Tag: Russia

Homophobia on the Offensive in Russia

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Russia is preparing for the elections to its parliament (called Duma.) Everybody knows that the elections will be a sham. The government forces state employees to vote for the party that is currently in power by threatening to fire them. It forces business people to vote the “right” way by threatening them with sanctions in case they refuse. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that the results of the elections have been predetermined. The Russian Prime-Minister Putin doesn’t even try to conceal that he is the puppet-master behind the current lame-duck President Medvedev.

So what do you do when you are planning to perpetrate such a massive electoral fraud against the people of your country? The answer is clear: distract them by something that will make them feel good and in control. It is no surprise that the authorities of St. Petersburg have introduced a bill that will impose fines on everybody who “engages in propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia.” Of course, the idea that homosexuality can be “promoted” makes as much sense as a plan to promote tallness. I’ve tried asking many a homophobe how much “propaganda” of gayness would be enough to make them gay. The answer is always the same: “Of course, nothing would make me gay, but I’m just worried about others.” Equating homosexuality and pedophilia, like this bill does, is also egregiously offensive.

However, many people in the fiercely homophobic Russia that inherited its hatred of homosexuality from the Soviet Union are happy about this bill. The authorities humiliate them by using them to pretend that there is some form of democracy in Russia. In reality, though, people are powerless to choose who will be in charge of their country. The attacks on gays make these downtrodden and humiliated people feel proud of their heterosexuality because there isn’t much else to be proud of. The suggestion that homosexuality can be promoted makes the heterosexual majority feel that sexual orientation is a choice and congratulate itself for making the “right” and the “moral” choice on this issue.

The anti-gay bill in St. Petersburg is still under review. Other areas in Russia, however, have already implemented this kind of legislation (Arkhangelsk and Ryazan). The economy in these areas is in even worse shape than elsewhere in the country, which gives their inhabitants more reasons to be unhappy with the government. And whenever popular discontent in Russia grows, you can always expect to see a distracting maneuver aimed at getting people to concentrate on their hatred towards some marginalized group instead of questioning the ruling party.

Russians Are Hilarious

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

So the Russian leader Putin went to a boxing match and got booed. The Russian government immediately announced that it never happened and he hadn’t gotten booed. Reports from the event were edited so that the booing wouldn’t be there. However, many people recorded the event and placed videos of it online.

Then, the Russian government placed an announcement that it had been a positive booing rather than a negative one. Instantly, hundreds of bloggers and journalists published articles analyzing the pitch of the boo and stating that it was decidedly negative in tone. They also drew everybody’s attention to the very distinctive yells of “Putin, go away!” from the audience.

After millions of people had familiarized themselves with the video of the booing incident and it became impossible to deny that the booing was very negative, the Russian government suggested that the person who was getting booed wasn’t Putin but rather one of the boxers.

Immediately, crowds of people started sending messages to the boxer explaining that everybody loved him and he was not the one being booed.

Let’s see what the Russian government’s next move is going to be.

Here is the video so that you can decide for yourself whether Putin was booed positively or negatively.

Romance and Cultural Differences

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Since people don’t seem to mind my gossip stories from Russia, I’ll share the most recent one. A famous female journalist and blogger of about my age was approached by a French company that manufactures comfortable underwear for professional women. The blogger agreed to participate in the company’s promotional campaign and started writing promo pieces about the product on her blog. She is such a talented writer that even her sponsored pieces are a lot of fun to read.

The next step in the promo campaign was creating a video featuring the French underwear. Since the blogger in question had participated in many ad campaigns as a model, she decided to star in the video. She also wrote the script for it. In the script, a beautiful, professional woman in her thirties sees off to work the man she loves while wearing the comfortable French underwear.

For the video, the blogger needed a male model who would embody her vision of the most desirable man possible: a paunchy, balding government official in his sixties. The modeling agency turned heaven and earth to find a male model who looked that way. It wasn’t possible to find a male model who’d be as balding and paunchy as the blogger found attractive, so she had to accept a male model who looked more or less like this:

The blogger wanted the story of the video to unfold in an apartment, but that would have made the filming too complicated. So the shoot took place at a hotel. In the video, the male model who looks like the guy in the photo above leaves a hotel room and a much younger woman in underwear sees him off.

The Russian blogger was very happy with her video and sent it to the French headquarters of the underwear company. Within hours, the enraged representatives of the company called her back.

“Are you trying to make fun of us?” they bellowed. “The guy in the video looks just like DSK! And he’s leaving a hotel room that he shared with a much younger woman. The DSK scandal is a huge embarrassment for our country! We don’t want our company to be associated with this nastiness in any way!”

The blogger tried explaining that she was not aware of any DSK character and that she was simply trying to film the most romantic, homey and tender scenario she could imagine. And what can be more romantic than a beautiful, highly successful woman and a state apparatchik twice her age?

The French company didn’t relent, however, and the male model had to be edited from the video altogether.

If you think I invented this whole story, I could provide links. They will be in Russian, though.

Where Is Russia Going?

~ Clarissa ~ 15 Comments

Want to know what direction Russia is heading in? A picture is worth a thousand words:

I found this photo on this Russian-language blog. I haven’t seen anything this horrifying in a while.

Why Medvedev?

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

Why was Dmitri Medvedev chosen by Vladimir Putin 4 years ago to serve as a puppet President? This is a question many people are asking. Medvedev was not known to anybody, had a zero recognition rate among the people of his country, had no leadership skills or experience. He was just an insignificant, lower-level bureuacrat which are a dime a dozen in any country. How was this guy even chosen for the role of Russia’s president?

I have an explanation, and, as weird as it will sound, I believe it is the only one that makes sense.

Putin is a very self-centered, insecure guy with an inferiority complex of enormous proportions. He is also much shorter than an average Russian male. While the average male height among Russian men (not the men of the Russian Federation, mind you, but ethnic Russians) is 6’1, Putin is only 5  feet 5 inches tall. This is quite rare among men in his country.

I don’t think that Putin’s ego would have been able to withstand appearing in public next to a guy who’d tower over him. Putin has become notorious for coming up with devious ways of avoiding being filmed standing next to taller people. So he chose Medvedev, a political nobody, whose one great quality is that he is only 5 feet 2 inches tall.

Why Does Russia Oppose the US on Palestine Independence?

~ Clarissa ~ 23 Comments

I know that the many fans of Juan Cole will hate me for this but I just can’t get into his writings as hard as I try. Here is what he says about the countries that defy the US with their support for Palestinian independence:

With countries traditionally willing to follow the U.S. lead on important geopolitical issues now breaking with Washington on Palestine, it is no surprise that the tier of rising world powers known as the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—is unanimously in favor of the Palestine bid at the U.N.

I understand that it is very tempting to group all of those weird third-world folks with funny names and strange cultures into one homogeneous group that has to serve the political purpose of supporting Juan Cole’s beliefs and then make itself scarce. But that’s just not how things work.

Putin’s Russia has been under the spell of a massive anti-American campaign for many years now. Putin will vote “nay” even if the US suggests that today is Wednesday. The Russian Federation could care less about Palestine. All it cares about is spiting the Americans who are stupid, nasty, miserable and aim at world domination that rightfully belongs to somebody else. Would you care to venture a guess as to who this somebody else is? Exactly.

The myth that the US won the Cold World and now Russia is on its merry way to democracy will cost us all very dearly of we keep dismissing what is going on in this huge nuclear power.

Why Do the Russian People Like Putin So Much?

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

In spite of all the fraudulent elections and the utter disrespect for freedom of speech and human rights that characterize Putin’s regime in Russia, he has very high approval ratings in the country. Simply put, the absolute majority of people love him. In order to understand the reasons for this seemingly strange attachment of the Russian people to a KGB guy with zero charisma and totalitarian tendencies, please consider the following:

1. In the 1990ies, FSU countries went through the period known as “bandits’ wars.” It was the time when criminal organizations engaged in brutal struggles over the property that use to belong to the state but was now massively privatized. Now that these criminals have served their purpose, Putin has jailed some and pushed others into exile. Many people see him as a politician who has brought back law and order rather than a member of an organization that is responsible for unleashing the gangsters to begin with and then clamping down on them after they stop being useful.

2. Putin uses the money he gets from peddling Russia’s vast supply of natural resources to keep people somewhat fed and provided with basic social services.

3. He also conducts a huge patriotic, imperialist propaganda campaign that allows people to feel proud to live in such a big and powerful country. Putin routinely ridicules Western politicians in a very public manner, and it makes the Russian people who saw the loss of former colonies as a huge trauma to feel vindicated.

4. Putin is openly dismissive towards his wife. In a culture of domineering women and weak men, a strong, powerful male politician who doesn’t allow his wife to walk all over him is very appreciated because he embodies fantasies of many people of both genders. One of the reasons Soviet people hated Gorbachov so much was that he was obviously in love with his strong and powerful wife.

5. The reason why people don’t value the loss of the freedom of speech is their memory of the late eighties when there was a lot of freedom and a lot of speech but all that eventually degenerated into the bandits’ wars.

Putin is still pretty young, which means that there are many decades ahead of us of his regime in Russia.

Russian Politics Is Hilarious: Russia’s Next President

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

While the US politics is dramatic and filled with tensions, Russian politics is absolutely hilarious. Probably, not for the Russian people, but for those of us who observe the events in the country from the outside, Russian politics offers an endless supply of material for jokes.

The people of Russia are preparing for the elections. Today, Russian leaders made an announcement that Prime-Minister Putin will “run” for President. As you must remember, Putin had moved out of the Presidential seat for the last elections and allowed his puppet Dmitri Medvedev to take his place. This was done to pretend that Putin respected the Constitution that didn’t allow him to run for the third term. Now, after Medvedev’s interim Presidency during which this poor puppet didn’t dare to breathe without Putin’s approval, Putin will move back into the President’s office once again. When his new two terms expire, he will probably perform the same trick: appoint some interim schmuck as President, sit out his term as the Prime-Minister, and become President all over again.

This has all been decided before the elections because the elections in Russia have become such a joke that nobody in their right mind takes them seriously. To give an especially egregious example, one of the leaders of one of the strongest parties of the opposition discovered – to his huge surprise – that at the polling station where he and his family voted, not a single vote had been given to his party.

Putin’s ruling party has become so shameless that it just ships in fake ballots by the kilo and substitutes all the actual ballots people deposited in the voting booths.

This is why when I hear people talk about “democracy in Russia” and the “collapse of the Soviet Union” I always have uncontrollable fits of laughter.

A Scandal Around Oscar Nominations in Russia

~ Clarissa ~ 15 Comments

I know that nobody will have any interest whatsoever in this post, except maybe my 3 staunch and long-suffering Russian-speaking readers. But since this is my personal diary, I will still write about this story because I find it fascinating. In any case, this is Saturday, the day when the smallest number of readers accesses the blog, so I will not bug anybody excessively with it.

As I mentioned before, anti-American sentiments are strong in Russia today. Stories of “those stupid Americans” are constantly invented, shared, and celebrated. The Russian government does all it can to stoke these feelings of superiority towards the “idiotic Americans” and their silly way of being. In the artistic circles, it is fashionable to ridicule the United States as the home of philistines and ignoramuses who are completely incapable of understanding art, a place where nobody ever reads any books at all, and where only complete rubbish is produced and consumed in terms of culture. (For my Canadian readers, I want to clarify that this wave of anti-American propaganda only concerns the US. Canada simply does not register at all for most Russian people.) American movies are referred to as horrible garbage that can in no way compete with the beautiful traditions of the great Russian cinema.

What is really hilarious, though, is that those same film-makers who spend their lives publishing articles on the inferiority of American film start biting each other’s heads off for the privilege of their work being nominated as the best foreign-language film by the Oscar committee. At this very moment, a huge battle is being waged by the leading Russian film-makers as to who will be nominated by Russia for the Oscars. The level of pre-Oscar hysteria in a country that keeps repeating how little it cares about the stupid entertainment of the stupid Americans is nothing short of fascinating.

The roots of the scandal go back to the Soviet era. Nikita Mikhalkov, one of the greatest Russian film-makers of all times, belonged to a very important, connected, and rich Soviet family. This means, of course, that today he is the all-powerful and authoritative overlord of everything that is related to movie-making in the country. (Remember that there was absolutely no transfer of power when the USSR supposedly met its end, and the same people are in power today who were in power during the Soviet times.)

Sadly, Mikhalkov lost his film-making talent a while ago (I hear that he is a very heavy drinker, even by the Russian standards.) The last time he made a good movie was in 1994. I’m talking, of course, about his Burnt by the Sun, a film that won him an Oscar.

So Mikhalkov decided to get himself another Oscar this year. He got a huge amount of money out of the Russian government and filmed two sequels to his Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun. The film is heavily ideological, extremely patriotic, and very pro-Russian Orthodox Church, which is why the government sponsored this expensive movie in its entirety.

The sequels flopped completely, even though the Russian government forced groups of people (especially school students) to watch them. As bad (for Mikhalkov) or good (for everybody else) luck might have it, this is also the year when the Russian film industry seems to have become extremely successful. Some really great films have been made in Russia this year, like, for example, Faust, a film that won the Golden Lion in Venice. And there are two other films that people say deserve to be nominated a lot more than the long, convoluted and cheesy melodrama filmed by the son of a Soviet boss.

The funniest thing is that Mikhalkov’s movie (which, admittedly, is no work of art) has a much better chance of actually winning the Oscar than any of the other movies people are saying deserve to be nominated over his. One of those films deals with very Russian realities that I can hardly imagine anybody outside of the country caring about. I can barely make myself care about them, so I don’t believe the Academy folks will give a rat’s ass about the film. Another one of these supposedly more deserving movies sounds like it’s beyond pretentious. And it was filmed by a director known for pretentiousness. (He is the guy who filmed this horrible Russian Ark crapola that graduate students love to watch to feel worldly and sophisticated.)

The scandal around the Oscar nomination, however, has long stopped having much to do with who has a chance of winning the award. It is now being used by film-makers, film critics and actors as an opportunity to vent their grievances against the dynasty of Communist party bosses who just can’t be pushed out of their positions of power and authority.

OK, now I have gotten this off my chest and I can promise not to treat my readers to any boring Russian gossip for a while to come.

There Is No Demographic Crisis in Russia

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

The Russian people have been so brainwashed by the “let’s procreate to stop the brown and the yellow threat” propaganda that they unashamedly peddle these ideological goods overseas. Here is the opening paragraph from an article by a Russian journalist in Foreign Policy:

“Russia needs babies” may as well be the unofficial slogan of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia Party. The country is in a demographic crisis, shedding 2.2 million people (or 1.6 percent of the population) since 2002, and the government is trying to encourage more women to bring Russian citizens into the world.

First of all, there is no “demographic crisis” in Russia. There are racist scary tales but the “crisis” only exists in the heads of Russian nationalists. Our planet is at risk because of overpopulation. This means that any discussion of how people are not procreating enough has to be motivated by racism. The numbers this pseudo-journalist provides are, obviously, all garbage. The migration into Russia has been huge and any “loss” of population has been amply compensated for by the new arrivals. The journalist coyly refuses to mention that the only population she deems worth counting is the white and blue-eyed.

Readers have probably now started wondering why I keep harping on this topic. The truth is that I am deeply convinced that the tendency not to take Russia seriously and not to pay any attention to it since the fall of the Berlin Wall is a huge mistake. The same people (or their children) are still in power in Russia. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a huge symbolic event. Its practical dimensions, however, were limited.

Racism, xenophobia, contempt for everything Western, and religious fanaticism are being promoted in Russia right now. Nobody wants to pay attention, however, because today’s narrative in North America is that Russia has been democratized, now all attention should concentrate on bringing the joys of democracy to the Arab countries. This attitude is as unreasonable as it is short-sighted.