“Russia is a bear. You think you are playing with it and it devours you.” Protagonist in Pavel Lungin’s 2002 film Oligarch, predicting his future downfall.
The bear has deep roots in Slavic mythology. Indeed, Russian folklore expert Professor Jack Haney (An Introduction to the Russian Folktale) indicates that the bear was so important to pre-Christian slavs that they dared not mention its real name. So they gave it a substitute designation, derived from its favorite food: medved, “honey-eater,” or as defined in this issue’s Survival Russian, “the one who knows where the honey is.”
The bear, which Eastern Slavs believed to be their common ancestor, was a sym- bol of strength and fertility. That it entered Mother Earth in the fall and emerged again in the spring also made it a powerful sign of rebirth.
In fact, there is evidence that in some parts of Russia, up through the 19th centu- ry, villagers celebrated a “bear holiday” – komoeditsy, near the spring solstice, on March 24. It was an elaborate celebration, timed to coincide with the supposed emergence of bears from their dens.
Apparently komoeditsy is coming three weeks early in 2008. On March 2, Russia will elect its third president, and Dmitry Medvedev, whose ursine family name repre- sents the apotheosis of bear symbology in Russian poli- tics, will emerge from his metaphorical den and take cen- ter stage. The inauguration is set for May, perhaps timed with this year’s Victory Day celebrations, when, for the first time in about a decade, fearsome military hardware will course through Red Square.
– something that came more naturally for his predecessor and long-time patron, Vladimir Putin.
Yet, in the run-up to the March election, the theme of Medvedev’s campaign appearances has been decidedly “soft.” The successor has been at pains to demonstrate that one of his primary goals will be a strengthening of the social safety net. And, in the best Russian political tradition, Papa Bear has been traversing the country, making tsarist interventions to help common folk.
In December, Medvedev, who over the past year has focused repeatedly on the issue of stopping Russia’s population decline (perhaps in respect of the connection between bears and fertility), met with the family of the 100,000th child born in Moscow in 2007. The father, Dmitry Grigoryev, is a translator and tutor, and said that this was the couple’s third child. Yet, Grigoryev said, his young family had been wait- ing eight years on the city’s list to get a their own apartment, and continued to live with their parents.
Medvedev then turned to First Deputy Mayor Lyudmila Shvetsova, who (as luck would have it) had accompanied him to meet the Grigoryevs. Might there be a way that the city could help the young couple? Papa Bear asked. Well, replied a sheepish Shvetsova, given the birth of a third child, “there are legal reasons to expedite the process.”
Legal reasons? Perhaps. Political reasons. Definitely. The bear, after all, always knows where the honey is...
Enjoy the issue.
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