At this point, I should be numb to Russian horror stories. But several days ago, the following story struck a chord, not just for its violence and predatory nature, but because it speaks to the spectre of the 1990s — a period many Russian citizens associate with state and societal collapse, widespread criminality and economic insolvency — which is currently haunting Russia.
On 5 April, in the town of Iskitim in Novosibirsk oblast, four masked debt collectors broke into the home of Natalia Gorbunova, beat her husband and 17-year-old son, and then raped her in front of them. Gorbunova had taken a 5,000 rouble ($75) microloan from two companies, Money Now and Money Quickly, in 2014. She couldn’t make the payments.
But how could she? According to them, Gorbunova now owned them 240,000 roubles ($3,586). The beating and rape weren’t the loan sharks’ first resort. They’d been threatening her family on the phone for two years. A week before the collectors raided Gorbunova’s home, they tried to assault her son, but he managed to get away. The identity of the assailants is still unknown. The cops are scrambling to find them.
Many in the foreign press have noted that revelations of Vladimir Putin’s connections to the Panama Papers weren’t reported in Russia’s federal media. But the reality is that for most Russians who are struggling to stave off constant harassment, threats, and outright violence from predatory lenders, Putin’s alleged two billion dollars matters far less in their immediate daily life. It’s a reminder of the old Russian adage that “God is high above and the Tsar is far away.”
