Prilepin takes top honor
The jury for Russia’s National Bestseller Prize has named Zakhar Prilepin’s book Sin the “Book of the Decade.” (natsbest.ru) Each RNB prizewinner of the past ten years was in contention for the title, including Dmitry Bykov’s biography of Pasternak, Mikhail Shishkin’s 2005 novel Venerin Volos (Maiden’s Hair) and Viktor Pelevin’s DPP(NN). Prilepin’s novel is a series of stories about a soldier who returns home from Chechnya and restarts his life by working in various mundane jobs.
The jury represented the full spectrum of Russian intellectuals, from writer (and radical political activist) Eduard Limonov, to Kremlin aide Arkady Dvorkovich. The famously reclusive Pelevin, whose appearance was widely advertised by the organizers, failed to show.
Circassians applaud decision
Georgia became the first state to recognize as genocide Tsarist Russia’s forced deportation of Northern Caucasus indigenous communities from the Sochi area in the 1860s. The deportation of ethnic groups labeled as “Circassians” followed Russia’s long Caucasus war, which started, ironically, when Georgian King Irakli II asked Russia for protection from Muslim invaders in the late eighteenth century. The war dragged on for nearly a century before a parade marked its official 1864 end in Krasnaya Polyana, site of Sochi’s ski resort and future host of the Olympic Games in 2014.
The vast majority of the native population was rounded up and shipped to Turkey. Today it has spawned a diaspora of several million Circassians across the globe. The diaspora has for years lobbied for the recognition of what they argue was genocide, and made other political demands, one of the main ones being their ability to repatriate to Russia. The issue has largely been ignored by Russia over the past decade, and many see Georgia to be using the 150-year-old issue for its own political interests, as a way to stir the already boiling melting pot of the North Caucasus.
1 week, 100 portraits
Renowned portrait photographer Platon has photographed some 100 Russian activists for a joint project with Human Rights Watch expected to go public in the fall. Platon, famous for his portraits of politicians and celebrities (one of his best-known photographs is that of Putin on the cover of TIME), previously worked with HRW to shoot portraits of Burmese refugees and exiled human rights defenders, which made a splash in top American magazines, including The New Yorker. The work in Russia spanned over a week in May and touched upon Russian civil society from across Russia, HRW deputy director Caroll Bogert told Russian Life. “These are some of the best people of Russia,” she said of environmental, human rights, children disability, and other activists photographed by Platon and interviewed by the human rights NGO.
Rising filmmaker gains award
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s latest movie, Elena, was a success at the Cannes Film Festival this year, receiving the prestigious Un Certain Regard jury prize.
Actor-turned-filmmaker Zvyagintsev, who is originally from Novosibirsk, made a splash in 2003 with his directorial debut, The Return, which won several prizes at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Globe. Konstantin Lavronenko, the star of Zvyagintsev’s second film, The Banishment, won Cannes’ Best Actor award in 2007.
In Elena, the focus is a woman faced with a choice between her wealthy and powerful husband and her misfit children from a previous marriage. Zvyagintsev’s cinematic style, with many long shots and slow-moving plots, is frequently compared with Andrei Tarkovsky. For his part, Zvyagintsev said the new movie was inspired by the theme of personal apocalypse, and was supposed to be part of a British-based retrospective. He told the BBC that his next movie may be a full-length drama in English.
прямое транслирование с экрана некой надежды — это страшный подлог “One producer kept tormenting me with the question: where is the light at the end of the tunnel here? And in my battle to keep his hands off the film’s intention, I said that transmitting some kind of hope directly from the screen would be a terrible sham. One director, who is still working, had a movie called Everything Will Be All Right. The very name rings of deceit. I don’t want to deceive the people sitting in the audience.”
Cannes prize winner Andrei Zvyagintsev. (Itogi)
Chechen terrorist in the crosshairs
Russia’s most wanted fugitive, Doku Umarov, whose rebel group Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate) has taken credit for several terrorist bombings, including the carnage at Domodedovo in January, now has an American price on his head. When U.S. President Barack Obama met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the G8 summit in France this spring, it was announced that the U.S. was offering $5 million for information leading to the capture of Umarov. Caucasus Emirate has further been put under a terrorist-targeting presidential order, to “help stem the flow of financial and other assistance to the group,” the U.S. State Department said.
Umarov, the self-proclaimed leader of Caucasus Emirate, which seeks to establish Islamic rule across Russia’s North Caucasus and Tatarstan, has been pronounced dead or gravely ill several times by Russian authorities, most recently after an unprecedented air strike on a militant base in Ingushetia. Yet Umarov somehow keeps returning with a statement or YouTube video proving he’s alive and well. This year he promised Russia a year of “blood and tears.”
Film saved from oblivion
Director Yury Kara’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous novel, The Master and Margarita, has finally opened in Russian theaters after sitting on the shelf for 17 years due to disagreements between the film’s producers and the writer’s descendants. After spending so much time in storage, the low quality 1990s celluloid had to be restored before it could be debuted to audiences. The naive lack of special effects is supplemented with plentiful nudity, while the perestroika-era political tint (Satan’s Ball is attended by both Hitler and Stalin) seems once again timely.
McFaul tapped for Spaso House
Michael McFaul, a former Stanford professor and President Barack Obama’s advisor on Russian policy, was nominated by the president to replace John Beyrle as U.S. ambassador to Russia, the New York Times reported before the official nomination became public. It will be the first appointment of a non-diplomat to the Moscow post in 30 years.
As a Russia expert, McFaul was often a critic of Putin’s policies before he was named advisor in 2009, but since then has been behind the U.S.’s “reset” policy towards Russia. His first order of business as ambassador will reportedly be ironing out disagreements regarding the European missile defense shield.
In Russia, where Beyrle has been quite popular (in part due to his late father’s involvement in World War II; see Russian Life July/August, 2010), the news was well received. McFaul is widely known in political analyst circles and is a known quantity both to those holding government posts and those in staunch opposition to the current regime.
“McFaul is a great guy, and in general a strong professional, a person who knows Russia very well and actually likes Russia,” said Vladimir Milov, a former energy ministry official turned opposition politician. “He was the person that argued for an adult, serious approach to relations with Russia, making Obama’s policies more balanced,” he told Dozhd internet TV station.
Russian internet boomlet
Russian search engine Yandex, one of the world’s few country-specific engines to withstand the global Google onslaught, held a very successful IPO in May, raising $1.3 billion. The offering thus valued the company at some $8 billion and Yandex is now listed on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol YNDX. Yandex followed in the footsteps of mail.ru, which had an IPO last November.
Despite being fourth after the short program, rising star Artur Gachinsky earned bronze in men’s singles at the Figure Skating World Championships this spring in Moscow, while Russians Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov took silver in the pairs.
The 17-year-old Gachinsky, who was making his World Championship debut, was Russia’s only entry in the men’s competition (but, thanks to his bronze medal, Russia will get two entries at the next Worlds).
Russia failed to win any medals in ladies’ singles or ice dancing.
The figure skating championships in Moscow received high praise from Ottavio Cinquanta, President of the International Skating Union, who said that Russia deserved a gold medal just for organizing the event, which had been scheduled for Japan, but had to be moved after that country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Russian National Ice Hockey Team Coach Vyacheslav Bykov and his assistant Igor Zakharkin were dismissed after Russia’s lackluster performance at the World Hockey Championship in Slovakia. After a 7-4 loss to the Czech Republic in a highly charged scrap for the bronze medal, the Russian National Hockey Team returned “medal-less” from a Worlds competition for the first time since 2006.
The team scored unconvincing wins over Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia, while losing twice to Finland (including in the semis) and celebrating a one goal victory over Canada in the quarterfinals. Washington Capitals’ star striker Alexander Ovechkin failed to get a single point in five games, and only individual efforts from Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexei Kaigorodov allowed the team to defeat Canada.
Boris Gelfand (Israel) beat Alexander Grischuk (Russia) to win the Candidates’ Chess Matches in Kazan, earning him the right to challenge reigning World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand (India) for the title in 2012. After five draws, Gelfand won a superb strategic game on move 35.
The Candidates’ Matches were held May 3-27 in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. Levon Aronian (Armenia), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan), Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan) and Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) were knocked out in the quarterfinals. In the semis, Grischuk beat Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), while Boris Gelfand beat Gata Kamsky (USA). All four semifinalists have Russian or Soviet roots, including Gelfand, who was born in Minsk and is a representative of the Soviet chess school.
Russian cruiserweight boxer Denis Lebedev knocked out American Roy Jones Jr. in the tenth round of their bout in Moscow. The fight had little action until round ten, when Lebedev unleashed a flurry of punches that put Roy to sleep on his feet with 11 seconds left in the round. Lebedev’s final right hook sent the 42-year-old Jones crashing to the canvas.
Lebedev (22-1, with 17 KOs) had a close fight in Germany with the world title holder Marco Huck last December, losing a split decision. The Jones match-up was not a title bout and simply intended to help Lebedev raise his profile.
Russia is the world’s hardest smoking country, puffing through an average of 17 cigarettes per person, per day, according to top health official Gennady Onishenko.
60.2 percent of men and 21.7 percent of women smoke, and 40 percent of woman smokers continue to smoke while pregnant. Most Russian bars and restaurants are smoker-friendly, exposing all guests to secondhand smoke.
A Levada Center poll of Moscow residents revealed that, in the capital, 52 percent of people smoke at least occasionally. However, most people spoke out in favor of banning smoking in public places, especially schools and universities. 60 percent said they would support banning it in the public spaces of apartment buildings, a popular smoking venue for those who don’t want to expose their children to smoke. The price of a pack of cigarettes (40 rubles, or $1.42), however, remains the biggest factor contributing to the popularity of smoking.
Actor and director Mikhail Kozakov, one of Soviet cinema’s best “bad guy” character actors and director of the über-popular musical comedy Покровские Ворота (Pokrovsky Gate), passed away in an Israeli hospice after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 76 years old.
Kozakov, known in movies for his unusual, slightly demonic dark looks, was born in Leningrad and as a child experienced the wartime hunger and evacuation (as did Alexander Lazarev, below). His film debut at 22 was in the role of Frenchman Charles Thibault, who kills his mother for joining the French resistance during WWII’s Nazi occupation.
Unlike many other actors of his generation, Kozakov continued to star in films made over the past decade, but even his appearance as an old Jewish doctor in the tasteless Любовь Морковь (Lyubov Morkov) could not tarnish his reputation as an actor. Neither could his confession in recent years that he was a KGB agent for decades after being recruited in 1957. His first assignment was to start an affair with an American journalist, he told Ukrainian TV presenter Dmitry Gordon in 2008. “She was so beautiful that I fell in love and confessed everything to her,” he said.
Theater and film star Alexander Lazarev, the reluctant 1960s sex-symbol, died in Moscow at the age of 73.
The Mayakovsky theater star became known to a wider audience in 1968 after starring in Еще раз про любовь (Once Again for Love), a drama branded “immoral” by the authorities and which featured one of the first “erotic scenes” in Soviet cinema: Lazarev, playing the young scientist Yevdokimov, lies on a bed fully dressed, while actress Tatiana Doronina stands near the window, after spending the night with Yevdokimov following their first date.
Although the film turned Lazarev into one of the most sought-after actors, his film roles tended to merely use his aristocratic appearance, as directors cast him as princes and gentlemanly professors. His richer acting life occurred at the Mayakovsky Theater, where he famously played Hamlet and Don Quixote, and where he met his wife, Svetlana Nemolyayeva. The couple was married for over 50 years, making it one of the least scandal-prone celebrity marriages in Russian entertainment.
Abkhazia’s second president, Sergei Bagapsh, died suddenly of heart failure in Moscow after undergoing a surgery his doctors had termed “successful.” He was 62 years old.
Bagapsh had led the unrecognized seceded Georgian region since 2005, in a balancing act between Abkhaz nationalism and Russian protectionism that has gotten increasingly challenging since Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia. Abkhazia is recognized as an independent state by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Vanuatu.
A Georgian Communist Party bureaucrat and later prime minister, Bagapsh was a moderate towards both Georgia and Russia, but signs of instability overshadowed the poor coastal region at the time of his death, as Russia demanded control over a traditionally Abkhaz village on the border between the two countries. This caused an outcry in Abkhaz media and intellectual circles. “He died at the time when it became obvious that there is no answer to the question how you can be president when you are meant to be governor [of a Russian region],” gazeta.ru newspaper wrote by way of an obituary.
Vadim Medish, a professor emeritus at American University in Washington D.C., a scholar in Soviet history and Russian literature, and former head of the university’s Languages and Foreign Studies department, died of heart failure in May. He was 86.
Medish was drafted into the Soviet army in World War Two, fought in an anti-tank unit in the Battle of Stalingrad and was taken prisoner by the Axis. He and his mother, who had fled the Soviet Union along with millions of refugees, were interned in a camp in Germany. He avoided forced return to the Soviet Union by doctoring his papers to reflect his birthplace as Pinsk (in reality, it was Minsk), which was in pre-war Poland. As a “displaced person,” Medish studied law at the University of Munich before emigrating to the United States in 1949.
While not yet a U.S. citizen, Medish was drafted for the Korean War and joined a U.S. Army intelligence unit. He was on a mission in Pyongyang, North Korea when the Chinese army crossed the Yalu River, and later served with the CIA in clandestine services until the early 1960s. After returning to the U.S., he obtained a Ph.D from American University and wrote a best-selling textbook on Soviet history, The Soviet Union.
In 2005, while visiting his hometown of Krasnodar, Medish and his son were detained without explanation by the Russian secret police. A year later, he received the Order of Friendship from then-President Vladimir Putin.
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