A dysfunctional family with spouses living separate lives but staying together only for the sake of the children. Huge debts from the couple's small business. A family of five crammed into a tiny, rented two-room apartment. No chance to start a new business or find well-paying jobs. Add to that serious drinking problems for both husband and wife and you get the perfect setup for a Dostoyevskian novel that inevitably leads to murder.
The murder took place Jan. 3 after a fight. The lawyer for former restaurateur Alexei Kabanov said Kabanov confessed to strangling his wife, journalist Irina Kabanova, and dismembering her body. Kabanov started hiding the body parts but was prevented from completing his task by investigators. They searched a car he was driving and found two bags filled with human remains in the trunk.
Kabanov made his name in the Moscow restaurant scene. In 2000, he was one of the originators of the innovative OGI Project, named after a publisher of art-house literature. A literary club and cafe hybrid, it was a place where people could have dinner as well as attend exhibitions, book readings, literary festivals and poetry readings. It even had its own library.
The project was a success. The owners opened several other cafes under the brand PROgi and had plans to start another 18 cafes. But the company wasn't able to raise the money to expand, and after the oil boom crashed in 2008, the company began to nosedive. A number of cafes were closed, and others were sold. Kabanov and his wife opened their own cafe, called Cherska, in the center of Moscow. It was financed by the sale of Kabanova's apartment. But the cafe failed, and the couple lived on her income from a radio talk show.
Unfortunately, domestic murders are common in Russia. As psychologist Gennady
Blogger
A blogger on the
Questions like these, which sound like they were taken from Stalinist-era newspapers during the Great Terror, are more puzzling than upsetting. Poet Vsevolod
Of course, the Kabanov family tragedy has nothing to do with the protest movement. But it does have something to do with the economic situation in the country, particularly the crisis of small business development. Last year, income from individual businesses in Moscow was down 3 percent, according to an analysis published in
The analytical Internet site
There were many factors that led to the murder in the Kabanov family. But there is a larger lesson that can be gleaned from this tragedy. A country that denies opportunities to its creative and entrepreneurial class is a country without prospects for economic development in the 21st century.
Victor Davidoff is a? Moscow-based writer and? journalist who follows the? Russian blogosphere in? his biweekly column.
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