#18 | September 25 - October 8, 1997  

by Matt Taibbi with Mark Ames

A note from Michael Bass

We can officially confirm the news. Michael Bass, scandalous bald society columnist for the barely-breathing English-language daily Moscow Tribune, really is the new imagemaker for Liberal-Democratic party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. I know. I asked Zhirinovsky myself, while filming a new talk show for TV6 last Saturday.

I was in a panel of young politicians and journalists, many of whom were fascists and communists, some of whom were reasonable people, and nearly all of whom were likely to be edited out of the final version of the show. Zhirinovsky was under attack from the get-go, but the barrage of questions reached a new pitch when he declared that he was the "Russian Clinton"-young, centrist, and energetic.

"Russian Clinton?" asked a young female reporter to my right. "Is that why you chose such a...strange imagemaker for yourself? To become another Clinton?"

Zhirinovsky dodged that question, but I raised my hand next.

"I think I know whom my colleague was referring to," I said. "She means Michael Bass, right?"

"Michael, sure, I've got one of those," snorted Zhirinovsky. "Good guy."

"Right," I said. "Did you know that he was convicted for fraud in he States?"

Zhirinovsky laughed. "Sure," he said. "I knew all about it. So what?"

"That doesn't bother you?" I smiled.

"Why should it?" he said. "He did his time, fufilled his societal obligations...there's no such thing, anywhere, as a clean family. A clean family doesn't exist. You dig deeply enough into any family, you'll find someone who did time."

That was good enough for me. I already knew, of course: Bass was an ex-con, sentenced for mail fraud in California. No big deal. I myself was arrested once, for flipping out on acid in public in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

I got beat up pretty badly that day; when the police were done subduing me, I looked a lot like the cover photo of this newspaper. I was nineteen when it happened. I remember my father sitting me down the day after charges were dropped and I was released. "Listen," he said, dabbing the side of my head with a piece of gauze. "You can't go through life like this, getting stitches in your head. You're so behind in life now. You've got to catch up."

That was eight years ago. I haven't had my head bloodied since. And it wasn't until I moved to Moscow that I saw what my father meant by being behind. A lot of people get their heads cracked open in this city. That's what happens here when you're not worth killing, but too annoying to be let off scot free. A hundred guys a day here misread the angles and get beaten up by someone on someone else's order.

Only one of those guys, however, is a Westerner. His name is Michael Bass. Who is he? Why are we so fascinated by him? And what's going wrong with his life, that he keeps getting his head bloodied?

A little background, before we get to the story behind the photo on this cover:

Michael Bass is a former modeling agent who came to Russia a few years back. About a year ago, he started writing a column for the Moscow Tribune, a column with distinctly eXile-like qualities- nearly everyone hated it, but it was widely read. As we later learned, Bass is nearly illiterate (see Bass letter), and the column was essentially written by Tribune copy editors, but the damage was done: Bass was suddenly a minor celebrity in Moscow expatriate society. He had already been a well-known figure, particularly in the casino scene, as he'd had a hand in the public relations efforts behind the Casino on Neglinnaya, the Golden Palace, and the Beverly Hills club. He also had a company called Image Media, and was said to be one of the founders of a modeling agency called Karin.

Bass in his column demonstrated an incredible talent for gaining entrance into the inner circles of visiting celebrities. King Juan Carlos of Spain, otherwise-intelligent basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chuck Norris, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a host of others granted Bass interviews and allowed themselves to be photographed with him. Bass even managed, for God's sake, to be photographed with Bill Clinton. The Trib, it seemed, had scored a coup. Here was a guy who could barely write, who had never worked as a journalist before, who was gaining access to the biggest figures in Russia. Other reporters scratched their heads: who was this guy? Where did he come from? And how had he managed to talk his way through so many doors?

Some people had theories, there were any number of rumors-Bass has for years been the Dorian Gray of Moscow, a catch-all funnel for vitriolic innuendo-but no one who knew anything was going public with the information. One thing everybody agreed upon, however: Bass's technique, whatever it was, was not standard. There were too many bizarre incidents, like the one that precipitated the photo on our cover, that excluded the possibility of normalcy.

Okay, so here's how the cover photo happened. Bass had just signed on as an image consultant to the LDPR, after helping organize a "Jamaican Beauty Contest" at Chesterfield's at which Zhirinovsky was a judge (the winner was a 14 year-old girl). Not long after his partnership with Zhirinovsky began, he learned that the Beverly Hills club-a club with which he had had a relationship, as an events coordinator-was holding a banquet for ambassadors at which Chuck Norris was to be present. Sensing a good photo opportunity, Bass headed over to the club, not knowing that Boris Nemtsov had also been invited. The savvy club management, knowing that Nemtsov and Zhirinovsky did not exactly get along (Zhirinovsky once threw a glass of juice at Nemtsov on national television), suggested that Bass and Zhirinovsky come by another time, in order to avoid an incident. Bass, however, created a tremendous fuss, banging on the door, screaming, and demanding that his client, a former presidential candidate, be let in. Zhirinovsky was so enraged that he called NTV, ORT, the Tax Inspectorate, and the police to plead his case. By the time the mob arrived, Chuck Norris himself had intervened and let Zhirinovsky in. The press, however, did come away with a story: Bass, once inside, got in an argument with a certain Important Personage in the club, who cracked a glass of whiskey over Bass's head. Witnesses described Bass hurrying out out the room, shouting, "He hit me on the head! You can't do that!"

It was the second time Bass had been bloodied in the club. A few months before, he had been beaten up by the club security, after allegedly assaulting a member of the staff, and left for dead on the stairwell. The first incident passed without much notice. The second got a little more attention. A few days after the fight, the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets-Moscow's most popular newspaper-ran a big story on Bass under the headline, "Who's Combing Vovochka's Hair?" The photo on our cover this issue ran alongside the piece, which publicly revelled in the absurdity of the new Zhirinovsky-Bass union.

"The name of the head of the LDPR has always been associated with stories of extremely notrious nature," the piece read. "There's been a little of everything: his helpers have been killed, and his closest handlers have been linked to wild scandals. But for the 'main patriot' of the country to hire a citizen of 'Russia's biggest enemy' as his imagemaker, that's something new."

The union was unusual for another reason-namely that Bass, an American Jew, was linking up with a notorious anti-Western anti-semite. Bass in the piece defended himself hilariously:

"Before, I wouldn't for my life have agreed to be in the same room with him. After all, I'm not a racist or an anti-Semite."

The incident did nothing to stem the expat community's curiosity about Bass. In fact, the barrage of publicity-first his link with the LDPR, then his characteristic public whipping-only added to the legend.

In many ways, the marriage of Bass and the LDPR is a match made in heaven. The LDPR has since its inception been a sort of Oakland Raiders of Russian public life-a home for misfits and degenerates who were shunned elsewhere but welcomed into the arms of the new brotherhood. The LDPR has long had the reputation as an "Aftoritetnaya" party, a political group with the image of a criminal clan. The image is based on concrete information. In 1995, prior to the parliamentary elections, Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov released a report delineating which of the Duma candidates had criminal histories. The LDPR had 12 such candidates. Today, the LDPR boasts such excellent figures as Mikhail Monastirsky, who served time for trading in stolen antiques in the 1970s, and Valentin Brushakov, who was arrested earlier this decade for inciting race hatred after writing articles sympathetic to Hitler. Last year, three LDPR aides were shot and killed in still-unsolved assassinations, while Zhirinovsky's top aide suffered an attempt on his life just weeks after he split with the party.

Despite its reputation outside the Duma, the LDPR inside is the envy of the Russian government, known as the wildest partyers in parliament. Couches in the Duma lounge were reportedly removed after LDPR members made a habit of lying prostitutes on them in evening drinking parties.

Bass should fit in well there. No matter what you say about him, it's clear he knows how to throw a party. Club owners all over town may hate him, but almost everyone agrees: he can pack a place with people who spend money. And he has a stunning talent for rounding up young women. The murky past, the freewheeling lifestyle, all of this makes him a logical choice for an LDPR imagemaker, even if his nationality and his religion would seem, on the surface, to make him an anathema to the party.

Michael Bass threatened to kill me a few months ago. The eXile had just published an excerpt from a New York Times bestseller called "You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again," in which a young model wrote about her experiences with Bass in Paris. In the book, the young woman, "Liza," claimed that Bass had brought her to Paris with a promise of a runway modelling contract, only to be locked in her hotel room and asked to prostitute herself for visiting Arabs.

Bass was furious at us for publishing the piece, and called me shortly afterward to let me know that his "roof" wanted me dead and that he, Bass, was still unsure of whether to have my legs broken or to let me go. I went to the legal attache office in the U.S. Embassy, which advised me to take it easy for a while: I left town and returned only after independent sources assured me that Bass was not going to take any action.

Since then, the eXile and Bass have been completely copasthetic. Bass even showed up in a ZiL with a giant scar on his head at our last party. We have brutalized him over and over again in our newspaper, and he just keeps coming back for more. In a way, we've really started to like him.

When Moskovsky Komsomolets reporter Yevgeny Antonov came to our offices last week to inquire about Bass (for a follow-up to his first piece), we didn't have much to tell him. We recounted some of the more famous Bass stories, such as the legend that he had once hired a double to play the role of Diana Ross after selling high-priced bogus tickets to a dinner with the singer at Golden Palace; when the real Diana Ross came down with the flu, Bass's scheme was unmasked, and he barely escaped alive.

We told Antonov the numerous beating stories, and passed on a few rumors for them to check out. But we couldn't help Antonov with the information he really wanted: where does Bass make his money? How can he afford his luxurious apartment on Tverskaya Ulitsa? What does he actually do for a living?

We had no idea. That is, we have lots of ideas, but no reliable information, and no hope of ever getting any. If anybody knows for sure, we'd sure be interested to hear.

The irony of Michael Bass's rise in the Russian political world is that he probably knows less Russian than any American in Moscow. The fact that he has so many contacts here suggests that he's speaking a different kind of language with his Russian partners, a more international language. We're just not that good at that language. We wish we were. It would make understanding Russian politics a lot easier.

Who's Michael Bass? The short answer is, a guy who's lived an interesting life, who we wouldn't want around our daughter. More than that, we don't really know.

Why are we so fascinated with him? That's easy. There aren't any other foreigners in town who provide us pictures like the one on the cover. In fact, despite all the trouble we've had with him, we really hope he stays alive. Our own lives would really be dull without him.

What's wrong with his life? Answer: nothing. In Russia, getting whacked around every now and then apparently doesn't mean you're behind in life. It may even help you get places-like the LDPR inner circle.