Requiem for a Russian Mobster

Is it just me, or has 2009 been exceptionally rich in the deaths of legendary figures?  In August Ted Kennedy was finally reunited in heaven with Mary Jo Kopechne. In July a much more interesting man, Harry Patch, the last veteran of World War I, died aged 111.

Only a few days after Kennedy expired, Sergei Mikhalkov, the Stalin-loving author of the lyrics to three versions of the Soviet and Russian national anthem also shuffled off this mortal coil. And what about Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon etc? All of these deaths were recognized as significant breaks with the past, symbolic passings that marked the end of an era, even if the era in question had actually come to a close decades earlier. On October 12th yet another such mega-death was marked in Russia, as Vyacheslav Ivankov- AKA Yaponchik- was buried in Moscow’s Vagankovskoye cemetery. Although his name is less well known than Ted Kennedy’s, Yaponchik’s life and career are highly significant nevertheless, for as the most notorious Russian mobster of the 1990s he was a living (until recently, anyway) symbol of an era of near-total societal collapse, the repercussions of which are still felt globally today.

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