Primorye: Cars and Crime

1

Vladivostok. The Japanese restaurant Yamato. On the table in front of me is a plate of raw halibut, local mushrooms (which, judging by their appearance, are poisonous), calamari, and some sushi.

I am talking with a guy named Yura. He is telling me about his business. Yura specializes in bringing in used cars from Japan. It is the only viable business in the Russian Far East.

“Pakistanis run the used car trade in Japan. The Japanese don’t like them. They also don’t like the Russians. And the Russians don’t like either the Japanese or the Pakistanis. But they all somehow get along.”

“They really don’t like Russians in Japan?”

“Why should they? Japanese, for example, have a custom of going barefoot in their homes. Shoes and umbrellas are always left just outside the front door. You walk down the street and on the porches are the whole family’s shoes and umbrellas in their stands. Aha! The Russians, as soon as they are moored on their first night, run about the city. They collect all the shoes along the street into a large sack and then hop on the boat home.”

“Do you steal too?”

“Rarely. I specialize in cars. A week’s shopping tour in Japan costs $150. For this sum you can be written up as a member of a ship’s crew. It’s a couple of days from Vladivostok to Japan. After you shove off, the crew puts the boat on autopilot and the whole crew, led by the captain, goes on a bender. When you arrive, you wash up quickly with cold water, hop on a bicycle and head off to the auto market. Or you skip the bike and hail a Russian taxi.”

“There are Russian taxis in Japan?”

“Tons! In every city! I’m telling you, that’s a real business. The taxi drivers know ahead of time when the boats are coming in and they are waiting on the dock. You don’t even have to pay them. Just give them $50 for every car you want to buy and it becomes their headache, how they are bought.”

“Are they really allowed to work legally in Japan?”

“Who is going to ask for permission? I have an acquaintance who went to Japan on a three month visa and has been living there for eight years. He gathers up old gas caps thrown away at filling stations and sells them to Russians for a dollar apiece. He’s a well-to-do guy. Some hire themselves out as slaves. That is, they are locked up in some kind of factory without the right to go outside. For six months or a year they work inside those four walls. They forget what the sky looks like.”

“Pretty boring.”

“Boring, of course. But for a year of life like that, you can bring home $6,000. Some, on the other hand, become bandits. Guys come for cars, with lots of money in their pockets. These bandits descend on them, knock them upside the head, and take their money. Or they simply gun them down. Not long ago, they brought home the corpse of our mechanic. With a hole in his head. This has been going on a lot lately.”

“How much money do you need to get started in this business?”

“It’s too late to really make money on this. The market is saturated. I brought over my first car in 1989. Of course, I had to borrow money for that. But my second car I bought myself. In general, a practically new Japanese car – five years old – costs about $2,400-2,600, including delivery to Vladivostok. In Vladivostok, such a car can fetch $2,800-3,200.”

“A $200 difference? Is that really a good business?”

“$200 for one car. But I bring over 20-30 cars. Every week. Can you do the math? And of course you don’t have to sell the cars in Vladivostok. If you want more money, you can ship them west. With each city you pass through, their value increases by $100-150.”

“We hear horrible stories about this shipping of cars westward. That the mafia has got the whole road covered. Anyone who refuses to pay for passage is killed.”

“Nah! That was 10 years ago. It’s rare that people get killed for that now. In the entire Primorye, the only criminals left are in Khabarovsk. If you get past Khabarovsk, then no one will touch you. The roads are empty in Siberia. You drive and drive all day and, if you are lucky, you’ll meet one other car.”

“And how do you get around Khabarovsk?”

“It’s simplest just to pay a good policeman $30. He gets in touch with the bandits and accompanies you to the region’s border. It’s a nearly 100% guarantee. Or you can pay the bandits directly. It’ll cost you $100-200.”

“Does everyone pay?”

“A few even today try to slip through without paying, loading 5-6 guys in a car, all of them with guns. The bandits, they have special old cars for responding to such situations. They use them to ram the foreign cars. They break their windows with baseball bats, all while driving down the road. They manage to stick knives in their tires while careening down the highway at 120 km/h. It’s a total circus!”

I was drinking mineral water. My companion was downing some foul-smelling Vladivostok vodka. Around the end of his first bottle and the start of his second, he became philosophical:

“In general, it’s a crappy business. I am never home. I have no wife. Actually, I don’t even have a home. I get back and it’s already time to leave again.”

Yura drank some coffee.

“The worst of it is that I have only just started to understand everything. About money. About women. About everything. But I have this impression that no one really needs me.”

I understood that it was time to wind down our conversation.

“Well, Yura, I think I’ll go. See ya.”

I saw true melancholy in my companion’s eyes.

2

Of all the cities of the Primorye, Khabarovsk has the worst reputation. Which is exactly why I decided to start there.

At the exit from Khabarovsk airport was a huge billboard plastered with the face of this area’s discoverer, Yerofey Khabarov.

The driver who gave me a lift had shifty eyes. For the entire ride, he mumbled something about a beheading in the Komsomol mafia, of being held by the neck at knifepoint, of a taxi driver being knifed for kopeks.

The driver demanded so much to take me to the train station, you would have thought he was taking me all the way to St. Petersburg. The station was a broken-down mess, covered with scaffolding.

All of the train stations in my country smell exactly the same: a mixture of chlorine, onions from baked pies and vomit. Kids wandered around the line to the cashier. They had typically puffy faces and smelled of Moment brand glue.

I didn’t plan to be in Khabarovsk for long. I wanted to buy a ticket on the first possible train and get out of here.

In the line ahead of me, a guy was eating ... I have no idea what. But it had a strange smell. After he had gobbled it up, the guy belched and began to clean his teeth, loudly clicking his tongue.

The cashier seemed to enjoy rejecting people. Not a single client walked away from her window with what he wanted. It was the same with me. I wanted to leave right away today, but the cashier said that there were only tickets for tomorrow, after lunch.

Buying a ticket for tomorrow, I went out onto the station square. Across the way, the sign for a strip bar blinked. There was not a single person going in. In general, bars where you take in spirits, rather than strip shows, go over a lot better in this region.

I needed to find a place to pass the night. Almost immediately, a gypsy came up to me ... well, maybe not a gypsy, but simply a very swarthy fellow with a southern accent.

“You don’t have a lighter, do you?”

I handed him my lighter. After lighting up, he did not give me back the lighter, but said, “Hold on a sec ... come here for a minute ... come on, come on ... don’t be afraid.”

He calculated correctly. I could not go anywhere without my lighter. Retreating and smiling, the gypsy led me into a narrow alley. The gypsy planned to mug me. As soon as we got into the alley, he stopped smiling and started blurting out some kind of threatening words.

I was not afraid of the gypsy. First of all, he was very cross-eyed. So cross-eyed, in fact, that I could not tell if he was looking at me or diverting his gaze in embarrassment. Second, he talked with such a thick accent that I could only understand about a third of what he was saying (and that with great difficulty). In other words, I understood that he was demanding money and threatening me. But what was he threatening? What was he promising to do if I did not give him any money?

We agreed on $1.50. On the whole, we both parted satisfied. The gypsy received the dollar and a half – good money in these parts. And I received the opportunity to regale you with the story of how a cross-eyed gangster mugged me in the most criminal city in the Russian Primorye.

I really had had no interest in exploring this sewer of a city. And after my tête-à-tête with the gypsy, I was even less interested.

I returned to the station square. In the middle of the square was a monument to Yerofey Khabarov.

3

The first Russian to reach the Amur was the Siberian Cossack Poyarkov. His detachment acted according to the established pattern. Taking the head of the local tribe hostage, Poyarkov informed him that, from this point forward, the tribe was subject to the authority of the Moscow sovereign, and should give tribute of a certain quantity of valuable furs.

This trick had worked with the northern nomads. But it did not work here. The Amur tribes annihilated a large portion of Poyarkov’s detachment and the survivors hid themselves in their fortress. During the winter, the Cossacks resorted to cannibalism. As soon as the snows receded, they shamefully retreated to the North.

Where Poyarkov failed, Khabarov excelled. In less than two years, most of the tribes were slaughtered, their remaining leaders brought to submission through torture, and Russian cities began to be built along the Amur.

The subjugator of the Russian Far East disappeared within a year, lost in the taiga. Yet today the criminal capital of Primorye bears his name.

4

I spent the night in the train station’s “Resting Place.” For $4, I got a bunk in an eight-bed room. There was just one other person besides me staying overnight there.

There was little space between the cots. In the corner was a doorless shelf unit. The interior design was unchanged from the Stalin era. On the toilet doors were not the symbols M and ZH, but silhouettes of a man in an antediluvian hat and a woman with a tall hairdo.

The window was hung with bleached-out curtains. Its glass was covered with ice the thickness of my palm. So that wind would not blow through the cracks, several old, burn-splotched mattresses lay on the sill.

It was impossible to see what was going on outside. Yet you could still hear the eternal sounds of the station: the echo of the radio, women’s shrieks, the clank of train wheels over rail joints.

Khabarovsk is seven hours ahead of Moscow. I went to sleep at 8 o’clock at night and woke up at 3 am. In order not to wake anyone up, I sat in the corridor drinking coffee. In silence.

At six, I settled my bill for the bunk and went into the station. The Khabarovsk station is not any different from hundreds of other Russian stations: psychos wearing socks like gloves, shabby old women, criminals with metal teeth, prostitutes blackened from drink and dirt.

The homeless slept on the concrete floor, their crutches leaning up against the wall. Militia men with truncheons flirted with giggling station girls. Swarthy guys sat on their heels.

Babushkas sat in the waiting area as well, of course. Over their coats were fastened thick, down shawls. On their feet – valenki with bent toes. The babushkas did not sleep the entire night, standing watch over their string-bound luggage.

A drunk slept at a plastic table in the buffet. He had a hood pulled over his head. Even in the building, it was cold. An acquaintance of the sleeping man was at the counter, trying to buy a dried-up, grey piece of chicken.

The buffet girl counted out his change and said:

“Sit. I’ll bring it to you.”

The fellow had a rather interesting reaction:

“Sit!? Like hell I will! I’ve sat my fill.”

Siberia. The word “to sit” means just one thing here: “to sit in prison.”

That’s what this place is like.

5

Just four hours travel from Khabarovsk is the nice, quiet, patriarchal city of Birobidzhan. Capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

After the Second World War, the question of a Jewish homeland became critical. A huge people. An ancient history. The main victims of Hitler’s genocide. Yet they still did not have a homeland.

In the West, someone proposed giving the Jews some land in tropical Africa. And in the USSR, Stalin ordered that they be given a huge parcel of land bordering on China.

For a time, Soviet Jews seriously strove to make this plot of land theirs. In Birobidzhan schools, they even taught Yiddish. Today, however, the language is practically dead here.

The city itself is tiny. Just one street. Grey, five-story buildings line the street. The people are poorly dressed. There is, most likely, a synagogue here, but I didn’t see it.

They were selling shashlyk in a cafe. Pork shashlyk. I asked the attendant: “So, where are all the Jews?”

“There are none left. What, do you think they are fools and would live here? They all left for Israel long ago.”

“Every last one?”

“For those who were born here, the climate in Israel is, of course, not quite right. It’s a desert there, after all. I heard that one person recently returned. But for the most part, they’re all gone.”

There are almost no Jews left in the Far East. Yet recently many Chinese have appeared. Truthfully, not simply many. There is a HUGE quantity of Chinese people here.

6

When the Russians conquered Siberia and plundered the Siberian tribes, it was a private Russian affair. But, in the 1640s, Cossacks crossed the border into China. And it became a huge foreign policy issue.

Conflicts began almost immediately with the Chinese. Sometimes China was too weak to worry about its distant northern regions. But then, later, it became strong and sought the return of its land.

Even when confessors of communism held sway on both sides of the Russo-Chinese border, the arguments over who Primorye belonged to did not end.

Yet today there is no more talk of military conflict. The Primorye is being colonized by peaceful means. But it is colonization all the same.

7

A relaxation of rules for Chinese citizens crossing the Russian border came into effect in December 1992. Visas were no longer necessary. Tourists came over the border by simply being enumerated in group travel lists.

Of 10 who traveled to Russia, no more than seven or eight returned to China. The remainder settled, put down roots, concocted businesses and gradually got rich.

The peak of migration was in 1994-96. In Primorye there are some four million Russian citizens. And somewhere between 500 thousand and 1.5 million citizens of China.

In some cities, there are more signs with Chinese characters than Cyrillic. Everyone here talks of the “yellow peril.” Groups of Chinese are met with furrowed glares.

Sitting in a café near the train station, I struck up a conversation with a local Russian.

“Ten years ago, when the borders opened, I also visited China. Simply out of curiosity. Such poverty! Roofs of thatched straw. Recently, I visited again. Now there are modern cities with tall buildings. And advertising.”

“Are you jealous?”

“That’s not the point. They are a deceitful people, that’s what. It’s embarrassing that they are buying us up.”

“They are buying us up?”

“I can tell you how I came to understand their deceitful character. Shall I?”

“Please.”

“In China, there is fast food in all the huge cities. Especially for Russians. It is a smorgasbord system: you pay about a dollar and eat all you want. There is even vodka. Again, all you want. And all for a dollar!

“I went to such a place with my friends: everyone filled up their plates. We took five liters of vodka. We sat and chowed down. But, of course, we could not eat and drink everything we took. And when we got up to leave, the bouncers told us that we had to eat up everything. They would only let you leave if your plate was clean. Otherwise you had to pay not a dollar, but almost fifty!”

“And what did you do?”

“What was there to do? We choked it all down. Somehow the three of us drank down five liters of vodka. But after that I understood: the Chinese are a deceitful people. I hate them!”