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Friday,
November 07, 2003
Communists on Parade! I met up this morning on Nevskii Prospekt with Kait, Katia, Sofia and Quiet Amanda. (There are two Amandas. One is quiet and the other is not, hence the oh-so-clever nomenclature. Not-quiet Amanda is the one referred to in my Nizhny-Kazan-Moscow trip entries.) The plan for the day was to see the city's great churches. We saw a lot of great churches, yeah, but the real highlight of the day was the Communist parade. When I arrived at Nevskii this morning, the street felt unnervingly still. Ordinarily, it's bustling, but today, traffic was minimal and the only people out were police officers and quiet little crowds of elderly people, surrepititiously wearing their little old red star pins and battered army caps and shining medallions. The traffic finally dispersed entirely, and the quiet of the street was replaced with marching music.  a police officer keeps an eye on an elderly marcher The marchers were mostly old people, carrying banners, pictures of Lenin or just marching quietly. It made me a little sad. Like most people of my generation US, I grew up with the vague idea that communism is bad. And then I went to high school, where we learned that communism isn't bad, it's just silly, because it's a nice theory, but doesn't work in practice - I mean, look at Russia! All falling apart under Perestroika and all! And then I actually read Marx, as well as other socio-economic thinkers, and realized that basically everything I "knew" was full of crap. Communism is supposed to be the step that comes after building a strong capitalist base in a country's economic development, and of course, Russia skipped that step, so you can hardly say that the USSR is an example of a failed attempt at Marxism. Personally, I think you can see Marx coming true today...how many countries that count themselves capitalist are bending more and more toward socialism? Yeah. So I certainly don't have that knee-jerk augh, Commies! thing going on. I like communism, really. I'm not about to go overthrow the state, but I find it a lot more appealing than pure capitalism, which is built on a foundation of "screw people over or be screwed over." That's not why the parade made me sad, though. It made me sad because all these old people spent their entire lives believing they were working toward a great future, and then the country they'd been working for...went away. No more USSR, just Russia, and a battered and shamed Russia, at that. And now, in their old age, the state that they supported is no longer there to support them, and even if they had savings, they're gone thanks to the events of the 90s, so they have to live off the kindness of friends and family - but families are small here, and in old age, friends are passing away, or are as badly off as they are. And now, on Revolution Day, which isn't even called that anymore...they still come out and march for a dead cause and the memory of a life-long dream from which they've woken up. And it's sad. Oh, of course, there was a fine share of silliness. There was a big group of young people marching with big red Che Guevara flags. One of the young men came over to us, and asked if we knew about Che, which of course set us off laughing, 'cuz...yeah. US college students. We know about Che. There were a couple of other real winning conversations, too... Old man: Young ladies! Tell me, do you see the people marching under the Red Flag? Us: Uh...yes? Old man: Now, you must count - are there more under the Red Flag. or under the blue? Me: What? Old man: Count, girls, count well - are there more under the Red or the blue? Me: Uh, I don't know? Old man: You just see. You just watch and see! To the Revolution! After a few minutes, the Yedinaya Rossiya political party came marching along, and suddenly, the old dude's point became clear. The Yedinaya Rossiya party, as well as a few other parties, were also marching, and Yedinaya Rossiya's flags are blue. Yedinaya Rossiya is pretty much mainstream, definitely not communist, although it's made up mostly of former communist middlemen who have wholeheartedly adopted the new system. Dicks. And there were a whole lot more people marching under the Red than under the blue. Then, there was this other guy, who came up and gave us a lecture about the necessity of studying. He said that in youth, people study. And in adolescence, people study. And then they work their whole lives, and in their old age, they study again, and that was why the parade was full of old people. (Personally, I think it's full of old people because they grew up Communist, but I digress.) Studying is important because everyone should be more like Lenin, because Lenin was super-brilliant, and why was Lenin super-brilliant? Because he was always, always studying! All the time! And he was brilliant! And Plato, too. Plato says you should study and be like Socrates. Wait, do you know who Socrates is? Okay, I see that you do. So, study! Hurrah! The guy saluted us and marched off. But my very, very favorite was the group of idiots marching with a big communist banner...and a bunch of black flags with the anarchy A on them. Ridiculous. Then, when the parade was over, an echalon of street sweepers came driving by, sweeping the street, even though it was no dirtier than usual - cleaner, in fact. Seriously, they were driving in wedge formation. Sofia declared it "a street-cleaning operation the likes of which I have never seen." 
After the parade, we resumed our touristing through the churches. On the way, we saw this sign, which I think may even replace the lada-driving-into-a-canal sign as the weirdest Russian street sign, what with its simple elegance: 
Senseless and beautiful. We also returned to the "City Sculpture Museum," aka The Moodiest Graveyard in Russia, because Katia wanted to see it. Now, granted, some of the allure of the first time through the graveyard was that we'd been tricked into seeing it, making it not only ridiculously Gothic, but funny even beyond that. Plus, it wasn't drizzling a nice creepy rain today, so the mood wasn't quite as appropriate. But I had the opportunity to get pictures of some stuff I missed last time.  Tchaikovsky's grave. Sprinkled with red carnations! Moody!  A tombstone in the shape of a moody boat! With a moody angel in the background! And dude, then there was this, which is a masterpiece. There was this whole era in gravestone design where they put a lot of reminders of people's mortality on the stones, as a warning to those who would pass by and see - you know, skulls, hourglasses, suchlike. Well, this stone apparently wanted to get as many reminders of human mortality in one place as possible, because...  From top to bottom, I see a vulture, flies, skulls and crossbones, a depressing quote, an ourobouros, an hourglass and a scythe. Wow. The skulls with flies were a particularly nice touch, I think. Plus, they're grinning evilly. Sofia, who is quite brilliant with turns of phrase, said that they "put the jolly in jolly roger." Adding to the wonderfulness of this photo, you can totally see a bewildered tourist in the background. Hee. 
But do you know what really made my day? I found out that Lenin had a speech impediment. And would you like to know, dear people, what kind of speech impediment Lenin had? He couldn't roll his Rs. I feel so vindicated. I may not be able to roll Rs, but neither could Lenin! I'm in good company. - declared by Liusia @ 2:50 PM Thursday,
November 06, 2003
S dnyom velikoi oktyaberskoi revolutsii! Happy Great October Revolution day, that is! 
As if I wasn't already a big fan of Lenin, I get tomorrow off of school for Revolution day! Never mind that it's the October Revolution, and we're celebrating in November. (Russia's had some calendar issues.) Never mind that the holiday's not officially called "Den' Velikoi Oktyaberskoi Revolutsii" anymore, since the fall of the USSR. (It's something like "Blah Blah Blah Day of International Friendship Blah Blah." Everyone still calls it "Revolution Day" anyway.) Never mind that one is really kinda supposed to celebrate the Revolution by working really hard. We have no class and I'm going downtown to watch the Communists march in the streets! Sonya says that back in the day, everyone was required to participate in cheery Revolution Day activities, but now just the hardcore Communists do it, and the state doesn't exactly look fondly on the hammer-and-sickle waving that goes on. But seeing as how like 35% of the population still counts itself as Communist, that's a lot of people downtown waving red flags, so there's not much they can do about it. Plus, they're not all that miffed about it. Most of the people now in power were pretty enthusiastic Communists themselves, back when. As we all know, Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer. Valentina Matviyenko, Petersburg's mayor, was a local Party leader. 
Last night at work, I had a bit of a scare. I thought another Velikaya Revolutsiya had broken out. I was sitting at my desk typing away, when the sound of explosions came from St. Issac's square. BOOM! BOOM! B-B-B-B-BOOM! Right in front of our office building. Of course, the staff, like all good journalists, has no sense of self-preservation, so we all ran to the windows to see who was doing the shooting and why. It turned out it was just some dude shooting off fireworks by the Duma building a few days early. The fireworking didn't go on for long - either he ran out, or he got arrested. I bet it's illegal to shoot off fireworks by the Duma building. I'm a little torn. On the one hand, huzzah for no bloody coup! On the other hand...it was just fireworks. How am I supposed to write a bestselling novel about my harrowing experiences in Russia when the scariest things I encounter are fireworks, Gypsies, the trolleybus and Evil Chef Boyardee? - declared by Liusia @ 1:06 PM Tuesday,
November 04, 2003
Are you happy now, you sick bastards?! 
Yeah, here's a look at young Vinnie's naked torso! Oh, my, now, that was worth the bandwidth! I'm not gonna tell you how to make a homemade silencer, though. I don't think the FBI goes after people for scantily-clad Vinnie, but they're a little touchy about self-constructed silencers. And don't even get me started on how ridiculous that is - in a country where any felonious frontal lobotomy patient can get a handgun, people doing creative acoustic experiments with soda bottles and cotton batting are the least of our concerns. - declared by Liusia @ 3:44 PM Why, God, why?! At this point, a huge percentage of my site hits come from people searching for either "vincent kartheiser shirtless" or "how to make a homemade silencer." I suppose I can get behind the latter, but the former? For the love of God, people! - declared by Liusia @ 3:38 PM Monday,
November 03, 2003
I'm homesick. Police said revelers "body-slammed" each other, and others uprooted two trees in the vicinity. As the crowd inflated to what police estimated at 5,000, people looked down on the melee from the windows of the University Inn. Some in the street started yelling at girls in the windows to "show your tits," and some of the people in the windows flicked off the crowd. Others further incited the violence by hanging out the windows and singing the Minnesota Gophers' fight song, according to City Council President Mike Verveer, District 4, who monitored the street all night. See the full article here. Also, this may be one of the best editorials the Daily Cardinal has ever published: A mattress is not an ideal Halloween costume For all the insanity that living in Russia entails, I think I was well-prepared for it by my UW-Madison college experience. - declared by Liusia @ 7:34 AM Sunday,
November 02, 2003
Boldly, Comrades! 
You may remember my insistence that the Russian pedestrian-crossing man is not just crossing the sidewalk, but is, in fact, the super Soviet hero, boldly striding into the great new future. Well, folks, I have found proof of that theory! 
A while ago, Kait and I came across a collection of old Soviet propaganda posters, reprinted as postcards. Among them was this. The slogan says, "Be bolder, comrade! Glasnost is our strength!" Boldly striding into the future. Yes sir. - declared by Liusia @ 8:27 AM Things I did this week that were not boring On Wednesday, Sofia and I decided to go to the Aleksandr Nevskii Monastery, because we'd been told by our program director that the must-see locations in Petersburg were the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Summer Palace and the Aleksandr Nevskii Monastery. Well. I mean, it wasn't a shabby monastery or anything, but to put it on the list with the Winter Palace was just ridiculous. It was pretty much just a pretty church (which was under restoration while we were there) and pleasant grounds full of graveyards. The graveyards are a funny story, actually. So, we go up to the ticket booth, and buy tickets for the City Monument/Sculpture Museum, which sounded interesting. Russian statues are usually worth seeing, if only because they are almost always ridiculously gigantic. But the "Sculpture Museum" turned out to be this: 
I guess there are some actual sculptures around there somewhere, but that section was also closed for restoration, so basically, we bought tickets to see a creepy graveyard. I enjoy a creepy graveyard as much as the next Edgar Allan Poe fan, and the idea that we'd been tricked into paying to see the moodiest cemetary in the city...for some reason, it made it even better. Every once in a while a bewildered tourist would wander in with a kind of what the hell is this look on his or her face. Hee. It was the sort of graveyard I didn't realize existed outside the stories of Anne Rice. Ridiculously angsty. The major theme seemed to be "beautiful women weeping for their lost loves." Many of the grave markers featured carvings of distraught chicks draped over the stone or urn. 
Natalya Pushkin is buried there, athough of course with a different last name, as she remarried after Pushkin's death. Her actually rather tasteful stone has a marker next to it in English that helpfully says, "Natasha, Wife of Poet A.S. Pushkin Bu Second Marriage." "Bu" is apparently secret Russian code for "that is, before her second marriage, as first she married Pushkin, then some other guy, and of course, Pushkin himself was only married once." Like at most monasteries and churches, they had icons for sale. I came across this icon of St. Princess Olga, and of course I had to buy it. She just looks so pissy. She's like, "Oh, kill my husband and propose to me, will you? We'll see about that!" Plus, she's wearing way too much eye makeup. Beautiful. 
You can only wander around making fun of the stones in an angsty cemetary for so long, so we soon left. We decided to go to the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, because some cartographer had stuck it prominantly on Sofia's map, and every time she'd looked at the map she'd wondered why. I guess the cartographer just really liked taxidermied penguins. The museum was in what had clearly once been either a palace or a church. It still had the original plaster fleur-de-lis and so forth all over the place, but all the murals were repainted to show handsome Soviet supermen planting flags in icecaps and manfully steering ships around ice floes and so forth. There was this sign from the south pole, which cracked me up: 
Oh, those zany Soviet antarctic colonists! The markers show the distance in kilometers to, among other places, Moscow, Kiev, Budapest, Leningrad and the moon. There were lots of photos from the international antarctic research posts. In most of the pictures there's a Japanese guy looking really excited to be running around on the polar ice, an American, French or British guy who looks like he's trying really hard to smile and be happy like the Japanese guy, but actually he's freezing to death and all he wants is to go home, and a Russian making a face like, "I grew up in Siberia. This is normal. What are you idiots so excited about?" Friday was still Halloween, of course, although Halloween isn't a Russian holiday. Halloween made me miss Madison a lot, because Halloween there is like Mardi Gras. I mean, we even had riots on State Street last year! People set stuff on fire! There's debauchery in the streets! On second thought, maybe I don't miss Madison that much. Anyway, I went to teach English as usual after class. Of course, I've missed the last few weeks, because we were on that trip. So I was surprised to find that the kids had planned a Halloween party. I've got two groups, a horde of 8- to 10-year-olds and a group of older teens. The younger kids totally got the idea. They'd constructed really creative costumes themselves, since of course you can't buy Halloween stuff in Russia. Probably the cutest was the boy who declared himself the "headless horseless Headless Horseman." He attached empty water bottles to either side of his head with a piece of elastic to form "shoulders," then wore a "bloodstained" men's dress shirt draped over that, and carried around a balloon on which he'd drawn an anguished face and glued some yarn "hair." At the end of the party, he came up to me and confessed, "I put watercolor paints all over the neck of this shirt. It's going to be a nightmare for my old lady when she does the laundry." Hee hee hee. They ate chocolate and told scary stories and jokes and toasted with orange soda. Their vocabulary list of the day was all words like "werewolf" and "vampire" and "graveyard," which they thought was hilarious. One of them just couldn't remember the word pumpkin, so she kept calling it a "tikvennakin," since the Russian word for pumpkin is "tikva." One of the younger boys explained to me that schools in Moscow banned Halloween celebrations in English class, because they are dorks who think it's evil, but people in Petersburg are cooler than that, so kids here get to dress up creepy like Americans. Heh. I tried to explain the concept of TP-ing a house to them, and I'm pretty sure some of them got it. I like to think I've started a whole new generation of hooliganism. - declared by Liusia @ 8:25 AM
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