St Petersburg Travel Notes, installment five: Russia's kontraktniki and Blood Money
As part of my recent stardom on the widely watched interview channel 'Judging Freedom' hosted by Andrew Napolitano, I am motivated to browse the Comments section below the videos and to consider the thinking of the several hundred who bother to make an entry out of the tens of thousands who watch the shows. A very large number of those writing in extend fulsome praise to interviewer and interviewee. A minority kicks the tires, so to speak, and opines that the interviewee would have nothing to say if his cable channel to Russian television were cut off, or that he is nothing more than an empty suit, if I may paraphrase one of the more disagreeable comments from Thursday's show.
Yes, indeed, there are plenty of 'empty suits' holding forth on alternative media, just as there are mediocrities on mainstream. But few if any of those empty suits find the time or possess the language skills to learn firsthand what Russia's leading statesmen and best commentators are saying daily about international and domestic affairs. Still fewer, or if I may come to the point, 'none' is spending any time in Russia on a regular basis to report back what is new, what is unchanged in this country at war.
I remain convinced that such information is important for those readers who want to do something to prevent Armageddon as well as for those who despair of preventing a nuclear war and just want to know when they should fly off to New Zealand.
Regrettably my periodic visits to Russia have been scaled back from the once in two months for two weeks at a time trips in the pre-Covid, pre-sanctions years to the present once in six months frequency. Hopefully, though, once this damned war winds down and travel to Russia again becomes almost normal via intra-European scheduled airlines like Lufthansa or Brussels Airlines, the old periodicity of my visits will be restored and there will be more first hand observations of life at ground level to relate. If that relative normality also means fewer of you will be interested in news from St Petersburg, so be it; I will accept the loss of stardom with equanimity.
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Tomorrow I expect to cross the border into Estonia on my way home to Brussels. Accordingly this fifth installment of my travel notes is the last of the series and will cover a variety of topics as I wind up my stay here.
I begin with the issue flagged in the title above, the Blood Money being offered to Russian men of all ages who sign up to join the fight on the battlefield of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
In medieval German and Anglo-Saxon Wergeld money was paid by those responsible for someone's death in compensation to put an end to enmity. You could also say it was an approximation of the monetary value of a person's life.
This concept came to mind as I looked over some of the many recruitment posters that you find at bus stops, on public transport and elsewhere here in the Greater Petersburg area. I put that together with information on radio and television these past few days about the new, higher levels of compensation that the government will be paying to those who have experienced contusions, amputations and other life-changing events while serving in the SMO. These pay-outs vary with specific categories of injury and loss. But the amount to be paid out in case of death was named: it is now 3 million rubles, approximately 30,000 euros, which is 50 per cent more than the sum paid till now.
Meanwhile the sign-up payment by the federal government to new recruits (kontraktniki) shown on the posters is several hundred percent above what it was a year ago. The new rate is 2 million rubles at sign-up and 200,000 (2,000 euros) per month for each month spent in the war zone, which I believe lasts 6 months. It is understood that a much lower monthly pay is issued during the training period preceding dispatch to the front.
I also note that this sign-up payment probably represents a leveling up from the schedule of payments put in place in the early months of the SMO. Back then the fairly modest lump sum from the federal budget was complemented by a lump sum from the regional government which varied widely according to the prosperity of the region. Given that the financial incentive is more important in the poorer regions of Russia from which a disproportionately higher share of recruits can be expected to come, the leveling up, if that is what it is, makes good sense.
All in all, if you add the death pay-out to the sign-up pay-out, we may conclude that the Wehrgeld or average value of a working age male in Russia is presently 50,000 euros.
In a minute, I will put that number in the context of general salaries here for lower class people, who are the main body of the population that goes off to war. But first I must explain that the crass financial considerations approach is only one vector of the poster campaign for recruitment. I believe it is directed at middle aged Russian males who make up a large percentage of the soldiers and officers on the ground in this war, as you can see from television coverage. My advice to armchair analysts in the United States, including some very highly considered professors whom you see weekly on youtube, is that they should take a look at Russian war reporting before they open their mouths to mourn the loss of young men sent to war by old men in power. I have heard acquaintances who intended to enlist reason along the following lines: 'I married, I have had kids, I have fulfilled my biological mission and am ready to take my chances in the army.'
Another vector of the recruitment campaign is clearly directed at young men. It carries the message: 'Join your own,' meaning join your coevals, young and patriotic men like yourself. Since this variety of poster is at least as widely disseminated as the ruble and kopeks poster, I assume that it works and brings in lots of recruits.
Now, returning to the question of what males actually earn in wages here in Russia. I make reference to an article in the Financial Times which I cited on these pages several months ago. Their reporter said the Rosstat figures showed that average wages doubled in the last year, and the results were most striking in the depressed regions, many of them in the Urals, which had one-factory towns that never recovered from the shutdown of those factories in the 1990s economic crisis. Now they are enjoying full employment thanks especially to defense industry orders. Due to labor shortages, wages have gone up from 30,000 rubles per month to 60,000 or more (600 euros). In this case the total death benefits of a recruit killed in action equals 7 times his annual earnings at present conditions at the bottom of the pecking order.
Of course, not all ships rise with the incoming tide. There are always losers as well as winners. I present as examples what I heard from two taxi drivers these past few days. One was the driver of a new Chinese crossover in the livery of Yandex Go that he had bought for the equivalent of 30,000 euros, presumably paid in cash given the rest of his story. He wanted me to know that he has an engineering degree and had been working as the head of an engineering unit with 20 men under him before the SMO. He had been living very well, earning a monthly salary of 500,000 rubles plus housing allowance and other generous benefits. Back then he assumed everyone else was doing well and did not pay attention to the poverty in Russian society. However, the war put an end to his easy life. His unit was a subsidiary of an Austrian company that halted operations and left the Russian market after the war began. He then looked around to find another job in engineering but discovered that salaries were too low to meet his life style requirements. And so he opted to become a taxi driver and now takes home 160,000 rubles (1600 euros) a month.
Another taxi driver in Pushkin who shared his personal experience with me works for a local taxi company and presumably has a harder time getting customers who order a ride to the city (15 euros), having to settle for point to point fares in the immediate vicinity (2.50 euros a ride). He also has a new Chinese car, but in a lower price range. He purchased it with a bank loan set at 16 percent annual interest. Friends say he did well, but the accumulating interest is formidable and he is doing his best to pay off the loan ahead of schedule by tightening his belt on home expenses. Nonetheless, he is upbeat and coping with the financial stress well. I did not ask his monthly take home pay.
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I have spoken briefly in earlier Travel Notes about my visits to the neighborhood supermarkets in various price categories from Economy to Premium. I reconfirm here that they are all very well stocked including with exotic fruits that you would imagine are sold only in the most exclusive. In our Economy standard Verny supermarket, they offer not just the sharon fruit (rock hard as usual) but also the fragile, shall we say voluptuous genuine persimmons that presumably are imported from Iran, along with the salted pistachios that are ubiquitous here and some very good stalk celery and iceberg lettuce.
I will go one step further: these Russian supermarkets seem to have better stock control than our leading Delhaize (the Lion) chain in Belgium (now Dutch owned) which frequently runs out of this or that in what I assume is an effort to cut working capital requirements and spoilage.
Meanwhile, I wish to say something about municipal investments in vehicles and infrastructure both in downtown Petersburg and here in Pushkin, which is an outlying city borough.
In Pushkin, I note that all city buses seem to be newly acquired. In the city center, most of the trams are also new and more stylish than what they have replaced. For their part, the electric trolleybuses now operate from batteries when they are not attached to overhead electrical feed. This means that they are not stuck in the middle of traffic when the connection above detaches as used to be the case to the annoyance of all. Such hybrid trolleys exist in Western Europe, where I have seen them in France. But they are new to Russia and they are making their appearance now during wartime when you would expect the government to have other concerns on its mind.
It is also worth mentioning that at long last Russian Railways seems to be upgrading the commuter trains to the suburbs. The other day I took what looked unchanged from the outside but on the inside was a train with comfortable seats and amenities like a big luggage rack in the center of the car. They had replaced the old wooden bench configuration that was no treat for travelers. Looking out the window to gauge our speed and then at my watch upon arrival at destination, I was persuaded that the time in travel has been cut substantially.
Speaking of transportation, I was pleased to see that the Financial Times yesterday put some nationwide figures to the changes in the automobile market that I have been reporting based on what I see on the streets in Petersburg and as a rider in the taxi fleets here.
To be precise, the share of the new car sales in Russia held by European, Korean and Japanese manufactures fell from 69 percent in February 2022 to just 8.5 percent in October 2024, while the share held by Chinese manufacturers in this period rose from 9 percent to 57 percent.
I can attest to the comfort and innovation of the Chinese brands. It seems that crossovers predominate and it is so much easier to get in and out of them than with the European, Korean and Japanese sedans that they replace. The Chinese models all are loaded with electronic gadgets for driver satisfaction.
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Finally, I close out these Travel Notes by some observations drawn from my experience of high culture in Petersburg this past week.
On Monday, we had tickets to the performance of Wagner's Flying Dutchman at the Mariinsky II theater. Christian Knapp, an American born and trained conductor who has been working at the theater since 2011 and has a vast repertoire under his belt led the orchestra this evening, taking us all far out to stormy seas in the overture and setting the mood for an unforgettable evening. The singers were all Russian, led by the veteran soloist Nikitin as the Captain of the phantom vessel. For those watching their wallet, our tickets in fifth row center cost 4,000 rubles each. As I have mentioned earlier, seats farther back in parterre or in the balconies would cost half or less. All seats have direct vision of the stage and enjoy good acoustics.
On Thursday, we went to the Russian Museum to see the month-long exhibition of paintings by Karl Bryullov to celebrate the 225th anniversary of his death. It is drawing large crowds and we had a wait at the ticket desk even at 3 pm on a workday. The show is interesting for the very important paintings of historical events such as the 1581 siege of Pskov or the Last Day of Pompei that won artistic prizes for the artist in Paris and elsewhere. These measure 5 x 6 meters or more and are rarely put on display. Then there were the still more astonishing and less known 'cartoons' by Bryullov, i.e. 1:1 drafts for transfer in paint onto the interior walls of the St Isaacs Cathedral in central Petersburg during the 1840s. Seeing these masterpieces leaves no doubt why Bryullov earned universal respect not only in Russia, where he was awarded a gold ring by Emperor Nicholas I for one of his paintings but also in the West, where he spent a good part of his life, starting from his 3 years in Rome on a stipend from the Russian Academy of Art when he graduated to his final years leading to his death. Bryullov is in fact buried in the Cemetery for non-Catholics in Rome.
I understand that anniversaries have their own schedule independent of current global events. But I do read significance into the presentation right now when relations with the West are so fraught. After all, Bryullov was so integrated into European high society as he was at home in Russia. His mistress, a lady in the highest circles of Russian nobility, kept a residence just near the Spanish Steps in Rome and that is where he passed his time. A couple of his magnificent portraits of her are shown in this exhibition.
In this vein it is also noteworthy that the exhibition's general sponsor is VTB Bank, the former Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR which has recently greatly expanded its retail branch network and is giving Sberbank a run for its money. Mr. Gref, head of the latter bank, should watch out!
The Chairman and CEO of VTB just happens to be Andrei Kostin, who is close to Vladimir Putin. A year ago, Putin entrusted to VTB and his management the country's most important ship-building complexes. Kostin also just happens to keep his personal yacht tied up in the Seychelles, where he may on occasion meet with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, who built a palatial complex overlooking the harbor of Victoria on a site formerly occupied by a US radar and intelligence gathering base.
When you follow the dots, life becomes quite interesting. Is the VTB's sponsorship of the Bryullov exhibition just a coincidence or is it a straw in the wind with regard to Russia's eventual reintegration into civilized relations with Europe?
My last entry in the culture category relates to the presentation at TASS headquarters in Petersburg of the forthcoming Schnittke Festival. The Festival will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the composer's birth.
Schnittke died in 1998 at age 63 in Hamburg, a city to which he had long time bonds. In the spirit of Moscow's collecting its sons, he is buried in Moscow and his memory is given all honors as the Festival will demonstrate through concerts, lectures and master classes in composition.
The forty-five minute presentation was delivered by the organizer from the Petersburg Union of Composers, by the conductor of the first concert performing Schnittke's music on traditional Russian folk instruments, by a music professor and composer who will deliver a lecture and master class. But the most important contribution was by Iosif Raiskin, musicologist and music critic, aged 89, who was a close friend of Schnittke for decades and introduced personal touches.
The subtitle of this Festival is Schnittke's 'Eclectica'. Though the term is used in various arts with a pejorative tonality, in the case of Schnittke it is used to highlight his presence in different ends of the music world, in different genres. In the 1960s and 1970s, Schnittke's avant garde symphonic compositions, which included ventures into electronic music, were scorned by the official composer's union and by Party bosses. And so in parallel with his composing large tableau works, some of which were performed abroad, he made a living writing musical scores for the Russian film industry. The Festival will focus on how he reconciled these two very different sides of his creative work. I have no doubt that the Festival, which is called 'international' will attract some professionals from abroad, and the planned concerts should be of interest to anyone passing through Petersburg in late November.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024