The Parable of the Isms - a guest post by Matthew Rojansky



[image source]



The Parable of the Isms, as Applied to the Former Soviet Union
Guest post by Matthew Rojansky

My colleague Karim Sadjadpour recently published a satirical analysis of Middle East politics, "The Cynical Dairy Farmer's Guide to the New Middle East," riffing on a famous Cold War joke about communism and capitalism, known as "the parable of the isms."  As Karim noted,

 No one really knows how the two-cow joke known as "Parable of the Isms" came about, but most students of Political Science 101 have likely come across some variation of the following definitions:

Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbor.

Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.

Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes the cows.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Satire it may be, but the essential truth of the "cow jokes" is what makes them funny. Karim's thirteen terse metaphors for Middle Eastern regimes cut to the heart of a complex region in which increasing American interest has followed increasing investments of blood and treasure, with very little added understanding of what's really going on.

The Soviet Union suffered no dearth of American attention over nearly half a century after World War II. Yet even the keenest observers, like Kennan and Kissinger, were focused almost entirely on Moscow, and within it mostly on the Kremlin. During the Cold War, that made good sense - after all, no one in Kiev or Almaty, let alone in Chisinau or Ashgabat, was making particularly important decisions for US foreign policy and global security.

But twenty years after the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, things work a bit differently in Eurasia. To understand why drugs flow so readily from Afghanistan through Central Asia and into Russia and Western Europe requires some sense of what's going on - and what's not - in places like Dushanbe and Astana. To see why a NATO-Russia impasse over missile defense is so serious requires an understanding of how the people, and the governments, in Kyiv and Tbilisi relate to their massive neighbor.

The former Soviet republics are no longer defined so much by being formerly Soviet, as by what they have become after twenty years of independence. Yet the old categories - socialist, communist, capitalist, fascist - don't easily work to describe a region where political cultures draw on everything from Rome and Byzantium to Baghdad and Beijing. Let's see how the "parable of the isms" might offer a convenient shorthand guide to the fifteen states that once made up the USSR.

Russia
You have six cows and four bulls. Two of the bulls die from alcoholism, and the remaining two form a "tandem" to take the cows' milk and sell it to Germany and China.

Ukraine
You have four of the most productive cows on the farm, two of which allow themselves to be milked by Russia, which upsets the other two so much their milk goes sour.

Georgia
You have two cows and one prize-winning bull. The bull is so distracted winning prizes that Russia runs away with both cows.

Belarus
You have one cow which you savagely beat until it produces milk. The milk dries up after your last savage beating, so now you must sell the cow to Russia.

Moldova
You have two cows and a calf, but the cows live in Italy and Russia and send milk home by Western Union. You ferment the milk into wine, and launch a frenzied campaign to join the EU. Meanwhile, the calf is stolen and sold by rustlers.

Armenia
You have four cows, but three of them live in Los Angeles and think they are horses. They send money for you to build stables.

Azerbaijan
You have one cow that produces lots of excellent milk. You sell the milk to Farmer Browne and buy cattle prods from Israel and Turkey.

Turkmenistan
You had one cow but you sold it to buy a golden statue of a cow that rotates with the sun.

Kazakhstan
You have two cows that produce vast quantities of milk. You sell the milk, buy each cow a gold-plated cow bell, and declare yourself bull for life.

Kyrgyzstan
You have two cows: one Kyrgyz and one Uzbek; they hate each other and refuse to be milked. Instead of hay, feed them tulips. Then sell one each to Russia and the United States. After six months sell them again.

Tajikistan
You have three cows: one Tajik, one Uzbek, and one Russian. You beat the Russian cow until it runs away, and use your misfortune to plead for international aid. Meanwhile Iran milks your remaining cows.

Uzbekistan
You have four cows. You let them drink all the water in the neighborhood swimming pool. Now no one can go swimming. You blame this on "corrupt and lawless elements," and volunteer to remain in power until the problem is solved.

The Baltic States

You have lost half your cows, for which you blame Russia and demand an apology. As consolation, the EU gives you a sleek Scandinavian-designed barn and NATO farmers teach you advanced milking techniques.

[image source]

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.

Battling Historical Narratives

Moldova in Myths and Legends, Chisinau, April 14.

I already pointed out how the government-run newspaper Moldova Suverana equated the protesters / rioters on April 7th with fascist Romanians retaking Chisinau in 1941. Now I have seen the flip side of this exaggeration of historical parallels, in a message sent around a few days ago by an opposition activist:

The Moldovan state authorities' violence against protesters is without precedent. Unlawful arrests, preventing access to a lawyer, torture, sexual abuse towards arrested young women are comparable only with the Soviet times in 1940s, when the country was militarily incorporated in the USSR along with the Baltic States.

Useful Background

Posters exhorting citizens to vote - "Your vote counts!", Chisinau, April 12

There is an interesting interview with Dmitri Furman in the Nov-Dec 2008 New Left Review, in which Furman analyzes the "Imitation Democracies" in the post-Soviet world. Ideally this analysis would be read in conjunction with some reading about Virtual Politics, which covers the process part of the equation, but a few portions of Furman's article stood out as relevant to a full understanding of what's been happening in Chisinau lately.

Furman, in his initial taxonomy of post-Soviet states, avers that Moldova is in good company:

A purely regional subdivision does not, in my view, bring out any especially significant post-Soviet characteristics. It would be better instead to class these states according to their type of political development, which produces the following three groupings. First, countries in which power has several times been transferred to the opposition through elections, and which we can consider as being squarely on the path of democratic development. These are: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, to which we might add Moldova—though this is a more complicated case, developing in its own distinctive fashion.

Second, countries in which power has never been transferred to the opposition, or indeed to anyone not nominated by the authorities themselves. There are four of these: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, ruled today by Nursultan Nazarbaev and Islam Karimov, both former First Secretaries of the cp Central Committee of their respective republics; Turkmenistan, ruled by Saparmurat Niyazov, also a member of the Soviet nomenklatura, until his death in 2006, when the presidency was handed to one of his comrades-in-arms; and Russia, where power has twice been transferred—but to men designated by their predecessors. These are what I have termed ‘imitation democracies’, characterized by a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule.

Thirdly, in between these two paths of development—democratic and authoritarian—lies a large group of countries which have, as it were, switched between the two. There are seven of these: Ukraine, Belarus, the three Transcaucasian countries—Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan—and in Central Asia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. They have followed highly varied trajectories.

Furman also describes the trajectory of "imitation democracies," in a passage which suggests that those Moldovans who are fighting right now to keep their country from becoming one are doing the right thing:

Where does this all lead? In the end, to crisis and collapse. Increased control over society means the atrophy of ‘feedback mechanisms’. Once elections become pure fiction and the media are on a tight leash, the authorities lose all sense of what is happening in the country. The strengthening of control leads, ‘dialectically’, to a loss of control. The quality of the elite deteriorates, due to systematic promotion of the weakest and most servile. Corruption reaches monstrous proportions. Legitimacy disappears, since there is no alternative ideology and democracy itself becomes an increasingly transparent fiction. Moreover, as societies develop, the psychological bases for imitation democracy are eroded. What had seemed incredible freedom in 1991—for example, the ability to travel overseas—has now become the norm, and it becomes more and more difficult for new generations to be satisfied with imitation democracy.

And Furman then describes why Moldova stands out as somewhat unique in his categorization - sort of like the Baltics, but not really:

Moldova’s trajectory has been highly distinctive. It is the only post-Soviet country where the reaction to the anti-Communist revolution of 1989–91 brought the Communists back to power; not Communists ‘repainted’ as democrats—those are in power everywhere—but real ones. At the same time, it is closer to stable democracy than all the other post-Soviet countries except the Baltic states and Ukraine. How did this happen? Moldovan society is deeply divided over the question of national self-identification: who are the Moldovans—Romanians or a separate people? What is today called Moldova was formerly part of a princedom vassal to the Ottoman empire, torn from the rest of the historical Moldovan principality as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12; thereafter, as Bessarabia, it formed part of the Russian empire, and its predominantly peasant population developed very differently from that on the other side of the frontier.

At the end of the 1980s, movements emerged advocating ‘reunification’ with Romania, and in the following years, the matter of national identity became the organizing question of Moldovan political life. The resultant divisions prevented the Moldovan elite from consolidating around the president, as elites elsewhere did, in order to prevent the Communists from coming to power. The ‘alternativeless’ regime in Russia, for example, was founded on the principle of excluding the Communists—with full support from the West, which backed Yeltsin’s coup of 1993 and the very dishonest elections of 1996. But the Moldovan example indicates that the Communists were capable of accepting the democratic ‘rules of the game’—and shows that a democratic victory for the Communists is not necessarily a catastrophe for democracy. There was also a strong subjective factor at play in Moldova, in the person of the level-headed Communist leader Vladimir Voronin.

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.

Rural Moldovan Bus Stops

This post is, I guess, a tribute to a guy who is something of a photography role model of mine, Christopher Herwig. To understand why I might find this perfect stranger worthy of emulation, you need know no more than I do about him - namely, that he has self-published a photo book titled Soviet Bus Stops. I own a copy of said book and highly recommend buying it as a gift for that Sovok-o-phile who has everything (Google tells me I'm not the only one who feels this way). You can view some of his bus stop images, with a brief introductory essay, here. Herwig observes:

The roadside bus stop serves a simple purpose – to show where the bus will stop and to provide some comfort and shelter for waiting passengers. One would think that the Soviets would have come up with one universal design for this community structure – simple, functional and cheap to mass produce. However, in many instances this was not the case, much time, effort and imagination went into many roadside bus stops. The sky was the limit with different shapes and design– blocks, domes, columns, towers, A-frames and archways, even ones shaped like birds, yurts and hats. If the bus stop was less bold and daring with its architectural design then the creators would often attract attention with decorating the structure with murals or mosaics.

Rural Moldova is replete with such wacky and beautiful bus stops, many of them in a tragic state of disrepair. I would have photographed more of them, but when you're driving on an intercity trip your passengers (even when they're family) start to look at you funny when you pull over, hop out and start clicking away at every bus stop. Nevertheless, each of them is a treasure in its own right. My photos can't really hold a candle to Herwig's, but I was lucky enough to get real people in most of them. The full set, including some other roadside photos from this past summer, can be viewed here.

Alexandreni

Alexandreni is one of those villages that I think has been subtly renamed in the post-Soviet years, from Alexandrovka. I am not 100% sure that's the case with the Alexandreni where this bus stop stands, but I know it's happened to at least one village of that name. Also noted on my last visit was a Dmitriovka --> Dumitreni renaming which has taken place in the last couple of years. Creeping Romanianization, indeed.

Gura Cainarului

This looks to be a modern variation (i.e., built in the last 15 years) on the Soviet idea of crazy thematic bus stops. The bottle is an ad for Gura Cainarului mineral water, which is bottled just a short distance away.

“Gura Cainarului is part of our life!”, - and that isn't a simple advertising slogan, these words reflect actual situation. It is Gura Cainarului that during 8 years is the most popular and demanded product on Moldova's market of mineral waters.

Name of mineral water comes from location of this unique spring in the village Gura Cainarului of Floresti region. Spring No. 3 delivering Gura Cainarului water is flowing on the depth of 120 meters. Such depth ensures complete protection from external influences. Numerous layers through which the water raises to the surface saturate it with healthy minerals that are vital for human body.

As you head out of Floresti, this bus stop is on your right-hand side. Take a left on the dirt road which intersects the "highway" at this bus stop, bounce along for a few minutes, and you can buy fizzy or flat water direct from the plant. Or you can just drink from the well that's hidden in this enormous stone bottle.

Marculesti

A daughter tends to her mothers hair while waiting for the bus.

Chapaev

This cheery yet derelict bus stop appears to depict Bolshevik hero Vasily Chapaev and a generic grape-bearing Moldovan maiden, but I'd be happy to hear any other interpretations.

Obligation runs into devotion

As some of my readers may be aware, I've been spending the summer preparing to take the New York Bar Exam. The stress and difficulty of this process is not a proper subject for a post on this blog, however I would like to share one sample multiple choice question which I encountered today in the course of my practice test-taking. This is a question that is supposed to prepare test-takers for the Multistate Bar Examination, or MBE, which is the second day of the bar exam in many states:

Gorby wanted to kill Yeltsin in the most horrible manner possible. He knew that Yeltsin had difficulty sleeping and took medication which nearly rendered him (Yeltsin) unconscious during the night. Gorby decided to burn down Yeltsin's house as Yeltsin slept, and seized his opportunity one night after they had finished playing chess. Yeltsin had taken his medication and was sleeping deeply.

Gorby got a coffee cup, filled it with lighter fluid, lit a cigarette, and put the cup underneath Yeltsin's bed with the burning cigarette balanced on the cup's edge. Gorby knew that as the cigarette burned, it would tip and fall into the cup of lighter fluid, setting the bed on fire. Gorby then left the house. The igniter worked just as Gorby had planned, except that Yeltsin's housekeeper smelled the smoke and called for help before the bed could ignite.

Yeltsin was killed by the toxic fumes emitted by the burning lighter fluid, but there was no other damage to Yeltsin's home except the blackening of the ceiling of the bedroom from the dense smoke.

If Gorby is prosecuted for arson of Yeltsin's house, he should be found... [multiple choice options omitted]

(c) Kaplan / PMBR

"Today's Pioneers"

"Today's Pioneers"

Last month there was some talk about the revival of the Young Pioneer organization in Russia. Russia Today did a talk-show segment asking, "Do Children Need Ideology?" All the fuss coincided with the anniversary of the organization's founding in May, which was marked more widely a year ago on the 85th anniversary of the Pioneers' founding.

RIA Novosti ran a photoset last year to mark the occasion ("День рождения Пионерии") with images from the organization's history, including one from a 2006 Pioneer induction ceremony on Red Square that could have been from 1986 except for the prominent involvement of post-Soviet Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.

День рождения Пионерии

www.rian.ru

смотреть всю фотоленту >

Here are a few more pictures of that day's ceremony by RIA Novosti's photographer which didn't make it into the photoset linked above.

In May, a friend emailed me this somewhat amazing video clip from a news broadcast by ProTV of Chisinau (which unfortunately can't be embedded), showing a bemused news anchor reporting on the Pioneers' induction ceremony in Moldova's capital last month. The ceremony was timed to mark the 86th anniversary of the Soviet Pioneer organization's founding and involved the induction of around 70 children.

ProTV asked a few of the kids what they were there to celebrate and got responses like "I don't know...Victory Day" and "our teacher told us to come." The TV station titled the report "Pioneers Help Their Elders," which is part of the Pioneer's oath but also no doubt a tongue-in-cheek reference to these children's utility to Moldova's ruling Communist Party.

I pulled a few screen-shots from the video of the ceremony (below), but it's worth watching the video. The ceremony was conducted in Russian, and many of the kids interviewed were not able to answer questions put to them in Romanian, which explains the subtitles in the screen-shots:

[part of the Pioneer's oath]
"...to conscientiously fulfill the duties of a Pioneer..."

"Be faithful to the Pioneer ideal!" says the
elderly man sporting a St. George's ribbon.

One enthusiastic young inductee tried to explain what exactly those ideals meant to her:
"It's very important to be a Pioneer, because [Pioneers]
defend...their city from different...well, how can I put it..."

"...from different enemies and those who damage the environment."

Perhaps she just couldn't think of anything else to say, or perhaps for at least one young member, the ideals of the Pioneer movement in its ninth decade are morphing from red to green.

A dog-and-pony show, starring a Bear

From officially approved "democrat" Andrei Bogdanov's wikipedia page:

In the summer of 1992, after a visit to Pridnestrov'e as part of a delegation of the youth union of the DPR [Democratic Party of Russia], he qualified Moldova's actions as "genocide against the people of Pridnestrov'e." The DPR's youth union condemned the position of the Russian government on this issue and called for immediate action by the Russian military "to save the people of Pridnestrov'e." [Bogdanov] blamed the Russian mass media for spreading lies about the events in Pridnestrov'e, and called the Russian government "sellouts." He immediately established a charity, "The Youth Chooses the Future," which collected money, medicine, equipment and food reserves for the defenders of the PMR.

This episode - far from the most bizarre one in Bogdanov's eccentric political career, which also included campaigning for pyramid scheme mastermind Sergei Mavrodi - is also mentioned briefly in his bio on anticompromat.

Amazingly, such a history of dedication to the PMR's cause doesn't seem to have won Bogdanov the support of politicians in this breakaway part of Moldova. Everyone seems to be supporting Medvedev and the continuation of Putin's course. This was the conclusion reached at an "international conference" which took place in Tiraspol last week, titled "Forward with Russia":

The conference was organized by the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrov'e. Participants included representatives of a number of other PMR socio-political organizations, as well as pro-Russian organizations from Ukraine, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, a representative of St. Petersburg veterans, the president of the "Planet of Children" foundation, and others.

A policy declaration adopted at this conference can be seen here.

Bogdanov also failed to win the support of the politically active youth of Transdniester, who are 100% behind Medvedev:

"PRORYV!": Demonstrations in support of Dmitry Medvedev will be going non-stop
Lenta PMR [reprinted verbatim from the PRORYV! website], Feb. 26, 2008

The week remaining until election day will be filled with many demonstrations organized by the International Youth Corporation / People's Democratic Party [ММК-НДП] "PRORYV!" [trans. - the name of this group means, "Breakthrough"] in support of Dmitry Medvedev's candidacy.

Young people from "PRORYV!" are working simultaneously in practically all of cities and towns in Transdniester. In personal talks with citizens, the "Proryvians" are explaining the importance of participating in the voting [голосовании], providing information about the location of election precincts and giving out calendars with Dmitry Medvedev's picture and an inscription calling on the recipients to come to the ballot boxes on March 2. According to PDP "PRORYV!" leader Aleksandr Gorelkovsky, March 2nd is a genuine national holiday for the 120,000 Russian citizens who reside in Transdniester.

"On this day we can come and vote for the president of our 'Greater Homeland' [«Большой Родины»]. Each of us understands how large Russia's role in Transdniester's existence has been: economic assistance, security guarantees, and the uninterrupted cultural-historical connection which allows us to maintain our national identity. The Russian authorities' attitude toward us in the future depends on voter turnout. That is why 'PRORYV!' is doing everything possible to increase the turnout and is endorsing Dmitry Medvedev. Unlike other parties, we do more than make political statements, and 'go to the people' in the fullest sense of that phrase. I am certain that serious political success can result only from direct interaction with citizens," emphasized Aleksandr Gorelkovsky.

More recently, it seems that one of the people behind PRORYV!, a shady guy named Dmitry Soin, decided to try to manage expectations, at least with respect to turnout:

"Turnout will be above 50%, but it will not be tremendously high. This is because many Russians [residing in Transdniester] are currently outside of Transdniester, and the ones who are here are certain of D. Medvedev's victory. 97 percent of the Russians we surveyed believe he will win. The lack of a sharp battle or intrigues will lower the turnout. From 88 to 92 percent of voters are prepared to vote for the main candidate, depending on the region surveyed. Mr. Bogdanov has the lowest rating, about one percent. V. Zhirinovsky and G. Zyuganov could get from 4 to 7 percent each

[all items translated by me - links to originals in Russian]

Uninspired and overcommitted

For some reason, 2008 hasn't inspired me to write about anything in this space. Oh, I've been following events and collecting links for posts, they just never get written. Sometimes my would-be posts end up as addenda (also known as comments) elsewhere. So, in lieu of a post requiring any thought or research, and in order to avoid having January pass without anything new here, I'm posting a few photos from our summer '06 sojourn to Odessa and points thereabout. The full photoset from that day can be seen here.

Guy selling every imaginable type of light bulb at the 7th Kilometer Market
(officially the Avangard Market - read a great NYT article about the market here).

Кафе-Бар "Ё-Моё," Privoz Market.
The name is a phrase which means something like "Aw, Shucks," in the sense
that it's a euphemism for a commonly used vulgar expression. The window advertises
"assorted ice cream," "cold beer" and "hot dogs." We did not sample the fare.

I don't pretend to know Ukrainian, but I'm guessing the truck is labeled "Live Fish."
Also from the Privoz market. Read more about the market here.

In the beach/resort area of Zatoka, near the Karolino-Bugaz and Limanskaya train stations.
The yellow posters are promoting some sort of adult entertainment -
the sign says "Happy Titties Await You."

Beach in the area of Zatoka. The sign says (in Russian),
"Do not swim past the place indicated by the buoys."

The bulletin board of a "база отдыха" (recreation center, lit. "base of rest") named Micron -
the name is no doubt a relic from the Soviet era when some Research Institute's
employees and their families enjoyed one free trip per year to the Black Sea.
Now anyone can book a vacation there!

Happy (belated) Birthday, Mr. President...

"Наши" натянули одеяло на Владимира Путина // Прокремлевская молодежь поздравила президента с днем рождения Вчера около 10 тыс. активистов движения "Наши" поздравили на набережной Тараса Шевченко с днем рождения президента Владимира Путина. Руководство движения объяснило замерзшим и вымокшим под дождем подросткам, что господин Путин на выборах в Госдуму должен победить сразу и безоговорочно, а не просто набрать "какие-то 50%". Чтобы сделать господину Путину приятное, "Наши" подарили ему 200-метровое "одеяло мира" и пообещали взять под свой контроль все избирательные участки страны. открыть материал ...

Well, it's not quite a serenade from Marilyn Monroe, but Putin received robust birthday wishes from Nashi on Sunday. As usual, the Russian-language version of Kommersant's article on the birthday demonstration is more thorough than the English version from their website. I don't read any ulterior motive or message into this, no doubt it's just an economy of translator resources on Kommersant's part. I've translated a couple of the more interesting bits from the original that didn't make Kommersant's summary translation.

For one thing, the Russian-language article included some of the chants shouted down from the stage - chants like "Putin, we are with you!"; "Putin is an eagle!; and "Two, twelve, two thousand seven - Putin, stay with us forever!" ("Два, двенадцать, две тысячи семь -- Путин, останься с нами насовсем!"), referring to the date of the Duma elections. It also included an interesting tidbit about the banner on the stage, which read "December 2nd - the election for Russia's national leader during 2008-2012." A few photos from the event, courtesy of Kommersant, can be found here. Robert Amsterdam also has a photo from the event and links to a Moscow Times article in which Putin is quoted as saying, "You know, as a rule I don't hold any parties, but this year is an exception." I wonder if Prime Minister Zubkov was at Putin's side during the celebration, as he has been in the past (according to Anticompromat, and yes, I know I posted this before, but it was buried in my ridiculously long post about Zubkov):

V. Putin invites V. Zubkov to his birthday parties (in 2000 [Zubkov] "...was summoned to [Putin's] birthday party at the Podvor'e restaurant in the city of Pavlovsk (there were only 21 guests)" - "Polit.ru", Nov 2, 2001, citing Kommersant). At one of Putin's birthday parties, accurding to Profil' magazine, V. Zubkov even participated in extinguishing the candles on the cake ("Profil'", Jan 26, 2004).

Anyway, here is the abbreviated English translation of Kommersant's article about the Nashi celebration:

Pro-Kremlin Youth Celebrate President's Birthday
October 8, 2007

About 10,000 members of the Nashi (Ours) movement gathered on Taras Shevchenko Embankment in Moscow yesterday to mark Russian President Vladimir Putin's birthday, which was rainy and chilly. Nashi leaders told the crowd, which came from at east 20 regions of Russia, that the president must win in the State Duma elections next month, “and not by some 50 percent.” The crowd carried signs reading “Putin is stability,” “Putin is peace in Chechnya,” “Putin is the Olympics,” “Putin is the stabilization fund” and “Putin is Sakhalin 2” and was entertained by techno remixes of Soviet pop hits.

Nashi leader Vasily Yakemenko, who is also a member of the state committee on youth, declined to speak to journalists at the event. “They complained about the rain and cold in the back rows,” Yakemenko told the crowd from the stage. “But I want to say that I remember the 1990s, when bandits ruled the streets, the country's budget was approved by Americans at the International Monetary Fund and Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky declared war in Chechnya. And I want to say that we cannot allow that to be repeated and the election of the national leader depends on us!”

The Russian Orthodox branch of Nashi ordered prayers for the president's health in all the main churches in Moscow.

Here we have a summary version of many of Nashi's greatest hits - cult-of-personality-level hero-worship of the leader ("Putin is the stabilization fund"), Americaphobia, myth-making about the '90s, fallen-oligarch-bashing, making the youth feel powerful ("the election of the national leader depends on us!"), and of course religion in service of the state. One bit that was omitted from Kommersant's English-language translation was this interesting exchange between the journalist and a Nashist:

"Are you enjoying the party?" I asked a young man dressed in a warm coat and hat.

"Well, it's so-so," he unexpectedly admitted, "We were brought here from Kovrov [250 km from Moscow], and here it's rainy and cold. I want to go home."

"Will they at least feed you?" I asked sympathetically.

"Where would they do that?" he became totally sad. "When they were giving us our instructions, they said to bring money and a lunch box [тормозок]."

"Bring what?!"

"You know, a lunch box, a package with food from home."

So much for Nashi's vaunted perks for the members. I guess a free trip to Moscow is all the provincials got out of Putin's birthday. Another bit:

Mr. Yakemenko finally set out the main points: "The President has made the difficult decision to head up the United Party candidates' list. But he can't do it alone,* and not everything depends on United Russia, either. And Putin can't just get some 3o% or even 50% of the votes. He must win immediately and unconditionally. And we, the Nashi movement, will help him do this!"

The crowd no longer shared his enthusiasm. The freezing and soaked young men and women were standing three and four to an umbrella, and many of them were shivering. On the pavement lay a piece of posterboard that had been dropped by someone, which had "Putin is our national leader" written on it with a marker. No one wanted to pick up the soaked and dirty poster, but everyone was also afraid to tread on it, so people stepped around it carefully.

*a strange thing to say, given that Putin is alone on United Russia's party list.

Kommersant also offered a brief video report from the festivities:

But it seems that not everyone thinks VVP's birthday should be something special. Echo of Moscow Radio conducted a survey (call-in and online - neither of which, of course, is scientific) asking the question, "Do you think Vladimir Putin's birthday should be a 'red-letter day' on the calendar?"

Results of the call-in voting:

1.	67	8%	yes
2.	793	92%	no
3.	0	0%	hard to say

Results of the internet voting (2869 total votes):

1.	421	15%	yes
2.	2365	82%	no
3.	28	1%	hard to say

For some reason, the very fact that they asked this question made me think of a little ditty that I learned back in the mid-1980s while attending a Soviet school:

Всегда мы помним Ленина
И думаем о нем
Мы день его рождения
Считаем лучшим днем

We always remember Lenin
And think of him
We consider his birthday
To be the best day

Tongue in cheek

Apropos of the latest gas beef, I can't resist posting this image. It's from a book I bought at a used bookstore that is a Georgetown institution - and that is having a half-price sale this weekend. I bought it partially for the title page you see above and partially with an eye towards dropping a see generally cite to the book in a paper I'm writing this semester about the various types of force Russia uses in the "near abroad" - seems like it might be worthwhile to mention that some of the moves used by Putin & Co. are from an old-school playbook. On the other hand, I still hew to the belief that market pricing for gas will only hasten CIS countries' departure from Russia's orbit. Once the leverage of subsidized gas is gone, Russia has much less to offer.

Random

A few interesting links that I've run across in the past few days:

- Belarusian bloggers present President Lukashenko with his very own "LuNet."

- News.ru's roundup of Russian and foreign media coverage of Patriarch Alexey's speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

- Dmitri Minaev, who blogs at De Rebus Antiquis Et Novus, has a series of posts summarizing Yegor Gaidar's recent book about the collapse of the USSR. Well worth a look.

- Popular Mechanics magazine encourages Russians to vote for a Russian mission to Mars:

Olympic dreams from the past

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics will no doubt shower riches (and white elephants) upon the people - and especially the leaders - of Russia's Black Sea coast. However, I doubt they will have the far-reaching and long-lasting influence of the 1980 Moscow Olympics on fences and gates throughout the post-Soviet space:

Veterinary Pharmacy, Floresti, Moldova
Taken on Aug. 1, 2006

Immortal Sovok

The eXile reports on the resurgence of propaganda posters and billboards around Moscow:

Russian Propaganda Posters Are Back With A Vengeance
They also have the exact same design
By Alex Shifrin

It all started last year, with a heavier than usual smattering of non-profit and socially minded advertising appearing in the capital. The smattering soon became a deluge. The amount of public service announcement advertising has now increased to such a point that, last week, while driving on the embankment near the White House, it hit me: PSAs now outweigh regular product and service advertising.

Read on...

Global Voices Online recently reported on some old-school billboards ("Putin's Plan - Russia's Victory!") which are apparently more of a nationwide phenomenon than the Moscow PSA inundation that the eXile's article discusses. Not that such billboards are particularly new - I seem to recall seeing ones a few years ago, ahead of the 2003-04 election cycle, that had a photo of Putin (also on the background of the flag) and a quotation of his, something like "Together we will make Russia united and strong." I have a photo of such a billboard across the street from the central market in Kaluga, but it's on an external hard drive somewhere...

On the validity of comparisons, Russo-British relations, and history

I feel sort of funny using new media to post photos of old media, but this book - bought in the book-buying binge attending the closure of a nearby used bookstore - is too good not to share.

Often in debates over at Sean's Russia Blog, commenters (one in particular) will begin to address criticisms of Russia by criticising other countries and finding that Russia compares favorably or that there is an injustice in criticizing Russia while failing to criticize the other countries mentioned. Sometimes this is relevant - often, it's not. Anyway, this book - Two Commonwealths, by K.E. Holme - published back in 1945 when the Allies were still all friends, shows the extent to which agenda-driven comparisons can be taken. It's also interesting in light of the recent tensions in the Russo-British relationship, although of course it's nothing new that the Allies - US & USSR included - all published "friendly" materials about their soon-to-be Cold-War foes.

Two Commonwealths can be yours on abebooks (see link above) for $30-50, but in the miracle of this going-out-of-business sale I got it for $5 - and my copy included some bookseller's pencil notation on the first page (where the price goes): "A regular Grimm's fairytale." Indeed.

Check out the cool skyline graphics, and the other books in the series (on the back inside flap of the dust jacket) - especially Volume III, which is to be titled How Do You Do, Tovarish? (it was actually published in 1947) and promises to be

A description of daily life, work, and leisure. There are at least two very significant things which the Russian and the British people have in common. They are a warm human sympathy for the oppressed and the unfortunate, and a passionate love of
freedom.

These two photos equate "local government in the Gold Coast" with "local government in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic." The first paragraph of text reads as follows:

Since 1917 Russia has been trying to cram into one generation political changes which have taken three hundred years in Great Britain, and economic changes which have occupied the best part of two centuries.

Translation: they may be backward, but at least they're trying real hard! And the direct comparison of the "two commonwealths'" policies toward their respective subject peoples is relevant to portions of this recent SRB discussion.

Photo captions:

"Indian contingent at the Coronation of H.M. King George VI. The British Commonwealth is united by the allegiance of all its members to the Crown."

"Parade on the twenty-first anniversary of the October Revolution, which ended Russian domination over the formerly subject peoples. Now they all serve in the Red Army."

And the visuals created by the Isotype Institute (credited on the book's front cover above - apparently this institute was a design innovator) are priceless and require no commentary - just click on the images to see them expanded:

Восток - дело тонкое*

This just goes to show that (to paraphrase Skynyrd) you can take the boy out of Russia, but you'll never take the Russia out' the boy. Rather than buying a porcelain Mao on Hong Kong's Hollywood Road, I found this overpriced (HK$300, bargained down from a truly outrageous HK$850) and rather anatomically incorrect porcelain Stalin (or, as some here who've seen him have dubbed him, "red-headed Mao with a moustache") in a somewhat more out-of-the-way tchotchke shop. I know that Soviet-sculpture-obsessed Rubashov will appreciate this.

Chinese Stalin - acquired in Hong Kong, July 2007.

*The origin of this phrase is this canonical movie, which has provided the title for at least one excellent blog.

Downtown Tiraspol in pictures

"Board of Honor" on the wall of an enterprise near the bus station
- it was vacant when I first saw it in 1999, and it's still vacant today.

Lenin statue on the square in front of
the main government building.

Statue of Suvorov

Near the Suvorov statue. WWII memorial signage; the sign
on top of the building is promoting a construction company, I
think, and says, rather imperatively:
"We are building the city in which you will live!"

Street scene near the main government building.

Inside the wall is a time capsule.

The plaque is addressed
"To the generation of Tiraspolians who will greet the 100th
anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution"
and is inscribed as a
"Declaration of the workers of the city adopted at the rally
on 7 November 1967 dedicated to the 50th anniversary of...
[the Revolution, I assume, but the last bit of text has worn off]"

The billboard says "We love our city!"
The street-level signage is from the government-organized
youth organization "Proryv" - the PMR's answer to Russia's
Nashi - which uses Che Guevara for its logo.

Central movie theater "Kinoteatr Tiraspol"
The empty boards say "Today" and "Coming soon"

Ususally one sees tank trailers like this one selling
kvas, but in this land of the Kvint distillery (whose
logo is on the tank) and large-scale wine production,
they are used for wine also.

All of these photos were taken on Aug 7, 2006. I have run a couple of them before in black & white, in case they look familiar. There are some much more spectacular photos of Tiraspol available on Flickr.