steal, and this country is going to die out slowly, and become a frozen, rotting, crumbling wasteland, an Africa without fruits or vegetables or animals, with fewer varieties of diseases but just as many ways to die slowly, painfully and too young.

Don't believe us? Check this out. Here are the eXile's 5 reasons why Russia is now as bad off or worse than any or all of the African countries it used to subsidize:

1. The Domestic Economy

Russia's economy is worsening faster than that of any other country in the world. At the close of the Soviet era, in 1991, Russia had a gross domestic product, per capita, of 3,220 dollars, placing it solidly in the middle of a group of so-called "second world" countries--places like Hungary, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Mexico. Its GDP back then was about 80% of the world average, and about 14.5% of that of the world leader, the U.S.

By 1997--that is to say, before the August crash of last year--Russia's GDP per capita had fallen to 2740 dollars, i.e. 53% of the world average and 9.5% of that of the U.S. Its new economic soulmates were no longer struggling but functional Latin American countries. Even Mexico had left Russia in the dust. Now Russia was grouped with genuine basket cases and banana republics, having fallen below the Dominican Republic and threatening to drop below lowly Albania.

That was before last August. Now, with the devaluation and the collapse of Russia's capital markets, Russia's economy is expected to shrink considerably. Last year, Russia's economy fell 5.5%, officially, while this year, the IMF expects at least another 8.5% drop. The real value of state budget revenues have been optimistically projected to drop by at least a fourth compared to last year. By next year, Russia will be wishing it were a one-crop island economy in the Caribbean, as it falls below Cote D'Ivoire, Gabon, and a host of other African nations. Parlez-vous grass skirt, Russians?

2. Crime

In 1996, the year Boris Yeltsin was reelected and international optimism about Russia's future was at an all-time high--when it featured the highest-performing stock market in the world--even then, Russia already had the second-highest murder rate in the world, having just surpassed the United States to make a run at South Africa. With a population of about 150 million, Russia that year had just over 33,000 murders, compared to about 24,000 in the considerably more populous United States--a place which, incidentally, keeps far more accurate records about this sort of thing.

Figures for 1998 have not yet been released, but news reports have projected that this year's murder total will exceed 40,000 for the first time in the country's history. Furthermore, crime-related deaths not listed as murders are also on the rise. Deaths from alcohol poisoning--that is, deaths resulting from poisonous bootleg liquor--are reportedly in the tens of thousands per year, a plague rivaling the damage caused by the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the 1980s. Kenya is starting to sound pretty good, isn't it? Just wear a condom.

3. TB and AIDS

Feshbach and others have cited an Interior Ministry report which indicates that the incidence of tuberculosis in Russia, already outrageously high, will increase fiftyfold between now and the year 2000. Feshbach says he believes the current rate of infection is about 150,000 cases per year; he bases his estimate partly on the grounds that studies have shown that one in ten of Russia's 800,000-odd prisoners have the disease. By the turn of the century, Feshbach says, annual tuberculosis deaths will outnumber those caused by both cancer and heart disease.

Incidentally, we're talking about viral TB here. Even if you spend most of your time at the Starlite, you can die pretty easily if you get this thing. It doesn't go away with a shot.

Okay, that's one disease. Feshbach also says that by the year 2000, one million Russians will be infected with HIV. Only a tiny minority will be able to afford protease inhibitors. Most all will die after a protracted incubation period of needle-sharing and unprotected sex. Think it can't happen to you? Well, so do a lot of people. But eXile readers need look no further than the conspicuous absence of "vacationing" Johnny Chen to find reason for pause.

4. Poison

Things like this happen so often that people barely pay attention to them anymore, but sooner or later, Russia's going to run out of livable space because of them. Greenpeace last week announced that Lake Ladoga, one of the largest lakes in the Russian Northwest, is probably going to die after a paper factory leaked 800,000 cubic meters of liquid pollutant into it. This thing is the size of Lake Champlain, and you can write it off. Ditto for the 10-20,000 people who live around it, who will almost certainly develop immune problems and cancers as a result of the chlorine levels in their drinking water.

No problem--just stay away from Lake Ladoga, right? Wrong. Feshbach notes in his report that lead emissions in Russia are "50 times higher than in all of the European Union". The problem is caused by incomplete combustion at thermal power plants, of which, you'll probably note as you read this to the light of your electric lamp, there are a few in this area. If you've been living here for a while, you might want to think twice about having children; Feshbach cites that a Russian government report which describes one town where, as a result of lead pollution, "76.5 percent of the children...are mentally retarded."

The Central African bush is starting to sound even better. Hell, even Lawrence Summers once noted with disdain that industrial pollution in some African countries was "insufficiently low" even compared with the United States. A few spiders no longer seem that scary.

5. Everything Else

As a result of environmental poisons and disease, Feshbach estimates that one-third of Russia's adult population is incapable of reproduction. The population is being reduced at a rate of about 800,000 people per year. By the first decade of the next century, the population will fall to about 138 million.

Aggressive action to correct Russia's problems might, theoretically, reverse the situation. The problem is that, even in the statistically insignificant chance that Russia's political leaders will suddenly band together in a sincere, selfless, united effort to save their country, they will have absolutely no chance at getting the money they need to even begin addressing any of their troubles. Russia has already missed a payment on its Paris club Soviet-era debt; through some semantic gymnastics both sides managed to avoid calling the non-payment a default. However, it looks very, very probable that sometime soon, probably by the end of the year, Russia will announce that it is defaulting on its sovereign debt. This will make Russia the first country in the history of the world to formally rescind its international responsibilities, making it a world credit pariah of a type the world has yet to see anywhere, even in Africa. After it defaults, Russia will find it virtually impossible to raise money internationally. The eXile will have a better chance of opening up a sovereign credit line than Russia. The GKO market has already dropped like a stone; Russia could probably offer a mile of arctic coastline to the dollar, and private investors wouldn't bite. No one will touch the place. Africa? People will visit, go on safaris, swim on the beach. They'll buy yams and cola nuts and cocoa, and mine diamonds. Russia? Forget it. Even the Bolshoi theater is collapsing. And as for the rest of what this country has to offer, well, you can die just as easily at home.