Letter from Germany - It isn’t just in Germany that I’ve found myself for lengthy stretches of business: in the mid ’90s it was Russia for nearly a year, when premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, who died yesterday, was in his pomp. A sort of a cross between John Prescott and Gerald Ford, his centre of gravity (if that's the right word) was the mighty Gazprom – formerly the old Communist Ministry of Gas - and he never quite made it at the top of Yeltsin-era politics. .
After Gazprom became a joint stock company, if you took all the listed shareholdings they added up to 99%, and it was often rumoured that Viktor disposed of the balance. That's quite a wedge. In 1995, trying to forge his own political power base, he formed a short-lived party called Наш дом Россия – Nash Dom, our house, Russia. In Russian, the possessive pronoun is very possessive indeed, and ‘ours’ means ‘come hell or high water’.
At that time Gazprom’s logo was a stylized gas flame in the shape of an isosceles triangle, and the roof of its big tower in Moscow the same. Curiously, Nash Dom’s logo was also such a triangle – formed from a corner of the Russian flag: and in his poster-portraits, Viktor would sit at a desk with his steepled hands forming a triangle too … the symbolism was not subtle, and the party was generally referred to as Nash Dom, Gazprom - which sounds nicely in Russian, as the correct emphasis is on the –prom.
In true Prescott style, Viktor was known for his mangled prose, Sam Goldwyn-type half-intended jokes and homespun wisdom. "We wanted better, but it turned out like always" – that was one of his. An archetypal Russian sentiment – from the land where the reaction to hard times and still harder times is the shrugged, fatalistic “it’s normal”. And Chernomyrdin was in many ways a typical big Russian bloke.
Farewell, then, Виктор Степанович. You did your best, in crazy times.
ND
1 comment:
"and in his poster-portraits, Viktor would sit at a desk with his steepled hands forming a triangle too … the symbolism was not subtle, "
Indeed, for holding your hands that way (as if making the steeple of "here's the church and here's the people" nursery game) is Russian sign language for "krisha".
Protection.
Which mob is your protector? Nash Dom was very clearly making the association not just with Gazprom, but with the notion that everyone needs to have such a protector and Viktor was the man to do it.
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