Ukraine - send in the clowns

John Kerry - verbose and incoherent tit at the best of times, off to Kiev to save the day;  President Barack Obama states that "no country has a right to send in troops to another country unprovoked." - kettle, pot;  a Downing Street aide unintentionally reveals the approach of the UK Government to the Russian action in Ukraine by leaving his notes visible to the long lenses of press photographers - apparently we're not going to do anything but talk tough in "generic" terms.  With this shower, is it any wonder that Putin thinks he can act with impunity.

Morten Morland cartoon for 03.03.14 for The Times

Yanukovich in Rostov - not the Hotel Ukraine Moscow

Ousted president of Ukraine, the corrupt, murderous thug Yanokovich has turned up in Rostov-on-Don in Russia.

Rumours had been circulating that he was holed up in the Ukraine Hotel in Moscow.

YANUKOVICH IS NOT HERE

Putin vodka

Now on sale at Lidl.  For procrastinators everywhere...

Iron Felix still not going anywhere

As I reported back in October, the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky is not to be restored to its location on Lubyanka Square: http://blog.therussiahouse.net/2013/10/iron-felix-to-stay-put-again.html.

As reported in the Moscow Times this week, the Duma has confirmed this the case.

Moscow Duma Says Dzerzhinsky Will Not Return to Lubyanka | Arts & Ideas | The Moscow Times

Homophobia in Russia - Channel 4 Documentary "Hunted"

Another negative Russia documentary of questionable timing. Channel 4 documentary last week called Hunted which documented homophobia in Russia was intended to coincide with the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi - obviously capitalising on the international criticism of Russia on its gay rights and the new law prohibiting gay propaganda.  Setting that aside, it was an interesting programme but I found it thoroughly depressing.

It followed the groups of vigilantes, in Moscow and St Petersburg, hunting down, beating up and humiliating gay people. My overall impression was why do these people do it? Why go to such lengths - does other people's sexual identity upset them so much?  Or do they get their kicks out of it?  The documentary showed scenes of bullying, violence and humiliation - the perpetrators were obviously getting some kind of thrill out of it - enjoying the power, sexual thrill of talking about homosexual acts with their victims, sadistic pleasure in exacting humiliating punishments. It seemed obvious to me that they were in troubled by their own sexual identity, but hey, who am I to comment.

There was one man in particular, a married family man with a young child, who drove round engaging in harassment of gay people - but he was a jewellery designer! I thought, oh oh, hello - here is someone in denial.

I don 't want to get all moral relativist here, but it does seem to me, coming from a culture in the UK of widespread tolerance, acceptance of LGBT lifestyles, and indeed the recognition in law of gay marriages, that such developments are positive and not indicators of our moral decay. This has to be the right way.  The views of some of the Russian Orthodox priests and others in the documentary are morally repugnant, simplistic and backward.

One hopes that they are not representative of the country at large - I'm sure they are not.

Olympic Opening Ceremony BBC coverage biased.

Back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, when Western influences were frowned upon and aspects of western culture banned from the TV screens (What? the Russians had TVs back then?) western pop music could only be seen on the TV if it was accompanied by a political commentary criticising the decadent music - often drowning out the music itself.  But it seems this nanny state approach continues to this day in state owned socialist broadcasters.  BBC - I'm talking about YOU!

We couldn't just sit back and watch the spectacle of teh Winter Olympics opening ceremony, with the usual the dumb-ass commentary from sports commentators, we had to have a political commentary from the BBC's Moscow correspondent Daniel Sandford - a decent enough and objective reporter - but here talking about the Olympics being propaganda for Putin, being overshadowed by security fears, allegations of corruption, complaints from unpaid construction workers and concern about the rights of sexual minorities in Russia.  I don't think that an explanation of the political context was appropriate at this point in the proceedings.

What took the biscuit though was Hazel Irvine's comments during the section depicting the post war period in the USSR - scenes of reconstruction, space achievements, as well as many popular cultural references from the  50s 60s 70s Soviet Union. The commentator remarked that the audience in the stadium were really loving this section and she was puzzled that this was the case. How come this was a happy period for them! For gods sake - the post-war USSR was never a North Korean style closed society or dictatorship.

I remember a radio interview with Rodric Braithwaite, former British Ambassador to Russia, who was discussing his book  "Moscow 1941" -  about the first year of Russia's involvement in the World War II; he described his interviewees recalling that terrible period in their lives with some fondness - despite the horrors of the battles, the hardship and the repression of the Stalin period, this was a time in their lives when they were young, made friends, had adventures, fell in love - the war was merely the backdrop.

Whatever the reality - nostalgia is nostalgia - it can be pleasurable making a trip down memory lane (although I think derives from the ancient Greek for our pain).  So it is hardly surprising that the Russian people of that generation thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle.

I was so incensed, I neglected to count the number of times "iconic" was mentioned.  This over-used the point of meaningless word is so ubiquitous in BBC broadcasts nowadays - such is the fall in journalistic standards in that institution.

Winter Olympics, Sochi, Russia

Today, an American snowboarder pulls out of the Winter Olympics at Sochi, over safety concerns - and it's headline news; we have constant flow of negative reports filling our airwaves and newspapers: reports of unfinished venues, lack of accommodation for journalists, mild weather / potential lack of snow, terrorist attacks, environmental concerns, bribery and corruption, anti-gay legislation; huge costs and budget overruns. I can't help thinking that the western media is rubbing its hands with glee over any scandal or problem affecting the forthcoming Winter Olympics - they want it to fail. 

Even the supposed fact of a journalist bitten by the tiger that Putin was photographed with is seen as newsworthy (the tiger in question is just a cub, and there is some doubt over whether the incident happened. 

Sure, this is a massive propaganda exercise for President Putin, which may or may not be successful in masking or fixing any of Russia's many problems, but it is seen on the international stage as an opportunity for political point scoring.

One notable exception to this negativity was a recent 2-part BBC program: Russia on 4-wheels - a whistle stop tour of the "new" and "old" Russias. Two presenters set off from Sochi in different directions: one in a modern armour plated people carrier (more like a tank) favoured by oligarchs, heading northwards to Moscow, St Petersburg and Murmansk; the other in a 40 year old UAZ headed off eastwards to the Urals via Togliatti, Volgograd, Perm and Nizhny Novgorod. I enjoyed the program and I felt it gave a fairly even handed coverage of Russia in general and the Sochi Olympic preparations in particular - it was a fairly short series - two hour-long episodes to cover a lot of material.

Their report on Sochi visited the impressive facilities, the huge infrastructure projects - the presenters seemed genuinely impressed and were positive about the faciltiers.  But they didn't gloss over some of the negatives: the alleged corruption and the adverse environmental impact on Sochi and it's residents.

Much has been made of the huge cost of hosting the Olympics - as if this alone was evidence of corruption. The scale of spending is huge. The most expensive Olympics to date was Beijing which came in at $43 billion - the London games were a modest $10.4 billion. Sochi 2014 is estimated to be $50 billion. This seems at first glance to be profligate to the extreme, with the cost of hosting the games generally in the region of $3 billion.  But much of the costs incurred in Sochi relate to the infrastructure and civic development rather than on Olympic facilities alone - and this has been a mammoth undertaking.  

There are seven new venues built in two locations: an Olympic Park was constructed in Sochi's Imeretinsky Valley on the coast of the Black Sea, with Fisht Olympic Stadium and the Games' indoor venues located within walking distance, and snow events will be held in the nearby mountains at Krasnaya Polyana - at a new, world-class ski resort which has been built. 

But this represents a very small part of the overall project -  in addition, preparation for the games has included modernizing the telecommunications, electric power, and transportation infrastructures of the region. This has involved building new and improving many roads, tunnels, bridges, interchanges, railroads and stations in and around Sochi. There are new road and rail links (a four-lane highway up the mountains, and a high speed train link: Moscow to Adler, near Sochi), and extensive tunneling through the mountains.  
This has generally been overlooked by western media.

Legacy is an important consideration in Olympic developments, this one will be huge for the region.  With improved links to Moscow and regional connections, it may help to establish Sochi as a year round international tourist destination.  

I think it's time to stop the sniping, the criticisms, and negativity and lets just enjoy the games.

Khodorkorvsky Pardoned

President Putin has today announced that he intends to pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky who has spent more than a decade in prison.  This has come hot off the heels of the Russian Parliament's pardon of the two Pussy Riot demonstrators yesterday.   It's obviously an attempt to avoid international criticism of his rule on the run up to and during the forthcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.  But I think is just another example of his playing the Kind Tsar to mask the absence of a truly independent judiciary in Russia.

Buran: triumph and tragedy of the Russian space shuttle

Another anniversary! It's 25 years since the first and last space flight of the Soviet Space Shuttle, Buran (Russian for snowstorm). An audacious copy of the American Space Shuttle, the Soviet's version of  a"reusable" spacecraft was, in many respects, technically superior and took only 10 years to develop (compared to 15 years for NASA's shuttle).  

It was an example of the triumph of Soviet technical know-how and expertise in the space race.  It was first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. The ability to fly the shuttle into space, have it perform two orbits then land it on a runway - meters from its intended destination, all on autopilot, demonstrated the technical brilliance of the scientists employed in the space program. 

This is how the old Soviet new agency TASS (Telegraph Agency Sovietsky Soyuz) announced it:

"November 15, 1988 was marked by the formidable success of the Buran space shuttle flight in Soviet Union. After the departure of the Energia launcher and Buran shuttle, the orbital shuttle was placed on its orbit, made two rotations around the Earth and finally landed on the cosmodrome at Baikonur . . . . . .It is the extraordinary outcome of the technology and science of our nation, opening a new way in the Soviet program for the space studies.  It was the first and until now the only landing in automatic mode of a shuttle in the history of the aerospace. This new and outstanding fact in the space conquest was gained brilliantly by the science and Soviet technology."

The automatic unmanned flight did, however, mask a serious flaw in Buran's design.  Although it was intended to carry as many as ten crew members, including four pilots, there was no room for life support systems on the shuttle, so they had no choice but to fly it in auto-mode.

Perhaps the Soviet electronics industry, driven primarily by military considerations, did not have the commercial impetus towards miniaturisation that their western counterpart did, and so could not shrink all that sophisticated equipment to a size suitable for a manned shuttle flight. 

I vaguely remember an old Russian joke which was a wry comment on the Soviet's obsession with gigantism in their propaganda: The USSR has created a new microchip – it's the biggest in the world!

A full size mock up which resides in Gorky Park, Moscow

The tragedy was that it was not economically viable for commercial use and, thanks to the end of the Cold War, its military role was surplus to requirements. The collapse of the Soviet Union effectively brought an end to the Cold War, but it was the consequent economic dislocation and squeeze on budgets in the new shrunken Russian state, which ultimately put paid to the Soviet space shuttle program. 

McEwan's Best Scotch - Moscow (1988, UK)

Russia - nice place, shame about the beer!

Can't believe its 25 years since this advert came out.  Some classic lines in there "they've only got propaganda, not propa Geordie brew"

GQ Magazine 25 Years Old

Its 25 years since British men's style magazine "Gentlemen's Quarterly" first hit the news stands in the UK.  Originally a quarterly publication, hence the name, GQ is now a successful monthly publication with worldwide readership.  What is the relevance here, I hear you ask?  Well, apart from the fact that GQ has published a Russian version for a couple of years now, I used to buy GQ back in 1988.  I clearly remember some adverts in that first edition which were advertising clothes by "Sisley", mainly because I cut them out and still have them (loser!), which were  themed "Moscow Tour".  I kept the adverts because I loved the images of Moscow.  Here are two of them.  They are poor scans - as they were done years ago; but I will dig out the originals and re-scan them.

On Manage Square, in front of Moscow Hotel.  On the advert, I'm sure there was some caption "you must be some kind of idiotsky to speed down Prospekt Marx on a motorbike"

A good site for learning Russian

A Spoonful of Russian
A good site for learning Russian.

Russia House scene locations "bagged"

I've just returned from a short break with my family in London, originally for four nights, but owing to the storms and the subsequent cancelled trains, we were forced to stop another night - such a hardship!

Anyway, the trip presented an opportunity to "bag" some locations from The Russia House movie. With careful planning of routes, tube maps, I managed to persuade the missus that we could make a couple of diversions to our itinerary. 

 First stop, King Charles Street, Whitehall. After being on the London Eye, we walked across Westminster Bridge to Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. From there, we walked up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.  En route, we passed King Charles Street which is the first side-street you come to (on the left, heading towards Trafalgar Square) and runs parallel to Downing Street. This street, or at least a room in a building purporting to be on this street was where the secret service discuss the importance of the notebooks passed to them by a disaffected soviet scientist, Danté (Yakov Yefremovich Savelyev, played by Klaus Van Brandauer).

The scene is set with the camera panning past the statue of King Charles,which stand at the top of the steps facing St James's Park, and focusing on a window of a building on the corner of the street.

The second location I visited was the location of the street training scene in which Ned (James Fox) teaches Barley (Sean Connery) how to make contact with a "source" when out in the field."the source is the star of the show and the star decides whether to make the meeting or abort". 






It has taken me years to find this location - an earlier blog post describes how I found it. I always felt that the scene was filmed in an area around Victoria in London; in fact, it was filmed on Symons Street, just off Sloane Square in Knightsbridge, so I wasn't too wide of the mark with my Victoria guess.  It was great to finally walk along this street, but I was a bit disappointed because so much has changed since the film was shot here over twenty years ago.  

Mayor Sobyanin rides the Metro

Shortly after his re-election as mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin was pictured taking the metro to work. Obviously, a stage managed photocall to show that he is just like ordinary Muscovites having to endure the crush of the morning rush hour on the Moscow metro.

This sort of "man of the people" stunts rarely turn out well in Russia - especially when they make the country's leader - sitting aloof in the Kremlin - appear remote and out of touch with the ordinary citizen.  How does it look to Muscovites?  Sobyanin takes the metro to work, like millions of his fellow Muscovites; whereas Putin takes his private helicopter alone to his office in the Kremlin.

Back in the late 1980s, such a contrast was made between the then Mayor of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Gorbachev - the increasingly unpopular General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the USSR.  Yeltsin used to take the metro to work and developed a frugal image which was popular (or populist?) which contrasted with the luxurious lifestyles and privileges of the members of the Communist Party Central Committee - including Gorbachev (and his wife, Raisa, who was often criticised for her taste in expensive clothing).

Similarly, Kirov, the popular Leningrad party chief, was seen as a man in touch with the people, and his increasing influence was seen as a threat to Stalin - who was the remote and austere leader holed up in the Kremlin.

Yeltsin was sacked, Kirov was shot. Sobyanin, however, is tipped as a possible successor to Putin - it's even been suggested that he has been anointed by Putin as his successor, should Putin decide not to run for president in 2018.  As such, he must be carrying on in he same vein as Putin with his staged photos: a word of advice Sergei - keep your shirt on! ....please!

Iron Felix to stay put - again

Back in 2002, I wrote on my old web site about proposals by the then Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, to restore the statue of KGB founder, Felix Dzherzhinsky, to its former position in the centre of Lubyanka Square outside the KGB offices.

"the Moscow City Duma's monuments committee rejected an appeal by Communist Party members in Irkutsk for Dzerzhinsky's return. The Communists said in a letter sent last month that the monument to Dzerzhinsky was a "symbol of the fight against crime." 

A long-simmering drive to resurrect Dzerzhinsky from his graveyard at the Central House of Artists gained momentum in October when Luzhkov declared that the 16-ton statue was an "excellent" monument that had been "the highlight of Lubyanskaya Ploshchad." "We should remember that he solved the problem of homeless children and bailed out the railroads in a period of devastation," Luzhkov said at the time. 

His remarks were an about-face from four years earlier when he fiercely opposed the statue's return. Liberal politicians slammed Luzhkov for supporting the return of a man blamed for the deaths of millions in the 1920s and 1930s. 

The statue, one of the more notorious icons of the Soviet past, was toppled from its pedestal near the former headquarters of the KGB by protesters after the failed coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991.

Dzherzhinsky's statue along with with other communist statues were daubed in grafitti and unceremoniously dumped in the park next to the Central House of Artists in Moscow.  However, in recent years the statues have been cleaned up and returned to an upright position in in the sculpture park." (http://rossiya_david.tripod.com/n_dzhershinksky.htm)

11 Years later and they are still talking about putting Felix back on the Lubyanka Square pedastal.  On Saturday, Moscow city lawmaker, Andrei Metelsky, said that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could return to its place in front of the Federal Security Service's headquarters (the KGB's successor) after the monument's restoration, at the cost of 50 million rubles ($1.5 million).  However, the city legislators were quick to refute that claim: Vladimir Platonov - legislature speaker - said that the city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky.

The Russia House scene locations - update

I've added details of a few more scenes and there locations in my blog http://therussiahousescenes.blogspot.co.uk. These describe the meeting between Barley and Katya at Sergiev Posad, and the night train to Leningrad. Here are just a few of the images I've added (including a badge I got in 1988 when I was on the "Yunost" train to St Petersburg.

Oblomov: I’m like a shabby, threadbare coat ...

"I’m like a shabby, threadbare coat, worn out not because of exposure to the elements or hard work but because for twelve years a light has been burning inside me, unable to find an outlet and doing nothing but illuminating the walls of its own prison and, finding no opening to the outside world, has just been snuffed out for lack of oxygen".
Oblomov, Goncharev.

No reason for posting this, just like the quote.

Krasnodarsky chai - tea

Enough of the political posts, let's have a picture of a tea caddy - after all, it's the 25th anniversary of its appearance in my kitchen. I still use it. The Krasnodarsky tea is long gone, but I regularly refill it with Chinese "Gunpowder" green tea.

Pushkov is an arsehole

The words disingenuous or specious are words that usually spring to mind whenever I watch this guy spout crap on the TV, dissembling with the same ease as Soviet-era politicians and spokespersons did.  But his latest ejaculation - on Twitter - is just crass.

Alexei Pushkov, Head of the State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee,  has mocked the deadly shooting in Washington on Monday.  Thirteen people were killed and eight were injured in a mass shooting at the Navy Yard, a secure military complex in in the U.S. capital.  While most politicians expressed their condolences, Pushkov called the attack an example of "American exceptionalism."

He Tweeted: "A new shootout at Navy headquarters in Washington — a lone gunman and 7 corpses. Nobody's even surprised anymore. A clear confirmation of American exceptionalism,..." "The U.S.A. should part with the notion of American exceptionalism. It contradicts the principles of equal rights and smells of political racism."

What an insensitive tit!  

The term "American exceptionalism" was a term used by Putin in an open letter to the American people published in the New York Times last week.  Pushkov's use of the term smacks of toadyism - he is obviously trying to curry favour with Putin.  

But, I believe his crass and insensitive comments  essentially detract from what has widely regarded as Putin's deft diplomatic out-maneouvering of USA over unilaterla military strikes against Syria, and undermines the credibility of Putin's critique of American-centric viewpoint on world affairs.  In fact, I think it betrays a certain Russian exceptionalism - a sense of being a special nation - which often motivates Russia's attempt to restore its national pride, power and influence in the world (following the collpase of the USSR).

Putin is a tosser

...allegedly; at least according to Conservative MP  Henry Smith, the Tory MP for Crawley, on Twitter (in response to Putin calling the UK a little island) - and I don't think he was referring to Putin's judo skills; meanwhile President Obama has likened him to a 'bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom’.  Both of these comments have been made recently in reaction to events  at the G20 summit in St Petersburg.  Tosser or petulant schoolboy, or even jackass (as some internet spoof news sites have claimed Obama said of him) - none of these descriptions correspond to any of the characters and storylines in the Seventies UK children's cartoon: Mr Benn, as far as I can recall.    This cartoon was a favourite of mine, and I have mentioned it in an earlier post regarding my purchase of a gingham shirt like the one worn by Sean Connery in the Russia House (http://blog.therussiahouse.net/2013/02/a-large-unmade-bed.html).  In the cartoon, Mr Benn – dressed in a suit and bowler hat - passes a costume shop, which he enters, chooses a costume, puts it on in the dressing room, and leaves the dressing room through another door to have an adventure relating to the identity or role of the costume. 

Listening to a Russia special on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week programme earlier this year, I was fascinated to hear Putin being described as a Mr Benn type character by one of the guests on the programme: Fiona Hill. Fiona is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution (one of the Washington’s oldest think tanks, which conducts independent research into social sciences; primarily in economics, governance and foreign policy), and she has written a number of books and articles about Russia.  

Her most recent book, co-authored with Clfford Gaddy, is “Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”, which describes how Vladimir Putin’s public relations team has orchestrated PR stunts to appeal to the Russian populace; these have ranged from a  fire-fighting airplane pilot, the shirtless big-game hunter, the scuba diver, the easy-rider biker, even night club crooner – Hill thinks is reminiscent of the British cartoon character Mr. Benn.    These staged PR stunts do cause much amusement in the West and perhaps for the urban middle classes in Russia, but they are popular with the wider Russian population outside of the capital, specifically with the target  audience to which the various stunts are intended to appeal.

They ask in the book “Who is Mr Putin?”; because, it has proven very difficult, if not impossible, to get any concrete facts on Vladimir Putin’s past: “Observers have variously said, he has no face, no substance, no soul; he is 'the man from nowhere' - a nobody, yet a man who can appear to be anybody. Of course, Putin is not a 'nobody'; he only wants the world to see him that way, and he has gone to extraordinary lengths throughout his life to conceal who he really is."

Much has been made, in the Western press, about Putin’s past as a KGB operative – suggesting secretive nature, shadowy past, brutal operating methods, communist – but this is too simplistic an observation to explain his improbable rise to power. 

 Whatever we may think of the role of the KGB in persecuting dissidents, killing defectors, crushing dissent, its core function, as a security service, was to protect the state.  It has been said that the KGB, with all the vast intelligence resources at its disposal, was perhaps the most “progressive” organisation in the Soviet Union – in the sense that they were able to assess accurately the relative fortunes of western and communist economies – and identify that the centrally planned model was failing (not that they were able to do much about it, although it has been suggested that the KGB were influential in hastening Gorbachev’s rise to power).  

Putin’s background as a KGB operative was probably more important in the development of his “people” skills – in the book Hill and Gaddy describe how Putin let slip that he was a specialist in communicating with people:  “Working with people has a dual meaning in KGB jargon. It also means working on people”.  They have indentified Putin’s multiple identities, of which, six are most prominent: Statist, History Man, Survivalist, Outsider, Free Marketeer, and Case Officer. It is the combination of all his identities that made Putin an effective behind-the-scenes operator in Russian politics and helped propel him into the Kremlin.  

It’s fascinating stuff (from what I’ve read from various internet extracts and transcripts of talks that Fiona Hill has made) so much so, I have ordered the book today from Amazon.

Incidentally, my wife bought me a new winter coat last week which has a big furry hood.  When I saw it, I thought “my god, it’s a Putin coat!”.  So I tried it on and thought “I know, I shall go for a Mr Benn-like adventure - as President Putin”. Now, who is the tosser?