Dispatches from the Former Evil Empire - Hardcover

Richard Threlkeld; Walter Cronkite; Betsy Aaron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573929042 ISBN 13: 9781573929042

Publisher: Prometheus, 2000

Synopsis

For almost three years, as Moscow Correspondent for CBS News, Richard Threlkeld was a close observer of the scene inside Russia and many of its old Soviet allies. This broad canvas of a book is his engaging memoir of life in the remains of the former Soviet Empire during the waning years of Boris Yeltsin's regime. Through colorful vignettes the reader is taken from the crime-ridden Wild, Wild East of Siberia to the glitzy casino world of the new Russian rich in Moscow. Along the way we visit the mountain people of Azerbaijan, some of whom at age 120 are still alive and well, and native Arctic tribes in the far North of Russia, who still live much as America's Sioux or Cheyenne did two centuries ago.Equally fascinating are the characters who people the murky world of Kremlin politics. Dispatches goes behind the scenes to chronicle the decline of "Czar Boris" as well as the intrigues of Russia's new Rasputin, financier Boris Berezovsky and his ally, Yeltsin's ambitious and willful daughter Tatyana.But the real heroes and heroines of this story are the ordinary Russians, long-suffering as always: The Kuzbass coalminers who line up for cold cuts in lieu of a paycheck; the rural schoolteacher who every day stoically instructs her shivering and hungry students; and the fellow in Zaraisk who took his son with him into the voting booth to show the boy "how this democracy idea works."Threlkeld depicts a fascinating, sprawling land where the funny and the tragic are ever side by side. And as with everything in Russia, it is all larger than life.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Threlkeld (Tucson, AZ), veteran correspondent for both CBS and ABC News, was the CBS Moscow Correspondent from 1996 till his retirement in 1999. Threlkeld is one of the most experienced combat correspondents in broadcast journalism. He covered the Persian Gulf War for CBS News and was one of the first journalists to report live from the front during the ground war along the Kuwait-Iraq border and from Kuwait City immediately after it was liberated. Threlkeld also reported extensively on the Vietnam War and, in 1975, was among the last journalists evacuated from Phnom Penh and Saigon before those cities fell to the Communists.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

ZARAISK VOTES (June 1996)

The town of Zaraisk lies a little bit southeast of Moscow. In June the snow and mud are finally gone and Zaraisk is surrounded by lush, blue-green fields of grass, watered by a little stream, a tributary of the Oka River, that runs through the center of town. Zaraisk is 850 years old, older than Moscow itself, and if circumstances has turned out a little bit differently, Zaraisk might have been the great big capital of Russia, and Moscow a little town on the Moscow River, just a few miles to the northwest.

Even so, Zaraisk is a proud place, with its collection of churches and the old walls of its kremlin, or fort. This kremlin is not as big nor elaborate as the other Kremlin, but it has a simple, rustic beauty to it.

This was a big day in Zaraisk, as in all of Russia. The Russians were voting for president in the first round of the election, and at this point nobody was quite sure whether the winner would be the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, or his challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist.

You could say that this was the New Russia's first genuine presidential election. There had been an earlier one, in 1991, when Russia had just transformed itself from the Soviet Union to something called the Russian Republic. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of that in a landslide. But now, five years later, the new and improved Russian Federation, democratic and capitalist, after a fashion, had emerged.

It was the voters of this Russian Federation who were choosing a president this day, and because it was a tightly contested election, for the first time ever, their votes, each and every one, would truly matter. Of course for most of this century, when Zaraisk was part of the Soviet Union, their votes didn't matter. The Communists were the only ones on the ballot. Even then, though, nearly everybody who was eligible went to the polls here. Voting has always been just something everybody does in Zaraisk, along with going to church, handling the weekend chores, or attending the meetings of the neighborhood improvement association. Voting's regarded as something responsible, a civic duty, and Zaraisk strikes you as a solid, no-nonsense, responsible sort of place.

So it wasn't just the candidates and issues in this election that produced the customary crowd at the precinct we visited in Shoe Factory Cafeteria Number Two. The registrars were busy all day with Zaraisk voters dressed in their Sunday best.

Mrs. Bernishkova, the precinct warden(who also runs the cafeteria), told us that in Zaraisk, election day is regarded as one of the most important days on the calendar. Mrs. Bernishkova and her volunteers dutifully checked the voting lists, but that was just a formality. You can tell that everybody knows everybody else here anyway. "If somebody doesn't show up to vote," she said, "the neighbors always go right over to check the house to make sure everybody's all right." Needless to say, voter turnout around here is close to 100 percent.

There were a couple of poll watchers on hand, along with the town cop. For the record, there were no apparant shenanigans.

Mrs. Bernishkova said they'd been using the cafeteria as a precinct polling place for about thirty years. They hadn't had a chance to do much remodeling since the old Soviet days. The customary statue of Lenin was gone, having been replaced on its pedestal by some potted plants. And they hadn't yet gotten around to painting out the old Communist hammer and sickle on the ballot box. They just turned the insignia to the wall.

The voting was secret, of course, and the ballots were paper, and it was all very much a family affair. Fathers and mothers brought their babes in arms right into the polling booth. The poll watchers and the town cop didn't seem to mind.

Mr. Lubov, who was towing his five-year-old son, said he wanted to show the boy how this thing called voting is done, "so he'll know all about it when he grows up."

Mrs. Sazonova, who parked her groceries from the market over in the corner while she went to mark her ballot, said, "If we're going to make life better for ourselves, it's up to us, and voting is part of it."

We left Zaraisk before the polls closed, after sampling some of Mrs. Bernishkova's sweet cakes, and we never did find out which candidate got the most votes here. But I know the winner in Zaraisk that day--Democracy.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1573929042
• ISBN 13: 9781573929042
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300