Their Modernization and Ours

In Russia, the time of great campaigns has returned. In Soviet times, we broke new ground and planted corn. Then we fought against drunkenness and concerned ourselves with economic acceleration. We were not always successful, but certainly in the real world. Today’s Russia proclaims the slogan of modernization. But so far this modernization is only in cyberspace.

Medvedev Creating Own Party?

Time for everyone to put on their Kremlinologist thinking cap again! Get ready to roll those chicken bones and peer deeply into the tea leaves. The boys in the Kremlin are up to their tricks again. According to Trud, Medvedev is creating a new political party. The move would inevitably pit he and Putin in the gentlemanly game of Russian electoral politics. Is it truth or fantasy?

Consuming Russian Feminism

The theme of my last post on how International Women’s Day has been transformed from a public to a private holiday reminded of the enormous advertisement for Elle Magazine at Lubyanka Square covering Detskii Mir. The ad is a blend of revolution, feminism, and consumerism with its depiction of riotous women holding signs that read: “Let there always be mini-skirts!” “Give us a paid holiday during sales!” “Shopping is the best opium!”

Domesticating March 8th

One hundred years ago today, the First International Women’s Congress adopted International Women’s Day as a day of struggle for women’s rights. But in Russia, where the holiday, what was once a day calling for a “struggle against patriarchy,” has in many ways become patriarchy’s reinforcement.

Their Modernization and Ours

In Russia, the time of great campaigns has returned. In Soviet times, we broke new ground and planted corn. Then we fought against drunkenness and concerned ourselves with economic acceleration. We were not always successful, but certainly in the real world. Today’s Russia proclaims the slogan of modernization. But so far this modernization is only in cyberspace.

“We Await You, Merry Gnome!”

Russian chinovniki are known for a lot of things–graft, ineptitude, oblomovism, and when necessary, zealous obsequiousness. Sometimes, the latter leads the chinovnik to take preemptive action in hopes to satisfy the leader even if the latter is not looking to be satisfied. Take for example, the recent hilarious incident in Omsk where a preemptive measure to make President Medvedev “comfortable” led to the removal of a poster reading “We Await You, Merry Gnome.”

Porno Billboard Bandit Busted

It just goes to show that the sleuths in Russia can work fast when the want to. Witness how it took them a mere month to catch the internationally infamous hacker who placed porno on a Moscow billboard. And get this, they caught him not in Moscow, but some 760 miles away in the southern city of Novorossiisk. If only they moved so ardently when a journalist is murdered . . .

Medvedev Creating Own Party?

Consuming Russian Feminism

Domesticating March 8th

Their Modernization and Ours

“We Await You, Merry Gnome!”