Winter Games a triumph for local residents
SOCHI, Russia — For Anna Ruskazova and her 11-yearold son Mark Kavolov, as for tens of millions of Russians, the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics Friday were a triumph for President Vladimir Putin and his ambition to restore respect for Russia as one of the greatest and most influential nations in the world.
Westerners have sometimes lampooned these Winter Games as a crazy $51 billion ego trip by the Russian strongman, but that was definitely not the view in Russia on the night the Olympic flame was lit.
“There is no doubt that this has increased Putin’s popularity,” Ruskazova said as she and her son sat enthralled before the television in their cosy flat in a tumbledown Soviet-era building atop one of Sochi’s many hills watching the XXII Winter Olympics. “If not for Putin, these Games would not be so big and would not be getting so much international attention.”
While worried about the stunning tab for the Games, “our standard of living has improved because more roads and railways have been built and there are many more good shops and cafes,” the cellphone sales clerk said.
As for the ecological controversies, “they messed that part up a bit,” Ruskazova acknowledged. “Where once there were bears and elk, they have gone somewhere else. On the other hand, a lot has been spent on fountains and beautiful parks and that has been appreciated. You can say that as a result of the Olympics some places are ‘greener’ than they were and we like that.”
Russia has received an international mugging lately over these issues as well as concerns about human rights. It mystifies and may disappoint western critics, but such criticisms, as well as complaints about showers that don’t work and unfinished hotels, get little traction here. It is therefore pointless for western leaders to keep trying to get Putin to be more like them. He does what he wants because he can. And one of the biggest reasons that he can act with impunity is that his country is behind him.
Still, after 14 years in the Kremlin, Putin’s popularity has dipped a bit. Having faced down months of public protests two years ago in Moscow, the Olympics are likely to provide a timely and welcome tonic.
But western naysayers have managed to strike a sensitive nerve here. Obviously making an effort to restrain himself, one of Russia’s legendary ballet dancers Valeri Vasiliev testily told a post-opening ceremony news conference that “we have a slightly different view from those who have come from abroad.”
Before serving heaping bowls of borscht to two visitors who came to share the magical evening with her family, Anna Ruskazova gushed, “wow,” “fantastic” and “first class” as the history of Russia unfolded before her, including a rather stark but positive depiction of the Soviet era.
She, her son, her husband, who delivers food to restaurants, and her daughter, who is an Olympic volunteer, got their first taste of international sport by watching figure skating and junior hockey last winter at the rinks in the Olympic Park. They liked the experience so much that they have purchased tickets to the Olympic biathlon, which rates just behind hockey and figure skating in popularity in this country.
Except for a few lucky people in Sochi, most Russians saw the opening ceremony through the prism of state television. It treated the spectacle with great reverence, leaving the cameras to paint a picture and seldom offering much commentary.
The only jarring moments were when television commercials upset the tempo. But as at the Super Bowl, some of these advertisements were specially created for the event. The first of them showed hockey superstar Alexander Ovechkin being mobbed after scoring a goal. The most breathtaking ad depicted a polar bear and a snow leopard observing a German-made Audi sedan slicing through deep snow in the middle of a stunning winterscape.
Such are fears of a terrorist attack by Muslim insurgents on Russia’s first Winter Games, that thousands of police cordoned off a large swath of Sochi for several hours so that Putin and his usual cavalcade of limousines could travel swiftly from his dacha on the Black Sea to the opening ceremonies 15 kilometres away in the suburb of Adler. As every driver in Moscow knows, Russia’s leaders have never cared about the inconveniences caused by such gridlock.
Unfortunately, the traffic lockdown in Sochi, which was much bigger than those that take place in the capital, prevented tens of thousands of frustrated locals from reaching home to witness the first half of the big show taking place down the road.
But the atmosphere of celebration was so great that those same streets were virtually deserted during the last half of the nearly fourhour long extravaganza, while a national television audience estimated to be in excess of 50 million sat transfixed in homes across Russia’s nine time zones.
“It was a massive event. A grandiose event. I’m so proud of our athletes and I am so proud of our city,” Ruskazova gushed.