This was really good. It is also the only place I have ever seen the fact pointed out in the Anglophone press that AR appears to have been named after Limonov's book. I like to think you learned that from me. ;)
Just a couple of small criticisms:
1. I think you mean Kasyanov, not Illarionov.
2. The people Kasparov represents (all 5 of them) I wouldn't call "intellectuals"; they're more of the extreme fringe of the zapadniki (Westernizer) loony liberal wing.
The point about the elitism is spot on. Mark Ames made much of the same point about the elitism of what I guess you could call the "'90s elite intelligentsia" in his review of Tales of a Kremlin Digger a few years ago:
The eXile 22 April 04
Lord of the Swine
Censorship in Russia: Revenge of the Disenfranchised By Mark Ames ( editor at exile.ru )
I have just discovered why nearly 80% of Russians support censorship of the free press. The reason is Elena Tregubova, and everything that Elena Tregubova represents -- which is to say, the liberal free press of the 1990s.
Tregubova is the controversial author of the sensational new book Baiki Kremlyovskogo Diggera (Tales of a Kremlin Digger). She was a former star of the Kremlin press pool during the late Yeltsin years through the early Putin years. Her new book caused a scandal last month supposedly because of its revelations about the sleazy, backstabbing culture inside the Putin administration, and how it forced a bootlicking, cowed pool of journalists to heel. The controversy surrounding her book reached a peak mid-December when the Kremlin allegedly ordered the popular Sunday night Namedni show on NTV to cancel an interview with Tregubova.
Having just read Baiki Kremlyovskogo Diggera, I was shocked to find how small a part Kremlin politics and the destruction of the free press plays in her book. Rather, what emerges in Tregubova's memoir is a portrait of one of the most loathsome, shallow, vain personalities I have ever come across in any medium. I found myself screeching with every flip of the page. But as I read her accounts of the press pool, what I understood was that she was not merely inadvertently laying bare one elitny Muscovite dyevushka's vile inner world, but rather, the vile world of an entire elite stratum that few have considered until now: the Yeltsin-era intelligentsia, a class which was led by journalists like Tregubova just as the Soviet-era intelligentsia was led by writers and poets.
(snip)
A few pages later, when Tregubova is invited back into the Putin press pool, she heads into the dreaded provinces, and boy oh boy is she horrified. By the poverty and destitution left by the tragic Yeltsin reforms? Well, not exactly, as this anecdote proudly shows. I have to quote it in full it is so repulsive and revealing about Tregubova and her entire class:
"'Excuse me, do you have any Earl Grey tea?' I politely inquired at the hotel snack bar. And having received a negative answer, I moved on to the next indispensable point of the program: 'And might you have some fresh [ie: fresh-squeezed] orange juice?'
"'We do. Twenty rubles,' the snackbar lady answered.
"I was pleasantly surprised by the low price and so just in case I asked again:
"'Excuse me, are you sure that it's fresh?'"
"The snack bar lady angrily hissed between her lips:
"'We don't carry non-fresh, dyevushka.'
"And a minute later they brought me -- of course not fresh juice in the true sense -- not fresh-squeezed,
but juice from a packet. Perhaps it was in some sense fresh also. As in -- made this year.
"My hopes collapsed and I fell into a state of absolute desperation: 'I beg you: you have oranges -- please, squeeze a glass of juice for me! I haven't slept for two nights, and I have to write an article now!'
"But to my regret it turned out that in most cities of my vast Russia it's not possible, no matter how much you're willing to pay, to buy those little things without which, as funny as it sounds, I cannot imagine living.
"In the end, so as not to fall into depression, I started taking with me from Moscow such soul-savers as tea with bergamot [an elitny chai -- Ed.]. And I would buy two kilograms of oranges from the hotel snack bar in the evenings so that in the morning, in order not to frighten the aborigines by my gluttony, I'd lock myself in my hotel room and eat them with my breakfast, thus simulating my daily need for fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is necessary for my emergency resuscitation."
Did you get that? "Aborigines." It's one thing for her to whine like a cliched Tseppelin dyevushka over fresh juice, elitny chai, and dreadful mornings...but calling provincial Russians "aborigines" because they don't know what her beloved fresh-squeezed orange juice is?! ABORIGINES?! Because they're too poor and destitute thanks to the policies of oligarchs who funded Tregubova's entire career?! And people wonder why most Russians loathe the Yeltsin-era "free" press!
Etc. : http://www.exile.ru/2004-April-22/feature_story.html
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