FEAR AND GREED RULE AS A MIGHTY NATION FALLS APART

 PYOTR Patrushev has just returned from his first visit to his native Soviet Union in 28 years - the country which, only a few weeks before his return, overturned the death penalty imposed on him for his dramatic escape abroad all those years ago.

"The country is in a far worse state than when I left," said Mr Patrushev, 48, a former swimming champion who fled the Soviet Union at the age of 20 by swimming 30 kilometres across a treacherous corner of the Black Sea to Turkey, and who later migrated to Australia.

"But it's far better in that at least we know about the conflicts, about the need for change, and though it feels extremely uncertain for people who are in the midst of that change, ultimately it is better.

"It's like being in neurosis or being sick without knowing it and now it is finally out there - you can deal with it, it has become conscious."

Mr Patrushev - a writer, broadcaster, translator and consultant with the Chatswood-based Conflict Resolution Network - said that when he first arrived at Moscow Airport he was taken away by guards and detained for more than eight hours.

He had made the trip to visit relatives, mainly in his native Siberia, and make contacts for the network, which teaches conflict resolution skills under the auspices of the United Nations Association of Australia. (The Northern Herald reported his work in July, when the Conflict Resolution Network was inundated from letters from the Soviet Union following an article about it in Pravda, the Soviet newspaper.)

Both Soviet and Australian authorities had assured Mr Patrushev that it was safe for him to travel to the Soviet Union on his Australian passport.

But nevertheless he was detained, most of the time in a hot and stuffy airport hotel, without being able to contact the Australian Embassy or his waiting relatives.

He was freed with no explanation, except that of the hotel manager who commented: "See, perestroika is working."

Mr Patrushev said he was shocked by the "sea of chaos" that is the Soviet Union today - a land struggling to forge a market economy and at the same time overcome its former world isolation and immense social problems ranging from alcoholism to outright hunger.

"Moscow seemed like a giant derelict orphanage," he said. "There's a sense of gloom. It's as if there had been a war.

"The country is becoming more like India than any other place I know.

"There's a culture of professional young beggars that's emerging, as there already is in developing countries and in the Asian sub-continent.

"There are children in the Moscow subway - babies left by their parents, with a little kitten next to them - for people to give them money."

Mr Patrushev said there were severe shortages of food, power and basic goods and services, including medical services. People looked malnourished.

Rapidly growing unemployment was another problem - "people are talking about 25 per cent in the next six months".

Mr Patrushev said that as capitalism took over, he believed there was the danger it would be "the tooth-and-claw capitalism of the industrial revolution, that doesn't even exist in the west any more" and that a growing number of minority groups such as the aged would need protection.

"I think they will have to create soup kitchens or a system where people will have to give part of their income for these people, otherwise it will be like India," he said.

"The paradox is that the socialist structure gave the illusion of you being taken care of by the powerful State.

"The reality of it was that the predatory elite had been bleeding the resources of this very rich country and very large and relatively welleducated population, for its own benefit, and now the country is bled dry." Mr Patrushev found the Soviets were keen to befriend Westerners, as they had been starved of such contacts for so long.

Many also wanted to leave the country. A massive "brain drain" was already seeing some of the best-educated snapped up by Germany and the United States.

"But the largest malaise is the sense of moral vacuum - their lives are lacking purpose," Mr Patrushev said.

"To have the market as the new god is not sufficient yet for the Russian soul - it's not sufficient yet to make people work, and work compassionately and in the way that's going to create a true welfare society.

"People are frightened, people are greedy - the whole thing is operating at the level of fear and greed. There is not yet the emerging courage, the 'yes, we can do something and we can do something better than it was before'.

"That's what needs to come when there are some role models of courage, but they are not there, even at the highest level."

Mr Patrushev said there was a religious revival in the Soviet Union and a burgeoning environmental movement.

"Perhaps it's this new ecological consciousness, combined with the good aspects of Orthodoxy and Christianity, that will provide the impetus for spiritual revival in Russia."

Editor: Pyotr Patrushev’s books and articles can be found on his website, www.russiantranslate.org

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