Finally, Someone Who Understands Russia

From the Economist's Moscow correspondent:

I once asked whether their salmon was fresh; the waitress assured me that it had been fresh when it was frozen. [See, I'm impressed that he got any answer at all.]
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Last winter was one of the harshest on record. For a couple of weeks it was cryogenically cold. Your nostrils froze together as soon as you stepped outside; there were daily stories about people going to hospital with mobile phones stuck to their hands, having inadvisably removed a glove to take a call. “What a shame,” old ladies were heard to mutter, “such a winter, and no war.” But even last year the winter’s hardships were easily outweighed by its curiosities and joys: crunching around forests, and along frozen rivers under clear January skies; cross-country skiing, then a shot of vodka at home.
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It is impossible not to be impressed with their tenacity, and with the long-range devotion of the Armenian diaspora, whose remittances stave off ultimate ruin. Most of these come not from rich Armenians in America but from poor ones in Moscow, working on building sites and as illicit taxi drivers.
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I was interviewed on a London radio station the other day and asked about the mood in Moscow over the Litvinenko affair, a thrilling (for the British press) mix of poisoning, radiation and the KGB. There wasn’t much of a mood, I tried to explain. Most Muscovites are uninterested.
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This information vacuum makes journalism somewhat taxing. By way of compensation, it also makes Moscow a world capital of conspiracy theories. The theorists begin by asking a classic Russian question, “komu vigadno?” (“who profits?”), then work backwards from the answer to identify a culprit. I await the day when somebody links the Litvinenko case with the (surprise!) unsolved poisoning that disfigured and almost killed Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine two years ago―on the basis that both victims had eaten sushi, a favourite new-Russian food. Who benefits if not the kebab lobby, which discredits sushi and recovers market share?
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