Desktop Relic

The Russian text of this article sat on my desktop - in a Word file, of course - for nearly a year and a half. It accompanied me through most of Civil Procedure and my other 1L fall classes, then through Property and the like in the spring, through a blissful summer back in Moscow, and through last fall's marathon of interviews and too many courses - sitting there on my desktop all the while, the file name ("idiot box.doc") reminding me of things other than law school.

I've finally translated it, and some of its points - on the impoverishment of Russian TV under Putin and on the existence of (at least) "two Moscows" - still seem pretty relevant. And some of the "scandals" discussed in the piece should provide Russia-watchers with a chance to take a brief walk down memory lane, back to the summer-fall of 2005. I thought about footnoting some of them, but decided that linking would be enough.

All in all, I don't regret spending a couple of hours translating this, although I probably had better things to do and certainly had other things I should have been doing. Of course, I can't say I agree with all of the author's conclusions, and maybe not even with his main point. After all, I'm not one to criticize people for sitting in front of their computers - or their TV's - from dawn to dusk (or vice versa). Glass houses and all that.

“The Idiots’ Box” - Yurii Saprykin, Bol’shoi Gorod, 26 September 2005

In the city of Moscow, at least among the more active and employable portion of the population, watching television is just not something one does. Truth be told, ever since they shut down “Namedni,” it's really become a pointless activity. Among friends, when the subject of TV comes up, there will always be some eccentric who either doesn’t have a television at all or has one but hasn’t turned it on for five years. It’s considered especially chic to say, “Who’s that?” when someone like Andrei Malakhov is mentioned. Once I was relating to some colleagues a funny episode from the old show “Field of Wonders” (“Поле чудес”), and they looked at me like I had just turned into a crocodile.

There is, of course, another Moscow, where people drop quotations from TV ads into conversations; run home from work to catch the TV show “Clone”; and talk on the phone about Petrosyan’s latest jokes (actually, I wonder - does he have any new jokes?). One time I happened to be in an old Moscow communal apartment. I wasn’t surprised by the way of life there and by the smell in the kitchen – the one thing that really shocked me was that at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, people were watching TV in all four rooms.

The Moscow that lives without TV looks upon the TV-watching Moscow not so much with condescension as with pity. And this is understandable – after all, these people are depriving themselves of a full-fledged life. Their entire perception of reality consists of Mikhail Leont’iev’s commentaries, topics covered on the “Domino Principle” talk show, and various “New Russian Grannies” (“Novye Russkie Babki”). Overall, television has replaced nature for them. “Poor, poor, people!” thinks the Moscow that has rid itself of television. And then it goes to check its friend-list.

Nowadays, any office in Moscow, from the editorial offices of the magazine “Among Us Girls” to the Presidential Administration, differs little from that ill-fated communal apartment. People who are nauseated by “House-2” drop everything to watch other people shave their legs, get loaded or try on new things. People who despise the show “Anshlag! Anshlag!” don’t miss a chance to showcase their wit by writing comments like “f***ing first” («первый нах») or “author, rite mor” («афтар, пеши исчо»). And this was worth turning off the television for?

LiveJournal (“ZheZhe”) and totalitarian TV appear outwardly to be direct opposites, but the ways they work are surprisingly similar. The thrill of watching someone else’s life; the pleasure of being in the middle of an uninterrupted information flow; the joy of "meeting" one’s favorite performers, be they Verka Serdiuchka or Mister Parker – these primal instincts can be exploited with equal effectiveness in both information spaces. ZheZhe plugs its heroes just as much as TV does, and already a huge number of people are starting to believe that there’s an important writer named Gorchev, or a successful band called Pled, or an awesome musical festival called Current Music. And whatever isn’t in ZheZhe doesn’t exist in real life either.

When someone suggested to journalist Valery Panyushkin that he start a ZheZhe blog, he supposedly replied, "Nabokov wrote that babblers are divided into paid ones and unpaid ones, and I think I’d rather be a paid one.” With all due respect, such a position in this day and age is hopeless atavism, something along the lines of a duelers’ code of honor. There are things more important than one’s Citibank payroll card, and the unpaid babblers know this quite well. When your every sneeze is answered by hundreds of people writing “bless you!” – you know, that really raises one’s self-esteem; just like how TV professionals love to talk about how mailbags full of letters arrive at their offices.

In spite of its apparent democratic spirit, ZheZhe is more and more structured along the lines of TV: there are the ratings leaders, hooked on the feeling of their own importance, and an amorphous mass following their every move. The leaders set the key items on the news agenda (see the Ivannikova case, the story about the NBP members getting beaten up, or the one about Minkin and Latynina getting pelted with tomatoes), and the masses approve (or disapprove) with a discordant rumble. And as for the idiocies of the rating leaders, well even the Malakhovs and the Solov’yovs of the world couldn’t dream of them. Just consider the (already paradigmatic) phrase about how “the mothers of Beslan should just have more children.”

Having rid itself of one media drug, the active and employable Moscow immediately got hooked on another. And now everything we hated about television is seeping into ZheZhe: people are starting to dump compromising information (компромат) there and circulate rumors as provocations, campaigns collectively hounding this or that person seem to arise as if on their own (again, see the Ivannikova case or the discussion of the abovementioned Panyushkin’s article about the “logic of a rabid dog”) – the only thing missing – for now – is the commercials. Moreover, there are already several movies in production which will have marketing campaigns built on ZheZhe penetration, and that’s just the beginning. I may be exaggerating a bit: ZheZhe hardly resembles the alchemical basements of Ostankino [trans.: site of the Channel 1 studios], which Zavtra used to love writing about; ZheZhe has plenty of outstanding writers and plain old smart people. Although if you watch the Kul’tura channel, they put Lotman on, too.

But the clinical fact remains: thousands of people sit from morning to night as though glued to their screens, swallowing up some endless ZheZhe soup (“лытдыбр”). What a tragic fate – whatever media you give them, it all turns into television anyway.

With VVP in Volgograd

Thanks to one of our very good friends in Moscow, who's a Volgograd native, we had the chance to spend a long weekend in the city formerly known as Stalingrad last July. We saw a lot of interesting things there - the museum chronicling the Battle of Stalingrad, the Rodina-Mat' statue, and of course the Volga itself (other views of Volgograd - not ours).

We also saw President Putin in some unexpected places. All photos from July 8, 2006.

Vitrine in the Stalingrad Battle Museum gift shop (with the vozhd' himself).
We are the happy owners of the ceramic magnet in the lower right-hand corner.

Watching over a used bookstore, which - as I found after waiting for the

shopkeeper to return from lunch - had a rather disappointing selection.

In a "Volgogradskii Suvenir" kiosk, with toothpicks,
henna for hair-dying purposes, and other essentials.

Summer pictures

As DC lurches into "Winter Storm Warning" mode - for a forecast of a couple of inches of snow and freezing rain - and Moscow seems to be experiencing snow, according to the weather report on Google, it seems appropriate to contemplate summer fun in the sun on the Black Sea Coast:

Sochi in 1988

Abkhazia in 2005

Hmmm....

Thought-provoking article from an original point of view? Or evidence that Ames has sold out to the powers-that-be?

Технический перерыв-2

I have resorted to quoting myself now that I've been off the air for over six months, just to put up some kind of explanation. The text below is from the original entry linked to in the last sentence. Of course the reasons are different from the ones outlined in that post. Now, it's law school and the joys of family life that leave me little time for blogging. I keep thinking I'll start posting again, but when so much time has passed, it's hard to know even where to begin. So the перерыв continues.

Among the Multitran.ru on-line Russian-English dictionary search results for "технический перерыв" ("tekhnicheskii pereryv"):

Деловая лексика (business lexicon):
перерыв по техническим причинам - interruption for technical reasons

Техника (equipment):
перерыв по техническим причинам - maintenance outage

Телекоммуникации (telecommunications):
перерыв по техническим причинам - out-of-service

Some people talk about their blogs "going on hiatus," or "taking a break," or use other phrases to describe what happens when they don't have time to update as much as they would like. I prefer the all-encompassing Russian phrase "tekhnicheskii pereryv." Literally, it translates variously as the phrases listed above. In addition, I actually found - at a website called for office workers called klerk.ru - a lively online forum discussion of the legal meaning of this concept, which is worth checking out for laughs if you know Russian.

In practice, though, as anyone who's ever needed to (just for example) urgently change money in a one-exchange-booth town knows, it's a phenomenon that can occur at any time, although generally at an inconvenient time, and for just about any reason. One cashier and she has to take a bathroom break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." The paper receipt roll in the cash register ran out? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." Smoke break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." You get the point.

Highly recommended

This is a great article.

In their own words

Following up on my earlier post with a couple of tales of Moscow life from Americans who live there, I've received permission from a friend to post her friend's story of passport woe, as emailed to the folks back home. This one is from St. Petersburg:

Well, as I was stretched out on my windowsill, looking out at the Russian sky, I began to think about the different experiences a young woman may have when traveling abroad. Many in my position, I suppose, have used such an opportunity to meet and fall in love with some local man.

They would then stroll through his native city together, she on his arm, learning of the soul of this new and exciting country with the advantage of an attentive and handsome guide. I, however, do not believe in such mundane foolishness. No, no, I feel a far more productive use of one's time and the ideal route to a thoroughly enlightening visit to a foreign country is to have one's passport stolen within the first week. This is especially good if the country you are visiting requires a visa for exit. Yes, I managed to accomplish this last week while strolling down the street near my house. My school needed my passport to register me, and it had been returned earlier that day. When I noticed it in my bag, I thought, "Uh, oh! I sure wouldn't want something to happen to my passport if my bag were to get stolen...I know, I'll put it in the pocket of my pants where I can keep track of it better and would certainly feel it if someone were to take it!" Well, apparently my butt is a lot more numb than I gave it credit for, and I didn't realize the passport was gone for about 10 minutes.

After searching all my belongings, returning to apartment, and crying on the floor for 5 or 10 minutes, I call my school's director and the US Consulate.

The application for a new passport cost 100 dollars, which I regretted paying, but had no choice. The visa poses more of problem, and I was warned that the Russian government might decide at any moment to throw me out of the country.

So I made sure to see the Hermitage on Sunday.

Anyway, the person who stole the passport then called the school with a really lame story about "some guy" finding it on the street and giving it to him. Anyway, he demanded $300 dollars within 30 minutes, or he would sell it to someone else. The US Consulate then called him and threatened him, and demanded he return it at once. He, of course, then quickly "disappeared" from phone contact. The US Consulate instructed me to go to the city police headquarters
and make a formal statement.

So in the end, this lovely adventure gave me the rare opportunity to spend the evening inside a Russian police station, which is something you really wouldn't be able to pay to be allowed to do!

The police officers were more or less like those in the US, except they were smoking constantly and doing shots of vodka every few minutes. I thought they were joking when they asked if I wanted a drink, but they then produced a huge bottle of vodka and finished it within the 4 hours it took them to fill out the 1 page report. The station itself was something like a dungeon, with heavy, dented metal doors, and hand and footprints smeared on the concrete walls. On my way out, a heavyset officer with one tooth, and only one tooth, slipped me his phone number and wiggled his eyebrows. If I get really lonely next weekend, who knows, maybe I'll give him a ring. It's more attention than I've gotten in quite some time.

Oh, yeah, as to the Hermitage, it is everything they say--gorgeous, overwhelming, enormous. After a few hours, though, I became exhausted with all the beauty and began looking for ugly things or thinking of inappropriate thoughts about the paintings and sculptures (ie "Well, well...what's HE doing?" or "Smell me finger", etc). So I'll have to return when I'm more mature, maybe next weekend if they don't kick me out of the country and I'm not on a hot date with a hefty, single-toothed, heavily intoxicated police officer.

In the interest of keeping things "fair and balanced," and just so that people don't get the impression that Russia is all about pickpockets and scams, I have a more optimistic tale involving a lost passport. This one is from my own experience back in early 1999. While spending my winter break in Novosibirsk visiting an American friend who was teaching there at the time, I lost my passport - and didn't even require a pickpocket to do so. We later determined that it must have fallen out of my pocket while I was wrestling in a snowbank with my friend on the way home from the bar(s).

After several days of panicked visits to the local authorities and marginally successful attempts to contact the US consulate in Ekaterinburg, I was in a state of despair. Naturally, you can't travel from Novosibirsk to Ekaterinburg without a valid passport. And getting the police to issue me a document confirming my document's loss was difficult - remember that this was all taking place during the week after new year's, when, as one of the people I met on that trip told me, "all of Russia is drinking," and even at the US consulate everyone's on vacation. Then, I think on the very day I went to the AmEx office to get some extra cash - a bailout package from the parents at home - I learned that someone had fliered the entire campus (I was in Akademgorodok, not Novosibirsk proper) with leaflets announcing they had found an American passport, with only an email for contact info.

I emailed the guy, and we arranged to meet at the main entrance to NGU. I went with a Russian friend (who was then a student and is now a successful oil geologist), just in case it was a shakedown. As it turned out, the good samaritan didn't want any money, but I still gave him as much as I could spare (which was not much). Lesson learned? Good things can happen in Russia, sometimes.

Ukrainian election observation - in DC

Following up on last year's photo report from the elections at the Moldovan Embassy in Moscow, here's a similar report from the Ukrainian elections in late March of this year - as they were conducted at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, DC. I guess I am rather tardy in posting this, given that the election was over a month ago - these photos are from March 26th, right around noon. I have to say, the scene was considerably more orderly than what I saw in March 2005 on Kuznetsky Most.

The Ukrainian Embassy occupies a beautiful and historic building in Georgetown - a lovely area, but inaccessible by Metro.

Apparently this is the building where the agreement was signed to carve the District of Columbia out of Maryland and Virginia. Virginia, of course, later took its part of DC back.

This bus was carrying diaspora Ukrainians from Pennsylvania, if its license plate can be believed (often, though, the license plates of commercial vehicles have little bearing on what state they're actually coming from).

Inside the Embassy - more staff than voters! Everything was running very smoothly, and the Embassy security officer was friendly and not averse to a non-citizen (me) accompanying his Ukrainian friends and taking a few pictures.

"Find yourself in the list of voters," if I'm not mixing up this translation.

The ballot boxes. In the background are the voting booths.

Not particularly attractive photos, aesthetically, but it is always nice to see people excited about voting, and just about everyone there was. I don't have photos of people dropping ballots into the box, etc., because I figured they might not want to be featured in a stranger's blog. Note - the voters here did not get a stamp in their passport like the Moldovan voters in Moscow did last year.

Rebranding

Snowsquare has a post about a cryptic ad campaign apparently setting up a rebranding by mobile telephony provider MTS.

There is something strangely appealing about the crazy drama of these "secret" ad campaigns. I can remember several from my time in Moscow. The silliest was one that involved a bunch of posters with nothing more than the letters "AB" (if memory serves) and eventually turned out to be advertising a new (and ultimately unsuccessful) line of potato chips being promoted by Alla Borisovna Pugachova, an aging, overweight pop star. Happily, I think the Russian marketers have become more sophisticated in the past couple of years, although some of snowsquare's photos suggest there are still companies taking a low-budget approach to advertising.

Another, more recent - and more captivating - campaign of this type involved a man with his hand on a curvaceous figure that looked like the silhouette of a woman, with the caption, "So that she doesn't leave [you] for someone else." ("Chtoby ona ne ushla k drugomu") Turned out the ad was for car alarms, and the man was resting his hand on what emerged (in the second version of the ad) to be a luxury automobile.

Strangely, I don't think I've ever seen anything similar in the US, except maybe once in a long while promoting movies. I think this is a function of Russia's money being concentrated in Moscow, a city which has more than enough outdoor advertising space to create a huge impression on any of its 10+ million residents. There is no such single concentration of wealth/influence in once US city, although maybe there are ad campaigns like this in New York and I've just never heard about them. Maybe it also has something to do with people who are only 15 years into the daily visual assault of advertising and are thus more willing to look at the billboards and think about them. On the other hand, I guess there are sometimes some pretty cryptic ads on US TV (our nation's equivalent of the common city-space), but I have been living TV-less and therefore have been deprived of them for the past 6 months or so.

If I may rave briefly, I'm a huge fan of snowsquare - the best English-language slice-of-Moscow blog around.

Not quite there yet

From a BBC Monitoring report sent around in Johnson's Russia List earlier this week:

[...] Ren TV's late-night news on 12 April noted that the number of bureaucrats has risen to 1,462,000, which is some 100 per person. Presenter Mikhail Kurennoy noted that since 2001 the number of officials has been "growing at an amazing rate", despite pledges to the contrary by President Putin and Prime Minister Fradkov. "There are now more bureaucrats than there were in the USSR," Kurennoy observed.

Right, the USSR never had more than 80 bureaucrats per person, tops...