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The eXile, founded in 1997, is a Moscow-based English-language biweekly free newspaper, aimed at the city's expatriate community, which combines outrageous content with investigative reporting. Major contributors have been Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, who wrote a book together on the eXile in 2000. Rolling Stone magazine said in 1998 that "Ames and Taibbi take the raw material of this decadent new Moscow and convert it into 25,000 instantly snapped-up issues of The eXile, consisting of misogynist rants, dumb pranks, insulting club listings and photos of blood-soaked corpses, all redeemed by political reporting that's read seriously not only in Moscow but also in Washington."

The paper has taken advantage of Russia's allegedly poor enforcement of libel laws to publish arguably defamatory material, which in 2002 led to a successful libel action against it. Its eight-year history has seen a number of stunts, including reportedly getting Mikhail Gorbachev to enter negotiations to secure a position as "perestroika coordinator" for the New York Jets.

The eXile is edited by Mark Ames and John Dolan, and published by Konstantin Boukarev.

Origins

In 1997, Ames left the English-language Moscow newspaper Living Here to found the eXile. The concept was first proposed by Manfred Witteman, who also convinced Marina Pshevecharskaya to provide $10,000 of start-up capital. Ames was initially joined by former Living Here sales manager Kara Deyerin, and Matt Taibbi, then a Moscow Times, contributor, was recruited after the third issue as co-editor, but returned to the United States in 2002.

Ames later wrote that the word 'exile' was chosen as a title for its contextual triple meaning. First, Ames considered himself an exile from California. Second, he intended to lampoon the way Western expatriates complained of the minor annonyances of Moscow life. Finally, Ames was aware of the painful connotation of exile (изгнание or сослание) in Russian culture, and that he was in a some sense "selling the national tragedy as a joke."

Content

Articles published in the eXile have focused both on Moscow and Russia related topics, as well as issues of more general interest. Investigative reporting, reviews of Moscow nightlife, concerts, and restaurants, commentary on politics and culture in Russia and America, film and book reviews, and mocking replies to its readers' letters appear in most issues.

As Taibbi remarked in 2000, "We wrote a whole bunch of editorials about the size of Putin's penis." and "The 90's in Moscow were a great time... like what they say about the 20's in Paris or the early 30's in Berlin. It was completely hedonistic and nihilistic and full of crime." Drugs were a characteristic of this culture: Taibbi said he wrote most of the eXile book whilst on heroin, with Ames adding "A lot of his prose was written on smack and a lot of mine was written on speed." (New York Observer, 19/6/2000)

Ideology

According to John Dolan, the eXile publishes articles from perspectives not often heard or read elsewhere. He has referred to eXile columnists as "subaltern," claiming they have been discounted from mainstream discourses as "sinful," irrelevant, disgusting, mysoginistic, or otherwise too objectionable to be heard. As an example, Dolan referenced Gary Brecher:

"Brecher's sensibility...has found hundreds of thousands of fans online. Every day devoted followers write to the War Nerd, giving homage to the only online voice they trust. Yet Brecher's sensibility could never be admitted either to mainstream journalism or to academic writing."

Dolan has cited the eXile's audience as a reason for leaving academia and what he called its "starchy sensibility," and proclaimed a central role for his concept of sin in the eXile's ideology:

"By contrast, the eXile was conceived in sin - "and proud of it," as Bart Simpson would say - by refugees from the moral world of the American academic. Its editor, Mark Ames, fled Berkeley to set up his own paper in Moscow, then the sin capital of the world. In 1997, when the eXile began publishing, Moscow was without law - especially libel law."

Dolan was not the first eXile editor, however, to mention the importance of libel in the paper's ideology.

Libel

The newspaper has admitted to printing many statements, satirical and otherwise, that would be considered libelous under most jurisdictions. In the opinion of the editors, these statements are justified both by what they see as the odiousness of their targets and the inefficiency of ordinary journalism at raising public awareness.

Former editor Matt Taibbi has said that weak Russian libel laws provide a certain immunity to the eXile. Similarly Ames asserted in his article “Democracy Sucks” that “we'd be sued out of existence within a few weeks of appearing in any Western democracy, but here in Russia, in the so-called kleptocracy, the power elite has been too busy stealing and killing to give a fuck about us, allowing us to fly around the capital beneath their radar, like a cruise missile. A real democracy would never let us get off the ground.” Nonetheless, the eXile was found liable in a 2002 Russian libel judgement.

Edward Limonov and the NBP

"The eXile" regularly publishes columns by the extreme-right writer and politician Eduard Limonov, founder and leader of Russia’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), who was convicted in 2002 by a Saratov court on felony charges of purchasing automatic weapons and explosives, though he was released halfway through his four-year sentence at the request of several members of the Russian Duma who protested that the case was politically motivated. In his "eXile" column, Limonov has described several episodes from his personal history, including how the BBC filmed him as a “guest sniper” of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, firing shots into Sarajevo.

Material from the eXile has also been published on the NBP's website, including one article calling Limonov “our hero.” The eXile regularly reports on NBP activities and links to their site, and Ames has published his own articles in the official Russian-language NBP publication Limonka (Hand Grenade).

Columns

(past and present)

• "The War Nerd," in which self-proclaimed war nerd Gary Brecher provides commentary and analysis of past and present military conflicts.
• "The eXile's Field guide to Moscow," a description of the stereotypically colorful characters that can be encountered in Moscow, parodying the descriptive style of wildlife or bird-watching guides.
• "Whore-R Stories," in which Mark Ames describes an encounter with a female prostitute, solicited specifically for the purpose of providing material for the column. While descriptions of sexual performance, body type, etc. are usually included (and sometimes accompanied by a picture), the main column's main focus is usually relaying Ames' impressions of the background, opinions, and personality of the prostitute. The more subtle economic and social aspects of prostitution in Moscow are often an important theme as well.
• "Feis Kontrol," consisting of impromptu photographs of Moscow nightlife. The title derives from a double transliteration of the phrase "face control" from English to Russian and back to English.
• "In Brief," a collection of headlines and short news blurbs in the style of such satirical newspapers as The Onion, typically with the aim of lampooning other news sources.
• The "Club Guide", a review of Moscow clubs, bars, strip clubs, and other night venues. Each location is given rated as a place to drink, as a place to find casual sex, and on its level of "face control".
• The "Restaurant Guide", a frequently updated review of Moscow restaurants.
• "Dyev's Diary," in which Lyolya Androsova reflects on the experiences of her Moscow youth.
• "Press Review," consisting of criticism of the coverage of Russian affairs in Western media.
• "Chess," wherein eXile writers and editors play and analyze chess games against Russian masters and Russian prositutes.
• "Death Porn," which describes and categorizes gruesome and unusual violent crimes occurring in Russia. This section adopts the graphic and cynical style of Moskovskiy Komsomolets's "Скоро в Номер" section.
• "Mandela Porn," in which Natasha Marchetti covers violent crime and law enforcement in South Africa, with an emphasis on particularly vicious and dim-witted criminials.
• "Schoepenhauer Awards," covering the most unpleasant creatures of the animal kingdom.

Stunts

Buns McGillicuddy

To mock "face-control" policies at elite clubs in Moscow, the eXile fashioned their intern into a fictitious international nightclubbing celebrity, Buns McGillicuddy. Creating a fake entourage and an absurd music single "Touch my Buns," eXile intern Jeremy Lanou was allowed into the VIP rooms of Moscow's most elite and restrictive clubs.

Pie attack on Michael Wines

In March 2001, "the eXile" setup a single-elimination contest to determine who, in their eyes, was the "most foul hack journalist" in Russia. In each issue, they paired up the previous week's survivors, who were then compared and analysed. The winner, New York Times Moscow bureau chief Michael Wines, had a cream pie allegedly made from equine semen flung into his face by Matt Taibbi.

Kiriyenko letter forgery

In July 2004, the eXile claimed responsibility for the "Kiriyenko letter", a forged document purportedly from five U.S. Republican Congressmen which expressed concern over Russia's "democratic transition," and accused former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko of stealing IMF funds. After claiming to have forged the letter, Ames was condemned by U.S. Representative Henry Bonilla (R-TX), who demanded that Ames be "prosecuted" and "punished" for forgery. Many media outlets also believed that the eXile had sent the letter. In the next issue, Ames retracted his claim, saying it had been inserted as filler on production day. Ames wrote that he feared for his safety as a result of Bonilla's condemnation. In the preceeding weeks Bonilla had called for the Russian Government to take "tough action" against Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov, and Klebinikov was subsequently assassinated. The episode earned the eXile a "website of the week award," from the Philadelphia weekly City Paper.

See also

• War Nerd
• The Hungry Duck
• Gonzo journalism
• Mark Ames
• Gary Brecher
• John Dolan
• Denis Salnikov
• Matt Taibbi
• Beigeist (Wiktionary)

Footnotes

1. Rolling Stone Magazine, issue 800, November 26th 1998.
2. Mark Ames, Matt Taibbi, and Edward Limonov. The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia. Grove Press, 2000. ISBN 0802136524. (online excerpt available)

References

• The eXile website
• List of eXile columns
• "From Russia With Malice" by Sean McMeekin, Reason Magazine, book review of The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia, January 2001

• Biweekly newspapers
• English-language newspapers
• Russian newspapers