The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

fourteen

THE FUTURE IS HISTORY

in march 2008, Seryozha flew to Moscow to vote in the presidential election. He had been living in Kiev for a year, barely following Russian politics, but he knew he had to vote. His grandfather would have said so. Alexander Nikolaevich always talked about how lucky Seryozha was to have been raised with elections. Perhaps this was why Seryozha felt he had to fly to Moscow and cast a ballot at his local precinct rather than vote at the embassy in Kiev.

It was an hourlong flight. From Sheremetyevo International Airport, Seryozha took a shuttle, a rickety minivan, to the nearest Metro stop. The vans ran one after another, and so did the slower large buses, so the Metro station was always full of travelers, most of whom looked tired from journeys much longer than Seryozha's had been. Seryozha got in line to the ticket booth: of course, everyone had just come in from someplace else and no one had the multiple-ride cards that saved Muscovites time in line. The Metro station was stuffy and loud, the air full of everyone's travel dust. Bags made it feel even more crowded than it was. Tired children complained. Tired adults snapped at them. The line seemed interminable.

Actually, it lasted fifty minutes. If Seryozha was tired by the time he reached the ticket window, what must it have been like for everyone else?

"Sixty rides, please," he said, pushing a thousand-ruble note through the window. According to a typed price list posted on the ticket booth, sixty rides was the highest-denomination ticket available. It cost 580 rubles, or about twenty dollars.

When he had the ticket, Seryozha walked over to the turnstiles and said as loudly as he could:

"I have just stood in this line for fifty minutes! I don't want you to have to stand in line for fifty minutes too, just because you came here from another town! I have purchased sixty rides! Please go through on this ticket."

There was a pause. Many people seemed to have heard him but not believed him. Then one woman walked over. Seryozha fed his ticket into the turnstile, it spat out the ticket and flashed green, and the woman went through. Then one more person went, then a couple, and then a young police lieutenant was pushing his clean-shaven face into Seryozha's.

"You have to come with me."

Seryozha went. The lieutenant led him through one of the black metal doors in the lobby into the station's own police precinct, where a more senior officer sat. His completely bald head was red and beaded with sweat, and though he was sitting there behind his metal desk, he looked and breathed like he had just been climbing stairs. As soon as they entered, the sweaty man started shouting at Seryozha, a barrage of obscenities. No one had ever shouted at Seryozha like this, and it must have shown on his face, because the young lieutenant now led him back out of the room. Out of earshot of the sweaty man, he tried to use his own words to tell Seryozha that what he had done with the ticket was wrong. He could not really make a logical case, or even a coherent sentence, and this made Seryozha want to help him.

"Look," he said, "there was no fraud here. I did get a discount for buying twenty rides at once, but I am not profiting from it and I saved everyone time and trouble—including the cashier!"

"The resale of tickets is illegal," said the lieutenant.

"I wasn't reselling them."

"You could have gotten the cashier in trouble. She could get fired."

"Why would she get fired? She did nothing wrong! No one did anything wrong."

"What do you think you are, God?"

Something changed right then. Seryozha felt a calm and clarity. The word "zen" floated into his mind, followed by a perfectly formed

phrase: "This man's mind works in a way that I will never be able to understand."

"I understand," said Seryozha, and walked away from the policeman. He fed his ticket into a turnstile, walked through, and then stuffed the ticket into the hands of the first person to pause long enough in response to Seryozha's "Excuse me, please." Seryozha had no use for the remaining fifty-five rides.

He went directly to his polling place. It was set up in a school: a half-dozen makeshift booths and two transparent plastic ballot bins in the center of the room. He took his ballot and stopped short of entering a booth. The first name and bio on the ballot were:

BOGDANOV, ANDREI VLADIMIROVICH. Born in 1970, resident of

Moscow. Place of work: Democratic Party of Russia, political party.

Job title: Central Committee Chairman. Place of work: Solntsevo

Municipal Council, City of Moscow. Job title: Deputy, part-time.

Nominated by: self. Registered on the basis of voter signatures.

Party affiliation: Democratic Party of Russia, party leader.¹