Amid Squalor, a Russian Insists He’s a Millionaire

Valery S. Sergeyev is not a millionaire--yet--but already he feels different from all the other invalid pensioners at the ramshackle state institution where he lives.

For them, the sullen, squat building in the small town of Kudymkar, about 685 miles east of Moscow, is the final stop in life. But not for Sergeyev. The 63-year-old has big plans--once he gets the $3.6-million inheritance he is sure is his.

“It will be a completely new life. I’ll stop wasting my time doing nothing,” he says of his hopes of inheriting the money he contends his grandfather, who died in the 1960s, left him in a Swiss bank account. The Swiss bank, UBS, confirms only that it is assessing his claim.

To be an invalid Russian pensioner and inherit millions would be like having a rescue rope haul you from a prison of utter poverty. Sergeyev dreams of world travel, a villa in Bavaria, an apartment in Moscow and one in Kudymkar with a TV, fridge and washing machine. He’ll get a car too, of course, and learn to drive.

But for a nascent media star making the plans of a soon-to-be millionaire, Sergeyev--who lost a leg and part of a foot from frostbite more than 20 years ago--seems rather sad and complicated.

Life used to be simple, but now he faces the complication of how to get to Zurich to claim the money. On just 87 rubles, or $3.60 a month, after paying his keep at the institution, he doesn’t have money to buy a ticket and can’t figure out how to get it.

Like a Chekhov character, he appears restless yet somehow passive, mired in inertia and helpless against his fate. The longer he talks about going to Switzerland to get his dreamed-of inheritance--and the grander his ideas for spending the money--the more a chimera his plans for a new life appear to be.

Propped on his crutches on the home’s decrepit balcony overlooking a weedy, overgrown yard, Sergeyev sucks on a cigarette--Yava, one of the cheapest Russian brands and the only one he can afford--before throwing it on the ground and stamping it out with his crutch.

Amid the squalor, he holds court with journalists from around the world drawn here by his story. First came the local press, and then the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda declared him a millionaire. The Russian news wires picked up the story. Since then, he’s had numerous visits from international media organizations.

“So many difficulties,” Sergeyev tells the latest visitors with a sigh, “with trying to get to Moscow and from there trying to get to Zurich and get my money.

“I’ll definitely go. As soon as I get my passport, I’ll go,” he says enthusiastically. But later he absently remarks: “If I get to Switzerland . . .”

In one pocket Sergeyev keeps his old internal Soviet passport in a small plastic bag, and with it the handful of small coins that are all his spending money. He sits on his narrow bed, takes off an ancient hat and props his battered crutches to one side. His suit is poor, and his undershirt peeks through a gap in his shirt.

He shares his room, which has been specially cleaned by staff before visitors arrive, with three others. The poverty of the room creeps up detail by unhappy detail: four beds crammed into a small space, and under each a chipped enamel saucepan to serve as a chamber pot; a bare lightbulb; peeling paint. On his table, attracting the interest of several flies, are a couple of slices of hardening bread and a boiled egg that he has saved from breakfast to eat later.

From under his bed he drags a small green suitcase, which contains most of his worldly possessions and his ticket to escape, the letter from a Swiss bank about his inheritance, written in German, a language that seems strangely exotic in these surroundings.

He tells his incredible story: His mother’s father was a czarist officer who fought in Germany before the 1917 Russian Revolution and was taken prisoner. After the revolution, Sergeyev’s grandfather, Guri von Korsakov, never returned to Russia but managed to marry well in Germany, deserting his first wife and his daughter, Sergeyev’s mother. The couple built up a manufacturing business and made a fortune.

Some years later, Korsakov sent word back to his Russian family, through a Soviet diplomat named Lavrov, and the secret connection continued for some years. Korsakov died, and the family legend of a fortune salted in European bank accounts took hold.

Sergeyev says it took him 20 years of writing to banks in Germany and Switzerland to track the money down. (There are 400 banks in Switzerland alone.)

Now he has his letter from Margrit Burgherr of the UBS bank claims department, which arrived in February, with its crisp white paper and fancy letterhead. The bank has told him he has to provide certain documents, he says, a fact the bank confirms. It means he will have to go to Chuvashia, his grandfather’s birthplace, to get the birth and marriage certificates that prove his relationship and show he is entitled to the money.

But even getting to Chuvashia, 335 miles away, and extracting that documentation from local authorities seems itself a monumental task to him. He has few friends and no one to help him.

Sergeyev’s life has never been easy. When he was 40, he worked in Kazakhstan trucking supplies to construction sites on the steppe, where winter temperatures sink as low as 45 degrees below zero. His truck broke down, and both Sergeyev and the driver he was with were badly frozen. Sergeyev’s left leg and part of his right foot had to be amputated.

Since then, he has lived in institutions for invalids. He never married--but hasn’t given up. He dares to hope that, when he gets his inheritance, plenty of women will be interested.

That inheritance is what has kept him going all these years. “I’ve always known I’d be happy someday, that someday I’d get the money,” he says.

In the institution, everyone has dreams. A small sign near the front entry advertises cures through Christianity and advises those interested to bring a church candle along to gatherings. On a summer day, Sergeyev’s fellow pensioners bask in the sun, watching him in the middle of another interview with foreign journalists. They stare with undisguised curiosity at this latest group of newcomers from distant parts.

As he sits among them having his photograph taken, Sergeyev elevates himself, proud and tall. He’s different from the others; he feels it. He doesn’t belong here; the world awaits.

He has an escape, a letter from a Swiss bank.

The pensioner gets irritated by insistent questions about which documents he has seen to make him sure there really is such a big inheritance coming his way. Because questions create doubt, and doubt clouds his dream.

“If they didn’t admit I had this money, they would not have sent me the form to fill in,” he says indignantly. “Of course they’re going to give me the money.”

Sergeyev fiercely guards his dream, but with a call made later from Moscow to UBS in Switzerland, another chunk of Sergeyev’s fantastic edifice falls away. “The bank will do its very best to assess his claim and to look for an account in the name he gave. And we will touch base with him, and we’ll do it in Russian to make it easier for him,” says the gentle, blank voice of the bank’s press officer, Christoph Meier.

In the end, Sergeyev’s story seems a bit like the Russian fairy tale of a poor man who is granted anything he wishes by a little golden fish and, after consulting his wife, can think of nothing grander than getting a new washtub. But after the old man comes back to the fish with more and more extravagant wishes, the magical little fish disappears. And everything goes back to the way it was before.