Person of the Week: Mikhail Leont'ev

The first in the Person of the Week series I have decided to dedicate to certain well-known television presenter, political commentator, editor in chief of economic magazine Profile and all-round conspiracy theorist. For his uncompromising opinions on international affairs that range from run-of-the-mill America-bashing to outrageous and at times plain hilarious accusations, my choice this week is a public figure who is outspoken, not shy of controversy and not welcome in several post-Soviet states: Mikhail Vladimirovich Leont’ev.

Leont’ev is perhaps best known as the host of the weekly five-minute political commentary program “Odnako” (However). As host of a prime-time slot at the end of the main evening news on state-owned Channel One, you may think that he would have to be rather careful about what he says. However, careful would not really be the right word for it. Leont’ev’s weekly shows may come across to the Western ear as the unrestrained rant of what numerous Kremlin representatives are supposed to tiptoe their way round in public; a diplomatic disaster that has already happened, the fact that he does not hold any state position nevertheless gives the government just enough ground to officially avoid any implication in the event of a scandal.

And scandals are what Leont’ev does best. He is the proud holder of court rulings declaring him persona non grata in Latvia and banning him from entering the Ukraine for five years. In 2003 in an interview on Latvian television, he described the country as “wretched” and likened it to a tiny spoonful of tar spoiling the entire pot of honey that is the European Union. In 2006, a Ukrainian court ruled he pay $500 compensation and publicly retract comments made in reference to the former Prime Minister Victor Yushenko’s wife on “Odnako”, where he insinuated that she was influencing her husband’s politics with American ideas. Having refused to carry out the court’s demands, he subsequently fuelled further anger by questioning the legitimacy and sovereignty of Ukraine as an independent state.

Most recently Leont’ev has been devoting his attention to the financial crisis, observing the rack and ruin of Western economies with more than a hint of schadenfreude. His longstanding predictions of the West’s imminent downfall confirmed, he does remain optimistic as to the solution however, recently quoted as saying; “[t]he only way out of the current crisis is a world war. Who will start it and how is a mere technicality.”

Despite all the bravado and provocation, or perhaps because of it, Leont’ev remains fairly popular, in particular for past achievements in the nineties, having worked as a journalist and more recently on several popular documentaries. He may lack a little diplomatic finesse, yet he is not the only Russian public figure who could be reproached for doing so. Whether he makes any contribution to the pluralism of ideas that the country needs on television right now is certainly another matter however.

Do svidaniya!

This week’s issue of “Odnako” can be found here: http://www.1tv.ru/newsvideo/138823

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What's in a Name?

Photo: Yuri Kommisarov

Since he was born six years ago, one young Muscovite chappie has been at the centre of a dispute between his parents and the Moscow general register office for births, marriages and deaths (GRO). The parents of “BOCh RVF 260602”, an abbreviation of “Biological Human Object born of the Voronin-Frolov families, on the 26th June 2002”, are adamantly refusing to rename the child, despite the GRO’s refusal to provide a birth certificate and officially register the child under such a name.

Several courts, including the European Court of Human Rights have refused to examine the case. Russia currently has no law that would prevent a child from being given such a name. “This is in the child’s interests,” stated Tatiana Ushakova, deputy director of the Moscow GRO, which has taken the matter into its own hands, “the parents should be thinking about the child himself and how he is to live with such a name, rather than their own ambitions.”

The situation seems to have reached stalemate and the possibility of taking custody of the child in order to rename him as in the case of “Tula does the Hula from Hawaii”, a New Zealand girl with a similarly catchy name, has not been raised. Although in a country where paper documents are everything living without a birth certificate or official registration must be rather problematic, none of the reports that I found noted whether the child was nevertheless able to attend school or receive state medical treatment. I can only suppose that amongst the profusion of metro adverts offering everything from passport registration and university diplomas to medical certificates and driving licences his parents have perhaps found an alternative birth-certificate provider.

(Some excerpts from RIA Novosti.)

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Village People

Photo: carolinephotography.co.uk
Living in Moscow it’s easy to forget that for much of Russia’s rural population who do not live in the excesses (or simple adequacies) of the country’s capital, life in the 21st century has not yet begun. A friend and I spent a night living like locals (well, almost) in the Siberian village of Tashtagol and understood rather quickly how male life expectancy out in the sticks of Russia can average as little as 46 years in the worst regions.

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The plan to stay at the datcha for three nights doesn’t get off to a good start. “Firewood’s in the barn and the toilet’s over there,” says Andrei, the next door neighbour enlisted to help us out, nodding over at a small wooden hut around 20 metres away yet separated from us by untouched snow nearly 6 foot deep. “You’ll have to dig your way over,” he adds, with a chuckle. I have other priorities in mind - the temperature outdoors is minus twenty something and although the stove is doing its best, indoors it is still averaging a good ten degrees on the wrong side of zero. “How cold is it forecast to be tonight?” we ask tentatively. “Ooh, around minus 48 I should think,” is the unwelcome reply. I hope that is a rural Russian joke.

Left to fend for ourselves and having quickly assumed traditional gender roles Johann is shovelling snow to clear a path to the barn outdoors and as the female hunter-gatherer I pay a passing motorist to give me a lift to the local shop to buy supplies for the night. Admittedly, had I been true to my Russian villager role I would have braved the wait for a bus, but then my English feet are freezing and my English patience exhausted. My groceries, however, are decidedly “local” (in ‘the League of Gentlemen’ sense and admittedly not out of choice); some dubiously-looking sausage, cheese, black bread, a pot noodle and some instant smash.

On my return it’s already dark outside and the hut has heated up to a tropical minus two; I even have a go taking my coat off. In preparation for the night ahead Johann does some frozen wood chopping and does his best to fill a bucket, which is more hole than bucket, with some frozen coal. Our supply of frozen wood and frozen coal does not fill one with optimism. The buckets of water collected earlier from the village’s only tap have begun to freeze over despite being next to the stove. So has the water that has emptied straight onto the floor from a hole in the sink and that has collected near the entrance. My ideas of a steamy-hot banya and hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire are gradually being replaced by a somewhat colder reality.

Having eaten a dinner of all the above-mentioned ingredients fried together in a pan, exhausted any frozen wood chopping opportunities and even having stomped our way through shoulder high snow to the outside loo, we find ourselves at 6pm and at a bit of a loose end. With no transport, and nowhere to go to in the near vicinity even if there was, we quickly understand the allure of drinking oneself into oblivion and thus the crux of Russia’s rural demographic crisis. Hacking at the ice that has formed around the entrance provides some brief entertainment but we’re freezing in bed by 8pm; the thermometer inside our hut is has reached two degrees. Hourly efforts at keeping the stove alight prove futile; our two degrees Celsius average doesn’t get any better. By morning we decamp to an apartment in town – I’ve already had enough of the “real” Russia.

The most surprising thing about this experience was not our complete ineptness at keeping a stove lit, nor my reluctance to use an outside loo in subarctic conditions but rather the fact that 27% of Russia’s population of 140,000,000 live in rural areas with many in conditions largely similar to that from which we had quickly fled. In Abakan and Krasnoyarsk, two other Siberian cities we visited, just outside the city centre one finds clusters of these traditional wooden houses, which, despite being so tantalisingly close to civilisation have sporadic electricity supplies and no access to running water. Moreover, a large proportion of those living in such conditions are not sturdy youths who can chop wood and fetch buckets of water with relative ease, but the older generation who have nowhere else to go – living in rural poverty since time immemorial, excluded from the Soviet Union’s modernisation drives, brushed aside under capitalism and condemned to an existence below the breadline.

Such impoverished living conditions for so many of Russia’s citizens have clear implications for the country’s pretensions to superpower status on the world stage. The facts are contradictory; a member of the G8 that is, in parts, a third world country. A UN report published in 2006 presents some sobering statistics; the poverty rate in Siberia averages 35%. In one district this was as high as 77%. In another, nearly 16% of housing was classed as being in dilapidated or dangerous state of repair. Progress has been made over the past ten years yet many households remain excluded. The future prosperity of the country as a whole depends on lifting the most backwards areas into the 21st century and providing running water to rural communities is one of the important tasks that Russia faces today.

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Why I'll Never Understand Russia

Photograph: Aleksei Petrosian

There are many, many things that I don’t understand about Russia. Clichéd as it is, I still find it difficult to get away from Churchill’s old description of a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ Nothing seems more apt to describe a country that is so inexplicable, so full of contrasts. A country that professes to hate US culture but glorifies McDonalds, that claims to have the most beautiful women in the world yet celebrates Western pinups; that pays lip service to democracy but, well… quite. Even beyond this, on a day-to-day basis there’s so much I don’t understand. Why, for example, do the hand runners on escalators in the metro go faster than the escalators themselves? Why the hysteria over an unpolished shoe? And just why will girls insist on matching their hair colour, boots and bag?

At first I thought my inability to understand Russia was just because I was a foreigner, an outsider. Just as I couldn’t understand Russia, nor could my Russian friends understand the UK. “Why do you have two taps instead of one”, I have often been asked. “What does the Queen actually do?” is another. Or just simply, “House of Lords?” To none of these questions could I give a proper answer. Maybe all countries and cultures are just totally incomprehensible to any other, anyone not born there.

Then I read an article entitled “Why we don’t understand our own country” by Igor Chubais, director of the Centre for Russian Studies. The article expresses the identity crisis that Russia is currently suffering and tries to answer those questions so often tackled by the good and great of Russian literature: ‘What is Russia?’; ‘What does it mean to be Russian?’ Somehow I find it difficult to imagine an English equivalent.

Chubais suggests that, since it’s generally not acknowledged that today’s Russian Federation is entirely different from its predecessor, the Soviet Union, (he argues that the two states are equally as contrasting as, say, the Third Reich and the Russian Federation), today’s Russian citizens find it difficult to construct a certain identity. When, in 1917, Old Russia ceased to exist to be replaced by the Soviets, propaganda and intellectuals took great pains to emphasise the novelty of the new regime – it was an entirely new system, with its own government, symbols, morals even. By contrast, no such line has been drawn between today and the not so distant Soviet past. It is this ambiguity, Chubais argues, that has deprived current Russians of reference points to construct a new identity: Who are our ancestors? Were we born under the salvo volley of the Aurora or does our history start with the VIII century? Who are our heroes, where are our ideals, which rules guide us? Between historical Russia and the USSR there have been armed seizures of power, a Civil War, tens of millions killed and repressed, 70 years of totalitarian censorship… What Russia does our army defend? Soviet or Anti-soviet?

Russia is left in limbo, uncertain of her direction, equally incomprehensible to her citizens as to visitors. Of course in Britain we have our own soul searching (since the fall of the Empire could anyone really say what we are? Part of Europe, stand alones or just America’s special friends) but our search for identity knows nothing compared to the anguish of Russia, and the situation described by Chubais. How is it possible to face up to the past, the litany of repression and change that the country has seen, and assimilate it into today’s history. In short, it doesn’t: We live by rules that are at the same time both Russian and anti-Russian, Soviet and anti-Soviet, Western and anti-Western. [A situation] that destroys any general rules.

The question of what Russia is today and how this relates to her past has obsessed academics ever since the tanks rolled on to Red Square in 1991. Even before that, the difficulties of acknowledging the repressions of the 1930s and other atrocities of the twentieth century taxed a host of Soviet leaders. It is only now that this question of how to relate to the past is coming to the forefront in public (public, here being a very narrow space – the readership of fairly marginal newspapers and websites) and political debate, as the ministry of education seeks to define broad guidelines of how Stalinism is to be remembered in school textbooks. It is only when Russia has decided on what its past is, that it will be able to know its present. And then, maybe, I might start making some headway on working out why so many Russian men feel the need to sport the unattractive-on-everyone mullet.

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Siberian Ski

Photo: The Big Soviet Library (bse.lib.ru)

Despite the financial crisis, this winter has seen a record number of Russians taking ski holidays in Courchevel – over 10,000 so far this season. But don’t the Russians have enough snow at home to keep themselves occupied? Whilst Krasnaia Poliyana, a key destination for the Sochi winter Olympics 2014 might currently be a bit of a building site, further East into Russia Siberia’s freezing temperatures combine with a picture-perfect mountain range to give the ideal natural conditions for a jolly good ski holiday. I’ve just got back from Sheregesh, Siberia’s most developed downhill skiing resort and was able to see how skiing in Russia can give the Alps a run for their money.
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Squint a little on the approach to Sheregesh and all those little wooden dachas look a lot like chalets. As the bus winds its way thorough the snow-covered mountain roads one could be forgiven for failing to notice the profusion of fur hats on board, or for overlooking the telltale abundance of birch trees in the surrounding forests; all signs that indicate that you’re not actually in the Alps, but in the depths of Siberia.

On arrival at the base of the pistes the ski rental shops have the same up-to-date equipment as one would expect from any European ski resort; the ski techs are helpful, professional and (unusually) smiling. Look around you and there’s the very same chairlifts, cable cars, long winding slopes and latest ski suit fashion as further West.

Yet despite the similarities at first glance, Europe this is not and daily temperatures that range from a chilly minus 5 to a lung-freezing minus 40 and beyond are only the start of the story. Take the town itself for example. There may be some new chalet-style hotels appearing, but the main town of Sheregesh consists almost entirely of low-rise 1970s apartment blocks; those who are not so lucky to live in such luxury make do with ramshackle wooden dachas with outside toilets and no running water. In case you missed it on the approach, the view from the mountain reveals the town to be surrounded by active local industry with lone chimney stacks of small run-down factories bearing inscriptions such as “Work for the Glory of the Motherland” billowing black smoke into an otherwise pristine mountain air. On the short taxi ride to the base of the slopes you pass the army posts of the local high-security prison. That your taxi is an ice-encrusted lada with a cracked windscreen, no seatbelts and nothing but an orthodox icon glued to the dashboard for protection is also a dead giveaway that you’re not in St. Moritz.

On the slopes themselves, snippets of conversation between other skiers point to the fact that we’re rather east of Berlin. “What a pleasure it is to snowboard drunk,” exclaims one teenager, as he and his friends contribute to the collection of beer cans near the lift entrance. A skier stops at the side of the slope to answer his hands-free mobile, “it’s alright, I’m free to talk” he says, heading off down the slope, a fur tail (a bizarre fashion item sold at the base of the slopes) clipped to the back of his pants waggling in the wind.

On closer inspection there’s also something not quite right with the ski lift system. For a start, it is impossible to buy a lift pass for the whole ski domain. In fact, rather than a unified network, the lifts have instead been built by different private firms, each competing with each other and boasting the cheapest tickets or longest runs. “Each company fears they will miss out on some potential profit,” explains Konstantin, our ski tech, as we point out this fatal flaw in the valley’s coordination. What results is a rather annoyingly large proportion of time queuing at various ticket booths at the base of each lift in order to buy a ticket for that precise lift. Whilst some lifts have a top-up card system, others just provide a paper ticket to hand to the attendant and none offer unlimited ascents which, for those who want to do a day skiing all the slopes on offer means spending a lot of time rummaging in ones pockets for the correct bit of paper or plastic card for the particular lift that you want to take at any given time. Russia would not be Russia without its VIPs and so of course most lift queues offer a “VIP lane” for those oligarchs who just wouldn’t feel rich enough having to wait with the masses.

There are also indications that general health and safety may not be quite to European standards. The fact that none of the pistes are marked is the least of ones worries. A skier taking the chairlift in front of us gets tangled up as he sits on the chair and drops a pole. Already a metre or so in the air and with the lift attendant looking on disinterestedly and making no attempt to stop the lift, the skier takes his life into his own hands and leaps from the chair to retrieve the pole himself, ending up in a heap on the ground for other lift-users to try to avoid.

In certain areas the lifts are no longer functional due to the massive quantities of snow that has not been cleared and has been allowed to pile so high that the lift cables themselves are nearly submerged. In others, the chairlift is still just about high enough to keep people off the ground, but low enough to present a hazard for those forced to dodge their way between in order to pass underneath.

So all is not les Trois Vallées, but then if it was why would one bother hiking thousands of miles to Siberia for a ski break? Sheregesh’s geographically isolated location has both its upsides and downsides. Flights and transfers are not only costly, but also time-consuming. For the European market, a flight to Moscow (four hours from London) followed by a five hour internal flight to Novokuznetsk still only brings you three hours by bus from the resort. A trip to Canada suddenly doesn’t seem quite so distant.

Yet skiing in Siberia has its fair share of advantages. The remoteness of the resort means that during the week even in peak season (bar the New Year period) there are practically no lift queues and the slopes are uncrowded. You don’t have to get up at 6am to find some untouched powder to ski. The current ski area is big enough to keep an experienced skier occupied for a week, with some excellent off-piste and forest skiing. The surrounding hillsides look promising for further extension of the resort in the future.

The few foreigners that make it to Sheregesh every year will be greeted by metres and metres of light, fluffy powder in daily quantities that will astonish even the most veteran traveller. They may also be treated to an as-yet unspoiled and difficult to match dose of Siberian hospitality. And to top it all off, at the base of the slope - the chance to have their photo taken with life-size cardboard cut-outs of everyone’s favourite snow sports enthusiasts ready for action: Putin and Medvedev.

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Oh mamma!

Photo: Ruslan Shamukov

Amongst numerous other things, the Russian authorities do not like demonstrations, protests, unsanctioned parades or any other form of public dissent. This was clearly indicated by the swift and high-handed termination of the recent “Dissenters’ Marches” of members of the political opposition by police. The forceful suppression of the latest demonstrations against the tax on imported cars served to show that any public display of opposition to the Kremlin’s policies, even by those not officially involved in the political sphere, would not be put up with either. Now, as this most recent incident demonstrates, the government’s intolerance extends to any form of protest however small, harmless and comical it may be. (Extracts from Kommersant 21 Jan.)

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30 People in Mummy Costumes Arrested in Moscow

Approximately 30 people attempting to carry out an unauthorised demonstration demanding the removal of Lenin’s body from the mausoleum on Red Square were detained on Manezhnaia Square in Moscow on Monday. Approximately 30 members of the “Orthodox Monarchists” group had previously declared their intentions to organise a “flash mob” dressed in Mummy costumes on Red Square on the 85th anniversary of Lenin’s death.

According to the representative of the city’s police force, “A group of around 25 young people carrying a cardboard coffin were arrested by members of the police force."

Before the event, the organisers had stated that “this will not be a mass demonstration. There will not be crowds of people standing round and creating a scandal and so we hope that we will not be dispersed. The mummies will join onto the Communist’s march... Our demonstration is to demand that the government and communists rebury Lenin in a modest grave at Voklovskoe cemetery in St. Petersburg where there is enough space for him to be placed and where the communists will be able to come and pay their respects to Vladimir Il’ich (Lenin) in peaceful surroundings.”

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Chocolate Alenka

Photo:www.romantiki.ru
As pretty much anyone who has ever read a newspaper will know, Russia’s main exports are industrial: gas, oil and other natural resources. Exportation of domestic goods is rare – ask most Westerners to name five Russian domestic goods and they’ll probably struggle. After Baltika and perhaps the odd obscure brand of vodka, they’re likely to draw a blank. Nevertheless, Russia’s homegrown food industry is thriving. Certainly, Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds et al. have made their (dramatic) mark here, however Russia’s domestic food industry remains one of the fastest growing within the market sector.

It should be no surprise then that most food brands dominating the Russian market at the moment are relatively new, having sprung up throughout the nineties, filling the gaping economic void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian brand names may make up a substantial proportion of the market, however they are yet to build up the sentimental consumer base enjoyed by their counterparts in the West. There are few equivalents to the likes of Cadburys, Hovis and Bisto, whose branding and packaging evoke feelings of nostalgia across generations of Brits. In Russia, brand-based nostalgia is reserve for Soviet goods, most of which are now defunct or mere shadows of their former selves.

This is where Alenka comes merrily skipping in. Alenka (a fairly common girls’ name) is one of the most successful brands of chocolates in contemporary Russia. Described on the official website as a symbol of a happy childhood for several generations, they’re of the few Soviet products to make it through the collapse of socialism and ensuing economic chaos and still come out smiling. First produced in 1966 in Moscow’s Red October Factory following a Kremlin directive to create a new brand of milk chocolate, Alenka became a sign of the good times. Following the austerity of post-war years, the Brezhnev years (1964 – 82), when Alenka first appeared, were embraced by many as a period of relative stability and prosperity. Alenka fitted right in with this general mood and is remembered fondly by Russians of this era, as well as my contemporary Russians. The brand (along with several others) is still made by the Red October factory, which, uner a different name, both predated and outlived the Socialist experiment.

The story of how the Alenka packaging came about adds a further later of whimsy to the brand, giving it a cockle-warming quality that many of the new brands, whose teeth were cut on the brutality of the 90s market lack. The packaging shows a smiling Soviet child, a character as instantly recognisable to Russians as the Coco Pops monkey or Tony the Tiger. Unable to come up with a suitable mascot, Red October launched a competition to find the face of Alenka, whose image would adorn the chocolates. Entries arrived in droves and unable to decide on an overall winner the company initially used several in rotation. And then came an entry from an photographer who had rendered his daughter, Elena, who was to soon become a household face.

In the 1990s, as part of an advertising campaign, Red October ran a feature, 'Alenka, where are you now?' to find the original little girl. Again, respondants replied in droves, but eventually the scores of pretendants were whittled down to just one – Elena Gerinas, the daughter of a famous Soviet photographer. The company greeted her with open arms, lavishing chocolates upon her and feting her in the media.

And then the story turns a little sour. In 2000, the real Alenka, who had inherited rights over her father's estate decided to try and make some money, demanding recompensation for the use of face on the company's packaging. In her opinion, the brand's success was in no small part due to her and her father's work, and she was determined to receive some sort of payment for her participation. She initiated a costly dollar law suit against Red October for violation of author's rights, but was unsuccessful due to lack of evidence that it was really her, or even her fathers' work. Since then other 'Alenka's' have appeared, but it has not been decisively resolved who the real Alenka is.

In any case, Alenka remains a cult brand with spin off versions popular in lots of ex-Soviet countries. You also know you’re successful when parodies appear, and Alenka land is full of them. Here are two of my favorites: Voldoka (diminitive of Vladimir) and Bono…










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The New Brits Abroad?

Artwork: Diana Machulina
Us Brits are well known for our shameful reputation abroad. There’re the all-day drinking sessions, complete lack of cultural awareness, inability to muster up enough linguistic ability to pronounce a simple “merci” or “gracias”. Then there’s the peeling lobster red skin as we get our once-a-year exposure to the sun... It’s probably best not to even get started on our football supporters. However, as this article from the December issue of “Russian Reporter” magazine seems to indicate, the Russians may be trying to beat us at our own game. The shame of it!

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A Cultural Break
Sasha Denisova

Like all Russians, I’m on the edge of a nervous breakdown by the time I take my yearly vacation. I head to Egypt, to a hotel where Italians and Russians along with a couple of Swedes and English are holidaying. However, the hotel staff know exactly who to say “buongiorno” and who to say “dobry dyen” to. I decided to master this art.

In the pool the men are playing water polo. Three of them are throwing themselves after the ball in a particularly violent manner, making the water overflow. During lulls in the game they manage to make a dash for the side of the pool, pour themselves some “Absolut” in plastic cups and with the cry “Vovka, you’re being marked!”, block the goal with their chests, all without spilling their precious liquid. One manages a one-handed save; this, of course, calls for another drink.

The Italian referees whistle and the Swedish players are frozen with shock. The Italians try to grab the vodka off the Russians and only then do they slither out of the pool on their own accord and set off to finish drinking on the sun beds, miffed. It’s midday.

You can tell a Russian a mile off from the glass in his hand and his outward appearance. Italians, without exception, are dressed like members of a golf club: summer jumpers, polo shirts and white sneakers. Italians are always well-groomed, even those on their pension.

A Russian man is noticeable from a distance. He’s sleeping with a cap on. He’s gloomily mooching along the edge of the surf with a pair of flippers hanging from his hand, like a dead fish. He throws himself like a deadweight from the jetty into the sea and swims three metres in a style that only he alone can identify as butterfly stroke. And afterwards, wheezing and panting, he lies on his back bobbing on the waves.

Russian women on holiday are a bit more active. At midday the zombies crawl out to the gym, to dance or do yoga - that is, to hopelessly drag their bluish legs up to their foreheads. Up comes an Italian and you can see straightaway that life is in full swing; she has a personal masseur, card club membership and her own vineyard. Up comes one of us; we have gastroduodenitis, thrombophlebitis, arthritis. Neither gold bracelets, nor self respect. All we do is violently wave our legs around whilst our grandchildren are sleeping and our husband is still out cold.

A Russian goes through two phases – self-destruction and self-realisation. In the city he smokes, drinks, and is completely immobile. On holiday he does his best to get back in shape. The personal trainer in the gym, having seen how I was dangerously teetering over a set of weights, darts over to catch them and, discovering that I was Russian, almost burst into tears; “You’re the very first Russian tourist we’ve had in here! They don’t come in the gym – only the sauna!” Out of a heartfelt pity he offered to let me use the gym for free.

In the sauna, the notices are displayed in Russian: “Dear guests, the sauna and jacuzzi may only be visited in swimming costumes.” They say that there were cases when a couple of stark naked Russians, sniggering, burst into the fitness club; the Swedes made a swift move out of there. A group of Italians sit in the jacuzzi merrily chattering about something or other. To the side – two men with stern expressions; you can just make out the words “payment” and “dispatched”.

The main thing that you don’t come across in a Russian’s face is relaxation. If he goes somewhere it’s on business. For example, going for a beer: he gets changed right there on the beach with a forbidding look on his face; the hotel is three metres away, but he wraps himself up in a towel anyway and gets tangled up in his underpants, hissing at his wife.

Soviet holidays have left us permanently damaged. Once upon a time our holiday-makers had to fight claw and nail to obtain their little piece of happiness from the state. A holiday permit, hotel voucher, canteen meals and a deckchair in the sun. That’s why to this day we still get up early in the morning to reserve the sun beds. It’s not so easy to get us out of that habit.

A Russian is an untrusting type. He doesn’t know any languages and that’s why he’s so sullen. He wants to get what he wants without beating around the bush. So arrogantly, in his great and powerful native tongue, shouts in the Egyptian chef’s face: “You worried I might get fat or something?” The chef doesn’t understand a word of course, but places another burger on the Russian’s plate just in case. A three-year-old boy with a threateningly barrelled tummy hides from his dad under the table. Dad wants to feed him kebab and fried aubergine. But the young organism is no fool – he’s trying to survive. “That’s the fourth day he’s not eaten anything,” complains the inhabitant of the Central Russian Upland to the Egyptian waitress, “only drinks that kefir of yours!”

In general, all hope lies with the children; it’s possible that they’ll manage to survive the aubergines and learn how to take a real holiday. They’ll take peaceful walks in Baden-Baden with dignity, just like Turgenev, Gogol’ and Russian aristocrats used to do.

Contemplating our national way of holiday-making, I look down at my compatriots with a feeling of superiority, and, in a fit of healthiness, jump into the sea and onto a rock hidden beneath the surface. Result: five stitches in my foot.

The rest of my holiday I sit off on the bank, sipping beer and pondering the fact that holidays are generally dangerous for Russians. In any case, in the form that they take at the moment.
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Happy Campers

Photograph: Oleg Klimov
I’ve just got back from a week at that thoroughly Russian institution – the children’s camp. Present all across Russia, from St Petersburg to Vladivostok to the Black Sea, most Russian kids will spend at least one week of their lives at a children’s ‘rest camp.’ This seemed a pretty good opportunity to see Russian children’s life firsthand.

Today’s camps morphed out of the old soviet system of Pioneer Camps, which were initially dreamt up by the Soviets - partly as a means of rewarding parents (factories and organisations would send their workers’ children to camps throughout the USSR) but primarily as a form of ideological indoctrination. The Young Pioneer movement sought to educate Soviet youth in the ways of Marxist-Leninism and so mould future socialist society. The camps were a residential extension of this aim. As such, they were organised around the entire rigmarole of Communist propaganda: morning marches to rousing Soviet music, an oath of allegiance, walls adorned with absurdly large portraits of Lenin and other Soviet heroes and successes, and an extensive program of good, clean Soviet fun.

The Pioneer Camps are remembered in scores of memoirs and novels, which recall a whole host of different experiences, ranging from nostalgic recollections, to vitriolic tirades describing force-fed ideology, terrible accommodation and horrific food. I wonder what all the legions of former Pioneers (most of today's Russians aged over 30) and indeed, Lenin and co. themselves, would make of today's children's camps?

Camp Day Break, where I was working, is a direct descendent of the Pioneer Camp system. Located about 80 km from Saint Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland, the basic infrastructure is left over from its former days as a genuine Pioneer camp, although, as it is keen to point out, all its rooms are newly renovated to 'European standards'. Certainly, despite the rackety buildings, it no longer looked Soviet, but rather similar to children’s camps I’ve been to in the UK (if somewhat colder). So far, all change.

Then I was taken to the cafeteria. Manned by unsmiling matrons dolling up mass-portions of tasteless stodge, the cafeteria seemed to fulfil every stereotype of carb-heavy, Soviet cuisine. Next, I was presented with the camp timetable: wake up at 8 am sharp; callisthenics at 8:10; room tidying; breakfast (probably half-solidified porridge); lessons; walk; lunch (carbohydrates and something pretending to be meat); activities; break (teeth-rottingly sweet tea plus some variation of cake); more lessons; dinner (same as lunch, but less); activities; svechka (a bizarre occurrence, where the entire camp sits in a circle and a candle is passed round as everyone recounts their highs and lows of the day); lights out at 11 pm. It looked like a strict return to discipline, with little time left for just messing around. Perhaps, despite appearances, something of the Soviet era lingered on?

But then again, perhaps not. As with many of my experiences in Russia, there was little correspondence between the official description and how events really unfolded. Sure, we were woken up at 8 am sharp and dragged to the hall for exercises, but in the face of mutinous teenagers, brought up under capitalism and do-what-what-you-want culture, these were half hearted and mainly consisted of the camp counsellor prancing about in front of a horde of sullen teens. By the end of the week they had been scrapped, to be replaced by a lie-in until 9 am. The meals did take place, but were not to the taste of most of the kids, who preferred to pick at it, before begging a leader to take them to the local shop so they could stock up on junk food. Whether or not camp food has got worse since Soviet times I couldn't say, but certainly, Pioneers would not have access to coke, snickers and pot noodles, so would have had to make do or starve. Attempts at making the children study or participate in any of the activities were fairly futile and the camp quickly descended into 'free time' – i.e. playing Nintendo, fighting or flirting. Not to mention the one thirteen year old who some how got his hands on a bottle of vodka, which he promptly downed, giving himself dramatic alcohol poisoning and a nasty, nasty hangover the following day. Dear oh dear, what would Lenin say?

The modern Russian camp is a far cry from its Soviet counterpart. What was once fuelled by ideology is now powered by e-numbers; pop songs have replaced Soviet anthems; the focus of the camp is now fun, not ideological training. Of course, this has resulted in a break down of discipline within the camps, as kids are allowed to pursue their own agendas rather than conform to a state-wide pattern, unanimously imposed from a central, Moscow location. This transition and break down of order can be seen as positive or negative depending on your viewpoint, but in any case the departure from ideological brainwashing can, in my opinion, only be a good thing.

There has been much written about the revival of children's camps as a form of ideological brainwashing under Putin, with special Nashi (the pro-Putin youth group) run camps being hailed (if that’s the word) as an example of a Kremlin plot to inveigle its politics into innocent young minds. Certainly these camps exist, but it should be remembered that they are the exception, not the rule. My experience of camp (admittedly, nothing to do with Nashi, or indeed any political organisation) tells a very different story. Here, kids are just kids and there is no agenda. For the vast majority of Russian youth this is the reality of camp, not an ideological experience.


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New Year... New War?

Photo: Oleg Klimov
Since the war in Georgia this summer and the declaration of independence by South Ossetia and Abkhazia, there has been a lot in the Russian news about events in these areas. We’ve seen the newly-appointed Russian ambassador to Abkhazia show us around the planned site for the Russian embassy, the tangerine farmers from towns along the Russian border queuing to daily cross the border to sell their harvest for a better price (a terrible daily wait to pass customs – wouldn’t it just be easier if Abkhazia and Russia just… shh, don’t say it!), the rebuilding of the ruins of Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, courtesy of the Russian taxpayer. With the amount of news coverage that has been dedicated to these two regions, one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that they were already another part of Russia. A new threat from Georgia might be the last push needed for Abkhazia and South Ossetia to finally unite with Russia. Such a threat might arise in the very near future if we were to judge by the article below, published on 28th December in “Kommersant”.

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The Ministry of Defence of South Ossetia has issued a statement claiming that Georgia is amassing military equipment along its border with the state. Georgian armoured personnel carriers have been sighted in the village of Nikozi, situated in the immediate vicinity of the border with Ossetia. Georgia has claimed that the tanks in the Tskinvali region are needed to monitor the situation in the area and that EU observers have already been informed of this.

According to the Ministry of Defence there are now 28 tanks situated in the town of Gori, where Georgian tank battalions are based. There are now also “Cobra” armoured police vehicles in villages in the Tskinvali region. The Georgian Home Office has confirmed these claims, stating that EU observers have already been informed. According to Shota Utiashvili, head of the Georgian Home Office Department for Analytics, the vehicles are being used for patrols and monitoring.

On the 22nd December the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced its decision to withdraw its observation mission from Georgia by the 1st of January 2009. At the same time, the deputy head of the Central Command of Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Anatoli Nogovitsyn noted that a new military undertaking by Georgia against South Ossetia and Abkhazia could not be ruled out. According to the lieutenant, this would be possible should Georgia restore its military potential with the help of NATO.

“That Georgia is amassing military equipment close to its borders with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, indicates that her leaders have not renounced their plans and intentions of restoring at any price the so called “constitutional order” in these newly independent countries and restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity that was lost as a result of the August war”, claimed Nogovitsyn. He has indicated however, that it was unlikely that Georgia would “again undertake such a wide-scale military operation against South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after Russian soldiers and officers had crushed the Georgian Army.” In Nogovitsyn’s opinion, “if Tbilisi decides to go for all-or-nothing (to restore the situation to its pre-war status) then they would most likely resort to some kind of secret military operation led by the Georgian army and special task forces.”

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