One of Russia’s better known writers, Mikhail Shishkin, scandalized literary and political circles in March when he declined to attend this spring’s Book Expo America (BEA), saying he could not represent a “criminal regime.”
Shishkin, an award winning author whose works have been translated into several languages and who some have called Russia’s greatest living novelist, has lived in Switzerland since the early 1990s. He addressed his letter to the organizers of BEA, the annual summer event that is the largest US book fair. “Ethical considerations,” Shishkin said, forced him to decline the invitation to be part of the Russian delegation.
“By taking part in the book fair as part of the official delegation and taking advantage of the opportunities presented to me as a writer, I am simultaneously taking on the obligations of being a representative of a state whose policy I consider ruinous for the country and of an official system I reject,” he wrote.
Shishkin’s letter was published by The Guardian, and caused a loud debate in Russia, where some writers who consider themselves close to the opposition continue to take various grants instituted by the Ministry of Culture and participate in sponsored events.
In 2012, BEA’s special focus market was Russia, and Shishkin traveled to NY as part of the official Russian delegation, along with some 30 authors, two dozen publishers and as many journalists.
See also PostScript this issue.
Russia is considering instituting tougher residency registration regulations, which could herald a return to the Soviet-era propiska system. Under that system, it was illegal to live in a city without being registered to a particular apartment or house. A new Duma bill fines persons who are not living at their registered address, and “fake” registrations would become a criminal offense.
Critics say that the measure will not solve the problem it supposedly targets: the fake registration of dozens of migrant workers to a single apartment. Instead, they argue, the bill would hurt hundreds of thousands of renters and turn Russia into a police state.
The bill has met with massive opposition, especially from Muscovites, many of whom live in rented apartments but are registered elsewhere – many landlords refuse to register tenants at their address.
Leftist activists who staged a brief, unsanctioned protest on Red Square in March were arrested and fined, some spending up to eight days in jail. Over 100,000 Russians have signed a petition asking that the bill be shelved.
In March, the Russian government unleashed a massive campaign to inspect dozens of NGOs across the country, examining their finances and investigating their budgets for the inclusion of any foreign grants.
By the end of the month, FSB prosecutors, and Ministry of Justice officials had raided the offices of some 90 NGOs, demanding access to financial documentation and even email accounts. Western politicians and activists were quick to brand the move a “witch hunt.”
The raids were supposedly intended to enforce legislation passed by the Russian parliament last year that requires NGOs with foreign funding to declare themselves “foreign agents” and thus be listed on a special “foreign agent” register. Yet months after the legislation passed, no organizations had registered, largely because the law is seen to be unclear, full of loopholes and imprecise wording.
Nearly simultaneously with the raids, President Putin signed a decree setting aside some R2 billion ($67 million) for organizations “engaged in socially significant work and the development of civil society.” Critics have long maintained that the purpose of such allocations was the creation of “shell” organizations that are supposedly engaged in the defense of human rights and electoral transparency, yet which never seriously examine violations committed by government officials and security officers. The state grants would be distributed by groups close to the People’s Front, an organization heavily involved in Putin’s presidential campaign last year.
The new, animated version of the Soviet sci-fi satire classic Kin-dza-dza (directed by Georgi Daneliya) has finally been finished and was released on April 11.
Called Ku! Kin-dza-dza-dza, the animated film was also directed by Daneliya (with Tatyana Ilyina) and took seven years to complete. The plot is similar to the live-action film: two men are transported to the planet Plyuk, where they must adapt to new societal norms.
The project ran out of money halfway through production and could only be completed when Channel One agreed to join as a producer in 2010. Daneliya, who is 82, said this will be his last film.
See the trailer: bit.ly/kukindza
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a global domain names registrar, has approved several dozen domain suffixes, including three in Cyrillic.
By the end of April, it will be possible to register websites with names ending in .рус, .сайт and .онлайн.
The Los Angeles chapter of the ACLU has petitioned that city’s council to cut sister city ties with St. Petersburg due to the Russian city’s “increasingly repressive laws” targeting Russia’s lesbian, gay and transgender community.
St. Petersburg was one of the first cities in Russia to pass a bill against “gay propaganda,” loosely-worded legislation that gay activists say would fine them for even holding hands in public.
“Truly global cities like L.A. celebrate their diversity and protect the rights of all residents. By passing its so-called anti-propaganda law, St. Petersburg has shown that it’s not the same sort of place, and has sent a chilling message to LGBT youth both in Russia and abroad: hide yourself, don’t speak up,” said the ACLU’s James Gilliam.
Russia and Georgia have agreed to restart bilateral trade after a six year hiatus, brought on by worsening relations and war. “We agreed to resume the relations that were interrupted in 2006, to formalize them and to sign the necessary documents that will regulate the supplies of separate commodities,” said Alexei Alexeyenko, press secretary of Rosselkhoznadzor.
Russia has long been Georgia’s largest trade partner. The Caucasian state’s main exports to Russia are wine and cognac, bottled water, and fruit and nuts.
Russians spend about $30 billion each year on magicians and soothsayers, according to the country’s head cardiologist, Yury Buziashvili (Vedomosti). However, the tendency to believe in prophecies, immortality, and aliens seems to be on the decline, according to a recent Levada Center poll.
The poll indicated that 52 percent of Russians believe in omens, down from 57 percent in 2000. Likewise, there was a waning of belief in prophetic dreams (43 percent, versus 51 percent in 2000), astrological predictions (28 percent versus 33 percent in 2000), alien visitations (26 percent versus 31 percent in 2000), and immortality (17 percent today versus 21 percent in 2000).
Sweden-based Civil Rights Defenders has created a new, GPS-enabled wrist band for civil rights protesters that will automatically send an alarm when the activist is arrested, or when the wristband is removed. The alarm will be received by locals via a smartphone application so they can quickly get to the location of the attack. At the same time, the alarm signal is sent to the Civil Rights Defenders headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, from whence it will be broadcast out over concerned social networks.
The new device is part of what is called the Natalia Project, which is named after Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova who was abducted and murdered in 2009.
Russia earned two gold medals, three bronze, and overall third place in the team medal count at the Essent ISU World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships 2013 held in Sochi in March. The event was held on the Olympic ice track.
Muscovite Denis Yuskov, 23, took the gold in the 1500-meter race, Russia’s first gold in a single distance in 17 years. “Our goal is the Olympic Games, and this competition is just a small step towards it,” Yuskov said afterwards.
Energized by Uskov’s win, Chelyabinsk’s Olga Fatkulina caused a sensation in the 1000-meter race when she took Russia’s second gold, besting China’s Hong Zhang and setting a track record time of 1:15.44.
Russia’s Evgeny Gradovich scored a split decision win over Australia’s Billy Dib to take the International Boxing Federation’s featherweight title on March 1.
Gradovich ranked just eleventh in the IBF rankings and had only been in 15 fights before this (though he was undefeated), his first chance at a world title.
Gradovich became Russia’s fifth world champion in pro boxing after Alexander Povetkin and Denis Lebedev (90.7 kg), Zaurbek Bayzangurov (69.9 kg), and Habib Allakhverdiev (63.5 kg).
Russian wrestler Sagid Murtazaliyev recently returned his Olympic gold medal to protest the IOC’s decision to drop his sport from the program. Murtazaliyev said it was a “tough decision” to make, but he hoped it might help Olympic officials see “common sense.” Murtazaliyev, 38, won gold at the 2000 games in Sydney, in the 97-kilogram (214-pound) freestyle class. He was preceded in his action by Bulgarian wrestler Valentin Yordanov, who also returned his medal to the IOC in protest.
The final decision on the Olympic program for 2020 will be made by the IOC in Buenos Aires in September, along with the announcement of that year’s host city.
Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov skated to their career first gold in the pairs event at the 2013 ISU World Figure Skating Championships held in London, Ontario in March.
Skating to Violin Muse by Ikuko Kawai, Volosozhar and Trankov produced virtually immaculate technical elements, including a triple twist, a side-by-side triple Salchow, and triple toe-double toe combination, as well as a throw triple loop and Salchow. En route to their first world title, they set a new highest score (149.87) in the free skate and a new highest total score of 225.71 points.
In ice dancing, Russia’s European champions, Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev, took third place and gained their first World Championship medal with 169.19 points.
As a consequence of its performance at the Worlds, Russia will be granted a full Olympic quota of three entrants in both pairs and ice dancing. Yet Russia will be under-represented in both the men and women’s singles events due to less than stellar performances.
Boris Vasiliev, the acclaimed writer and author of the tragic novel The Dawns Here are Quiet (А зори здесь тихие, 1969), which was adapted to the screen by Stanislav Rostotsky and was nominated for an Oscar in 1972, passed away in March at the age of 88.
While over 20 of his works were made into films, Vasiliev was known primarily for The Dawns Here are Quiet, which is about a group of women railroad workers in northern Russia during WWII. Vasiliev himself went to the front at 17, after volunteering to serve in a battalion near Smolensk in 1941. He later became a paratrooper and served in the military until 1954, after which he focused on writing. Much of his work addressed the ruthlessness of war.
During perestroika, Vasiliev wrote another acclaimed novel, Tomorrow was War (Завтра была война, 1984), set just before the outbreak of WWII. “Russia operates in such a way that we only lose senseless wars. But if the survival of the country is at stake, Russia cannot lose,” Vasiliev once said.
Vasiliev’s mother was from an aristocratic family, something that sets him apart from other widely read Soviet writers. His father fought for both the Red and the White armies during the Russian Civil War.
Alexei German, a film director whose works spanned five decades, passed away in February. Although he directed only seven films throughout his career (he wrote or acted in dozens more), his work was tremendously influential.
German’s best known films are My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Мой друг Иван Лапшин, 1984), about a policeman in a provincial town in the 1930s, 20 Days Without War (Двадцать дней без войны, 1976), in which a writer and war journalist must travel to Tashkent to inform a colleague’s family of his death, and Khrustalyov, My Car! (Хрусталёв, машину!, 1998), about a respected doctor disgraced during Stalin’s Doctor’s Plot. German’s monochromatic, dark, and often brutal films had to face many obstacles in being released; some were shelved by censors for years before they were shown to the public.
German was born in Soviet Leningrad in 1938, to writer Yury German and Tatyana Rittenberg, a doctor who so abhorred the idea of having a child during the worst years of Stalin’s purges that she tried to induce a miscarriage by jumping off cabinets and lifting heavy objects. But German insisted on being born. His son Alexei German Jr. is also a successful filmmaker.
The elder German’s final film, It’s Hard to Be a God (Трудно быть богом, 2013), was based on the novel of the same name written by the Strugatsky brothers. It was filmed in the Czech Republic, decades after German first came up with the idea of adapting the book to the screen. Production finished in 2006, but the premiere was pushed back several times. The movie will finally be shown later this year.
Andrei Panin, one of Russia’s most visible actors, was found dead in his home in March. He was just 50 years old; the apparent cause of death was head trauma.
Panin became famous as private detective Vladislav Stasov on the popular television series Kamenskaya (1999), which led to a series of solid roles in top Moscow theater productions.
Born to working class parents in Siberia, Panin grew up in the coal mining city of Kemerovo and briefly attended culinary school before deciding on an acting career and earning admission to the Moscow Acting School (on his fourth try). Directors told him he was “unfilmable” as an actor, but he ignored their assessment and went on to act in over 70 films and TV dramas. On the big screen he mostly played supporting characters with questionable morals and troubled personal histories, which may explain his popularity in post-Soviet Russia.
Panin starred in several made-for-TV films and series, including Brigada and Sherlock Holmes (as Doctor Watson), which will be shown on Channel Two this fall.
Just a few hours before his death, Panin was nominated for a Nika, Russia’s prestigious film award, for his supporting role in Redemption (Искупление, 2012). He won the award in April.
Initial news reports indicated that Panin was beaten before his death, as evidenced by multiple bruises on his body. A criminal probe was launched, but investigators later said Panin had alcohol in his blood and probably died by falling and hitting his head. However, his friends have launched their own investigation.
Valery Zolotukhin, a veteran theater actor who had served as director of the Taganka Theater for the past two years, passed away at 71 after a battle with cancer.
Born in a small Altai village just as World War II was getting underway, Zolotukhin wanted to be an actor from an early age. He came to Moscow and studied at the GITIS drama school, then joined the Taganka Theater. During what many consider that theater’s “golden age,” he was one of its leading stars.
National fame came to the charismatic actor after he portrayed the WWI soldier Bumbarash in the eponymous 1971 musical film. He acted in over 50 films during his long career.
Unusual for an actor of his caliber, Zolotukhin took on directorship of a regional theater in his native Altai in 2003 and steered it for a decade. He published more than a dozen books, including one on the painful breakup of the Taganka Theater. According to news reports he succumbed to brain cancer.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
