Moscow
Russia’s Duma election was not an irrelevant farce. It marked an important stage in the continuing struggle between President Putin and the enlightened few who are striving, with talent, energy and courage, to create democracy and a civil society in this country. Though the political events in the preceding weeks sometimes looked like impenetrably intricate clan wars within ‘the elite’, they exposed this struggle in all its simplicity.
Beguiling imagery covers the surface of the city. This month’s big prize at the Shangri-La Casino on Pushkin Square is a ‘prezidentsky kortezh’, a familiar sight for Muscovites. Get lucky and you win two Mercedes-Benz saloons and a boxy jeep, complete with blacked-out windows and blue lights for cutting through traffic. For most of the year, members of the Russian parliament entering the Duma building have been watched from up close by the lynx eyes of a BMW on a poster covering the condemned Moskva hotel on the opposite side of the street.
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