Roulettian Intermezzo -- Photo of the Week

After the long winter and the short spring, it's finally possible to sun yourself in Petersburg. Pigeons take advantage of the warm weather, perching on a balustrade that leads down to the waters of the Canal Griboedova

Putin's Back and a Forest Festival

Well, he's back: Putin was inaugurated as President of the Russian Federation on 4 May 2012 for the third (but probably not last)  time. Then again, has he ever really been gone? Like the US Constitution, the Russian Constitution prevents a president for running for more than two terms, but Putin is nothing if not clever and seems to leave little to roulettian chance.  His interpretation:  two consecutive terms.  So after a four year stint as Prime Minister in which his cohort Dmitry Medvedev held the highest office, he's once again President (and now Medvedev has revolved back to Prime Minister). During this time period Putin also managed to have the length of the presidential term altered: from four to six years.  If all goes as he seems to have planned, it looks like we might have Putin around for another 12 years -- until 2024! Yes, he's back and back for a while.


Meanwhile I get a text message from Red Kirill:  "You've got to come, you won't see anything like this anywhere else."  So after watching the inauguration ceremony --  an icy, imperial affair, replete with tsarist pageantry that seemed to emphasize the height of power and the isolation of that height  -- I jump on the metro to the Parnas station and from there head by bus to somewhere in the middle of nowhere -- a lake in the woods upon whose shores, promises Kirill,  a four-day festival is in full swing.

And good heavens, Kirill was right! I have never seen anything like this, not in Russia, not in New York. Where did all these people with dreadlocks, tie-dye, and alternative clothing come from? You certainly don't see them promenading on Nevsky Prospect -- to say nothing of Putin's inauguration at which the general populace was strictly excluded in a central Moscow that seemed devoid of people. Rather, this is an alternative art festival in the forest with loud music blasting from speakers at various stages scattered among the trees along with scads of tents and literally thousands of people, many in fanciful clothing, intent on having a good time, hanging out, and creating art.

"These folks aren't the ones that you see at the demonstrations," says Kirill, "they aren't interested in politics. They just want to live their own free life, make art, and not be bothered by any one."


We're sitting around a little campfire -- it's still chilly here in the Petersburg region -- drinking hot tea made from real ginger.  Suddenly a young girl in dreadlocks and alternative clothing goes swooping by, crying "People, be kind, be kind! Kindness! People! Kindness!"


Surprisingly, Kirill sniffs: "Yeah, clearly, she is still living with her mother who does the shopping and cooks dinner for her. She hasn't had to work a day in her life.  Once you start to work, kindness goes to hell in a hand basket. It's productivity that counts.  Well, let her dream..."

Of course Kirill has his own performance event planned: in support of the eco movement it's called "Chase out the Garbage."  Artist Lena paints his face in a medley of colors and he dons an improvised costume to which all sorts of trash -- teabags, cigarette packs, plastic bottles -- has been attached.  He is the "garbage" -- and we all run after him through the forest, with shouts and cries, chasing "garbage" out of the woods.  Rah!

From the tsarist majesty of Putin's inauguration to collective festivities in the forest in a few short hours.  What can you say?

People are strange and so is life!

Roulettian Intermezzo -- Photo of the Week

May 9th -- Happy Victory Day in the Great Fatherland War against Fascism, that is to say, WWII.  

This day is one of the most important Russian holidays and is celebrated with parades, fireworks, and presenting those who fought in this dreadful war (noticeable by their age and the numerous medals on their jackets) with red carnations and the phrase "Thank you for victory!"  Thank you indeed! One shudders to think what would have happened had Hitler won the war. In view of the importance of the day, here's one more photo of a respected veteran -- they are becoming so few now....

International Solidarity and Spring and Labor

Happy May Day!

In the United States, the First of May has lost all connection to the struggle of the exploited working class for shorter days and higher pay but in Russia, it's been a symbol of class struggle for a good hundred years. In Tsarist times, workers held annual protests demanding better working conditions and higher wages on this day from 1890 until 1917, when the autocracy collapsed. In 1918, when the class struggle had at least theoretically been won by the proletariat via the Soviet Revolution, May 1 was transformed into the Day of the International Solidarity of Workers.  Most Soviet cities had endless parades during which theoretically joyful workers streamed down main boulevards to show their unwavering support for the USSR. Hurra! Now that Communism in its turn has fallen, the day has been renamed, this time by the Russian Parliament who christened it Spring and Labor Day in 1992.

Meanwhile, I go with my friend Teacher Galya to the Spring and Labor Day Parade that heads down Petersburg's main boulevard, Nevsky Prospect. We're at the front of the parade and Galya looks for her branch of the teacher's union to check in. "We've all been bought, you know," says Galya, "no one wants to come, but they told us, you'll each get ten free theater tickets if you go. So that's why we're here."  

The sun is shining (finally, finally)  and under blue skies, banners wave, balloons bob, music plays from speakers piled on a rather dilapidated bus and generally, even if they are all "bought," most people seem to be in a celebratory mood.

We walk a bit with the teacher's union and then Galya suggests that we stand on the sidewalk to watch the parade go by.

AFter the trade unions come scads of people supporting Putin's United Russia. As one of the soldiers doing duty says, "nothing but United Russia. Geeze."

But then come the communists. Scads and double scads of them. I'd be hard pressed to say who had more people voting with their feet: United Russia or the various Communists factions. 

A red drummer girl in front of a banner reading "For a World without Exploitation"

The Communist van:  "Down with the power of capital! Give power to the majority!"

Why so much support for the Communists?  It's a bit difficult for Americans to understand, but there is a strong nostalgia for the good old Communistic days, when everyone had work but didn't have to work too hard, when no one was rich, when life was stable and settled.  Still, it's a bit hard to explain the nostalgia for Stalin, who made a well-groomed appearance on numerous placards. 

Here's one attempt at an explanation: "Stalin lifted Russia up out of ashes, he created a great power, he destroyed Hitler, saved Russia and humanity."  

More Stalin

And more Stalins

After the great hordes of United Russia and the Communists, lots of little groups trot by promoting various causes.  

Here's one for the NRA:  a small group supporting the right to bear arms.

Then the Tee-Totalers. 

"Sobriety is health!"  and "Sobriety is the Choice of the Strong."

This seemed like a pleasant surprise, Russian youth coming out in support of alcoholic abstinence.  Then I caught their chant:  "Those who don't smoke and don't drink breathe easier and beat up stronger."

Aha.

All Power to the Greens

The Pinks: Women, don't cry. Unite!

The road clear for bicyclists

Finally toward the end of the parade come several hordes of rebellious youth of the type that you might not want to meet in a dark alley at night.

At this point, the parade trickles to an end and Galya and I head to a nearby cafe to relax over coffee and dessert.  Maybe with all of these various grass-roots groups protesting -- who unlike Galya, the Unions, and probably United Russia, were not "bought" there is some hope for democracy in Russia after all?

On the other hand, it seems that while you can blithely carry posters of a mass murderer (Stalin) down Nevsky Prospekt don't think about waving a rainbow-colored flag. Seventeen people were detained before the parade started -- they wanted to protest against the new law forbidding the promotion of homosexual propaganda. 

Roulettian Intermezzo - Last Photo of April

Canal Griboedova is Ice Free!

A pair of beer cans float by as the finally ice-free waters of the Canal Griboedova erratically reflect the nearby buildings.  Spring is in the air, the trees are almost starting to bud, the grass is almost starting to grow, the sun is shining, and tomorrow is a holiday:  1 May, International Workers Day.  What could be better? Sometimes you get a winning hand after all.

Roulettian Intermezzo - Photo of the Week

The Ice is Melting, Signs of Spring

Temperatures still aren't tropical but Spring is slightly in the air as ice in the Canal Griboedova melts away.

Cabaret and Pocket Change

Start by admitting 
from cradle to tomb

It isn’t that long a stay.

Life is a cabaret, old chum,

It’s only a cabaret, old chum, and I love a cabaret!

Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles, Cabaret

The original inspiration for Cabaret was Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. This wrenching book (#58 on TIME's 100 Best English Language Novels since 1923) was a result of Isherwood's stay in Berlin between 1929 and 1933 when the sophisticated city danced on the perilous edge of upcoming destruction. 


A British native, Isherwood eked out a living as an English tutor and reveled in Berlin’s glamorous, scandalous night life, cultural creativity and sexual freedom, while mingling with firebrand Communists, wealthy Jews, homosexuals, and general bohemians before the catastrophic Nazi dictatorship swept over Germany and most of these colorful characters either fled or met their doom. Isherwood himself understood the signs of the encroaching times and headed off to sunny California not long after the Nazis acquired power and the concentration camp replaced the cabaret as a German national symbol.

Meanwhile, as Liza also notes in Cabaret „Money makes the world go around, that clinking clanking sound!“ and indeed, a little extra pocket change is generally a desirable thing. So from Cabarettian Berlin to Roulettian Petersburg, I decide to follow in Isherwood's employment footsteps and earn some extra roubles providing English lessons. My first student is a ten-year-old girl called Dearlise. Most Russians have predictable names: for women, it’s Olga, Masha, Natasha, Tanya, Sveta, or Ira.  My friends roll their eyes when I mention my student's name – it’s so incredibly pretentious.

Dearlise is sweet and slender, greeting me in a finely decorated apartment that lives up to the pretentiousness of her name. Vast and stylish, it exudes a faint whiff of nouveau riche kitsch, and my amazement increases when two finely groomed pedigreed Abyssinian cats are trotted out to meet me.

These are not the average Russian circumstances that I have come to accept as standard. I think of Uralian Natasha, who shares one narrow, cramped room in a communal apartment with her seventeen-year-old daughter. In the other rooms that seem not to have been renovated since WWII live two decrepit grandmothers that spend all day watching tv, and Azerbaijanean Nariman who hawks vegetables at a local market and cohabits with the blowzy Ukrainian waitress, Tanya. There is one kitchen and one bathroom between the six of them. It's considered a blessing that no one smokes or drinks much  and there are no feisty alcoholic scenes at three in the morning as is often the case in those crowded communal flats.

Well, Dearlise is a charming child and between reading Where the Wild Things Are and The Cat in the Hat in her spacious, lacy bedroom with puffy kingsize bed, upright piano, and florid rose wallpaper, I learn a little more about her circumstances. She lives in this luxurious apartment with her nanny, her grandmother and her grandfather, who she says has lots of secretaries and a big, black, expensive American Range Rover. Her real Mama and Papa reside with her six-year-old brother in Germany, where Dearlise was born. Mama is Ukranian and Papa italiano. Papa, it seems, was one of nine happy Italian children, and as the oldest thereof, he inherited the family’s apparently wildly profitable factory complex in Germany that produces rubber tires and the like. With all of this international confusion, I can't keep track of who owns what houses and where, but it's clear – while these folks may not be in the ranks of Prokhorov or Abramovitch, they're certainly financially far better off than anyone else I know, here of course, but even for the most part in New York! This also is Putin’s Russia. And personally, I'm thinking I should have requested a higher hourly rate.

So why is a girl possessing German and Ukrainian passports that was born in Germany to an Ukranian mother and an Italian father with houses and factories near Stuttgart, sitting here with me in a luxurious St. Petersburg apartment reading The Cat in the Hat?  I’m sure there’s an explanation somewhere, though it may not be a good one.

PS:  The new law has recently gone into effect in Petersburg that makes the distribution of gay propaganda illegal and so far four people have been arrested thereunder. There were hearings for two of the four on Monday. One was postponed because the arresting officer did not show up. The other person was found guilty of disobeying police orders to disband (the same charge that got Red Kirill into trouble back in March at  that unauthorized anti-Putin demonstration) while the charge of "homosexual propaganda" was left unaddressed. We'll see what happens to Madonna when she comes to Petersburg in August during a world concert tour: she plans to protest against this law.