Experimental Blog # 231

Comments on and quotations from "In Putin's Footsteps"' - Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones by Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler

It has been almost 28 years since both the end of the Soviet Union and Communism in Russia, which soon followed. However, only now are American and other outsiders really beginning to find out what life in the "new Russia", its many cities and provinces, has become. This book presents both some of the old and familiar negative and, sometimes surprising, new positive evaluations.

"After taking over from Yeltsin as acting president on the first day of the new Millennium"{the year 2000}, the authors then point out that eighteen years later Vladimir Putin is still very much in charge and is just beginning his fourth presidential term in office.

"At times you can't help feeling that Moscow is Byzantium, its modernized version, with Mercedes and gourmet supermarkets."

"Cities of the Mighty Volga" - Ulyanovsk did not revert to its pre-Soviet name, Simbirsk. Whereas Samara did not keep its Soviet name of Kuibyshev.
"Examining the museum's exhibits{in Ulyanovsk} < > we realized that only four leaders have remained in Russia's recent, and well-curated, official historical memory. First, Lenin, < > Stalin comes second < > Leonid Brezhnev is the third < > {Putin is the fourth, of course.}"
"And what of the "reformers" - Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin? They have almost completely dropped out of history, at least as the Russian state now presents it."

The more positively presented cities seem to be:

"The Urals' Holy Trinity":
"Perm is the Urals' culture capital - the "first city in Europe," < > Others view it as the last European city < > The Perm Paradox."
 Yekaterinburg is called a "well-kept city" and it is compared to Chicago!
"Founded in 1586, Tyumen, the current hub of the Russian oil industry, has had an even shinier look than most." It is called the "Capital of Russia's Klondike".

Novosibirsk is told as "A Story of Science{ because of nearby Akademgorodok} and Serendipity". It is apparently Russia's third largest city and is positively described as "a stunning success."
 And, not for the first time, Vladivostok is compared to San Francisco. 

Magadan is called the "Gulag Capital". Even though this chapter is about 22 pages long it does not mention that an American politician named Henry Wallace, who became Secretary of Agriculture and then Vice President from 1940 to 1944, was reported to have visited this city, probably in the 1930s, and praised what he saw there![ Further checking-up turned up the fact that Vice President Henry Wallace visited Magadan in 1944]