The Collapse of New Russia

The Collapse of New Russia
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, 19 February 2004

Russia is entering a period of man-made disasters. Aging Soviet-era machinery, infrastructure and buildings that went up mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s are now so worn out that they probably won't last more than a few more years. The fire at Ostankino television tower in 2000 was just a sign of things to come.

Experts close to the government dismissed such gloomy forecasts as unfounded, insisting that economic growth and the market will take care of the problem on their own.

But no one expected that the buildings thrown up in recent years would begin to crumble even before the country's vintage Soviet infrastructure finally gives out. Transvaal Park, which collapsed in southern Moscow over the weekend, was hardly the only new building with fatal flaws, but it struck a nerve. Not just because so many people were killed and injured, but also because the water park had been touted as a symbol of the "successful" new Russia.

City Hall proudly announced the opening of the "largest water park in Europe" when it opened in time for City Day back in 2002. The project was entirely financed by Russian investors - built without city funds, the park was hailed as a triumph of private enterprise. Mayor Yury Luzhkov attended the grand opening, and the city awarded Transvaal an award for "best realized project" of 2002 in the category of sports, health and leisure facilities. Scenes of smiling middle-class families splashing and sliding soon began to flood the airwaves and the pages of glossy magazines.

Too late we learned about the seamy reality behind the idyll. After Saturday's tragedy, builders and architects associated with the project began trading accusations of shoddy work. The water park wasn't even a financial success.

In November 2003, the owners, despairing of ever bringing in the sort of profit they had banked on initially, sold Transvaal Park to a group reportedly linked to Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, and her company Inteko. The new management vowed to turn the venture around "by cutting maintenance costs".

Inteko denies any connection to the water park, and Luzhkov has carefully skirted the maintenance issue in discussing the possible causes of the collapse. The press doesn't put much stock in Baturina's denials. But the real problem is bigger than individual businessmen, and bigger even than corruption in city government.

Among the victims of Saturday's disaster was the myth of the self-sufficiency of the market. The gaudy new buildings in Luzhkov's Moscow, a product of the building boom and the sky-rocketing value of real estate, are not so much evidence of Moscow's prosperity as a danger to the environment. By impeding the flow of ground water, they are gradually washing the city away. Not to mention that they are poorly built.

The buildings and facilities left over from the Soviet era are for the most part monstrously ugly. Many have never been repaired or renovated, and have outlived their planned life span by as much 20 years. But by some miracle they're still standing. That's not something we'll be able to say about the new generation of monsters in 10 years' time.

The safety, ecology and appearance of Moscow have suffered from the unbridled pursuit of profit. Rather than restore historic buildings, developers prefer to tear them down.

Rather than invest in unprofitable infrastructure, they erect extravagant buildings that either fail to turn a profit or collapse.

This is the case not just in Moscow but across the country. We have no money to fix broken water pipes, and in 10 years we won't be able to support our pensioners, but millions of dollars are thrown away all the time to satisfy the greed and vanity of the super-rich.

The fact that Russia's profligacy and corporate irresponsibility are hardly unique offers cold comfort, though we do engage in both with characteristic brio.

When the concrete cracks and the "elite" skyscrapers tumble, the price of real estate will fall along with them. Then we will understand the real cost of the current real estate boom. On the ruins of the old world we will begin to build the new.

We can only hope that it will be an improvement.

Copyright 2004 The Moscow Times