As you know very well, the Anti-Corruption Foundation has long taken a keen interest in Russian Railways chief Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin, and especially in his splendid palace outside Moscow. We simply cannot look on calmly while the head of a loss-making state monopoly, who regularly denounces consumer society, lives in a palace.
After all, how should an official who runs a loss-making company and preaches asceticism live?
A modest two-story house at the edge of the woods, birch trees, a lovingly trimmed lawn, fresh air, a bench, a book—what more could a humble, ascetic official need for happiness? And if there must be a fence around the property, let it be a small one, as a symbolic barrier against corrupting Western consumerism.
Alas, Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin is very far from that ideal. Consumerism has pinned him flat on his back.
The head of Russian Railways once said in an interview that there were no excesses at this country estate and that enemies—perhaps Dulles or Brzezinski—had invented all the stories about luxury and fur storage rooms.
OK. The Anti-Corruption Foundation has obtained official cadastral records for every building on Yakunin's estate and is ready to give you a virtual tour of the property that was first registered directly in his name and then was supposedly "sold." But it was "sold" to his family's offshore company. So let's talk about luxury with the documents in hand.
This post is dedicated to those of you riding battered commuter trains and long-distance trains, only to discover in surprise yet another fare increase.
The main house. This is where the legendary fur storage room is located.
Guest house.
Bathhouse complex:
Service building. This is where the household staff of this enemy of consumer society live:
Area: 497.9 sq m And in the woods there is also a guard house of 138.4 sq m. Not bad for a builder of an ascetic society and an opponent of the West, right? But what we found next astonished even us, accustomed as we are to fur storage rooms and tables made of suar wood. In fact, that's why I decided to write this post. Attention: THE GATEKEEPERS' HOUSE with an area of 418 square meters:
Honestly, we didn't make this up. Yakunin himself entered it that way in the official cadastral record:
Can you imagine what infernally brazen perverts you have to be to write not "utility building" but "gatekeepers' house" even in an official document?
It is also amusing to look up the exact meaning of the word "gatekeeper," since it is apparently so important to Yakunin. Wikipedia: Gatekeeper (or tiler) is an officer position responsible for external or internal security in a Masonic lodge.
They are not playing at this—they seriously consider themselves a new aristocracy. Ancient nobles, or, for all I know, princes.
He steals money from a state company and then rushes off to build a "gatekeepers' house." Quite right—there must be order. In the main house, a fur storage room; in the gatekeepers' house, a livery room; in the servants' quarters, a back kitchen; and in the stables, birch rods for flogging.
On holidays, the peasants should be given a silver ruble so they can drink some vodka and still have a little money left to buy an ever more expensive Russian Railways commuter ticket—the very railway where the master goes "to serve," honoring his sovereign benefactor and guarding stability.
Will we really never be rid of these swine?
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