Monthly Archives: May 2009

“Lenin” and “Death” these words are enemies. “Lenin” and “Life” are comrades . . . Lenin lived. Lenin lives. Lenin will live. –Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924

Vladimir Ilich Lenin turned 139 last month making him the oldest living person on Earth. However, Lenin does not live like his eulogizers had imagined.  When some mourners proclaimed that “Lenin has ceased to be an individual-Lenin belongs to the millions,” or that “Lenin has not died. Lenin lives.  There is not a corner in the world . . . where Lenin is absent,” they imagined a transhistorical Lenin, whose spirit marched through time and space.  His body may have died, but his essence continued to haunt the world.  “And when Ilich was no more, we still had Lenin,” declared the Bolshevik jurist Peter Stuchka. And this transfiguration of the spiritual Lenin from the corporal Ilich even defied the empirical sensitivity of the human eye.  “This metamorphosis went on before our eyes ..read more

It appears that some of Medvedev’s liberal posturing is producing concrete results. Or at least someone is getting the signals.  Finally, fi-nal-ly Memorial has gotten its materials back from the St. Petersburg prosecutor.  Twelve computer hard disks, or “Winchesters” as one report calls them, about 1000 business cards belonging to A. D. Margolis (the general director of St. Petersburg Rescue Fund and editor of the St. Petersburg Encyclopedia, and heаd of several Memorial projects), and seven CDs and DVDs were returned to the human rights organization on Thursday.

The return of Memorial’s property followed another ruling in its favor by the Dzerzhinsky court that deemed the December raid by the police as unlawful. The case’s lead investigator Mikhail Kalganov decided to not press the issue further. “Yes, this is our victory,” Memorial’s lawyer Ivan Pavlov told Kommersant. “And we think that in this case the Russian legal system managed itself [well]. ..read more

Hypochondriacs beware!  Swine flu has officially landed in Moscow. According to Novyi region, two women have been hospitalized in the capital. “Both women are citizens of Russia.  One of them arrived in Russia from New York yesterday, the second today.  They had fevers and were admitted to the hospital by our insistence,” Gennadii Onishchenko told Interfax. Interestingly, in Russia doctors call the virus, which has damned the good name of the pig the world over, “California 0409.”  That should make pigs feel better, but what of the sensitivities of us Californians?

Swine flu’s arrival makes Russia the fifteenth country to be infected.  The global hysteria sparked by the pandemic has led to altering flights, calls for a mass slaughter of pigs,  the quarantining of hotels at the first site of a Mexican tourist, and a whole host of other theories.  In Israel, the deputy health minister Rabbi Yakov Litzman won’t even ..read more