Russia’s Far East has always been an unruly place.  Tsars and Communists alike dumped its criminals and politicals there.  In the interwar period it was a hot bed for lawlessness and banditry, where gangs and holdouts of the White Army made life difficult for the new Soviet state.  There is one historical artifact that always stands out in my mind when it comes to the Russia’s Far East.  I tend to give it to my students so they can get a flavor of the heady days of the Russian Revolution.  The document is an anonymous letter to Lenin dated 15 January 1918.  After lambasting Lenin for not keeping his promise to deliver “peace, bread, land, and liberty in three days’ time” the complainant ended with this warning: “If you’ve picked up the reins [of power] then go ahead and drive, and if you can’t, then, honey, you can take a flying fuck to hell, or as we say in Siberia, you’re a goddamned motherfucker, son of an Irkutsk cunt, who’d like to sell us out to the Germans.  No, you won’t be selling us out: don’t forget that we Siberians are all convicts.”*

This document has resonated with me over the last few days as Russian police forces scoured the Primorye Krai looking for the so-called “Russian Rambos.”  The problem is that the evidence that these guys are “Rambos,” “Robin Hoods” or “revolutionaries” is rather thin.  It seems that they are at best common criminals and worse Russian fascists, making the supposed support of the “partisans” quite disturbing.

The group, which experts say may number between five to thirty members killed one police officer and wounded three others in a series of attacks last month.  The group is said to be led by Roman Muromtsev, 32, a supposed former army officer and Chechen war vet.  However, information has since come out casting doubt on Muromtsev’s war credentials.  Russian prosecutors are saying he isn’t the group’s leader at all nor did he fight in Chechnya. According to one source, Muromtsev has been in prison since he was 17, from 1996 to 2009 making a jaunt in the North Caucasus unlikely.  Moreover, according to one source, he “isn’t special forces, a terrorist, or an extremist.  He is an ordinary criminal.”

The other known members of the group are no more glamorous.  Andrei Sukhorad, 22, is a skinhead and was accused of beating up a Tadzhik in Vladivostok last year.  Roman Savchenko, 18, is also skinhead, according to his own father.  Aleksandr Sladkikh is said to have deserted from the army last year.  Scant information has been released about the last member: Aleksandr Kovtun, 22.

Little is known about the group and what exactly they believe in, if anything.  Most news reports have followed a story in Komsomolka which said that Muromtsev’s group was spreading flyers addressing police corruption around Spasskii and Kirov districts in Primorye before their first attacks in May.  There are also reports, again from Komsomolka, that an anonymous letter was sent to the MVD demanding “a purge of the MVD’s ranks.”  The cops didn’t pay it no mind that is until one cop turned up dead and a few others wounded.

This past week, however, an alleged address from Muromtsev appeared a number of Russian nationalist websites.  The potion below was posted on the Movement Against Illegal Immigration’s site:

We soldiers of our long-suffering and subjugated Russia say to you:

Muzhiki if anything in you remains Russian, then enough with getting sloshed and grumbling in the kitchen. Let our deeds be an example for you and an instruction for future actions to save our homeland in the name of our children’s future.

We can’t endure any longer the lawlessness of the global backrooms (беспредел мировой закулисы**) which creates terror on our land.

We, the VDV Special Forces, have risen up in armed struggle against the invaders of our land.  We have already carried out an armed struggle against them KILLING THESE CORRUPT BEASTS.

The media has already poured out a great number of megabytes of lies against us.  People of Russia don’t believe them.  We are not criminals or murderers, we are warriors of our Russia and we have risen in a fight against evil which enslaves our country while the Russian people is brought to its knees with the extinction of several million people a year.  We have risen up against Jewish fascism as our glorious grandfathers and fathers rose up in 1941 against the German invaders . . .

Interestingly, this address makes no mention of police corruption. Nor does Muromtsev’s Order No. 1 released on 7 June.  If Muromtsev is really “a common criminal” then there is also some question if he really wrote these addresses at all.  Nevertheless, this address has been quoted in a few stories, surprisingly with its ultranationalist tone left out.

Instead what has been emphasized is the fact that the “partisans” are waging a good war against police corruption, that to the authorities chagrin, seems to have the moral support of the public.  Writes the Guardian‘s Luke Harding:

The gang’s exploits have gripped the Russian media. More shocking, however, is the public’s reaction – with 70% of Russians, according to one radio poll, describing the gang members as “partisans” or “Robin Hoods”. Only 30% considered the police killers to be bandits, the poll revealed. One blogger even compared them to Che Guevara.

Well, the police must admit that they brought this public outrage upon themselves.  Nevertheless, before one jumps on the Russian “Rambo” bandwagon, if the address quoted above can be believed, and as their records show, these guys aren’t crusaders against the police, but possibly just criminals or worse right-wing nationalists fighting against a police they think is under the tutelage of dealers in “global backrooms” and “Jewish fascism.”   Also, if the right-wing militia phenomenon in the US is any indication, killing police and government officials doesn’t contradict an anti-Semitic agenda in the least.  Nationalists of this sort believe that since the government is under the control of Jews the police are merely their corrupt underlings who have sold out the nation.

Given this, I’m rather surprised that Harding wrote in his article: “In a defiant message posted on the web, Muromtsev called on fellow Russians to join his “war” against police “evil”, adding that he was prepared to sacrifice his life for the cause.”  But from the above address, which Harding is clearly referencing, doesn’t have the word “police” anywhere in it.  It does have words like “invaders,” “global backrooms,” and “Jewish fascism.”  Who might these invaders, backroom dealers and proponents of Jewish Fascism be?  I’m sure they aren’t the MVD.  Or maybe they are?  Still I think it is important to note that the only inference to the police in this text is to the fact that Muromtsev’s group had already killed “these corrupt beasts.”  The only reference to a war against the police specifically is based on an anonymous letter send to the police reported in Komsomolka.  The full text of this letter or the flyers Muromtsev allegedly circulated are as far as I can tell not public. Therefore, I have to ask the rather uncomfortable question: Did Harding leave out the fact that Muromtsev is rising up against “Jewish fascism” for a more the politically acceptable, from his point of view, war against police “evil.”  Is he implying that right-wing nationalism is okay as long as their ire is directed against the authorities?

This question can also be put to Russia’s liberals.  According to Polit.ru, in a poll conducted by the New Times, 80 percent of respondents support the “Primorye partisans” while only 5 percent favor the police.

In addition to this, the constant reference to them as Rambos, therefore, only adds to the group’s mystique.  I know that calling them “Rambo” is kind of cool in a pop culture kind of way.  The idea of them hiding in the forest attacking cops speaks to the romanticism of the film. In First Blood, John Rambo was a great anti-hero, a Vietnam vet who just wanted to visit his war buddy until the “evil” cops put the beat down on him.  The film is essentially an antiwar movie, a theme that was lost in later Rambo films as they became more therapeutic narratives necessary for American society to get over the “Vietnam syndrome.”  First Blood, however, is an excellent film because it highlights the horrible impact of war on vets: suspicion from society, war trauma and flashbacks, in ability to adjust, unemployment, etc.

My concern is that in calling Muromtsev’s group “Rambo” aren’t potential right-wing nationalists being turned into a kind of anti-hero we can empathize with?  Also, isn’t it a mistake to connect Muromtsev with the “good” fight against police corruption rather than with an increasingly violent Russian ultranationalism that murders immigrants, lawyers, judges, and antifascist activists?  Finally, if Muromtsev is a criminal who sat 13 years in the slammer, what makes him suddenly a hero—because he’s against police corruption so much that he’s become a cop killer?

As of today the search for the “Russian Rambos” has all but ended.  The other day, the police nabbed one of its supporters, Roman Savchenko, 18, who was caught allegedly carrying supplies to the gang.  Yesterday, the police surrounded a home where three of the “partisans” had barricaded themselves.  Two of the three are now dead.  According to the VL.ru, Andrei Sukhorad, 22, and Aleksandr Sladkikh, 19, were killed in the raid, and the remaining, though previously unreported member, Vladimir Iliutikov, surrendered.  Another member, Aleksandr Kovtun was apprehended after a standoff at a grocery store. As the for the group’s alleged leader, Roman Muromtsev, he’s said to be in hiding somewhere in Vladivostok.  I’m sure he’ll be back in the slammer by midweek.

As for the lore that has quickly surrounded the group, more will certainly be revealed in the coming days.  I just hope that before declaring these guys some kind of crusaders against police corruption that people consider where their “crusade” might be coming from another source.

* This letter can be found in Mark Steinberg’s excellent document collection Voices of the Revolution, 1917, 292.  The original Russian reads: “если  взяли  вожжи  то  правте  а  если  неможите  то летика ты свет нахуй посибирски  сказать к ебёной матери ты ёб тваю мать иркутская блядь хотишь нас немцам продать. Нет нас непродашь незабудтя что  сибиряки  все  катаржани.”

** Correct translation? Also the mention of “global backrooms strikes” me as a reference to the International Jewish Conspiracy.

The Tower: A Songspiel is a new agitprop production from the fine people at Chto Delat.  The film is the final part of a trilogy that includes Perestroika Songspiel: Victory over the Coup (2008) and Partisan Songspiel: A Belgrade Story (2009).  The theme of this installment:

Filmed in April 2010, The Tower: A Songspiel is based on real documents of Russian social and political life and on an analysis of the conflict that has developed around the planned Okhta Center development in Petersburg, where the Gazprom corporation intends to house the headquarters of its locally-based subsidiaries in a 403-meter-high skyscraper designed by the UK-based architectural firm RMJM. The proposed skyscraper has provoked one of the fiercest confrontations UNESCO World Heritage Site, Gazprom has so far managed to secure all the necessary permissions and has practically begun the first phase of construction. (Although recent oblique signals from the Russian president may have thrown an insurmountable wrench into the works. between the authorities and society in recent Russian political history. Despite resistance on the part of various groups who believe that construction of the building would have a catastrophic impact on the appearance of the city, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Gazprom has so far managed to secure all the necessary permissions and has practically begun the first phase of construction. (Although recent oblique signals from the Russian president may have thrown an insurmountable wrench into the works.)

. . .

The film is structured as a confrontation between two worlds. On the one hand, we see the world of power, which is represented by a group of people working to create the new symbol: a PR manager (the head of the corporation’s branding project for the skyscraper), a local politician, the company’s security chief, a representative of the Orthodox Church, a gallery owner (who is in line to become director of the corporation’s contemporary art museum), and a fashionable artist. On the other hand, we see a chorus comprised of people from various social groups: the intelligentsia, workers, pensioners, unemployed office clerks, migrants, young women, a homeless boy, and a leftist radical.

For more check out Chto Delat.

Watch. Learn. Agitate. Revolt.

I know it’s quite out of date at this point. I had planned to share some impressions and photos from Victory Day a few weeks ago but my self-imposed hiatus got in the way.  I had pretty much abandoned the idea, but then a colleague of mine posted her thoughts and I said to myself, why the hell not.  Otherwise, my impressions would have just remained in my head and the pictures exiled to the abyss that is my hard drive.

Basically, my impressions can be summed up as follows:

1.  Security nightmare.

This picture from Chekhovskya station is indicative of the security hell that the Moscow authorities concocted on Victory Day.  I understand that heavy security was necessary.  There were rumors, theories, and expectations that  another terrorist attack would occur on Victory Day.   Nevertheless, I couldn’t help note the irony that what was done to provide security only created a more insecure situation.  All of the central metro stations were closed except Chekhovskaya, which in their infinite wisdom the police decided to funnel everyone out of.

The problem with this mass amount of living meat is not that a lot of people would have been torn to shreds if someone decided to blow themselves up.  The sheer mass of bodies would have absorbed whatever screws, nuts, and nails thrown from a bomber’s explosive belt.  The ensuing stampede is what would have killed scores.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen and everyone was rather calm considering it took about 20-30 minutes to get out of the metro.  This is the one thing the volume of the Moscow metro prepares you for–patiently shuffling your feet to the pace of a human herd.

Once I emerged from the metro across from Pushkin Square I quickly realized that actually getting to Tverskaya (the street the parade went down) was impossible.  Pushkin Square was closed.  The police had blocked off access to Tverskaya.  The closest you could get to the main drag was about a block away.  I don’t know if people were along the route because I couldn’t get close enough to see.  Efforts to walk down one of the parallel streets along Tverskaya proved no better.

2.  Stalin-less.

People were milling around the outer edges of the square or positioning themselves on the balcony of the Pushkin movie theater hoping to get a view of the impending parade.  Among the crowd was a Communist Party van with a large picture of Comrade Stalin.  A lot had been made of whether Stalin would be attending the celebration.  Stalin’s visage was dis-invited at the last minute after Yuri Luzhkov got a bunch of flack from human rights groups for allowing a veterans group to set up information booths with Stalin’s image.   Civil society won out, Stalin was told to remain in the ether of history, except in limited form.  I read somewhere that City Hall put up some Stalins somewhere in the city.  I didn’t see them.

I did see the aforementioned KPRF van.  You couldn’t miss it with its large portrait of the Generalissimo as the figurehead of a not-so-great vessel.   The KPRF was intent on presenting history right, as they saw it, by reminding people that Stalin was the leader during the war.  I don’t know if this van was supposed to go somewhere or just remain parked on display.  All the streets were closed so I don’t think a Stalin caravan was in the works.  Perhaps this was an “informational booth,” but I didn’t see any “information” being distributed.  All I saw was a few elderly Stalinists standing around chatting.

The KPRF bus was the only picture of Stalin I encountered that day.  This is contrasted with the fact that virtually everyone had a ribbon of St. George or the Russian tricolor pinned to their lapel.  This simply proved something that I’ve been saying for a while: WWII is the foundational historical event of the post-Soviet state.  It is the one historical memory that unites every Russian regardless of political persuasion.  Even liberals can’t disparage it.  As the numerous articles Novaya gazeta ran in the lead up to Victory Day attest, all liberals can do is note the many examples of unrecognized heroism and draw attention to the miserable living conditions of many war veterans.  But this is hardly outside accepted political discourse.

The KPRF’s Stalin seemed out of place, kind of like when someone brings an unwanted guest to dinner without asking.  If anything, Stalin’s image on top and the sides of a bus felt more like kitsch.  The day as a whole had a kitschy feel with the flags, ribbons,  period artifacts, and uniforms.  It was a reminder that when it comes to historical memory the line between  parody and commemoration is quite porous.

3. Parade even lesser.

As I mentioned above, getting close enough to the parade to actually see it proved impossible.  At least by that time I arrived at 10:30 in the morning.  It seemed that if you really wanted to get a good view you had to show up early, something my companions and I were unwilling to do.  Most people seemed to understand this.  Those who wanted to see the parade stayed home or stepped into one of the bars that was showing the proceedings on television.  I couldn’t help note this act of watching something on TV that was a mere two blocks away.  It made the parade a wholly mediated affair, making a few of us wonder if the parade was actually occurring or if the images on screen were a recording of the rehearsal a day or so before.

As one friend suggested, the parade was not the real point of the holiday anyway.  Those who didn’t care much for vintage military hardware, marching soldiers, missiles, and flowery speeches were out strolling Moscow’s central back streets enjoying a rather nice day. We can all thank Mayor Luzkhkov and his weather sorcery for the clear skies (Incidentally, it rained later that evening but curiously cleared up right before the fireworks ceremony).  Walking around outside the security barricade erected around Red Square was one of the most enjoyable things about the day.  All of the streets were closed to traffic allowing for a rare opportunity to bask in the peacefulness of a car-less Moscow.

Those interested in seeing any of the display of military might stood idle in the shade waiting for the planes to fly overhead.  The crowds shouted “Hurrah!” as the jets roared past.  Planes are all they saw.  Planes are all I saw.  The only difference is that I’m sure many people could actually identify their make.  To me their only difference was their various shapes.

4. Generation Past to Generation Next.

Walking the streets you were reminded that this was a day where militarism was central.  This is obvious of course since  it was to commemorate victory over the defeat of Nazi Germany.  Like Victory Days of the past, veterans were all decked out in their holiday best with their chests proudly covered in an embroidered shield of gold and silver metal.  The vets were quiet stunning in their obvious new uniforms of solid blue, olive green and white.  Their hats pompously resting on their wrinkled heads.  It was amusing to imagine how the hats must have engulfed their younger heads sixty five years younger.  Again, even here I found the line between parody and commemoration fuzzy as the vets also looked like aging marionettes, living ornaments sent out to stroll the boulevards ready to strike a stiff pose for the camera.  They too seemed part of a larger ensemble that added to the performative aspects of the holiday.  Moscow was made into a grand play and they were its cast.

What surprised me was not the vets.  It was their day and they deserved to do whatever they wanted.  What struck me, however, was the number of children dressed in military regalia.  Camouflage and sailor suits were a staple in children’s wear.  These little cadets were reminiscent of those famous pictures of Tsarevich Aleksei in his sailor suit.  Some, like this pudgy fellow to the right, was decked out Rambo style, complete with a St. George ribbon and toy AK-47.  He’s getting ready for the future, undetermined war.  But as it stands now tiny uniforms and plastic guns will have to do.

5. A Victorious Day

When I returned home that afternoon, I felt that I needed to see some of the parade.  I quickly went to the one place I knew that video of it would exist: the internet.    Sure enough the parade was there.  Watching the regalia on screen proved anti-climatic.  Quickly bored, I turned off the video after about a minute.  The energy on the streets just couldn’t be reproduced, reminding me that the day wasn’t about the military, planes, speeches, and Red Square.  Nor was it about the past, Stalin, the dead, or even history.  Like most historical memory, Victory Day was about the here and the now and what was later to become.  It was about the living and paying respect to those who through their sacrifice made that life possible.  Lastly, Victory Day was not a nostalgia for the Soviet Union.  The USSR was only a marker in the long duree of Russian civilization.  Victory Day was about a past repacked and deployed toward the future.  A memory fit to symbolize a mighty Russia eternally reborn.

Russian faith healer, self-proclaimed messiah, and all around conman, Grigory Grabovoi was released from the slammer last Friday.  Apparently, Grabovoi, who’s antics have included promising Beslan mothers to resurrect their dead children, posing as the Second Coming, and declaring that if he became Russia’s president, he would outlaw death, kept his mouth shut in prison.  He should consider himself fortunate to only serve four years of his eight year sentence for swindling people “under the guise of resurrecting the victims’ dead relatives or curing them of serious illnesses.”  Actually, he’s lucky that one of his victims didn’t put a bullet in him.

Prison seemed to have no reformatory effect on Grabovoi because it didn’t take long for him to get back to his old ways.  Alas, the Messiah’s work is never done.

Always ready to take advantage of a community’s sorrow, Grabovoi has offered his “services” to the families of Raspadskaya coalmine.  Using his supposed wondrous extra-earthly powers, he’s prepared to “make a reading of those places in the mine, where those alive can be found.”

Um, no you’re not.  Mezhdurechensk mayor Sergei Shcherbakov says that if “healer” attempts any of his old tricks, he’ll “drag him by the collar” back to prison.  “We’ve had enough of this weirdo.  He’s a conman!  He’s not going to save anyone.  And now he wants to come to the Kuzbass, to put it mildly, to get his face bashed in?!”  This is exactly what the miners intend to do if Grabovoi shows up preaching his crap.  “No, of course we won’t kill him, but we’ll give him a good thrashing,” says miner Dmitri.  “My neighbor’s husband died in the mine.  And now some “healer” wants to comfort her for money? We won’t let him!”

Needless to say, authorities have advised Grabovoi to refrain from engaging in any public activities. And by the way so has his wife, Elena.  According to her, Grigory’s messiah days are officially over.  “He is going to get a legal education, bring up his children, do family work and wait for his grandchildren,” she told journalists.

Perhaps Grabovoi just needs a change of location.  After all, there’s an oil spill to clean up off the Gulf Coast and a lot of potential victims.  If my family is any indication, belief in the supernatural is common trait among Louisianians.

I’ve been doing a bit of soul searching in the last few weeks about this blog, its purpose, and, more importantly, my relationship to it.  Nothing too deep, and perhaps “soul searching” isn’t the right word.  Let’s say I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting.

This reflecting was also coupled by the fact that I’ve haven’t had the energy/time/inspiration to write.  The main reason for this is that I’ve been tending to other things–applying for jobs, starting research on a new project on race in Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, writing an article on war trauma, and gathering materials for a few side projects on war invalids, prostheses, plastic surgery, and deformity (Oh, and of course it is NBA Playoff time, and that takes priority over just about everything).  The latter topics have inevitably brought me to examine fin-de-siecle anthropological, medical and psychological journals, which in turn have presented studies on bestiality, incest, and of all things, lactating men.  Given my penchant for anything weird, I’ve greedily scooped up all those materials too.  I call my budding library my own textual Kunstkamera.

Encountering such medical and social oddities leaves topics such as Khodorkovsky’s “hunger strike” and whether he is a “dissident” less intriguing.  Plus, many of my fellow blogging comrades have done a good job at dissecting this issue (see A Good Treaty, poemless, Mark Adomanis, and Vadim Nikitin for various takes.)  What is my own opinion on this?  I know adoring fans want to know.  Basically, Khodorkovsky’s arrest and imprisonment is political motivated. Duh.  But this doesn’t mean he doesn’t belong in the slammer for a long time.  I’ve always thought that the problem of the Russian government’s treatment of the “oligarchs” is that its justice is too selective.  But then again, if it cast its anti-oligarch dragnet too wide too many government officials would be in prison and foreign businesses would have headed for the hills faster than they already have.  But such are the contradictions of a system based on legalized theft.

Anyway, enough of this digression into Misha-land.  My point is that when it comes to my weird interests, chattering about  the Russian news cycle just doesn’t compare.  Hence the lack of inspiration.  My sights have been more set on the efforts by Russian anthropologists to quantify and categorize the bodies of Russia’s ethnic minorities.  The news certainly doesn’t approach the attempts to reconstruct the mangled faces of war veterans in Stalinist Russia or the efforts to assemble a usable prosthetic metallic claw for a lathe operator in the 1920s.

In my reflections during my absence from the Russia blogging world, I also discovered another thing.  If you are reading this you’ve probably already noted that the blog’s theme has been changed.  I found that the Newsweek theme wasn’t conducive to blogging, something the ever astute Anatoly Karlin told me right from the beginning.  He proved to be right.  The theme put too much pressure on writing more substantive posts to justify its functionality.  This became a problem as I came across interesting news bits and experiences that I wanted to mention but not necessarily dwell on or incorporate into a larger commentary.  So the theme in front of you is a return to the basics of blogging, a move that I hope will free me up to do more.

On that note, I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on the new look, and any suggestions they might have on improving it.

Two things hit me as I emerged from the Oktyabrskaya metro station on Saturday morning to check out the KPRF May Day march.  First was that God himself must have been smiling down on the KPRFers.  After several days of on and off rain, his holiness decided to part the clouds, let the sun shine through, and let Russian commies do their thing without the hindrance of rainfall.  The second thing that hit me was that unlike most, or should I say every political rally I’ve been to, the Communists began marching on time.  Who would have ever guessed Communists to be prompt.  And they say Leninist discipline is dead.  As soon as I pushed through the heavy glass metro doors, I had to quicken my step to catch up with the dancing red flags on the move.

Luckily, a rapid pace quickly turned unnecessary.  The Communist march stretched at least three, even four blocks down Bolshaya Yakimanka (Anyone who’s been to the capital knows that is a pretty long distance.)  The KPRF at the head of the ruddy train was already out of sight.  Before me and my four companions stood the tail which consisted of the “far Left”–Trudovaya Rossiia, the Red Youth Vanguard, the Revolutionary Communist Youth League (RKSM (b)), the National Bolshevik Party, and a variety of anarchists, antifascists and left frontists.

The attendance was large.  It felt that there were at least five thousand people.  The Russian media is saying that there were indeed 5000; the organizers say there were 7000.  The English press pegged it at a lower 3000.

The attendance was an eclectic mix–young people, old people, even children.  Red was the dominant color, of course.  The sounds were that of political chants–”Peace! May! Labor! Socialism!”; “Nato–Get the hell off of Red Square!” (in reference to plans for the Americans, British, and French soliders to march in the upcoming Victory Day parade.); “No Predatory Rise in Utility Prices!”; among others.  Brawny speeches bounced off of the buildings lining Zamenka Street. Old Soviet songs raised a comradely spirit.  Down the train there was even a brass band blowing marching songs.  People carried KPRF flags and fine Soviet era banners of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.  Marchers hoisted pictures of Stalin.  Homemade signs bobbed along.  One read: “Bureaucrat!  You are a servant of the people!  Not the bosses!”  What concerned people was not the abstract issues of “human rights,” “democracy,” “law and order,” or “free speech.”  Those were to be addressed at the sparse Solidarity rally later that day (which of course the Western media focused on).  The communist rally was about the social economics of everyday life, tradition, and good fun.

Of course there is Stalin, again something the Western media makes sure to note without any critical reflection.  Yes there were lots of Stalin signs.  There was even a large Stalin banner.  Stalin was on homemade signs.  Stalin was on t-shirts. But what did Stalin mean? This is probably one of the most perplexing, yet mostly ignored questions.

It was clear what Stalin was not.  Stalin, for better or worse, was not the NKVD, terror, Gulag, or totalitarianism.  That’s what it meant to the people of Solidarity with its artsy display of Stalin portraits with red-blood vampire teeth.

But for a little old man holding a photo of Stalin?  For him, the dictator means something wholly different.  There is certainly a large element of historical nostalgia embedded in Stalin’s portrait.  Stalin is mostly about the USSR’s victory over the Nazis and a time when Russia was a superpower.  This is especially the case since the 65th anniversary of Victory Day is a few days away. The Stalin posters also signify a longing for an imagined past of stability, predictability, and ironically, a paternal state that dealt a measure of social and economic justice.  Stalin’s image, I think, is also about class.  Stalin is the antithesis of the oligarchs, the capitalists, the bureaucrats and the intellectuals–the very people that causes the Russian working class man seething hatred.  Stalin is a metaphor for the longstanding class divide that haunts Russia and a time of class justice rendered.  Lastly, Stalin is also defiance.  People carry posters of Stalin simply because others tell them they shouldn’t. Hoisting Stalin to the sun is about the current war over memory.  It’s about saying without hyperbole: This is my Stalin and he has nothing to do with yours.  In this sense there is no historical Stalin.  The Stalin that is illuminated through documentary evidence and historical truth has no bearing.  Stalin is a metonym for the political struggles of the present. One may disagree.  One may even be disgusted.  But like it or not this variegated memory of Stalin must be reckoned with.

The crowd had visibly thinned by the time the march reached its destination at Teatralnaya Square and nestled in front of a stage shadowing the Karl Marx monument.  The nearly eight kilometer march exhausted some.  The inevitable boredom that would accompany listening to didactic speeches vanquished more.  Politics caused the rest to move on.  After all, the stage was a KPRF only event.  The united left front splintered off to join other rallies around the city, home, to a pub, or who knows where.

The speeches commenced.  I ignored them as I strolled around eying the remaining crowd as they held their banners, sat in the courtyard of the Bolshoi Theater, rummaged through the several second hand booksellers along the sidewalk, or licked much deserved ice cream purchased from a nearby vendor.  One noticeable moment was when the Soviet National Anthem began blaring through the sound system.  The crowd paused and stood at attention in solemn reverence.

“And now Comrade Zyuganov will speak.”  Well, that was our signal.  Time to jet.  Sorry to no time to hear the bald, warted one.  Our growling stomachs were pulling us to a nearby cafe.

The day didn’t end there.  Though I had grand delusions of attending as many rallies as possible that day–United Russia, the Russian Federation of Labor march, Just Russia, and even the Eurasian Youth League, one of my companions got a call from a friend at the Solidarity gathering at Bolotnaya Square.  We decided to head there.  To my disappointment, the crowd was predictably sparse.  The ‘roid raged riot police clearly outnumbered the participants.  Orange flags stood at attention as bad punk music blared from the stage.  Kasparov has spoken sometime before.  No loss there.  The only things of note were signs reading “Russian without Putin,” a display of Stalins with the vampire teeth, and a series of political cartoons mocking the Russian legal system. The twenty minute minimum I decided to grant Solidarity couldn’t come fast enough.

Just before we left, I noticed one large photo from 1990 of a 100 thousand strong protest for “democratic reform.”  I guess the liberals suffer from a bit of historical nostalgia of their own, I thought to myself.  As the Solidarity gathering proved, the days of thousands demanding “democratic reform” are long over. . .