Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears for Luzhkov

However disgracefully he was forced out, let’s get one thing straight: Luzhkov was a dirty crook. And so is the interim Mayor.

Today’s New York Times grandly muses about the ‘two sides’ of Luzhkov – the top city manager who turned Moscow from a “trash-strewn” dump to a “humming megalopolis of skyscrapers, luxury boutiques and traffic jams”; but who succumbed in later life to despotism and cronyism.

First of all, let’s dispel the myth of “Moscow’s Saviour”. Only the most historically naive and blinkered outlet such as the Times could misrepresent Soviet-era Moscow so much. Yes, 1992 Moscow was a dump compared to today’s Moscow, but both Moscows are paradises compared to the rest of the country, and this gap has kept steady.

Has the NYT forgotten what the rest of Russia looked like in 1992? In 1992 , or indeed any other year of the 20th century, 99% of the USSR’s population would sell their souls to be able to suffer the luxury of cigarette shortages on its “trash-strewn” streets?

My own parents often took a three day train from Murmansk to Moscow for the privilege of standing half a day in line for sausages or leather boots, listening to locals complain about the indignity of queuing for things that the rest of the country didn’t even imagine existed in shops.

In a hypercentralised country like Russia where most of the national wealth resides in the capital, Moscow and Muscovites had always lived like kings compared to their compatriots, and it’s certainly no big achievement of Luzhkov’s that he managed to keep it that way.

His other sins, such as the wanton destruction of priceless historical buildings, littering the city with horrific sculptures purchased for six figure sums from his friend Tsereteli, all the accusations of corruption and the undemocratic and cabalistic approach to governing, have been too widely reported to go over again here.

And let’s not forget that it was Luzhkov who pushed for the environmentally devastating Khimki highway project which resulted in mass civil unrest and which Medvedev decided to postpone for the time being.

So trying to balance these supposed two sides of Luzhkov is like balancing the pros and cons of cigarettes. Sure, they cause cancer but hey – on the other hand, maybe they can decrease global warming!

Luzhkov was a bruiser whose family wealth grew to billions during a tenure equaling, in years, that of Brezhnev and whose approval ratings have been sliding inexorably downhill for a decade.

However, the mere overwhelming veracity of the Kremlin’s case against Luzhkov still does not make his removal right.

Some, like his old foe, the ex-KGB UK based oligarch Alex Lebedev, think it does.  According to the Guardian:

Lebedev also defended his decision to appear in a hostile documentary on Baturina, the world’s third-richest woman, shown by NTV earlier this month. He said: “I don’t like state-controlled TV stations behaving like 1937 Pravda. But since it was my point of view they were expressing, why not.”

Why not? First of all, has Lebedev never read Niemoller? And second, because for all his crimes, Luzhkov maintained a crucial independence, remaining the last powerful holdout from Putin-Medvedev’s St. Petersburg clique.

At least Moscow’s buildings can breathe a sigh of relief!