This is Russia’s timeless, quintessential paradox: the country has no problem building a state of the art stadium in Chechnya and bringing over international football legends Maradona, Figo and Steve McManaman all the way to Grozny for the inaugural exhibition match, but can’t manage the simple task of delivering an Amazon shipment to ordinary people trying to order books online.
In fact, it’s easier to ship a humble package to Iraq or Afghanistan. Writes Herbert Mosmuller:
An astounding 13 forms need to be filled out for a shipping container from the United States to enter Russia, according to a World Bank investigation last year. By comparison, fellow BRICS nation India requires nine forms, while Mexico seeks five and France two.
Moreover, it takes an average of 36 days and $1,850 to get a container from the United States to Russia. These shipping troubles landed Russia in a dismal 166th place among 183 countries on the World Bank’s Trading Across Borders list.
But instead of focusing on a basic national priority like a functional customs system, Russia has preferred to spend its resources on an ultra-modern, 30000 seater, FIFA compliant stadium in a provincial capital that is not even one of the cities hosting the 2018 World Cup.
The USSR, a country that sent man into orbit but couldn’t produce enough toilet paper or a decent pair of shoes, ignored – to its peril – a simple truth: that a country’s greatness is not measured in the height of its buildings, the stockpile of its rockets and Olympic medals, or even the reach of its spaceships, but in the unheroic, competent handling of the prosaic little things that lend comfort and ordinary dignity to people’s daily lives.
And while Putin’s Russia – with its gleaming stadiums, glass office towers and foreign limos – may look nothing like its Soviet predecessor, its underlying addiction to showy monumentalism over quiet substance remains unchanged.
