Note Book

Generous Gift

Nonconformist collection donated

Rutgers University’s Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum has received a massive donation – some 17,300 works by more than 1,000 artists – from Nancy and Norton Dodge. The collection is comprised of Soviet nonconformist art spanning from Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 speech to the end of the USSR. The works come from throughout the Soviet Union, not just Russia, and some will be on view through February 18, 2018 (see Events Calendar).

Red Book

Scientists alarmed

Russian scientists have appealed to President Vladimir Putin, voicing concern that the government may be succumbing to pressure by hunting lobbyists when drawing up the country’s list of endangered animals.

A letter signed by renowned zoologists, and supported by scientists from other fields, argues that Russia’s commission that compiles the so-called Krasnaya Kniga, or Red Book (listing species that receive federal protection), has seen most of its scientists removed, replaced by heads of hunting organizations. According to the letter, signed by 60 scientists in all, the Red Book list “reflects the commercial interests of hunting bodies and aquarium industries rather than scientific research.”

Tick Tock

Hermitage restarts legendary clock

To mark the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, this fall the State Hermitage museum wound and restarted its famous Black Rhinoceros Clock. The timepiece was stopped on October 25, 1917, allegedly at the exact time the Provisional Government was arrested by the Bolsheviks in the Winter Palace’s White Dining Room.

The Hermitage’s clocks were long poorly maintained, but in recent years the museum’s Laboratory for Clock and Musical Instrument Repair gradually fixed them all. Only the most symbolic clock was left unticking.

“Whether or not the time of the clock’s stop was correctly displayed is difficult to say,” said Museum Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. “The main thing is the stopped clock’s symbolism: a break in history. It will tick again, marking, among other things, our view of history. Yes, there was the event that was the revolution. But it has ended.”

The Hermitage’s exhibition “History was Made Here,” chronicling revolutionary events with historical artifacts, is on display until February 4.

Masks of Sorrow

Neizvestny’s project completed

Thirty years after the sculpture was ordered, artist Ernst Neizvestny’s memorial “The Masks of Sorrow” has finally been unveiled near Yekaterinburg. It stands on the site where some 20,000 people were executed and buried in the purges of the 1930s.

Neizvestny was living in the US in 1990, when Yekaterinburg, called Sverdlovsk at the time, asked him to produce a memorial to the city’s victims of Stalinist repression. It was a symbolic request, because Neizvestny had endured a difficult relationship with Soviet authorities since 1962, when Khrushchev accused him of producing “degenerate art.” (Yet, interestingly, Khrushchev’s family asked the sculptor to craft the ousted leader’s headstone after his death in 1974.)

The project was shelved two years later for reasons that are unclear, but at least in part financial: such a huge undertaking was no longer easily affordable during the Yeltsin era economic upheavals. Yet, incredibly, Neizvestny’s plaster models survived through the 1990s and 2000s, hauled from place to place, until finally a young sculptor, Ivan Dubrovin, decided to spend his own money to finish the job.

Neizvestny, who was born in Yekaterinburg but who died in New York in 2016 (living most of the last few decades of his life there), did not see his idea brought to life in bronze.

The memorial depicts two faces: the face of Asia looking toward Europe, and the face of Europe looking toward Asia. And both faces seem to cry tears in the shape of human heads.

Media Backfire

US journalists under pressure in Moscow

US pressure on Russia’s state-owned RT television channel has now escalated into a tit-for-tat targeting of media that may require several non-Russian outlets to operate under the label of “foreign agent.” The US media recognized as “foreign agents” by the Ministry of Justice would also be barred from entry to the Russian parliament.

In the latest round of sanctions following Russian meddling in the US election, the US government required RT to register as a “foreign agent” under its Foreign Agent Registration Act, normally only applied to government lobbyists. In response, RT unleashed a campaign in Moscow urging lawmakers to pass legislation that would make it possible to label any foreign media outlet – not just American – a “foreign agent.”

In addition, after the US Congressional Press Office revoked RT’s accreditation on Capitol Hill, the Duma voted to ban American journalists working for such “foreign agent” organizations from its premises. At press time, the Ministry of Justice listed the following as foreign agent media: Voice of Russia, RFE/RL, Current Time, Azatliq Radiosi, Siberia.Realii, Idel.Realii, Caucasus.Realii, Crimea.Realii and Factograf. The last six are part of RFE/RL.

Departures

Vyacheslav Ivanov, a linguist and polymath who knew dozens of languages and is considered to be the last great Soviet philologist, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 88.

The son of writer Vsevolod Ivanov and actress Tamara Kashirina, Ivanov was educated at Moscow State University and then taught there until 1958, when he was fired for expressing positive views of Boris Pasternak and literary theorist Roman Jakobson.

Ivanov researched semiotics and, together with Vladimir Toporov and Yuri Lotman, established the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. He also published several memoirs, including on his acquaintances with Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. Between 1991 and 2015 he taught at UCLA, which called him “one of the intellectual titans of the 20th century.”

Mikhail Zadornov, a stand-up comedian and writer who satirized life in Russia and the West before national television audiences, passed away at 69.

Born in Latvia, Zadornov was educated as an aviation engineer. Yet he was soon distracted by comic theater and satirical writing, and began to be published in magazines. He became famous for his sketches in the 1980s, including for his impersonations of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Memorably, in 1991 he upset the natural order by addressing Russians on New Year’s Eve, instead of the president. Boris Yeltsin nonetheless also spoke, following Zadornov, causing a delay in the Kremlin’s midnight chime.

Over the past decade, Zadornov’s satire increasingly targeted the West, and he famously destroyed his US visa in 2002 by voiding it with a pen on live television.

One of the greatest baritones of his generation, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, passed away after a battle with brain cancer. He was 55, and continued to perform over the past year, even while enduring cancer treatment.

The silver-maned native of Krasnoyarsk gained international fame after winning the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, which launched his career and made him a household name in Russia. He was especially known for his Italian operas – he was self-taught in bel canto singing – and frequently expanded his repertoire beyond academic opera to more mainstream Russian romances.

Critics praised Hvorostovsky’s wide vocal range and his warm and commanding stage presence. He lived for many years in London with his Swiss-born wife, soprano Florence Illi.

Legendary Soviet pilot Marina Popovich has died at the age of 86. Popovich started flying at just 14, after lying about her age. She then managed to enter professional flight school at a time when this was almost unheard of for a woman.

Popovich grew up in Nazi-occupied Smolensk province and wanted to fly in order to take “revenge” on Nazi Germany, despite the war being over. She convinced party leader Kliment Voroshilov (then deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers) to approve her entry into flight school when she was only 16. She became a test pilot, one of the most accomplished woman pilots, and set 101 aviation world records.

Nicknamed “Madame MiG,” Popovich aspired to enter the space program, but that dream only came true for her husband, cosmonaut Pavel Popovich. Later in life, in the 1990s, Popovich spoke publicly about UFO sightings, claiming that she once met extraterrestrials in a forest who “looked like dogs standing on their hind legs.”