The Russia Journal

Necessity, goes the proverb, is the mother of invention. A rather overbearing mother in the case of Russia, but it makes Russians a very inventive people. Couple this with the thieving urge noted by even such patriots as 18th-century historian Nikolai Karamzin, and what do you get – corruption, banking scandals and so on.

The average American might not know Karamzin, but they're getting the idea that you can't trust those diabolically inventive Russians. Some of the stories of Russian antics in the citadel of world capitalism have now passed into history. Russian comedian Mikhail Zadornov has tales of Soviet immigrants back in the 1970s weighing their own bananas in American shops. They'd do no more than brush the scales with the bananas, paying a few cents rather than a couple of dollars.

American salespeople eventually caught on and don't allow that kind of self-service anymore. But Russian inventiveness has since found plenty of other outlets. Take the scandal involving $900,000 in Salt Lake City at the end of last year. The capital of Utah, which is to hold the winter Olympics next year, has been getting visits from foreign Olympic committee officials, among them two representatives of the Russian Olympic Committee, coming to open bank accounts and prepare the ground for their national teams.

The catch is that these two Russians – they had Russian passports and (probably fake) IDs signed by the Russian Olympic Committee president – opened bank accounts, received checkbooks and made off with $900,000. It's entirely possible the two fraudsters weren't Russian citizens at all, but that they used Russia as a cover says something in itself.

It may be unfortunate for Russia's image, but there are reasons why Russians get painted in such black colors in America. Just take another story of two Petersburgers who moved to New York, rented a car and set about rifling through the contents of mailboxes in the city's poorer districts. What they were after was envelopes containing credit cards, phone accounts and other financial documents. The swindlers' enterprising operations in cashing in other people's bank checks and withdrawing money using others' credit cards came to an end when they were caught by an old woman.

Her suspicions were aroused when she saw them come three times in one day to the same mailbox, knowing that a federal welfare check was due that day.

In Los Angeles, Russians, who had caught on to the American love of various charities and funds, gathered donations for all kinds of monuments, environmental causes and people in need. Needless to say, the money didn't reach its stated destination. One pair of Russians even collected a tidy sum in the name of protecting dolphins, though they'd probably never seen a dolphin in their lives.

Another Russian opened a mobile fortune-telling clinic in California using a van stolen in Colorado. In just a couple of weeks, he diddled naive Californians out of more than $50,000 with his dubious consultations, but was caught after two old ladies called the police.

On a smaller scale, there's the age-old Russian love of getting something for nothing. When a group of high-placed Russian officials arrived in the United States to observe the presidential elections, they brought with them a host of respectable-looking chief secretaries and security people.

But the minute the bosses were busy in meetings, their respectable subordinates waiting in the reception areas of reputable American institutions stormed the telephones, calling Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk and everyone back home. One Ukrainian intern in a well-known Washington foundation ran up $2,000 worth of calls back home from the office phones.

It might be some consolation to the average Russian that at least in all these cases, the people being taken for a ride are gullible Americans rather than unfortunate victims in Russia.

But the downside is that none of this will do anything to persuade the average American, or the country's new president and his team, to change their perceptions of Russia.

(Yury Sigov is Washington bureau chief for Noviye Izvestia and a regular columnist for The Russia Journal.)