>Most of the Soviet "middle class," to which the intelligentsia belonged,
>was
>lumpenized when their savings were wiped out in 1992. They're too busy
>selling hot dogs in kiosks to adopt any kind of serious oppositional
>stance.
>A university professor in Russia makes about $50 a month (officially,
>anyway; there's also taking bribes and backdoor lessons and tutoring exams
>to New Russians and using your car as a taxi and hawking fast food and so
>on
>and so on).
Some years ago I helped organize a philosophers' trip to Russia, this was when I was still a professor, and we did it through a tour group; our guide in Petersburg was a former art history prof who could make better money on one tour with a bunch of western professors--and we were people making $25-$50K, not luxury my US standards by any means--than she could in a year at the U. We went witha Russian grad student to a somewhat pretentious restaurant in the Arbtaskaya, he read the menu for us, and paled when he saw the prices, which turned out to be about 2/3 of what one one pay for similar meals at a upper-mid range restaurant in Chicago, maybe $15-$20 fora n enree.That was half his monthly saalry. We took him him to McDonalds, it was a big treat, we felt like such a bunch of ugly Americans and Canadians. I have a friend, an editor at Znamyia, took us to dinner, or rather we took her to dinner, at the house of writers, the maitre d' said to her, haven't seen you in a while. She said, can't afford it. There, a fancy dinner for five, beluga caviar, the works, which would cost easily over $100 a person here cost $100 total, but at $40 a month, she couldn't afford her own meal. The guests therew ere almost all gangster and biznizmen.
>One person who has carried himself admirably, though I don't agree with him
>on virtually everything, is Solzhenitsyn. He has been unsparing in his
>criticism.
>
>By the way, in Russia Solzhenitsyn is considered to be a very, very bad
>writer, as well as a pompous ass.
>
>
Well, he _is_ a pompous ass. And he hasn't written anything worth reading since Cancer Ward and the First Circle. August 1914 is a fucking disgrace.
jks
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