#10 | June 19 - July 2, 1997  

by Abram Kalashnikov

The French like frog legs (that's why they are called Frogs). The Germans fill up on sauerkraut (that's why they're called Krauts). The English eat porridge for breakfast. Their national cuisine is so bland they aren't called anything because of it. Americans are either junk food or health food addicts.

Russians are cannibals. The LA Times says so.

In a recent story entitled "Russians Shrug off Cannibalism Cases," Vanora Bennett reports from the city of Novokuznetsk that a local unemployed man named Sasha Spesivtsev (for some sentimental reason Ms. Bennett prefers to call him by this diminutive rather than his full name, Alexander) killed and ate some runaway kids. Well, to be precise, a runaway girl found in his apartment with multiple stab wounds somehow managed to tell the police that Spesivtsev ate his victims. Then she died. There were no other witnesses.

Spesivtsev has admitted killing street kids. He has not had his day in court, though. In her story, Ms Bennett describes the callousness and inefficiency of Novokuznetsk police so vividly that one begins to wonder how the confessions were obtained. However, Ms. Bennett is sure her "Sasha" is not only a killer but also a cannibal. She needs to be the jury and the judge because she has a point to make.

"In other places, the brutality of these killings - and the mere suggestion of cannibalism-might have created a sensation, as did the 1991 case involving Jeffrey Dahmer, a Milwaukee serial killer and cannibal," Ms. Bennett writes. "But there has been no outcry in Russia. Here, such crimes are surprisingly prevalent, always in rundown provincial towns, almost always among the unemployed, the drink-sodden and the uneducated."

This paragraph is full of interesting assertions. Had Spesivtsev's case not created some kind of outcry, Ms. Bennett, based in Moscow, would not have known about it. Also, at home, Ms. Bennett might have had to refer to O.J. Simpson as a "suspect" in the murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. In Novokuznetsk, if the police say someone is a murderer and a cannibal, it is enough for an American journalist to say this person is a murderer and a cannibal.

The LA Times even ran a sidebar to the story, explaining why Russians like to eat people.

The sidebar quotes one Konstantin A. Bogdanov-a FOLKLORE expert, for God's sake-who offers the following theory: "In the States, people are trying to move on from the thinking of Sigmund Freud, the idea that people's basic mechanism of interaction is sexual. So an American who wants to express his rage at his society will typically do so through sexually deviant behavior-rape, child abuse, sexual harassment. But here in Russia, what we are all trying to escape is Marxism. And Marx believed that people always interacted socially, as classes or groups. When people here want to find a way to manifest rage against their surroundings, they express their deviance socially. And what could be a purer form of antisocial behavior than eating people?"

An expert in fairy tales would know, of course. And Jeffrey Dahmer was just trying to escape from Marxism.

To be fair to Russians, some of them are not cannibals. This breed of savages prefers black caviar. Since they cannot afford to buy it in stores, they illegally catch sturgeon, then eat some of the caviar and sell the rest for $8 per pound.

Lee Hockstader of The Washington Post, who recently did a story about that, is particularly concerned about the price aspect. "It's hard to say who's winning the caviar wars [between poachers and the authorities]," Mr. Hockstader writes. "By all indications, the big losers are the sturgeon-and the wealthy caviar lovers from Japan to Georgetown willing to pay up to $2,500 for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of the finest."

What are these people going to do if the damned Russians eat all the caviar or sell it to each other for only $8? Starve, obviously. "With the wild, wild west mentality now going on in Russia, we're going to have a real problem soon," said Eve Vega, head of operations for Petrossian, a major caviar retailer and importer to the West.

Mr. Hockstader easily gets around the paradox of sympathizing with both Petrossian and the fish. After all, they have a common enemy-the penniless, poaching, gold-toothed, filthy Russians.

There is consolation, however, for those who resent Russians eating each other and those expensive fish eggs. Most of them get eaten by mosquitoes, who have been rendered particularly vicious by the onset of economic reforms. Clara Germani of The Baltimore Sun reports that Moscow is plagued by a special kind of gnat-the basement mosquito.

"The little pests are the legacy of the decline of the Soviet, and now Russian, economy, entomologists say," Ms. Germani writes, without quoting any entomologists. "As the economy got worse, so did the maintenance of government-owned apartment buildings. The less upkeep, the more deterioration of pipes and the more standing water in basements."

Thus the deterioration of the Soviet - sorry, Russian-economy gives birth to new vermin. Apparently, in healthy economies apartment buildings, government-owned and otherwise, are invariably well-maintained, as evidenced by areas like the Bronx, parts of Stockton, South Philly and South Central LA. This week's prize-for sheer smugness and condescension-goes to the San Francisco Chronicle for Andrew Kramer's story entitled "Russians Taste the Good Life." The central characters of the story are the Milosserdov family. Kramer's article depicts the ultimate pipe dream for American readers: destitute Russians who are pleased as punch because avoiding taxes leaves them just enough money to buy Western stuff.

The Milosserdovs are typical representatives of the nascent Russian middle class because they own a Power Macintosh computer, a $300 Pentax camera, a Sharp color TV-and FOUR VCRs.

"Like most Russians with money, the Milosserdovs do not report their true income to the tax authorities," Mr. Kramer writes-and goes on to report these incomes to the world at large: "Yury reports only a fraction of his $500 salary. Nadya makes about $140 a month working at home on her computer." Two pictures come with the article- one with the following caption: "A Moscow woman tried on shoes; more consumer goods are available and growing numbers can afford them."

That's why the streets are filled with the middle class these days: these guys can finally afford shoes.