"I could really care less," said Andrei Ostrovsky, news editor for the newspaper Vladivostok. "Life in Vladivostok won't get any better or worse because of it.
"In fact, when I watched the fighting in October 1993 on television, I felt about as distant from the events as I did watching the Iraq War," he added.
On Tuesday, the first newspaper issue since parliament's amnesty for the leaders of the leaders of the 1991 and 1993 coups took effect Saturday, Ostrovsky's paper, the largest in the region, devoted a small corner of page six to the event that could revise the nation's political landscape.
Indifference to political events in Moscow 9,350 kilometers away has grown so strong here that some people had not even heard that the coup leaders were released from prison.
Political apathy even toward such controversial figures such as Rutskoi and former parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov is growing nationwide, experts say, but the sentiment appears especially strong here.
"We've lived through such a time that we have enough of our own problems to worry about, such as the shortage of electricity," said Andrei Gorbunov, 35, a carpenter. "People are looking out for themselves and are not interested in politics."
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