Vodka

by Boris Starling

  “Nor much of an omen,” said Lewis, perking up for the first time since their arrival.

  The Metropol was entirely to Lewis’s taste, which was to say it was sufficiently luxurious to kid him that he wasn’t in Russia. He retired to the bathroom to soak away thoughts of the great unwashed outside, while Alice plucked four Smirnoff miniatures from the minibar and drained them with systematic relish as she stood at the window, looking down at the patches of neon signs flickering uncertainly, the dancing headlights of crazy drivers, the gargantuan buildings that loomed like supertankers from the darkness, and the people, the people, scurrying fifty yards below the remote and omnipotent goddess who’d come from the promised land to spread the gospel according to the almighty dollar.

  5

  Friday, December 27, 1991

  The limousine pulled up around the back of the president’s official residence, a neoclassical triangular building that used to serve as the senate. The driver, a thickset southerner named Ruslan with beetle brows and an ill-fitting suit, opened the door for Alice. The cold was dry and seemed almost industrial; it hurt her nostrils the moment she stepped out of the car.

  “I’ll be waiting here for you when you come out,” Ruslan said.

  “You’ll be keeping yourself warm while I’m gone?”

  He looked at her blankly, perhaps surprised at how good her Russian was. Alice opened the passenger door and pulled a bottle of vodka from the glove compartment. Ruslan sized her up fast and smiled. “Best heating known to man,” he said.

  She grinned back. “Save some for me.”

  The president’s office was at the end of a long corridor carpeted in red. Alice passed through an anteroom bulging with stone-faced men in gray suits and into a small conference room, where she waited until a secretary arrived to escort her into the inner sanctum.

  Anatoly Nikolayevich Borzov, president of the Russian Federation and now the Kremlin’s inhabitant, kissed Alice’s hand, took a step backward the better to admire her, nodded approvingly and steered her by the elbow toward a white leather armchair. Gorbachev had been gone barely thirty-six hours, and already there was no trace of him. Rumor had it that Borzov had moved in even before Gorbachev had left, piling Gorbachev’s possessions in the corridor as though he were holding a fire sale. Now the office was a shrine to Russia and Borzov in equal measures.

  Huge paintings dominated the walls: Lentulov’s St. Basil’s Cathedral, Surikov’s The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy, Polonev’s Moscow Courtyard. Along the plasterboard, smaller frames jostled for space: prints of prerevolutionary streets and czarist armies, icons of apostles, and scores of photographs, all without exception featuring Borzov himself, his drinker’s luminous face glowing under the statesman’s stiff helmet of white hair. Borzov in a bulldozer, Borzov outside McDonald’s on Pushkin Square, Borzov laughing with colleagues.

  “You’ll take a hundred grams with the chief?” he said.

  It was ten in the morning. “Of course.”

  Borzov filled two glasses and handed one to Alice. The vodka in his glass lurched as he sat heavily into the chair opposite her, but the preservative balance innate to the hardened drinker ensured that not a drop was spilled. “Your good health,” he said, and moved to drain the glass in one gulp before remembering whose company he was in and smoothly altering the action to a sip.

  There was a knock at the door, and in came Arkin.

  “Kolya!” Borzov launched himself from his chair and kissed Arkin on both cheeks. “Kolya, meet Mrs. Liddell. Mrs. Liddell, meet Nikolai Valentinovich Arkin—the son the chief never had.”

  Arkin looked to be in his mid-thirties, two or three years older than Alice. He shook her hand and speared her with his good looks; skin glowing under well-groomed black hair, as tall as Borzov but many times more handsome as he shrugged off his Italian cashmere overcoat, a Russian as the West likes to see them. Untainted by any past association with the Communists, Arkin was a perfect poster boy for the new generation. At his inauguration as prime minister the previous month, he’d taken a stiletto blade from his pocket and slashed at the air in front of him. This is to be my trademark, he’d said; this knife is the symbol of my desire to cut through red tape and get things done. “I’ve no time for the enemies of progress,” he’d proclaimed. Whether he’d mimicked the famous Soviet slogan deliberately or unconsciously was moot; that he understood the free market was evident.

  “You two!” Borzov said, looking at Arkin and Alice as though he were presiding at a wedding. “So young, and already ruling the roost! There’s hardly room for an old codger like Anatoly Nikolayevich these days, is there?” He winked at Alice to let her know that he wasn’t being serious, and she understood instantly why he was such a hero to Russians; they were seduced by his bonhomie, but they also recognized the steel beneath it, and that reassured them. He’d stood on a tank outside the White House in August, he’d faced down the gray bureaucrats until the coup had disintegrated. He belonged to the Russian people, he was theirs. It was no wonder that Muscovites had rallied to him in those dark days the previous summer.

  Borzov motioned Arkin to a chair, chided him good-naturedly for refusing a glass of vodka—“Don’t say it, Kolya; someone has to remain sober, no?”—and then went to sit behind his desk, one side of which was covered with banks of telephones, some white and others colored but all without numbers. Under the Kremlin telephone system, each phone was connected to only one other person, which meant that the number of telephones was a direct indicator of seniority. No one had more phones than the president, of course. A modern exchange, though infinitely easier and more flexible, would have defeated the point: what matters in Russia is not just who has the power, but who’s seen to have that power.

  “It’s very simple, Mrs. Liddell,” Borzov said. “Russia is reforming, God knows, we’re reforming. Prices are being freed next Thursday, we’re stabilizing the money supply, creating a new tax system, protecting property rights and contracts, and so on. It sounds very simple put that way, no?” He nodded toward Arkin. “Kolya understands all this much better, which is why Anatoly Nikolayevich made him prime minister, to see this whole program through. And he tells the chief that the one thing we need to do before everything else, the one thing that’s of paramount importance, is to privatize. The state owns everything, absolutely everything: diamond mines, food stores, oilfields, barber shops. Yes, Gorbachev’s reforms have ushered in some new beasts—leased enterprises, joint-stock companies, economic associations, cooperatives—but these are little more than variations on a theme. If we’re to be a proper market economy, the state must own nothing, yes? As little as possible, anyway. So we put out some feelers. ‘Who knows about privatizing command economies?’ we asked. We asked everyone—international organizations, other governments, embassies—and one name came up time and again. Yours.”

  Alice wasn’t surprised; quite the opposite, in fact. She’d have been insulted if she hadn’t been chosen. In the mid-eighties, she’d been the first woman to work on Milken’s infamous junk-bond trading floor in Beverly Hills. Headhunted from Wall Street at decade’s end, she’d spent the last two years running privatization programs in Eastern Europe, suddenly liberated after the momentous autumn of 1989 when government after government toppled, the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Ceaucescus were executed by their own people. If there was a single person who’d shuttled between Budapest, Prague and Warsaw more than Alice had in that time, she’d yet to meet them. But she’d always been conscious that, however important her work there had been, it was little more than a dress rehearsal for the big one—Mother Russia herself.

  “Speed is the key here, Mrs. Liddell,” Arkin said, and it was the smugness of his tone that prompted Alice to answer back.

  “Speed is always the key in situations like these, Nikolai Valentinovich, but we can only move fast if you pledge to stick behind me all the way. I planned rapid privatization in Warsaw, and was undone by the bureaucrats. I was more cauti
ous in Budapest, and was criticized for being too slow. Prague was the best I managed, largely because Havel backed me all the way. If this is to work, gentlemen, your support must be unwavering; I can’t do it otherwise.”

  “This is Russia,” said Arkin. “You can’t apply the same strictures here as elsewhere.”

  “Why not? You’re all postcommunist societies, you’re all facing similar transitions; you’re all the same, more or less.”

  The silence was so deep and encompassing that it seemed to swallow Alice’s remark and whirl it down into the black hole reserved for heresies. The muscles in Arkin’s cheeks stood out like walnuts; Borzov struck his clay pipe against the table as though it were a drumstick. It seemed an age before the president spoke, in the quiet and measured voice of someone trying very hard to control their anger.

  “Russia is unique,” he said. “It is categorically and absolutely not like anywhere else.”

  Alice, her hands held up to pacify, gabbled to rectify her mistake. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend, I was just…”

  “We respect your knowledge and experience, Mrs. Liddell.” It was Arkin this time, playing the peacemaker. “And in return we hope that you will respect our country. By the time your work is done here, you may love it or hate it—maybe both—but you’ll most assuredly see that it is indeed like nowhere else.”

  Alice had the sudden and uncomfortable feeling of being a teenager again, chastised by an elder, someone more worldly and sophisticated than she’d ever be. She drank the rest of her vodka and looked around, trying to hide her embarrassment. On the nearest wall was a picture of Borzov, mushroom-colored, emerging from the Moscow River. He was clad only in a tiny pair of swimming trunks, obscured at the front by the pendulous overhang of his belly.

  “They break the ice and have a competition to see who stays in there longest,” said Arkin, following her gaze. He’d noticed her discomfort and was now moving to assuage it. Alice was grateful, and confused. “Anatoly Nikolayevich always wins.”

  “Only because they let him,” said Borzov. “They think he doesn’t notice, but he does. He’s not stupid just because he’s old, but you try telling his doctors that. Now that he’s nearly seventy, they say he shouldn’t swim in there. Fools!” He grinned at Alice. “Your husband would know better. Anatoly Nikolayevich will remember to ask for him next time he’s carted off to the hospital.” Borzov peered gloomily into his empty glass. “Another?”

  “Please.”

  He hauled himself out of the chair, refilled their glasses and resumed his place, tamping tobacco in his pipe with excruciating slowness. He was larger than he appeared on television; the screen conveyed the breadth of his shoulders but not his height, nor his depth. Borzov seemed to go back a long way, Alice thought.

  She looked out the window. There was a demonstration on the far bank of the river; doctors protesting about their pay—less than ten dollars a month, when miners were still earning four hundred—and holding up banners saying Hippocrates, please forgive me.

  Borzov spoke to Arkin. “Now, Kolya, you were saying; speed is of the essence.”

  Arkin was turning a book over and over. It was only when he stopped in order to speak that Alice made out the title: Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith’s masterpiece of free market doctrine.

  “The West thinks every Russian is delirious with gratitude for the end of the Soviet Union. Not so. There are millions, tens of millions, who fear that reform will lead the country to ruin, and they’re well represented in parliament. Forget the resistance you saw during the coup, Mrs. Liddell; parliament is stuffed full of reactionaries who hope and believe we can’t do what we say we will. If we don’t prove them wrong, and fast, then our window of opportunity will be gone. That’s why something, anything, is better than nothing. We don’t need you to run an entire privatization program, Mrs. Liddell, not yet.”

  “But that’s what I—”

  “There’s no history of private property in Russia. Communism succeeded czarism; czarism had succeeded feudalism. Privatization will be as seismic as introducing money into a barter economy—I don’t exaggerate. This is why we tell you that Russia’s different. We need to hurry, but we also need to be realistic about what we can do. To privatize everything overnight, that’s impossible. But a single factory, successfully sold off, to show that it can be done … Make that work, and the rest will follow. The dinosaurs will see that privatization is going to happen whether they like it or not. How long would that take you, to sell off an enterprise?”

  “In Poland, I did one that…”

  “No, by Western standards. To sell an enterprise, with due diligence and so on; how long?”

  “A year, perhaps. Nine months at the outside.”

  “Parliament meets in the second week of March. You’ve got nine weeks.”

  They told her what was needed. The enterprise chosen would be in Moscow, just about the only place in the nation where more firms were still functioning than going to the wall. The guinea pig had to be well known, stable and commercially viable; bidding would be stronger for firms with good export potential and a strong retail base. Finally, it must already be corporatized as a joint-stock company; corporatization was a cumbersome process, and performing it anew would take too long.

  With all these factors taken into account, there were seven possibles—seven! Alice thought. In a country that spans twelve time zones, only seven! There was the Vorobyovy chocolate factory; the Moskovksie Brewery; Koloss, which made spaghetti, snacks and tea; Moscow Food Processing; the food wholesaler Torgovy Dom Preobrazenski; and the Bolshevik Biscuit Factory. All these were suitable in financial terms, but not politically; the government couldn’t hold up a spaghetti manufacturer as the harbinger of the Great Leap Forward, for instance. For the test case, the flagship, they needed something more … more Russian, something quintessentially national.

  The seventh possible enterprise was the Red October distillery, and the decision had already been made. What could have been more appropriate? Vodka is just about the only recession-proof industry; the worse the economy gets, the more vodka people drink. In many of Russia’s cash-strapped regions, vodka was a stable currency, making it as profitable as diamonds or oil. Alice had read that teachers in Murmansk were receiving their salaries in vodka (having rejected funeral accessories and lavatory paper) because the local authorities couldn’t pay them. The nation’s consumption of vodka borders on the heroic, and the figures remain staggering no matter how many times you hear them: Russia accounts for four fifths of the world’s vodka; a million liters are downed in Moscow each day; the average Russian drinks a liter every two days (the average Russian, including women and children—consider that for a moment).

  “Choosing Red October—it’s not just an economic decision, you know.” Borzov held his glass up to the light and squinted at it, as though the nation’s secrets were held within. “The people will understand why, because vodka’s our lifeblood, the defining symbol of Russian identity. It’s our main entertainment, our main currency, our main scourge. Vodka affects every aspect of Russian life, good and bad: friendships, business, politics, crime, and the millions of Russians whose lives are lonely, embittered and tough. If there’s one thing that unites the president with the frozen drunk found dead on a Moscow street, it’s vodka. Vodka’s always been the great equalizer, from here in the Kremlin down to the hovels. The good, the bad and the ugly, they all drink it. No matter what’s going on up above—monarchy, communism, capitalism—there’s always vodka, and all life goes through it. Our history and our future depend above all on one thing: vodka, and our relationship with it.”

  This was a sacred homily for Borzov, and Alice respected that. Borzov lowered his glass and stared at her. “What’s vodka, Mrs. Liddell, if not all things to all men? It can be a folk medicine, a hallucinogen revealing the mysteries of the soul, a lubricant more commonly applied to sophisticated machinery than any conventional liquid—and of course it can simply be vodka
too. Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in vodka, and its exaggeration too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, because we’re tired and to get tired, out of habit and by chance. It warms us in the cold, cools us in the heat, protects us from the damp, consoles us in grief and cheers us when times are good. Without vodka, there’d be no hospitality, no weddings, no baptisms, no burials, no farewells. Without vodka, friendship would no longer be friendship, happiness would no longer be happiness. It’s the elixir sipped sociably, spreading gregariousness and love; it’s also the anesthetic without which life would be unendurable. Vodka’s the only drug that enables the dispossessed to endure the monstrously cruel tricks life’s played on them. It’s the only solace for desperate men and women for whom there’s no other release. So where better to begin the second revolution than at the spiritual home of Russia’s vodka production, the drinker’s Mecca?”

  Borzov’s cheeks lapped over the edges of his bulbous nose. He clenched a fist and grinned at Alice; she raised her glass to him and then followed his lead—down in one.

  “You drink like a Russian,” he said, and meant it as a compliment.

  “Nine weeks,” she told Lewis over dinner. “That’s ridiculously short. A quarter of the time we need, at best. They must be mad.”

  “I bet they got your measure the moment you walked in.” There was more than a trace of irritation in Lewis’s laugh. “You love it. It’s just another challenge to you; something else huge and complex and impossible for you to pull off. No, don’t insult me by arguing, Alice. I’m right, and you know it.”

  He was right, and Alice did know it. The thrill rose in her gut like a salmon leaping from clear Siberian waters. This impossible schedule was the latest in the endless series of obstacles against which she could measure herself and discover in that measuring whether she was all she hoped she was—whether more, perhaps, or whether less?