Notebook

Price of Solitude

Math genius hides from
money and limelight

Grigory Perelman, the brilliant mathematician who solved the Poincaré Conjecture (see Russian Life Nov/Dec 2006), has received the Millennium Prize Problems Award, which pays out one million dollars. But Perelman has indicated he may refuse the money.

It is a repeat of the situation with the prestigious Fields Medal, which Perelman was entitled to receive in 2006, but has declined. Instead, Perelman has opted to stay out of the spotlight. As described in Masha Gessen’s book, Perfect Rigor, Perel-man abandoned mathematics after becoming disillusioned with the field’s slow recognition of his genius and its “unethical practices” (as he told The New Yorker some years ago). He is unemployed and lives with his mother on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. 

At a loss for up-to-date photographs of the reclusive genius. news agencies have resorted to snapping blurry outlines of his head in his apartment window, or attempting to talk to him through his closed apartment door. James Carlson, current head of the Clay Mathematics Institute, the foundation that initiated the Millennium Prize, told the Associated Press that the award is Perelman’s whether or not he accepts the money, but could not say where the money would go if Perelman refused to take it.

Closer Regions

Extending the power vertical 

through time

The first fruits of President Dmitry Medvedev’s initiative to slash the number of Russia’s time zones were felt when daylight savings time changed in March. 

Samara region and Udmurtia have changed their time zone by one hour to coincide with Moscow time. Kemerovo region, Kamchatka, and Chukotka have all moved one hour closer to Moscow as well, which means that the number of Russian time zones has now been reduced from eleven to nine.

There may be further merging of time zones in Siberia and the Urals, presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich told Itar-Tass, but the issue requires more research. Medvedev has also suggested dropping daylight savings time, introduced in the Soviet Union in 1981, and mainly only implemented in the Northern Hemisphere.

Medvedev championed the time zone overhaul in his State of the Union address. “Have you ever considered how having so many divi-sions can make difficult the eff-ec--tive ruling of the country?” he asked.

Hundreds of people in Samara protested the region’s temporal subordination to Moscow, demanding a referendum on the subject, although authorities refused to sanction their rally. “United Russia stole an hour from our day!” read protest banners. 

Meanwhile, some analysts suggested that Medvedev’s persistence on such a trivial issue, when Russia is dealing with a wide array of serious socioeconomic problems and a budget deficit, demonstrates his political impotence. “This is something where he can act totally independent from Putin,” the Carnegie Center’s Nikolai Petrov told The Moscow Times. “But it is a niche pretty much at the fringes of politics.”

Dictator’s Shadow

Stalin’s figure used for political capital

More than half a century after his death, Stalin has once again become a subject of debate in the lead up to the 65th anniversary of Victory Day (May 9). Moscow authorities, nota-bly Mayor Yury Luzhkov, proposed hanging portraits of Stalin in the Russian capital to commemorate his leadership during World War II. 

“I am not a Stalinist, but I favor objectivity in recounting history,” Luzhkov said. “It was Stalin who led the country to victory and this is a fact that cannot be silenced.”

Immediately, the human rights organization Memorial retaliated by announcing that they will install posters informing Muscovites about Stalin’s repressions, some of which (notably the evisceration of the officer corps on the eve of the war) likely put Russia at greater risk of defeat. Said Russian Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev, Stalin was “a hangman” who “bears full responsibility for the array of defeats our country faced in the first two years of the war.”

A public debate ensued, with regional authorities carefully monitoring the wind direction. In the end, both Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev failed to applaud Luzh-kov’s initiative. While Medvedev called Stalin’s repressions a crime, Putin said more ambiguously that the situation “cannot be judged in general.” The city backed away from their plans to decorate the city with the posters. For now. 

According polls by levada.ru, 32 percent of Russians have a positive view of Stalin (versus 38 percent in 2001), 38 percent are indifferent toward him (12 percent in 2001), and 24 percent have negative views (43 percent in 2001).

“Stalin’s image is interesting to Russia’s current rulers because it’s connected to the most powerful symbol of unity – the memory of victory in World War II,” Alexei Levinson, a sociologist at Levada Center told polit.ru, “and his crimes make him not a weaker, but a stronger symbol” that can be used to cement the legitimacy of an authoritarian regime.

Back to Shkola

Show an affront to school workers 

A controversial TV series about a Moscow high school may be prompting overdue discussions about school reform. The series, called simply Shkola (“School”) is the creation of Valeria Gay-Germa-nika, who directed Everybody Dies But Me, a film which got a -special mention at the 2008 Cannes Festival. 

The low-budget series (complete with jerky filming) portrays the daily lives of 14-16 year olds in a Moscow school, and it pulls no punches when it comes to drinking, sex, cursing and violence. The series originally aired in prime time on Channel One, but, after a public uproar, was moved to a less conspicuous 11:30 pm time slot. 

While many critics have called Shkola an outrage and a disgrace, others have applauded its frank display of what can go on in the school system. While Gay-Germa-nika has publicly said she isn’t trying to send a political message, her show may help launch school reforms, something Presi-dent Medvedev has indicated an interest in. Channel One, a longtime Kremlin mouthpiece, officially stated that “hypocritical statements that education has no problems are unconstructive for the country.” 

Burnt by the Net

Movie patriarch ridiculed
into humility

Director Nikita Mikhalkov is releasing his long-anticipated sequel to Burnt by the Sun, the 1994 Academy Award winning film about a decorated Red Army colonel at the dawn of Stalin’s Great Purge. 

Although Colonel Kotov was said to be shot at the end of Burnt by the Sun, the sequel returns him from the dead (not unlike Ostap Bender, murdered at the end of The Twelve Chairs, then miraculously alive again in The Little Golden Calf) and inserts him in a “disciplinary battalion” during World War II. More-over, the sequel is actually divided into two full-length films, Burnt by the Sun: Menace, about the horrors of the first year of the war, and Burnt by the Sun: Citadel, which has a more optimistic tone. A 12-part TV miniseries version will also be aired.

The movie was released just before Victory Day, and its publicity struck a decidedly dissonant chord with the public. “A great film about a great war,” say the film’s posters, displaying an audacious lack of modesty while capitalizing on an important and painful subject. Bloggers immediately began to mock the director, Photoshop-ing the promotional images and changing the title to “L’homme Nikita” or “A Great Film About Me, Again.”

Monstrations

Police just don’t get the joke 

Authorities have cracked down on Artyom Loskutov, a Novosibirsk resident and artist who has organized annual “Monstrations” – massive rallies sporting absurd slogans and lacking any overt political message. 

Since 2004, Loskutov has inspired increasing numbers of young people to join in annual May Day celebrations “with no goals except aesthetic ones, in order to, ‘show oneself and look at people’ as the Russian proverb says.” 

Evidently, however, even banal slogans such as “Where am I?”, “Foot is a man’s best friend,” and “ZhPChShTs” make authorities suspicious. Loskutov was arrested last year by Novosibirsk police on charges of marijuana possession. On his blog (kissmybabushka.com), Loskutov said the drugs were planted. Novosibirsk authorities have repeated denied requests to hold a Monstration in the city in 2010.

Though the R20,000 fine Loskutov would face if convicted is not that large, the use of drug charges against non-political activists may be unprecedented, Kommersant noted. Only members of the outlawed National Bolshevik party and labor unionists have previously suffered a similar fate. 

RIP Obmen Valyuty

One of the symbols of the 1990s, the currency exchange booth, will soon disappear. The Russian Central Bank is forcing banks to either close exchange points (often carved out of a dark apartment building entryway) or turn them into full-fledged branch offices. There are reportedly 709 currency exchanges in Russia, the vast majority of which are in Moscow and the Moscow region. They were especially popular in the 1990s, when the unstable exchange rate prompted Russians to convert their ruble savings into dollars in order to save them from devaluation. However, the exchanges are hard to monitor and often offer deceptive exchange rates and charge usurious transaction commissions, the Central Bank said. The decree will go into effect October 1.

Press Tycoon

Russia’s maverick oligarch Alexander Lebedev has bought a second British newspaper, the Independent, after revamping the Evening Standard tabloid, which he purchased last year. Lebedev paid one British pound to take over the publication, which is deeply in debt. Lebedev also owns Russia’s liberal, oppositionist newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, in partnership with Mikhail Gorbachev. Although Lebedev said he wants the Independent to become profitable, he told the Wall Street Journal he is “not in the business for the money.” The Evening Standard was rebranded as a free publication last year, following its purchase by Lebedev’s company,
Evening Press.

Thriller Lauded

How I Ended this Summer, a new film by Russian director Alexei Popogrebsky, received two Berlin Bear awards at the Berlin Film Festival. Popogrebsky’s previous films were Koktebel and Prostye Veshchi (Simple Things), both well-received by critics but poor box office performers. How I Ended this Summer has just two actors, Sergei Puskepalis and Grigory Dobrygin, who shared the Berlin Festival’s Best Actor award. The film’s second award was for Pavel Kostomarov’s camera work capturing Chukotka’s rugged wilderness. The film’s plot revolves around two characters working at a meteorological station on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The film opened in Russian theaters on April 1. (etimletom.ru)

Closer to the People

A new website has been created to syndicate all blogs by Russian government officials and politicians. Goslyudi.ru, launched by the Polit.Ru website, monitors blogs that officials began after President Dmitry Medvedev’s campaigned to get old-school bureaucrats using the internet. Although many officials have their press services maintain their blogs, there are personal ones, notably by Perm governor Oleg Chirkunov, Kirov governor Nikita Belykh, and A Just Russia party head Sergei Mironov.

Brighton Idols

The popularity of the reality TV show Jersey Shore has producers looking to create a similar reality show about young Russian Americans based in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn’s Russian speaking neighborhood. The producers are reportedly scouting for promising “Russian Snookis” to be cast in Brighton Beach, which has attracted over 4,000 potential fans and participants on Facebook. The main difference from Jersey Shore, producers Alina Dizik and Elina Miller told The New Yorker, is that Brighton Beach’s players will speak “russlish” and “create a microcosm of the Soviet Union in the house.” (brightonbeachshow.com)

Chasing Vampires

Timur Bekmambetov, Russia’s leading action film director (Night Watch, Day Watch, Wanted, The Last Witch Hunter) is teaming up with Tim Burton to produce a film based on the best selling book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, according to ScreenDaily. 

Runglish

It’s official. For years, Russophiles have debated what to call the strange admixture of Russian and English spoken by persons who straddle the Russian-English linguistic divide by inserting Russian words into English conversation (“I have got to get these guys to finish my remont”) or Russianizing English words, as in poslaysany chiz (“sliced cheese”). Most have called it “russlish,” and others “runglish,” yet Merriam-Webster recently adopted “rusglish (noun): a combination of Russian and English.” The word was submitted by Yury Stoma of Penza, who also successfully submitted this to the linguistic authority: “rumorology (noun): the study or practice of spreading rumors.”

From State to Church

The government is finalizing a draft bill that will give ownership of all religious structures nationalized by the Bolsheviks back to the Orthodox Church, with the exclusion of just a few UNESCO World Heritage sites, such as the Kremlin. The law, once passed, will make the Russian Orthodox Church the largest landowner in Russia, after the Russian government. Critics have said the decision is dictated by the government’s desire for loyalty and support from the Church, and that the change in ownership could displace hundreds of museums and put works of art in jeopardy. 

Fall Guys

Russia’s underwhelming performance in the Vancouver Olympics disappointed even the worst pessimists and has now stepped up the pressure for Sochi. President Medvedev lashed out against inept “fat cats” – Russia’s sports bureaucrats – and urged them to step down. Eight, including the head of Russia’s Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachev (who also happens to be Prime Minister Putin’s ski instructor), took the hint. Sports minister Vitaly Mutko has so far managed to keep his post.

“Where are my two Volgas?
Where are yours? Why do we
have such a rift between
the rich and the poor?
Where did the billionaires
come from? Did they earn
their wealth?”

Former Central Bank head and Yukos
CEO Viktor Gerashchenko, on why
liberal economic reforms of the 1990s
were “naïve.” (slon.ru)

“Contention within the ruling tandem is impossible, and it
will be in the country’s driver’s
seat beyond 2012.”

Head of the A Just Russia party,
Sergei Mironov (gazeta.ru)

“Not a single police officer knows who the organizers are. They snatch up random participants at rallies, and in court no one can say anything. And this circus has been going on for several years. There are cases of people being detained who have nothing to do with the protests, including journalists.”

Olga Yegorova, Chairwoman of the Moscow City Court (Interfax),
on detention of demonstrators

“I would refer Ms. Yegorova to the authorities. Let her request of the Moscow government that all rallies be permitted, as it is our constitutional right to hold them. As far as the police, I don’t have many complaints... It is my impression that it is the courts who refuse to rule on illegal, in my opinion, detainments. They don’t want to rule on them and send the cases back to the police.”

Writer and politician Eduard Limonov (Interfax)

“There is also the position taken by Kisa Vorobyaninov,
who said that there are issues where haggling is
not appropriate. In general,
I agree with Kisa.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quoting a character*
from Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs,
regarding Belarus’ silence on recognition
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, (RIA Novosti).

*  OOPS. One has to be careful with literary references. In the novel, Kisa Vorobyaninov is a front man who tricks Kislyarsky out of 500 rubles, sending the poor fellow packing instead of leaving him to continue his nice vacation. Thus, Putin unwittingly endorsed a lying swindler’s trickery. (See Survival Russian, page 27) 

“As to Medvedev, his evaluation of recent events, in my opinion, more accurately reflects what has happened, than Putin’s.”

Communist party head
Gennady Zyuganov
(Vedomosti)

“Today a person does not have to resort to baseness when his conscience comes in conflict with the interests of authorities. Unlike 30 years ago, he will not be locked up in a mental asylum; unlike 60 years ago, he won’t be shot… The opportunity to not have to choose between being a scoundrel or a hero is a great breakthrough for a country like ours. There are very few people who would risk their careers to preserve their self respect… And self-respect (not to be confused with self-love) is our scarcest national quality. Everyone today has the freedom to respect or to not respect themselves. And it is from that freedom that all other freedoms spring.”

Writer Boris Akunin
on why he feels Russia
is a free country (Russian Newsweek)

Facts & Figures

Russians comprised 6% of the world’s total of 377,000 asylum seekers in 2009. This puts Russia in fourth place after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, and followed by China and Serbia. 13,630 persons requested political asylum in Russia over the past 5 years. The United States was the destination country with the most applications: 49,000, followed by France with 42,000.

An average car on Russian roads is 12.9 years old, which is .9 years older than the average age one year ago. The oldest cars are in Sakhalin (19.1 years old) and Kaliningrad (19) regions. The youngest are in Tatarstan (9.1 years old) and Perm region (9.3 years old). 23% of cars in Russia are over 20 years old.

The average bribe in Russia has increased by 250% over 2009, jumping from R9,000 to R23,000. Last year some 4,000 persons were detained for involvement in corrupt transactions.

Russians are happiest in Tyumen region: 81% percent of Tyumen residents said they are mostly happy with their lives. Moscow is the second happiest region with 80%, Tatarstan is third with 78%.

46.5% of Russian men and 51.7%

of Russian women are overweight. In 2000, the figure was 30.7% for men and 27.4% for women.

56% of Russian men think women and men have equal opportunities in Russia. 49% of Russian women think so.

40% of Russian men think women have harder lives than men in Russia. 63% of women think so (down from 56% and 73%, respectively, in 2001).

65 Years Ago: 

  The War on the Eastern Front

95% of the European Axis forces (Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Finland, Romania, etc.) that were killed in World War II were killed on the Russian Front. Total German military losses in the East were more than 4,000,000 killed, including 1.1 million by March 1942 (still two years before the Allies opened a Second Front in Europe, in June of 1944).

In August 1942, the Germans approached Stalingrad with 1,250,000 men. Of this number only 30,000 ever returned home. On November 19, 1942, the Russians encircled 330,000 German troops inside Stalingrad. Of this number, 94,000 survived and surrendered on January 31, 1943. Only 5,000 ever returned home.

The Battle of Kursk took place in July of 1943 and involved 2,500,000 Red Army and 1,000,000 German troops. In this two-week battle, nearly half of all German troops were killed (125,000), or captured or wounded (350,000).

On June 22, 1944, the Soviet Union launched “Operation Bagration” against German Army Group Center. In the week that followed, German battle casualties were 480,000 men. Army Group Center lost 25 of its 43 divisions. In five weeks, the Russian Army moved 200 miles west to the gates of Warsaw. On the Second Front in France, during the six weeks after D-Day (June/July 1944) total German losses were 140,000 men.

During the course of the Battle of Berlin, Germany lost 460,000 soldiers and another 480,000 were captured. By 1945, the Russians had amassed 30 times more artillery than the Germans, virtually all of which was produced by the Soviets themselves (97% of the weapons Soviets used during the war were Soviet made, including 100% of their own artillery, 99% of their tanks, 93% of their own aircraft and 82% of their trucks).

An estimated 34 million Soviets “donned a military uniform” during WWII.  Over 8.6 million Soviet troops were killed and over 4.5 million were taken prisoner by the Germans. The Soviet Union also suffered an estimated 12-14 million civilian casualties.