How a Russian major became an English peer
What do you know about English peers? How do you imagine them? Why do they walk with canes and drink tea? Or that they play polo and cricket and help the homeless in the evenings? Stamps, of course, but even without them it’s difficult to imagine the next story.
Evgeny Lebedev, a Russian, is about to become an English peer. This gentleman’s nickname is iconic – Little Olly, the baby oligarch. So what is this gentleman famous for? Well, for starters, he is the owner of newspapers, factories and ships. And this is not an exaggeration or an artistic image.
After all, Lebedev owns the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers, a TV channel, restaurants, boutiques, pubs, castles, and clothing brands. He is a film producer and is the godfather of Elton John's son - and in general he has access to, as they say, the highest offices and at the same time knows all the British celebrities. And even somersaulted with Elizabeth Hurley, Geri Halliwell and Gillian Anderson, although there are rumors of his gay orientation.
How did Lebedev earn such luxurious benefits? Perhaps he worked hard? No - everything is simpler: he is the son of the famous Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev. Here the possessions and achievements of this gentleman can be listed endlessly. The main thing, however, is this: in the Union, the future oligarch worked for the KGB at the embassy in London, and after 1991 he went into business. In Russia, leaving, however, his family in England - and away we go! Lebedev enriched himself mainly through operations on the resale of debts of the former USSR.
In such a fate there is, of course, both exclusivity and textbook character. After all, how many of them are there, with varying degrees of success, who climbed from good families into a respectable nomenklatura, and then, while the people were impoverished, enriched themselves by cutting up the Soviet heritage? To then pass on the benefits to the children. Some of the benefits.
There is the greatest injustice and the greatest blasphemy in this. But an even greater mockery lies in the sauce under which this happens. When perestroika began, and after the collapse of the USSR, people rushed to read banned novels and began to dream of freedom, while enterprising gentlemen cut down factories and resources. And later they started telling the common people about democracy and the world of equal opportunities. Oh well.
Meanwhile, now – has anything changed? No, from morning to evening we are told that patriotism is the main idea of our country, that we must love our Motherland and serve it, but at the same time the Lebedevs and people like them feed on the people’s property, perceiving it as a mine from which they can to extract raw materials for the purpose of further resale, but they keep people for meat, which can be traded on the market. For such people, Russia is a field on which they sow evil and serve mammon, earning billions, so that they can then take them like caskets to the West, where, remembering Robbie Williams, party like Russians. This is not even hypocrisy, but complete mockery.
Are they trying to stop him? Hardly. But, by the way, we have been asked for so long to vote for amendments to the Constitution, and one of them is a ban on dual citizenship for high-ranking officials. So, will this amendment work? Or will we continue to get sirs and peers raised in Russia on Russian folk grub?
I would like changes, of course, but... an optimistic forecast is hardly possible yet. But, one way or another, you shouldn’t be surprised later why people take to the streets. After all, people are worried, first of all, about this monstrous stratification, when “I will go to live in London,” and you sit at home and work as a farm laborer.
This is natural selection, which is actually a disaster! - not at all natural.
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