The audience sat in stunned silence. Roman Borisovich continued, “there is an army of UK bankers, accountants, lawyers, trustees, and other professionals assisting Russian corruption.”

Facilitating such dubious financial transactions should be ‘socially unacceptable behaviour,’ he argued, ‘just like child pornography.’

September 14th marked the Frontline Club’s inaugural Kleptoscope; the first in a new series of events investigating corruption and dirty money in London.

“Klepto as in kleptocracy,” award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough explained, “scope as in looking at it under a microscope”. Their aim, he elaborated, was not just looking at those ‘stealing money from their budgets’, but also the ways in which that dirty money is laundered and then spent. Kleptoscope’s debut event certainly delivered on this promise.

Anti-corruption campaigner and ex-banker Roman Borisovich shared a former insider’s perspective. The UK, he argued, is the “single largest enabler of money laundering and corruption in the world.”

That dirty money, Chido Dunn of Global Witness claimed, is stashed in a ‘secret bank’. This bank, she said, is one without branches and employees, but which takes dirty money and cleans it: the London property market.

“If you were a corrupt politician and you wanted to buy a luxury property using stolen money,” Dunn asked, “how would you go about it?

Her explanation made it seem simple.

Imagine you’re a corrupt minister with the power to sell oil rights, Dunn urged. Using an anonymous company you’ve registered in the British Virgin Islands (‘Shady Incorporated’), you sell those rights to yourself at a fraction of their market value, and then sell them on for their full worth. With no trace left behind, you pocket the ‘profit’. But, Dunn asked, how do you clean that dirty money?

“Property is an excellent way to launder money,” she said, “you can drop a large amount at one time with very few questions asked and the value of that asset will steadily increase.”

‘Very few’ might even be an exaggeration. A excerpt ‘From Russia With Cash‘ screened at the event showed several London estate agents caught on camera blithely nodding along with Borisovich, who played the role of a corrupt oil minister, much to the entertainment of Kleptoscope’s audience.

But whilst the hapless estate agents’ actions were certainly laughable, the impacts of corruption clearly are not.

“Corruption threatens our economy and makes our country less safe’ explained Dunn. In Russia, Borisovich said with an air of resignation, corruption “has caused irreparable damage to the nation”

But, where does the money go from here? Describing the links between individuals associated with bribery, corruption, and violence in Ukraine and Azerbaijan and back-bench MPs in the UK, Bullough asked whether it is being used to buy influence and access. He couldn’t be certain that these links were crooked, he cautioned, “but it looks bad, it looks concerning.”

“By focussing the scope on these things” he reiterated, “hopefully we can push for greater and greater transparency so when the sunlight is shone on these deals we can say actually it was fine […] we need to know, this is a democracy.”

The first event will feature three groundbreaking stories focusing on the former Soviet Union, exploring how Russian kleptocrats have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money; how London’s property market has become a piggy bank for the world’s corrupt elite; and how ex-Soviet businessmen have covertly funded MPs and parliamentary groups, gaining preferential treatment as a result.

Speakers:

Roman Borisovich is a former banker and a political activist and campaigner against corruption. After appearing in the documentary From Russia With Cash he set up ClampK.org, and is the architect of the hugely successful Kleptocracy Tours.

Chido Dunn is a Senior Campaigner in Governments and Corruption at Global Witness. She works on their investigation into whether the UK is providing safe haven for corrupt individuals and their assets – with a primary focus on luxury property.

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.

On Wednesday 24 February, a panel of experts met to discuss the legacy of war and communism in eastern Europe. A full house convened for the event to mark the release of the latest edition of Granta, No Man’s Land, which focuses on the ground between opposing forces, twenty five years since the fall of communism. 

Themes of amnesia, nostalgia, construction, rebuilding, liberal democracy, end of history, paranoia, and conspiracy theories led the body of the rich discussion.

Oliver Bullough, journalist and author of The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame Be Great who has lived and worked extensively in Russia, chaired the event. Joining him were senior fellow at the Legatum institute and author of Nothing is True and Nothing is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia, Peter Pomerantsev, and Philip Ó Ceallaigh, author of Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and The Pleasant Light of Day.

The event began with Pomerantsev and Ó Ceallaigh reading excerpts from their Granta pieces – ‘Propagandalands’ and ‘Bucharest, Broken City’ –  and drawing the audience into the landscape that was to be discussed.

Bullough engaged with the theme of truth being an irrelevant concept in eastern Europe. “This idea that the victory belongs to the persuasive… How pervasive is that? How quickly do you doubt everything?”

“Ukraine is a laboratory of contemporary propaganda… The problem that people have is they have too many sources of information… In all the sociology they say ‘we don’t believe anyone anymore,'” Pomerantsev responded. He went on to say that this phenomenon is not unique to Ukraine but is seen across the world – particularly in the United States.

Ó Ceallaigh commented later on the mistrust that was prevalent in Romania during the time of communism. “One of the deepest wounds of the Communist years was the fact that everyone was snitching on everyone else.” He shared that the younger generation are different in that sense.

Bullough then moved the discussion onto the subject of nostalgia, questioning its significance in the contexts of Ukraine and Romania.

“I think nostalgia might be more about not being happy with the present… The phrase that the separatists used, ‘things will be like they always were’; they’re talking about some kind of dreamscape. On the one hand the internet breaks our idea of reality, fragments it, and in this fragmented space people start dreaming of sort of lost nostalgias… But at the same time when you go and pull down a statue of Lenin no-one seems to care,” Pomerantsev responded. 

“It’s a nostalgia for a fictional past,” added Ó Ceallaigh.

Fascinating @GrantaMag/@frontlineclub talk last night with @OliverBullough & @peterpomeranzev. Now to dive into this pic.twitter.com/Uc5RKAtrT9

— Jack Losh (@jacklosh) February 25, 2016

The discussion moved to the notion of conspiracy theories, with Bullough asking: “Is conspiracy theory essentially yearning for a higher power?”

Pomerantsev commented, “Confronted with the chaos of globalisation, the chaos of too many information sources for our little minds to cope with… people revert to conspiracy theories. And that is a reflection of some of the nasty political movements.”  

“Victims of the violence are actually being confused with the perpetrators, which is exactly what you had in the wake of the Paris attacks… The media suddenly flips and you see things completely backwards. It happens over and over again. This is what we need to recognise,” Ó Ceallaigh said.

An audience member asked the panel to comment on how the West could feasibly improve the current situation in Ukraine and Romania.

Ó Ceallaigh responded, “Throw money at it. In a way it’s as simple as that. It’s crude and usually goes wrong at the beginning, because when you throw money at a corrupt society the people there who are going to take advantage are those in power.”

“It took me years to make sense of my own history, and Russian society will take a similar time.”– Vladimir Ashurkov, Russian opposition politician

In collaboration with Theatre Royal Plymouth and the Sputnik Theatre, on Thursday 14 January the Frontline Club presented a staged reading of Grandchildren: The Second Act by Alexandra Polivanova and Mikhail Kaluzhsky as part of its Power, Politics & Performance in Russia series.

Told through a series of overlapping testimonies, Grandchildren explores how people construct and ultimately justify the actions of family members who – as members of Stalin’s inner circle or of the secret police – contributed to the atrocities and purges of the Soviet era.

Chairing the subsequent debate that covered the performance itself and the question of collective memory, BBC foreign correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse began by asking the panel what parallels they saw between the period depicted in the play and contemporary Russia.

John Freedman, theatre critic and former theatre critic for The Moscow Times, said that one of the strengths of the piece was that it “points no fingers, it has no answers, it does not say somebody is guilty or innocent.”

“What it messes with is life and the reality of a life that people live. Any one of us can look back into our own pasts and find difficult moments that we rationalise.”

And it was this, said Freedman, that causes him to despair, “because I see the same thing happening now. People around me are finding the exact same answers to similar questions.”

Writer and broadcaster Oliver Bullough stressed that each nation seeks to define itself by its past, but that in the case of Russia it is far harder to simplify into didactic terms and to challenge the narrative that has already been established. “People need stories to live their live by,” he said, “in order to make sense of it.”

Watching the Sputnik Theatre performance at #FrontlineClub with Cameren – Power, Politics & Performance in Russia pic.twitter.com/w0iNfLAhKv

— Catie Dear (@Catie_Dear) January 14, 2016

Touching on a recurring theme that a lack of lustration – a process of reckoning akin to the Nuremberg trials – was one of the primary causes of the current situation in Russia today, Vladimir Ashurkov, a prominent opposition politician and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, said this is perhaps best illustrated by the resurgence in mass support for Stalin.

Russians have a long history of authoritarianism, said Ashurkov, but key is the role that government plays. “It can take steps to bring people closer, to make sense of their history and to be in touch with reality.”

He added that, over the past 15 years, the Russian government has sought to rehabilitate the cult of Stalin as a means of inspiring and imposing a new wave of xenophobia and nationalism.

Freedman touched on the building of this Stalin brand as an increasingly powerful tool: “What I see is people using the name of Stalin, using the picture of Stalin, as a sign to say ‘this is good, this is strong, this is part of the Russia I want’ – and running towards that.”

Alexandrina Markvo, a leading figure of the Moscow art scene currently living in exile, added that this use of the Stalin-myth as a tool for propaganda was resoundingly clear when you examined the teaching of history in schools across Russia, and specifically the way in which Stalin is presented.

On the subject of complicity, one audience member reiterated the panel’s earlier argument that the historical divide between victims and perpetrators had become far harder to define in Russia, and – over the course of 70 years of Soviet rule – had frequently become interchangeable. He argued that this had made it more difficult to point fingers of guilt, and suggested instead the existence of a complex of collective guilt versus collective innocence.

Ending with the question of whether Russia had entered a period akin to that under Soviet rule, speaking from the floor, artistic director of Teatr.doc Elena Gremina said: “Of course not, because the current government is much more dangerous and, in a sense, much more anti-people, and anti-state than even the Soviet government.”

On Thursday 18th April at the Frontline Club, authors Irina Prokhorova and Oliver Bullough talked about their experiences of Russia which have informed the research and writing of their two very different books.

Prokhorova’s book 1990: Russians Remember a Turning Point charts the missing year after 1989 when the Soviet empire fell apart and before 1991 when the Soviet Union was formerly dissolved.

“The close study of this period showed that all genesis of new life, just grew out of 1990. With its best achievements and worst [ . . . ] my idea was to show [ . . . ] this point of growth, the potential of the society of which probably we still don’t know enough.”

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winner and most recently author of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 , who was chairing the event, said that it felt that on reading the book one of the most notable points was how teachers were inspired to be creative with their curriculums. Prokhorova responded:

“I expected to find it but I was amazed how many things have been created at that time [ . . . ] we always underestimate the creativity of our own society [. . . . ] Somehow started in this period the whole basis of new life was created.”

Irina Prokhorova

While Prokhorova‘s book charts the lives of both ordinary and elite Russians at the fall of communism through interviews and documents of the time, Bullough‘s book, The Last Man in Russia and the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, follows the story of an Orthodox Priest named Father Dmitry who throughout the sixties tried to combat the alcoholism that was commonplace throughout Russia. Bullough said:

“He attempted, in a small way because he was one man and this is a very large country, to create an alternative community in which people could trust each other [ . . . ] His theory was – and I think he was right – that the nature of a totalitarian society is that it can only survive by breaking down the bonds of trust between individuals.”

Oliver Bullough and Anne Applebaum

“So many of the dissidents, Marchenko or Sakharov…they are authentic heroes. Cast iron, 100% astonishingly brave, wonderful people and when you read about them it is inspirational. Father Dmitry is as it turns out not quite like that. In a totalitarian society heroes are a vanishing small minority; most people have to compromise. For whatever reasons, to get ahead, to get married or to get a job or to get a drink – to get anything. And once you compromise it’s difficult to stop. That is why I wanted to write about him.”

Prokhorova added:

“They have to compromise to save their lives and their loved ones.”

In contrast to Prokhorova‘s optimistic view of society flourishing throughout 1990 and hopefully into the future, Bullough offered a different opinion:

“The protests against Putin are a sign of a growing society and people are beginning to trust each other in a way that they weren’t before [. . . . ] However, the damage that has been done by vodka is so awe-inspiring. The UN estimates that the population by the middle of the century will be 116 million – it’s currently 143million. That’s a drop of about the population of Canada.”

Prokhorova added later on:

“Liberating yourself from the most horrific regime is a very painful process. You have to do quite a lot of things: psychologically, intellectually, practically. It’s very difficult to create this social fabric, I can assure you, for 20 years I’ve been trying to do it. The whole idea of survival was an individual thing [. . . . ] You have to teach people and you have to teach yourself too. We need a span of time.”

To which Bullough voiced his concern:

“There is a risk that people will become disillusioned and leave. This is something that the Soviet Union didn’t have – that it was very difficult to leave [. . . . ] The book does end in a relatively upbeat way. I’m encouraged that the new Soviet generation is much more socially active than I think I realised.”

Listen to Irina Prokhorova on how the Russian government should approach society in the future:

Watch the full discussion here:

Irina Prokhorova, founder and editor-in-chief of New Literary Observer, and Oliver Bullough, Caucasus editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, will be joining us in conversation to offer two different portraits of Russia charting historical change.

1990: Russians Remember a Turning Point, edited by Prokhorova, brings together a fascinating collection of documentary evidence that charts the lives and hopes of ordinary and elite Russians at one of the great turning points in history, the fall of Communism.

The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation by Bullough also charts historic change but through the life of an Orthodox priest, Father Dmitry. Following in his footsteps, Bullough reconstructs the world he experienced: the famine, the occupation, the war, the frozen wastes of the gulag, the collapse of communism and the excesses that followed it.

Chaired by journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum. She is a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, and director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute in London. She is author of Gulag: A History and most recently Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56.