by Fenek Solère
‘Yes’, Sveta agreed. ‘Lviv declared independence for Ukraine whilst 15,000 rallied under the Russian flag in Simferopol. I think Svoboda and Pravy Sektor are being funded by Judaic interests. Poroshenko, the chocolate magnate, is one of the Chosen. So is Yulia Tymoshenko. She urged the “wiping out of all the katsaps.”’ Tom looked unsure. ‘It is a bad name the Ukrainians have for Russians’, she explained. ‘There is talk once again of child ritual murders in Kiev, like the Youshchinsky case back in 1911.’
‘Look, we still have people like Igor Strelkov supporting Alexander Bordai and Igor Plotnitsky in Lugansk’, Alexander insisted. Then for Tom’s benefit, he added, ‘Strelkov’s the centurion who took the executive building in Sloviansk with the tacit support of the Defence Minister, Sergei Shoygu.’
‘Isn’t Strelkov former SBU?’ asked Tom. No one seemed sure.
‘Some say he goes by the alias Girkin, too.’ Sveta shrugged.
‘But his open call for support from the Kremlin didn’t get universal support, certainly not from Sergey Kurginyan of the All Russian Patriotic Movement, or even that GRU crony Vladislav Surkov’, Tom said, nonplussed.
‘That was a mistake we will live to regret’, acknowledged Grigori. ‘But the grey cardinal doesn’t play all his cards at once. And anyway, the Duginites are concerned that the architect of managed democracy, as we call him, is really an Israeli agent.’
‘Our people in Donetsk are the vanguard for Novorossiya!’ Alexander blurted. ‘I liked what Zakharenchenko said about the Jew pencilnecks. “I can’t remember a time when Cossacks were led by people who had never held a sword in their hands.”’
‘They’ve even got women’s fighting units in the people’s militia’, Sveta added.
‘That bastard Kolomoisky gave the order for the shootings in Odessa, but all we hear is whining from that Chief Rabbi Azman!’ Dimitry was less than impressed. ‘And that Zionist front-man, Petro Poroshenko, is still calling for total war with Russia!’
‘There was a time when Putin claimed Russia could take Kiev in two weeks’, Tom contributed.
‘With what result, more Slav deaths? More mourning mothers crying over sealed coffins in Ussurikysk? Hundreds of thousands of our people fleeing to camps in border areas like Sumy?’ said Alexander.
‘The EU has special forces in western Ukraine operating under cover of a no-fly zone, and we have civil strife in the East. It is just like the partition of Cyprus’, Dimitry postulated. Grigori looked on.
‘And the Jews are working to control the oil and gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea, also!’
Following the installation of NATO’s Missile Defence Shield, President Babel signs a new strategic arms agreement with the UN, NATO, and the EU confirming Russia’s compliance with the non-use of strategic weapons to resolve current geopolitical disputes. Teams of UN inspectors arrive at various missile launch sites to monitor the situation;
Pro-Putin deputies in the Duma speak to a large crowd gathered in Manege Square calling for the former President’s return to office;
State media show Prime Minister Viktor Akulov lighting candles at the funeral for those killed in Ufa;
The Russian 31st Separate Airborne Assault Brigade are flown in to Leonidovka from their home base in Ulyanovsk to secure chemical weapon stores;
UN peacekeeping forces cross the Polish-Ukrainian border at Eava-Ruska and Ustrzyki-Dolne;
The Muslim Federation’s offer to provide troops as part of the peacekeeping arrangements in Ukraine is warmly welcomed by the EU;
Joint EU and Muslim forces operating west of the Dnieper stop their advance 50 kilometres from Kiev;
EU leaders interrupt emergency meetings with the Russian delegation in Strasbourg about the best way to respond to the ‘Great Migration’ humanitarian crisis in order to face Jerusalem during their prayers;
UN armoured columns comprising personnel carriers, and Leclerc and Polish PT-91 tanks supported by F-4E aircraft operating out of the Holzdorf Airbase enter Lutsk, Rivne, and Lviv;
The encirclement of Ivano-Frankovsk results in mass arrests of extremists and allegations of mistreatment of deportees in the hastily established containment centres near Lublin and Zamosc;
Rumours of mass drownings in Lake Hancza are steadfastly denied by sources in Brussels and Warsaw;
The Royal Navy enters the Black Sea in a deliberate act of provocation against the Russian fleet based in Sevastopol.
‘What do you think the wars in Syria and the threats to Iran are all about?’ Grigori barked. ‘Americans scream about human rights but still support anti-Assad rebels who eat the hearts of their enemies. They fund groups like ISIS and see the world through a distorted lens. Some of our own worst gangsters have been welcomed to Western countries with open arms, and we have created scapegoats at home who our enemies champion as martyrs. Think of the journalists who have died mysteriously, the frauds like Khordokovsky and Berezovsky. They robbed Russia once and their type will try again.’
‘Things were different before, the old President got control over the oligarchs’, Dimitry asserted.
‘Or was their partner?’ Sveta echoed. ‘Putin was a functionary of the sistema. Who passed the law criminalising anyone challenging the findings of the Nuremberg trials? Who talked about the threat of militant nationalism? Both Fradkov and Chubais wear the Star of David. Lavrov went around Europe making speeches about the rise of anti-Semitism. I think he was a Fifth Columnist.’
‘We need someone like Alexander Lukashenko or Islam Karimov’, Dimitry demanded.
‘Head boilers!’ Sveta interjected. ‘Better, our old friend from Zavtra, Alexander Prokhanov, Zakhar Prilepin, and Konstantin Malofeev at the Valaam monastery.’
‘Yes, and also people like Baron Ungern-Sternberg, Captain Semenov, and Mikhail Drozdovsky, who liberated Rostov from the Red Army’, Tom chimed in wistfully.
‘I want a Zil-4112P to drive me around’, Alexander toasted drunkenly.
‘And an Ilyushin jet with a solid gold toilet to shit in!’ screeched Grigori.
An hour later, they were still drinking. Anger was still evident when they recalled the riots in Sokolniki Park and the killing of a Spartak football fan, Egor Sviridov, by ‘them’. Then there was that Cameroonian ‘artist’ Pierre Narcisse, who had married a blonde Russian. Another O J Simpson slaying in the making. They agreed that it had been a positive sign that Putin had broached the subject of declining White demographics, but nothing had been done. The anti-immigrant riots in Kanopoga in Karelia in 2006, the fighting in Manezhnaya Square in downtown Moscow in 2010, and the rocketing crime statistics had all been ignored. Azeri, Chechen, and Georgian gangs dealt in arms, drugs, prostitutes, and scrap metal. The 3000 or so poppy fields in Uzbekistan and the infinite cannabis production of Kazakhstan had fuelled their takeover of the underworld from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. There were whispered expressions like inorodnye, khokhol, and ishak. Then there were references to sobornost and solidarism, the Harbin Russian Club, Konstantin Rodzaevsky, the ideologue Mikhail Mikhailovich Grott, Vasilyev’s Pamyat, Barkashov’s street fighters, Red-Brown alliances, Rutskoy, and the October 1993 rising. Soon they were raising glasses again, this time to the long-dead heroes of the ‘Hundred’. Then the New Generationists, people like Menshikov, Ustrialov, and Tikhomirov. They finished by honouring the exile Anastase Vonsiatsky and Danilevsky’s notion of a Slavic mission to save the world.
‘I have an original copy of Vehki!’ Dimitry announced.
‘Ah’, said Grigori, ‘so much for Berdyaev’s words . . . a conservative man of letters today is almost a contradiction in terms . . . ’
‘I hear the same comments from current American pundits’, said Tom.
‘Same dirty tactic to marginalise us’, Grigori said. ‘You know our security services told the FBI about the Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsanaev.’ Tom recognised the words Chechen and terrorist as they punctured the rapid Russian dialogue like bullets with a displaced centre of gravity, the ones
that spiral through human flesh, lodging in the most difficult places in the bones for a surgeon to get at. ‘We can’t even protect the children in our schools or the people going out to the theatre’, Grigori cursed. ‘I tell you, Beslan shamed us. The Shahidkas set off bombs in our train stations and on our trolley buses.’ Tom recalled hearing of the thirty or so dead in Volgograd and seeing the uncensored TV footage of the Russian officer crucified in the city square in Grozny years before. The brutal execution of Rodionov, a young conscript clinging to his silver cross, even as his killer, Khaikhoroyev, sawed at his throat with a rusty blade, still haunted his mind. ‘And all this in the name of the desert god, Mohammed. Our armies have not been destroyed in battle’, Grigori was preaching. ‘Both Napoleon and Hitler were stopped in Russia. Our retreat from East Germany was a terrible mistake. Between 1989 and 1991 we gave up an empire. Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. At least our intervention in Crimea and South Ossetia arrested that decline!’
‘Back then our confidence was gone’, Dimitry moaned, ‘Remember Unit 20004? The officers stole the soldier’s wages. I blame the General Staff!’
‘No’, Sveta said. ‘It was Gorbachev’s mistake not to join the August Coup.’
‘Better they had seized Yeltsin and kept him in Zavidovo.’ Grigori sounded morose, even bitter.
‘Don’t talk to me of that hero’, someone breathed like hot steam. ‘What a fool, standing on top of that tank and shaking his fist. It is a pity one of those Alpha sharpshooters did not put him out of his misery.’
‘Like they did with Boris Nemtsov?’
‘California style!’
‘Put us all out of our misery’, they laughed, raising glasses in salute.
‘But at least it meant the end of a one-party state’, ventured Tom tentatively.
‘You think?’ Grigori’s drunken face betrayed his ill-temper. ‘Listen, English’, he said, ‘the government bombed our own people in Ryazan with hexogen to cause a backlash against the Chechens just to keep themselves in power. The Americans learned that trick from us. But as always, they had to do it in a bigger way. Look at the USS Liberty incident. That was a false flag attack! What do you think the Twin Towers were?
‘Well, I don’t know. Are you a 911 conspiracy theorist?’
‘Well, George Orwell is one of you, no?’
‘One of what?’
‘British writer!’
‘Yes, so?’
‘Think about Nineteen Eighty-Four.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, Osama bin Laden was Goldstein. You think Big Brother is just a stupid TV show on BBC?’
‘Well . . . ’
‘No, you’ll see that it is true.’ He swilled yet more alcohol. ‘The one-party state is all over the world now. Globalism is paramount. That is why people like Dugin are hunted down. It is written in the Eurasian Mission Statement that “we Eurasianists defend on principle the necessity to preserve the existence of every people on earth, the blossoming variety of cultures and religious traditions, the unquestionable right of the peoples to independently choose their own path of historical development”. Is there a difference between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington? I cannot see any. Is there a real divide between Labour or Conservatives in Westminster? I think not.’
‘But The Sunday Times is not Pravda, yet!’
‘You say not. I say, yes!’ Grigori slapped his guest on the shoulder. ‘Alexander Temerko, a man who made billions out of the Yukos fraud, funds your Conservative Party. Fukuyama’s Open Society translates into whole populations coming under the control of those same people who run the world of finance and have a monopoly on the world’s media. We are all being assimilated into a One World Government.’
‘So Eurasianists think that by forming a Berlin, Moscow, and New Dehli axis they can counter the forces of Western Atlanticism?’
‘Leonid Savin said, “Russia is not part of Europe or Asia” . . . we will oppose Neo-Liberalism to our dying breath.’
‘I’m guessing you are not a big fan of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, then.’
‘Hell, no!’
‘Anyway, I think his influence over American foreign policy is long gone.’
‘Yes, now he talks of state-building.’ Grigori could barely hide his distaste. ‘Listen, my friend, who was Saddam Hussein’s biggest supporter in the war with Iran? Who invaded Iraq and why? What did your Tony Blair stand to gain? Who was pulling his strings? Same question now with Assad’s last stand in Aleppo and Damascus. We stood our ground alongside General Mohammad Ali Jafari’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who came to defend Sharyat and Tiyas against those IS fanatics. But who funds them and who pulls America’s strings?’ Fat fingers played the puppeteer with invisible puppets over the table.
‘I’m too drunk to debate’, Tom protested. Grigori poured him another.
‘Not drunk enough!’ he shouted. ‘We were in Afghanistan, remember. We saw this jihad at close quarters long before your people ever did.’
Around midnight, a black BMW came to collect him, its bumper rubbing tight-up to the blockwork, headlights blinking twice as a signal for Tom to leave. All along the Griboedova embankment, people were leaning, comatose, on the iron-work, languorously smoking cigarettes, bottles of Danish beer lined up one after another along the cold stone wall. In the Sakura, a passing waitress helped Tom to find his coat. Saying goodnight, he stepped outside, his breath forming a lattice scarf of French needle-point before him.
Walking around to the back of the car, Tom pulled on the door handle, reassured by the click of German engineering.
‘Would you like a tour of the city by night?’ asked the silver-haired driver as Professor Hunter sank into the deep leather seat.
‘Why not?’ He felt happy, succumbing to the eddy cocktail of alcohol and jet lag. His arms stretched out across the spacious cream interior, smelling of leather polish and jasmine air freshener. Suddenly, the car jumped the kerb. There was a cat’s squeal of burning rubber as the vehicle spun along a tight spiral arc. Tom caught a glimpse of the driver smiling mischievously in the rear-view mirror.
‘I will show you a good time’, he promised. There was a curl to his lip like a wild dog let off the leash. Pedestrians scattered to left and right in the rogue’s headlights. Tom gripped the door handle as the car shot along the waterside, weaving between oncoming traffic, out past the mosaic domes of the old Cathedral and the Mikhaylovskiy Gardens. They rushed across narrow bridges, under the outstretched metal arms of 1930s street lighting. They emerged onto a stretch of road between the old city and the brooding Neva.
‘This is a good place to walk in daytime.’ Tom noted the ominous emphasis on daytime. To his right he could see the city spread-eagled across the smoky blue horizon. His tired eyes drifted over the bridges to the shimmering windows running along Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt.
‘Over there is Petrograd and Vasilievsky’, said the driver. ‘You can visit the battle ship Aurora. Do you know the history of the Revolution?’ For a moment the Professor’s memory was filled with shaky old black-and-white newsreels of a crowd surging up against a thin line of troops, plumes of gun smoke, Comrade Lenin standing on a banner-strewn platform, clenched fist pumping.
‘I know a little’, he replied, rightfully reckoning his guide had lived through the Brezhnev epoch and been dumbfounded by the Gorbachev turnabout. He thought it best not to raise difficult subjects and just to let sleeping dogs lie.
‘This side’, the man continued like a well-rehearsed tour guide, ‘is the Marble Palace, built by Rinaldi in 1768. It was a gift for Catherine the Great’s right-hand man, Orlov. Now it is an art gallery. I have been there many times. If you like eighteenth-century paintings, then this is a good place for you.’
They drove on. ‘Now this is spectacular, the Hermitage, one of the biggest museums in the world. There are artefacts f
rom Egypt, India, and China. My favourite place is the gallery where they keep works by Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Matisse, and Michelangelo. Very big exhibit, you must give yourself time.’
Fifty metres ahead, the traffic lights were rolling to red. The driver cursed loudly, flicked his headlights on and off to warn of his intentions, then floored the accelerator onto Dvortsovvy Proezd. To the left was a vast circle of buildings and a flat square with a massive stone column rising like a strong muscular arm out of the ground. Tom thought it seemed to be reaching greedily upwards to grab for the Moon.