Russia

Don’t believe the gushing obituaries. Like Orwell and Sakharov before him, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had outlived his usefulness. Long since his art was sacrificed on the West’s ideological altar, the courageous anti-Soviet dissident had become an embarassment; a Putin-friendly, anti-Semitic pan-Slavist with a Tolstoy complex.

As a philistine, I’ve only ever read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. That book was stark, honest and left the reader to make up his own mind; unfortunately, I can’t judge whether or not his later works were indeed repositories of moralistic, self-aggrandising flatulence.

It’s all well and good for people like Zinovy Zinik to attack the Solzhenitsyn of today as man unable to “comprehend the political value of the right to disagree, of agreeing to disagree”, someone “whose views on patriotism, morality and religion attracted the most reactionary elements of Russian society – from top to bottom”.

Yet I can’t help feeling bad for the guy. In the 1970s, when he was the darling of the west for writing about Soviet labour camps, his revulsion against liberalism, alleged suspicion of Jews and Orthodox intolerances were ignored in polite company, like his ugly and spurious denunciations of Soviet dissidents with whom he disagreed as KGB stooges.

In 1974, when Solzhenitsyn first came to the US, he was already all those things he was at his death: brave fighter for justice, wrongly convicted war-hero and great literary talent, as much as a prejudiced, obnoxious anti-liberal Russophile. You don’t need to be Walt Whitman to understand that people can be funny like that.

While America only had use for Solzhenitsyn the rabid anti-Soviet (dismissing his savage indictments of ‘our son of a bitch’ Yeltsin, no matter that they came from a man seen as an authoritative moral compass when he’d been ditching dirt on the USSR) Putin eagerly tried to cozy up to Solzhenitsyn the statist, right wing mystic (with variable success).

There was always something laughable and pathetic in the Soviet Union’s attemps to frame thinkers, some of whom had pre-dated socialism by whole epochs, as communist visionaries in order to make them acceptable. Pushkin? A proto-Marxist! Remember his support of the Decembrists, right? Er, the fact that he was a high society playboy was just a convenient cover. And look at Tolstoy! Look at the tender sympathy he had for peasants! And look how dialectical War and Peace was? And Anna Karenina, what a stunning expose of bourgeois decline!

Good to see we weren’t alone! In 1954, as an animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm came out in cinemas, bankrolled by the CIA in order to indoctrinate young Western audiences about the dangers of Communism, the book’s author was himself under surveillance for…Communist sympathies. Thus, in a series of events not unlike having one’s face mauled by rats, a secretive intelligence service singlehandedly reduces a lifetime of dissent, conscience, artistry and intellectual ambiguity into a 2 hour mind-control feature, made in Hollywood, and bleating: West good, East bad.

And what of Andrei Sakharov? He was a big man on campus all through the 80s, when his message embarrassed the Soviet leadership and preached nuclear disarmament. However, his warnings of the perils of an anti-Ballistic missile shield didn’t quite fit in with the plot. Sakharov was against Soviet weapons, went the story line, not Star Wars.

Such was the fate of the intellectual, on either side of the Iron Curtain. Let’s hope that Solzhenitsyn’s death serves as a stark reminder of the dangers and gracelessness of using ideas and their thinkers as procrustean pawns against the enemy du jour.

[DISCLAIMER: We realise that this story has been around for a while since it was published in last week’s Moscow Times, but decided to write about it only today in an hommage to Luke Harding.

Also, never believe anything until it appears on Gawker.]

As Obama finished his speech in Berlin, one spectator said the following to a Guardian journalist:

“I wanted to see [Obama] before he gets assassinated,” commented one Emo-looking youth… Who would assassinate Obama, exactly? “The military-industrial complex that runs America,” he replied flatly. But, if they’re already running America, why would they care? He shrugged and said no more.

Such a statement could never occur in Russia. Why?

Because all Emo teenagers may now be banned under a new law.

Seems like there are some advantages to living in an authoritarian government after all!

Naturally, the ban would come exactly at a time when Emo has just stopped being cool in Russia.

The text of the bill notes that

Emos… are from 12 to 16 years old and wear black and pink clothing. They have black hair with long bangs that “cover half the face,” black fingernails, black belts peppered with studs and pins, and ear and eyebrow piercings, the bill says.

The “negative ideology” of emo culture may push young people toward depression and social withdrawal, and the movement carries a significant risk of suicide, especially for young girls, according to the bill.

It is too early to speculate about the number of young girls that would commit suicide as a result of emo being banned, or the role of heavy pressure from the mullet lobby in the bill’s inception.

“In America, there are many fewer good journalists than in Russia”, said Exile editor mark Ames before barely escaping with his life.

So now that the Exile has relocated to Panama and gone global, who will fill its gaping ulcerous void?

The FPA’s Russia Blog is launching an ongoing project to expose promising new alt-journalist talent to virgin Western eyes.

What sort of things are we (ie. just me, blogging alone in my windowless office, after work) looking for? Ideally, a toxic mix of non-preachy social consciousness, wry observation, sophomoric antics, modern aesthetics, political engagement, eclecticism and investigative reporting.

A tall order? Well, the Exile had set the bar high, but there are plenty of reasons for optimism. Russia has a burgeoning young literary scene, but one we in the West seldom hear about amidst all the din surrounding the state’s repression of the ‘respectable’ media, the sort of New York Times-style papers that would never have had the guts to cover such original protests as this , with or without government censorship.

So where do these fellows hang out? One place is Bolshoi Gorod (Big City) magazine. It’s a uber-cool mix of nightlife, style, literature and politics, with pieces like this but also some rather thought provoking social reporting. For example, the most recent issue carried a provocative series of interviews with the ‘invisible faces’ of nightclubs–the wardrobe attendants, cleaners and security guards.

BG’s sparse and ironical prose turned a potentially leaden and sanctimonious homily into an edgy and open-ended commentary on modern Moscow.

You get the idea.

This series will be frequently updated, so please send any tips this way!

What writers, magazines or papers would you nominate?

Forget Barack Obama: Medvedev is already the world’s first metrosexual leader.

Joel Stein recently wrote of the effeminate US Democratic presidential candidate in the LA Times:

“He’s well-dressed. He eats arugula (rocket) — which he buys at Whole Foods… He is, as we mentioned, quite thin. He may only be half-black, but he’s three-quarters gay”.

What a girl! Being thin, eating organic leaves and wearing an off the rack Burberry suit was the best Obama could do?

Once again, as with women’s tennis, robber barons, computer hacking, conspicuous consumption, espionage and racism, it falls to Russia to step in and show America how it’s done.

While it may have stalled a little regarding such incidentals as elections, a free press, tolerance for minorities and business transparency, Russia has made democratic history where it counts: by electing a president who appears to be more a puppet of GQ magazine than of Vladimir Putin.

Take this EASY QUIZ to see if YOU are a METROSEXUAL PRESIDENT!

1. When hosting an international summit, you give visiting heads of state gifts of:

a) Oligarch livers.
b) Silver scale models of the next generation T-90 tank
c) Signed albums of your own amateur photography, which include pictures of ‘Italian cherubs, a rowing boat bobbing on a dappled turquoise lake, ducks, and several landscapes’.

2. What is your favourite Crayola colour?

a) Bruised-Chechen Blue
b) Rib-eye Red
c) Deep purple

3. To relax, you:

a) go shirtless fishing
b) practice judo on little children
c) meditate

4. As a kid, you wanted to be:

a) a spy
b) leader of all the Russias
c) a lawyer

5. Outside of the office, you prefer to dress in:

a) a nuclear submarine commander’s uniform
b) just a strategically placed gun
c) turtleneck paired with a leather jacket

(ANSWERS: 5 Cs or more: Congratulations! You’re a Metrosexual President!

3 As or 3 Bs: Congratulations! You’re the new Prime Minister!)

A cursory analysis of Medvedev’s dress confirms the suspicions: Roped shoulders a la Tom Ford? Check. Waisted double vented shorter-than-average jacket? Check.

High lapels? Metrolicious!

Cheeky school-tie knot paired with uber-spread collar? Like, straight out of Gossip Girl!!!

And don’t neglect those nails!

Many commentators have attempted to paint Medvedev as little more than an extension of his predecessor. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In a radical departure, the new leader quickly jettisoned Putin’s boxy Brionis and his predictable, precision tied half-windsors.

But what does that tell us about his future foreign policy?

More than you might think!

Vladimir Putin’s preference for Brioni and Hugo Boss suits correlated perfectly with his close political ties to Berlusconi’s Italy and Schroeder’s Germany (Schoeder, too, apparently chose Brioni). Conversely, Putin was as circumspect of British tailoring as of its Berezovsky-shelterin’ Prime Minister.

Unlike his mentor, Medvedev is clearly a Saville Row man. Though we do not know exactly which tailor he uses, the subtly waisted cut and characteristic navy colour (preferred by the likes of Daniel Craig and Prince Charles) of several of his suits, together with his penchant for old-boy style asymmetrical tie-knots, points strongly to a W1S postcode.

Therefore, could the era of hostility and suspicion between Russia and the UK be drawing to a close?

It is too early to tell, but all those sceptical of sartorial power in international diplomacy should note the wonders Medvedev’s style has already done for Russia’s relationship with France.

The exile is back…sort of. Newly reincarnated as the exileD, it is run out of “Putin-proof” Panama.

Fuelled by paypal donations from readers, the first edition came out on July 14, Bastille Day.  

Exile fans can be reassured, at least for now: despite bitter avowals to quit Russia for good, the issue contained the familiar by-lines of Edward Limonov, Mark Ames and War Nerd, a typically hard hitting article on political prisoners, and plenty of photos of scantily clad Russian girls, covered in mud.

Gone are the heady heroin nights of the nineties, and with them, many of the expats who had come East to trade in the drudgery of their suburban lives for a more visceral, tragic version of humanity.

Now that the country brims with the Toyota Priuses (Prii? Priux?), hipsters, libel laws, Time Out Magazine, nuclear families, decent sushi and the other assorted petit bourgeois nightmares of back home, what’s the point of putting up with a scary government and summary bureaucracy?

Indeed, to witness non-oligarchs holidaying abroad, taking up sales and marketing jobs and driving new model Ladas or even Peugeots can be very bittersweet. No matter how clichéd, the question begs asking: has the well-adjusted middle class life that has enriched the hitherto threadbare existence of so many (though still not even remotely the majority of) Russians cost us that self-destructive, protean, brooding, extremist yet spiritual truth seeking poetry - borne of suffering, longing, deception and isolation?

Has Russia lost, in a word…its SOUL??!

More chillingly, has said Soul been sold to a rentier state whose petrodollars drown questions of illegitimacy and oppression in the warm, moist umbilical fluid of light sweet crude?

Not quite! And here’s why:

1. The 90s Paradox:

The libertinism of moral clarity and/or cheap drugs, anarchy and play that the expat rebels revelled in proved catastrophic for their Russia’s own Rimbauds.

In fact, the Soviet enfants terribles of the 1980s: young guys trapped in obscure think tanks penning underground verse or music, hippies and political dissidents who shocked and shamed their bankrupt system in the same way that the Exile shamed and shocked its own, could not survive in the new climate.

Their rock music – filigreed, cryptic and high maintenance - didn’t stand a chance against Aerosmith or the Spice Girls. In a country drowning its collective sorrow in endless re-runs of Santa Barbara and The Bold and the Beautiful, no-one had the time or money for their now-permitted protest literature. Their well paying research jobs, at which they could comfortably sit and write, disappeared. Many sold out; for others, despair and the dulling embrace of heroin replaced the creative kick of vodka and kombucha tea.

By the end of the 1990s, the Soviet intellectual, dissident and underground scene effectively disappeared. In 1998, Claude Frioux had written its obituary in Le Monde Diplomatique:

Russia’s intellectuals are now entirely absorbed with questions of material survival, paralysed by a fear of displeasing somebody, and confused about how to deal with the mafia face of power….They are no longer the small islands of lucid dignity that they once were. They are now an amorphous mass, and outside observers comment dismissively on their cynical lack of concern and their total absorption in the business of making ends meet.

Even in Russia, people sitting in unheated flats and using furniture for firewood eventually switched from questions of philosophy to questions of finding scraps of food; undoubtedly in an homage to Bakhtin.

2. Biting the Hand that Feeds You:

A cursory look at instances of mass intellectual awakening/rebellion reveals that such events generally follow periods of increased material wealth and stability. 1968 is the obvious example. In Russia, it was no different. The impoverished and hellish 1930s and 40s gave way to the staid, authoritarian and materialistic 1950s. Yet before the decade was out, Khruschev’s famous Thaw began. Similarly, the wealthy, even ‘decadent’ years of Brezhnev’s stagnation (few in the West realise that Soviet living standards peaked in the mid 1970s, and that it was the time of every baby boomer’s life) preceded the grass roots rebellions of the late 1970s and early 80s that eventually paved the way for Gorbachev’s glasnost.

History shows that as soon as (but not a moment before) a country raises a generation of reasonably well fed, educated young people in an ordered, stable society, they will immediately proceed to do their best to undermine and destroy that society, tear up its sick, fraudulent and oppressive underbelly, and seek freedom. Before long, they will become bankrupt and bitter or ‘grown up’ and responsible, and the cycle will continue.

Thus, is it any surprise that after a decade of abject poverty and national trauma beginning in the late 1980s, Russia now witnesses an era of a materially comfortable, socially conservative authoritarianism?

Indeed, it would be useful to keep in mind an article by Other Russia leader Eduard Limonov that appeared in today’s Grani.ru newspaper.

In it, he writes that Putin’s authoritarian system will be overturned not by the impoverished masses, but by a growing wave of educated disaffected youth feeling stifled and demanding philosophical rather than material freedom. Thus, unlike with the masses, the regime’s capacity for delivering the goods economically would no longer be enough to save it.

So where is this new ‘class for itself’, these islands of lucid dignity? We don’t hear much about them in the West, but they are definitely out there. In the field, one group is Limonov’s own National Bolshevik Party foot soldiers, frequently arrested on trumped up sedition charges, and even occasionally killed. On the intellectual front, someone to watch is Kirill Medvedev, a young dissident writer, poet, activist and blogger whose work has recently been profiled by the dashing Russian-American factotum and animal lover Keith Gessen in his own thick journal n+1. What kinds of things can we expect from this new generation? Well, a recent essay posted on Medvedev’s site quotes the following poem:

Literature Will Be Tested
—
Entire literatures consisting of subtle turns of phrase
will be tested to prove
that where there was oppression,
there were also rebellions.
By the prayers of earthly creatures to heavenly beings
it will be shown that the early creatures trampled one another.
Their rarefied verbal music will testify
that many did not have enough to eat.

Don’t write off Medvedev’s Russia quite yet.

Mysterious message spotted on their website. Will update with more information.

I’m not the nationalistic sort. I count in my head in English, I think Ukrainians are alright, at heart. Even the Georgians, when they behave. I quietly enjoy the good news from back home and decry the bad, with the equal dose of ironic detachment and self-referential mockery demanded of my generation.

Yet I’d just lost my voice after two hours spent in a delirious jingoistic orgy as Russia devastated the Dutch. Watching Russia’s mesmerising play unlocked something primal in me, something dark, smouldering, bloodlustily beautiful.

60 minutes in: caught myself trying to superglue a small Russia flag to my neighbour’s front door.

10 minutes into overtime: searching Aeroflot’s website, rearing to go liberate my brother Slavs in Kosovo and Estonia.

But enough about me: what does this success say about Russia? Two important parallels stand out:

1: The last time Russia triumphed under the closest thing to a Dutch coach was when Peter the Great applied what he learned in Holland to drag his country into modernity. He studied ship building in Amsterdam, kept a Dutch mistress and in addition to technological advances tried to introduce to Russia a protestant spirit of hard work and self reliance. Yet in many ways, Peter’s reign was a culturally repressive one. Peter’s contempt for indigenous Russian traditions and institutions meant that it was only during Pushkin that the Russian language and culture had begun to shed their aura of inferiority.

2: The last time Russia faced the Dutch in a European championship was 1988, at the heyday of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, which remade the country’s social and intellectual fabric. Incidentally, the inspirations for Gorbachev’s reforms were also Western European. Perestroika and ‘new thinking’ were heavily influenced by Italian Eurocommunism and Gramscism. Unlike Peter’s reforms, however, Perestroika ended up being a dismal failure in economic, military and technological terms. Yet it produced an immense cultural and creative awakening.

So was the match a metaphor for a national renaissance, and if so, which kind?

From a purely sporting standpoint, the renaissance of Russia’s team transcends these historical parallels. Hiddink did not remake the squad in the Western European image; in fact, he achieved what had eluded both Gorbachev and Peter the Great – using Western know how to activate and enhance inherent Russian strengths. In his brilliant piece in the Guardian, football historian Jonathan Wilson writes that “Russia’s thrilling commitment to fluidity represents a return to the fundamentals of their own footballing heritage”: after years in the wilderness, Arshavin and co have revived the authentic ‘total football’of the young Soviet side of the 1940s.

Russia is clearly experiencing a re-birth. Its massive sporting successes (whether in women’s tennis, the Olympics or hockey) after over a decade smarting from the horrors of transition only complement its economic and geopolitical re-assertion. Russia is in the news.

Putin’s rule, like Peter’s, aggressively sought Western engagement and know-how, and embraced with zeal its business (if not political) institutions. These instruments, however, were not used to ‘undo’ or ‘over-ride’ Russian culture as in Peter’s day. In fact, the Putin era was marked by a strained synthesis of economic and commercial Westernisation coupled with a peculiar, artificially inseminated nativism.

The state sanctioned fetishisation of the Soviet Union in popular culture, the Putin-inspired brand of laddism and machismo, the return of the traditional family, the constriction of press freedom, the growing ethnic prejudice and nationalism have been the repressive corollaries of this technical modernisation. Yet in one sense, the net effect is the same as in Peter’s day: a growing austerity and social intolerance. The current renaissance is neither deniable nor progressive.

In Euro 1988, the USSR lost to Holland. Like its squad, the Soviet Union itself had run out of steam. Yet the defeat coincided with the flowering of Moscow News, Ogonyok magazine and other independent media, and the general culmination of glasnost, or openness.

The booming, assertive and proud country that won against the Dutch yesterday could not be more different from its beleaguered, teetering predecessor of 20 years ago. Not least because that win came on the heels of the closure of yet another newspaper.

Not to be outdone by yesterday’s tennis ‘interviews’ in the Daily Telegraph, this Sunday’s New York Times front page photo made sure no-one skipped straight to the magazine section:

“Free and Flush, Russians Eager to Roam Abroad”, the headline beamed, in case anyone might also be interested in reading the accompanying article, which happened to be about the new-found prosperity of ordinary Russians. Here are a few interesting titd -bits from the piece:

“The number of Russian tourists visiting countries outside the former Soviet Union grew to 7.1 million in 2006, the last year statistics were available, from 2.6 million in 1995, according to the Russian government.

…[Increased] foreign travel reflects not just Russia’s economic revival under Vladimir V. Putin, but also how the country has become, in some essential ways, normal.

Many Russians interviewed here credited Mr. Putin, the former president and current prime minister, for their ability to travel, saying that he was responsible for Russia’s new prosperity.
If you have some time and a little money, you can travel. Just like everyone else in the world.

“It is now so easy — buy a package tour for $800, and here we are, in paradise,” said Ms. Kasyanova…”

Crickey! With all this globetrotting, is there like, anyone even left in Russia? Well, the New York Times certainly couldn’t care less.

But scholar and Russia blogger Sean Guillory has bothered to track down a few of these non-travelling losers, pickling peppers in Voronezh instead of packing La Scala.

21.7 million losers, to be precise. Yep, that’s the number of Russians living below the Federal subsistence (read: starvation) threshold of $95 dollars a month.

So here’s a little lesson in newsworthiness for the New York Times, next time it wants to devote a front page spread to a social phenomenon gripping Russia:

But then, how on Earth would you work a good bikini shot into such a story?

The English may accuse Russia of bad sportsmanship in the boardroom, but they certainly wouldn’t mind taking a bit of a corporate raiding from the new crop of Soviet bloc sportswomen.

A series of ‘interviews’ to “assess the changes on court” was The Daily Telegraph’s highly plausible excuse to “meet eight rising stars from the east in distinctly non-regulation kit”.

Good to see the Tottygraph fly its lecherous old flag…for the Motherland!