Where the booze can kill, and Putin is a 'good czar'

IRKUTSK, Russia — The overworked cleaning woman realized that her grown son was not just sleeping off his habitual hangover in the Siberian city of Irkutsk when she discovered — to her horror — that he had quietly gone blind.

Even as his speech slurred and his condition steadily deteriorated, the man, Renat V. Mukhamadeyev, 31, dissuaded his widowed mother from summoning an ambulance until about midnight. Wheeled into the emergency room at nearby Hospital No. 8 — by then a hellish madhouse of the dead and the dying — he fell into a coma and expired within a day, one of at least 76 victims of a mass alcohol poisoning.

To many outsiders, including President Donald Trump and his inner circle of advisers, Russia is riding high today, strutting about the globe. It wields its clout both openly, by sending its military into Ukraine and Syria, and surreptitiously, warping politics in Europe and the United States through a sustained campaign of propaganda and cyberwarfare.

Yet, at home, the picture is decidedly bleaker.

Since oil prices plunged in 2014 and the West imposed economic sanctions over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russia has been mired in a grinding recession that has lowered living standards throughout the country. For many people, this has meant exhausting savings, cutting back on expensive items like meat and fish, growing their own vegetables and — tragically, in the case of Irkutsk — buying cheap vodka substitutes.

Most of the afflicted in Irkutsk started that Saturday night in December just like Mukhamadeyev, trotting out to a local kiosk or small corner store to buy "boyaryshnik" — "hawthorn" in Russian, lending the product a false holistic air. The label called it bath oil and warned against drinking the contents, but it was common knowledge that bootleggers produced the rotgut specifically as poor man's vodka.

"Everybody drank it because it was the cheapest," wailed Zoya Mukhamadeyeva, 59, Renat's mother, tearfully kissing childhood photographs of her only son.

The working-class neighborhood of Novo-Lenino, where the bulk of the victims lived in this provincial capital some 2,600 miles east of Moscow, is in many ways a snapshot of the growing poverty in Russia.

"The situation is typical for the whole country. It just happened here," said Yuri Pronin, the editor of Baikalskiye Vesti, a local independent weekly.

It was not supposed to be this way. Over the 16 years that Vladimir Putin has served as either president or prime minister of Russia, the standard of living had inched upward in the neighborhood, even as it soared in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Squat, five-story banks of numbing gray Soviet apartment blocks gave way to cheerfully colored, 10-story buildings constructed around appealing playgrounds.

Imported cars clogged the parking lots. Pizzerias and health clubs vied for the residents' spare rubles.

As he imposed order on the economy and cut back press and political freedoms, Putin promised in return better lives for all Russians, laying out a series of targets for 2020.

At least 60 percent and maybe even 70 percent of Russia's 143 million population would join the middle class. Average salaries would rise to 40,000 rubles a month (more than $1,000 then; less than $700 at current exchange rates). Russians would live far longer, with life expectancy for both men and women reaching 75.

During the recession, those and other benchmarks have receded.

Nationwide, the ranks of people who consider themselves middle class have dropped to around 50 percent. The average wage of 36,703 rubles would have to be 55,000 in 2017 rubles to equal Putin's target. In the Irkutsk region, the number of people living below the poverty line — officially 10,000 rubles per month, about $170 — has grown to about 20 percent from 17 percent before the crisis.

In Siberia, residents traditionally raise a birthday toast "to Siberian health," as if the harsh climate forges a stronger constitution. In reality, people in the Irkutsk region die at age 67 on average — 59 for men — compared with 77 in Moscow. The climate and the drinking, as well as inferior medical services, take their toll.

The overall population of Irkutsk is also shrinking. "People constantly discuss the lack of prospects here," said Mikhail Rozhansky, the head of the Center for Independent Social Research and Education.

While the modern apartments and new cars lend Novo-Lenino a patina of prosperity, the people have little work and dwindling savings, said Andrei Kolganov, who spurned a Moscow career to become a clown in the neighborhood, parlaying that into a successful children's entertainment center. Problems spiraled after 2014.

"The majority of the people in this neighborhood drink illegal alcohol," Kolganov said during an impromptu tour. "You can see that people don't live that badly. But they don't have work, nobody needs them, so they drink. It's a Russian tradition."

Even some local people were shocked by the number of seemingly comfortable people who drank the tainted alcohol — nurses, teachers, drivers — people with steady if low-paying jobs. Some victims just keeled over on the street, residents said, and others were discovered dead days later in their apartments.

"Everybody knew that it was not bath oil. That label was just meant to fend off the inspectors," Kolganov said. "What really shocked people is that those who died wanted to give the appearance that they were doing well, but they lacked the money to buy decent vodka."

Although sold under different names for decades, even from vending machines, the basic product remained uniform. Boyaryshnik was packaged in a 250-gram bottle of almost 95 percent alcohol that cost about $1 and could be diluted to create a normal-size bottle of what was considered vodka. A 500-gram bottle of legal vodka, with all government taxes paid, costs around five times as much.

After the mass poisoning, investigators discovered that some bootleggers had produced a batch of boyaryshnik using methanol instead of ethanol. Even a small amount of methanol is fatal, as it destroys the central nervous system, including the optic nerve.

That Sunday, seeing her son lying practically comatose, Mukhamadeyeva, who juggles three cleaning jobs, summoned a doctor living in the building. He discovered that Renat had gone blind without saying anything.

Later that night, Mukhamadeyeva said, she encountered bedlam in the emergency room. Even as her son was wheeled into the intensive care unit, she said, four corpses were carted out. Told to wait, she watched a woman on a stretcher die by the admitting desk.

"Doctors were running here and there, but they could not seem to do anything," she said. There is no antidote to methanol, but some of the 123 affected overall by official count lived — other alcohol they drank apparently diluted the methanol.

Even before the poisonings, market vendors in Novo-Lenino had noticed that residents were getting poorer. Shoppers bought more cabbage and macaroni, less meat. Any discounted produce sold first.

That mirrors changes nationwide. After two years of recession and what consumers say is roughly a doubling of food prices, government statistics indicate that the average Russian eats markedly less meat, fish, dairy products and sugar, while consumption of potatoes, melons and vegetables has jumped. About half of all Russians grow a portion of their own fruits and vegetables.

Such changes were not limited to the poor. Some people with suburban dachas who seeded lawns during the fat years have since dug them up to plant potatoes, said Larisa Kazakova, a local opposition activist.

"Everyone tries to grow their own potatoes," said Kolganov, laughing when told that a few university professors had denied knowing anyone in such dire straits. "Do you think a university professor is going to confess to you that he has to plant potatoes to get by?"

Until the vodka tragedy, nobody protested the economic plight.

"We all saw the difficulties as temporary," explained Alexander Rasstrigin, a businessman of ample girth who owns the Progress Plus street market.

"Before the sanctions, people lived quite well," he said. "People took out loans. They were confident about tomorrow. They bought cars. They were sure there would be stability."

Now it seems as if everyone can afford only half, or less, of what he or she could before. Pensioners in particular count every kopeck, Rasstrigin said.

"We buy fewer extras," he said. "I cannot afford expensive cheese. I cannot afford good kielbasa. I don't buy any delicacies."

The poisoning even roused a rare protest, but only among vendors incensed after city bulldozers began smashing their 30 market stalls. They felt they were being scapegoated for the illicit vodka trade, which the police had long tolerated, if not controlled. Boyaryshnik has since been banned — at least temporarily — and some two dozen local police officials, bureaucrats and dealers have been detained, but no major suppliers.

Asked about the poisonings at a news conference, Putin criticized "supervisory bodies" for failing to prevent the tragedy, but ultimately blamed unidentified foreigners. Given that experts estimate the bootleg trade represents 20 percent of the national alcohol market, nobody expects it to disappear soon.

Describing their protest later, a small knot of women grew agitated. "Let people see how Putin really manages this country, see how poor people really live!" yelled one.

Tatyana, 58, a short, stout fishmonger, said she lived on a pension of about $133 a month. She ate normally one week every month, she said, then subsisted on bread and butter.

"We suffer while those in power eat black caviar by the spoonful," she said, miming a person shoving a spoon into his mouth.

"Spoonful?" scoffed Elena, another vegetable seller. "They gorge on buckets of the stuff!"

In a curiously Russian dynamic, they avoided blaming Putin personally.

"The president says that small business should be protected, but lower-level bureaucrats continue with their dark deeds, and as a result, we will all end up unemployed," Rasstrigin said.

The vendors were convinced, as Russians have been for centuries, that if only the czar knew of their plight, he would surely intervene. "Tell Moscow, tell Putin, that they are closing the market," Elena pleaded.

Putin is expected to win a fourth term as president in 2018, ensuring him another six years in office. His unmet pledges on issues like life expectancy do not enter the calculus of most voters, analysts said.

Older Russians in particular remain grateful to Putin for ending the chaos and lawlessness of the 1990s, while overall he has made Russians feel better about themselves and their country's standing in the world.

"I like Putin. He is a good czar, and Russia needs a czar," said Kolganov, the businessman, stressing that he wanted to avoid excessive criticism or praise.

"He is protecting us; how can we say anything against him?" he added. "If he did not do some of what he promised, well, how can one person do everything?"