The Return

[image source]

It's hard to believe it's been almost four months since I posted anything here.  The fourth quarter of last year was filled with work, work and work, but that's no excuse. Scraps of Moscow is back for 2011 and hoping to provide better content than ever with a new series of posts to be launched over the weekend.  My focus, as before, will be on the "protracted conflict" areas in the post-Soviet space, with other topics to be covered including the domestic politics in Moldova and Russia - both of which promise to be interesting this year.

In the meantime, I was remiss last year in not sharing any of my non-blog writing about the region, which included some thoughts on Karabakh as well as co-authored opinion pieces on "Why Moldova Matters" (Russian version) and on Transdniester (Russian version).  If you're interested in a longer read, an article I co-authored with a mouthful of a title - "Acquiring Assets, Debts and Citizens: Russia and the Micro-Foundations of Transnistria's Stalemated Conflict" - was published in the Fall 2010 issue of Demokratizatsiya but is unfortunately not available online.

I'm still trying to figure out how to usefully integrate some of the content from my Facebook wall into this space - an friend recently referred to it as my "Facebook blog," which is accurate given the amount of links posted and comment discussions that erupt there.  I guess the simplest way is just to be less lazy and do a three-sentence blog post when I see an interesting article instead of a one-sentence comment with a shared link on FB.  Stay tuned...

Hiatus, interrupted

Buster has helped me realize it's OK to talk about blogging dry spells. I hope to put a couple of things up today / tonight but then may go back into hibernation for a bit.

Here's a story about a wonderfully human experience - so elusive in Moscow - by an old banya buddy (no jokes!) of mine.

A Gift for Reading Hall No. 1
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2009
By BRYON MACWILLIAMS

Moscow

I walk past the long line of people waiting to check their coats in the grandiose atrium of the Russian State Library. I stop next to the first person in line, a young woman. I smile, shed my wool overcoat, lay it across the counter.

An elderly woman in a dark blue smock approaches. I hand her my coat. "I'm in the first hall," I say.

"So what?" she says. "That doesn't make a difference anymore. We're all equal now."


I look at the young woman next to me. She looks down. I had not meant it that way, as if I were somehow exceptional. I was merely following the rules: Veterans of World War II do not need to wait in line, nor do those like me, those in Reading Hall No. 1.

Engraved into a brass plate on the tall, heavy wooden doors of the reading hall are the words, "For Professors, Academicians, and Doctors of Science." I am none of those. To the pensioners who work the coat check, it is apparent. Sometimes they glance at my library card to verify that I am telling the truth. Sometimes they look at me as if I were crashing a party — or, rather, the elite club as intended by the Communist Party.

I was placed in the first reading hall in the mid-1990s, when the Russian government still honored Soviet traditions of granting certain privileges to certain foreigners. Today the government is not enamored of foreigners, especially foreign journalists. Today I would be put in a reading hall that is less exclusive, and more crowded. I am a holdover from another time. And I am grateful.

For me, Reading Hall No. 1 is a retreat from the grim energy of this megalopolis, and from the things I do to avoid sitting still and working — sleeping, snacking, surfing the Internet, talking to friends, and chatting up women. Here in the first hall, the rules are different. I can request as many books as I want. I can keep books without renewing them for five days, not three. I can hold them for two months, not two weeks. I can also use a laptop for long periods; it is the only hall with electrical outlets. Most importantly, though — for a guy without a girlfriend, kids, or even a roommate — the reading hall is a place where I can labor at a solitary task, among people. Usually the people at the reading tables are much older men, in down-at-the-heel shoes and threadbare suits, who, one librarian told me, have been coming to the library for 50 years, "who come here for themselves, for the soul."

"It was conceived as a place for our very best specialists — those who love to read, and love the library. A special level, a very special level, was necessary, because important scientists sit here. They need quiet, they need comfort," Lyudmila Koval, head of the Museum of Library History, told me. "Of course it is splendid for a reader to walk in and, all around him, there is a kind of aura that is uncommon, extraordinary."

The reading hall is extraordinary. The ceiling is some three stories high, as are the banks of windows that overlook the crenelated walls of the Kremlin across the street, and, within, the golden domes of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. In late morning the daylight drifts cool through gauzy white curtains that hang like crepe, accenting the faux-marble swirls of the imperious columns, and the grain of the shellacked wood of the reading tables. In early evening the muted light of the chandelier and the brass lamps with green lampshades bestow a cozy atmosphere, like that in a study at home.

For me, though, the uncommon aura of the reading hall is composed less of notions of grandeur and more of elements that are without pretense. The librarians, all women, are attentive, patient, helpful; sometimes they cut corners to get me a book. Moreover, they have introduced to the hall a dimension that was not envisioned by the architects in the early 1900s: In Reading Hall No. 1, there always are more plants than people.

Recently I counted 76 plants on the parquet floor, on the recessed window sills, and on bookshelves that serve as privacy screens on the reading tables. There are split-leaf philodendrons, creeping vines native to tropical rainforests in Central America. There are spider plants and tubular white arum lilies, natives of Africa. There are jade plants and Christmas cacti. There are ferns and ivies. There are hoyas in bloom, and begonias and hibiscuses that are not. All were brought from home, by the librarians.

There is an orange tree. There are lemon trees, and young date palms with spindly leaves. All of them were grown from seeds of fruit eaten by the librarians, and their families, at home. None of the trees actually bears fruit; this is the 55th parallel, after all. But the leaves of the plants are lush and, like all the surfaces in the reading hall, without dust.

When I moved to Russia, in 1996, I did not expect to see tropical plants. I expected gray skies, scarce sunlight, and long, cold, dark winters. Snow and vodka, yes. Split-leaf philodendrons, no. Yet just about everywhere I have reported, diverse places in each of the country's 11 time zones, I have seen exotic plants in public buildings, primarily universities and scientific institutes. They are tactile expressions of the human spirit, a devotion to beauty, and life, in dilapidated surroundings.

Everywhere, perhaps without exception, the caretakers of the plants are women. In Reading Hall No. 1 they are Oksana Sakharova and Natalya Lionova, librarians who arrive at 8 a.m., an hour before the library opens, and fill a half-dozen five-liter jugs with water from the private lavatory of the library's director. They transport the jugs in a stainless steel tub, on wheels. They let the water sit for a day, to allow chemicals to evaporate. Then they water the plants, together, over the course of about an hour.

Other librarians from other reading halls "come in and steal them," Ms. Sakharova told me, smiling. "I even have had to hide plants." The pilfering has less to do with avarice, she said, and more to do with the popular belief that one cannot rely on the health of plants purchased in stores, that "for a plant to live, it's best ... not to pass up a chance to break off a piece."

Some of the plants were donated by readers. "This palm tree was shipped to us by a reader from the Crimea," Ms. Sakharova said. "The coffee plant — see the tall one with the red fruit? — was given to us by a reader from Sochi," also on the Black Sea.

Others — more than a dozen — were donated by me: a tall palm grown from a coconut brought back from Sri Lanka; another palm, smaller, that was given to me by a friend. I've donated plants, native to regions from South Africa to South America, that I grew in the seven apartments I have rented over the past decade. I gave them to the hall because I am leaving the country soon. I am working here for possibly the last time. I am researching a book, my first.

I donated the plants because I wanted to give something back, something living. If my book is published, I will mail a copy to the librarians, who will place it in bookcase 43 N. 1, beneath the sign "Gifts from Readers," on a shelf near Soviet-era books like The Arithmetic of Infinity and Cosmonautics and Rocket Building, and more recent titles like From Where, and Toward What, Goes Russia?

The other day I asked a pensioner at the coat check what will happen after I leave, after my library card expires. If I come back, can I still work in the Reading Hall No. 1?

"Of course," said the woman in the blue smock. "Why couldn't you? Just stand here, and you'll always get a special place. Just come right here, and we'll take care of you."

Bryon MacWilliams reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade. He is writing a book about Russia through the culture of the banya, the Russian steam bath.
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 30, Page B20

Navel-gazing

I try to avoid self-referential posts and indeed have only done one such post dissecting the contents of my server logs in the past - over three years ago! - that I can recall, in which I wrote:

I know this is a sad excuse for a post - whenever weblogs resort to navel-gazing like this, I usually roll my eyes and navigate away. But I hope that my regular readers - all 5 of them - will indulge me just this once.

OK, twice. Anyway, I've noticed in perusing my server logs that people sometimes visit from interesting domains, and sometimes the search terms which lead those visitors here are illuminating. For example, just in the past week or so:

- A visitor from an IP address associated with Ketchum Communications - providers of "really smart PR" to the Russian government - arrived here based on a Google search for abkhazia map 2008

- A visitor from the socom.mil domain (that would be the US military's Southern Command) arrived here based on a Google search for Black Sea Caucasus blog

- A visitor from NATO's Allied Command Transformation (domain name act.nato.int - interestingly, Statcounter still identifies the IP address as associated with SACLANT, although the reorganization of SACLANT into ACT took place 8 years ago) arrived here based on a simple Google search for a not-so-simple guy: rogozin

- A visitor using a computer on the NY Times' network found us while googling first for nashi and mishki and then just for mishki - it also seems one NYT reporter, who shall remain nameless, found this blog while googling himself

- A visitor from Kansas State University found this old post while googling for resurgent russia

- Someone from the European Commission (psbru.cec.eu.int) landed here while looking for something related to Itera

- Visitors from imedia.ru - a domain associated with the publisher of the Moscow Times - arrived here recently searching for moscow blog and abkhazia cement

- And someone visiting from pentagon.mil liked the map of Achara that I posted so much that they checked out the blog's archives for the past three months.

[Update July 15]

One more interesting one from yesterday:

- Someone visiting from the aommz.com top-level domain, which belongs to the flagship of Transnistrian industry, the Moldovan Metallurgical Factory, searching for itera usmanov.

[Update July 23]

OK, I guess I'm going to use this post to catalog a couple more interesting hits from recent days:

- Someone visiting from house.gov, a.k.a. "Information Systems U.s. House Of Representatives," searching for russophobia

- Someone visiting from the State Department, searching for rumsfeld foundation four [sic] central asia

- And this interesting search conducted by someone visiting from Ireland (a bit of an inside joke for the family of SRB commenters)

Waiting for a coincidence...

Last week I posted a photo and titled the post "Waiting for a miracle" - it just happened to be the first phrase that popped into my head, although I was able to explain my choice of title when asked about it. Now I see that there's a film with that same title, and it's set in St. Petersburg, just like my photo. Strange coincidence...

On a different note, like Sean, I have some academic obligations which will keep the frequency of posts down for the next few weeks. I'm sure you're all quite sad...

New look

After two and a half years, it was time for a change. Plus, this lets me get more text on the page. The font on some of the older pages may look a bit small, though. I'm afraid I won't be going back to edit them all...

But I may swap this template for another one if it turns out I don't like it after a few days, or if it turns out no one else likes it. Feedback, constructive criticism and comments are all welcome.

I've also updated my links list for the first time in forever, so please let me know if there's anything/anyone I missed.

About Scraps of Moscow

[Please disregard the date stamp, it merely reflects the date of this blog's inaugural post; this "about" page is updated on an ongoing basis.]

The caption under the blog title used to read as follows:

Photos, found objects, and opinions from the capital of Russia by an American expat. This blog is a loose chronicle of our life and times in Moscow and a repository for various interesting personal, political, and pop-culture-related thoughts and images. Also, sometimes I'll get bitten by the bug of a breaking news story and put up lots of links and my translations of Russian-language articles.

That was before late August of 2005, when I moved back to my hometown of Washington, DC. I've still got lots of photos of and opinions about life in Russia and the countries that surround it, though, so I'm still maintaining this blog. Thanks for stopping by. Don't hesitate to email me if you have questions about anything you see on this blog, or just go ahead and post a comment!

Update in April 2007 - I've started updating this blog more frequently, to the detriment of my studies, and I've been told by at least one reader that I've become more "opinionated." Perhaps, although stronger opinions are the last thing the Russia blogosphere needs. Anyway, I've set up a better email for blog-related correspondence - scrapsofmoscow [at] gmail [dot] com.

Update in October 2008 - The subheading under the blog's title has been changed to read "The post-Soviet world as seen from London," since we moved here last month. Perhaps a renewal of frequent posting should be expected now that we are closer to "the region" and past the most labor-intensive part of our relocation.

Update in April 2010 -  I've changed the blog's subhead back to "...as seen from Washington," since we are once again calling this fair city home.