...about the fate of the submersible "Priz" and the seven seamen inside. Earlier today I was listening to Echo of Moscow Radio, and they have blanket coverage on the air and on their website (in Russian). To be honest, my first impression was that they were flogging this story because it's August, which means (1) there must be catastrophes in Russia in order to live up to everyone's expectations, and (2) many of the usual newsmakers are on holiday, and the journalists need something to cover. But perhaps that was colored too cynical by the fact that I got up a bit too early this morning to catch my flight back to Moscow, and by the cynicism-inducing impact of a rapid journey from relaxing Chisinau to dog-eat-dog Moscow.Anyway, Andy at Siberian Light has coverage of the Priz situation, and Veronica at Neeka's Backlog has mentioned it as well - presumably other Russo-centric blogs are also on the case. RIAN has coverage in English. It looks like the submariners may have only 24 hours to live, unfortunately; I've already heard comments on the radio about how this month is the 5th anniversary of the Kursk submarine disaster; let's hope we don't have a repeat showing.The only thing I have to add to the other English-language coverage I've seen is the revelation, which I heard first on Echo (though they referred to this Russian-language RIAN wire item) that the stricken mini-sub was scheduled to undergo "modernization" in March 2006. Not sure if this release is someone's advance attempt at deflecting blame or an attempt to show that this situation is not another result of the abject decay of Russian military hardware, since plans were in place for some work on the vessel. Somewhat interestingly, the item on the English-language RIAN site does not talk about the planned "modernization," but has a brief item stating simply the following:Stricken submersible certified until March 2006. 17:13.
MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - The deep-sea submersible trapped off the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East was certified for operation until March 2006, a source in the Russian Pacific Fleet said Friday.
"A commission of naval officers and the developers of the AS-28 bathyscaphe [submersible] from the Lazurit design bureau tested the submersible in March 2005 and concluded it was fit for operation without any restrictions until March 2006," the source said.
To be honest, I hope that this potential catastrophe is not another symptom of Russian military decay. When I encounter people who defend Russian power projections such as the military presence in Transnistria, I like to remind them that the Russian military needs to focus less attention abroad and more attention on its starving and hazed-to-death conscripts and its rusting hardware, but it would be a shame if more people had to die to drive this reminder home. Plus, Russian military decrepitude is flat-out scary if you think about it, given that they persist in running training exercises like this one:Russian strategic bomber carries out training launch of cruise missile. 17:06.
MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian Tu-160 heavy strategic bomber (NATO reporting name Blackjack) launched a cruise missile Friday hitting a target at one of the country's northern shooting ranges, an Air Force spokesman said.
"Two Tu-160 aircraft took off Friday morning from the Engels airport in the Saratov region (the Volga region) for a scheduled flight," Alexander Drobyshevsky said. "During the flight one of the planes successfully launched a cruise missile, which hit the target at a northern shooting range near Vorkuta."
He added that the eight-hour flights, which covered thousands of miles, had been carried out in accordance with the training schedule. He also said the crews had included young members. "Missions like this are regularly conducted, which lets long range pilots improve their skills," the official said.
Yes, folks, we get the point - brother Bear still has "strategic weapons" in the arsenal and is making sure to keep the long-range pilots sharp just in case they need to fly over the top of the world towards North America anytime soon. I just hope those cruise missiles they're using for training are dummies, or at least that they're certified beyond March 2006. I have nothing against the Russian military training its troops, but I do wish we Westerners could get to the state which so many Russian analysts seem to think we fear - respecting a strong Russia - rather than continuing to have to dread the potential manifestations of the country's weakness.PS: I promise, no more RIA Novosti items today - sorry to go crazy with that, as I know it's not the most reliable website in terms of the quality of information provided. But it is an important guide to what official Moscow wants the world to hear about.
RIA's coverage of the recent brouhaha surrounding Nightline's decision to broadcast an interview with Shamil' Basaev, and then follow it up in a later edition with an interview of a member of MS-13, a notorious Latin American gang, is rather interesting. For domestic consumption (in Russian), there's a just-the-facts story which describes the interview and has some background on this criminal organization. But on the http://en.rian.ru/ English-language RIAN site, we get a shoddy translation of a hatchet-job commentary piece (here is the original in Russian) by one Pyotr Romanov:
ABC: Reality show of murderers, Aug. 5, 2005
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov.) The U.S. ABC's late-night hard news program Nightline has shown an exclusive interview with a member of MS-13, one of the most dangerous gangs in the U.S. and several Latin American countries.
It was done, deliberately, soon after ABC broadcast an interview with Chechen bandit Shamil Basayev, which provoked the protests of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the indignation of common Americans, and despite the Russian ministry's decision not to prolong the accreditation of ABC staff in Moscow.
This is a highly "original" line of defense chosen by the channel. Its leadership apparently decided to prove that the principle of freedom of speech allows them to show the world's scum and butchers and hence the interview with Basayev was routine and quite normal for American television. [...]
Jose said he was used to seeing corps [sic] all around, decapitated, maimed and the like. "We torture them before killing," he said, to the delight of beer-swilling Americans watching him on TV.
Personally, I cannot accept the logic of ABC leaders - and many other normal people, including in the U.S., will surely agree with me - that the founding fathers of American democracy fought for freedom of the media to show the decapitated bodies of innocent victims and broadcast philosophizing pathological killers. I thought the "founding fathers" had different goals. [...]
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
Romanov has a hard time with his train of thought, poking fun at "beer-swilling Americans" (a rather strange dig, given the astronomical consumption of malt beverages in Russia on the street, in the metro, in the morning...) in one sentence and then appealing to "normal people" in the US to agree with him in the next.
Regardless of the lame disclaimer at the end, RIAN saw fit to publish this under the rubric of "opinion and analysis." Disappointing, but not surprising. To be fair, the RIAN website also has more thoughtful items on this controversy, including an interview with RFE/RL Director of Communications Donald Jensen and a response to that interview from Caucasus expert Robert Bruce Ware, both in English.
RIA Novosti has an in-depth article in English on the case of Peggy Sue Hilt, a Virginian accused of killing her adopted Russian daughter. I have no doubt this will become a cause celebre in the Russian media just like the Irma Pavlis case earlier this year, and will lead to more calls to clean up the Russian adoption business. All well and good (there are plenty of shady Russian purveyors of, as well as perhaps some less-than-squeaky-clean American seekers of, Russian adoptees), as long as people are able to steer clear of the anti-American tone which shone through in some of the coverage of the Pavlis case in the state-run media here. But I'm sure the temptation to bad-mouth the US will prove too great to resist for some Russian commentators. Everyone should remember that, while these horrible cases have occurred in the United States, we're reading about them because crimes committed against children are actually prosecuted in that country, as opposed to the situation in Russia, where it's easy to get cops to look the other way.
OK, so that's a bit of a high-flung post title. But I decided to answer - in a totally subjective way - the question, just for myself and not because anyone asked, "What is Chisinau like?"
For some reason, I always find this town to be refreshing and relaxing, even when it's 35+ degrees outside and the sun is stifling, as it's been for the past few days. Maybe it's just that it's such a nice break from the fast-paced bling-bling of Moscow, but as I recall I enjoyed coming here plenty back in the day when we lived in the States as well. I've been here at least once a year since 1999, although in recent years our visits have been shorter, and I've only seen Chisinau in the summer, when I've been either a student or on vacation, so that may bias me a bit.
Walking the streets, it seems like a cross between a Soviet regioinal capital and a small European city. Chisinau has a surprising sense of sprawl for a city of only around 700,000; to see all of the outlying neighborhoods - which, thanks to Soviet urban planning, consist of rows of similar or identical apartment blocks - you definitely need more than just your own two feet.
People are down-to-earth and maintain a sense of dignity about them; even though you can tell many people are struggling to get by, they go about their business without the frantic energy which is so prevalent in Moscow. You can still get away with speaking Russian to most Moldovans in Chisinau and not experience the rude response with which such an act of linguistic presumption might be met in some other former Soviet capitals. In fact, you're more likely to see local Russian-speakers being mildly rude to people who attempt to address them in Moldovan, which some of them persist in not knowing, or pretending not to know.
It's a strange detail, but one of the things that places Chisinau in Europe in my mind is the assortment of motor vehicles on the streets. The marshrutka-riding* masses of Chisinau travel in roomy Mercedes minibuses, while their middle-class brethren in Moscow are relegated to shoddy, Russian-made Gazelles, which even the Moscow authorities acknowledge are unsafe; and in Uzbekistan the marshrutki are a step below that - predominantly crumbling Soviet-era RAFiki and tiny UZDaewoo Damas contraptions. In downtown Chisinau you'll also see the elites of the nation - and some upper-middle-class folks as well - tooling around in shiny BMW and Mercedes sedans, which are available used on the local market for prices which seem surprisingly low to anyone familiar with the American used-car market. The prices are less surprising, perhaps, when one considers the shady ways in which many of these vehicles make the journey to Moldova from their native Germany.
As for the country as a whole, it doesn't quite live up to the poster I saw at the airport a couple of years ago, which proudly proclaimed, "Moldova - the prosperous land."** It is a beautiful land, though, and rich agriculturally - rolling fields of sunflowers, apple orchards, and vineyards interspersed with forests - inhabited by beautiful people who are surprisingly friendly and hospitable, considering their historical misfortune of being located on a borderland between empires.
Walking along Blvd. Stefan cel Mare, you might overhear people speaking Turkish and even Arabic, another reminder that Moldova is on the outskirts of Europe, although you're much more likely to overhear people speaking Russian - it is the second state language, after all - and of course the native Moldovan.If you're interested in seeing/reading more, check out the photo galleries here and here; an excerpt from the Lonely Planet's Romania & Moldova guidebook here and their Moldova page here; Wikipedia articles on Moldova and Chisinau; and the brief on Moldova from the ever-popular CIA World Factbook, which notes that 25% of working-age Moldovans are estimated to be employed outside of the country. Additional recommended reading is this blog post which is somewhat Chisinau-related. I hope to have some photos to post when I'm back in Moscow at the end of the week.*In the Russian-speaking world, "marshrutka" is short for "marshrutnoe taksi," and refers to a minibus which runs a specific route, usually a route also served by larger city buses. Marshrutki, though, are faster than city buses, and more convenient because in many cities you can flag them down and ask them to stop anywhere along the route, not just at designated stops. They are also more expensive than regular city buses and are privately operated.
**The Moldovan boosters' attempt was at least somewhat more credible than the posters I saw at Tashkent's international airport, which trumpeted, "Uzbekistan - the Great Republic."
The photo at right, taken from a car speeding across the Troitsky bridge (I think) early in the morning on July 8, is probably my favorite from the whole trip to St. Petersburg. For some reason, the fact that this photo was taken from inside a chastnik's cab reminded me of the most out-of-place-looking chastnik (as private or gypsy cab drivers are called) I've ever seen, one of the many with whom we rode that first week in July - a man of African descent who spoke heavily accented Russian and piloted a bright-orange VAZ-2101 with nearly opaque tinting on the 
windows and paper temporary license plates. Going totally off-topic for a minute, readers not familiar with Russian autos may be interested to know that the VAZ-2101 was a design purchased from Fiat by the Soviets decades ago which is still very much in evidence on roads across the former Soviet Union. This car is popularly known as the "kopeika" - which means a kopeck or a one-kopeck coin - and served as the narrative conceit for a recent movie of that name. The photo at left was taken on the evening of July 8th as we headed to Moskovsky Vokzal for the night train to Moscow. Looking back out the window of another cab (this one was a black Volga, if memory serves) at what is definitely the Troitsky (Trinity) Bridge, with the spire of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress visible off to the left.
It seems a bit out of place/time to be posting these photos of St. Petersburg from an internet cafe on Stefan cel Mare Blvd. (formerly Ulitsa Lenina, I believe) in Chisinau, but I guess I had to get away from Moscow to find the time. These pictures were all taken on July 5th, in the midst of my celebratory just-quit-my-job trip to Russia's northern capital.The photo above is amusing (maybe) because of the way that the sign has been altered. It used to say, "Push button, wait for the green signal"; now it says, "Push button, wait for the green cash," "nal" being slang in Russian for "nalichnye," or cash money. I'm ashamed to admit that without a guidebook I don't know what the building in the background is - it's on the Neva Embankment on the Vasilievsky Ostrov side, if I recall correctly. [UPDATE: an alert reader has reminded me that the building in the background is the St. Petersburg Birzha, or Stock Exchange, which makes the message on the sign all the more appropriate. Thanks, Mom.]
Abandoned boots waiting atop a Metro ventilation shaft for their owner to return near Ul. Kuibysheva.
I was focusing on capturing the cleaning lady in the upstairs window and didn't even notice the "Casino" sign on the building until I had taken a few unsuccessful shots. Not sure why I like this one so much.
I returned yesterday from my trip to Uzbekistan; thanks to Aeroflot's flight schedule - 0430 departure from Tashkent with an 0810 arrival in Moscow - I slept about half of the day and was up all last night reading at home. Even though I had only a week to spend there, my first trip to Central Asia definitely lived up to expectations, and fortunately failed to justify the misgivings of some of my relatives about traveling to an area which is portrayed so often in the press as "unsettled." The itinerary was 2 nights, 2 days in Tashkent; 2 nights, 2 days in Bukhara; 2 nights, 2 days in Samarkand; and 1 night, 1 day in Tashkent. Mainly I wanted to get just a small taste of life in this country which first drew my attention when I closely followed developments after the Andijan massacre back in May of this year. I also wanted to visit some of the country's "must-see" architectural treasures, although I wasn't able to make it to all of them (Khiva, for example, will have to wait for next time).
I didn't glean any particularly original insights into people's quality of life there - by "original" I mean observations which are not already conventional wisdom (e.g., people are friendly and hospitable, but this is a pretty poor country, everyone seems to want to emigrate, etc.) and/or have not already been bandied about on Registan.net - but that wasn't really my primary goal anyway. As for those observations I had which might be interesting to a wider audience, I may post them here later once I've had time to digest them a bit myself.
For now I just wanted to post a couple of photos from the Tashkent metro - the two which I had time to snap before being approached by a cop and told that photography in the metro is not allowed. Luckily, he was not in the mood to extort money from a guest, so he told me that while some of his colleagues might have berated me (he used the Russian word rugat' - the conversation took place in Russian, and I identified myself as being "from Moscow," as I did in many instances on the trip), he wasn't going to do that, and let me go on my way. This was probably as far beneath the surface of things as I got in Uzbekistan. Both of these photos are from the Hamid Olimjon station, which seems to have a cotton-related theme like so much of Tashkent's Soviet-designed architecture, and were taken around 1:30pm on July 20. In general, Tashkent's metro stations are beautiful and seem to be designed with the idea of echoing or repeating the grandeur of the Moscow metro. I saw at least one instance where Soviet-era wall decorations (mosaics? bas-reliefs?), whose message presumably did not suit independent Uzbekistan's ruler, had been ripped out of the wall, with nothing left in their place. My trusty guidebook, MacLeod & Mayhew's Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand
, mentions the photo ban in the metro and directs readers to a website which I couldn't get to open for photos - perhaps this resource was disabled by the Uzbek powers-that-be due to security concerns. Other places online where photos of and information about the Tashkent Metro are available are the following: Tashkent Subway (in English), the Toshkent (Tashkent) Metro page on UrbanRail.net (in English), Tashkentskoe Metro (in Russian), and this photo gallery. None of these sites, though, has photos which do justice to the more spectacular stations.
This is probably the only Uzbekistan-related post for which I'll have time before leaving for Moldova tomorrow morning. That promises to be another interesting trip, although I've been to Moldova many times (at least once in each of the past 5 years) since it's my wife's homeland. For that reason, the trip to Moldova will have more the feel of a comfortable trip down memory lane, as opposed to the Uzbekistan trip's rush of new impressions.Since I probably won't have time to post anything while I'm in Moldova, further updates will come no sooner than next Thursday, when I'll be back in Moscow (leaving Chisinau at 0615 on the brutally scheduled Air Moldova flight).
Yulia Latynina (always a favorite pundit of mine) has a great column in today's Moscow Times about how dangerous it is that people surrounding Russia's leaders are afraid to share bad news with them. The final graf is right on the money:
The Kremlin is a lot like a driver whose windshield has been replaced by a television screen. Instead of the mountain switchback ahead of him, the driver sees only an open highway. Under such conditions, the joy ride won't last long.
I heard about this survey on Ekho Moskvy radio this morning and thought it was funny. However, the announcers reporting it seemed a bit concerned, as though a dislike of lawyers could be translated into a populace which doesn't respect the rights of the individual. Here are the facts, as reported by Mosnews.com:
Another group whom most Russians do not like is lawyers, according to the results of a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation published by the Lenta.Ru website. It transpired that only 55 percent of Russians believe that lawyers enjoy respect in Russia. 21 percent of respondents are convinced that lawyers are not worth any respect whatsoever.
Most respondents were critical of lawyers’ performance. 41 percent said it was unsatisfactory, while 14 percent said it was bad or very bad. Only 17 percent praised lawyers for their work. Half of those who had sought legal counsel in the past said they were dissatisfied with the quality of service they received.
25 percent said all lawyers were corrupt, greedy, incompetent and unscrupulous. Only one-third of the respondents believed that lawyers were honest and law-abiding.
Still, the legal profession remains one of the most prestigious in terms of pay in Russia. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents agreed with that.
What I'm wondering is, why is this news? Does anyone doubt that the results of a similar survey would be as critical or more critical of lawyers in the United States, where lawyer jokes proliferate and slurs like "ambulance-chaser" are common?
I feel like I've been falling down on the blogging job for a while now - something like 6 posts in the past 6 weeks, which just doesn't cut it. Happily, we're now fully moved into temporary quarters - a cozy apartment right next door to the Aeroport metro station. I'm blissfully unemployed and have caught up on sleep following a virtually sleepless few days in St. Petersburg last week, and I have some time free for blogging before undertaking some more travel: to Kaluga this weekend, then to Uzbekistan for a week, and then to Moldova for 5 days or so, which means I'll then have the middle two weeks of August in Moscow to say a long good-bye to the city before leaving for Washington on August 22. My only complaint about our new Aeroport location (that's actually just the name of the metro station, it's mercifully nowhere near the airport) is the lack of easy internet access in the neighborhood. The Zen Coffee around the corner has outrageously priced - 120 rubles, or about $4, per hour - and buggy wi-fi provided by the Time Online franchise. Happily, I remembered a place I had noticed several months ago that had free wi-fi - the Moka-Loka cafe near the picturesque Novoslobodskaya metro station - and a visit here today has shown that they still haven't caved to market pressure and started charging, as so many of the once-free Moscow hotspots have. Let's hope that holds for another month and a half at least.So, I'm sitting here with a bird's-eye view of the intersection of Dolgorukovskaya St. and Selezniovskaya St. (2 blocks from my favorite banya, in fact), and the fact that a vicious thunderstorm has just broken and all of the passers-by are sprinting for cover and hurriedly deploying umbrellas is doing nothing to dampen my summer spirits. I'm trying to take advantage of the free wi-fi to upload a bunch of photos for this blog and for my other neglected project, Moscow Graffiti. Probably I'll get the most recent ones up first, but hopefully I'll have time this summer to post some of the better photos from this spring as well, before I'm swallowed up by the demands of my first year of law school.
