The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Putin had responded to the pensioners' protests by announcing mammoth government investment in social services. The investment was divided into four different "priority national projects." The first year, Russia invested about $2 billion in the four projects, and the following year the amount went up. The largest share of the money went to National Project Health. It was designed to radically modernize Russian medicine.¹⁹

Health care and research institutions began importing vast amounts of medical equipment and the chemicals and parts required for it to function. Because the funds were federal, all purchases had to go through the health ministry, where kickbacks accounted for 80 to 90 percent of the expenditures. But foreign suppliers, bound by their national laws, could not accommodate the kickback schemes or pay the bribes at customs. This was where the "distribution company" stepped in. It was Masha's job to ensure that the corruption premiums were paid but the paperwork looked clean. She got an excellent salary.

thirteen

ALL IN THE FAMILY

the first time Lyosha saw another gay man was in December of his first year at university. The man had come to visit one of the girls at the dorm. His name was also Alexei, he was also from Solikamsk, and it was all such a wonderful coincidence that Lyosha immediately fell in love.

He also immediately moved in with Alexei. After that, all was not exactly as Lyosha had expected. Alexei was older—twenty-one to Lyosha's seventeen—and a college dropout. His tiny apartment was filthy. Lyosha spent the first couple of days scrubbing it down and setting it up for domesticity: Alexei had apparently never cooked. The apartment was very close to Perm's lone gay club, and many of Alexei's friends were used to crashing there after a night of drinking, alone or with someone. There was a lot of drinking. Some of Alexei's friends had cirrhosis of the liver. Someone died of it. Someone else committed suicide. The sex was rough and painful, and Alexei had sex with other people too. Still, the most important thing was that Lyosha had a boyfriend.

Now was the time to come out to his mother. When Lyosha went home to Solikamsk for New Year's, he got right to it.

"Mama, we have to talk."

They sat down at the kitchen table.

"Mama, I love you," said Lyosha, and started sobbing uncontrollably.

Galina waited for him to collect himself. He could not.

"Are you trying to tell me that you like boys?" she asked finally.

"Yes."

"I must have done something wrong," she concluded dispassionately.

Galina said nothing else for three days, but at family holiday gatherings on each of those days she would down three shots of vodka in quick succession. Normally, she did not drink.

Things were difficult for the next six months, though Galina had resumed speaking to Lyosha and continued giving him money for rent. He knew that she had stared down the choice between Lyosha and society, and had chosen her son. Now she was acclimating to the consequences of that choice. Among family, whenever someone tried to engage her in teasing Lyosha about his not having a girlfriend yet— at the ripe old age of eighteen now, when other young men were considering marriage and children—she cut the conversation off with a stern, "He'll do what he wants when he decides it's time." She also made it clear to him that she did not want to know any of the details: she asked no questions, welcomed no confidences, but also never said anything pejorative. Still, things felt a bit better after Lyosha broke up with Alexei. Galina seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

What had happened was that Alexei had brought someone home when Lyosha was there. Lyosha had reluctantly agreed to an open relationship, but this was unbearable. Lyosha ended the relationship, but he also made a promise to himself to rid himself of jealousy. It was an unproductive emotion. If he ever had a boyfriend again, he would be mindful of the need for a variety of experiences and would be tolerant of indiscretions as long as the boyfriend did not fall in love with another person. The relationship with Alexei had made Lyosha wiser. Back in the dormitory now, he became a bit of a love guru: female students came to him for advice, and so did the mother of one of his female classmates.

Lyosha met Sasha during one of his visits to Solikamsk. Actually, he did not meet him, but he saw him: Sasha sold music CDs and VHS tapes from a permanent stand at Orbita, the new shopping center. It was perhaps a quarter of the size of the shopping malls that had opened up in Perm, but it had the same blinding neon lights and slippery tiled floors. Someone told Lyosha that Sasha had had a lover,

an older and perhaps wealthy man. Someone else told Lyosha that Sasha wanted to meet him.