Monthly Archives: April 2006

Obsession about the quality of Russian youth is not new. In a 1928 study on the daily life of Russian youth titled Life Out of Control (Zhizn’ bez kontroliia) sociologist and moralist V. Ketlinskaia wrote,

We want our youth to be strong, hard-working, optimistic, and energetic. It must have unsullied heads, masterful hands, a healthy body, and cheerful mood. And for this, the youth’s lives—both social and private—must be normal and healthy. It is known that family discord, casual sex, abortion, venereal and feminine (sic) diseases, “alimony issues” and other accompaniments to a an unorganized sexual life strongly destroys the health, rattles the nerves, and kills the good spirits and energy of youth. It is necessary to organize the sexual habits (byt) of youth so that they don’t destroy the strength of youth, but assist in the knowledge of health and physical strength of the young ..read more

Slovenian Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is a personal favorite. I am currently reading, among many things, his long essay called “Lenin’s Choice” in Revolution at the Gates, a collection of Lenin’s writings from 1917 that Zizek edited. His article, “The Two Totalitarianisms” from the London Review of Books is a year old, but I find it fascinating and worthy of attention. Here is an excerpt: Till now, to put it straightforwardly, Stalinism hasn’t been rejected in the same way as Nazism. We are fully aware of its monstrous aspects, but still find Ostalgie acceptable: you can make Goodbye Lenin!, but Goodbye Hitler! is unthinkable. Why? To take another example: in Germany, many CDs featuring old East German Revolutionary and Party songs, from ‘Stalin, Freund, Genosse’ to ‘Die Partei hat immer Recht’, are easy to find. You would have to look rather harder for a collection of Nazi songs. ..read more

Note: In an effort to concentrate on other work, posts over the next two weeks will be short and sparse. I hope to merely point out and excerpt news and commentary instead of giving my own comment on it.

Commentary and analysis of the Belarusian elections and their aftermath continues. Aleh Novikau’s opinion, “Contract of the Third Term” on Eurasian Home caught my attention. A columnist for the Minsk paper Nasha Niva, Novikau argues that Lukashenko’s use of repression against protesters might do more to spread the opposition than the Opposition itself. Novikau writes: By conducting mass police arrests under farfetched pretexts, refusing to give the prisoners’ relatives any information and forbidding them to bring packages, backing up special squad soldiers who beat people up in front of the cameras, the authorities involuntarily aroused the people’s sense of civil dignity. The relatives and friends of victims of the political repressions as well ..read more

My Moscow friend, fellow dissertator, and all around potty-mouth, Brigid has started a blog, Laughter in the Dark, all about her research travels. Her first post about her train ride from St. Petersburg to Smolensk is a must read. Here is an excerpt: Over the next five hours, I would learn that the old man was 85 years old, a WWII veteran who had fought in the battle of Stalingrad, a man who still pined for Lenin (though not for Stalin), a devout atheist, and a living repository of Soviet history. None of us ever learned his name; the other men just referred to him as “grandfather.” Volodia, from Nizhnii Novgorod, was quiet in the face of his conversational competitors, and proved (for now) the least uppity in our bunch. He was traveling to Smolensk to meet a colleague and loved to watch birds from his country home ..read more

What the hell is happening in the Republic of Georgia? All week it has been racked by political crises. First, Georgia Special Forces were sent into Tbilisi Prison No. 5 to suppress a prison riot. It seems that the riot was a well organized attempted prison break by criminal oligarchs. Seven inmates were killed along with 17 injured. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has called for an independent probe into the riot. According to Kommersant, the violence has sparked calls for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s resignation and fear from the Opposition that the accusations could be used as justification to repress them. Perhaps this is already happening as Parliament MP Valery Gelashvili of opposition Republican Party was stripped of his credentials. The ruling majority claims that Gelashvili is running his construction business while a serving as a ..read more