Breaking crockery over Russia

 This is a guest post by Miranda Ingram, a well-known English international journalist. While we all watch in shock the events in Ukraine, this is what she has to say addressing the Russians.

To Sasha, my husband, and your Russian friends – our Russian friends…

Not only the best, but almost all the years of my life have been inseparable from my love of Russia, Russians. Russian-ness. 

Those of us who are afflicted call it “the Russian disease”.

I had a mother who talked incessantly about Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. About Lenin, even.  When I was a child, she wrote an essay about Vladimir Ilyich for an international competition and won a tour of the Soviet Union. The local papers wrote about it.

Thus my enchantment with everything Russian was a fait accompli even before my first faltering words when I chose Russian as a second language at school.

I soaked up Russian literature through my teens, took my degree in Russian history and politics, visited the country both as a student and, later, for work.

I moved to Russia!

I got to know every inch of Moscow, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, spent weekends at dachas, swimming in rivers, picking mushrooms in the forest, eating new potatoes and dill and sour cream and berries. 

I travelled right across Russia and all over the former Soviet Union.

I married a Russian, for God’s sake. 

I have Russian children. Sasha doesn’t like me to say “half-Russian” – ‘they are both Russian and English’, he says.

Since we left Moscow, I have missed Russia more than he does. He calls me part-Russian.

I was with you in August 1991, outside the White House, watching tracer bullets in the sky and cheering for Yeltsin. I breathed that hope and joy that filled the air. ‘In two years, maybe five at most,’ my future husband promised, ‘Russia will be a normal country’. 

We laughed; it seemed possible.

Of course, the 90s were wild, then along came Putin with a simple deal. He would put sausages into those empty shops and nobody need bother themselves about what was going on in the Kremlin. 

Not rich, by any means, but comfortable, a Russian middle class started to shop at Zara and Ikea, drink Starbucks coffee and watch Netflix on tv.

Just like people all over the world.

A modest professional class also learned to travel, eat oysters, choose French cheeses. Civilised global participants, some of you emigrated - to the States, France, the UK. Some of you stayed. On Facebook, via WhatsApp, in person when possible, you continued to debate politics. 

You were appalled by the death of Politkovskaya. 

You bemoaned curbs on freedom and wrote articles that were just inoffensive enough to slip past the censor.

You admired, or didn’t admire, Pussy Riot and Navalny. 

And now you are in shock. My husband, Sasha, rings Ukrainian friends to apologise even while he can’t take in what is happening. 

He is depressed. He feels it is somehow his fault. 

Don’t be silly, I comforted. It’s not your fault. We watched the news and grieved together.

And then I snapped. You know what – I turned on him – you are right: this is your fault. All of you - you, Andrei, Mikhail, Sergei, Lev, Alexei, Vasily…

Like the sausage-buying masses, you took your eyes off the Kremlin.

How could you? With your history? With your story? 

A few years ago, I wrote a novel set in 1990s Russia in which I despaired that within a couple of years of the defeat of a one-Party state, “ordinary” Russians had already lost interest in politics. 

And among you intellectuals, that post-putsch appetite for opening the files and learning the truth about the past quickly waned. 

Who wanted to rake through all that?

Yet if you don’t know your past, I argued, what was done to you, how you responded –  who you are, in other words – how can you hope to avoid the same mistakes again? Sleepwalking into yet another dictatorship?

This was your job - you, Sasha, and your friends, our friends, I ranted as I smashed crockery and burst into tears.

And you, Sasha, agreed with me, for once. You’re right, you said.

Oh, I don’t blame you New Intelligentsia entirely. I was uneasy with Western boasts of “winning” the cold war. I understood the humiliation of nozhki busha. I was livid at Britain’s spineless response to the Litvinenko murder in the heart of London and Europe’s and the West’s pusillanimous acceptance of Putin’s various annexations.

Nevertheless, I feel cheated. I must be like those true-believing communists who were told in 1991 that what they had believed in all their lives was a cruel joke.

I have loved, admired – romanticised, yes, been frustrated by, of course – Russia nearly all my life. And now those years of belief have been jerked from under me and my hand-woven Russian carpet turns out to be just a moth-eaten doormat.

After a lifetime of extolling the wonder that is Russia – the literature, art, music, science, warmth and that vast, vast nature – I no longer wish to recall my adventures, tell my anecdotes, bring out my photographs and souvenirs, cook Russian food for friends.

Will I be able to love Russia and Russians and Russian-ness again?

And you, does protesting that you “never supported Putin” make your hands feel clean when you introduce yourselves: “I am Russian”?

©M.Ingram 2022 ©publication A.Anichkin

Ukraine. The war and the history.

This is from my column written at the end of 2013, when the events were rolling up and eventually lead to the curent crisiss. 

[Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych's refusal [2013] to sign an association with the EU under the Eastern Partnership programme is spoken of as a "victory" for Russia. Of course, it was a victory. Only a victory with an unpleasant aftertaste. Because the “victory” of one is the defeat of the other.

Here in Europe, both French and English commentators agree: Ukraine's retreat is a Moscow's victory. True, they also talk about “strategic patience”. As they say, 'the process is still going on'.

Why is the Eastern Partnership, proposed by the Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, causing such rejection in Moscow? In addition to today's considerations, there is also an old, deep-seated one.

"Poland" and "Lithuania" — Польша, Литва — in the Russian mass consciousness, have long acquired a mythical meaning, the image of the enemy on the western borders. But where is this from? 

Well, yes, for Mayakovsky, in 1920s, Poland was “geographical news”. There was also the Livonian War, Gogol's Taras Bulba fighting with the Poles, then the partitions of Poland and the “Polish question” that remained after all that. The older, statist Pushkin wrote a poem 'To the Slanderers of Russia' about the suppression of the uprising of the Poles against the Russian empire. To the critics in France he said: do not interfere, this is our internal, Slavic family business.

At home, we are accustomed to one reading of our history — the Moscow reading, without even noticing it. There was a Kievan Rus, then the feudal fragmentation, then the Moscow principality began to “collect lands” and so on up to the empire and the USSR. 

One long Summer evening I was talking about modern politics with an old school friend, who by that time had gone into big politics. The chatter turned to history. 

My friend suddenly asked: Where did Ukraine and Belarus come from? There's nothing in our history?We had Kievan Rus, then the feudal fragmentation, the principalities... Then, suddenly, in a leap, Moscow “gathers” Russian lands, fights with Lithuania and Poland. And between that, what? 

Where were Ukraine and Belarus?

But it was not only Moscow that 'collected' Russian lands. And the 'Russian lands' in question didn’t always want to “get collected”. 

“Lithuania”, for example, was not the one state that is now [2013] holding the summit. The old 'Litva', or Lithuania was multinational, multi-confessional, with Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims left over from the Tartar-Mongol “yoke”, and Jews, who fled to Lithuania from persecution in Western Europe, engulfed in religious wars. The state was fully called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rusian (with one s) and Zhomoytsky. 

The state stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In addition to Lithuania, it included modern Belarus, part of modern Ukraine, Russia and Moldova. The state (administrative) language in the principality was Russian, more precisely Western Russian (or Old Belarusian). All office work was carried out in it, all legal documents were written in Russian and the early printer Francis Skoryna (Francysk Skaryna) put this on the cover of the Bible he printed — "Библия руска" - “The Russian Bible”. 

Later on Lithuania united with Poland in what was to be called the Confederation or the Commonwealth. The name is a reverse translation into the languages ​​of the state of the time of the expression 'res publica' — a common cause, a republic. Later, in our time, historians agreed to call that polity the Commonwealth. However, in the Russian mythological consciousness, the enemy remained as "Poland".

From Muscovite Russia, which built the state on the principles of the 'vertical of power', the Western Russian Commonwealth was different in that it had an elected head of state (the king was elected), a parliament, an autonomy of city self-government and a religious tolerance. The Commonwealth ceased to exist only in 1795, with the 'third partition of Poland'.

You say, it was a long time ago! And a lot of things happened since, and now we have completely different interests at work. But no, isn't a commonwealth, an alliance of friends, more attractive than an empire? 

The drift of Eastern European countries towards the commonwealth, even if it is now the European Union, is also a drift away from the empires. The ghost of “Lithuania” wanders around Europe, it still attracts.

It is difficult to part with an empire, especially the one in our mind. This one battle with Kiev can be won, but will the European drift stop there?

Vladimir Putin once remarked that England would never part with her Empire. And the recent “non-statement” by Dmitry Peskov about England as a “small island” completely stung the British. The Prime Minister delivered a fiery speech in defence of the English heritage, including even the fact that all sports were invented by the British. The country laughed, people compared it with the speech of Prime Minister Hugh Grant in the film 'Love, Actually', also about heritage, from Shakespeare to Harry Potter and Beckham's left foot.

So the empire was not just dismantled, but moved on to the Commonwealth of Nations, now even without the "British". Fifty-three states, both large and small. Moreover, even some of those who were not colonies of the British Empire had asked to join and were included, eg the former Portuguese Mozambique and the former Belgian Rwanda. One can underestimate the influence of this community, one can overestimate iIn Russia, hardly anyone follows it closely. But there is an influence, and a membership in the "family of peoples" is valued. 

The attraction remains. Apartheid in South Africa collapsed not least because the country was put outside the Commonwealth. In Pakistan, democratic change was stimulated by the fact that the Commonwealth expelled the country for a military coup. Thatcher fell out with Reagan when the Imperial US invaded the little Grenada in 1983 because it suddenly decide to have a communist government. After the event, Thatcher refused to talk to Reagan at all for a long time. They almost ruined the Russian perestroika! And take India, the former "pearl in the British crown", it remains the biggest democracy in the world.

In terms of economics, it has been estimated that, on average, one Commonwealth member trades with another 50 percent more than with a non-member country. Yes, and in Britain itself there is a movement to develop and strengthen the Commonwealth instead of EU membership.

The Soviet Commonwealth, the CIS, has stayed as a leftover of the Soviet empire. Perhaps, it it were less of an empire and more of a commonwealth, there would be no need to win “battles”. Talk, don't fight.

This column was also published in my blog "Like in Europe" on the BFM.ru portal. Texts may vary. 

Putin's changes don't matter.

Putin has proposed constitutional changes. 

A power shift from presidency to a little known body. 

Gorbachev was planning a shift in power from the Communist party to his newly formed presidential administration. It didn't end well. 

Government resignation and Mishustin's appointment don't matter, shouldn't be in the main news&

New Censorship in Russia

(From Censoring to Constructing the Agenda: on the current state of Russian media)

Who is controlling and directing Russian media today? How and to what degree such control is being executed? A general idea may be derived from various episodes and comments but a joined up picture of how separate media stories develop and link up with more general lines in propaganda and with underlying ideology needs specialist study. From the false story of the ‘crucified little boy’ in Ukraine to ‘gayrope’ ('gay Europe') and to an anti-American interpretation of the idea of a ‘monopolar’ world, is there a coordinating centre, a media politbureau where ideas, arguments and clichés are coined and then spread throughout a seemingly diverse media?

Vasiliy Gatov, a Russian journalist, media manager and researcher, has published an article on the development of new censorship in post-Soviet Russia. The article, entitled ‘Putin, Maria Ivanovna from Ivanovo and Ukrainians on the Telly’, is on academia.edu and Radio Liberty sites. (In English here and in Russian here.) 

Tetradki recommend this study to all those who are interested in how Russian public discourse is developing, the role of the press and the situation within the media. Gatov gave us permission to republish a few excerpts from his article. (Translation by Arch Tait.)

Censorship returns (90s to naughties) 

When in 1991-2 the old “Soviet” newspapers collided with the economic difficulties of the time, they rushed for assistance to the very president and government they so relentlessly criticised. Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Trud, Argumenty i Fakty and other publications which regarded themselves as “the foremen on Perestroika’s building site” pointed to the “duty of the State to promote freedom of speech”, and demanded they should be paid for providing support during the turbulent events of those years. Boris Yeltsin’s Administration decided to oblige and, for example, awarded the editors, many of whom were members of parliament, premises on a “gratuitous use” basis. [...] The foundations for future adverse changes were thereby laid, in the form, on the one hand, of politically motivated privileges and, on the other, of a deliberate intermixing of journalists with the political and economic elite. Government subsidising of the media began very early, and was to became one of the cornerstones of the New Censorship.‘

Gleb Pavlovsky [a leading media strategist and advisor in the 90s] claims that, already in summer 1996, the Foundation for Effective Politics proposed that the concept of media management should be, not a short-term emergency measure to get round the election problem [Russian presidential elections in 1996, narrowly won by Boris Yeltsyn - Ed.], but a permanent policy of the Presidential Administration. More detailed proposals were made in 1997 when information wars between the oligarchs’ media empires were at their height.

The coming of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin in summer 1999 required another media mobilisation. The individual chosen as Yeltsin’s heir was not a well-known politician. Indeed, his public profile was all but non-existent. Quite when Yeltsin would decide to step down nobody knew. They prepared to rally round at a moment’s notice. There were teams of officials, spin doctors and creative executives in the Presidential Administration and, crucially, around it, at the ready to solve the problem. 

The nature of the Friday policy planning meetings changed at this time, and directors of the main television channels began being invited to attend. At first the meetings were chaired personally by Alexander Voloshin, director of the Presidential Administration, but the job later passed to Alexey Gromov who was first Putin’s press secretary, then deputy head of the Administration. From 2000 to 2008 there were also “Surkov planning meetings”, especially where the activities of the United Russia party or regional policy were concerned. If “Gromov meetings” were essentially coordination of the week’s agenda and the apportioning of responsibilities between the key information channels, “Surkov meetings” were, according to those present at them, effectively a dictating of required content. 

The “Gromov meetings” created a new in-group of media managers linked by the fact of being allowed to attend them. After NTV was brought to heel, the channel’s new management were also invited to the Friday meetings, and in 2006 the conclave was extended to include Margarita Simonyan [of Novosti Press Agency] and the managers of REN TV and TVTsentr. 

Fundamental to the New Censorship was the post-communist personal loyalty of editors, key journalists and professional groups, and that was delivered by Gromov and [Mikhail] Lesin. [former Minister of the Press, President’s adviser and up until recently chief of Gazprommedia group - ed.]

“Redaction No.6”: open vs secret management

In late April 2000, at the height of the presidential election campaign, a document came into the possession of Veronika Kutsyllo, head of the political section of the magazine Kommersant-Vlast’ (Kommersant-Government). The headline writers of [Kommersant] Publishers promptly baptised it “Version 6”. [In the Russian original - “Редакция N 6”, an obvious allusion to Chekhov’s 1892 short story ‘Ward No.Six’ about a lunatic asylum where constructed reality clashes with real life. ‘Палата номер шесть’ - Ward No.Six is used figuratively in Russian to describe a place or a situation bordering on insane. - Ed.]  Gleb Pavlovsky, at the time more than close to the Kremlin’s politics, responded to a request to reminisce about Version 6 with a mixed memoir. On the one hand, he said, he had doubts about the document’s provenance; a little later, however, he added he could remember that kind of language being used and the details, but could not put a name to the authors. 

Version 6 hypothesises that the future administration of President Putin will live in a situation where there needs to be a distinction between overt and covert policy. Overt policy will declare adherence to the norms of the Constitution, law, international obligations and political standards. The covert component will almost completely restore the ideological and organisational control of every element of civil society.

“The moral state of society,” its anonymous authors write, “currently rules out any direct statements or actions by the president of the Russian Federation and his Administration aimed at suppression of the opposition and its leaders, or gaining control of the media and communication of news. Accordingly, the designers of the present programme identify as a key tactic that the political department of the President of the Russian Federation should adopt a dual approach to accomplishing its tasks: one official and overt, the other covert.” 

Among the covert tasks, Version 6 identifies gaining control of the media and journalists. It proposes, for example, under the auspices of the political department:  

— “To influence the activity of the media ... by collecting and making use of special information on the conduct of each media outlet’s commercial and political activities, its personnel, those managing its organisations, its sources of finance, economic, material and technological resources, formal and informal contacts, financial partners, etc.; 

— “To influence the work of journalists ... by collecting and making use of special information on the conduct of their professional journalistic, commercial and political activities, sources of financial support, place of work, formal and informal contacts, financial and personal partners and others.” 

Even more blatant is the authors’ proposal of two approaches to working with the media. The first should see the setting up of an agency (making use of the Administration’s resources) to investigate, accumulate and process information obtained and recycle it to the public “appropriately retouched”. The second approach would be to “induce a financial crisis in opposition media, or media sympathetic to the opposition, rescind their licences and certificates, and create conditions under which their operations became either manageable by the state or impossible.” 

Intervention intensifies

“In 2005, the practice of managing the media in Russia achieved a stable form that has survived almost unaltered until the present time. The model has proved effective, and even able to adapt to progressive (at least in technical terms) trends. And the system has been obliged to evolve: having felt its way to the levers of power in the field of news coverage, it went on to begin intervening in the news agenda. The system has also been forced to extend its reach from traditional media to the “new media”, from broadcasting and the press to the interactive sphere, from a domestic agenda to an international agenda. 

The system has to operate in an environment where, on paper, the laws ban the practice of censorship. The interests of the censorship system, however, coincide with the interests of the political establishment: to ensure maximum conservation and maximum survival of the existing model, irrespective of what justifications may be put forward at a particular moment by its leader. These can be, as in 2000-2015, “countering terrorism”, “constructing a pyramid of power”, “innovational development”, and even “spiritual supports”. The mission of the New Censorship is to change the agenda in such a way that a substantial majority of the public support the accompanying ideas, regardless of their opinion yesterday or today in respect of their local, professional or social agenda. 

Insiders and outsiders

Svetlana Mironyuk, chief editor of the Novosti News Agency in 2003-2013, characterises the period: “[...] From the outset of the 2000s, the authorities distinguished three broad categories: foes (Vedomosti, Forbes, Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, and a few others (most recently Rain / Dozhd’). There was no point in asking foes to do the Kremlin any favours, or to ask them to refrain from doing something. With them, as with the Western media, there was either a brisk, business-like relationship or no relationship at all. 

Then, there were friends: the state-owned media, although the warmth of the friendship varied greatly. Initially, for instance, there was respect for Vitaliy Ignatenko at ITAR-TASS and he was not particularly pressured. Konstantin Ernst [at Channel One] always occupied a special niche. Friends included Komsomolskaya Pravda and its editor, Vladimir Sungorkin, who were outwardly independent. There was Interfax and [its head] Mikhail Komissar. Later, “friends through thick and thin” included Aram Gabrelyanov [head of Izvestia and News Media group which owns LifeNews, a popular internet and TV news outfit. - Ed.]. In terms of his degree of intimacy with the Kremlin, Sungorkin was always a closer confidant than I [Mironyuk] was. It was all a matter of personal chemistry between Gromov and his group, and the editors, as well as a bit of horse-trading. “We’ll put an exclusive interview your way, and you can do us a favour in return.” 

Finally, the third category were the half-friends, or half-foes. Initially, that list included Kommersant, Moskovsky Komsomolets and Echo of Moscow radio [Russian original also includes Argumenty i Fakty in this list. - Ed.]; that is, people you might be able to do a deal with, but not always. 

A return of direct line

In addition, in 2004-2005 one further crucial element of governmental media management appeared. Mironyuk notes, “Some time around 2002, before I [was appointed to Novosti], Lesin wired up himself and all the editors-in-chief of state-owned media with a direct, dedicated cable. [Such direct lines existed in Soviet times and were refered too as ‘vertushka’. - Ed.] A line was laid specially from the Ministry of the Press in Moscow on Strastnoy Boulevard to all the editorial offices. That was done by Koryavov, who was deputy minister at the time. Then, in 2004-2005, for all the output [to news desks - Ed.] of agencies and television a special cable was installed on the closed ATS-2 network. This was a one-way yellow telephone without a dial which could only receive calls. [At present] all these non-dialling telephones go straight back to Alexey Gromov’s office. This is now the main mechanism for managing the media. [...] 

Manufactured reality

The main innovation during the latest period of the New Censorship has been a clampdown in the government-control media, especially television, on any generation of their own news agenda. Russia, as understood by the “collective Putin”, or as those who for the time being are his loyal lieutenants would like to see it, does not need real news. On the contrary, the only tool used for managing imperfect Russian society is a manufactured news agenda which is literally stamped into the minds of the public by the TV channels. 

The New Censorship does not merely exclude real events from the news agenda: it replaces them with simulated communications whose purpose is to create in viewers a sense of dependency on the principal hero in the stories. Even during the Ukrainian crisis, the model has not been modified, except that the “pole” [thrust - Ed.] of the messages has been changed [...]

[...] secondment [of members of the media team of the Presidential Administration - Ed.] certainly goes on, and many of the texts read out on Vesti (News) or Vremya (Time) are aired, or appear on the websites of the channels, without any involvement of the channels’ editors. And indeed if, after all the filtering of staff that has gone on, editors were permitted to correct the artistic efforts of that faceless “creative team in the Administration”, things would only get worse. A distinguishing feature of the New Censorship is that it encourages journalists (the word should probably be in quotes) not only to serve up the news agenda they are handed by the Kremlin, but also to creatively embellish it themselves.

[...] The authentic, natural, real news agenda has not disappeared, it is just excluded from the “reality” communicated to Russia’s citizens. 

Image: a drawing by A.Anichkin, after The Girl with an Oar statue by Ivan Shadr, one of the symbols of Russia, albeit sardonic.

Видеорегистратор - Dashboard Camera. (New Russian)

Hidden in this detailed report about the Russian meteorite is a language gem: dashboard camera. In Russian it's called видеорегистратор, pronounced vEE-dee-oh-reh-ghee-strAH-tohr. It is, for many practical purposes, a video registrar, as this passage from the AP report explains:

Social media was flooded with video from the many dashboard cameras that Russians mount in their cars, in case of pressure from corrupt traffic police or a dispute after an accident.

While Tetradki couldn't find statistics on how many Russian cars are equipped with videoregistrators, reports suggest that they are installed en-masse and widely used. They should be really hailed as a tool of democracy and an evidence of a civic society emerging in Russia. Militant activists from the Blue Buckets movement ("Синие ведерки", wikipedia, in English, and lurkmore, in Russian, about them) have used footage from videoregistrators to prove abuse and arrogance of the high and mighty as they drive through red light, on the opposite lane and do spectacular u-turns in the middle of busy roads endangering the lives of ordinary citizens.

This is not the kind of word you'd quickly find in a Russian-English dictionary.

Here is a blood-curling video from the Blue Bucket repertoire, 2011. The chauffeur of a government Mercedes threatens to shoot a driver in front of him, if he doesn't let him pass. 'Do you want me to shoot you through the head, punk?' he shouts over the tanoy before speeding off. The scene, captured on videoregistrator, went viral on the Russian internet:



Update: In this article on Wired.com Damon Lavrinc goes into more details about videoregistrators and the meteor. The article includes a number of videos of the meteor and of Russian road accidents.
And Languagehat discusses the expletives that Russians use when cars crash or meteors fall from the sky. Languagehat's post contains more exciting links.

WhiR


ead more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/14/5192622/meteorite-falls-in-russian-urals.html#storylink=cpy

bluebuckets

Grossman's Life and Fate comes to Russian TV.

Russian version of this post is here and a review of the film is here (in Russian)

The Russian TV series based on Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, the greatest Russian novel of XX century, begins today at 21:25 Moscow time (GMT+3). 

Rossiya 1 channel online is here, click on the red button Прямой эфир to switch to online TV.

This is the first screen version of the novel that was 'arrested' by the KGB in 1961 — all copies were confiscated, carbon paper and type-writer ribbons too. A communist party boss promised that the book will not be published for another 200 years. 

A friend of Grossman saved one copy and hid it in a shoulder bag at his dacha. In the 70s it was smuggled out on microfilm. The English translation of the novel by Robert Chandler's was published in 1985. A few years later it came out in Russia during Gorbachev's glasnost.

But it was only in 2000s when Grossman's incredible epic started slowly gaining recognition. A year ago the BBC ran a week-long radio play based on Life and Fate.

The film is available on YouTube — 

Pussy Riot Verdict. Shameful.

Shameful. 

Three young women of the Pussy Riot punk rock group were sentenced to two years in prison in Moscow today. They've already spent more than five months in detention, two of them have young children.

This is a quote from the Russian GQ editor Michael Idov's article in the Guardian, the best so far:

When you trim away everything else, three young women will spend two years in jail for dancing in a church.