Tag: Russian soft power

Mal Hombre

Lydia Mendoza, “Mal Hombre” (1934)

Era yo una chiquilla todavÌa
Cuando tú, casualmente me encontraste
Y a merced de tus artes de mundano
De mi honra el perfume te llevaste
Lo hiciste con migo lo que todos
Los que son como tu con las mujeres
Por lo tanto no extrañes que yo ahora
En tu cara te diga lo que eres

Mal hombre.
Tan ruin es tu alma que no tiene nombre
Eres un canalla, eres un malvado
Eres un, mal hombre

A mi triste destino abandonada
Entablé fiera lucha con la vida
Ella recia y cruel me torturaba
Yo, mas débil, al fin caí vencida

Tu supiste a tiempo mi derrota
Mi espantoso calvario conociste
Te dijeron algunos que a salvarle
Y probando quien eres, te reiste

Mal hombre
Tan ruin es tu alma que no tiene nombre
Eres un canalla eres un malvado
Eres un, mal hombre

Poco tiempo después en el arroyo
Entre sombras mi vida dependÌa
Una noche con otra tú pasaste
Y al mirarme oí que te decía:
“¿Quien esa mujer, tú la conoces?”
Y a la vez, respondiste: “¡una cualquiera!”
Al oír de tus labios tal ultraje
Demostrabas también lo que tú eras

Mal hombre
Tan ruin es tu alma que no tiene nombre
Eres un canlla, eres un malvado
Eres un, mal hombre

Source: Musixmatch

Yesterday we learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it. To be clear, this equipment was not the swabs we now use at home, but appears to be what at the time was a new point-of-care machine from Abbott Laboratories that claimed to be the fastest way to test for Covid-19. 

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine. In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn’t disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It’s disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.” 

Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he appears to admire. 

After 60 Minutes called him out for breaking a fifty-year tradition of both candidates talking to 60 Minutes and backing out of an interview to which he had agreed, Trump today accused the producers of 60 Minutes of cutting Vice President Kamala Harris’s answers to make her look good. He suggested that such cuts were “illegal” and possibly “a major Campaign Finance violation” that “must be investigated, starting today!” “The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he wrote. Trump is trying to cover for his own failure by attacking CBS in an echo of dictators determined to control the media.

In a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to have declined to appear at another presidential debate with Vice President Harris. After declaring he had won the previous debate with Harris and rehashing many of his grievances, he wrote: “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH!”

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

After he left office, Trump told author Michael Wolff that he had gone to bat for Kavanaugh, saying: “I…fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career.” Kavanaugh was the crucial vote for Trump’s right-wing agenda, including ending the federal recognition of abortion rights by overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months. 

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda.  

Yesterday, on California’s KFI radio station, Trump told host John Kobylt that Tom Homan of Project 2025, who as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversaw the family separation policy at the southern border, will be “coming on board” a new Trump administration. 

This afternoon, Trump told an audience in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that he expects to put former rival Vivek Ramaswamy into an important position in his administration. On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”

Trump has expressed frustration with the independence of the Federal Reserve, expressing a desire to make it answer to the president. In an interview with Barron’s, one of his advisors, Scott Bessent, has floated the idea of creating a shadow Fed chair until the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, ends, thus undercutting him without facing a fight over firing the Fed chair. 

This agenda is not a popular one in the U.S., but Trump is getting a boost as Russian operatives work to swing downballot races toward the Republicans. In a briefing on Monday, October 7, experts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters that China and Iran are trying to influence the upcoming election and that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians. Russian influence actors have planned, and likely created and disseminated, content, particularly over social media, intended to encourage the election of congressional candidates that Moscow assesses will oppose aid to Ukraine.”  

Russia, an ODNI spokesperson said, uses “influence-for-hire firms, or commercial firms with expertise in these type[s] of activities.” It also coopts “witting and unwitting Americans to work on Russia’s behalf,” to “launder their influence narratives through what are perceived as more authentic U.S. voices.” 

Not all of Trump’s supporters appear eager to stick around to see if Trump will win another term. Today news broke that Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive officer of OverStock, who became a fervent advocate of the idea that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, has left the country, apparently permanently, to live in Dubai. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Byrne, as is President Biden’s son Hunter. The younger Biden sued Byrne for defamation last November after Byrne claimed Hunter Biden sought a bribe from Iran. 

In September, Biden’s lawyers were trying to schedule a date for Byrne’s deposition when his lawyer abruptly “claimed for the first time that Defendant has moved his residence to Dubai and if Plaintiff wanted to take his in-person deposition counsel would have to fly to Dubai to do so, to which Plaintiff responded with various related inquiries to try to resolve this matter and defense counsel stated Defendant would not be returning to the United States for the foreseeable future.” 

Byrne claimed to have fled the U.S. because the Venezuelan government has put a bounty on him, but as Biden’s lawyers note, “the Defendant’s truthfulness is directly at issue.” 

[…]

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 9 October 2024

Lydia Mendoza, interviewed by Professor Gene Bluestein and Professor Manuel Pena at CSU, Fresno, before performing “Mal hombre.” Courtesy of the UNC Chapel Hill Folk Archives.

I was but a young girl
when, by chance, you found me
and with your worldly charm
you crushed the flower of my innocence.
Then you treated me like all men
of your kind treat women,
so don’t be surprised now that when I tell you
to your face what you really are.

Bad man
your soul is so vile it has no name
you are despicable, you are evil,
you are a bad man.

Abandoned to a sad fate,
my life became a fierce struggle
suffering the harshness and cruelty of the world
I was weak and was defeated.
In time you learned of my downfall
how my life had become a road to hell.
Some people advised you, “You can help her,”
but being who you are, you just laughed.

Bad man
your soul is so vile it has no name
you are despicable, you are evil,
you are a bad man.

Shortly after in a gully
among shadows I defended my life.
One night you passed by with another woman
and on seeing me I heard her ask you:
Who is that woman? Do you know her?
And looking at me you answered: She’s a nobody
and when I heard adultery from your lips
you demonstrated again what you are.

Bad man
your soul is so vile it has no name
you are despicable, you are evil,
you are a bad man.

Source: “Tango in Mexico: Mal hombre (Bad man),” Tango Stories: Musical Secrets, 8 April 2020

Lydia Mendoza (May 31, 1916–December 20, 2007) was born in Houston, Texas, to musically inspired Mexican parents. During Mendoza’s first ten years the family migrated back and forth between Texas and the Mexican city of Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León, as part of her father’s work with the railroad. In the 1920s, when Lydia Mendoza’s father left the railroad, the Mendoza family eked out a living doing musical performance, first in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and then singing for pennies and nickels on the streets of downtown San Antonio, Texas. The ten year-old Lydia Mendoza began her recording career—singing and playing mandolin—in the 1920s and 1930s with the Mendoza family who recorded for the OKeh, Odeon, and Bluebird labels. As a teenager in 1934, Lydia Mendoza did her first solo recording. The recording she made that day was of the song “Mal hombre” (“Evil Man”), which she popularized, and which became closely identified with her throughout her long singing career. In her later years, she recorded with DLB Records (San Antonio) and, in 2001, issued her last concert recording as part of her published life story, Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music.

Mendoza’s performance career stands as one of the longest in American music history, spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s when a stroke ended her performing life. Following upon her early success with “Mal hombre,” Mendoza continued to tour with her family as an itinerant performance unit that offered a variety of acts. They followed the agricultural labor routes where most of the Mexican American population worked: north to Michigan, back south to the Rio Grande Valley, later to California. Her closeness to her audiences earned her two epithets—“La cancionera de los pobres” (“The Singer of the Poor”) and “La alondra de la frontera” (“Lark of the Border”). As a grassroots idol, she was loved for her ability to articulate a working-class sentimiento (sentiment and sentience) through song and through the breathtaking visual spectacle of her flashy hand-sequined, hand-beaded performance attire whose symbolic designs announced her ancient cultural roots in the Americas. She publicly marked the enduring presence of indigenous Mexican culture even throughout historical periods (from the 1930s to the 1960s) in which public displays of Mexicanness targeted you for governmental harassment and/or deportation by Euro-American officials. Along the migrant agricultural worker routes, she affirmed and celebrated Mexicanness during those decades when eating establishments regularly featured signs that read “NO DOGS, NO MEXICANS.” Lydia Mendoza manifests the social powers of music: her natural speech-like voice, her striking physical presence, and her songs, so beloved among the communities she sang for, symbolically reclaimed and remapped a Mexican America. Mendoza always enacted a space of popular collective expression, an audible Mexican American homeland.

Throughout her performance career Lydia Mendoza adhered to the oral traditional practice of singing by popular demand: she sang what her audiences requested. That traditional practice meant that audience members called out each song and they tended to call out traditional songs associated both with that singer and with the broader norteño cultural matrix. The repertoire of songs was not unchanging, and “Mal hombre” is testament to that. Once Lydia Mendoza recorded the song—a song not originating in the US-Mexico borderlands, nor of a borderlands rhythmical style—audiences welcomed it into the changing body of “traditional songs.” Thus “Mal hombre,” whose rhythm and cadences mark its origins in distant Argentinian tango or milonga repertoires, became one of Lydia Mendoza’s signature songs; audiences requested it from her throughout her performance life. It should, however, be noted that in the course of the several decades of repeated performance, Mendoza indigenized the “foreign” rhythmed “Mal hombre” into the borderlands rhythms of the canción Mexicana. Still, after Mendoza’s performance life ended, “Mal hombre” also vanished from the borderlands circle of songs and has not been recorded by any borderlands singer since then.

“Mal hombre” was, from the onset, something of an anomaly within the Mexican borderlands musical landscape. The early sound media—recordings, radio, and later television—as well as the Euro-colonization process of the last 200 years, introduced music from far-flung places to the borderlands. There were various waves that swept through the Texas-Mexican landscape: tango, foxtrot, big band, polka, bolero, country, canción, cumbia, and more. The Mendoza family repertoire of recorded songs manifests that rich variety of song genres: ranging from the deeply rooted norteño song forms to the more fad-oriented recent arrivals. Along those same lines, Lydia Mendoza performed and recorded a rich variety of genres from the oral tradition accompanied by the full gamut of Mexican borderlands instrumentations—including the button-accordion conjunto, mariachi, guitar trio, and more. Yet Mendoza’s mainstay ultimately became her performance as a solo singer self-accompanied with her 12-string guitar.

Mendoza notably self-designated as a “norteña” (a Northerner) and as a “Mexicana,” marking her musical cultural geo-regional roots as spanning not only the northern Mexican states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Sonora, and Chihuahua, but also what was, until 1848, the northern half of Mexico, today’s southwest United States. As a mature artist, the mainstays of her song repertoire were the hugely popular canción ranchera (ranch song) and corridos (narrative ballads). The canción ranchera genre represents an evolution of the older Mexican canción. In the ranchera evolution, the love song often tends to be infused with imagery, customs, and symbols from the deep cultural matrix of Mesoamerica. During her last concert tour in 1986-87, Mendoza sang almost exclusively rancheras and corridos. She offered for sale her most recent cassette recording “Corridos,” which included, for example, “The Ballad of Joaquín Murrieta” (1829–1853). That corrido (narrative ballad) recounts the heroic acts of an iconic California freedom fighter that organized an army to protect Indians and Mexicans against the Gold Rush invasion. There is some common ground between such historic narrative ballads and the appeal of “Mal hombre”: they are songs from underdogs who face powerful odds against them. Singers such as Lydia Mendoza carried the voices of underdogs and thus impart the life lessons they embody.

“Mal hombre” (“Evil Man”) offers a life narrative in the voice of a woman underdog who at a very young age is seduced by an evil man’s “worldly arts.” The narrative voice in the song describes various stages of sexual exploitation: her seduction as a young girl, her abandonment by the lover, her life-and-death struggle, and her eventual downfall. The song’s popularity can only be understood in the context of the rampant sexual violence inherent of our patriarchal society institutionalized since colonialism. One of “Mal hombre’s” most notable features, however, is its beautiful poetics. No sexual act is described per se. Nor does the narrator offer any realism-based specifics of her demise. In the song, a great deal is left to the listener’s imagination, such as when she references “mi espantoso calvario” (“my horrific cavalry”). The female narrative voice of “Mal hombre” embodies a protracted life struggle, a feature shared by many classical corrido underdog heroes. The redemptive quality of this song, however, has to do with the victim rising to sing, with her strong indictment of the Evil Man, and with the fact that she has the last word in the matter, hurling loaded terms at the Evil Man with this refrain:

Tan ruin es tu alma

que no tiene nombre

Eres un canalla

Eres un malvado

Eres un mal hombre

Your soul is so vile

It is deplorable.

You are a scoundrel

You are a malicious man

You are an evil man

Through songs such as “Mal hombre,” Lydia Mendoza defies the subordination of women of color. She takes a womanist self-affirming stance in a number of her signature songs, such as “Mujer paseada” (“Experienced Woman”) or “Celosa” (“Jealous Woman”). Mendoza’s traditional corridos similarly praise the deeds of collectively cherished and remembered anti-colonial historical figures omitted from mainstream history books. At all times, Lydia Mendoza expressed in song her existential ties to her people.

In 1982, Mendoza became the first Texan named a NEA National Heritage Fellow. She performed for President Jimmy Carter at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1975. She was inducted into the Tejano Music Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1999, she received the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton. Lydia Mendoza passed away on December 20, 2007, at the age of 91.

Yolanda Broyles-González is appointed University Distinguished Scholar at Kansas State University where she serves as head of the American Ethnic Studies Department. She is a Yaqui elder of the Tucson, Arizona Barrio Libre tribal community. Her book publications include El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (UT Press); Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music/La Historia de Lydia Mendoza (Oxford); and Earth Wisdom: California Chumash Woman (Univ. of Arizona Press).

Source: Library of Congress. Image courtesy of Wednesday’s Women

Textbook Wars: Moscow’s Former Colonies Strike Back

Researchers at INION RAN analyzed depictions of Russia in the history textbooks of CIS and Middle Eastern countries. They found that these textbooks in post-Soviet countries mostly portray Russia as a colonial power.

Photo: Valery Matytsin/TASS, via RBC

The Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAN) has drafted a study edited by Vladimir Avatkov, head of the Institute’s Middle and Post-Soviet East Department, on how Russia is depicted in history textbooks in the countries of the Middle and post-Soviet East, as well as in China.

Most of these textbooks portray Russia as a colonial state which has oppressed the peoples in the annexed territories and damaged their culture, Razil Guzayerov, one of the co-authors of the study and a junior researcher in INION’s Middle and Post-Soviet East Department, told RBC. He noted, however, that often much less attention is paid to Russia’s contribution to the growth of these countries.

According to the authors of the study, “the promotion of false and distorted events in history textbooks shapes a negative attitude towards Russia, and in the future may become the basis for the growth of xenophobia and Russophobia.”

What RAN researchers read about Russia in CIS textbooks

“Colonial politics” in Kazakhstan

According to INION’s analysis, the authors of Kazakh textbooks for eighth graders view the Russian Empire as a country which sought to use Kazakhstan as a platform for its military and economic interests. They note that the Russian Empire’s policy of “military and colonial expansion” was the key element of its relations with the hinterlands. It aimed at establishing control over the new territories, exploiting their resources, and managing their populations.

In a textbook for colleges and universities, the authors criticize the policies of the Soviet regime. They pay special attention to the famine of 1921 in Kazakhstan, brought on by crop failure and drought. The authors note that the prodrazverstka, which by late 1920 had extended to all agricultural products, was regarded by the local population as robbery, leading to growing discontent. The famine, the textbook authors point out, seriously impacted the population of Kazakhstan, triggering mass hunger riots and deaths. According to their data, the population of the region decreased by more than two million people compared to 1914.

In a history textbook for tenth graders, the Russian Empire’s policy towards Kazakhstan is described by the author [sic] with terms like “territorial expansion,” “protectorate,” and “colonial politics.” The textbook characterizes the policy of the Russian Empire in Kazakhstan as “aggressive and ineffective,” citing as an example Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s resettlement policy, which, according to the authors [sic], led to social conflicts and popular uprisings.

“Invasion” of Azerbaijan with the aid of ”traitorous forces”

The establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan is referenced in that country’s textbooks as a “military invasion,” which was carried out with the support of “traitorous forces.” Uprisings against the Soviet regime and its “exploitative policy” are described in detail. The authors emphasize that the Azerbaijan SSR was established not by the Azerbaijani people but by Soviet Russia, and that the entire Soviet system was “aimed at satisfying Russia’s interests and ensuring its hegemony.”

“History textbooks for general education institutions in Azerbaijan imagine Russia as a colonial empire. The entire history of Russia is covered as the seizure and occupation of lands with subsequent exploitation of the local population. It is important to note that such anti-colonial discourse is especially exacerbated in new textbooks,” the authors of the collection [sic] write. “The current period of relations between Russia and Azerbaijan is presented in more neutral tones, although Moscow is occasionally accused of supporting Armenia and creating the Karabakh issue.”

Russia is identified in textbooks as the cause of the Karabakh conflict and other negative events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, the ninth-grade textbook The Hstory of Victory describes the coming to power of the “pro-Armenian” General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, under whom “the separatists ratcheted up their activities.” The authors of the textbook explain the success of “Armenian separatists” in terms of Moscow’s active support.

The INION researchers also note that the authors of some textbooks seek to introduce a divide between the central and local authorities in the Soviet Union. Thus, in these textbooks, life in the Azerbaijan SSR runs its normal course: while the local government carries out industrialization and raises the standard of living, the central government creates misfortunes for the republic.

The authors of the study detect a tendency towards a strengthening anti-colonial discourse around the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, a negativization [sic] of the entire historical period which “will eventually cause Azerbaijani youth to reject our countries’ common past.”

“Identity damage” and despotism in Uzbekistan

In a basic history textbook for students at the Academy of the Uzbekistan Interior Ministry, the authors describe the annexation of Central Asia as a violent conquest. They also “refute the opinion of historians that the policies of Tsarist Russia in colonized Turkestan had progressive consequences.” The authors challenge arguments about the construction of railroads, telegraphs, and industrial enterprises in Central Asia.

The textbook argues that any imperialist state “attempts to justify its wars of conquest by various propaganda myths, such as that it brings progress and civilization to the conquered peoples and liberates them from despotism, and they voluntarily join the metropole.” The Russian Empire in this context appears to be just such an “imperialist” state.

The textbook offers a harshly negative characterization of the period when Central Asia was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. With a few exceptions, such as education, the textbook’s main thrust is that Russia damaged both Uzbekistan’s national identity and its economic prospects.

Eradicating the Basmachi and transiting to a settled way of life in textbooks in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

According to INION’s analysis, textbooks in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan describe Russia’s influence more positively. Textbooks in Kyrgyzstan thus indicate that relations between Russia and Kyrgyz tribes evolved in different ways at different times — from moderately hostile attitudes to petitions by the Kyrgyz to join the Russian Empire. The authors positively assess Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the USSR, which enabled the Kyrgyz to grow their economy, education system, and industry, and marked the final transition to a settled way of life.

The Soviet period is generally not regarded and, most importantly, not depicted in a negative way by [the country’s] scholars, the researchers point out.

Tajik history textbooks positively assess the actions of Soviet Russia during the civil war in the country [sic]. They point out that Soviet troops were the main force protecting the local populace. The textbooks also note Russia’s contribution to the growth of science in Tajikistan.

In general, Tajik historians assess positively the rise of the Communists to power in Russia, which subsequently led to the attainment of independent statehood by the Tajik nation. And yet, Russia during the Tsarist period is assessed negatively as an imperialist power. Soviet policy is evaluated positively for “eradicating the Basmachi,” and for contributing to Tajikistan’s agriculture, industrialization, culture, and education. Although “individual problematic points” are also noted, they are described as inevitable parts of a complex historical process.

What RAN researchers read about Russia in Israeli and Iranian textbooks

Israeli textbooks describe the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as anti-Semitic states, while many positive aspects of bilateral relations between Israel and the USSR, especially during the Jewish state’s emergence, are ignored, according to INION.

Russian policy in Iran is often associated with interference in the country’s internal affairs and support for regimes favorable to the empire. Iranian historians present Russia as an aggressor implementing a policy of “expansion” into territories formerly belonging to Persia. The authors also draw attention to the consequences of the Russo-Persian Wars for the mindset of the Iranian people. They see these wars as emblematic of colonial domination and loss of sovereignty.

A textbook for eleventh graders ambiguously assesses the founding of the Tudeh Party of Iran, whose purpose, according to the authors, was anti-government agitation and the forcible secession of Southern Azerbaijan and the country’s northern regions. The textbook notes that the party, which was supported by the Soviet Union, was a factor of destabilization in Iranian society, causing tension and threatening civil war.

Moscow’s provision of arms, military specialists and technical support to the Iraqi army, including Soviet military equipment and missiles, is seen as a factor that complicated the Iran-Iraq conflict and caused great harm to Iran.

According to Murad Sadygzade, president of the Center for Middle East Studies and guest lecturer at the Higher School of Economics, such descriptions of events in history textbooks are not distortions of events, but their interpretation from the position of the losing countries.

“In fact, there were three bordering empires — the Russian, Persian and Ottoman empires — which divided territories between them. Textbooks in these countries describe the events from their own point of view. Of course, they may present Russia as a conqueror. But we can say that this is their position as the losing party. This does not mean that these countries have a drastically negative attitude toward Russia and its people,” Sadygzade says.

Sadygzade argues that Russophobia in the countries of the post-Soviet space and the Middle East is not promoted through [the writing and teaching of] history. Rather, “there are only some figures who try to present it in such a way so as to drive a wedge between countries.”

Diplomatic disputes over textbooks

In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized an Armenian history textbook for the eighth grade, saying that it “depicted events in the South Caucasus during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in a distorted manner.”

The Foreign Ministry detected an attempt to revise the outcome of the Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828. “The Treaty of Turkmenchay is labeled as nothing other than the ‘annexation’ of Eastern Armenia. Such a framing is capable of causing consternation for any historian,” the ministry said. It noted that the treaty, which ended the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, has so far been regarded as having “colossal significance for the future restoration of Armenian statehood.” Moscow viewed this interpretation as “another shameless attempt” to rewrite the common history “in the best traditions of Western propaganda and political engineering.”

As a result, the authors promised to make changes to this chapter of their textbook.

On September 26, Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Abroad, voiced concern about the way Russian history was portrayed in foreign textbooks. “I am certainly concerned, as we all are, about the interpretations that are permitted everywhere and anywhere outside of Russia, when it is depicted in a different way than we would like in the national versions of the history of the newly independent states,” he said during a discussion of a draft law on an agreement that would establish an international educational center for gifted children in Tajikistan. According to Zatulin, the Education Ministry and the Foreign Ministry were obliged to respond to all “unfriendly phenomena” in neighboring countries.

RBC sent a request to the Foreign Ministry and Rossotrudnichestvo to provide their own assessments of INION’s finding.

Source: Margarita Grosheva, “RAN researchers describe ‘negative images’ of Russia in CIS textbooks,” RBC, 28 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

World Festival of Youth and Students

Lev Rubinstein, born 1947 in Moscow, as photographed in 2017 by Natalia Senatorova. Courtesy of Wikimedia

There should be at least some news to slightly brighten — like a mosquito-sized flashlight — the gloomy hopelessness of the current media landscape.

So, this morning a news item flashed across my screen that seemed provisionally positive and even slightly heartwarming amidst the already familiar meteor shower of news items, each one more nightmarish and ridiculous than the last.

However, this seemingly welcome news is also shipshape when it comes to absurdity.

Amid the events happening around us this bit of news struck me as quite strange. I immediately wanted to check whether it was a fake (sorry for the non-Russian word).

But it seems to be true, alright.

“In February–March 2024,” I read, “the World Festival of Youth will be held in Russia, per the decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.”

“Within three months, the government,” I read on, “should start prepping for staging the festival, as well as finding sources of funding.”

While I am amazed, to put it mildly, at the incongruity and obvious strangeness of all this, and while I imagine how the eyes of the various “preppers” and “stagers” light up when they read the word “financing,” one of my most vivid memories serves as a powerful backdrop to these spontaneous reflections of mine.

In the summer of 1957, Moscow hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students — a festival of left-wing youth organizations that had been held since 1947.

The Soviet propaganda of those years stressed the “fight for peace” as an alternative to the “aggressive policy of the imperialist West.”

In the phrase “fight for peace,” the emphasis increasingly shifted towards the word “fight.”

Be that as it may, the word “peace” [mir] in those days, in terms of the frequency with which it was used in both official and unofficial speech, knew no rivals. This is especially often and especially vividly remembered in our own time.

Be that as it may, the 1957 Moscow festival, conceived as a propaganda event, was an important and gratifying event in the life of not only the Soviet capital, but also the whole country.

“Moscow Youth Festival” (1957). Silent footage from Pathé News 

I was ten years old—not so big as to understand everything, but not so little as to understand nothing.

That summer, parents were strongly recommended to take their children out of the capital. I don’t remember why I stayed in Moscow, moreover, smack dab in the center of it.

My friend and neighbor Smirnov and I would roam the streets of Moscow during the festival.

My eyes were blinded by the vividness and polychromatism. I remember an overexcited middle-aged dame grabbing the hand of a skinny Indian man. Speaking loudly and syllabically, as often happens when people talk to foreigners, she told him: “I i-dol-ize Indian cinema! Do you understand? I i-dol-ize it! Do you understand me?”

The Indian smiled and nodded his head, which was wrapped in something terribly foreign and incredibly beautiful. Then he shoved some kind of colorful pin into her hand. It is quite possible, however, that he was not from India but from somewhere else.

Smirnov and I were also given pins and postcards by foreigners. We kept them in our collections at home for many more years. Then they disappeared.

In those days it suddenly became obvious that, before the festival, we had been living in a black and white world. A spirit of unthinkable, unimaginable freedom reigned over the capital, which had become prettier and younger and had lapsed into charming frivolity.

“We Became Friends in Moscow” (1957). In Russian

The air was so supercharged with erotic energy that a year after the Moscow festival, babies of all colors of the spectrum showed up in noticeable numbers. Those babies are now all grown up.

But this was not the only trace left behind by the festival. Nor were the toponymic relics in the form of the countless “Festival Streets” and Druzhba (“Friendship”) cinemas. It was then, by the way, that First Meshchanskaya Street (“First Bourgeois Street”) was renamed Prospect Mira (“Avenue of Peace”).

Many artists of the older generation would later admit that the exhibition of modern painting brought to Moscow by the French and shown during the festival turned their ideas about art upside down and provided the first impulse to everything that is now collectively known as contemporary art. However hard the ideological leadership tried to put the “abstractionists” in their place a few years later and in subsequent years, the genie had been let out of the bottle.

After the festival, the stilyagi — the first aesthetic and, so to speak, behavioral dissidents in the Soviet Union — emerged. After the festival, the idea of fashion and fashionableness arose. After the festival, rock and roll appeared in the Soviet Union and spread around the country. After the festival, the youth subculture in our country took on distinctive features, however timid and provincial.

The Stalinist reinforced concrete (not even iron!) curtain was not flung open during the festival. Only a narrow crack opened in it, but the flow of air pouring through this crack was so powerful that it intoxicated an entire generation for many years to come.

“Khrushchev and the Avant-Gardists: from the Manege to the Manege” (1990). Artist Eli Belyutin and his colleagues look back at “30 Years of the Moscow Union of Artists,” held at the Moscow Manege in 1962. The show attracted the notice of the Soviet and foreign press, but it also angered Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. In Russian

The festival was yet another lesson about the important fact that freedom is not an absolute concept. That freedom is tangible only in the context of non-freedom. That freedom is just the feeling of freedom and nothing more. And it was this feeling that we experienced then. We were not given freedom. We were only shown it through a crack in a thick curtain.

Smirnov and I didn’t know how to articulate anything of the sort back then. We sensed this freedom in a childlike way, directly. It had appeared to us in a bright and sparkling shape that made even a New Year’s tree seem almost as tedious as a synopsis of the painting Arrived on Vacation.

There was no freedom, but there was the feeling of it then.

This powerful feeling touched even me, a ten-year-old. And for many young people from my older brother’s generation, this event largely shaped their further social and cultural evolution.

People who were twenty years older than me often recalled another brief but bright time when it seemed to many who had returned from the front, who had been able to see another world and other people, to spend time with the soldiers and officers of the allied armies, that “now everything would be different.” They also considered it a great fortune, despite the fact that they were very quickly shown who was the boss in the house, and, most importantly, who had really won that war.

Live coverage of the opening ceremony of the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students, Moscow, 1985. In Russian

History shows that when a totalitarian or authoritarian government, under the influence of certain political (most often external) circumstances, is forced to provide its citizens with a “whiff of freedom,” this is almost always followed by bouts of reaction in different shapes and guises. “You had a little breather and that’s enough!” the government seemingly says to citizens who decided that now things would be different.

Freedom, according to the great poet, comes to us naked. But when she sees that no one welcomes her with flowers and songs, she waits in vain for a while before dejectedly going home.

I cannot even really imagine the upcoming triumph of the spirit, the style and overall thrust of its staging, the number and, most importantly, the quality of its intended participants, and how the keyword of all the previous festivals, the word that begins with a “p,” and which has now become semi-forbidden, will be spun. I lack the imagination.

Source: Lev Rubinstein, “You can’t stifle this song, you can’t kill it: why Putin wants a World Festival of Youth,” Republic, 7 April 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. The videos inserted in the article, above, were part of the original publication, but the photo of Mr. Rubinstein was not.

But Will It Con the Kids in Kathmandu?

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu (Facebook), 6 April 2023

Source: Los Angeles Popcorn Ceiling Removal

Source: Shutterstock

P.S.

Source: Saint Javelin (Twitter), 31 March 2023. Thanks to Monique Camarra (EuroFile) for the link.

P.P.S.

[…]

First, if you know someone who might like this newsletter, please forward it to them.

Next, the story. I know many people this week are focused on the killing of Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in St Petersburg. We are working on that (stay tuned).

But I want to talk about the long-term impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the social crisis it has caused in my country. 

In this case, it’s about Ukraine’s teachers, who are facing serious salary cuts against a backdrop of high inflation, prices, rents and costs of basic services. 

It’s a story about who is paying the price of Russia’s war, which has caused hundreds of billions of dollars of direct and indirect damage to Ukraine. 

To do it, I spoke to teachers, local officials and trade union activists to find out how the Ukrainian government is being forced to pursue austerity – and what that means for hard-working people across the country. 

I found that some local authorities are managing to pick up the shortfall in central grants – while others just can’t do it, as tax income has dropped off following the invasion. 

Either way, local officials know it’s political suicide to fire people en masse, and have to scramble and scrape to get through the funding shortfall. 

But it feels like a crisis postponed – rather than solved.  

Read our story

Source: oDR Weekly Newsletter, 6 April 2023

Blessed Are the (Un)Happy

I was at an interview on TV Rain last week. We were supposedly going to discuss the Oscars, but suddenly we touched on what is an important topic, I think — how to behave appropriately during the war and amid everything else that is happening now.

I often read comments about how I smile all the time, but there is a war going on. About how I joke on the air, but now is not the time for jokes — Navalny is in prison. Why did I post this or that photo? It’s too glamorous and frivolous. Now is not the time for such things.

The complaints are understandable, but I totally reject the point they’re trying to make. It seems to me that the most destructive, the most incorrect thing we can do now is to don dark clothes, wring our hands and publicly suffer in front of our audience. By no means am I saying that there is no point in suffering in this situation. There is. The war is the most terrible event that has ever happened to us. It is absolutely incomprehensible how to go on living when your country has attacked and is destroying innocent people and destroying their lives forever as the scumbags on Russian national TV hoot and holler for joy. Everyone who is reading this post has experienced all this, I am sure, and of course you have been suffering. And those whom Putin came up with the idea of bombing with missiles and killing have been suffering even more.

Only one thing remains to us: to take all these terrible emotions, all these experiences, and turn them into concrete actions. Not cry on camera, not get hysterical, but to try and stop this horror as soon as possible. Today is better than tomorrow. Tomorrow is better than the day after tomorrow, etc. Each of us knows best of all what we ourselves are capable of doing and how to do it. The main thing is not to give in to despair. Despondency, despair and indifference are exactly what Putin wants from us. Don’t give him that.

I’ve attached a bit of the interview. And a frivolous photo to boot.

Source: Maria Pevchikh, Instagram, 31 January 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

[…]

And where you find a hero, you always find tragedy. The hero is always a vehicle for suffering, pain, rupture and tragedy. There are no happy heroes: all heroes are necessarily unhappy. The hero equals misfortune.

Why? Because being both eternal and temporary, dispassionate and suffering, heavenly and earthly is the most unbearable experience for any being. It is a condition that you wouldn’t wish on your enemy.

Ascetics, martyrs, and saints took the place of heroes in Christianity. There are likewise no happy monks or happy saints. All of them are profoundly unhappy as individuals. But according to another heavenly account, they are blessed. Just as those who weep, those who are exiled, those who suffer slander, and those who hunger and thirst are blessed in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the unhappy.

A person is made a hero made by an idea aimed skyward that crashes to the ground. A person is made a hero by suffering and misfortune, which tear him apart, which torment, torture, and harden him, and it has always been thus. This can happen during war or an agonizing death, but it can also happen without war, and without death.

The hero looks for his own war, and if he does not find it, he goes into a monk’s cell, to live as a hermit, and fights there with the real enemy. Because true warfare is spiritual warfare. Arthur Rimbaud wrote about this in Illuminations: “Spiritual combat is as brutal as battle between men.” (Le combat spirituel est aussi brutal que la bataille d’hommes.) He knew what he was talking about.

One hero, as the Neoplatonist Proclus says, is equal to a hundred or even thousands of ordinary souls. He is greater than a human soul because he makes every soul live vertically. This is the heroic dimension to the origins of the theater and, in fact, the ethics of our faith. It is the most important thing, which we should not lose, which we should cherish in others and nurture in ourselves.

Our job is to become deeply, fundamentally and irreversibly unhappy, no matter how scary that sounds. It is the only way we can find salvation.

Source: Alexander Dugin, “The Hero: The Metaphysics of Unhappiness,” Katehon, 3 February 2023. Translated by An Unhappy Translator. Thanks to Pavel Pryanikov for the heads-up

Maria Pevchikh: “In any puzzling situation this is what I choose and suggest that everyone else choose.” Source: Instagram

Now every employee of the Russian embassy in Germany has to think about Navalny on their way to work because they will see a replica of the solitary confinement cell where Alexei has been confined for the eleventh time.

Not only embassy employees see this solitary confinement cell. It is seen by Berlin residents, tourists and journalists. It is seen by readers of the world’s major media outlets. Millions of people see it — and thus learn about the torture chamber in which Navalny is being held. Some will tell their friends about the project, others will join the Free Navalny campaign, while still others will put pressure on local politicians contemplating compromise with Putin. Circles radiate all over the world from this one site.

It is in your power to make these circles spread even wider. Help us achieve freedom for Navalny and for the whole of Russia — support our campaign at acf.international/#donate.

Free Navalny!

Thank you for being on our side! 

The Navalny Team

“Navalny has now been in prison for 745 days.”

Source: FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) email newsletter, 2 February 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Pevchikh: What Corruption Has Done to Russia / vDud
6,370,703 views • Feb 5, 2023
(In Russian, without subtitles in English — for the time being, I imagine)

Maria Pevchikh is an investigator and associate of Alexei Navalny.

0:00 Let’s go! 0:37 Why we met in London 5:13 How the film Navalny is saving Navalny’s life 9:36 Dud in the Internet’s homeland 13:03 How to turn a photo of a hallway into an investigation 16:17 What is going on with Navalny now? 20:26 The second largest house in the UK is owned by a Russian oligarch 25:30 But why can’t a Russian oligarch buy a house in London? 29:48 The UK is fighting Putin but harboring thieves: is that normal? 37:22 Who are you and where are you from? 42:31 Where did you get the money to study in London? 44:02 What’s wrong with Moscow State University’s sociology faculty 47:19 What did your father do for a living? 48:41 A crash course about British universities (eight lectures a week) 53:16 Alexander Dugin was Maria’s thesis advisor: how did that come about? 1:00:03 Does Putin listen to Dugin? 1:03:05 What Medvedev was like thirteen years ago 1:05:20 “My cat was hit by a car, please sort it out”: what British MPs do 1:08:22 Gadaffi’s son was at university with you 1:14:35 Where did you work before becoming an investigator? 1:16:32 Do you have a flat in London? 1:17:47 How did you meet Navalny? 1:22:50 Why didn’t you mention Skabeyeva and Popov’s mortgage? 1:27:28 How are drones able to fly over Putin’s and Medvedev’s residences? (A question from Nikolai Solodnikov) 1:33:14 Where did you get the conductor Gergiev’s bank statements? 1:36:32 Is it okay to pay a bribe to avoid mobilization? 1:40:54 What is your beef with Fridman? 1:48:13 Is Galitsky an accomplice of the regime? 1:57:18 Can we detest someone for being afraid? 1:58:26 Why does Popular Politics have such sensational headlines? 2:04:08 Is it okay to call a program guest a “fat beast”? 2:08:21 The rude tweet about Durov 2:10:21 Does radicalism prevent the Anti-Corruption Foundation from becoming popular? 2:16:09 Roman Abramovich is a master of reinventing himself 2:24:13 How soft power works 2:29:52 If Abramovich had ended the war would you have forgiven him? 2:31:38 The “List of the 6,000” 2:33:59 Why have you called for sanctions against Sobchak? 2:35:35 Why have you called for sanctions against Venediktov? 2:44:00 What did Oleg Kashin do wrong? 2:46:34 Why were the designers of a facial recognition system removed from the “List of the 6,000”? 2:51:01 Is your father an accomplice of the regime? 2:55:49 How do you do your work without Navalny? 2:57:18 Why were your supporters’ data hacked? 3:05:38 “Carry out a mission in the fight against Putin and get points”: what is that about?! 3:07:53 How do people who work for the regime change sides? 3:15:51 Do you see yourself as a politician? 3:19:44 Do you have a plan for Russia’s future? 3:25:09 Won’t the dictatorship in Russia survive without Putin? 3:30:20 Do you have a UK passport? 3:35:51 What exactly have you done over the past year to overthrow Putin? 3:41:21 “Compromisers” 3:52:07 Russia without Putin 3:56:58 What does it mean to be strong?

Source: vDud (YouTube). Annotation translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Tiina Pasanen for bringing this remarkable video to my attention and persuading me to watch it despite my initial misgivings. When I assembled the first part of this mash-up, a few days ago, I had no idea that Pevchikh and Dugin were so closely connected in real life. For another perspective on the sociology faculty at Moscow State University during roughly the same period as Pevchikh describes, see Oleg Zhuravlyov and Danail Kondov, “Towards a History of the Conflict in the Moscow State University Sociology Department” (2008). ||| TRR

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Book reading and experience sharing program at Russian House

On December 29 Russian House in Kathmandu conducted a book reading and experience sharing program in collaboration with Half Tone Design Private Limited.

The event featured an interactive group discussion program with a brief introduction of the Russian library, books, authors, quotes, and poem recitation. There were over 40 people: authors, students, poets, and professors. The main purpose of the program is to build reading habits and share experiences. In the program, many of the audience suggested their favorite books, which are as follows:

1. How to win friends and influence people — Dale Carnegie, and Bhagwat Gita by Mr. Indra Prasad Adhikari.

2. Ramcharitra Manas. By Mr. Rudra Dulal.

3. Jeevan Yatra by Mr. Bhola Shrestha.

4. Muna Madan, Aamai and Paheli by Mrs. Goma Banjade.

5. Mother – Maxim Gorky by Ms. Mira Pokherel.

6. Guna Ratna Mala by Mr. Narayan Thapa.

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu, Facebook, 29 December 2022

Ukrainian officials said that over 120 Russian missiles had been launched at the country’s cities. Explosions were heard in the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odessa and Zhytomyr. The mayor of Kyiv said that three people had been taken to hospital, and that 16 missiles were destroyed in flight by the city’s air defences. On the southern front Ukrainian officials urged residents of Kherson, which they liberated just six weeks ago, to evacuate their city as Russian forces escalated mortar and artillery attacks.

Source: The Economist, “The World in Brief” email newsletter, 29 December 2022

Mikhail [Lobanov] telephoned. He says that he has been charged under Article 19.3 of the Administrative Offenses Code.*

Mikhail managed to convey that during the search he was beaten in the face and chest. There was blood on the floor of the apartment.

* “Disobeying the lawful order of a police officer, a serviceman, an officer of the Federal Security Service, an officer of state security bodies, an officer of bodies exercising federal state control (oversight) in the field of migration, or an officer of a body or institution of the penal enforcement system, or an officer of the Russian Federal National Guard,” as amended on 19 December 2022.

Source: Mikhail Lobanov, Facebook, 29 December 2022. Translated by TRR

The home of Mikhail Lobanov was searched today. Mikhail’s [legal] status and the article of the criminal code [which he is being charged with or suspected of violating] are not yet known.

Mikhail was taken to the Ramenka police department.

During the search, the investigator mentioned the name Ponomarev (probably referring to Ilya Ponomarev), with whom Lobanov is not acquainted and is not connected in any way. All electronic devices were removed from the home.

The security forces quickly sawed down the door and talked with Lobanov in the apartment for more than three hours. They did not allow him to contact a lawyer, demanded that he sign some papers, and behaved heavy-handedly, Mikhail’s wife Alexandra Zapolskaya reports.

Source: Mikhail Lobanov, Facebook, 29 December 2022. Translated by TRR

Father Death Comes to Berlin

Father Death Comes to Berlin — Silence Russian War Propaganda on Our Streets!

On November 29, the “Russian House” Berlin invites to a “festive lighting of the candles” at the Christmas tree in front of the building in Friedrichstraße. In a kitschy video, this event is also advertised by the Russian Embassy.

However, we do not feel “festive” at all! On the contrary. We are angry that such a propaganda action can take place without problems in Berlin. Because while in front of the Russian House “peaceful Christmas” are staged, Russia leads a brutal attack and conquest war in Ukraine, in which whole cities are bombed. The main target is the civilian population, which is exposed to permanent terror by Russian attacks.

The Putin regime is thus continuing a tactic that it has already been testing since 2015 in Syria, where even refugee camps are being attacked by Russian bombers. In Syria, Russian attacks have killed more than 2,000 children in the last eight years, and in Ukraine, nearly 1,000 children have been killed or injured so far as a result of the Russian war. There is no “peaceful Christmas” for these children!

The Russian House has so far refused to take a clear stand against the wars of the Putin regime. It gives itself the outward appearance of a non-political “cultural institute”. In fact, however, it is part of the regime’s propaganda machine and is supposed to convey the image of a peaceful and friendly Russia.

Russian House, Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Photo courtesy of taz

The right-wing Alternative for Germany is also occasionally given the opportunity to hold events in the Russian House. Thus, the Russian House also fulfills a function in the Putin regime’s strategy of promoting right-wing and far-right parties and organizations worldwide.

According to research by Tagesspiegel, the Russian House is “run by the Rossotrudnichestvo organization, whose head, Yevgenii Primakov, is a Putin confidant.” The organization is directly under the jurisdiction of the Russian Foreign Ministry and has been subject to European Union sanctions since July.

We ask ourselves: Why is the Russian House in Berlin allowed to continue to act unchallenged and to spread the “soft propaganda” of the Putin regime?

Join us on 29.11.2022 at the Russian House in Friedrichstraße and show your protest against the unspeakably hypocritical event “Father Frost comes to Berlin”!

We demand the immediate closure of the Russian House! Against the propaganda of the Putin regime in Berlin and everywhere!

Source: Facebook. Thanks to Harald Etzbach for the heads-up. I took the liberty of inserting the YouTube video and the photo, above, as well as incorporating the links to articles in the German press into the text. God knows that if I were still living in Berlin, I would be attending this protest. ||| TRR

But We’ll Always Have Kathmandu

[…]

Moscow’s effort to seize the high ground of technology has failed miserably. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, an American, was elected secretary-general of the ITU in September, winning 139-25. A challenge from Rashid Ismailov, a Russian former deputy minister of communications, collapsed after the invasion of Ukraine.

The ITU drubbing extended to components of the regulatory body. At the ITU’s September-October meeting in Bucharest, Russia failed to win a seat on the group’s 48-member council, its 12-member Radio Regulations Board or any of its three oversight bureaus. It was a shutout for a country that last year boasted it would “develop and implement legal norms and standards in the field of internet governance.”

Russia’s other internet initiatives have also stalled. Moscow’s plan to write a new U.N. pact to replace the 2001 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is on hold. The Moscow daily Kommersant noted this week that its proposal to continue overseeing internet issues through a Russian-backed “Open Ended Working Group” was supported by only 12 nations, while a U.S.-backed alternative had 50 sponsors.

The spreading stain of the Ukraine invasion has affected Russia’s involvement in other U.N. activities. In April, the General Assembly voted to suspend it from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. That same month, Russian candidates were rejected for seats on four organizations of the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council, and Russia was suspended from the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization.

[…]

Source: David Ignatius, “Russia is in retreat in every major international forum,” Washington Post, 10 November 2022

‘First performance of Himalayan Expedition 2022 by dance group “Obraz” from Kaluga city at Russian House to mark the Unity day.’

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu, Facebook, 4 November 2022. You can view all twenty-nine photos attached to this post at the link.

Outshined

This tool is called a chicken debeaker. It does exactly what you would expect with a name like that…it partially removes the beaks of chickens in order to reduce cannibalism, egg cracking, and feather pecking. This debeaker would be plugged into an electrical outlet which would heat the opening, like a hot guillotine. The chicken would then be held in place by a human with their beak in the opening. The human would then close the opening by stepping on the foot pedal on the ground thus trimming off a portion of the chicken’s beak. Debeaking is a common practice today in many egg laying facilities although the ethics of this practice has been called into question by many opponents of debeaking.

Source: Murray County Historical Museum, Facebook, 18 October 2022. Lightly edited to eliminate typos.

These handsome kids aren’t studying Russian.

We are announcing a contest for the most interesting story about how you learn Russian!

To enter, you need to publish a post or shoot a video in which you talk in Russian how and why you started learning Russian. You can tell us what difficulties you have encountered and what funny stories have happened to you during your acquaintance with the “great and mighty” language. If you have something to share, then we are waiting for your post.

Be sure to tag the Rossotrudnichestvo account and add the hashtags #ILearnRussianRS #RussianHouse #Rossotrudnichestvo.

The contest will run from October 15 to November 15. On November 22, we will announce three winners on our social media accounts. They receive an annual subscription to the electronic and audiobook service ru.bookmate.com.

Good luck!

Source: Russian House in Kathmandu, Facebook, 19 October 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader. A quick search revealed that the image used, above, is a stock image entitled “Studying with my boyfriend.”

The Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Russian: Федеральное агентство по делам Содружества Независимых Государств, соотечественников, проживающих за рубежом, и по международному гуманитарному сотрудничеству), commonly known as Rossotrudnichestvo (Russian: Россотрудничество), is an autonomous Russian federal government agency under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and cultural exchange. Rossotrudnichestvo operates in Central Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe (but mostly in the Commonwealth of Independent States).

The agency was created from its predecessor agency by Presidential decree, signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 6 September 2008, with the aim of maintaining Russia’s influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and to foster friendly ties for the advancement of Russia’s political and economic interests in foreign states.

According to OECD estimates, 2019 official development assistance from Russia increased to US$1.2 billion.

Rossotrudnichestvo was assessed by expert observers to be organising and orchestrating synchronous pro-Russian public rallies, demonstrations, and vehicle convoys across Europe in April 2022 in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Demonstrations were held simultaneously in Dublin (Ireland), Berlin, Hanover, Frankfurt (Germany), Limassol (Cyprus), and Athens (Greece).

Source: Wikipedia

Soundgarden, “Outshined” (1991)

Well, I got up feeling so down
I got off being sold out
I’ve kept the movie rolling
But the story’s getting old now
Oh yeah

Well I just looked in the mirror
And things aren’t looking so good
I’m looking California
And feeling Minnesota
Oh yeah

So now you know
Who gets mystified
So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Hey I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined
Oh yeah

Well someone let the dogs out
They’ll show you where the truth is
The grass is always greener
Where the dogs are shitting
Oh yeah

Well I’m feeling that I’m sober
Even though I’m drinking
Well I can’t get any lower
Still I feel I’m sinking

So now you know
Who gets mystified
So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined

Ooh yeah

Outshined

So now you know
Who gets mystified

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
Yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Oh I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling

Show me the power child, I’d like to say
That I’m down on my knees today
And yeah it gives me the butterflies, gives me away
‘Til I’m up on my feet again

Oh I’m feeling
Oh I’m feeling
Outshined, outshined, outshined, outshined

Source: Chris J. Cornell, “Outshined,” as quoted by Musicxmatch

Keep It Like a Secret

Delovoi Peterburg, a business daily, has just published its ranking of Petersburg’s alleged ruble billionaires.

It is no surprise that Putin’s cronies Gennady Timchenko (I thought he was a Finnish national?) and Arkady Rotenberg topped the list of 304 capitalists, with alleged net worths of 801.5 billion rubles and 294 billion rubles, respectively. (That is approximately 11.8 billion euros and 4.3 billion euros, respectively.)

Screenshot, from Delovoi Peterburg, showing Putin cronies Gennady Timchenko and Arkady Rotenberg in the number one and two slots of the business daily’s 2017 ranking of Petersburg’s ruble billionaires

There are lots of other pals of Putin and Medvedev in the top fifty, but I was disappointed to see the personal fortunes of my own favorite Russian super villain, former head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, had faded a bit in the past year. He has dropped to the number twenty-six spot in the ranking, claiming a net worth of a mere 37.07 billion rubles, which means that in Old Europe, where Yakunin is now dispensing Russian softpowerish wisdom to decision-makers and academics via his newly opened Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, in Berlin, he would be a regular old euro millionaire, with a measly net worth of 548 million euros.

But we should recall the exposés of Yakunin, his family, and their wealth, carried out by the only person in Russian unfit to run for president, Alexei Navalny, and his Anti-Corruption Foundation. In short, Herr Doktor Yakunin, who once had himself declared among the twenty-two “foremost thinkers in the world,” is very nimble when it comes to parceling out his assets to family members for safekeeping, so to speak, and then hiring “cleaners” to make his deservedly bad reputation go away. So who knows how much he is really worth.

Screenshot, from Delovoi Peterburg’s website, showing Yakunin’s number 26 spot in its list of Petersburg’s ruble billionaires.

Another thing that struck me when I surveyed the list was the signal lack of women among the city’s ruble billionaires. Women appear on the list only towards the very bottom, which means they are not really billionaires, but dollar or euro millionaires, at most, and maybe not even that. And there are no more than ten such women in a list of 304 names.

So, the Delovoi Peterburg ranking is not only more evidence of Russia’s extreme wealth inequality—which is a matter of elite practice, if not of explicit government policy—but of the fact that this extreme wealth inequality has an even more extreme gender bias.

Even if Putin crony and Russian oligarch Vladimir Yakunin had named his newish Berlin think tank the “Vladimir Putin Institute for Peace and Freedom,” this would have had no effect, I am afraid, on all the decision-makers and academics who are prepared to rush into Yakunin’s embrace at the drop of a hat, forgiven, as it were, by the squirrelier name he has has chosen, Dialogue of Civilizations.

Yesterday and today, DOC Berlin has been holding a bang-up conference, dealing, like all conferences these days, with the centenary of the October Revolution.

The conference is entitled “Inequalities, economic models and Russia’s October 1917 revolution in historical perspective” and features some speakers whose names you might recognize, people you would never have suspected of wanting to shill for the Putinist soft power machine.

Speakers:

Georgy [sic] Derluguian, Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, New York University Abu Dhabi

Michael Ellman, Professor Emeritus, Amsterdam University

Domenico Nuti, Professor of Comparative Economic Systems, University of Rome “La Sapienza”

Vladimir Popov, Professor, DOC RI Research Director and a Principal Researcher in Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Beverly J. Silver, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Director of the Arrighi Center for Global Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

Andres Solimano, International Center for Globalization and Development

Vladislav Zubok, Professor, Department of International History, London School of Economics, UK

Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor,  Department of Sociology, University of California-Los Angeles, USA

But they are there, holding forth on “revolution” on the Putinist dime, while Yakunin, who clearly loves these powwows (there are tons of videos from past DOC gatherings on YouTube and elsewhere in which this is apparent), and is eager to show he is running the show, laughs his silent “former KGB officer” laugh.

While you are at it, check out this rogues’ gallery of useful idiots. Even if you have only a few toes in the world of academia, as I do, you will immediately recognize several of the people serving Yakunin on his think thank’s “supervisory board” and “programme council.”

Screenshot from the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute website

Screenshot from the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute website

But what about the quality of the research supposedly underway at this so-called research institute? Here is a little sample, the abstract of a paper, downloadable for free, entitled “Church and politics: Russian prospects,” written by someone named Boris Filippov.

The paper is an attempt to make a brief overview of the Russian Orthodox Church’s state in the Post-Soviet Russia. Author notes, that the Church’s role in building civil society in Russia is potentially very considerable, since the Orthodox community’s ability to self-organize is rare for the post-Soviet Russia. He provides abundant empiric material illustrating Christian Orthodox community’s high capacities to contribute to building a prosperous society, for, as he shows, believers have gone much further on the way of consolidation than Russian society as a whole.

Is everyone who is speaking at today’s conference in Berlin and everyone who serves on Yakunin’s supervisory board and programme council kosher with obscurantist Russian Orthodox nationalism masquerading as scholarship? Do all of them know that “Russian Orthodoxy” (as interpreted by Patriarch Kirill and his intemperate followers) is now being used in Russia as an ideological battering ram to quash dissent and difference and reinforce Putin’s seemingly endless administration, as “Marxism-Leninism” was similarly used in the Soviet Union?

Do they know that their generous benefactor Vladimir Yakunin, in one of his other guises, wholeheartedly supports just this variety of aggressive Russian Orthodox nationalism?

The merging of political, diplomatic and religious interests has been on vivid display in Nice, where the Orthodox cathedral, St. Nicholas, came under the control of the Moscow Partriarchate in 2013.

To mark the completion of Moscow-funded renovation work in January, Russia’s ambassador in Paris, Aleksandr Orlov, joined the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, for a ceremony at the cathedral and hailed the refurbishment as “a message for the whole world: Russia is sacred and eternal!”

Then, in a festival of French-Russian amity at odds with France’s official policy since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the ambassador, Orthodox priests, officials from Moscow and French dignitaries gathered in June for a gala dinner in a luxury Nice hotel to celebrate the cathedral’s return to the fold of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Speaking at the dinner, Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime ally of Mr. Putin who is subject to United States, but not European, sanctions imposed after Russia seized Crimea, declared the cathedral a “corner of the Russian world,” a concept that Moscow used to justify its military intervention on behalf of Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine. Church property from the czarist era, Mr. Yakunin added, belongs to Russia “simply because this is our history.”

—Andrew Higgins, “In Expanding Influence, Faith Combines with Firepower,” New York Times, September 13, 2016

This entry has the title it does, not because I wanted an excuse to insert a recording by a beloved band of my salad days, which I did anyway, but because when I draft editorials like this on Facebook, as I often do, I usually endure stony silence from my so-called friends and readers after I post them. It is not that they are usually so garrulous anyway, but I do know they read what I write, because they are capable of responding enthusiastically to other subjects.

Writ large, this stony silence is what has helped Vladimir Yakunin operate his Dialogue of Civilizations hootenannies (usually held annually in Rhodes until the recent upgrade and move to Berlin) under the radar for nearly fifteen years with almost no scrutiny from the western and Russian press and, apparently, no due diligence on the part of the hundreds and maybe thousands of non-Russian academics, politicians, experts, and other A-league movers and shakers who have attended and spoken at these events.

So can we assume, for example, that Georgi Derluguian, Anatol Lieven, Walter Mignolo, and Richard Sakwa (I am only picking out the names of scholars with whose work I am familiar) condone the Kremlin’s occupation of Crimea, the Kremlin’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin’s downing of Flight MH17, the Kremlin’s repeat invasion and wholesale destruction of Chechnya, during the early day of Putin’s reign, and the Kremlin’s extreme crackdown on Russian dissenters of all shapes and sizes, from ordinary people who reposted the “wrong” things on social networks to well-known opposition politicians, journalists, and activsts shot down in cold blood for their vocal dissent, including Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov, and Stanislav Markelov, a crackdown that has been intensifying with every passing year Putin has remained in power?

A resounding “yes!” would be refreshing to hear, but we will never get any response from the members of Vladimir Yakunin’s semi-clandestine fan club. It is their dirty little open secret, and only someone who is uncouth, someone unfamiliar with the ways of the world’s power brokers and their handmaidens and spear carriers, would even think about asking them to reveal it. ||| TRR