This is a guest-post. I’d like to thank Jill & Cara for giving me the green light.
This is Natalya Arkhiptseva. She works at Russia Today. In the same building as I do (I work for The Moscow News, which is owned by RIA Novosti, and RT and RIA are neighbours).
On October 9, Natalya decided to meet up with her girlfriends downtown, at Prado Cafe. I’ve never been to Prado, but from what I understand, it’s a fashionable restaurant. “The place has pathos” – as the Russian saying goes.
Natalya was the first of her group to get to Prado. She asked the hostess to take her upstairs. Only one other table upstairs was occupied. Two men and a woman was sitting there. As Natalya passed by the table, one of the men said drunkenly – “Look at that ass walking by.”
I’ve tried to put myself in Natalya’s place, and in doing so, I realize that my reaction to that comment would have been pretty similar.
What Natalya did is that she turned around and asked the man if he was talking to her. “So what?” He slurred. “So what?”
The hostess asked Natalya if she would like security to be called. Natalya replied in the affirmative.
At this point, the other man sitting at the table told Natalya, “bitch, I’ll make you dance,” whipped out a gun, and shot her in the foot. (The cops initially said that it was a “traumatic pistol” – one of those things that is meant to be used in self-defense, as opposed to a lethal weapon. However, the bullet that was taken out of Natalya’s foot was a metal bullet. So it could have been a modified weapon. This is important when it comes to sentencing.)
Right now, you’re probably sitting there thinking that this couldn’t get any worse. Except that it kind of does.
Staff and security who work at Moscow’s posher restaurants are incredibly attuned to the caste system that exists in Russian society. They were instantly able to determine that a) Drunk Guy With Gun is an Important Person and b) Natalya’s just some lowly journalist, and acted accordingly.
Natalya received no help. Her friends had to call her an ambulance. While she waited for an ambulance, in a state of shock, the man who initially insulted her was allowed to go up to her and tell her how HILARIOUS it was to see her get shot. When the ambulance arrived, a waiter demanded that Natalya be given first aid outside, because, and I quote “people are eating here” and who wants to have their Important Clientele be squicked out by the sight blood? According to Natalya, the staff at Prado went as far as give false statements to the police.
The man who shot Natalya is businessman Sergei Virolainen, executive director of Saigon, a company that specializes in plumbing repairs [insert appropriate metaphor here]. Society journalist Bozhena Rynska, who was the first to break this story, ON HER BLOG (no one was interested in what happened to Natalya at first), reported that Virolainen is the nephew of a retired Saint Petersburg politician – and this news appears to be correct. As I mentioned in my story about this for MN, there’s ample evidence to suggest that Virolainen believed, and continues to believe, that his money and connections put him above the law.
I sincerely hope that he is swiftly disabused of this notion. I’m not going to go as far as say that it would be a good thing if he is also swiftly seized by a group of maladjusted goblins and repeatedly dunked head-first into a public toilet somewhere in the vicinity of Lyublino (a particularly rough neighbourhood in southeast Moscow) for at least a week or so – but I will say that should such a scenario or one similar to it take place, I probably won’t be too upset on Virolainen’s behalf.
Shockingly, Natalya’s story is not shocking. Virolainen’s behaviour is not shocking. The alleged behaviour of Prado’s staff is not shocking. I’ll go as far as say that the only reason we even heard about this incident has to do with the fact that Natalya is a journalist – and someone who will not be content with hush money.
I have bad stories of sexual harassment – in Moscow and elsewhere – as many of us do. What they all have in common is the same old notion of Woman as Public Property. A woman who is out alone, or else surrounded by people who are not easily identifiable as her bodyguards, a woman who’s wearing something a little more revealing than a spacesuit, a woman who forgot her grenade-launcher and her loyal pack of psychologically unstable Bull Terriers at home is obviously asking for someone to remind her of her place. Or, you know, just go ahead and shoot her – so that she doesn’t get any funny ideas about her possible status as a human being.
What makes sexual harassment by a Rich Dude sometimes worse is the fact that there is more of a chance of him getting away with it. I mean, I’m telling you, it was bad when a guy in an old, Soviet-made Lada drove alongside the pavement and yelled disgusting things at me as I tried to walk home one night – but if it had been a guy in a Bentley, I would have been way more scared. Society would have us believe that guys in Bentleys are just waiting for their chance to make us their Cinderellas – when the reality is a little more prosaic.
Natalya Arkhiptseva plans to sue Prado – and will insist that Sergei Virolainen be punished to the full extent of the law. There will be huge pressure on her to drop this entire thing, of course. The fact that Virolainen didn’t even get to spend the night in jail after doing what he did sort of speaks for itself. But I hope she fights the good fight – and I hope that all of us continue to support her in any way that we can.
Many people have already begun asking the same stupid question that always comes up when an incident like this occurs – “But what could have been done to avoid it?” I’m here to tell you that nothing, absolutely nothing could have been done to avoid it. Natalya was not in control of the situation from the start. She responded honourably (I used to not be a big fan of the word “honour,” but it’s been growing on me as of late). She was brave, and continues to be brave.
And I wouldn’t want people reading this to dismiss the incident as “something that happened in crazy old Russia, so it’s none of my concern,” because the first thing I thought of when I read about it was that one time a girl I knew got pistol-whipped in one of those “upscale” Miami clubs for having the temerity to complain when a guy began to grope her. Guy in question was never even arrested or prosecuted. Staff allowed him to leave by the back door while she lay bleeding on the floor.
Any one of us could have been that girl. Any one of us could have been Natalya Arkhiptseva.