(N)—Nyegr
Newcomers are shocked to see Russians call black people
nyegr right to their faces. Everyone does it, even blacks.
Nyegr is an older Russian word derived from “Negro.” It’s still the best word available. They can’t use a term like “African-Russian” since most blacks in Moscow are not Russian but African students who forgot to go home. “Black” doesn’t work because “black” in Russian is
chyorni and it refers disparagingly to people from the Caucasus. Actually, they’re called “black-asses.” After you see all the options,
nyegri is actually pretty good.
Being black in Russia is good and bad. While skinhead violence is so rampant that it makes East Germany look like a hippie commune, Russian chicks have the hots for Africans because they’re such good dancers. Seriously. If you’re an African, best to hang out in a nightclub like Cabana or Karma Bar. Of course, you’ll have to zip in there from the taxi because running into skinheads or cops when you’re black is never good.
Going to clubs in Russia is expensive, so a lot of Africans will augment their income playing the role of a “Negro” for a restaurant. Specifically, standing around in a monkey costume to attract, let’s say, “old-fashioned” Russian customers who like gawking at Africans. If you’re not into that, there’s always drugs. African students are the most reliable smack dealers in town.
(O)—OLIGARCHS
Russians are single-handedly responsible for reviving this old Greek word, which until recently was a favorite pejorative of Marxist-types looking to whip up class warfare.
In the 1990s, a small clique of well-connected businessmen took control of Russia’s largest “privatized” assets in rigged auctions. One guy, Vladimir Potanin, was put in charge of a privatization auction for a company controlling one-third of the world’s nickel and 70 percent of its platinum. Guess what? He won. Paying just $170 million for a company which at the time earned $2 billion a year, Vladimir and a few of his pals became some of the richest men in the world overnight.
These newbie billionaires needed a name to describe who they were, since “thief” didn’t go down well with their new international banking friends. First they came up with “robber baron,” to try to make them seem like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and the other ruthless-yet-respected titans of American industry. Then everyone started complaining that the analogy didn’t quite hold, since America’s robber barons actually built entire industries from scratch, whereas Russia’s robber barons merely stole already-built industries and stripped them bare.
So then they just decided, “Aw fuck it, who are we kidding? We control the country, the economy, and the president. Let’s just shove it in everyone’s faces.” Thus were born Russia’s oligarchs. A recent Forbes survey found that Moscow has the largest number of billionaires of any city on earth.
Things are changing however. Even though some oligarchs still have warehouses full of rubles, Putin has made it very clear that the second they fuck up they will end up in exile, in jail, or on ice.
Putin
photo by AP
(P)—Putin
Sort of like Pablo Picasso, Putin is only five-foot-five but girls cannot resist his stare. They also can’t resist his jails.
Putin came to power by methodically working his way up the ladder behind the scenes and proving his loyalty to his venal masters in the Kremlin. In 1999, Yeltsin and his cronies were shitting bricks because there was a real chance they might lose power to opposing clans and find themselves on trial or in exile. In a moment of panic, they plucked the slippery Putin from the FSB, killed a few hundred people by blowing up some apartment buildings, and then blamed the whole thing on Chechen terrorists. With anti-Muslim sentiment raging Putin invaded Chechnya, and lo and behold, his ratings soared from under two percent to over 70, where they’ve stayed ever since.
Why is Putin so popular? First, he doesn’t drink, which after Yeltsin was no small feat. Second, he’s ended the chaos of the 90s by clamping down on both “democratic elections” and the “free media.” We use quotes there because both democracy and the media were so corrupted at the end of Yeltsin’s tenure that all that was left when Putin took power were the trappings of these institutions. Finally, Putin doesn’t suck up to America the way Yeltsin did.
Russians love and Americans hate that Putin hasn’t let Western multinationals wet their beaks at the Russian oil trough. When oil baron Khodorkovsky tried to hook up his oil major Yukos with Exxon and Chevron, Putin wiped him out. Today the American media has rebranded him the second coming of Stalin, which to Russians is not necessarily a bad thing. He is due to step down in 2008, but whether he will or not is the 64,000-ruble question.
MARK AMES
CONTINUED:
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