Russian officials are seeking to prevent school shootings by blocking the influence of “harmful information” and by seeking out potential offenders through analysis of school essays. A new R1.6 billion program will subject the writings of Russian schoolchildren to content analysis in order to ferret out those “prone to socially dangerous and destructive behavior,” according to the bill describing the plan. The program, reported by the RBK news agency, will allegedly use a neural network to scan texts and find patterns, marking “suspicious” works with the help of psychologists and experts in deviant behavior.
Government attention turned to so-called “Columbiners” in 2018, when a student killed 21 people at a Crimea polytechnical college. This year, two attacks ended the lives of nine people in a Tatarstan school and six at a Perm university. The State Duma is currently sitting on a bill that would ban the purchase of weapons without a medical exam, an attempt to control firearms.
The shooter in the September incident in Perm, Timur Bekmansurov, was shot and wounded by police. At press time, he was still in the hospital. In a video taped prior to his shooting rampage, Bekmansurov said that he is not a member of any extremist group and told no one about his plans. He also said he began saving up for a weapon in tenth grade and dreamed of carrying out his plan for many years, expecting to die at the scene.
Two very different takes on Soviet-era repression were released this year. The first, by veteran Soviet filmmaker Gleb Panfilov, is a new attempt to adapt Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic novel, One Day in Life of Ivan Denisovich for the screen. Titled Ivan Denisovich in Russian (the English title is 100 Days), the film adds quite a few plot twists.
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is a soldier convicted of espionage and sent to a Siberian labor camp. Played by Filipp Yankovsky, Shukhov receives a full biography, and he is seen heroically destroying German tanks and then fleeing captivity during WWII, only to be sent to the GULAG.
Many critics have praised Yankovsky’s performance but questioned the 87-year-old Panfilov’s choice to omit camp atrocities, and his focus on religion and God.
The second film was created by a much younger filmmaker duo and real-life couple, Natalia Merkulova and Alexei Chupov. Captain Volkonogov Escaped is about an NKVD interrogator who is himself accused but manages to escape and spends the remainder of the film trying to seek forgiveness from his victims’ relatives. Although there are no direct references to the Great Purge, the film’s fictional events are set in 1938. The characters are mostly played by acclaimed young actors, and the scenes and costumes are designed to fit in the Soviet avant-garde tradition. The film was screened at the Venice film festival, but Russian critics were divided regarding its highly stylized and at times fantastical portrayal of some of the worst pages of Soviet history.
Great news for cycling enthusiasts: Russia will soon have a dedicated cycling route connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. In what the developer of the Velo 1 project calls “the first national cycle route,” the winding, 1000-kilometer path will pass through Dubna, Tver, and Ostashkov, wind around Lake Ilmen, skirt Veliky Novgorod, pass Gatchina, and end near the Admiralteyskaya metro station in the country’s imperial capital.
So far, the ambitious project has finished a pilot segment of 22 kilometers along the Moscow Canal, complete with signage and picnic spots. The project is open to input from bicyclists and local residents, and the eventual plan is to have cafes, small hotels, secure bicycle parking stations, and repair stops along the way. The gravel path will avoid large roads, so that cyclists can enjoy the Russian countryside without breathing the fumes of long-haul trucks and traffic jams.
instagram.com/velo.one
The Moscow Metro has launched a new system of payment, claiming to be the first city in the world to introduce a mass-scale, face-recognition-based ticketing system. By September, 241 stations on 14 lines had installed the technology, which allows users to enter the vast underground network by having cameras scan their faces, while their e-wallets are automatically charged the fare.
Those interested in using the system must register on the website facepay.mosmetro.ru, upload a photo, and tie their bank card to the account. To get through the turnstiles, all a registered face-payer needs to do is stare into the camera for 1-2 seconds.
Moscow has rapidly embraced facial-recognition technology, which is also known to be used widely to track down and prosecute political protesters.
After nearly 15 years of excavation work, a new square has been opened in front of Moscow’s Paveletsky Train Station. A long-standing plan to build an underground shopping center at the site was first put on hold, then abandoned entirely for several years until a new developer stepped in to complete the project.
Although the shopping center has not yet opened, the square has finally been unveiled and the construction fence removed, opening up vistas across the Garden Ring Road toward the historic station. The result is decidedly more attractive than a hole in the ground and offers seating areas, an amphitheater, and a fountain, though critics note the development lacks character (Paveletsky is in the famous Zamoskvorechye District, which has winding streets, old estates, and many small museums) and has too many stairs and other obstacles for travelers with heavy luggage.
Foodies rejoice: at long last Moscow has its very own Michelin guide. The eagerly awaited launch date of the green guide to the capital’s best restaurants was mid-October.
Michelin first announced its plans to scan the city’s eating scene last year, and went ahead despite the turbulence that the pandemic year wreaked on the food service industry.
Moscow’s chefs have been gradually ascending to the gastronomical halls of fame in recent years, with a Russian team (from Moscow’s Uhvat restaurant) this year getting into the finals of the prestigious Bocuse d’Or chef championship for the first time. The notable recipients of the Michelin stars are Twins Garden, which has its own farm and 3D prints some of its signature dishes, and White Rabbit, which is focused on modern Russian cuisine (the restaurant was featured in Driving Down Russia’s Spine).
guide.michelin.com
Legendary Soviet-Georgian chessmaster Nona Gaprindashvili has sued Netflix over her portrayal in the highly successful series The Queen’s Gambit after the series referred to her as “Russian” and described her as never having played matches against male players.
“Netflix brazenly and deliberately lied about Gaprindashvili’s achievements” in order to elevate the uniqueness of the series’ fictional hero, the American orphan Beth Harmon, according to the complaint cited by The Hollywood Reporter. Netflix said in a statement that the company respects Gaprindashvili but will defend its case in court if necessary.
Hailing from Zugdidi, Georgia, Gaprindashvili won the women’s Soviet chess championship five times. She did indeed compete against men, winning at a tournament in Hastings in 1964 and at several other international chess tournaments. Currently 80, Gaprindashvili is seeking millions in damages through the Federal District Court in Los Angeles.
Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev cinched a historic victory at the US Open, defeating Novak Djokovic – a rare upset against one of the “Big Three” (Djokovich, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal – to whom Medvedev lost the title in the 2019 final).
Medvedev, a 25-year-old Muscovite who, like many tennis stars, lives and trains in Monaco, represents a younger generation of tennis. He began playing at six and studied at a prestigious math and physics school and later at the Moscow Institute of International Relations. He later dropped out in order to move abroad and focus on tennis. The last time a Russian won a men’s singles title in a Grand Slam tournament was in 2005, when Marat Safin won the Australian Open.
A Russian law student has put his education to work, taking his case all the way to the Supreme Court to contest a “B” grade. The student, unnamed in court documents, believed he deserved an “A” and made an appeal to the university for a better grade. When the appeals commission scheduled a new exam date, he took the commission to court, and the case ultimately reached the country’s top court. The court sided with the student, saying that, under Ministry of Education rules, the university should have changed the grade rather than simply schedule another exam.
The historic Siberian city of Tobolsk has opened a new airport aimed at developing tourism in the region. Flights were to begin in mid-October, with plans for routes to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Tobolsk is in the south of Tyumen Oblast and was an important city during the era of Siberian colonization, though its importance later waned when the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed it. The airport was partially bankrolled by Sibur, a petrochemical company with headquarters in the city of 100,000. Among the city’s landmarks are its seventeenth-century kremlin – the only one in Siberia made of stone.
A new five-star hotel has opened in Svetlogorsk, a popular resort on the Baltic Sea. A private investment project, the boutique 43-room Karmanns Hotel will set you back up to R18,000 a night during high season. While this is pricy for Russians, investors believe the hotel will eventually attract European tourists from Finland, Germany and Lithuania, whose euros would go a long way in Russia. Surrounded by pine trees, the hotel also features a gym and spa, modern restaurant, and a panoramic bar on the roof. It even offers electric bikes and scooters for rent.
SERGEI KOVALYOV, a veteran rights campaigner and dissident who was one of the founders of the Memorial organization, has died. He was 91.
Kovalyov was one of the authors of the Russian Constitution (Chapter 2) and modern Russia’s first official human rights ombudsman. Born in northeastern Ukraine, Kovalyov was a scientist in the Soviet era, working in a biology lab at Moscow State University. He first became involved in human rights and political activism in the 1950s, when he publicly defended genetics from the onslaught of Lysenkoism (the pseudoscientific ideas of Trofim Lysenko then supported by the Soviet government).
In the 1970s, Kovalyov served a seven-year term in a strict penal colony, followed by three years of exile, for publishing the samizdat human rights almanac The Chronicle of Current Events. During perestroika, Kovalyov became a Duma member after being endorsed by Andrei Sakharov, as well as a member of the Supreme Council. He was instrumental in passage of the law on rehabilitating victims of political repression.
Kovalyov lost influence with the Russian government after being accused of “betraying” Russian troops during the first Chechen war, which he opposed, though he remained in the State Duma until 2003.
SNAPSHOT
There are 342 individuals and entities that the Russian government has pronounced “foreign agents” or “undesirable” organizations. These include media outlets, human-rights NGOs and other groups. According to a recent set of rules published by the security services, individuals can be labelled “foreign agents” for 60 different reasons, including gathering information about Russia’s army, security services and vital infrastructure, even if this information is not a state secret (basically, making journalism impossible).
There are 7 million foreign citizens living and working in Russia (Interior Ministry).
The number of Russian companies with full or partial foreign ownership has fallen by 40% since August 2018 from about 47,100 to about 28,400. This suggests foreign capital flight, since the total number of companies in Russia only fell by 22% in the same period.
Russia will hand out over 500,000 Russian passports in 2021, surpassing a previous record in 2010. According to RBK, many of these passports are given to Ukrainian citizens living in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
45% of Russians have a dacha (down from 57% in 2010), while 34% don’t and have no desire for one, and 21% would like one (up from 14%).
So why do Russians want a dacha? 33% say to relax in nature; 33% to grow fresh produce for their family; 11% want a place to take the children; 11% want a place to socialize; 10% want a piece of land and house in case of social instability; 4% would like a place to be alone; 1% want to invest their savings into a dacha; 1% want to rent it out (fom.ru).
What political system do Russians says they prefer? 49% say the Soviet system pre 1990 (up from 33% in 2011); 18% say the current system; while 16% say a western-style democracy (down from 23% in 2011); 6% say yet another system; 11% couldn’t say (Levada).
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