Moscow holiday diptych

The first photo (12:33pm, Dec 27, 2005) causes one to envision a group of friends swilling Sovetskoe champagne from little plastic cups on the embankment of the Moscow River, their moods buoyed by the early hour, the festive flags on the bridge and the inspiring architecture of the Ukraina Hotel across the river.



The second photo (8:37pm, Dec 28, in the Belorusskaia metro station) reminds one how such festivities can end - with yet another, clearly uncalled for, bottle of Sovetskoe.

Gratuitous Metro pic

Since I've been rather text-heavy of late, I'm trying to even out the balance with a few photos. Much more fun than politics or answering personal questionnaires. This one is from December 30th, around 4pm, in the Biblioteka Imeni Lenina metro station. Note Vladimir Il'ich's bald dome, rendered lovingly in a mosaic, peeking out above the crowd at the top of the stairs in the background.

I love you

If only the message scrawled on the subway door in this photo was a bit more legible, it would make a great Valentine. The faded graffiti reads, "Ia tebia liubliu," or "I love you." Photo taken at 4pm on December 31, 2005, on the green line somewhere between the Belorusskaia and Aeroport stations.

...in which the blogger perpetuates a tired blogosphere game

I've been "tagged" by Kevin of Languor Management. Because I like Kevin's blog, and because this week is National Procrastinators' Week, as well as my spring break*, I guess I'll take the time, though I don't think many people will find this interesting.

*I started this post two weeks ago, and it's been languishing as a draft since then. Since then, I've learned I was also tagged at about the same time by Wally Shedd, the Accidental Russophile.

Four jobs I've had (though none of these was within the past 9 years):
Waiter
Standardized test essay grader (sometimes those 8th graders had really depressing things to say)
Housepainter
Recycler of newspapers (including driving a 20-foot, 5-ton truck full of them - favorite job ever. That was a summer job; I also worked for these folks during the school year.)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Leaving Las Vegas
Burnt by the Sun
Ironiia Sud'by
Can't think of anything else - I've never been a very discerning big-screen viewer.

Four places I've lived:
Lagos, Nigeria
Leningrad, the USSR
Washington, DC (the District, none of this suburban nonsense)
Moscow, Russia (too obvious)
North Cambridge, Massachusetts

Four TV shows I like:
X-Files (not the last few seasons)
Namedni (R. I. P.)
Law & Order (preferably the original)
Simpsons

Four places I've vacationed:
Uzbekistan (made it to Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as the gateway city of Tashkent, although not to Khiva or the Aral Sea)
Shanghai, PRC
Moldova (I've been to just about every big city in the country - Chisinau, Balti, Soroca, Comrat, Ungheni, and others - even made it to Tiraspol twice)
Kenya (a week on safari and a week on the beach in Mombasa - something like 20 years ago)

Four of my favorite dishes:
Blini from Teremok
Starbucks Eggs Florentine sandwich (favorite food of the moment) / Starlite Diner Eggs Benedict
Hammered pork cutlets and yellow string beans with garlic
Anything my mom makes

Four sites I visit daily (there is actually no such site, but these are the ones I visit most frequently):
Neeka's Backlog
Slate.com
Lenta.ru
My counter logs

Four books I've read this year (or, to be precise, within the past year):
Acts of Faith (highly recommended)
Lying Together: My Russian Affair (don't draw any conclusions)
Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams (it didn't really work)
The Man Who Tried to Save the World : The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of an American Hero (interesting if you're interested in Chechnya)

Four bloggers I'm tagging:
Nobody. I don't want to lay this burden on anyone else.

More on Litvinovich

I was following the story of the beating of opposition activist Marina Litvinovich earlier this week - here, here, and here - which has now been thoroughly covered in English by the Moscow Times (they try to make you pay for their stories after the first day, but David McDuff of A Step At a Time has the story here. Information wants to be free.).

Masha Gessen had an opinion piece in the Moscow Times yesterday, which is worth quoting in full:

Moscow Times
March 23, 2006
A Message Delivered
By Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen is a Moscow journalist.

If you follow the news, you know now that Garry Kasparov, the chess king who has devoted his life to deposing President Vladimir Putin, has an office on Ulitsa Makarenko in central Moscow. There is no sign on the door announcing his grandly named United Civil Front, nor is his office marked in any way. When you enter, you encounter a couple of his bodyguards (altogether he has eight or so). These guys follow the opposition activist everywhere and watch over everything that concerns him, including food preparation. And if you follow the news, you know this is not paranoia.

Monday night, Kasparov's right-hand person, the political consultant Marina Litvinovich, left the United Civil Front office just after 9. About an hour later, she opened her eyes to discover that she was lying on a cellar awning and someone was trying to ascertain if she was all right. She was not: She had apparently been knocked unconscious by a blow or several blows to the head. She had been badly beaten, was bruised all over, and was missing two of her front teeth. Nothing had been taken from her: not her notebook computer or cell phone or money.

She spent three or four hours in the emergency room that night, and she spent another three or four at the police station the following day. She found the police to be extraordinarily polite and considerate -- and, as the organizer of many of Kasparov's public speaking events and any number of protests, Litvinovich is something of an expert on police behavior. Some higher-up had apparently been sent down to the station to handle her case. At the same time, she told me, "I am not stupid and I could see what they were getting at: that I was just walking down the street and passed out. That I must be in poor health." Litvinovich is 31 years old and healthy. "And that I fell in such an unfortunate manner that I got bruised all over."

Russian police are generally fond of blaming the victim as a way of solving crimes. I have read case descriptions in which police claimed that victims of beatings stumbled and fell (in one memorable case, a person was said to have insulted a police officer, then stumbled, fallen and apologized to the officer). Even Private Andrei Sychyov, the apparent hazing victim, has been said to have injected himself with the substance that necessitated the amputation of both legs. But failing the she-hit-herself-on-the-head theory, the police were willing to offer Litvinovich another version of events: She may have been hit by a car.

Litvinovich has a bruise on her leg that, the doctors told her, was probably caused by a blow with a rubber baton. The police suggested it may have been a car bumper. Litvinovich pointed out that her clothes were so clean that she was wearing the same trousers and coat the following day. She clearly was not hit by a Moscow car. Moreover, this is one of several signs that she was attacked by professionals: She must have been held while she was beaten, then laid carefully on the awning on which she found herself.

In other words, the attack was a message. The pristine execution and the fact that Litvinovich's valuables were not touched serve to underscore this. So what's the content of this message? Another young political consultant, an up-and-coming member of the Kremlin's Public Chamber, Alexei Chadayev, put the message forward in his blog: "Women should not be in this line of work. ... Marina is on the warpath, and no one ever said this war would be conducted according to rules." This is this country's ruling regime speaking. Its message is crude: as simple as a rubber baton, as brutal as a blow to a young woman's face. If you are going to oppose the Kremlin, it is saying, this will happen to you.

Perhaps the powers-that-be are even more angry at Litvinovich because, years before her recent attempt to get possible Putin successor Sergei Ivanov booted from his job as Defense Minister, she seemed to be on their side. Without wanting to call her opposition cred into question, it seems relevant to mention that she got her start working for Kremlin spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovsky's Fond Effektivnoi Politiki, though, to be fair, I think back in '99 Pavlovsky wasn't considered to have gone over to the dark side - actually, back in '99, concern about the Putin administration becoming a "dark side" was rather muted overall.

And back in '99, Litvinovich was also apparently the victim of a beating, although that time her assailants stole a briefcase containing "important FEP documents." That last bit is according to an exhaustive piece on Lenta.ru which covers the recent beating and provides a thorough backgrounder on Litvinovich's career as the "work horse of civil society."

Compromat.ru (caveat - a questionable source, which sources much of its article to the even more questionable Stringer.ru) has an article which recites some of the same facts about Litvinovich's early career, but adds the tidbit that author Tatiana Tolstaya's son is the father of Litvinovich's child. But that's getting too far into tabloid territory, I guess, and we try to keep things serious here.

One of the projects that Litvinovich worked on back in the day was strana.ru, which is still going strong. Here's an interesting excerpt from an MA thesis (which seems to be from 2004) about "The Changing Face of RuNet":

The establishment of high profile government propaganda sites further fuelled concerns in an online media community already made jittery by deteriorating press freedom and the state control of television. “It is not a business project,” said strana.ru director Marina Litvinovich (LaFraniere, 2002). “It’s a political project. The idea is to support Russian authorities and the Russian president.”

A project of this nature was viewed by its rivals as potentially an overture to actual repression: “Today we do not really feel interference,” said Anton Nosik, editor in chief of news site lenta.ru. “That’s because they haven’t started yet. Ever since Mr. Putin has been in the picture, there has been an urge to control the mass media. They are just not ready to come for us yet.”

Is it too obvious to suggest that it looks like "they" may be getting ready?

Minsk Madness, part 2

It looks like the tent city in Minsk has been broken up violently. Here's the BBC's take, and a bit on the crackdown from MosNews.

Although the links I've stored up for a post over the past couple of days seem dated now, I'll run through a few of them anyway.

BelaPAN news agency had a thorough photo essay from the short-lived "Minsk Maidan" a couple of days ago. Blogging from Belarus, LJ user tormozoid also had some photos. His most recent post says the following, in simple, bold type (my translation):

All those who dispered the tent city, and especially those who gave the orders, will burn in hell.

Hard to argue with that.

American bloggers were covering the story (that second link is especially good reading), and there will no doubt be more comment on the night's events when the US wakes up. David McDuff at A Step At a Time has a post up already about the tent city's demise, exhorting us all to "blog till it hurts" in order to keep the story in the news. And Sean had a thought-provoking post digesting the Guardian's take on Lukashenka and the West's alleged hypocrisy in their approach to the Belarus elections.

Veronica has been doing double duty, covering events at Neeka's Backlog and also on Global Voices Online.

And finally, courtesy of the man behind U Fanni Kaplan, a link from megablog Boing Boing to a rather troubling pro-Lukashenka pop song (including a video).

Visions of the Other

A Russian friend of mine recently emailed me this joke:

Как США представляли СССР в 70-е годы.
- Садись есть!
- Выпьем водки!
- Мама, можно я пойду, поиграю на балалайке, почитаю Ленина и подою медведя?
- Можно, и не забудь сдать нас в КГБ
- Папа, а где дедушка?
- Стоит в очереди за талонами на талоны.
- Дорогая, становится жарковато! Пойди, выключи ядерный реактор.
- Заткнись, Наташа! Выпьем водки!
- Папа, я написал сочинение « за Ленина я готов гнить на рудниках».
- Отлично Сергей, выпейте водки всем классом!

My translation:

How the US imagined the USSR in the 1970's.
"Sit down and have something to eat!"
"Let's drink some vodka!"
"Mama, can I go play the balalaika, read Lenin, and milk the bear?"
"Of course you can, and don't forget to turn us in to the KGB."
"Papa, where's grandpa?"
"He's waiting in line to get ration tickets for ration tickets."
"Honey, it's getting hot in here! Go turn off the nuclear reactor."
"Shut up, Natasha! Let's drink some vodka!"
"Papa, I wrote a composition called "For Lenin I Would Rot in the Mines."
"Excellent, Sergei, your whole class should drink some vodka!"

Maybe this is insider/niche humor and thus not funny to many, but as a social document it speaks volumes. This is the Russians' self-deprecating take on how we saw them during the cold war, and for me, a big part of the joke is that it is pretty close to true - both in terms of how things really were and in terms of how they were seen by an earlier generation of Russia-watchers (uh, "Sovietologists," I think they were called back in the day).

But it raises a couple of thoughts in my mind.

First of all, how many Americans still think of Russia in this kind of cartoonish way? Probably not a trivial number. And, frighteningly, we seem to still have some influential policymakers here in the US who haven't advanced their opinion of Russia much past this 1970's-vintage caricature.

Secondly, what would the reverse of such a joke (Russian impressions of the US in the 1970's) look like? My guess is that it would be even funnier, and even more misguided, because the average Soviet citizen had fairly limited and distorted sources of information about life in the USA. However, it's impossible to imagine Americans coming up with such a joke and telling it to each other, because caring about what people from other countries think of us is an exotic and unpopular pastime in the United States -- unlike in Russia, where it sometimes seems like a national pastime.

Free-market Metro (Flea-market Metro?)

Maxim Gorky's stern visage watches over a group of middle-aged Muscovites as they shop for winter fashions in the entry vestibule of the Park Kul'tury metro station. December 29, 2005.

Two Tales of a City

Looks like there was a full moon last weekend in Moscow. Below are two stories reported by email by friends who live in Moscow, both of which took place last Sunday.

Here at Scraps of Moscow, we may no longer be based in Mo-town (until this summer, at least), but we still try to bring the flavor of the city home to the English-speaking reader. If anyone had questions about which gender has the stronger moral compass in Russia, these stories should help with that determination.

Tale One - Babushka Triumphant - By Friend A

I was unsuccessfully attacked in the Tverskaya Metro Station this evening. While peacefully waiting for my train, a clearly drunk (and likely crazy) gentleman approached me as I was busily thumbing away on my blackberry.....he slurred something that was not only incomprehensible to me, but would have been incomprehensible to native Russian speakers.

In my best Russian, I responded, without looking up from my blackberry, Ya nye ponyal. He then decided the best way to make me ponimat was to grab/pull one of my arms....when he saw that this did not dislodge the blackberry from my other hand, he decided that slapping my other arm was the next logical step. At this point, I am stunned and shocked and standing there with my arms entangled with this maniac.......

Suddenly....to my immediate left (he approached me from my right) a blood curdling scream issued forth and we both turned to see a babushka entering into the wind up of what would have been the most terrifying southpaw roundhouse this side of Trenton....simultaneously, my shock switched to anger and this strange gentleman decided it was time to cut and run (with the Babushka yelling epithets at him as he ran, seemingly upset that she did not have a chance to unleash her mighty punch).

I was immediately very grateful to my savior who brushed it off like a superhero saying it is all in the day's work for a babushka. She apologized to me that the metro is so full of drunkards. I was tempted to slip her 500 rubles but worried that this might wound her pride. We can all make fun of the way they yell at you to put your hat on or elbow you getting into a crowded metro, but the babushka is the one segment of Russian society that has any sense of a human role (as opposed to nature) of telling right from wrong and acting accordingly. If everybody behaved like them, Russia would be a better place.

Anyway, I am home safe no worse for the wear (the whole thing lasted a matter of seconds) -- just thought some of you might appreciate the vignette. One little piece of irony....the police presence in the metro this weekend was simply overwhelming.....incredibly oppressive. I have notice that since new year, the metro is FULL of militsia. Of course, it is the babushka who are keeping this place safe (while their pensions are being cut to fund more money into the military industrial complex).

******

Tale Two - Dedushka Triumphant - By Friend B

I also encountered a bit of strangeness. I dropped 100 rubles on the ground as I was stuffing the change into my pocket after buying a bunch of spinach and other veggies at the outdoor market at my metro station.

I had taken a few steps when a woman, one of the sellers, pointed to the ground and said I had dropped the money. When I turned around a man, a well-dressed pensioner who had been standing behind me, already had pocketed it. I went up to him, and asked if he had found the note.

He didn't look at me, but responded softly, 'Nyeeet.' He took it. He knew I knew he took it. And so did his wife. I smiled and began to walk away. When I turned around again he was frantically shifting it from his coat pocket into his pants pocket.

Welcome to Moscow

A non-ethnic Russian is welcomed to the capital by a friendly local police officer asking to see his documents. Near the Kievsky train station, December 27, 2005.

Minsk Madness

OK, the post title is really just an allusion to the college basketball tournament currently taking place in the US, known as "March Madness." I don't think there's nearly as much madness in Minsk at the moment as democracy-philes might like. But in my (uneducated) opinion, I don't think it's over yet, either. There is a fledgling tent city (a tent village, maybe?), and people are using the internet and foreign media to get the word out given the media blackout conditions which exist in Belarus.

If you're reading this blog, odds are that you're already familiar with Neeka's Backlog, which is providing much better coverage of what's unfolding in Minsk than I could hope to do. The coverage there is more personal and also more up-to-date than anything you'll see in the mainstream media, because Veronica is watching (among many other things) the LiveJournals of people directly involved in the process and posting translated excerpts on her blog. This means that she finds things like this (a poster encouraging people to "kill your inner Lukashenko", sourced here - with a comment suggesting that the black-and-white version is better for flyering, because "you'll go broke paying for toner" to print the version with a red background).

Other excellent English-language coverage, with good photos and commentary on MSM coverage, is available here, here and here.

It's become a cliche, but only because it's a truism, to remark on the essential role of the internet in giving revolutionaries a fighting chance. Twenty or thirty years ago, the tanks would have rolled, and there would maybe have been outrage in foreign countries (depending on how much information got out), but inside the country no one outside of a select few would have known what happened. Not so today. Long live the internet. Zhyve Belarus.

I am still hoping that (as Veronica mentions in this post) that foreign MSM journalists stick around for the planned weekend opposition rally and as long as there's any semblance of a tent city. It's possible that Bat'ka is just waiting for the Amerikosy and other for'ners to leave before doing something drastic, the power of the internet notwithstanding.

And in the interests of presenting both sides of the story, here's a pravda.ru forum which reprints the Guardian piece by Jonathan Steele, doubtless controversial in certain circles, in which he laments "interven[tion]" by Western governments and the Western media's "narrow and partisan" coverage of the political scene in Belarus.

Hitting them where it hurts

Coming after the Ukraine gas crisis, this looks like another example of Russia using economic levers seasoned with an unconvincing pretext to stick it to near-abroad countries who hold their heads up too high:

RUSSIA TO CRACK DOWN ON WINE IMPORTS FROM MOLDOVA, GEORGIA
Interfax news agency (Russia), March 21, 2006

Tight restrictions may be imposed on the import of Moldovan and Georgian wines to Russia in the near future, Russia's chief epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko told journalists on Monday.

"We are strongly concerned about the situation with Moldovan and Georgian wines," Onishchenko said. Heavy metals, pesticides and other hazardous substances were discovered in wine imports from the two countries, he said.

The official, however, declined to provide further details.

So, after the "gas war" comes the "wine war"? At least it's got more alliterative value. And I'm sure these sour grapes have nothing to do with the souring of relations between Russia and a couple of its more unruly former subjects. The memo to Tbilisi and Chisinau really reads, "Give up Abkhazia and Transnistria (respectively), and stop flirting with NATO, and let the wine flow as before. Don't you love us anymore?"

I'm no economist, but my guess is that this is probably a bigger potential problem for Moldova, especially if the Russians decide to extend their "concern" to fruits & veggies or processed products like apple juice. Since it seems like just a war of words for the time being, going after the wine is first and foremost an attack on Georgian and Moldovan national pride. After all, wine is the product that is most closely associated in the Russian mind with either of those countries.

What Russia really needs to do is cut down on the amount of counterfeit wine and cognac (not to mention vodka) production that takes place on its own territory, which has done a lot to give Georgian and Moldovan wines a bad name in recent years. Since some fake hooch is no doubt mixed and bottled in Moldova and Georgia, better customs enforcement (cue laugh track) would also be a remedy.

And maybe "Russia's chief epidemiologist" should be more concerned about the epidemic of glue-sniffing among street kids, or the epidemic of industrial-strength alcohol consumption (I don't just mean the intensity of consumption but the fact that the products consumed are often not ones intended for human consumption) in Russian villages, than with imperfect imported wines.

As someone who's experienced the unpleasant consequences of consuming fake Barza Neagra ("Chorny Aist") cognac bought from someone selling it out of a bag on the sidewalk near Belorussky station, I support changes that will bring about the purity of grape-based potent potables, but I have a hard time believing this is such a change.

I suppose that another possible motivation for this policy change (if it really goes beyond words to deeds, that is) could be an attempt by Russia, Inc., to promote domestic wines from the south of Russia.

On a lighter note, "We are strongly concerned about the situation with Moldovan and Georgian wines" is the kind of official statement that the late bard Vladimir Vysotsky could have had a songwriting field day with.

Update on attack on Litvinovich

I'm not sure what I'm doing awake at this hour, but there are a couple of more detailed pieces on last night's incident with Litvinovich - one article on NEWSru.com, which appears to be sourced from interviews Litvinovich gave to Echo Moskvy radio and to Interfax, and an article at Kasparov.ru, where there's lots of activity in the comments forum.

Interestingly, the longest article on the attack that I've seen so far is by RIA Novosti - though of course their headline calls Litvinovich a "Famous 'Polittekhnolog,'" using a term that can be translated as "political strategist" or "spin doctor." Unfortunately, all of those sources are available in Russian only.

Here is a roundup of English-language sources on the incident (or just check Google News for the latest): MosNews has a bare-bones account, mentioning that Litvinovich hasn't contacted the authorities (but the doctor at Sklifosovsky who treated her did, so they are investigating, according to other reports); Interfax has something enigmatically titled "Garri Kasparov's aide attacked in Moscow (Part 2)"; Regnum has a brief capsule, stating that Litvinovich actually did "appl[y] to the police"; and a Japanese newspaper is running an AP story on the incident.

As often seems to be the case in this part of the world, truth is difficult to sort from fiction, and crazy conspiracy theories seem impossible to distinguish from cynical realism. Stay tuned to the story, although not here - it's unlikely I'll have more on it unless there's some really earth-shattering development.

The plot thickens...

Sometimes it's difficult to know what/who to believe when watching political events unfold in Russia. Here we have an opposition activist beaten in a street attack where none of her valuables were taken. Turns out that (if I'm reading the LJ time stamps correctly) not an hour before the time when Marina Litvinovich was attacked on Monday night, she posted a reminder on her LiveJournal website that on Tuesday afternoon she and fellow activists would be gathering at the office of the Presidential Administration to present a petition calling for the resignation of Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov. Apparently they had over 9,000 signatures in support of the petition.

Of course there's already one comment on Litvinovich's LJ - no doubt the first of many - suggesting that the beating was staged as a publicity stunt by Litvinovich, and the commenter links to another Russian LJ where a blogger calling himself "sumerk bogov" advances a similar theory, calling the happening a "circus," "self-PR'ing," and "self-victimization." Although I'm not sure I agree with his "versiia," Sumerk does make good sport of the prominent typo in the headline of the original NEWSru.com item:

В Мокве жестоко избита советник Гарри Каспарова Марина Литвинович

The graveyard-shift copy editor at NEWSru.com left out the first "S" in Moscow. So, blogger Sumerk ends his post on the matter thusly: "Моква слезам не верит." Or, "Mocow does not believe in tears."

I don't mean to make light of an event that seems like another horrible reminder of the political climate in Russia, but sometimes you have to laugh through the tears. Even if Mocow doesn't believe in them.

Just street crime?

See below. This looks like a story that could develop into something interesting. I've just translated the item from Newsru.com, which is the source Lenta.ru is using for the story as well. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but the cynic in me has a hard time believing that something like this happened at the very moment the Kremlin knows the eyes of the West are on Minsk and the aftermath of the Belarus presidential election.

Hat tip to LiveJournal blogger Nastya Karimova, on whose LJ I first saw this news item (now with lots of comments - including the news that apparently Litvinovich is now out of the hospital and safely at home).

Kasparov Advisor Marina Litvinovich Brutally Beaten in Moscow
Published 20 March 2006, 23:42
Last updated [21 March 2006], 09:07
http://newsru.com/russia/20mar2006/litvin.html
Translated by Lyndon Allin

NEWSru.com has learned that on Monday evening Marina Litvinovich, advisor to Garry Kasparov and chief editor of the "Pravda Beslana" website, was beaten.

Marina Litvinovich was leaving the office of the United Civil Front interregional social movement on Makarenko Street, having remained at work until shortly after 9pm. Unknown individuals attacked and brutally beat her, striking her mostly in the face and head, as a result of which she lost consciousness.

However, none of Marina Litvinovich's belongings were stolen, not even her notebook computer and money.

Around midnight, a NEWSru.com was able to contact Marina Litvinovich, who at that time was in the Sklifosovsky Institute with a suspected concussion.

According to the victim, she did not see the faces of her attackers.

The United Civil Front is an interregional social movement organized in June 2005. At the beginning of last November, the UCF was officially registered with the Russian Ministry of Justice. By the end of December, there were forty regional branches of the UCF, and preliminary groups are active in five additional regions. Garry Kasparov is Chairman of the movement.

A post by Veronica Khokhlova of Neeka's Backlog from last September now seems like it might have been prescient:

Looks like the state is very scared of Marina Litvinovich and is using its heavy artillery against her...

At the time, Veronica was talking about a negative story on Litvinovich which appeared on the Channel One news - definitely an instrument of the state - but perhaps the media punishment was deemed to be insufficient. Another post by Veronica about Litvinovich and PravdaBeslana.

Nostal'giia

Even though I moved back to DC over six months ago, I'm still not done unpacking some of the boxes that came out of storage. Last night, in one of them, I happened upon my old journals from the years 1997-2001. Paging through them, I found that while there are, of course, some bad memories from those years, there were also a lot of entries that made me laugh out loud or resurrected a visual memory. Probably my favorite memories are from the summer of 1999, when I visited Moldova for the first time for a rather unsuccessful study abroad program. While I didn't learn much Moldovan/Romanian, I did have the incredibly good fortune to meet Lorina, and that very summer we undertook our first of many trips together - to Cluj, via Iasi, in Romania. Following is an entry written while we were passing through Iasi on the way back to Chisinau:

8/12
Breakfast coffee at the Iasi McD's -- a cockroach scuttles across the floor, beggar kids bum a cup of water from the cashier before she shoos them away, and some weird American-type (not me) can't stop his head bobbin' to the groovy beats of the McMusic. But I am feeling fine because my face and head have just been washed and blow-dried in the cleanest bathroom I've seen in quite some time.

Note - this was probably the only time we entered a McDonald's on the whole trip, just so people don't get the wrong impression about how we roll...

Is it spring yet?

It's been a cold winter in Moscow and St. Petersburg, from what I hear. Apparently, it's still pretty chilly over there - according to the current info from Weather Underground, it's just 1 degree above zero Fahrenheit, or minus-17 Celsius. And it's not much warmer in Moscow. This makes me recall an email I received last month at the height of one of the cold snaps from an old, old friend who's a SPB native:

It's very cold everywhere, we drink tea mixed with vodka and minimaze [sic] our moving around the city.

For some reason, that observation brought home the level of cold better than any amount of meteorological facts and figures.

S prazdnikom, dorogie zhenshchiny!

Snowsquare is on top of things with an 8th of March post. This has spurred me into action. What can one say to the English-speaking reader about International Women's Day? Well, whatever its socialist origins, the holiday as it's celebrated in Russia is now something of a combination between Valentine's Day and Mother's Day (although Valentine's Day is increasingly being celebrated in Russia as well nowadays, thanks to the tireless efforts of card, candy, and flower marketers), except with the added weight of being an honest-to-goodness federal holiday. Usually, this results in a three-day weekend, but not this year - the Russian practice is to observe federal holidays that fall on a Wednesday on that Wednesday rather than moving them to create a three-day weekend.

I spoke to my wife, who's still in Moscow, today, and she was lamenting the fact that she didn't even really get the full holiday feeling - one day off and back to work the next day wasn't doing it for her.

[trip down memory lane] I was just recalling what we did for 8th of March in elementary school in Leningrad in the mid-1980's (I was the only foreigner in the school, for three long years): made cards for our mothers - this was before Hallmark's infiltration of Russia - with poems, construction-paper flowers, etc. We must have done something for our female teachers as well, but I can't remember for sure. Anyway, it was a different country back then. [/trip down memory lane]

Oh, and here's what I was writing about last Women's Day - a bit depressing...

A historical lesson on unintended consequences

From the January/February edition of the BISNIS Bulletin:

A curious event happened in the late 19th century in Siberia. When the Trans-Siberian Railroad was being constructed and Tomsk was to be one of its main transit points, the Tomsk guild of horse carriers raised a sufficient sum to bribe the designers so that the railroad was instead constructed via the small town of Novonikolaevsk, now Novosibirsk. In less than 100 years, Novosibirsk became a major transportation hub and the third largest city in Russia, while the economic complex of Tomsk has been suppressed due to lack of access to main trunk lines.