‘And we have waited far too long’, Svetlana said. ‘Business agreements between Rosneft and Sinopec are worthless. The Chinese model is the destruction of any other national element. They plunder our land east of the Lena and strip the wood from the taigas, drain the water from Lake Balkhash and siphon oil from under the Tien Shan mountains. Gone are the days when Russian and Kazakh youth shared café tables in Almaty. Now they are split into ethnic gangs. Using mercantilism, the Chinese intend to restore their Qing dynasty in Mongolia while hoovering up the Gobi Desert’s minerals. Ulan Bator is owned by Beijing. There are military skirmishes from the Kyrgyz border to Vladivostok. We either cede land or face open hostility. They already outproduce us in manufacturing using their Laogai sweatshops, and commit genetic genocide against suppressed peoples such as the Tibetans by forced intermarriage.’
‘Yes, they are not just after the zinc, nickel, tin, and precious metals. Long-legged Siberian girls are already bearing sons with Chinese faces. We fooled ourselves that our own Turkic element would outgrow their infantile belief system. While we are divided amongst Neo-Slavophiles, Eurasianists, National Communists, and ethnic nationalists, they are united by their Noble Qur’an. Our heartland stretches from Moscow to the Urals, and then to the Transbaikal. But look at the foreign faces swamping our streets. Listen to the different languages children speak in our schools. Now there is a civil war just like in France, Italy, and those other countries!’ Dimitry sounded angry. ‘We need another victory like at Kulikovo.’ Grigori cheered indignantly.
‘Our government is full of appeasers, paralysed with fear’, said Alexander through cigarette smoke. ‘Under the Soviets there were over forty-five ethnic regions. By the time of the 1989 census, more than four hundred different ethnicities were within our borders.’
‘There were plenty of signs years ago. Remember the Nord-Ost siege? Who do you think blew up the Moscow to St Petersburg train line and Domodedovo airport?’ Grigori stuttered, spilling a mouthful of cognac. Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘The same people who set off explosives on your underground?’
‘And Madrid and Charlie Hebdo!’ Svetlana insisted.
‘No, Paris might have been others’, Grigori hinted.
‘We never recovered from the marazm’, Dimitry muttered. ‘There are too many nostalgics for the Soviet empire.’
‘He means the Breznhev sterility’, Svetlana added for Tom’s benefit.
‘No, no!’ Grigori laughed. ‘Sterility means no sperm for babies. You mean senility.’ Then, tapping a finger against the side of his head, ‘No brain power!’
‘The same result’, she smiled back sarcastically over the rim of her coffee cup.
‘But since Putin’s 2006 natalist strategy of giving maternity money to families, your birth-rate is slowly stabilising’, Tom interjected, completely misunderstanding the point his co-conspirators were making. ‘In the UK our population growth is fuelled by Third World immigrants!’
‘Russian faces in strollers is good!’ Grigori confirmed. ‘The old President even enacted anti-homosexual laws and called abortion an abomination.’
‘Don’t give him too much credit, he was a power-hungry, self-interested politician, no different from the EU bureaucrats’, insisted Alexander.
‘But at least Putin declared that Russians have a unique and very powerful genetic code’, affirmed Dimitry.
‘Interesting that it was Khodorkovsky who challenged that’, Sveta said decisively.
‘And the very reason why he was the Soros Foundation’s Man of the Year for financing the Russian Liberty and Freedom Party’, Grigori belched.
‘Another bloodsucking flea, just like Boris Berezovsky. But at least that one had the decency to hang himself.’
‘Or was hung?’ Sveta propositioned.
‘It is all about money!’ Alexander raised a glass. ‘To Sergei Yevgenevich!’ Tom looked uncertain.
‘Former Chairman of the State Duma’, Grigori explained.
‘There was a book’, Dimitry said. ‘Another Life, published many years ago by the underground. My economics colleagues used to quote at me from it… “If nothing changes you and your children will continue to scurry around in shops, wear faded clothes, wait in line for an apartment for ten years…”’
‘I’ve never read it’, Sveta breathed, ‘but like Zhirinovsky said, the Americans are clever. They knew it is better to come here with chewing gum, stockings, and McDonald’s.’
‘I didn’t read it either’, blurted Dimitry, ‘but it is irrelevant now, Khodorkovsky’s book, Man with a Rouble, outsells it. Anyway, we should all be reading Dmitry Orlov’s Five Stages of Collapse or Dugin’s Mysteries of Eurasia and Foundations of Geopolitics, and writers like Aleseev.’
‘Dimitry is right. Naishul’s book has long passed its sell-by date’, Grigori insisted. ‘Alexei was a child when that book was circulating. Khodorkovsky’s is a celebration of embezzlement. At least Orlov was born in this city. Since then, mafia capitalists have been let loose by the shock-therapy economics of Gaidar, Fyodorov, and Chubais. Then, when the American ideas they used failed, we turned to Chernomyrdin and Gerashchenko’s liberal credit system. The World Bank estimated something like forty billion dollars was made on the back of sell-offs and acquisitions by racketeers between 1991 and 1994 alone. We had a choice back then, either to join those who exploit the world economically, or oppose them. This generation lives in a world where five years ago there were more billionaires in Moscow than New York. Have you seen Tverskaya Street recently? Once, there were better clothes there than on Rodeo Drive. Italian shoes and Swiss watches are not the answer. We need our spirit back.’ His hands moved in karate chops before his face. ‘We need passionarnost!’
‘Not so long ago we had all the gas’, said Sveta ironically. ‘Gazprom still holds reserves in Kazahkstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.’
‘But for how long? It is the energy resources the Muslims are seeking to control’, countered Tom. ‘They will nationalise those assets and refuse to acknowledge Russian ownership. Will Beijing still honour your trade deals? The EU is just waiting until they can seize all the minerals in the north. The South Stream project was once going to supply 64 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe, but the price of energy is being manipulated.’
‘Tom is right’, Grigori said. ‘The Chinese are devious and cannot be trusted. There is also a powerful alien grip on the American mind. Our enemies still want to impose an encirclement, the Anaconda Thesis on us. The EU’s Ostpolitik is to talk of a new Iron Curtain because of Russian aggression in Donetsk, then pull that curtain down with a bang. Even one of our own parliamentarians, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said the EU is the most successful model in history. NATO troops are now in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They join with Wall Street to intervene in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. They desire Georgia’s gold, copper, timber, and to choke the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, investing billions on a euro-transport corridor through Turkey, via the Caspian, to China. For God’s sake, they overthrew the legal government of Serbia. Bombed our brothers in Belgrade. Installed Muslims in Bosnia. Look closely at events in Ukraine. The US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, ‘Ukraine’s very existence as an independent country transforms Russia.’ The EU is in bed with oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky to raise volunteer battalions in Dnipropetrovsk. Jews like him and Arseniy Yatsenyuk are shouting about another Holocaust and how the Rabbis of the Golden Rose are leading the Chosen in yet another exodus to Mariupol. The American sanctions hurt us. The hand of Soros and the CIA are behind this? The USA has reappointed Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, who wants to buy Ukraine on the cheap, offering a few billion. Before all this, Russia offered 15 billion, joint projects involving heavy industry and setting gas prices below the market value. I say, God bless those burnt to death in Odessa, the slaughtered innocents in Slovyansk, Zakharchenko, and the defenders of Donetsk! They shelled the shit out of Horlivka, then shot down the Malaysian airways MH17 in a false flag operation. Why do you think they want to dislodge our influence from the Carpathians and undermine us in Belarus with the Treaty of Nice and their offer of Eastern Partnership? Where do the pipelines run? Which tribe do the Americans and EU support, both here in our homeland and in Ukraine? We had no choice but to send troops into Crimea. People like Aleksander Muzychku were killed like dogs in the street. But we have to ask ourselves whose interests are really being served when people like us, people who share the same ancestry and same territory, shed each other’s blood?’