“Farewell to Russia
By Joe Luc Barnes
Pegasus, 320 pages, $29.95
Joe Luc Barnes, a British journalist, was living in Moscow when events in Ukraine started in February 2022. Mr. Barnes went on to tour the 14 nation states (excluding Russia itself) that had been born from the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. He wanted to see whether independence had delivered on the promise of freedom and self-determination.
His first stop was the Caucasus. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, he writes in "Farewell to Russia," is remarkable for its stray dogs and the "cloying smell of propane," an alternative to gasoline. There are roughly 13 million Armenians in the world, but only about three million live in the country. More than 10% of Armenia's gross domestic product comes from foreign remittances, a pattern common to several post-Soviet states.
In Georgia Mr. Barnes is struck by the power of traditional gender roles, a pattern that seems to him common throughout the Caucasus, with the men prone to "a macho hotheadedness." Azerbaijan boasts a glittering, monumental capital city, Baku, flush with oil money and foreign investment. It hosts Formula One races while the rest of the country sinks ever deeper into squalor. On the train from Baku to Ganja, Mr. Barnes writes, he leaves behind "any vestiges of wealth and prosperity" and finds the poverty in the countryside to be "as in-your-face as Baku's gaudy skyscrapers."
The Aliyev family has ruled Azerbaijan since 1993, an example of how Soviet elites throughout the post-Soviet sphere have stayed in power and enriched themselves.
The picture in Central Asia looks even worse. Mr. Barnes calls Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, "a hostile city with no public transport and nothing but mad monuments to recommend it." This is a country of "gaping inequality," ruled by a "corrupt dictatorship." Neighboring Kyrgyzstan impresses with the staggering majesty of its mountains but is desperately poor: The average salary is $500 a month. In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon has built a cult of personality and fostered suffocating corruption. The low point, however, belongs to Turkmenistan, the ultimate Central Asian police state. Its government has the dubious achievement, Mr. Barnes tells us, of blocking "three times as many websites as China." Its chief tourist attraction is the Darvaza gas crater, in the Karakum desert: a smelly, burning hole in the ground also known as the Gate to Hell.
Mr. Barnes concludes his journey with the one country fighting for its very existence. He writes of Ukraine as a land depleted by conflict, but also as a place where people find a way to carry on with their lives despite the constant barrage of missiles and drones. At the same time, he hears stories of men paying bribes to avoid army service and later escape the country. Reading Mr. Barnes's account of life in Kyiv, it is difficult to say how long the Ukrainian spirit can hold out.
The author's travels around the former Soviet Union take a physical toll. The potholed and dangerous roads of the Caucasus and Central Asia -- Tajikistan's Tunnel of Death lives up to its name -- leave Mr. Barnes with aching buttocks and shattered nerves. But his liver suffers the most. "Farewell to Russia" reads like an epic pub crawl. Much of the time the author is either intoxicated or hung over. He happily partakes of every alcoholic beverage offered: Along with a mighty river of beer and wine, Mr. Barnes downs chacha, a sort of Georgian grappa; vyshnivka, a Ukrainian cherry liqueur; and Belarusian krambambula, a mixture of red wine and gin, occasionally turbocharged with vodka.
The drinks wash down the various national delicacies he samples along the way: dolma (meat wrapped in vine leaves) in Armenia; khachapuri (hot, cheesy bread) in Georgia; kurut (a sort of bread salad) in Tajikistan; and, in Kyrgyzstan, beshbarmak, which Mr. Barnes describes as "boiled horse meat with noodles and onions." He notes that beshbarmak is "tastier than it sounds." Food appears to be the main attraction in many out-of-the-way places.
Although Mr. Barnes stresses the differences among the countries visited, he is left with a general impression of social and economic decay, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia, as authoritarian leaders, corruption and cronyism extend and tighten their grips. "If this journey has taught me anything, it's that things can always get worse," he writes. He says he hopes "Farewell to Russia" will encourage people to see these lands for themselves. But his book is not likely to inspire any but the most adventurous travelers to put most of these countries on their must-see list.
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Mr. Smith is the author of "The City Without Jews: Life and Death in Nazi Vienna."” [1]
Baltic states are also deeply corrupt (čekučiai, anyone?), run by clans of Nazis without concentration camps, e.g. clan of Landsbergis. Economically they are hyenas, using poverty and cheap labor to keep feasting for short time on dying economies of Germany and Scandinavian countries, that have been basis of Baltic survival. Germans and Scandinavians are now short of money, so they use twice or even more lower Baltic salaries to get what they badly need.
Scandinavian countries (particularly Sweden and Finland) and Germany are major trade partners and sources of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for the Baltics, especially in banking, telecommunications, and manufacturing.
1. REVIEW --- Books: Imperial Hangover. Smith, Douglas. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Oct 2026: C9.
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