Causes of Xenophobia in Russia Analyzed

Dec. 27, 2005

Causes of Xenophobia in Russia Analyzed (translation courtesy of JRL)
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
http://mk.ru
May 25, 2010
Article by Valeriy Fedorov, general director of All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center: The Distinctive Features of Our National Xenophobia. Why Some People Living in Russia Do Not Like Other People Living in Russia and Foreigners

A mixture of races, cultures, and languages is common in today's world. Globalization has left its mark not only on the megalopolises, but also on the dacha zones and even the most remote oblasts and rayons. The Chinese and Koreans are not a problem on Sakhalin Island, but the uncontrollable stream of immigrants from Central Asia is arousing concern. Black-skinned waiters in cafes in Voronezh, the capital of the chernozem zone, have ceased to be unusual and are now a common sight. A former student from Africa who has settled down in Volgograd Oblast almost became the head of a rayon in last year's election. And no one is surprised anymore by the Armenian or Azerbaijani cafes that have become centers of gravity for their respective emigre communities in Pereslavl-Zalesskiy, a city which has been Russian since time immemorial.

Cultural and ethnic diversity, according to social scientists, facilitates the circulation of information and the exchange of innovations, encourages more rational behavior by individuals, and leads to the development and increasing complexity of the society as a whole. Life in a multi-ethnic society raises so many more issues than life in a mono-ethnic society, after all, and obliges people to be more considerate of one another and more circumspect and prudent in communication with people who do not resemble themselves. This life is extraordinary, diverse, and rich, but it is also less predictable and often entails more risks. These risks are diverse and there are numerous reasons why people of some races and nationalities are suspicious, dismissive, and afraid of others. And the ones who are afraid or dismissive are many in number: When VTsIOM (All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center) asked respondents to name "the nationalities and ethnic groups arousing irritation or hostility in you," only 56 percent replied there were none, while 35 percent named those ethnic groups.

What are the reasons and motives for inter-ethnic tension, irritation, and hostility? A few years ago, economic factors were the most common explanations in public opinion polls: Respondents would say that people of other nationalities (primarily immigrants, but also people from the Russian North Caucasus) were taking jobs away from the native residents. Today this is a much less common reason, however. Many people evidently have realized that the new arrivals are doing the kind of work for the kind of salary the native resident would never want. The ban instituted a few years ago to keep non-citizens of Russia from working in retail trade also had an impact, eliminating what had been one of the most irritating factors in inter-ethnic relations since the final years of the USSR.

There is another economic reason, but it is also partly social: the prevalence of certain ethnic communities in specific fields of business, the monopolization of these fields by associations formed on ethnic grounds. It is actually impossible for an "outsider" to break into these fields. In contrast to the former reason, this one still exists and still bothers people.

In this context, it is worth remembering that our society as a whole has acquired so many internal divisions in recent years that some researchers are already calling them classes: the lawyer class, the law enforcement class, and the deputy class.... Each of these classes lives by its own private rules, firmly supports "its own people" in their conflicts with "outsiders," and is highly selective in its acceptance of people from outside the class. When this kind of social division is supplemented with linguistic or family divisions, it can close off the entire field of activity to people wishing to enter the field or even to look into the field from outside. We know that the most bloody and brutal practices in our army usually can be found in units where "hazing" has been replaced with "ethnic affiliations."

In spite of this, the cultural factor still generates more inter-ethnic tension than socioeconomic factors: distinct differences in the appearance and behavior of members of other nationalities. Some are set apart by their inability to speak Russian well, others wear unusual clothing, and still others (these make up the largest group) behave in ways that seem odd in our society. This is most conspicuous in the "packs" of young people who amuse themselves by shooting into the air, for example, or by engaging in amateur car racing on the city streets. The "alien" stereotypes therefore are constantly reinforced by the inappropriate behavior of these "aliens" instead of gradually disappearing as people gain personal experience in communicating with representatives of other cultures. When people hear about examples of this behavior in the media or simply "through the grapevine," they are seriously exaggerated and make a profound impression because they fit so well into the traditional matrix of perceptions: "Others are aliens, and aliens are dangerous." That is how these negative attitudes take root in people's minds.

Respondents also voice another complaint in the polls: "These people usually lack even the rudiments of culture and do not know the right way to act." It is true that a new arrival, especially one from a small town or a rural community, has trouble getting used to urban life and it can take a long time for yesterday's peasant to stop keeping chickens or a sheep on his balcony. Many jokes were made about this even in the Soviet era. We can only rely on time and the education of the next generation -- the children of the new arrivals, who will act and feel like genuine urbanites -- to eliminate this problem.

On the other hand, it is interesting that the residents of rural communities, who are less likely for many reasons to travel outside their communities and less likely to see people of other races and nationalities, are more likely to say they "do not like the appearance, behavior, and character traits" of people of other nationalities. The residents of the capital cities, who are accustomed to differences in appearance and language, criticize the "aliens" for "not caring about customs and standards of behavior."

Whereas the first case is one in which people accustomed to the traditional culture have a negative reaction when they encounter unforeseen circumstances, the second case reveals the reluctance of urbanites to accept the irritating behavior of strangers they regard as boorish.

Now we can move on to the main thing. The most common response to the question of why members of other ethnic groups arouse animosity and suspicion was this: "I avoid them because of the threat of terrorism."

The terrorist acts in Moscow revived the fears of not only terrorists in general, but also the environment and territories giving rise to them. The Caucasus is the first place meeting this description for most people in Russia. This probably is the main reason that 32 percent of the respondents who were asked to judge the state of inter-ethnic relations in our country said they had become more strained and less tolerant in the past year. Only half as many -- just 16 percent -- expressed the opposite opinion.

The results of a similar poll in 2005 actually were worse: 41 percent in contrast to 17 percent. In other words, we actually could say that inter-ethnic relations in Russia have displayed positive changes. This conclusion can only be tentative, however: There are still so many stumbling blocks and hidden obstacles in this highly sensitive area. Regrettably, this is most evident in the capital -- in Moscow: 51 percent of the Muscovites said that inter-ethnic relations in the city are strained, troubled, and even conflict-ridden.

A Racist Restauranteur - Routine in Russia?

This was a pretty amazing article - appeared a few weeks ago on the afisha.ru website and generated some reaction from the Moscow dining public. So I translated it:

White Russian
Zhenya Kuida, 18 Sept. 2009

"Our patio has been open all summer - it's a pity that no one really wrote about it. But we still did a great job with it - even on weeknights there was a line for it, people were booking tables an hour in advance. I've been scolded for the fact that not enough people know about our patio, but I just didn't have time, we built it all ourselves in a month, practically with our own hands, Arkady didn't even know. I heard he was going to hire another director for this restaurant and was on his way here to talk about that with me, but when he saw our patio he decided to let me keep my job."

Alexei, the director of Novikov's latest restaurant Tatler, is showing me sketches of how the interior is supposed to look. Inside they're doing the work (changing it from the restaurant which currently occupies the space, I Fiori), and for now only the white-curtained summer patio is open.

At the next table over, someone is smoking a hookah. The sketches show wooden tables, an open kitchen, Ralph Lauren furniture and clocks set to London time.

"Tatler is, after all, first and foremost a London magazine, the most important one about celebrities. Arkady really wants to make this restaurant more democratic, American-style, to get people to come here for lunch - big portions, big plates, an eclectic menu. It's true that we have a French chef, so this is difficult for him. At the last tasting Arkady took a long time explaining to him that he needs to have fewer fashionable things, that everything should be simpler. Why don't you order something, try something, everything is delicious, we have a new menu!"

The waiter walking by drops a menu, and Alexei rushes to help him. "I remember well what it's like to be on your feet all day. I myself am not from Moscow, I worked my first few years here as a bartender in a casino and then as a waiter in GQ Bar. I always found it interesting to work at the bar - even when I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a bartender and making cocktails."

Alexei's phone rings, and he has a long conversation about a car loan. "I want to buy a Volvo, maybe now they'll give me a loan, one of the co-owners [of the restaurant] is a banker, he promised to help, and now I have a decent salary. It was, of course, a big step for me to become a manager. Although I'm really young, I run pretty much everything in the restaurant - I hire the staff myself, I watch the till, I structure people's work. Arkady only looks after the chefs and other little things."

Two beefy Armenians sit down at the table next to us, and Alexei's face darkens.

"Of course this used to be a completely dead restaurant. When I became manager, I cam here and freaked out - the place was full of darkies ["черные"]. It's like that everywhere - as soon as the darkies start to come, that's it, the restaurant dies. Of course I try to fight it - I don't let them in, I tell them that the tables are occupied or reserved, there's no table for you here, but you can't control everything, they still get in. And then normal Russian people come up to you and say, 'What sort of a zoo are you running here?' They also feel uncomfortable when something like that is sitting at the table next to them, they just want to come have dinner at a place with their own people, without these darkies. But what can you do, in these times of crisis things have become very difficult, who comes to restaurants these days? Just the darkies, no one else has any money. Just watch how restaurants go bad before your very eyes, and the same thing happens with clubs. One must strictly maintain the proper ratio - you can let them in sometimes, but not too many, so that they don't ruin the look of the place."

Alexei notices the hookah attendant walking by and calls him over. "By the way, we have excellent hookahs - the best in the city. Try the apple-flavored one, people say they come back to try it again."

18 years ago...

[image source - a personal memoir from someone who was there]

[image source - a great series of photos from 1991]

Last week, Snob.ru asked its community of readers and "global Russians" whether they remember August 21, 1991, the date when the GKChP and bit the dust - and with it, any chance that the USSR could be preserved. For those unfamiliar with the acronym, it stood for "State Committee on the State of Emergency," the group of people behind the attempted putsch which - much too late - aimed to derail Gorbachev's reform (or liberation, or running into the ground, if you prefer) of the Soviet Union.

[image source]
Boris Yeltsin at the barricades with his bodyguard Aleksandr Korzhakov,
whose apparent role in ruling the country (at least according to his tell-all
memoir) made him infamous during the '90s as a symbol of poor governance

The comments are pretty emotional and talk about the various stages of people's feelings about Russia's post-Soviet experiment:

Naive but wonderful feelings of unity - "A couple of times during the night [of 20-21 Aug.] I had a completely incredible feeling, as trite as it sounds, but a feeling of unity with my people [с моим народом], with all of the people [со всеми людьми] who had gathered there for whatever reason. It was a physical feeling of brotherhood, which I have never felt since. By 1993 it became clear that in 1991 we had been total idiots. What remained was an unpleasant aftertaste and those feelings, and it's not clear what to do with them. They have been lost for nothing. And it's a pity."

Later disappointment - "Everyone had incredible - and naive, as it later turned out - hopes...... Who could have known then that the nomenklatura (in epaulets and otherwise) would - having repainted itself - steadily come crawling back, once again grabbing up everything for itself, although now in the role of 'state capitalists'."

Dashed hopes - "Those were days when the hope appeared that there would be real democracy in [our] country. However, that hope rather quickly died a quiet death....I remember that since then I have never seen so many normal, human faces in one place. The first sign that nothing would really change was when they allowed the Communist Party to continue. First they banned it, and then they authorized it on the sly - that little fact left a feeling of extreme disgust. And didn't leave any hope for a better future."

Postcard of SVO as it looked in the late-Soviet era.

And one of Snob's readers had an interesting story which I've translated:

It was one of the most powerful impressions of my life!... At the time, I was working as a line customs inspector at Sheremetyevo-2. In those days, all of the flights with people leaving to live in Israel departed early in the morning (around 5am), so that arriving foreigners would not be discomfited by this picture of thousands of people emigrating. Naturally, all of the people leaving would show up at the airport the night before, and all night the departure halls were noisy, people would hold farewell parties for their departing friends and relatives; some laughed, some cried...

On the night of August 21, the departure halls were DEAD QUIET! And thousands of absolutely white faces, raised up to the monitors which had been set up in the airport, on which a single question was frozen - WILL THEY LET US OUT OR NOT? It was a frightening picture, burned into my memory...

The GKChP plotters and their not-so-bad fates (not counting Boris Pugo, who shot himself), 15 years later, as reported by AiF in 2006:

[image source]

More: Reports on the GKChP anniversary from 2004 and 2006.
Paul Goble's impressions of Russians' historical memory of August '91.

Navel-gazing

This is the latest post in a highly infrequent series wherein I examine the contents of my server logs (yes, I know there are more important things I should be writing about...).

This time I will be brief and will simply say the following to the individual in Texas insistently searching for "ingredients in russian crepes teremok": what makes up the food of the gods is to be gratefully enjoyed but not to be known by us mere mortals. Please, do you really need to know? Isn't it likely that knowing would take away from the delight we experience while savoring a Teremok blin?

If you're worried about the nutritional value of the ingredients (and having perused the details, it's possible you should be - the mighty Ilya Muromets blin is over 1,000 calories!), check out this helpful chart. If you're trying to reverse-engineer Teremok blini and open up a stand in Texas (I confess I've had visions of exporting the blin-stand business model to the US), I suggest you propose a franchising arrangement - you can get in touch with the Teremok team through their customer forum. And you can read here about one of the visionary individuals who we all have to thank for the heavenly blini. Happily, I can confirm that Teremok appears to be going strong in spite of the crisis - I had the chance to enjoy one of my favorite outlets with friends (and, to be honest, a couple more times on my own) on recent trips to Moscow, and the place was packed.

Миф и Быль

[image source]

A friend who lives in Moscow emailed this to me. The billboard appears to be advertising a book series titled "Myths about Russia," and the myth highlighted by this billboard is the one "about Russian drunkenness, laziness and cruelty." I may have to trot this out the next time I hear someone lazily trying to bat away an argument with some line about "Russophobic stereotypes."

R.I.P., Izmailovo?

Izmailovo, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

I don't want to believe this is true. I want to believe that while they may have shut down the vast Cherkizovsky market - a bureaucratic cat whose nine lives may have run out - that catered to locals right next door, they won't have the heart to permanently get rid of gingerbread-city stage set of the Izmailovskii Vernissage that reliably lured tourists and expats. Cherkizovsky was an amazing place where, shortly after arriving in Moscow in late 2001, we memorably bought a thick 2 x 3 meter carpet and a 3-liter jar of pickles and then had a hell of a time hauling both items home in one of those oversized "kitaiskie sumki." Some parts of that market were like walking into another country, complete with signage and street food from many time zones east.

It is a shame that Luzhkov and others favoring the reconfiguring of Moscow markets to exclude for'ners have failed to understand that such pockets of other-ness always added to Moscow's richness. And even operating from their xenophobic logic, it makes little sense to shut down the Vernissage, since nearly all of the vendors there were Russian, many of them artists and craftspeople selling their own work.

In any event, although we became more locals than tourists in Moscow, my more personal lament is not for Cherkizovsky but for the kitschy, tourist-oriented "Vernissage" section of the market, the one with paid admission to keep the riffraff out, the one with the mean-looking old drunk and his tragic trained bears just outside the entrance, across the walkway from the Central Asians cranking out cheese samsas using a huge iron vessel. If it's true, this means I will never be able to return to the mother lode of Russian souvenirs and flea-market-style borokhlo, or bric-a-brac.

It seems Moscow is no longer the consumer-oriented paradise of the boom years. Where will I now be able to go to buy vintage cuff links, pre-revolutionary books, fine carpets from the Caucasus, pirated DVDs, fake pashmina shawls, embroidered linen tablecloths, hand-carved chess sets, ratty (and not-so-ratty) fur hats, Soviet-era tourist maps, finely painted wooden eggs, and Chicago Cubs nesting dolls? Where will I now find the many missed opportunities of those past weekends spent at Izmailovo? I remember one in particular, an exhaustive collection of mint-condition Soviet-era bottle labels that filled five or six large albums. I couldn't bring myself even to haggle with the guy when he identified his starting price of 20,000 rubles, but now I wish I had bargained him down to 12 or so and walked away with a piece of graphic design history.

The photo above is from a happier, simpler moment - the day after Christmas, 2004, waiting to be warmed by some usually-good-but-never-great Izmailovo shashlyk. If it's true that the place is gone for good, I guess all I can say is, "Thanks for the memories."

Izmailovsky Market Closed
22 July 2009
The Moscow Times

Moscow authorities on Tuesday closed Izmailovsky Market, a magnet for tourists seeking deals on souvenirs, in a crackdown linked to the closure of nearby Cherkizovsky Market.

The prefect for Moscow’s Eastern Administrative District, where the markets are located, ordered the closure after authorities confiscated 5,843 truckloads of merchandise from Izmailovsky between July 11 and 20 and detained 25 people, including 14 Vietnamese citizens who will be deported, police spokeswoman Zhanna Ozhimina told Interfax.

Ozhimina said more than 150 police officers have been deployed to Izmailovsky to maintain public order as the remaining merchandise is removed.

Izmailovsky, which covers 10 hectares between the towering Izmailovo hotel complex and Izmailovsky Park, has been the place to shop for souvenirs since the 1990s. Its hundreds of stands also offered trinkets, Soviet kitsch, clothing and shashlik.

The market has been the site of two fires in the past four years, including one in March 2005 that killed a woman.

Authorities closed Cherkizovsky Market, located on Izmailovsky’s border, late last month during a smuggling investigation sparked by the seizure of $2 billion in Chinese goods last fall. More than 100 Chinese and Vietnamese traders from Cherkizovsky have been deported this month.

Update July 24: It looks like I may have broken out the black mourning clothes for naught - Rubashov has helpfully commented, adding this news from yesterday's MT:

However, the famous Vernisage, where tourists have shopped for souvenirs since the 1990s, remained open Wednesday. Interfax reported Tuesday that the souvenir market, located in the middle of Izmailovsky, had been closed together with the rest of the market.

Stay tuned, I guess...

Update July 28: A very interesting NYT story on what might be behind the closing of Cherkizovsky:

The trouble in this case was that the market’s owner, Telman Ismailov, who had made billions of dollars as Cherkizovsky evolved from a mere flea market into an industrial-scale distribution hub for Chinese imports during the oil boom, had violated unwritten codes of business conduct that put him at odds with Mr. Putin, according to analysts and Russian news reports.

The market was closed with a flurry of citations of fire code and health violations not unlike the use of environmental allegations to force Royal Dutch Shell to sell a portion of its investment in a Siberian oil field two years ago, or the shutdown of the Yukos oil company with tax claims before that. [...]

“Of course, if you applied the official hygiene, fire and labor codes, it was not done the way it was written,” Arseny Popov, an authority on the Chinese diaspora in Russia with the Russian Academy of Sciences, said of the market’s operations. “But nothing was happening there that wasn’t happening for the past 15 years.”

What was new was Mr. Ismailov’s $1.4 billion investment, using proceeds from the market, into a glittering, five-star resort thousands of miles away in a seemingly unrelated world of luxury on the Turkish seaside. It was called Mardan Palace, after Mr. Ismailov’s father, with 560 rooms, 10 restaurants, 17 bars and a lake-size swimming pool.

Mr. Ismailov, an immigrant from Azerbaijan who survived the sharp-elbowed world of street capitalism in the early 1990s to create the Cherkizovsky empire, threw a lavish series of opening parties in May. Mariah Carey was hired to perform a set and sing “Dreamlover” for Mr. Ismailov and his guests. Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone and Paris Hilton also attended, the resort’s publicist said. The mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, cut the ribbon.

It is unclear what about the lavish resort may have set off the regulatory onslaught. The ostentation in time of economic crisis, the investment abroad of profits made in Russia and a move to undermine Mr. Luzhkov, a one-time rival of Mr. Putin’s, have all been suggested in the Russian press. Mr. Ismailov declined to be interviewed about his market’s closing.

But within a week of the Mardan Palace party, the case had reached the ultimate arbiter of the business affairs and lifestyle of the Russian rich: Mr. Putin.

The prime minister broached the matter at a cabinet meeting June 1, leaving little doubt what he had in mind. “The fight is on, but results are few,” Mr Putin said, referring to smuggled goods at the market, according to news reports. “The results in such cases are prison terms. Where are the prison terms?”

Meanwhile, the people likely to suffer the most serious privation as a result of the shutdown of Cherkizovsky are the tens of thousands of migrant laborers who called the place both work and home. The NYT continues:

Mostly, the laborers can do nothing. Bakhodur M. Mirzoyev, a Tajik, squatted outside the market on a recent afternoon. He has been living in Kazan Train Station. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, open our containers,” he said. “We want to work.”

Asked why the market closed, Mr. Mirzoyev shrugged. The owner, he said, had built a hotel in Turkey. Now he was left with nothing but “three hungry children in Dushanbe.”

An opinion piece by Alexei Pankin in the MT weighs the "versii" and draws a slightly different, no less interesting, conclusion.

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

Putvedev's faith-based initiatives

A couple of the hired guns at one of last weekend's pro-gov't counterprotests.
My favorite part is the unrealistically hard-looking image of Dimmovochka.
[image source]

The Russian government has published, on PM Putin's website, a list of "measures undertaken to combat the consequences of the global financial crisis" (the word "crisis" never appears in official pronouncements without the modifier "world" or "global," because as any good United Russia functionary knows, the global financial crisis is called 'global' because it's happening outside of Russia).

But United Russia's supporters - both the ones hired as crowd filler and the ambitious, plum-job-seeking core - seem to be running on faith (to use a phrase immortalized by Eric Clapton).

Witness this by now infamous speech by a United Russia activist at one of last weekend's rallies. The speaker, a young lady named Maria Sergeeva, whose blog identifies her as "The Mashka" and who seems to like to post photos of herself, has helpfully posted a transcript of her remarks here. Here's my translation of the most testifyin' part of her performance (she even identifies her holy trinity!):

It's no secret: in Russia today there are forces which are trying to blame Putin, Medvedev and United Russia for our temporary difficuties. These forces are like a dangerous virus - as soon as they sense a weakening of our immune system, they'll attack.

But let's be honest with ourselves. Take me, for instance, a student who pays full tuition. In 1998 I wouldn't have known what to do. And now I don't just believe. I know for certain that Putin, Medvedev and the United Russia party will protect me. They'll give me the chance to take out a student loan at a rate of five percent, not 55 percent. They'll give me a job. They won't allow me to be fired illegally.

That post drew over 4,000 comments, many of them critical, compelling Ms. Sergeeva to write a rambling rebuttal castigating the "two-legged cockroaches on LiveJournal" and "parasites," and even deploying against her critics United Russia's rhetorical WMD - a quotation from the ideological architect of "sovereign democracy" himself, Vladislav Surkov - but (in case we forgot it was all about her) taking the first two paragraphs to marvel at her newfound fame. She sort of has elements of a Russian Sarah Palin - spunky and down-to-earth, but also self-contradictory and determinedly dim-witted, and not really ready for prime time.

It turns out that Ms. Sergeeva is not only a YouTube celebrity of sorts - an irony-free and more heavily managed version of Obama Girl, except without, you know, the singing - she is also a member of the political council of the Young Guards (United Russia's youth wing, usually abbreviated as MGER) and a videoblogger on United Russia's website, where the section devoted to blogs is wittily titled "Berloga" (which means "bear's den," but also happens to be spelled by inserting the initials of United Russia - ER, in Russian - after the "B" in "blog" - how punny!).

Based on her apparent inability to memorize even a few sentences of her monologues, and assuming the MGERovtsy are supposed to be a breeding ground for future Russian political elites, there really will be problems finding qualified leadership among the younger generation. Youth wings of political parties - especially parties with no opposition - are of course populated by careerist hacks to some degree in all countries, but this young lady takes self-absorbed hackdom to another level.

Anyway, here is a rather more articulate analysis of why Putin remains popular even in the face of an economic situation that seems to get more calamitous every week. The English translation is from the JRL, the original article in Russian is here.

Putin's Stable Popular Support Based on Cultural Closeness, Not Results

Gazeta.ru
January 29, 2009
Commentary by Boris Tumanov: "People Like Putin"

Despite all the crises,tragedies, disasters, and disorders, the citizens of Russia are not disillusioned with Putin because he is a symbol and the personification of themselves.

The global economic crisis with its still unknown outcome has already caused a marked intellectual revival in that segment of Russian society that can tentatively be called the thinking part of our elite. The general catalyst of this process is the expectation of sociopolitical cataclysms.

Russian thinkers who belong to the "vertical hierarchy of power" consider this perspective as a threat to their own well-being and seriously hope to avert it with the help the non-existent middle class and the traditionally obedient "tin soldiers,"' who are already being pushed into manifestations of loyalty. And their freedom-loving opponents believe just as sincerely that the coming upheavals will be a factor in the inevitable liberal transformations in the sociopolitical life of Russia.



However, in the former case it is nothing more than a helpless simulation of their own professional suitability, while in the latter it is an equally nonsensical, equally pretentious attempt at Cartesian analysis of the inscrutable instincts of Russian society.

As Solovyev's Khodzha Nasreddin would say in such circumstances, "Oh jinnis, you are searching where it is not hidden." For the main, if not the only, effective factor capable of determining the state of Russia in the foreseeable future is that almost symbiotic unity that exists between the largest part of Russian society and the person of the "national leader" known as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

This unity could not be shaken by the tragedies of the Kursk, Nord-Ost, and Beslan, the administrative tyranny of "sovereign democracy," "Basmannyy justice," or the rumors of the "national leader's" fabulous personal wealth just as it cannot be shaken by the current growth in unemployment, inflation, devaluation of the ruble, the disintegration of mortgages, or even the coming deprivations.

Here are figures that thoroughly illustrate this assertion. According to the findings of the Levada Center, in September of last year an overwhelming majority of Russian citizens polled --61% -- thought that things were moving in the right direction in Russia and only 21% of the respondents thought that the country was taking a wrong path. The short war in Georgia played a part here, of course, but even today a majority of Russia's citizens believe that things are going well in the country. In December 2008 and January of this year their number remained constant at 43% while the number of pessimists dropped from 40% to 34%.

Last September also marked the peak of positive assessments of the activities of the government headed by Vladimir Putin, 66% against 31%. But in December 2008 and January of this yeart hese figures were 60% and 36%, and 58% and 38% respectively.

But then the activities ofVladimir Putin personally in the job of premier are evaluated by Russian citizens using some different system of coordinates and criteria, if we judge by the fact that in December 2008 and January 2009 he was consistently approved by 83% of those polled, while the number who were dissatisfied with his activities declined from 15% in December to 14% in January. We will add that the peak of approval of Putin's activities, 88%, came in that same victorious September.

Remarking this phenomenon, both the liberals and the state-minded thinkers -- the one in vexation, the other with chauvinistic satisfaction -- explain it by essentially the same factor, which is indeed the main, although not the only, factor in "Putinomania." For some this factor is formulated as the patriarchal inertia of Russian society, the result of many centuries of slavery, while the others see it as a manifestation of sovereign Russian uniqueness expressed in communality, spirituality, and patriotic unity with the government. At the same time the most inquisitive opponents of Putin become lost guessing about what kind of mistakes and blunders he would have to make or what "Egyptian plagues" would have to overtake Russia under his leadership to disillusion the majority of Russian citizens who love him.

It would be simplest to answer this question by saying that Vladimir Vladimirovich can do anything he wants, practically without risk to his popularity rating. But such an answer, even if it corresponds to reality, demands convincing explanation, or rather a detailed investigation of the genesis of the "national leader's" unprecedented popularity. Russia's leaders and Vladimir Putin personally are absolutely right when they say that the main reason for the current crisis was their responsible consumption of the West, above all the United States. But afterall, it was this very mindless consumption that caused the manna from heaven that poured down on Russia in recent years in the form of incredibly fast-rising oil prices.

And if we take an unbiased look at the results of these "seven fat years," those who sincerely care for the real interests of Russia and its citizens could register serious charges against the Russian leadership and Vladimir Putin himself regarding how they managed the wealth that Russia enjoyed.

Instead of fighting corruption, instead of effective army reform, instead of development and diversification of domestic production, instead of building up still restless provincial Russia, they worked on strengthening the vertical hierarchy of power, which guarantees them practically lifetime terms of office. And after setting their intention as restoring Russia's stature on a global scale, the Russian ruling elite managed to quarrel with almost all of their Western partners; indeed they have found themselves in virtual isolation. Beginning with Vladimir Putin's Munich speech and up to the recent gas war with Ukraine, Russia has stubbornly destroyed its own international reputation and pushed away not just Europe and the United States, but also our neighbors in the CIS.

If Russian society were consciously striving to assume responsibility for the fate of the country or, at a minimum, if it were capable of an independent evaluation of the government's actions, its reaction to such behavior by the government would be much less equable. But civic responsibility presupposes a search for alternatives, which requires intellectual and psychological exertion, and the citizens of Russia will not be ready for that for a long time. Not just because the few opponents of the government are incapable of formulating an intelligible alternative to the current course, but above all because of the traditional and almost panicky fear that Russian society will be deprived of its paternalistic oversight by the state. That is why Russian citizens do not try to look carefully at the mechanisms of control over the state, the economy, and society, preferring to rely on the omniscience of the tsar, great leader, or national leader who by definition cannot answer for the mistakes of the ordinary mortals under him.

But in Putin's case there is one substantive aspect that prevents us from viewing the universal trust of him exclusively in the framework of the fatalistic formula: "Good tsar but his boyars are indifferent." For unlike the tsars who are "ordained from above" and the general secretaries, the citizens of Russia are convinced that Putin took charge of Russia as the result of their own will, not Divine Providence or a decision of the Politburo. And the fact that they chose him the way they choose the best fellow in the village (athlete, does not smoke, likeable, went into intelligence work) only emphasizes that from the beginning this choice did not presuppose any political responsibility of Putin to the voters. That is why, from the standpoint of the citizens of Russia, Putin does not have to answer for the activities of his own government, for the results of his own term in office.

They do not judge Putin because for society he is not functional. He is a symbol. He is the personification of the Russian citizens themselves; they identify themselves with him. And this is perhaps the first case in Russian history when the purely reflexive worship by the Russian masses of the latest domestic divinity is tinged with a sincere feeling of solid affection for him.

Affection that is linked not with his political and economic decisions, but rather with the fact that his worldview, hopes, and complexes are indistinguishable from those of the average Russian citizen.

It is the diehard fastidious intelligentsia who may be horrified at the vulgar language that Vladimir Putin uses with emphatic pleasure in his public statements, and especially in contacts with Western politicians and journalists. It is the numerous snobs who are amused at the former president's almost childish liking for dressing up as a submariner, a fighter pilot, or showing off his torso, and his way, plainly seen at Kennebunkport, of imposing the company of his Labrador Koni on his foreign guests. It is the liberal analysts, who are becoming extinct, who see in his aggressive megalomania in relation to the West echoes of the old humiliation felt by the future national leader when he discovered that Germany, even though it was socialist, was able, unlike the USSR, not only to produce an adequate amount of beer, but also to bottle it in three-liter bottles with a convenient spigot. And they are malicious skeptics who blasphemously mock the apocryphal tale that during his entire KGB career Vladimir Putin, surrounded by militant and vigilant atheists, never parted with the cross around his neck and his belief in the Almighty, risking exposure at the first physical training exercise.

On the other hand, a majority of Russian society is in complete solidarity with these behavior traits of the national leader because they fully coincide with the social culture of the Russian citizens themselves, with their ideas about the outside world and their complaints about the rest of the human race.

Well then, if we add to these feelings the easy material well-being that coincided with Vladimir Vladimirovich's term of office for a significant part of the society, which continues to believe furiously in the return of the "rivers of gas and banks of oil," we can say with certainty that Putin is going to last a long time.

And, incidentally, so is today's Russia.

Moscow street art - the final upload

Last December I finally finished uploading all of my photos of graffiti and other "street art" from my years in Moscow. The final (for now) set contains nearly 900 photos, including stickers, stencils, scribbles, high art, political statements, etc., most of which date from late 2004 - mid-2005 and the summer of 2006. Only a few of them were ever uploaded to my now-dormant blog dedicated to such photos. These are some of my favorites, or at least the ones most readily identifiable as being именно from Moscow:

Black PR or market manipulation?

This fake ad (image source - advertka LJ community) was apparently stuck up all over the Moscow metro in recent days. It appears to be an exhortation by TV personality Vladimir Soloviov to invest in Sberbank. The text above the photo reads, "In 2008 I made $2,000,000 with Sberbank." And below the photo, "You can do it too! After all, I'm just as ordinary as you."

Soloviov, who appears to be even more self-absorbed than your average TV host, is convinced that this is part of a campaign to discredit him in the eyes of the public, alleging that it's government-funded. And perhaps it is, I don't know what controversies he's been embroiled in as of late, and the text of the "ad" is not exactly flattering to Soloviov (the final line could also be translated as "I'm just as simple as you."

My first thoughts (most likely incorrect but more interesting than a theory as mundane as black PR) upon reading about a fake ad using a public figure to pump the idea of investing in Sberbank were (1) maybe someone's trying a low-budget way to goose SBER's share price (but it's not as if the Moscow Metro is full of retail investors in the stock market); and (2) I doubt that anyone made $2m on Sberbank last year, unless it was by short-selling the stock, which since the start of 2008 has underperformed even the collapsing RTS index.


[UPDATE 1/29: having seen this additional (obviously fake) ad involving Soloviov, which shows him promoting a sketchy-looking weight-loss method, I am more inclined to agree that someone is just trying to make him look bad.]

Nostalgia

tema has an interesting post about the visual design of Soviet agitprop materials (which he calls monotonous, "communist shit") that includes the above photo of Moscow's Dom Knigi, which is still there on Novyi Arbat. Dom Knigi is not even my favorite Moscow bookstore, and today it doesn't look anything like it did in 1967, when the photo was taken, but it still made me want to pay the place a visit.

"Moscow is the place to be, especially now"

After living in the heart of Moscow for nearly four years, some part of me always thinks it would be cool to go back for another stint. This recent MT article, however, while displaying much putting on of brave faces, didn't exactly make it seem as though this would be the easiest time to be there. An interesting time to be there, no doubt, but when in the past 20 years hasn't been?

Expats Digging In for Long Haul
Moscow Times, 21 January 2009
By Nadia Popova / Staff Writer

Although Russia has found itself among the countries worst-hit by the global financial mayhem, expatriates living here seem to be casting their lots with their adopted country, hunkering down through the economic malaise in hopes of brighter times ahead.

Hurt by salary cuts, the weakening ruble and looming dismissals but equipped with the experience of the 1998 default, expats say they are here to stay.

Many foreigners are paid in rubles, a currency that has lost almost 26 percent of its value against the dollar since July. And with debts and other obligations back home calculated in dollars and euros, some are feeling the pinch.

"I am paid in rubles, so I have to permanently watch the currency rates to hedge my risks," said the UralSib chief strategist Chris Weafer. "We are now facing triple risk of salary cuts, dismissals and currency-rate related losses."

Russian law requires Russian companies to pay salaries only in rubles. And although foreign-owned businesses are exempt, many working in Russia have switched to a ruble payroll over the last two years, said Yevgeny Reizman, a partner at Baker & McKenzie, which advises foreign companies in Russia.

"Now, when the ruble is getting weaker, with every passing day it --becomes harder for foreigners to pay their taxes, mortgages and kids' school fees in their domestic currency," said Neil Cooper, head of the Russian-British Chamber of Commerce.

Adding to the sob story, foreign professionals are witnessing the loss of the sometimes extravagant perks they had grown accustomed to before the financial turmoil.

Gone are the days of $200 restaurant bills charged to the company tab and limitless calls on the corporate cell phone.

Now employees of both domestic and foreign companies are finding their receipts scrutinized and their airline tickets decidedly economy class.

But the most painful problem, foreign employees say, is the reduction of their salaries and bonuses.

"My salary was cut by 15 percent in December," said a foreign specialist working at a Russian investment bank, who asked not to be identified, citing the privacy of the matter. "And I think there will be further cuts in spring as business conditions deteriorate."

Florian Hoser, Lufthansa's director for finance and administration in Russia, has seen similar cuts. "In some foreign companies, bonuses are not being paid, as the budgets of 2008 have not been met," he said.

"The attraction of an overseas posting is either job experience or the possibility of getting paid more than at home," the specialist said. "Under these conditions the only experience many are getting is a crash course in how to make ends meet."

While many firms are forced to reduce wages just to balance the budget, experts say some companies are overreacting, cutting wages first and asking questions later.

"Sometimes the impression is that some of the foreign employers overreact on the crisis because of the market's psychological pressure," Reizman said.

"For example, in December many foreign employers were planning around a 10 percent salary cut. But now they are cutting 20 percent or even more despite the decrease in the economic standing of the company was generally not worse than expected," he said.

But if the economy has been maligned in many respects, foreigners can at least take advantage of the now-affordable housing market. The economic downturn has caused rental prices in Moscow to drop, and tenants and prospective renters are now able to get a better deal than before.

"On the positive side rents are more easily negotiable," Hoser said.

Rental prices have fallen off, with apartments plummeting in cost from 20 percent to 30 percent since July, depending on the class of apartment, according to Penny Lane Realty. Business premium apartments that the firm used to sell for $12,000 a month now go for $8,000.

Yet every silver lining has a dark cloud. Some expats invested in the real estate market while it was booming, hoping to cash in on what seemed like Moscow's most lucrative sector.

Real estate prices have plunged in recent months, sending the average Moscow apartment price down to $5,186 per square meter from $6,122 per square meter since November, according to the real-estate analytical center IRN.ru.

"I bought an apartment in the center of Moscow late in 2007 and considered it a very good investment at the time," said Luca Gandino, who was recently laid off by Jones Lang La Salle.

Sberbank analysts expect apartment prices to drop by 50 percent in dollar terms by the end of this year.

"I know a lot of foreigners who came to work here and bought an apartment when the Russian real estate market was a never-ending upward spiral," Cooper said. "It is not that rosy now."

Other foreign professionals, while safe in their own jobs, look upon the current situation with a twinge of guilt.

"All of us here live with a thought saying 'I'm a very expensive guy,'" said the head of the Moscow office of a U.S. machinery-building company, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

"They rent an apartment and a car for us, pay for our kids' kindergarten," he said. "I recognize that it all costs my company a lot of money."

Despite the challenges, many expats say they aren't going anywhere.

Although Gandino was laid off by Jones Lang La Salle in December, he never doubted that he would stay in Russia.

"Moscow is the place to be, especially now," Gandino, a former associated partner at the development consultant said.

Hundreds of expats who have been given pink slips over the last few months think the same way.

The Russian-British Chamber of Commerce has been inundated by the resumes of laid-off professionals, mainly from the real estate, construction and banking sectors.

"The prospects here are way better than at home," Cooper said. "Russia is way more developed than 10 years ago when the default struck, so we believe in a quick recovery."

Until then, expats will stick around and think about brighter days — or try to.

"When the crisis broke out in 1998, you could hide from it, just leaving your office," Weafer of UralSib said. "Now, with your BlackBerry on, the crisis is always with you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

Druzhina

[image source]

Happy Holidays!

[recycled from last year...]

Best wishes to all for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009! We're enjoying the holidays in DC and remembering the Moscow new year's celebrations of past years.

Dreams and memories

tema has enough pull in the LJ-osphere that his post about the tragic loss of the Sh-2 ceilings (which prompted me to echo his lament) led to his coming into possession of a lovely six-ring scrap of said ceilings. For him, it was as if "a dream came true." And all I have is this none too arty photographic memory of the quirky ceiling rings, taken several summers ago as I was about to board the quasi-red-eye to Tashkent:

Research Bliss

I strongly advise anyone interested in researching Russia's turbulent '90s to head to Kommersant's searchable archive of articles, which contains materials dating back to 1991. I don't know when they made all of the back-issues available, but it is a remarkable and useful resource. The website will even generate code for inclusion in a blog of any article you find in the archive, although it's not all gussied up with a picture like it is for more current articles.

Below is a link to an article I happened upon about the re-registration of Moscow residents in 1999. As I was reading it, before seeing the by-line at the bottom, I wondered what might have become of the journalist who wrote such a wonderful story - touching, humorous and incisive all at the same time. Turns out it was written by one of the giants of Russian journalism, Valery Panyushkin.

Бизнес на гостях // 21 сентября в Москве закончилась перерегистрация иногородних. Теперь ходят слу открыть материал ...

The end of an era

[image source]

According to tema, they're changing the ceilings at Sheremetyevo-2. I think the first time I saw them must have been in 1984. The impression they created then was that they were a result of some horrible central planning glitch - a pipe factory with so much useless excess output that it had to be cut up and repurposed into a shiny (well, it must have been shiny once) ceiling treatment. Anyway, although I'm sure the border guards are as surly as ever and the lines to see them as chaotic as always (though maybe it's all changed, I haven't been back for over two years now!), it won't be the same without the ceilings.

"Russian March" gets ugly

via drugoi, originally posted by zahard

It's the type of thing that could make a the last Russian liberal's head explode. Nazi-saluting morons getting beaten by cops while marching on the Arbat. Cops stomping on the Russian flag. Should one be outraged over the police brutality, or appalled at the sentiments expressed by the marchers (and the way in which the latter are presumed by hard-core Putin-haters to be fed by the patriotic bombast of Russia's current leaders)? What a dilemma. I applaud drugoi's solution, which was to go photograph the whole mess and then put the pictures online. This one was my favorite from his set:

[image source]

The guys slinging shawarma - who have, let's face it, a bit more to fear - were apparently more willing to face the crowds of developmentally challenged racists than were the guys in the Kremlin. Here is a fascinating photo-report from the area around Red Square, which was makes it look like the area was under total lockdown as the marchers took the Arbat on November 4th - which, lest we forget, is the Day of National Unity in Russia.

Perhaps the reason for the harsher-than-usual treatment of the marchers (in the past, xenophobic organizations have been allowed to march) was the political context of this year's march (from the Moscow Times):

Although the action had a strong racist element, the increasing problems spawned by the financial crisis gave the rhetoric an economic edge.

"These are not gastarbaitery," said Boris Ivanov, a DPNI member, referring to the thousands of men and women who come to Moscow from Central Asia and the Caucasus to work in markets and construction sites. "These are strikebreakers," he said.

"Life is already very hard for us, and they come and bring down pay rates and make it even harder," he said, while those around him vigorously nodded their heads. "They are useful for the Kremlin and the oligarchs, because they work for less."

City Hall had authorized marches in three of the past four years, but this year authorities reacted strongly to the illegal marchers by deploying hundreds of truncheon-wielding riot police.

The reason behind the unwillingness of the city's authorities to sanction the march could be fear that it would lead to riots in the street, especially given the people's worries about the looming financial crisis, said Alexei Mukhin of the Center for Political Technologies.

And more photos from Nov 4's festivities, from the blog of Kommersant journo Ekaterina Savina.

VLKSM > Nashi

The 90th anniversary of the Komsomol is being celebrated more than one might expect, but it seems that the contemporary VLKSM-wannabes are not feeling as much love as they were a year ago. Read the full article for the punch line at the end...

Pro-Kremlin Youths Take Backseat to Crisis
Moscow Times, 28 October 2008
By Francesca Mereu / Staff Writer

Last year, pro-Kremlin youth groups were all over television, promising then-President Vladimir Putin love and loyalty, picketing foreign embassies and harassing a hodgepodge of opposition activists.

As recently as July, state-run television showed First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov lecturing Nashi activists in economics at their summer camp.

But with the election season over and the government grappling with the financial crisis, youth activists have drifted from the political spotlight, busying themselves instead with fashion shows and city cleanups.

There are no plans for a crisis-themed protest.

"We might organize something soon," Nashi spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik said of possible events concerning the crisis. "We have a meeting Friday. We will decide then."

Nashi is now working on "long-term projects," Potupchik said, adding that there are "fewer political reasons" for the mass demonstrations that the group organized during the December State Duma elections and the March presidential vote.

Nashi activist Antonina Shapovalova, who designed pro-Putin bikinis for the group, showed off her collection during the recent Moscow Fashion Week, Potupchik noted.

Nashi's top projects include promoting the patriotic children's movement Mishki, or Bear Cubs, tolerance programs and blood drives, she said.

"These are long-term and real projects, not one-day events," she said.

The plans are, however, unquestionably less confrontational than Nashi programs a year ago, when the group organized patrols -- accompanied by police and known as druzhinniki -- to head off any anti-Kremlin protests.

Now druzhinniki, members of a volunteer corps that dates back to Soviet times, are making different kinds of rounds. Recently, the volunteers removed political ads from the streets of Yaroslavl following local elections on Oct. 13, said Alexandra Valtinina, a spokeswoman for the volunteers.

"People were tired of seeing all those billboards, and we decided not to wait for communal workers to do the job," Valtinina said. "We cleaned everything up."

Nashi burst onto the political scene in 2005, staging a 50,000-member rally in Moscow to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Victory Day. The group was broadly seen as a response to the youth-led protests that helped bring pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power in Ukraine.

Last year, the group noisily picketed the Estonian Embassy following a feud over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn. It has also been accused of harassing former British Ambassador Anthony Brenton after he attended an opposition conference.

Nashi founder Vasily Yakemenko left the group last year to head up the Youth Affairs Committee, which is in charge of the country's youth organizations.

A woman who answered the phone at the committee Monday said Yakemenko was unavailable for comment and referred all inquiries to Potupchik.

Nashi's fellow pro-Kremlin youth groups have been comparably tranquil since the end of the election cycle.

Vladimir Nasonov, spokesman for the United Russia youth group Young Russia, said "mass action" is not a wise tactic during times of crisis. He echoed President Dmitry Medvedev's accusation that the Unites States "set up" other countries in the current global financial crisis.

"Our duty is to defend the powers that be in case of large protests against the government," Nasonov said. "We need to back them, because the policy of those people living on the other side of the ocean should be blamed and not our government."

Andrei Groznetsky, a spokesman for Mestniye, another pro-Kremlin youth group, said youth movements were politically active only during the election season.

Both Young Russia and Mestniye appear to be focusing on more nationalistic issues.

Young Russia will hold a demonstration to "protect the Russian language" on Nov. 4, People's Unity Day, Nasonov said.

Mestniye, meanwhile, is devoting its energy to "fighting against illegal immigrants who work as unofficial cab drivers," Groznetsky said.

Both Nashi and Mestniye plan to hold demonstrations on People's Unity Day. The Nashi event, called "Blanket of Peace," will be held on Vasilyevsky Spusk, near the Kremlin.

After United Russia recaptured a constitutional majority in last year's Duma elections and Medvedev won a landslide victory in the March 2 presidential election, Nashi and other pro-Kremlin groups have denied suggestions that they might fade into political oblivion.

In March, several young people took to the streets to distribute rolls of toilet paper embossed with the logo of Kommersant after the newspaper quoted an unidentified Kremlin official as calling Nashi activists "jubilant street punks" and saying their services were no longer needed.

Also printed on the toilet paper was the cell phone number of the author of the article. Nashi denied any involvement in the stunt.

Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with Indem, a think tank, said the Kremlin needs all the resources it can get to deal with the current economic crisis, meaning that there will be few funds left over to finance youth groups.

"The markets are in chaos, and there are no bankers or businessmen the Kremlin can ask for money like before," Korgunyuk said. "What can the Kremlin ask of [the youth groups] now? To hold a sit-in in front of the American Embassy and scream, 'Down with the crisis?'"

In fact, Nashi is planning a Nov. 2 protest outside the U.S. Embassy in conjunction with Halloween, Potupchik said.

Nashi activists will bring pumpkins to protest "what the Americans did in South Ossetia, in Afghanistan and in other conflicts," Potupchik said.

The name of someone who died in one of these conflicts will be written on each pumpkin, she added.

Echoes of Victory Day and the Inauguration

I happened to catch a re-run of the Daily Show a week or two ago and saw Jon Stewart's hilarious and surprisingly on-point riff on the Victory Day parade and Medvedev's inauguration ceremony. Transcribing selected sound bites from the clip wouldn't do it justice - just watch it and laugh:

That - as well as the return of the outstanding Darkness at Noon, which is back on line and has posted an original video of the V-Day festivities in Moscow, inspired me to corral a few links to online material on the events in Moscow of four weeks or so ago.

CSIS's Sarah Mendelson wrote a "critical questions" brief about the significance of the re-militarization of the Victory Day celebrations, which included a brief digression down memory lane, as Mendelson recalled attending a Soviet military parade in late 1990.

Global Voices Online had roundups about both the inauguration and Victory Day. And the always interesting Wu Wei has an interesting account of what it was like to watch Medvedev's inauguration on Georgian TV.

[Update June 15: I wanted to direct readers as well to this link which fell through the cracks - Oleg Panfilov's brief comments stating that the question of who has the upper hand as between Putin and Medvedev will become clear when one of the two begins to enjoy an advantage in TV coverage.]