February 16, 2017

The Kremlin on Ice


The Kremlin on Ice

Convicts and murderers and technocrats, oh my!

1. Why bother with jailhouse rock when ice is so much easier to carve? That’s the idea in Komi, which holds an annual snow sculpture competition for convicts. If you take a stroll through the region’s federal penitentiaries, you’ll see tigers, cannons, fairytale characters, soldiers, and polar bears. An SUV won first prize, but female convicts who created Moscow landmarks in honor of the city’s 870th birthday snagged second-place prize for putting the Kremlin on ice. Working with only snow, water, paint, and creativity, the convicts definitely earned their stripes.

rbth.com

2. The World Press Photo Contest has announced the year’s best photos. Per usual, Russian entries claimed several top awards. But the prize of Photo of the Year was claimed by a murder, with the shot capturing the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey deemed the most powerful image of the world’s most prestigious photojournalism contest. The decision was controversial, with some judges arguing that rewarding the image could encourage other would-be killers to publicly stage their violence.

3. In a gubernatorial game of dominoes, five governors (and counting) have submitted their resignations, months in advance of September elections. Three of them have already been replaced by “young technocrats” – perhaps appointed to solve managerial problems, or perhaps representing the “new guard” as the Kremlin gears up for presidential elections in 2018. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says it’s just "a routine rotation process." With all those explanations, dominoes sounds like the likeliest option.

In Odder News

  • White-collar clerk by day, white-collar adventurer by later in the day. For Pavel Makarov, a suit is the dress code for office work and extreme sports alike.
themoscowtimes.com
  • When you call an ambulance and a hearse shows up, is that a problem with you or the medical profession? (Hint: the medical profession. Regional prosecutors are looking into it.)
  • Gotta love a heroic dog: this one kept a toddler warm for two days after the kid was left on a porch in sub-zero temperatures in the Altai region.

Audio Spotlight

Netflix’s favorite Russian inmate meets one of Russia’s favorite creator of twisted fairy tales and fiction. In a new audiobook project, Kate Mulgrew (pictured as Red Reznikov in Orange is the New Black) will be the voice of Liudmila Petrushevskaya’s memoir, The Girl from the Metropol Hotel. With Mulgrew’s prestigious audio history and tenure as a starship captain and Petrushevskaya’s literary excellence, it’s bound to be a great – if weird – collaboration.

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Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

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Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

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The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
Fearful Majesty

Fearful Majesty

This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
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The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

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