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.

Hazing in the Russian Military

Bolshoi Gorod has a chilling article about the most common practices of humiliation used in dedovshchina. I haven't been closely following the recent story about a conscript who lost his legs in a hazing incident, which has apparently brought the issue out into the open - or at least forced the Minister of Defense to comment on it publicly.

Tightening up the draft rules to catch more young men of service age is an unconscionable thing for the MoD to be doing in the absence of a serious, systematic attempt to eliminate one of the main reasons young Russians dodge the draft. The risk of physical and psychological brutalization (not to mention the material humiliation of being shaken down by your fellow servicemen) is a cancer on the Russian armed forces.



As such, it's a threat to Russian security on both a systemic level (poor morale, not to mention rampant suicide in the ranks = worse fighting form) and on a micro-level (psychologically terrorized, armed soldiers deserting with their weapons are a public safety hazard), which you would think would have been of greater concern to the Russian security policy community for some time.




These illustrations are from BG's article and purport to reflect hazing methods which are currently in use, based on BG's research among people who have recently served and on the internet. So, some of them may be exaggerated or represent atypical practices, but I'm sure they are not all made up.

Motivation

Thanks to alert commenter Guy, I've been informed that Scraps of Moscow has been nomintated for "Best CIS Blog" in the 2nd annual European Weblog Awards sponsored by A Fistful of Euros. Objectively speaking, Registan and Neeka's Backlog are both much better blogs (and much more frequently updated than mine has been in the past month), so I can't really ask for your vote with a straight face, except to appeal to your sympathies - please go vote for Scraps so that it's not the last-place contestant in its category...

And congratulations to Nathan and Veronica - whichever one comes out on top, they are both a pleasure to read day in and day out.

Happily, this has provided me with some motivation to resume posting regularly (though of course it can't do much to provide me with more time to post regularly).

Baltic bliss

Visiting the Economist's website for the previous post, I noticed a strange headline:

CITIES GUIDE: Moscow
Letter from Talinn
Where the future is wired

This heading was strange for two reasons: 1) Tallinn has less to do with Moscow nowadays than it does to do with, for instance, Helsinki; and 2) the misspelling of the city's name shook my faith in the Economist's usually sterling copy.

Regardless of the odd header, the brief guide to the city looks useful for those planning a visit of a couple days or more.


We spent only about 5 hours in the Estonian capital, so even if I'd had the Economist's list of recommended spots to visit at my disposal during our trip, it's doubtful we would have managed to hit any of them. We spent our time wandering the streets of the old city, amazed at its beauty and at the exorbitant, tourist-trap-like prices for souvenir refrigerator magnets. I tried Lorina's patience by tarrying in the chilly weather to take lots of photos. The fact is that Tallinn's old town is prettier, in addition to being bigger, than Riga's. We spent January 2 through 6 in Riga, and the trip to Tallinn was a day-trip taken (in a zippy Hyundai Getz rented from local firm BalticLines) on Jan 4. The trip involved a four-hour drive each way over slushy, mostly unlit roads, so it was exhausting for the driver (me), although the snow-laden trees along the way were visually stunning and almost made the trip worthwhile all by themselves.

In general, after this trip, I highly recommend these two Baltic capitals as destinations for trips of a few days from Moscow or Western Europe. There are cheap flights to Riga from points west, apparently popular among boys intent on behaving badly, if one can judge from the town's thriving night-club scene and the numerous ads for "escorts" in the free English-language events magazines. We made the journey by train from Moscow and found the Latvian-operated Express to be quite comfortable and convenient. It was the first time in Riga for both me and Lorina, and I had been to Tallinn long ago in the 1980's (my most powerful memory of that trip is getting stuck - briefly but unpleasantly - in a crowded elevator in the Hotel Olympia) and only very briefly in 1996. Both towns are tourist-friendly, and reports of hostility toward Russian-speaking visitorsare greatly exaggerated.

All of the photos above are of Tallinn - I may have some items to post from Riga, but this will probably be it for tonight - I have to do quite a few things to get back into the swing of things in my DC life. One last bit of Christmas cheer (after all, Russian Orthodox Christmas was just two days ago) - the photo below was taken at a Lukoil gas station along the road on our way back to Riga from Tallinn.

A meaningful typo on the way home

As I winged my way home to DC, having spent winter break in blissful ignorance of world affairs, I read articles in the Economist and the International Herald Tribune discussing the unfolding US congressional corruption scandal. The Frankfurt airport's departure board had several typos - "Veroqa," "Mamburg," and "Tdinburgh," for example, but only one - "Cashington" - which appeared to be laden with meaning in light of current events.

Interfaith holiday scene

At least three religions are represented in this photo from Christmas Day. The lot selling pine trees (a pagan tradition now associated with Christian holiday celebrations) near Gorkovskoe metro station in St. Petersburg is right across from the town's main mosque. The billboard in the background advertising a promotional new-year's cell phone rate adds the presence of a religion that one sees more and more here around the holiday season - commercialism.

Moscow from 27 stories up

A view of Moscow after midnight on December 31 from the site of our New Year's Eve eve outing (note the big "2006" in lights at lower right), the Red Bar. Highly recommended, if a bit pricey.

2006 is here!

Per Russian tradition, the new year's celebration (in the form of new-year's-themed posts) continues...