Tag: Gennady Gudkov

The Danger of a Single Story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story” (TED, YouTube, 7 October 2009)

Diversity and Inclusion

Allrecipes is and always has been a community built around love. We are people who love food, love to cook, and love to share recipes and stories. There is no room for hate, racism, or inequality in our community. The 60 million cooks who make up the Allrecipes audience are extraordinarily diverse. We strive to celebrate the home cooks who bring Allrecipes to life, featuring them on the website and in the pages of Allrecipes magazine. 

We are committed to the goal of having contributors, featured cooks, featured recipes, and stories reflect the diversity of the Allrecipes community in our digital properties and in the magazine—and know that we still have much work to do. 

We are working to highlight more of the stories and traditions of our diverse audience. In 2022, we are reviewing and editing content representing 20 percent of our traffic, with the goal of removing any bias in language and instances of cultural appropriation, including language around race, gender, sexual orientation, and glamorized colonialism. 

We are also focused on recruiting more diverse voices and diverse contributors to our staff, our freelance pool, and our Allrecipes Allstars brand ambassador program. And we are working to ensure that our video and voice programming features the same diversity as our audience.  

We are dedicated to working with recipe developers, food writers, editors, food stylists, photographers, videographers, podcasters, illustrators, and models who reflect the strength and diversity of our community.

Source: “About Us,” Allrecipes.com

What can I say to the question, how are we? I was at my Arabic lesson, while Natan, Dan and our nanny Vika were at home. Usually, Natan and I would have been returning from the beach right at this time. Everyone was expecting Iranian missiles, so some of the students were looking at their phones during the lesson. In Hebrew, which we are forbidden to speak in class, there is no word for “terrorist attack”; the word used is פיגוע — “assault,” “infliction of harm.” We hadn’t had time to learn it in Arabic. When the woman sitting next to me uttered it in conjunction with the name of our street, we decided to take a five-minute break to make sure everyone was okay. Dan said they were fine, but that there was the corpse of a very young guy lying outside the house and that he was afraid it was someone from the neighborhood. (We moved in three months ago and haven’t met everyone yet.) Itai, Dan’s son, could not reach him and texted me to lock all the doors urgently, as the chase was still on. So I started calling Dan and Vika again, but couldn’t get through right away. Then the siren went off and we had to go to the bomb shelter in the upscale building next door. Normally, sitting in a bomb shelter in Israel is pretty fun and privileged, but when your child and loved one are sitting in an old building with huge windows on all sides and you don’t really know when it’s going to end, it spoils the fun a bit. When the sirens stopped, I jumped on my bike as quickly as I could and raced home. The whole neighborhood was cordoned off, and no argument that I lived there and that my child was there had any effect. The back entrance from the street parallel to ours came to my rescue. The next corner was also cordoned off, and chockablock with cops and ambulances. While I was fiddling with my bike, a woman said, “That’s the second terrorist,” pointing to a long black rubbish bag in the middle of the block, which several people were lifting and packing into another rubbish bag. I glimpsed it all very quickly, and I was in a hurry to get home, to pack Natan’s things in case we had to go to the bomb shelter on the next block. But then it was sort of over, and the phones started ringing off the hook.

This morning was quiet and so idyllically beautiful, as it almost always is here, that I felt like getting out of bed and just living. The entire street in front of our building and the building next door was still splattered with blood. I ran to find out from the neighbors if everyone was alive. They said they were. They had rescued a few people from the bus stop by dragging them into their yard. (Yes, these are the same neighbors who yell at each other in the evenings in such a way that it looks like a murderous rampage is about to kick off.) The woman from the supermarket opposite said that her nephew and niece and their mom had been on that tram. The three- and six-and-a-half-year-old children saw a head shot through, and blood and brains pouring out of it onto the floor. The boy vomited all night, while the younger girl panics when she sees a tram and screams רכבת שרמוטה (“Fucking tram!”) at it.

The murdered mom with the baby in the sling turned out to be the wife of Dan’s colleague. He visited us a couple of months ago, and we talked about whether AI can assist non-verbal children in communicating. He and his family had recently gone on holiday somewhere in Asia. Dan says that the last time they had met, he was beaming with happiness.

Now there are flowers, candles, notes, and (for some reason) an Israeli flag draped over the bus stop. There are many journalists on hand, but most people refuse to be interviewed.

For the second time in the last year and a half, death had missed us by about a quarter of an hour. I couldn’t say I have any strong feelings about it. I had no time to be scared for myself or even for Natan. It was either that there is so much anxiety in a mother’s everyday life that there are no reserves of fear when it would be warranted, or the realization that for almost a year now the enormous number of murders, deaths from malnutrition and other savage things happening every day has dulled the feeling that the disaster happening on your doorstep is one of a kind.

Apparently, the very young man who was lying outside the building had been one of the shooters. Dan saw them cut his shirt open. I don’t know the proper word for what happened. An act of terror? An act of desperation? An act of stupidity? An act of struggle? Revenge? Madness? An attack? A suicide?

Remembering the acute orphan-like longing when your mom leaves you to sleep at someone’s house and goes away. Fearing that a nine-month-old baby will live his whole life with that feeling — along with tens of thousands of other children.

Source: Olga Jitlina (Facebook), 2 October 2024. Translated by Thomas Campbell. Ms. Jitlina is a friend of mine whose artwork and writings have been featured on this website on several occasions.

Western leaders and politicians are calling for an end to the airstrikes in the Middle East. Do they even want to know and understand what is going on here?

Israel is the only country of freedom and democracy in this part of the planet. It has made serious progress.

Source: Gennady Gudkov (X), 3 October 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Gennady Gudkov is a Russian liberal opposition politician and businessman who lives in exile in Bulgaria.

They Don’t Stay in Their Lane

Bizarre Beasts, “Tenrecs Will Not Stay in Their Lane”

If all crustaceans “want” to look like crabs, then tenrecs “want” to look like basically any other small mammal. These weird little guys are endemic to Madagascar—they’re native to nowhere else on Earth.

Source: Bizarre Beasts (YouTube), 7 April 2023. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the link and the BBC Radio 4 programme “Nature Table” for the inspiration.

Prominent Russian liberal in exile Gennady Gudkov wrings his hands over what the “coloreds” are doing to his Russian liberal fantasy “Europe”: “Europe’s new cultural (or multicultural?) code (if that really is Finland).” ||| TRR

Source: Gennady Gudkov (X), 6 July 2024

Good News No. 3: We Can Do It!

  • We can build and work. We have been creating many new things — from cleaning firms [kliningovykh firm] and journalism projects to organizing impressive professional conferences and medical services the likes of which have never been seen!
  • We can overcome animosities and help one another! We have built outstanding platforms on the internet to help those who have it worse than we do. (However, it is still difficult to say this about the Russian opposition.)
  • We are creating our new culture!

Source: “A Time Without a Place, or How to Survive New Circumstances,” Moscow Times Russian Service, 5 July 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Inside Russia with Ekaterina Schulmann

Sciences Po and its Provost Sergei Guriev, a world-renowned Russian academic and economist who had to flee his country in a day in 2013, were honoured to welcome ‪@Ekaterina_Schulmann‬ for a very exclusive conference on 20 April, 2023. This political scientist and social media sensation guest speaker addressed the serious matters of the Russian regime stability and the dynamics of public opinion.

Source: Sciences Po (YouTube), 8 May 2023. My question, had I been in the auditorium for this fascinating lecture, would have been to the audience: how many of you are neither Russian nationals nor speak Russian? I suspect that the numbers of such non-Russian nationals and non-Russian speakers were quite low. And why was this lecture delivered in English, not French? ||| TRR

Source: unsolicited ad on Facebook

On 2 July 2024, International Law Club successfully organized an academic discourse entitled “Russia and NATO: Ceasefire in Ukraine.”

The speakers for the program included Dr. Yubaraj Sangroula (Professor of International Law), Dipak Gyawali (Former Minister of Ministry of Water Resources, Nepal), Dr. Govind Kusum (Former Secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs), Prem Chandra Rai (From Himalayan Development Affairs Council, Nepal), Yugichha Sangroula (Masters in International Humanitarian Law from Geneva), Dmitry Stefanovich (From IMEMO RAS, Moscow)

The welcoming remarks for the discourse were delivered by Anton Maslov, First Secretary and Director of the Russian House. The distinguished Chief Guest of the program was Seniormost Advocate Krishna Prasad Bhandari.

Dr. Dipak Gyawali provided valuable insights into the historical context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, emphasizing its longstanding nature within the framework of NATO-Russia dynamics.

Professor Dr. Yubaraj Sangraoula shed light on the hegemonic influences and Western interference in global affairs, highlighting the concept of a rule-based international order that has been divisive.

Assoc. Prof. Yuggichhya Sangroula emphasized the importance of interpreting international law in a balanced manner, noting the significant contributions of Asian nations to its development alongside European nations.

Assoc. Prof. Prem Chandra Rai advocated for adherence to the UN Charter as the foundation of international law, stressing the need for inclusive peace initiatives that engage all relevant parties, including Russia.

Dr. Govind P. Kusum underscored the disproportionate impact of global conflicts on developing nations and emphasized the urgent global need for peace and security.

Mr. Dmitry Stefanovich discussed the inadequacy of mere ceasefires and called for sustainable solutions and increased global cooperation, particularly from the Global South, to address ongoing conflicts.

The subsequent question and answer session facilitated critical discussions on ceasefire strategies and institutional reform. Speakers analyzed geopolitical dynamics, and Western dominance, and proposed measures for achieving global peace and security, with a focus on strategies applicable to third-world nations.

Overall, the seminar provided a platform for robust dialogue and strategic insights into resolving international conflicts and fostering a more peaceful world order.

We sincerely express our gratitude towards the speakers, guests, and participants for their involvement.

The Club would like to thank the Russian House, especially the Director of Russian House, Mr. Anton Maslov for supporting us in organizing this academic discourse and acknowledge the presence of Ms. Alena Danilova, Press Secretary from the Russian Embassy at this program of ours.

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu (Facebook), 4 July 2024. See “How to Escape from the Russian Army” (New York Times, 27 June 2024) for a slightly less sanguine perspective on Russian-Nepalese relations.

The Story of Igor Paskar, Who Threw a Molotov Cocktail at the FSB’s Offices in Krasnodar

Igor Paskar. Photo courtesy of Vot Tak (Belsat)

On October 28, the trial of Igor Paskar began in the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. He is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the FSB’s offices in Krasnodar, and also of setting fire to a [pro-war] “Z” banner. Paskar explains his actions as a protest against the war: after the alleged attempted arson at the FSB, he painted his face in the colors of the Ukrainian flag of Ukraine. The FSB has classified the protest as “terrorism,” and the burning of the banner as “vandalism.” Paskar faces ten to fifteen years in prison if convicted.

To Moscow and Back

Igor Paskar was born and lived until the age of thirty-five in a workers settlement in the Volgograd Region. He came of age in the 1990s, turning eighteen in 1994. After school, he enrolled in the administrative and industrial buildings maintenance program at the Volgograd Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering, but had to quit his studies in his first year after he was drafted into the army. After two years in a construction battalion, Paskar returned to his native village and immediately began working odd jobs — on construction sites, as a loader, and as a courier.

In 1998, when Paskar was twenty-two, he was first sentenced to five years probation on charges related to drug trafficking. In 2001, he received two years of actual prison time for theft and possession of hashish. He was last convicted of a criminal offense — one and a half years probation for possession of marijuana — in 2006. The last ten years, Paskar told Vot Tak, he has been clean — he completely gave up using light drugs.

In 2013, Paskar moved to Moscow. At various times in the capital, he worked as a courier at Samokat, as a loader, and as a furniture assembler. He also sold rare items on Amazon.

He became interested in politics in 2018 — as his case investigator would later write, he became an “adherent of radical liberal opposition ideas.” In 2021, Paskar was detained in Moscow for taking part in a protest rally called by Team Navalny after the politician’s arrest.

In the summer of 2021, the activist returned to Volgograd, where he got a job as a courier. During one of the interrogations about this period, he said: “I was still interested in the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and I supported Alexei Navalny. I publicly voiced my opinions among people I know, including at work, and I posted my opinions in messengers and chats.”

The FSB on Fire

In February of this year, before the start of the Russian invasion, Paskar responded to an ad and took in a lost dachshund. According to the activist, stray dogs tried to attack the pooch several times, so he bought a flare gun to scare them away. He soon left his village in the Volgograd Region with his dog for work: he had found an unusual vacancy on the internet — picking strawberries in Adygea. Paskar was unable to start the job, however. There was a conflict in the workers’ accommodations over the dachshund, and he fired the flare gun at the ceiling. Paskar himself called the police, and the court sentenced him to five days in jail. After his release from a special detention center, Paskar left for Krasnodar.

In a letter, he describes this period as follows: “I have had a whole series of failures in life over the last three months. When the special operation began, I was unable to transfer money from abroad after the SWIFT system was switched off. I had an Amazon account on which I traded rare items. After the start of the special operation, I lost my earnings. I could not get a job in Volgograd and decided to go to Krasnodar for seasonal work, but there were a number of failures. I was angry at my plight and decided to sacrifice myself for what I believe in — peace.”

Paskar held his first anti-war protest in downtown Krasnodar on June 12, Russia Day. It was then that he threw a lighted bottle of gasoline at a banner featuring the letter Z and the slogan “We do not abandon our own.” No one paid attention to his actions, the banner quickly went out, and Paskar was not detained.

Paskar then decided to carry out a protest action at the FSB’s Krasnodar offices. He did not plan to go into hiding and prepared for his arrest by selling his phone and packing a bag for the pretrial detention center. “My criminal experience has left its mark on me. When a person has [this experience], they are no longer afraid to go to prison. They already know that you can live there too — not very well, but you can do it. It is not hell. This has an impact not so much on radical decisions as on accepting one’s fate,” Paskar noted in a letter to your correspondent.

On June 14, Paskar went to the FSB’s offices on ulitsa Mira [“Peace Street”] in Krasnodar. A Molotov cocktail flew [sic] onto the building’s stone porch. The activist then painted his cheeks yellow and blue and waited for passersby to react and for the authorities to detain him. He hoped that someone would record the protest on their phone and post the video on the internet. Passersby avoided the scene, however. FSB officers came out of the building after a few minutes and detained the activist.

The moment when the fire flared on the porch of the FSB offices in Krasnodar: Source: Baza. Courtesy of Vot Tak (Belsat)

A Burnt Rug

Paskar calls his protest symbolic, emphasizing that his actions could not have caused serious damage — only a rug was burned on the stone porch. Despite this, a criminal case was immediately launched against Paskar under Article 205 (“Terrorism”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, which stipulates a penalty of ten to fifteen years in prison.

On October 28, the Southern District Military Court began considering the case — according to the amendments to the law adopted in 2014, only four district military courts [in Russia] can try terrorism cases. The court extended Paskar’s term in the pretrial detention center for six months, and ruled that the trial would be open to the public. The first hearing on the merits in the case was scheduled for November 10.

In 2016, for setting fire to the door of the FSB headquarters in Lubyanka Square [in Moscow], the performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky was sentenced to pay a fine of 500 thousand rubles under Article 243 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code (“Destruction or damage to objects of cultural heritage or cultural artefacts”). And yet, at the trial, the artist demanded that his actions be reclassified as terrorism.

Earlier, the [exiled opposition] politician Gennady Gudkov said that Paskar’s actions could be deemed disorderly conduct: “In any civilized country, such a thing is regarded as disorderly conduct and is punished with a warning or a fine.” And gallery owner Marat Guelman called Paskar’s act activism.

Paskar is being aided by the human rights initiative Solidarity Zone, which previously announced a fundraiser to pay for Paskar’s lawyer.

Source: Ivan Astashin, “‘He became an adherent of radical liberal ideas’: the story of Igor Paskar, who threw a Molotov cocktail building at an FSB building,” Vot Tak (Belsat), 31 October 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader


Vot Tak has published an article about Igor Paskar, who is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the FSB offices in Krasnodar and setting fire to a “Z” banner. He did this to drawn attention to the war and voice support for the people of Ukraine.

On October 28, the Southern District Military Court began trying Paskar’s case.

Solidarity Zone has been providing comprehensive assistance to Paskar.

We are now raising funds to pay for Igor’s lawyer.

Fundraiser details:

💳 Sberbank card

4276 5500 2065 1710 (Zlatislava)

🪙 PayPal: solidarity_zone@riseup.net (marked “for Paskar”).

🥷 Cryptocurrency (be sure to email us at solidarity_zone@riseup.net if you transfer cryptocurrency to support Igor Paskar)

bitcoin: bc1qfzhfkd27ckz76dqf67t0jwm4gvrcug49e7fhry

monero: 86565hecMGW7n2T1ap7wdo4wQ7kefaqXVPS8h2k2wQVhDHyYbADmDWZTuxpUMZPjZhSLpLp2SZZ8cLKdJkRchVWJBppbgBK

ethereum: 0xD89Cf5e0B04b1a546e869500Fe96463E9986ADA3

other altcoins:

https://nowpayments.io/donation/solidarityzone

#solidarity#nowar#prisoners

Source: Solidarity Zone, Facebook, 31 October 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Artemy Troitsky: Putin’s Last Autumn? (Song of the Ordinary Man)

Putin’s “Last Autumn”? (Song of the Ordinary Man)
Artemy Troitsky
Echo of Moscow
August 28, 2020

I’m an ordinary guy, not lacking in simplicity.
I’m just like him, I’m just like you.
I don’t see the point in talking to me —
It’s the same as talking to yourself.

The are the opening lines from Mike Naumenko’s “Song of the Ordinary Man.” Mike Naumenko died on August 27, 1991, twenty-nine years ago, an anniversary that many remembered, especially since in recent years Mike’s legacy has been held in high esteem, and rightly so. However, I’m sorry to say I won’t be talking about my late friend this time, but about something else entirely. I recalled Mike’s song because I am a one-hundred-percent “ordinary man” in Mike’s sense of the term, someone who has neither inside info nor insights, nor political science tricks up his sleeve, nor political party experience, and besides I am absolutely indifferent to conspiracy theories. At the same time, I am quite interested in what is happening in Russia, and I want to get to the bottom of it without resorting to any bells and whistles except for publicly available information and common sense.

For many months, the popular expert and lonely nightingale known as Valery Solovey has been trying to persuade his audience, weary with uncertainty, that this autumn 1) mass protests of unprecedented power will kick off; 2) the authorities will most likely be unable to cope with this “turbulence,” especially since 3) President Putin, due to “force majeure” circumstances, will hardly be able to be involved in this process and generally has been fading away; 4) although Putin has appointed a successor, there is little chance that the Kremlin’s scenario will be implemented; 5) consequently, we will probably be “living in a different country” by 2022. Needless to say, this all appears quite appetizing (to a person with my anarcho-libertarian tastes).

Because I live abroad permanently, I did not attend Solovey’s private lectures. I was too bashful to shout “Give me the details!” over the phone, so I didn’t think it possible to get into a debate or, on the contrary, celebrate our country’s imminent deliverance from the hated regime. But another dear “talker and troublemaker,” Gennady Gudkov, has just made a similar forecast (in an article entitled “Putin is leaving: the transition has already begun”). Gudkov is super-experienced: he’s an KGB officer, a former MP, and a prominent opposition figure. At the same time, like the “ordinary man” that I am, Gudkov does not rely on secret data from the backstreets of the deep state, instead making his conclusions based on news bulletins. And his conclusions, in short, are that Putin is going to leave the Kremlin, either due to unbearably bad health, or because he is just very tired. Accordingly, the people of Russia are going to be transported from one reality to another like a passenger changing planes.

This, unfortunately, is what I would like to argue with.

First of all, I don’t enjoy regularly watching Putin on screen, but from the bits and pieces I have come across, I wouldn’t conclude that he has physically and/or mentally noticeably thrown in the towel. Sixty-eight is a laid-back age: I am sixty-five, say, but I don’t do sports and fitness, I’m not under the care of doctors, I don’t inject Botox and stem cells, I don’t deny myself any “harmful excesses” (except smoking tobacco), and I feel great. And since when did a ruler’s feeble state affect anything in Russia? Let’s remember dear old Leonid Brezhnev, who could barely move his tongue, the zombie-like Chernenko, and late-period Yeltsin. Secondly, it is absolutely impossible that Putin would voluntarily deign to vacate the throne due to fatigue or anything else. He’s only going out on a gun carriage. In my opinion, it is quite clear: this is Lukashenko’s scenario, not F****ace’s. And we should note that the Reset One doesn’t even have Consanguineous Kolenka to fall back on, while iPhone Boy, the Buddhist, and the Reindeer Herder are . . . Even arguing this point is boring.

Nikolai “Kolenka” Lukashenko (far left) and his father, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, at a meeting “in the situation room of Independence Palace” on August 23, 2020. Screenshot from the Telegram channel Pul Pervogo. Courtesy of Mediazona Belarus

Nor do I think that the predictions of mighty grassroots turbulence are more realistic. Why should I? Russians have learned to put up with poverty, and empty store shelves, and “elections,” and the riot police. Russians who haven’t learned to put with these things have left the country and will continue to leave it: as many who can get out will get out as soon as the quarantine is lifted. What happened on Maidan and is happening in Belarus is regarded by the majority of the Russian populace as a nightmare, while the minority sees it as a miracle, an impossible miracle. The only obvious reaction to the events in Belarus has been on the darned social networks. In tiny Lithuania, fifty thousand people turned out for a rally of solidarity with the rebellious people of Belarus; in Tallinn, two or three thousand people lined up in a chain; in Moscow, a couple of hundred young people protested outside the Belarusian embassy on Maroseyka, most of them Belarusian nationals. And what about the Russian city of Khabarovsk? Everyone is, like, amazed at the resilience of the protesters (for the time being it’s as if they’re talking to a brick wall), but only solo picketers come out in support of them in other parts of Russia. Or have I fallen behind the times in my own little corner of Europe, and it’s just the good weather that is to blame for everything? And in the autumn Russians are going to cut loose and go bonkers?

This is how Mike’s song ends:

If you ask me what the moral is,
I will turn my gaze into the misty distance
And I’ll tell you: I’m sorry,
But, by God, I don’t know what the moral is.
We live the way we lived before,
And we’ll live that way until we die,
And if we live like this,
That means that’s how we should live!

Mike always spat out the last line with fury. I don’t know whether this was the desperate rage of a stoic or the impotent rage of a fatalist . . . Let’s hope, in any case, that I’m wrong.

Artemy Troitsky is a well-known Russian journalist and musical critic. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Thanks to TL, VL, NK, and AR for helping me to identify the Belarusian and Russian supervillains mentioned at the end of the fifth paragraph. Translated by the Russian Reader