Keith Gessen Blog

Politkovskaya retrial

Some people have asked me about the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to cancel the verdict in the Politkovskaya murder case. I’ve been surprised by the interest this has generated in the West, as in Russia the Supreme Court decision was entirely—and depressingly—expected. A large proportion of jury acquittals get overturned in higher courts, despite the fact that jury trials in Russia are a great deal fairer than bench trials. In this case, with the political pressure for a guilty verdict, a refusal to annul the decision would have been progress; instead it’s business as usual. So don’t believe the hype.

would you rather have a lexus or justice?

For the 12th year out of 20, J. D. Power and Associates have chosen a Lexus. Over justice.

kolkhoznik

A summer Sunday evening around nine is a pretty good time to be on the road—but still there was a bottleneck in front of the Leningrad train station. Is this where Anna Karenina threw herself under a train? No. Not quite. Still, there was a small traffic jam.

“What the fuck?” said Igor. It really was a little puzzling. We crawled along, bit by bit. Finally there was some open space ahead, in another lane. Igor accelerated our Infiniti FX50 right into it, cutting off a sputtering old Moskvich. We saw the Moskvich’s driver, a man with a tan, weathered face and a little summer cap, as he looked reproachfully at us. “Kolkhoznik!” said Igor contemptuously—collective farm worker—and then we were free.

HFM's dream

HFM: In the US, as much as you hear people complaining about the bankruptcy process, that’s my wet dream, to go through bankruptcy processes in the US. They’re so much more fair and speedy and transparent than ninety-nine percent of the jurisdictions I’m used to.

n+1: You’d love to go through bankruptcy in the US?

HFM: No, I’d love to put people through one. If I could take these recoveries and put them through a US bankruptcy process, that would make a lot more sense. Even with Obama interfering with the bankruptcy process politically—where the Chrysler secured lenders feel really bad about the fact that they wind up getting twenty-five cents on the dollar, and some of the unsecured creditors got a better recovery—to me that would probably be a good result. In some of the jurisdictions I deal in that would be a spectacular result.

weekend traffic

On summer weekends in Moscow, the traffic disappears. Cause for celebration? No. It just means the traffic has moved elsewhere, and you were not invited.

traffic expert?

Some people say, How can you be Moscow’s premier traffic expert when you don’t even have a car there and don’t yourself spend hours and hours sitting in traffic?

The question answers itself: If I were a driver, I’d be sitting in traffic instead of writing this. There are thousands—hundreds of thousands—of traffic experts much more expert than myself, but their voices cannot be heard through the tinted windows of their black Mercedes, behind which they die their silent deaths.

I speak for them.

traffic update

This is from ten minutes ago:

— 19.06.2009 21:26 —

В Москве на Садовом кольце неизвестный обстрелял прохожих

Московские милиционеры ищут машину Lada Priora, из которой неизвестный стрелял из травматического пистолета по прохожим на Садовом кольце в центре столицы, пострадавших в результате инцидента нет, сообщил источник в правоохранительных органах Москвы.

That says: A man sitting in his Lada on the Ring Road started shooting at people with a riot gun (i.e., presumably not with real bullets). But still.

Why would he do this? Or, rather, would he start shooting at people if he was not sitting in traffic? If his Lada Priora was moving comfortably along?

I conclude that the traffic right now on the Ring Road is not good.

traffic blog

Two days ago during rush hour, at the corner of Sretenka and the boulevard, near the Krupskaya monument, the southbound and northbound traffic light turned red and stayed red. The radial traffic up Sretenka—meaning, outbound from the Kremlin—got a permanent green. On the northbound half of the street, a traffic cop waved people through the red. But there was no analogous cop for the southbound traffic; all they had was their red. They started honking. And honking. Eventually the traffic cop came over from the other side of the street, angrily; a woman in one of the cars waved to him to let traffic through. Instead he shook his traffic baton at her and said, “I’ll show you how to wave! I’ll wave too! You’ll see!” That is to say, he was going to hit her with the baton.

The woman rolled up her window. A few minutes later, three government cars sped quickly through the green light. Why’s everyone always complaining about the traffic? they must have thought. What a bunch of complainers. We should get an extra prize for having to govern these people. A government prize.

the internet

I’ve often said that if the internet were a city, we’d be well within our rights to bomb it.

But reading Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal’s book about the first Chechen war, I see I wasn’t thinking right militarily speaking. Of the debacle of the invasion of Grozny in late 1994, in which the Russians threw a lot of tanks and other armored vehicles into the city only to have them be incinerated by a small, outnumbered, but mobile group of Chechen fighters, they write:

[Russian Defense Minister Pavel] Grachev was ignoring not only Russia’s experience in Afghanistan but also lessons from the historic battles fought on Russian soil in the Second World War. The epic struggles of Stalingrad and Leningrad had shown more than anything in military history that a city can only be taken with enormous cruelty and passion. Tanks were no good in a city, it needed a ruthlessly enforced blockade, and then very determined infantry. (202)

This seems like good advice. But how do we—the enemies of the internet—blockade the entire internet? I’m not sure. Clearly leveling the entire internet the way the Russians leveled Grozny is not the answer. Is it worth destroying an entire city block to get rid of one anonymous commenter? I don’t know. I mean, we can get our movie times elsewhere, as this Tumblr has demonstrated, but the international opprobrium would be tough to take.