EKATER TO YELSTIN’s SPLEENY
A lot has been written about the humiliation Russia experienced when it ceased to be a superpower; a lot has also been written about the rapid immiseration of a vast segment of the post-Soviet population. But these things were affected by the daily experience of fear. It was certainly bad to be ruled by the senile bureaucrats of the Communist Party, but for a lot of people it was worse to be ruled by thick-necked thugs in tracksuits and Mercedes. It’s notable that the one work of cinematic art to come out of Russia in the 1990s was Alexei Balabanov’s Brat (Brother), a revenge fantasy in which a young man comes to Petersburg after serving in Chechnya and, somewhat reluctantly, finds himself killing all the mafiosi in town. It’s a Russian Taxi Driver, a film animated by a profound wish to wipe the scum from the streets, born in the collective unconscious of a social class (the emasculated intelligentsia) incapable of doing any such thing.