"I met Alina Rotenberg in the summer of 2012. At thirty-six, she was no longer married, but her last name spoke volumes in Moscow: her ex-husband, Igor, was the son of Arkady Rotenberg, one of Vladimir Putin's childhood friends and judo buddies. There were a lot of women like Alina in Moscow. They were beautiful, their laser-toned skin and ostentatiously luxe clothing advertising their wealth."
"The post-Soviet nomenklatura was not that different from the one it replaced-and that was intentional. Putin had joined the K.G.B. during Leonid Brezhnev's tenure, in the seventies, and, having used its power structure to reach the country's upper rungs, he was all too happy to reproduce it. Back were the villas and the apartments, the chauffeurs and the mistresses swaddled in foreign luxury."
Alina Rotenberg represents Moscow women whose social standing hinges on elite surnames and marriage connections despite divorce or aging. After Putin's 2000 election, a new oligarchic class emerged through no-bid contracts to cronies, recreating a Soviet-style nomenklatura. The revived elite acquired villas, apartments, chauffeurs, and mistresses and gained greater access to world markets, fueling demand for luxury. Many women sought entry to that gilded stratosphere by marrying men within those circles. Public attitudes often reduce these women to beauty despite their wealth, labeling divorced or older women as having a 'character' or being 'difficult,' limiting autonomy.
Read at The New Yorker
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