I want to say a few words too about the protesting motorists. After all, I’m kind of a motorist myself. Igor Sechin apparently called the protesters in the Russian Far East “crooks.” Let’s be honest with ourselves: most likely, a fair part of the protest movement is being organized by firms that import old right-hand-drive cars from Japan. Once I got a ride from a taxi driver in one of those cars. Horrifying. Every overtake felt like pilot Gastello’s feat (a Soviet WWII pilot famous for a suicidal crash attack). I don’t like the fact that people drive cars like that in Moscow. The OMON riot police beat them up. Threw them into police vans. Of course I sympathize, but I’ve been beaten and thrown around too—both at the Dissenters’ March and at the Russian March. Nobody in Vladivostok seemed especially upset then. A lot of people work in the Russian auto industry. These are town-forming enterprises. Armies of unemployed people. They have families. This has to be dealt with somehow. But here’s what I remember when I think about all this. The last Russian-made car I had was a “12th model” (VAZ-2112). I bought it new. Paid a crazy amount of money for it. I remember it like it was yesterday: with tinted windows and an alarm system, it came to $9,600. I got home. Put it in the garage. The next morning it wouldn’t start. Completely dead silent. I had it towed from Maryino to Kuzminki to the dealer. Turned out the electric fuel pump had burned out: “That happens a lot.” They replaced the fuel pump under warranty, but they didn’t reimburse the towing cost. I got home, put it in the garage. The next morning it wouldn’t start. Dead silent again. Tow truck again. The electric fuel pump had burned out again. I screamed at the dealer like a madman—a brand-new car, and for two days I’m getting around by tow truck. In the end they figured out there was something wrong with the wiring. That’s why the fuel pump kept burning out. They replaced the wiring. But they still didn’t reimburse the towing cost. Never mind the two lost days. And here’s another story familiar to many people. You’re driving, in a hurry. You press the clutch and hear “Pyaaaauuu”—the clutch pedal drops to the floor. Everything inside you freezes, and you say to yourself, “please not this please not this please not this.” But you know exactly what happened—the clutch cable snapped. You pull over, grab a ride, go to an auto parts store, buy the damn cable, and then, scraping your fingers, getting your clothes dirty, and cursing, replace it yourself. Of course, you can make it to a service station if you don’t shift gears but “slam them in while moving.” Only after that you’ll have to replace the clutch disc. You can try flagging down some “handy guy” to replace the cable for money. But those aren’t always easy to find. I had two “eights” (VAZ-2108s), both bought new. On one, the cable snapped twice; on the other, once. And there’s this too. You come out of the house in the morning, walk up to the car, and the high beams are on. You’re stunned, of course. The battery is dead. You push-start it and drive to the service shop. Then it turns out something shorted out somewhere. Because the car’s designer thoughtfully placed the fuses in a spot where they get soaked with water every time it rains. So even taking into account that “crooks” may be protesting in Vladik (Vladivostok), I have established through purely empirical means that armies of unemployed people and hungry families will appear in Tolyatti and Samara not because of right-hand-drive cars, but BECAUSE OF THE CROOKED HANDS AND SKEWED EYES of the people of Tolyatti and Samara. Why, in all the time these factories have existed, there has never been a moment when they weren’t enjoying “special state support.” Import duties were raised. Tax debts were forgiven. They were simply handed piles of budget money. They were supplied with state orders. None of it helped. And it won’t help. If we want to get the Russian auto industry back on its feet, then the first measure should be jailing all the managers of VAZ and GAZ from the perestroika era onward. All those Kadannikovs and the rest. All those mugs who spent years siphoning billions out of the factory and forcing people to buy tin cans on wheels. After that, all the engineers and designers should be publicly made to run the gauntlet past soldiers with rods. After that, all the workers should be publicly flogged. Ten lashes for a laborer, fifteen for an assembler, twenty for a shop foreman, and so on. There’s a slip of paper in a box of chocolates saying “master so-and-so.” If there are fewer chocolates, it’s obvious who’s to blame. Well then, let there be a slip of paper attached to the clutch cable too. And let the bastard who made that cable be hanged with it after three complaints that it snapped. All the cops, FSB men, and the rest who service VAZ should be sent off to perform their official duty in Svalbard (Spitsbergen). I honestly do not understand this recurring story where they announce, “Three hundred tons of unaccounted-for metal were discovered at VAZ.” That’s several railcars’ worth! Even if it’s a VERY large factory, the very fact that railcar-loads of unaccounted-for metal can be sitting there shows that 100% of the factory’s workers are involved in the mafia group. One hundred percent—not just the “villains in management.” So there it is. My position as a citizen of the Russian Federation advocating the revival of the domestic auto industry is this: FIRST, destroy the mafia—with arrests, show trials, accountants committing suicide, and all the rest. THEN, and only then, any measures of state support. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. One year, two, five. Let the region’s residents and the workers understand that they themselves are interested in a swift investigation, not in mutual cover-ups. And one last thing. To the guys in Khabarovsk, Vladik, and other cities. Guys! Well, you see, the world really is round. Yesterday we were the “political marginals” and “provocateurs,” “working for Berezovsky’s money” (Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch). And today you’re “crooks working for gray-market importers.” Yesterday you were snickering at the “Muscovites who got smacked around by OMON.” And today you got smacked around yourselves. I say this without gloating. I’m just stating a fact. So next time you see a political picket being broken up. A Russian March or a Dissenters’ March being broken up. Some pathetic three weirdos getting hauled off by the cops. Think about the fact that this isn’t something to laugh at. It’s something to join. Because this really is “for your freedom and ours.” Including “for our freedom and yours to buy with our own money what we want, and not what Alyoshin, Deripaska, and God knows who else produce.” It may sound overly pompous, but that’s exactly how it is.