Roulettian Intermezzo -- Photo of the Week

About Summer We Can Only Dream

Great Grandma's Mutant Gene and Orphan Retaliation

On 30 July 1904, a 301-gun salute rang out from the cannons of Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress, joyfully announcing the birth of Alexei, fifth child and only son of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. 

This little boy was the desperately desired heir to the imperial Russian throne and one of the most roulettian children in the country's tumultuous history. And all because long ago (in 1819, some 85 years before Alexei's birth) and far away (in London) the girl who would become Queen Victoria of England was born with a fatal, but as yet undetected flaw: the mutant x chromosome that causes hemophilia. 

Women aren't afflicted with this dreadful, often deadly disease in which the blood does not clot, but they can be carriers and depending on the roll of the dice, their male children might be hemophiliacs -- or they might be spared.
Well, Victoria passed the mutant gene on to her daughter Alice, who in turn gave it to her daughter Alexandra. And Alexei, Alexandra's newborn son?  Statistically, he had a 50% chance of winning the gamble, but Nicholas and Alexandra hadn't had much luck with statistics: their first four children were girls, whereas they desperately needed a boy to ensure royal succession.  Less than a month after Alexei's birth, the first indication of tragedy struck:  he started bleeding from his navel and doctors were unable to staunch the flow.  Soon after, the horrific diagnosis was pronounced: the heir to the throne and the most important child in Russia was a hemophiliac.   

Although stringent steps were implemented to protect the boy's fragile life, it was impossible to avoid all injuries, and in those desperate cases, with the doctors unable to alleviate the boy's excruciating pain and the Tsar's incredible wealth incapable of purchasing a cure, a terrified Alexandra grasped at other means to save the life of her beloved son: the magnetic Siberian mystic, Rasputin. In one typical incident, the three-year-old Alexei accidentally cut himself while playing in the royal park. The Tsar's sister describes what followed:  

‘The poor little boy lay there in excruciating pain, with black rings under his eyes, contorted with suffering and with a dreadfully swollen leg. There was simply nothing the doctors could do to help. They looked even more frightened than we did. Hours passed, and they gave up hope. Then Aliki [Alexandra] sent someone to St Petersburg to get Rasputin to come. He arrived in the palace around midnight or later still. In the morning Aliki called me to come to Alexei’s bedroom. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only was the boy alive; he was in good health.’

How did Rasputin do it?  To this day, no satisfactory answer has been found.  But because of incidents like this, Alexandra trusted him implicitly as the only person capable of helping her pain-wracked son. Thus, because of a random mutant x-chromosome from a distant great-grandmother, the mangy mystic gained enormous influence over Alexandra, and through her over Nicholas, all of which only further destabilized the war-ravaged country.  Some have claimed that no hemophilia, no Rasputin (this is certain),  and if no Rasputin, then no Russian Revolution (this is speculation). In any case, the story would have ended better for everyone without that damaged gene. Rasputin was brutally murdered in 1916 by members of the imperial family who feared his influence over Alexandra, and the Tsar was swept from power in revolutionary 1917.  Thereafter the royal family was imprisoned and eventually shipped off to Siberia, where Alexei passed the time helping his father, the ex-Tsar, saw wood.  

In July 1918, a few weeks short of his fourteenth birthday -- so ill that he could not walk, but had to be carried -- Alexei, along with Nicholas, Alexandra, and his four sisters, was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad in which bullets ricocheted off both brick walls and precious jewels sewn into the girls' corsets. The bodies were then disfigured with sulfuric acid to prevent identification, doused with kerosene, set on fire, and tossed into mine shafts where they decayed for decades. 

Well, the wheel spun around yet again.  The remains of all seven Romanovs have been located, excavated and given state funerals in Petersburg's St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, and the entire family was recently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.  The unfortunate Alexei, surrounded by his sisters and parents, stands in the center of the icon that depicts his new status as a martyr and passion bearer, a golden halo surrounding his head.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, 13 January, a demonstration was held at Mars Field in the distant shadow of Petersburg's landmark Church on the Spilled Blood. In minus temperatures, about 1,000 people gathered to protest the anti-adoption legislation that President Putin signed on 28 December 2012. This law seems destined to negatively affect the future of a number of other unfortunate children, as U.S. citizens are no longer able to adopt Russian orphans, many of whom languish under wretched conditions in abysmal orphanages. 

Members of Congress, don't disgrace the country!

"Uncle President!" says the boy, wheelchair-bound, to the looming silhouette of Putin, "I don't know who Magnitsky is. I just want a MOMMY!" 

Who, indeed, is Magnitsky? Alas, now the question must be phrased who WAS Magnitsky? This Moscow lawyer painstakingly documented and exposed an organized ring of corruption that included tax officials, convicted murderers, and police investigators. Brazenly, these  conspirators committed tax fraud in the multi millions of dollars, vacationed lavishly in Cyprus, and purchased opulent real estate objects in Moscow and Dubai for prices that equalled about 1,000 years of their annual income. Instead of these corrupt officials being arrested and investigated, it was Magnitsky who was hauled off to prison by the very police officers he had implicated. Held in ever-worsening, inhumane conditions, denied medical treatment, and repeatedly subjected to torture, he nonetheless refused to withdraw his accusations.  After a year of such brutality, the 37-year-old Magnitsky, who had entered prison a healthy man, was dead.   

And what does all of this have to do with Russian orphans?  As none of the people involved in Magnitsky's appalling death (murder) were ever prosecuted, the U.S. Congress passed a law forbidding them from entering or owning property in the U.S.  Thus, although the ostensible reason for Russia's new anti-adoption law is the death of 19 orphans (out of 60,000) adopted from Russia by U.S. citizens over the last twenty years, everyone understands that the real reason is retaliation for this blacklisting.  

By the way, the wheelchair-bound child in the poster is relevant. In 2012, Americans adopted 956 Russian children, 89 of whom had various disabilities or diseases, such as Down's Syndrome and HIV. This makes them virtually unadoptable in Russia.  

"Don't involve children in politics" and "Children are waiting for a home."

"Who gave you the right?

You take away the future of children, defending your right to steal!"

"Freedom to Politically Imprisoned Boys and Girls!"

In the end, the losers in this game will be the powerless orphans who have been forfeited the chance of a family and a home. 

Roulettian Intermezzo -- Photo of the Week

Winter

Calendar Chaos and Petrodegradation

The days February 1 through 13, 1918 do not exist in Russian history. This oddity can be traced back to 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the Julian calendar in use since the time of Caesar should be replaced with a more accurate one, which required skipping over almost two weeks.  Catholic countries made the change forthwith, Protestants joined the program a century later, but the Russian Orthodox church was not about to let a Catholic pope tell them how to calculate time and in Russia the Julian calendar was used until after the Revolution when atheist Lenin decided to conform to western standards. And so in 1918, the leap was made from January 31 to February 14 and the days between remain blank and untouched.  A further oddity in all of this calendar chaos is that the revolution, which took place on 25 October 1917 in Russia, occurred according to the western calendar on 7 November, and thus, the iconic Great Socialist October Revolution, with the endless parades in Moscow and elsewhere, was always celebrated in November.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church still persistently adheres to the Julian calendar, so 6 January is Russian Christmas Eve, and at 9 p.m. Red Kirill gives me a call. Black Max is hosting a small gathering at his apartment in an hour or two and we are both invited. Black Max, is, so to say, the antithesis of Red Kirill. Kirill dashes about, entangled in so many projects and ideas that he can barely focus his high-voltage energy, dressed in red, the color of hope. Max, on the other hand, sleeps. When he does manage to drag himself out of bed, he wears exclusively black. 

It seems that Max's parents, while not wealthy, nonetheless have enough funds on hand to keep Max installed in his comfortable, renovated apartment and to meet all of his rather modest needs, so he doesn't have to toil in the hard world of capitalistic labor. He has no real interests, plans or purpose, gets up around 4 in the afternoon, takes a look out the window, and decides he would rather sleep some more. He lives, says Kirill, a life in despair.  

At least tonight he seems to be in a good mood as he meets us at the Pioneerskaya Metro station and walks us back across ice and snow to his apartment over Restaurant Tokyo.  "Olya is still sleeping, she only gallivanted in a little while ago," says Max, referring with a sigh to his girlfriend, "Ach, she's young, which in itself isn't a disadvantage. She'll grow out of it." 

The other guests arrive shortly thereafter:  Alyoscha and Katya, a brother and sister from Moscow, and Katya's husband, Vitya, a native Petersburgian. These folks from Moscow are so surprisingly wholesome, healthy, and red-cheeked, they seem to have skipped in from the countryside and not the dissolute capital. It's as if they've been edited into Max’s Dostoevskyan despair from a different movie, something along the lines of a Russian „Oklahoma!“ Alyoscha quickly sets to preparing the main course and accoutrements with the speed, skill, and fixation of a professional chef while the rest of us gather around the table, sipping, variously, champagne, amaretto, martini, vodka and balsam.

In the meantime, Olya has woken up and staggers into the kitchen with a hairdo of partial shave/partial dreadlocks and a pet rat crawling around her shoulder. She seems like street cat who has long since understood that you might find free food around the garbage can, but oh God, is life there hard.

Spritely Katya greets her with „Merry Christmas!“

Olya squints, a cigarette drooping from her mouth, „But I’m an atheist.“

„Oh, dear! Well, then, happy holidays.“

Olya dismisses these bothersome formalities and quickly gets to the main business at hand which is to open another botttle as Kirill and Vitya start confirming that „Petrodegradation“ is in full swing – there is no cultural life in Petersburg and there never will be as long as these criminals are in power.

With a Russian Oklahoma flourish, Aloscha breaks into the Petrograd despair, and presents the main meal with a cheery grin.  Merry Russian Christmas!

Another Year Rolls Around

Happy New Year from Petersburg Roulette.
May you always have a friend near you in 2013!