Tag: cargo cult

The Grinch Who Stole New Year

The colossal immersive 3D show The Grinch and the New Year Factory

Palma Mansion (18 Pirogov Lane)
Dates: 2.01.2024, 3.01.2024, 4.01.2024, 5.01.2024, 7.01.2024
Time: 11:00, 14:00, 17:00 (daily)
We recommend arriving 30 minutes before the start of the event.

New Year is a magical time of miracles and fairy tales! StageMagic Agency has produced a colossal immersive 3D show, The Grinch and the New Year’s Factory, that will entertain children of all ages and even adults! The show can be seen only from January 2 to 7 in the old Palma Mansion!

This New Year’s week will be full of magic, and even the walls of the mansion will come to life as if by magic! No, no, we’re not kidding! Thanks to cutting-edge 3D mapping technologies we will create a Petersburg Disneyland in an old mansion featuring enchanting sets, an incredibly colorful light show, and an exciting performance, including musical numbers performed by the city’s best artists!

Little viewers can look forward to becoming full-fledged participants in a exciting journey through Cartoonland and along with their favorite Disney characters saving the New Year from the insidious Grinch, who decided to spoil the children’s holiday and stole all the gifts from the elves’ magic factory! Elsa, Jack Sparrow, a wizard on a real magic carpet, and many more will come to the aid of the good elves! Will the cartoon characters manage to save the New Year? Will goodness prevail? Come and find out at the main New Year’s celebration in Petersburg, The Grinch and the New Year Factory.

Before the show starts, children will enjoy an exciting welcome program including interactive games with their favorite cartoon characters, a TikTok show, a beauty bar, a magician’s show, and even a photo shoot with adorable husky dogs.

But that’s not all! Every child will receive a 3D gift from Santa Claus, and every adult will receive a welcome cocktail from the owner of the mansion!

All categories of children’s tickets entitle them to receive a gift.

RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN BETWEEN 4 AND 10 YEARS OLD
ADMISSION WITH PARENTS
CHILDREN ARE SEATED IN THE FRONT ROWS BY AGE (YOUNGER CHILDREN IN THE FRONT ROWS, OLDER CHILDREN BEHIND THEM, AND PARENTS BEHIND ALL THE CHILDREN)

There is no such thing as too much magic, StageMagic knows that for sure! See you in the fairy tale!

Duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes
We recommend bringing a change of shoes.

Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader

Dima Zitser. Photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle

Dima Zitser, the well-known educator, writer, and presenter of the weekly program Love Cannot Be Educated, gave a lecture in Berlin in mid-December. Before his “pedagogical standup routine,” as he himself dubs his encounters with audiences, Zitser granted an interview to DW. With Russian schools becoming obedient tools of propaganda, the renowned educator increasingly has to explain to worried parents how to protect their children from the monstrous influence of the government’s lies and manipulation. Zitser told DW how to talk to children about the war, how to teach them to resist propaganda, and how to help them adapt to a new country when they have been forced to move.

DW: Russian parents today often do not know how to talk to their children about the war. They want to protect their children from trauma, but prefer to create an information bubble for them and pretend that nothing is happening. How do you feel about this stance?

Dima Zitser: You cannot avoid talking about the war with your child. You’re forbidden not to talk about it! First of all, it’s tantamount to deception: children are always aware of and know much more about the world around them than we would like them to. If Mom doesn’t talk to it, the child will take its questions to everyone else but Mom. It won’t want to traumatize its mom. It will imagine that this is a painful topic for Mom, that it is not the done thing to talk about it in adult society.

Russian children live in a country that has unleashed a bloodbath. Clearly, we must protect children, and we must choose our words carefully when we talk to them about the subject. But we cannot conceal from them the kind of world they live in. Imagine the level of disenchantment that awaits it when a child bumps its head on this reality. There are no secrets that don’t surface in the end. What do we want our child to grow up to be? A person who doesn’t care about the troubles happening in its midst? It is vital for a person to experience emotional strife.

— Sometimes a child has a hard time coping with the war and even feels ashamed because he or she is Russian. What can parents do in such cases?

You have to explain that it has nothing to do with a people or a nation. Tell your child about the history of Germany, say, which went through its own horror. Tell it about Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, about people who found the strength to stand out. It was hard for them, but if they hadn’t done what they did, the German people would have been finished.

My eldest daughter lives in New York. She does a lot of projects, including ones on behalf of Ukrainians. Her son Yasha is nine years old. [Ukrainians] refused to speak Russian with them in one place. So Yasha asked, “If this language is so hated and it has to do with this war, why do we even speak it?” There is no short answer in this case. Your conversation with your child should start with the fact that the feelings and emotions of people from Ukraine who cannot stand to hear Russian are understandable.

A close friend of mine from Kyiv refused to communicated me after the Russian invasion started, even though I’ve never been a Russian citizen. But later I wrote to her in Ukrainian (my mom and dad are from Ukraine), and we had the most painful conversation for an hour and a half. We met in Europe a month and a half after the war started, and she explained to me that she couldn’t bear to hear Russian being spoke. Although my friend understands that Russian-speaking people may have nothing to do with the war, she feels physically sick and her body hurts when she hears Russian.

I think we need to talk about it. This is what is meant by empathy. We try to understand, albeit incompletely, what is going on with other people.

Dima Zitser, ”Freedom from Education” (TEDx Sadovoe Ring, June 2016, Moscow). With English subtitles

— Suppose a child goes to a Russian school where there is aggressive ideological training, where the war is glorified in “Lessons About What Matters.” Is it enough for the family to talk to the child about what is going on?

I take a very rigid stance in this sense. If people who read DW have these things going on at their child’s school, they have to get the child out of there. There is no other option. If we’re talking about a person around six or seven years old, it believes what adults say without a second thought. It has no sense whatsoever that adults could want to harm it. This, by the way, is the basis of many crimes. The impact of school, propaganda, and indoctrination on this person is enormous! There are absolutely horrible studies on this subject in connection with the Second World War and Nazism.

Get the child out of there! In the Russian law on education, there are different forms of education—for example, homeschooling. Right off the bat tomorrow morning, any family can take their child out of school and start homeschooling it. After that, the technical stuff starts. It will be difficult, but did these people assume that they could live during a war and pretend that there was no war? That they could say things to their child at home, and the child would go to its quasi-Nazi school and everything would be fine? It won’t be fine. It’s a war, guys! It’s a matter of saving our loved ones!

We can’t live in a time of war as if it isn’t happening. We have to make decisions. For example, we can form a study group: parents agree amongst themselves, pool their money, and hire a teacher. This is legal, and there is such a trend in Russia.

If a person is fifteen or sixteen years old, it’s no big deal. Well, they will live amidst doublethink, just as we did when we were growing up. True, it did us no good. There is such an argument amongst adults: “We survived after all.” Like hell we survived! We learned to lie, to be mistrustful, to look for a hidden agenda in everything, to expect the worst. I would prefer to live in a world where people are open and frank.

— Suppose a child has been removed from a Russian school, but other sources of aggressive propaganda continue to harass it. Should children be taught to recognize and combat propaganda?

This is like asking whether a person should be taught critical thinking. Yes, of course they should! We should teach them to seek out alternative sources of information and ask follow-up questions. If someone speaks on behalf of the state, one should immediately question what they say. We must teach children that the phrases “everyone knows,” “anyone would say,” and “there is no doubt” are forms of manipulation.

— In addition to children who have remained in the Motherland, there are thousands of children who have left Russia with their parents. The problems faced by emigrants are often discussed, but what happens to the children is forgotten. How should parents behave so that emigration is less painful for their children?

The most common mistake is to try to maintain the routine you had in place before you left the country. Did you study music? You’ll go to music school here too! Were you studying English? You’ll keep learning English! We played chess on Tuesdays? We’ll do the same thing here!

Not even the best parents are immune to this mistake. They instinctively try to maintain stability at such moments, but they are accomplishing just the opposite. The frame of reference has changed! You can’t live in Berlin as if you were still living in Ryazan! People here are different—they speak differently, look different, behave differently. When we try to stop time, we keep the child from growing.

When we keep a child “packed and ready to go,” it has no chance to grow into the country in which it has arrived. What should it do, pretend it’s in Moscow? Not start speaking a new language? Not make new friends? Not go to the German theater? We are suggesting that these years be excised from its life. It’s a grave mistake.

Children are quite protective of adults, often more protective than adults are of them. They understand that Mom has it rough, and Dad has it rough, so I’ll try not to whine. I’m not very good at it—I get prickly and rude—but I try. Adults are really tempted to say, “What do you know about trauma? You’re only nine years old! What we [adults] are going through, now that’s trauma!” But for all its short nine years, it had lived its little life in familiar conditions, from which it was yanked at the snap of someone’s fingers.

You have to find things to keep yourselves afloat. You have to give yourselves the opportunity to learn things, to be interested in things, to like things. There is a beautiful tree here, a comfortable bench here, a nice store here. You have to establish a new routine: going out to eat delicious ice cream after school, inventing new traditions, having new conversations. Yes, it’s going to be hard, and that’s okay. But we’re together, we’re having lots of experiences, we’re recreating our family bonds. If mom (or dad) doesn’t tell the child that she (or he) is having a hard time, then the child is sure that it doesn’t have the right to say that it is having a hard time either. This is an important point! Sometimes, you have to hug each other and cry on each other’s shoulders. This doesn’t lead to neurosis. It’s a way for the child to realize: I’m normal.

Source: Maria Konstantinova, “Dima Zitser: You cannot avoid talking about the war with your child,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 20 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Today, everyone at Samokat is talking about only one thing.

Samokat has been notified that we are being evicted from our little home on Monchegorsk Street in Petersburg. While everyone else is busy with pleasant pre-New Year’s chores, we are being kicked out on the street along with our favorite books and holiday plans. We have just one day to move: tomorrow.

❗️First of all, we appeal to the leadership of St. Petersburg and the Committee for City Property Management. And we hope that the cultural capital is not indifferent to the plight of one of the best bookstores in the city by one of the primary independent children’s publishers in Russia.

Just yesterday we shared a Christmas greeting from Natasha, celebrated our publishing house’s anniversary, showed off our cozy annex, and invited you to our New Year’s workshops. Yes, we share all the news with you. Today, unfortunately, there will be no good news.

Samokat’s annex has become a magnet for our dear readers, a place chockablock with warmth and coziness, and we believe that this warmth amounts to much more than four walls (even if they are the four walls dearest to our hearts). Now we need your help very much.

❗️Tomorrow, our little home at Monchegorsk 8B will be open from 9:00 a.m., and we will be giving away all our books at a thirty-percent discount. Now we basically have nowhere to move the books, and any purchases you make will be a huge support to us. Also, if possible, please pick up confirmed internet orders.

❗️ We are looking for volunteers to help us get our little home ready to move. There are only two young women taking care of our little home, Natasha and Polina, and we are confident that you will not leave them in the lurch. If you are willing to help, come to Monchegorsk from 1:00 p.m.

❗️We are urgently looking for a suitable storage facility to temporarily store our books, we have somewhere around 250 boxes of books, furniture and equipment.

❗️ And of course, we are looking for a new shelter for our books. We need upwards of 25 square meters for retail space and book events, plus a utility room, in the historical/cultural center of Petersburg.

✉️ If you have suggestions and options, please write via Telegram at +7 (921) 809-8519, and Natasha and Polina will be in touch.

Source: Samokat Publishing House (Facebook), 26 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Natalia Vvedenskaya for the heads-up.

Valery Dymshits: Petersburg as Mistletoe

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Valery Dymshits
Facebook
October 26, 2017

In May 2016, the Akhmatova Museum hosted an event entitled Debates on Europe, featuring all sorts of outstanding people. I don’t know why, but I was invited, too. We were asked to talk about Petersburg and its place in Europe. I was also part of a special panel, entitled “How Do We See History? How Do We Deal with the Past?” I spoke my mind honestly. Today, I came across the two talks on my computer and thought I mostly agree with myself, so why not post them. So I am posting them. This is the first one, about Petersburg.

The City as Mistletoe
I probably will not be saying anything new if I note that Petersburg was originally built as the world’s largest cargo cult site. Peter the Great and his heirs firmly believed that by reproducing certain forms—and only the forms!—of European architecture and town planning, they would create a great country, a country that would rival or surpass Europe’s best countries.

When I went to Amsterdam, I was amazed by Petersburg’s resemblance to it. (Yet Amsterdam does not look at all like Petersburg, just as children resemble their parents, not vice versa.) In Amsterdam, I noticed that most of the buildings in the historic center had been built in the mid seventeenth century: the dates they were built were displayed on the façades. The entirety of Amsterdam’s huge historic center had been developed literally over twenty to thirty years. It was then I understood Peter the Great’s choice. It was not just the case that Amsterdam was among the magnificent, rich cities of Europe, but unlike Paris and other cities, it had been built not over the course of centuries, but in a few decades. Peter the Great realized that if he built another Amsterdam, so to speak, there was a chance of not only creating a hotbed of European civilization in Russia but also of living to see the project completed. This, of course, is a pure manifestation of the cargo cult.

An airplane hewn from the trunk of a palm tree may never fly, but it can be the pride and joy of an ethnographic museum’s collection. Russia did not become Europe, but Petersburg and its environs came to be a wonderful artwork, a huge artifact. I mean the Petersburg of the palaces and parks, cathedrals and embankments.

But there is another Petersburg, the one were we live. This is the city of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, built after the launch of Emperor Alexander II’s great reforms. It is the city of huge tenement houses, lush façades, and endless courtyards. This Petersburg was not a frozen magic crystal nor a miraculous receptacle supposed to attract the spirits of Europe with its outward shapes. It was a city of banks and factories, shops and slums: a normal city. We love it no less than we love the city of palaces. The loading cranes in the port and factory smokestacks dominate the city’s skyline as much as its domes and spires do.

But this city, in turn, woud not have emerged if the the first city had not been built. (And it was certainly built on the bones of its builders: animist religions involve human sacrifice.) A cargo cult is a religion and, as such, is no worse than any other religion. A religion’s truth is defined by the fanaticism of its adherents. The Russian cargo cult fashioned a great, artifact-like city. Like a colony of honey fungus inhabiting an old stump, another city sprang up from the first city, and this second city was real.

In fact, the Slavophile critics of Petersburg and the Petersburg period of Russian history were right when they argued that substantial homegrown grounds were needed to really build a great country, not empty, borrowed shapes. But by the time this criticism had become widespread, from the Populists on the left to the Black Hundreds on the right, it had already lost its main justification. Petersburg had become a natural, organic phenomenon, something that had sprung from the culture, not from the soil. As second nature, culture is no worse than nature per se.

Petersburg resembles mistletoe, a parasitic plant that grows on the branches of other trees. Mistletoe is quite beautiful. Since antiquity, it has been a symbol of life, and it was used as an amulet. The Romans and the Celts believed in mistletoe’s miraculous powers. It was a symbol of peace among the Scandinavians. It was hung on the outside of houses as a token travelers would be provided shelter there. If enemies happened to meet under a tree on which mistletoe grew, they were bound to lay down their weapons and not fight anymore that day. Mistletoe protected houses from thunder and lightning, from witches and maleficent spirits.

I would argue it is productive to compare Petersburg with mistletoe, with a beautiful, sacred, safeguarding parasite. We know that people do not quarrel under the mistletoe, but kiss and make up. Petersburg did not make Russia Europe, but the city has become a place where Russia can meet and talk with Europe. This is more or less understood by everyone, by the Russian regime and by its opponents.

Every country, region, and city tries to develop by relying on its own resources. Our resource is distilled culture, cut off from all soil. Let us imagine the Hermitage Museum is a typical mineral deposit, something like an oil well. It differs from other major museums since it is not a cultural feature of a major country and major city, as the Louvre is a a cultural feature of France and Paris. On the contrary, to a certain extent Petersburg is a feature of the Hermitage. I am not speaking of tourists. They have places to go besides Petersburg. I am arguing that, having emerged as the shrine of a cargo cult, Petersburg gradually turned into a condensed expression of European cultural know-how, projected onto a wasteland. The know-how was all the more important, since European cultural shapes have been purged, in Petersburg, of all ethnic specificity. It is a generalized Europe.

The question of how to fill these shapes is open. It is open to everyone: to Europeans, Russians, and Petersburgers alike.

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader. I would like to thank Valery Dymshits for his kind permission to let me translate his essay and publish it here.