A Smart Dorky Dork in the Middle of Dorky Park Russia

This article from Foreign Policy.com is both funny and I find it accurate. FP and I don’t always see eye to eye but this is a good piece written

BY SHAUN WALKER.  It just came out and I think it shares a satyrical light on things we already know or at least should know.

  For centuries, foreigners have had a habit of staying in Russia longer than they intended. The European architects engaged by Catherine the Great, the tutors who came to school the 19th-century aristocracy's children, and the businessmen who swarmed into Moscow after the fall of communism -- all arrived in Russia planning on a short stay and ended up staying for months, years, or the rest of their lives, wooed by love, money, or the sheer gruesome fantastic-ness of the place.

Your case is pretty special, Edward. You only came to Moscow for a flight connection, but now find yourself granted asylum for a minimum of a year. You left Sheremetyevo Airport with a grin yesterday, with a stealth wholly in line with the opaque mystery of your five-week stay inside the transit zone. The big question now becomes: What on Earth are you going to do in Russia?

As a long-standing resident of Moscow myself, allow me to give you a few tips.
Get used to grumpiness. It's a decent bet that a smiling Potemkin border guard reserved especially for arriving U.S. dissidents was detailed to stamp you into Russia for the first time, but for the rest of us, friendly officials are like unicorns. They don't exist. Border guards here almost never say a word, even if you greet them with the chirpiest "zdravstvuite" ("hello"). Forget about that verging-on-annoying friendliness one gets from waiters, shop assistants, or random people in elevators in America. From here on in it will be angry glances and accusatory stares, suspicious neighbors and glum shop workers. The U.S. Justice Department might like to have a few words with you, but there'll be punishment enough in Moscow. Show up at the grocery store without exact change to pay for your "doctor's sausage" (don't ask, Edward, just don't ask) and you'll get an earful of barking abuse.

The exception to this will be if you end up living in a building with a "concierge," which in the Moscow incarnation is not a smartly dressed polite man in a suit and hat, but an inquisitive, squintingbabushka who will use a combination of your comings and goings, the identity of any visitors you might have, and ceaseless interrogation to put together a complex psychological portrait of you and the other inhabitants of the building. Think of it as an offline, Soviet version of the PRISM program.

Moscow, of course, has spent the past two decades going through wave after wave of change, and if the angry stares get you down, you can always hire a bike and ride with the hipsters at Gorky Park, or party with the nouveau riche at Gypsy, where your newly acquired fame is sure to get you past the strict face control. Indeed, your lawyer Anatoly Kucherena has said that numerous young Russian damsels have already expressed an interest in providing you with shelter, and perhaps much, much more.

Anna Chapman, expelled from the United States as part of a Russian spy ring in 2010, has alreadyproposed to you via Twitter. With the kind of glamorous life she leads now, though, you will need to have deep pockets to keep her happy. Even a coffee can cost upwards of $10 in Moscow, and at the kind of restaurant that someone like Chapman would enjoy, dinner for two is at least $250. (Assuming, of course, that she shows up to the right location for your date.) For now, you say you miss your girlfriend, the acrobatic pole-dancer Lindsay Mills. Perhaps Mills will travel to Moscow to resurrect your relationship, or perhaps you will join the long list of expats in Russia whose relationships are wrecked on the rocks of Slavic temptation.

Aside from what you get up to on a Friday night, there is also the political issue -- and the rather obvious and glaring point that you have received political asylum in a country that does not treat its own whistleblowers in the nicest fashion. The most poignant comparisons have been made with Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader and blogger who leaked information about corruption in the Russian elite and was recently handed a five-year jail sentence (for corruption, ironically), which is currently suspended but will kick in if his appeal is unsuccessful. Human rights isn't a big thing here either: your exit from the airport came on the same day that Russia's sports minister confirmed that gay athletes at next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi would be arrested if they flaunt their homosexuality.

Glenn Greenwald, the reporter with whom you worked, referred to those who pointed out Russia's own treatment of whistleblowers or its new anti-gay laws as "drooling jingoists." I understand, of course, that you were hardly laden down with options of where to go, and a case can certainly be made that staying in a country with a dubious record of its own is preferable to returning to the United States to face charges you believe are unfair.

But what Greenwald seems to miss, or ignore, is that there is a big difference between grudgingly accepting Russia as the best of a set of bad options, and actively trumpeting the beacon of democracy and human rights that is Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. You have previously said that Russia and other countries that offered you asylum were "refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world." Your father went even further, thankingPresident Vladimir Putin for his "courage" in offering asylum to his son.

Whatever drove Putin to offer you asylum, Edward, it is fairly clear that the former KGB man was not motivated by a principled stance of support for whistleblowers. Trust me on that one. The question now is whether you make a few sheepish statements of thanks to the Kremlin and that's it, or whether you become one of the legion of infatuated useful idiots, the most notable being the French actor Gérard Depardieu, who has taken Russian citizenship and struck up a bromance with both Putin andRamzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya accused of all manner of human rights abuses.

Entering into the protection, financial or otherwise, of the Kremlin appears to induce crippling cases of myopia in many people, whether they be Gallic buffoons enjoying their alcohol-soaked twilight or Western presenters working for the Kremlin-funded television station Russia Today. You come across as a much sharper individual, Edward. I am sure you have noticed that when it comes to clandestine surveillance, Russia is not exactly a paragon of democratic transparency. But perhaps you feel that Russia's woes are none of your business, and that your fight is with the U.S. authorities only. If so, then the perfect place for you is indeed Russia Today. The Kremlin-funded channel would almost certainly be delighted to have you. When it comes to America-bashing, nothing is too far out for this channel, which recently confidently asserted that all recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been CIA "false-flag" operations, and once ran an op-ed entitled "911 reasons why 9/11 was (probably) an inside job." The channel airs interview shows fronted by your buddy Julian Assange, and somewhat more unexpectedly, Larry King. The appearance of The Whistleblower, a weekly show fronted by your good self, is more than just an outside possibility.

But the Russian authorities may prefer to keep you quiet. George Blake, the British spy and Soviet agent who fled to Moscow in 1966, is still only allowed to give interviews when he has permission from Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, even though he is now 90 years old.

Your lawyer Kucherena claimed that you hopped into a normal taxi before heading off to an undisclosed location to meet American "friends." Who these friends are, and how you made them, I have no idea, Edward. But there's a fairly good chance that the Russian security services are keeping several dozen pairs of beady eyes on you.

If you feel comfortable enough to walk the streets, and are allowed to, there is much for you to see and do. There is Red Square and the Kremlin, not to mention Lubyanka, the imposing building that serves as home of the FSB security services (formerly, the KGB). But you probably know all about them already. Then there are the museums, the nightclubs, the delicious Georgian food, and the all-night bars and clubs. Even a kind of nerdy guy can have a lot of fun on his first weekend in Moscow.

A word of advice, however, Edward. If you are approached by a man in a blond wig who suggests meeting for a coffee in the area of Novinsky Boulevard, you should decline politely. And run away, fast.