| February 16, 12:00 AM “Year of Youth” Won’t Be As Fun As It Sounds |
Congratulations, young people of Russia! It’s your year — 2009 is officially the Year of Youth. But before you get too excited, you should know that the authorities did not do this to celebrate you. They did this to highlight the fact that you are lazy, drug-addicted hamburger eaters who are driving their great nation into the ground. In fact, they’ve made a 3 1/2-minute PSA to guilt-trip you about it. Now don’t take it too personally; Mommy and Daddy are just stressed about the financial crisis — which, by the way, you caused by not having enough babies. (Why the hell did you think they made 2007 “Year of the Child”?) The video, along with our handy translation, after the jump. |
February 18, 12:00 AM Sochi Update: Latest News An Olympic-Sized Mixed Bag |
Remember when Putin told us, “Everything relating to the [Sochi 2014] Olympic project is safeguarded by the budget”? Not so much. Just yesterday, a government re-evaluation of the budget resulted in an $8.6 billion cut. Considering that we got that original quote from Kremlin propaganda dispenser Russia Today, it will be fascinating to see how they wriggle out of this one. |
February 18, 12:00 AM Ghosts, Weirdos And A Camera Crew Haunt Bulgakov’s Old Pad |
This past Friday the 13th marked exactly 68 years since the completion of Mikhail Bulgakov's magnum opus, The Master And Margarita. It is, in a way, the only clear birthday one can celebrate for his cult masterpiece, a decidedly un-Soviet fantastical satire in which the devil comes to Moscow and torments the sinners (i.e., everyone). Bulgakov died in 1940, leaving the novel unfinished. His wife completed it in 1941, but the government refused to publish it until the Thaw, although by that time it was already an underground sensation. Bulgakov’s old flat, the very same "no good apartment" haunted by the devil's minions in the novel, has become a Mecca for M&M devotees. This is all by way of telling you that RIA Novosti has made a spooooky video about the place, complete with swinging lamps! |
February 17, 8:00 AM Five Worst Clichés of Russia Reporting |
Writing about Russia always carries a whiff of proselytizing. The reason is simple: people tend to either be obsessed with it (that includes the obsessive loathing, too) or know next to nothing about it; the first group are invariably the ones doing the writing for the second one. As a result, even the best writers are forced to pick from a woefully tiny toolbox of memes and metaphors that would make the material “sing” to the general public. Below, the five journalistic devices we never, ever want to see used again. |
February 17, 12:00 AM Let Them Eat Work Visas! A Tax For Foreign Celebrities |
Russia’s Federal Migration Service is cracking down on good times at high prices. A new policy, currently under consideration, is going to make it much harder for Russian millionaires to invite their favorite singers, rockers, and Paris Hiltons to perform at private parties. Under the new policy, all entertainers entering Russia would need to apply for work visas, and pay the resultant taxes. Needless to say, this is a buzzkill. A work visa requires advance notice and tons of paperwork on both ends, but it's especially irksome for the performer, who must endure "labor" tests and blood work, including HIV testing. Say, this wouldn’t have anything to do with band Björn Again leaking Putin’s affinity for ABBA cover bands to the press, does it? That’ll teach foreigners to open their yappers. It’s called a private party for a reason. |
February 17, 12:00 AM Book Review: Inside the Stalin Archives |
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February 16, 12:00 AM “Russian Madonna” Hoping To Become “America's Russian Madonna” |
Russia’s music sales fell 21 percent in the first half of last year, so you can hardly blame the crisis for their continual slump. It may be a quality issue. But there’s also the little matter of piracy: most CDs sold in Russia are unauthorized copies. And Russians paying for downloading an MP3? Ha! So the country's artists rely on live performances to make bank. As they say, though, mo’ rubles, mo’ problems. Now more than ever, Russia’s artists are trying to break into Western music scenes. Perhaps no one more fervently than Valeriya, the 40-year-old Forbes-honored Russian singer whose PR people insist — just insist — on calling her “the Russian Madonna.” |
February 16, 12:00 AM Liveblogging Dmitry Medvedev's Fireside Interview Thingy |
Dmitry Medvedev, looking comfortable in a big leather armchair, channeled his best Franklin D. Roosevelt when he spoke to the Russian people Sunday in his first in a planned series of television addresses. The debut talk, a “fireside chat” with no actual fire, focused on the global financial crisis. In the abridged version of the talk available on the Kremlin’s “blog,” it isn’t clear that Medvedev’s looking at an interviewer just off camera. So, despite his call for honesty, for the first two minutes we’re left wondering why he’s avoiding our eye contact. Let’s belatedly "liveblog" the highlights of the Kremlin’s edited highlights of Medvedev’s big talk as they unspool on our laptop. |
February 13, 12:00 AM Cheburashka and Gena |
Kids' literature tends to reveal as much, if not more, about a culture as the grown-up stuff. While American children feast on rags-to-riches stories like Cinderella, their German peers thrill to Grimm tales such as “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forward to Learn What Fear Was.” So it's fitting that the most popular children’s characters to arise from the U.S.S.R.—Cheburashka and Gena—are steeped in wistfulness and melancholy. |
February 13, 12:00 AM Svetlana Medvedeva’s Fancy Watch Has “Life Ruining” Function |
It's no secret that Svetlana Medvedeva enjoys the finer things. A regular fixture at benefits and fashion shows, the Russian first lady is partial to couture gowns, and she counts several of Russia's hottest fashion designers among her friends. So why are we hearing rumors that the editor of Russia's major business newspaper got fired over a photo of her wearing a $30,000 watch? |
February 13, 12:00 AM The Bathtub Gin Of Blood Doping |
That at least three Russian biathletes recently tested positive for drugs isn’t really news, but damn if they weren't on DIY dope! Old. School. It’s called “Erythropoietin” (EPO), which increases red blood cell production, and is far from unheard of in performance-enhancing circles. The difference in the EPO detected in the lab work of Russia’s biathletes is that it’s “homemade, of Russian origin.” If the legit pharmaceutical stuff can wreak cardiovascular havoc on the human body, we can only imagine what the homegrown version is capable of doing — nor what a home EPO lab looks like (photos welcome!). But seriously, Russia. If you want to bring home the gold in Sochi, don’t skimp on your banned substances. |
February 12, 4:00 PM 02/13/09: The World's Lamest iPhone Trick And More! |
The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, RUSSIA! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics. |
February 12, 10:00 AM Russian PR Is Bad. It's Supposed To Be Bad |
Over at The New Republic this week, James Kirchick has an intriguing piece on the Kremlin’s public relations campaign in the U.S. In addition to trusty fog machine Russia Today, Moscow's attempts to curry Western favor include placing hilarious inserts in the Washington Post, wining and dining American journalists at annual retreats and, bafflingly, letting the foreign press meet the boorish and decidedly unpresentable Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. All of this is trumped, however, by the Kremlin’s 2005 hiring of a D.C.-based PR firm, Ketchum, Inc., who take credit for making Putin Time’s 2007 “Person of the Year.” Ultimately, Kirchick is at a loss to explain a) why these PR attempts are so poorly and haphazardly executed and b) why the Kremlin bothers with them at all. Our guess is as good as anyone’s about the second question, but maybe we can get somewhere with the first. |
February 11, 4:00 PM Seriously. The Pilot Had Been Drinking. |
We hate to do this to you, Aeroflot. We really do. But we have to add this to our string of recent Aeroflot bashings. You know the Aeroflot-Nord (an Aeroflot subsidiary) Boeing 737 that took a nosedive near the Ural mountains in Perm last autumn, killing all 88 people onboard? Well, not only have the reasons for the crash been determined as “poor training,” lack of preparedness, and the subsequent “disorientation” of the crew, but the crew commander’s blood just tested positive for alcohol in a forensic study. The revelation casts the previous drunken-pilot story in an entirely different light. |
February 11, 12:00 AM Pushkin Pays For Bleeding All Over Sofa |
Remember our man, Alexander Pushkin? Russia’s greatest quill, Pushkin was publishing epic poems by age 15, authored what is arguably the world's finest novel in verse ( Eugene Onegin), but famously managed to die like an idiot at 37, after challenging his wife’s alleged lover, Georges d'Anthès, to a duel. Here’s the silver lining to that story. The bloody sofa he died on was never sold on eBay — or, for that matter, cleaned. Now, some CSI: St. Petersburg types are looking at swabs and blood samples taken from the sofa in order to more precisely evaluate Pushkin’s demise. No, dying in peace is not an option. |
