The Noughties. A Russian wrap-up.

Mikhail Yefremov in Citizen Poet.

The Noughties ("Нулевые") is a 70-minute documentary about Russia in the 2000s that is quickly becoming a hit on the internet. It was made by Vadim Vostrov for Krasnoyarsk, East Siberia, regional television company TVK-6 (producer Xenia Cherepanova).

It paints a bleak picture of modern Russia controlled by corrupt bureaucracy who act with complete impunity knowing that Putin will never let them down.

Vostrov follows the rise of the opposition protests since September last year. The collection of politicians, historians, activists, journalists (including The New Yorker's Moscow writer Julia Ioffe), writers and actors who are interviewed in the film seems haphazard at first but towards the end grows into a multi-dimensional picture of vibrant  Russian debate.

Bykov

The film includes extensive interview with one of the top modern writers Zakhar Prilepin and footage of Boris Akunin speaking at protest rallies in Moscow.

One subplot in the film describes the extraordinary success of a Moscow theatre production called Citizen Poet ("Гражданин поэт"). It is, essentially, a reading of poetry, or rather paraphrases of well-known poems by Russian classics written by Dmitry Bykov, a popular journalist and TV presenter. They are all blistering satirical takes on Putin and Medvedev and their publicity stunts. Packed hall bursts out laughing at each new joke, and the performer, Mikhail Yefremov, can't help cracking up himself at times. The production has been seen in theatre by more than 300 thousand people. Citizen Poet was released as series on Echo Moskvy  radio and Dozhd TV channel. YouTube clips of Citizen Poet have been viewed more than 15 million times.

The phrase 'When poets rocked the stadiums' has long become commonplace to describe the phenomenal renaissance of Russian poetry during Khrushchyov's thaw in the late 50s - early 60s. Could it be that now, 50 years later, we may see a new wave?

(The film is in Russian, the subplot about Citizen Poet starts at 1:07:45 into the film, Prilepin's interview is split into short takes throughout the film. Read more about Citizen Poet in this Russian Wikipedia article. Photo of Bykov by Rodrigo Fernandez).

Oxy morons. Russian Means Sober.

A Boulevard Run, by Alexander Deyneka,
from Deyneka.ru

(watch video below)

The beginning of this year has been marked in Russia by a curious clash between the young oxys (sharp ones) and the official morons.

Leo Tolstoy wrote The Living Corpse (1900). Vsevolod Vishnevsky wrote The Optimistic Tragedy (1934).

Both titles are examples of oxymoron, a figure of literary speech where a seeming contradiction in terms is used to create a striking semantic effect. The term is from two Greek words ‘oxus’ (sharp) and ‘moros’ (foolish). 

Sober Russian may be another oxymoron. Consumption figures vary from 9.3 litres of pure alcohol per person per year to 18 litres, depending on who and how counts. But alcohol abuse is often cited as the main factor in Russia’s catastrophic demographic situation. The nation’s population has not been growing since 1991, but declining by several hundred thousand each year. Researchers attribute 600-700 hundred thousand deaths a year to alcohol. 

Since mid-1980s there has been no serious concerted effort to stem the vodka tide.  The problem has long been exacerbated by the fact that tax and excise revenue from alcohol sales is necessary to finance public spending. ‘How do we pay teachers and doctors, if we stop selling vodka?’ is one killing argument I’ve often heard.  

Another factor is the rich culture surrounding drinking which portrays excesses in a largely positive light. 

From the beginning of this year groups of young men and women, mostly students, have been organising mass runs in city parks. They communicate through the internet social networks and bypass official channels. Runners seem to appear from nowhere and in numbers reach 200-400, sometimes up to a thousand. Participants chant the slogan ‘Russki znachit trezvy’ – [being] ‘Russian means [being] sober’. They warm up, run and some have dips in holes made in city ponds for Epiphnay rites. The atmosphere apparently is good-natured and the young people seem to be well-behaved.

This youth action caught officials unprepared and struggling to work out how to react. Nervous and tetchy after ugly race riots in Moscow last December, they took it as another ‘fascist’ or ‘nationalist’ demonstration. Police were sent in and arrests were made. The official reaction caused much amusement – and growing anger among the sober runners and general public. 

Here is what an organiser of one recent run says on gradmar.ru web-site:

‘It isn’t correct to compare the new initiative with the story-line of, let’s say, Forrest Gump. The main character there was running across the USA ‘to get away from himself’, or if you will, ‘to find himself’ and later realised that there was no sense in what he was doing. The background was sharp satire of the American political system. Here we have a very clear aim, we know what we are running from and where to. Our action has a definite message – to dismantle the cast stereotype of a Russian as the moronic hard drinker.

The reaction of the authorities and law enforcement organs is bewildering. Does it mean that every runner-sportsperson who happens to be in the Botanical Gardens or any other Moscow park has to be checked to see if they belong to an ‘extremist organisation’? Or is it that the slogan ‘Russian Means Sober’ can be seen as extremist? What, with no other ethnicities mentioned, does it mean that to say to a Russian that he is sober is to humiliate and ‘insult the nation’?

Let’s just imagine that 400 alcoholics get together in a park to get legless. Militia wouldn’t probably dare to approach them. If there were fewer, the maximum what they’d get would be a night in the ‘monkey house’, emptied pockets and squashed mobile phones with an administrative protocol and a fine of a few hundred rubles. And no ‘politics’!

So, now if a person sticks to a healthy life style, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke (no payments to the state through excise on vodka and tobacco), doesn’t watch [state controlled] TV (politically suspect!) and actively promotes these principles in society, then that person is an extremist! And even if that person goes further and creates a family (doesn’t spend on abortions, condoms, visits to a venereologist, etc.), and, despite everything, is raising two, three and sometimes more children, then they are Extremist with a capital letter.’

The Yobs, the Swots and the Intelligentsia

BRITISH STRATEGISTS SHOULD LOOK TO RUSSIA TO MAKE EDUCATION FASHIONABLE IN UK

Being the first to put your hand up and getting answers right is not always cool in British schools. While a handful of pupils manage to walk the fine line between academic achievement and popularity, it is more likely for the clever, hard-working child to be picked on as a "swot" or "teacher’s pet". Even "brainbox" is hardly a term of endearment.

The problem is more acute among boys, and government strategists in the UK are looking at ways to make education trendy.

In the former Soviet Union and now Russia, the opposite is the case there: pupils want to learn and there is no shame in it. Admittedly the Soviet education system had its defects —learning was largely by rote. Thinking for yourself, playing the devil’s advocate and asking questions were not encouraged. But within the classroom bright children were the heroes and the slower ones worked hard to be like them.

This popularity even extended to the playground, where it was the clever ones, not the truants, who were gang leaders and organised games. "It was the reverse to here," says Alexander Anichkin, a foreign correspondent who was educated in Moscow and now lives in Britain. "It was the people at the bottom of the class who were taunted and derided. Everyone worked hard so as not to come bottom. I was useless at chemistry but worked all hours so that my friends wouldn’t laugh at me for getting poor results. This attitude was encouraged by the teachers, who held up the clever pupils as examples."

Anichkin believes that political correctness is part of the British problem. "Here everybody bends over backwards to find excuses for the under-achievers. In Russia some people are frequently drunk, but that is not an excuse to under-perform at school. In Britain teachers can be afraid to encourage bright kids openly because it might offend the under-achievers," he says.

Education carries such kudos in Russia that the start of the academic year is a national event. Girls put bows in their hair, boys scrub their faces, photographers take pictures and children walking into school are made to feel special.

"that is a source of capital

that cannot be taken away from you"

Darya Razumikhina, a doctor of philology who has taught in Russia and the West, says: "There is a strong feeling that children are the country’s future and education is the key to that. Teachers are highly respected by society and have their own day when everyone thanks their old teachers or gives them flowers or chocolates. Knowledge is seen as more than exams. It gives you access to society, ease of mobility, and above all, status among your peers.

Konstantin Kedrov, a poet, literary critic and part-time teacher who was once thrown out of the Herzen - Moscow's leading literary institute - for anto-Soviet propaganda, makes the following point: "Education has always been seen as something more than facts and figures. In Russia children understand, suprisingly early, that is a source of capital that cannot be taken away from you. I was at school in the Fifties and to us gaining an education, acquiring knowledge, was almost an act of rebellion. It meant access to higher cultural and spiritual values that took you away from daily Soviet values - it was an escape from behind the Iron Curtain even while you still lived behind it. It was something that no whim of the system could take away from you."

"Interestingly, the same attitude prevails today. After the rouble crashed in August 1998 I noticed a renewed interest in education among the students. They saw the fortunes that people had amassed were wiped out and realised that education is ‘capital’ that cannot be wiped out by a stock exchange crash"

The success of education in Russia extends to attitudes outside the classroom. ‘There has always been a great respect for intellectuals, unlike in Britain where they are often dismissed as ‘the chattering classes’," says Anichkin. "Even the Communists, who were frightened of them, set intellectuals up with dachas and tended to leave them alone as long as they didn’t overstep the mark. People noticed this. It is a great insult, in Russian, to be described as nekulturny (uncultured).

"No one, whatever their social status, wants to be seen as uncultured. As a result even your plumber or your taxi driver will be able to quote a few verses of Pushkin"

- first published by Miranda Ingram - The Times 10/11/99 (London.)