Whenever they travel overseas, most Americans are aware that the locals hate them, but few know why. Usually Americans ascribe bad blood to jealousy. Iranian flag-burning mobs? Uneducated, unfortunate and misguided people, afraid of progress. Okinawans? Sore losers, still mad that we invented the bomb first. Russians? A gang of layabouts, too used to the security of communism, afraid of the hard work and responsibility necessary in the free enterprise system. (more…)

This is the cover of Issue # 8 of The eXile, published May 1997.

Virtually every unmarried person-and certainly every unmarried man-who reads Moscow newspapers knows what he’s looking at when he sees an ad for “Massage.” Though The Moscow Times long ago disposed of the word in favor of the even more meaningless euphemism “Introduction,” The Moscow Tribune and advertisers in a host of other Moscow papers (including our own) still insist on calling prostitutition services “Massage.” A man seeking “massage” in this town can specify the hair color, height and even bust size of his “masseuse.” But can he get a massage-particularly if, after contracting a mildly contagious disease, he really needs one? (more…)

Almost two years ago, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Russia’s victory over the Nazis, I experienced the quintessential evening of Moscow Decadence. It began at around midnight in the parking lot of the Young Pioneer’s stadium. My friends, a mixture of Europeans and techno-Russians, spread the goods atop a mirror: an 8-ball of whiff cut into rails as long as asparagus stalks, 6 caps of X, and some diazapams to smoothe the ride. (more…)

While the United States is beginning to dominate the loony suicidal cult market, Russia is rapidly replacing America as the serial murder capital of the world. First Andrei Chikatilo set the modern record for serial murder victims by killing 53 people in a twelve-year span; then Soviet-born Andrei Onuprienko nearly broke the record with a three-month killing spree near Lvov, Ukraine that left 52 people dead. Now police in the city of Novokuznetsk suspect that one Alexander Spesivtsyev, 27, may have surpassed Chikatilo by killing more than eighty people. Formally charged with the murders of nineteen children, Spesivtsiyev’s story is unusually gruesome even for a serial killer. (more…)

We at the eXile were on the phone last week when a funny thing happened. We were hard at work at the time, researching an in-depth story on what spring in Moscow was really all about. Unlike other newspapers and magazines, we’d decided to go straight to the source-the people-to get our story. Our first call was to the KGB Veterans’ Club. Surely, we thought, they of all people must know what spring is all about.

“What?” a voice answered. “I don’t understand your question.” (more…)

The fashionable writer Viktor Pelevin provides this neat little paradox in his latest novel, Chapayev and Pustota:

“Foreigners, of whom there is an incredible number in Moscow, have for many years dressed in such a way that they could not be discerned from ordinary passers-by-for security reasons. Most of them got their ideas on the appearance of the ordinary Moscow passer-by from CNN broadcasts, of course. And CNN, seeking to portray Muscovites as they follow the ghost of democracy through the scorched desert of reforms, has in 90 cases out of 100 presented viewers with close-ups of U.S. Embassy staff dressed as Muscovites, because they looked much more true-to-life than Muscovites who had been trying to dress as foreigners.”

One may question the generalization in this passage, but Pelevin, after all, is a novelist, not a journalist, and even if he writes something that is blatantly wrong but does it in an endearing way, his readers will admire him and not sling overripe tomatoes at him. (more…)