By Irina Glushchenko
MOSCOW — Russians travellers are mostly still obliged to cover the huge distances in our country by rail. While no-one would expect the Russian railways to be an oasis of order and efficiency within the current general decline, the situation in the rail system today is not just difficult — it's catastrophic.
People can, of course, simply give up travelling, and many have done just this. But sometimes they have no choice, and then they encounter torments of which they can scarcely have dreamed.
"The unpleasantness begins right there in the booking office", Moscow News reported in January. "Shifty types who have slipped money to the cashiers hang around, offering tickets for prices that suggest the railway carriages have turned into airliners."
The article featured a list of black-market prices for railway bookings. Moscow to Vladivostok costs from 15,000 to 18,000 roubles, compared with an official price of 2823 roubles, and Moscow to Samara 2000 roubles as against 220.
The railway stations are veritable hothouses of criminal activity. "According to official figures", Moscow News reported, "a total of 45 crimes were reported in the Moscow stations during the first nine days of January. These included one murder, 10 cases of robbery with violence and 20 thefts.
"During the same period 46 accidents were recorded on the railways, 10 of them involving loss of life."
When you brave all this and board your carriage, you're likely to find that there are numerous vacant seats. This is a result of the presidential decree freeing commerce, which renders train tickets as tradable a commodity as jeans and sausages. Buying them up wholesale has become highly lucrative. The operation would have become much less profitable if the speculators who had cornered the market in tickets had lowered their scarcity value by selling more than a limited number.
And so, you're on the train. But you can't let down your guard; you have to keep an eye on your belongings, and watch out for fights. If you find yourself wronged, there's no-one you can appeal to — the transport police have either been bribed or are themselves afraid to intervene.
Those are some of the dangers from other human beings. Now for the technical perils. Last year 8 million wooden sleepers were laid in Russia instead of 18 million required. The situation is similar with rails — there is no money to buy them. There are not enough wagons, and spare parts are short.
"The railways are obviously one of the last outposts of socialism in , Moscow News continues. "They cannot raise their prices to cover costs, since no-one would be able to afford the new charges, neither passengers nor goods shippers ... There is only one way out — government subsidies, and very large ones. This is completely normal world practice — rail transport cannot be profitable by definition."