So, I recently took a trip to Kirov Region. Which is now apparently the most democratic of all the regions. People have been asking about my impressions, so here’s a mini report. Getting to Kirov Region by air is problematic. For some reason, no normal planes fly there. Only some An-28s or An-24s. I was told: we do not recommend flying. Apparently, instead of landing, they usually offer ejection. So I went by train, which was perfectly comfortable. You leave in the evening and arrive in the morning. Kirov is a small, pleasant city, but very poor. Like the whole region. The region’s population is 1.5 million. Kirov itself has 500,000. Budget subsidies account for 40%. At the station, it was the classic situation of a Muscovite arriving in another city: The train attendant warned me not to take a taxi right on the platform—they charge triple. I step out, and a guy comes up: Need a taxi? — How much to the Tsentralnaya Hotel? Well, the guy looked me over with a squint, planted his hands on his hips, puffed himself up, let out a strained grunt, did everything else that crafty little operators are supposed to do in such situations, and blurted out: Two hundred rubles! What a blessing that there is a non-Moscow, and non-Moscow taxi drivers. The Tsentralnaya Hotel is a perfectly decent place. But overpriced. $200 a night with breakfast for three stars is a bit much. Maybe they factor the low taxi fares into the room rate? There’s also the Vyatka Hotel in town. Also decent. Belykh’s buddies from Perm, who had also come, stayed at the administration hotel. Apparently they were lured in by the nomenklatura-style glamour. That place is hell. It’s like 1983, only with a grenade having gone off. How do the locals feel about Belykh’s appointment as governor of the region belyh? Honestly, I was curious myself, so I asked every peasant I ran into, from the train attendant to taxi drivers to the women selling Dymkovo toys (a traditional local painted clay craft). I was already looking forward to telling Belykh that he hadn’t even started working yet and everyone already hated him. But no. I can state this plainly: everyone is delighted. They’re thrilled. Seriously. The line is: “Thank God they appointed someone new, young, and not one of our own Vyatka people.” After spending two days in the region, I started to understand where that enthusiasm comes from. The current governor comes from the prosecutor’s office crowd. He built a sort of mafia-not-mafia around himself, but a very cozy little circle. The governor runs everything and settles all the issues. Half the region belongs to the deputy governor. The other half belongs to the top businessman and owner of the main bank. Everyone else looks on in ancient Russian melancholy. That’s why they’re pinning such high hopes on this outsider (a “Varangian,” meaning someone brought in from outside). The idea is that he’ll drive out the local crooks. Whether he’ll manage it or not—who knows. The people of Kirov themselves love sayings like “Vyatka folk are a damnable lot” or “Vyatka has its own rules.” And they strongly hint that the local mafia is more likely to swallow Belykh whole and absorb him into itself than give up its positions. We’ll see. The situation is difficult. There’s no work. Factories and plants operate two days a week. Local villages survive by illegally cutting timber and selling it. There is no other source of income. The environment is on the brink of catastrophe. It ranks first in Russia in the number of mental health disorders. In short, there’s plenty of room there for an anti-crisis manager to spread his wings. And one detail really struck me: in Kirov, the time is wrong. I mean, the space-time continuum still exists there. But the time is wrong. Kirov isn’t that far, for example, from Perm, where the time is a full two hours ahead of Moscow. But in Kirov Region, the time is Moscow time. The result is that by 3:00 p.m. it’s already dark outside. I have no idea how people live like that. But then again, “Vyatka has its own rules.”