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The last couple weeks have been rather eventful: May Day, Victory day, and the inauguration of a new president and Putin’s no less public shift to the Prime Minister’s office in the Russian white house.
May Day is a complicated holiday here; although most of the fanfare and state backing of the soviet years is long gone there are still sizable marches in most cities. Depending on the location they span the range from dissidence to pride. In Moscow, as I read, the massive march was backed by United Russia, the party in power (and by no means a socialist organization). In Petersburg the scattered opposition rallied to the March as a surrogate to the Marches of Dissidence that have been frequently and effectively suppressed in both capitals. I only caught the end of the Nevsky Prospekt procession; but even that was complete with slogan-wielding anarchists, Babushki holding portraits of Stalin, and the menacing march of the OMON special police trailing the parade.
Victory Day might be the most emotional and dramatic of the holidays owing to both the enormous significance WWII occupies in Russian history (particularly in Peter) and the Kremlin’s effort to rekindle the Soviet grandeur of earlier parades. The big story was the massive parade of Military vehicles in Moscow, the first of its kind in 15 years and seen by most as more than just a little saber rattling in the direction of the west, despite Putin’s insistence to the contrary. All the same, most of the Russians I know reacted to all of this with more consternation and bewilderment than pride or awe before the power of the contemporary Russian armed forces. Soviet Nostalgia may be surging in parts of the country, but tanks on red square have a creepier and far more tangible significance than the sickle and hammer or even portraits of Stalin. Besides this, Muscovites are no doubt unhappy with the fact that the parade shut down the center of the city for the better part of a week with rehearsals, executions and now road repairs, which, by the way, are set to cost the city something like $40 million. In Petersburg we woke up early to see what sort of millitary parade was in the works, but were sort of disappointed in that respect. On account of our late arrival and the massive crowds, we didn’t see much more than the heads of some soldiers and the red tips of some rockets, but it’s safe to say there wasn’t anything near as grand as the Moscow parade. Later in the day we watched the city’s veterans and residents during the blockade march along Nevsky, ordinals clattering all about. A far more worthy spectacle.
The inauguration of Dimitri Medvedev seemed to go off without a hitch. I watched a bit of the ceremony on tape a couple days later and was mostly struck by the tradition and rigor of the whole thing, something like a coronation, from the incredible gilded hall to the nearly goose stepping constitution bearers and the presence of the Orthodox Patriarch. The tsarist atmosphere was only set off by Medvedev’s rather awkward entrance and walk down the red carpet; he’s really such a little man. After his rather run of the mill speech he went to one of the Kremlin cathedrals and kissed an icon, the first time such a thing has happened, as I understand. The following week has been packed with appointments of ministers and rearrangement of government structures. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the whole thing, but from overheard comments and the few things I’ve read most people are saying the arrangement of the new government shows that Power is moving to the new Prime Minister. Putin certainly hasn’t left the public eye, at any rate; I heard a statistic on Echo Moscow that in the weekend following the inauguration Putin appeared in the mass media two times as frequently as Medvedev.
But in Petersburg this is all kid stuff next to the main story. On Wednesday the Petersburg football club Zenit won the UEFA cup and the city went absolutely nuts. My flickr (assuming I ever catch up with my uploads) should give you something of an idea about this. In my experience of the impromptu holiday everything was, comparably, peaceful. I witnessed minimal destruction and I didn’t see any fights, quite the opposite: there was a lot of hugging and dancing. (Fabrizio and I skipped maybe a kilometer down Nevsky singing “Ole, Ole”) Nevertheless there have been reports of violence and the like all around the city, continuing even through the weekend. A couple of my friends got in a fight with some miscreants somewhere after 5 am, thankfully after I’d already set off for home.
By comparison, Russia’s victory last night over Canada in the Hockey world championship went over with out much fuss. I watched the match get tied up in the final dramatic minutes but then had to run out to a film before it entered overtime. Later when we left the movie there were some cars honking about and waving flags, and some complete idiot trying to ride on top of a speeding land rover, but otherwise Nevsky was empty.
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A week or so has passed since writing the above (lazy internets) and in the meantime I’ll add two more things. The other day I was walking around the center, looking for a good place to sit and finally finish Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow – Petushki, when I happened across a crowd of orthodox clergy and worshipers outside of the Church on the Spilled blood (built over the spot where Aleksandr II was assasinated). The strange thing was that the atmosphere was more like a political protest than a religious service. Everyone was waving strange flags colored black, yellow and white, others had signs cryptically reading “Black gothic, Sacred Rus,” still others were carrying pictures of Tsars as if they were icons (Nicholas II is in fact a canonized saint). An old man was holding an icon and the declaration to the Russian people that they’ve “forgotten that they are Russian.” There were even police standing around. The service was difficult to understand, but what I did catch was all about forgiveness for the sins of the sacred slavic peoples. I later found out that the black/yellow/white flag is the Tsar’s standard, making the group some kind of monarchist orthodox group.
On Wednesday I was roaming about the Russian Museum (paying tribute to the Filonov’s there) when one of my friends called to let me know that there was some kind of nuclear accident just south of the city. He was running around pharmacies trying to buy some iodine, which was bought up soon after rumors of the accident spread. I didn’t quite know how to react, the museum was nice, the day outside was beautiful, and everyone around me was behaving incredibly normal for such a “crisis.” At any rate, thinking about Chernobyl, of course, I decided to at least take a step outside and find out what was going on. On my crummy portable radio I caught enough through the static to here that there was nothing going on, just spurious rumors spread by the help of the internet and SMS. Later at home I watched enough news to confirm the rumors were false, thought a bit about White Noise, and then quite calmly went out to watch the Man U. – Chelsea final. It’s now pretty safe to say that nothing has happened, but it’s rather interesting to think about how people reacted. In the first place, few Russians were willing to believe the news reports, but they also didn’t believe the rumors. Most sort of shrugged and said there was some kind of explosion, but no crisis, although maybe, all the same, it might be a good idea to take a nice healthy dose of iodine. For one of the teachers at Smolny, the real refutation came from the complete absence of the event in the international news media.
So:
Zenit is playing in the UEFA championship; they are expected to win and all hell will probably break loose shortly thereafter. The team’s success apparently symbolize the country’s transformation from communism to capitalism. We watched the totally magical, if suspiciously high-scoring, victory (4-0) vs. Bayern in a packed sports bar with Dascha and Ljenja and I felt a little awkward about not screaming my guts out with every goal. But, I mean, i’m just not used to this kind of fanaticism.
Thursday was may day, which nowadays means all kinds of diverse things. In Moscow the Ruling Pary, United Russia, pretty much dominated the rally while in Petersburg Kasparov et. all made something of a dissident event of the thing. I was, rather unfortunately, indisposed in the morning and so didn’t make it out my front door and onto Nevsky until the very end, and this only thanks to Valerii, my neighbor, who woke me up at 11:30 insisting that the May Day march would be something of an essential experience in Russia. I snapped some crappy pictures of a woman with a Stalin picture and then, rather unsuccessfully, tried to get back to sleep.
Also on the holiday front, Friday is Victory Day (WWII) and I am definitely going to wake up early to catch the parade. This year the big hullabaloo has surrounded the Red Square demonstration which will feature heavy military equipment for the first time since the soviet era, but from what I understand there’ll likely be a similar display of tanks and rocket launchers along Nevsky. I’ve, of course, got some mixed and rather stomach turning feelings about all of this, Putin’s reassurances notwithstanding, but I’ll definitely show up for the spectacle. In Petersburg the holiday is particularly important owing to the city’s casualties during the 900 day axis siege.
On Friday Marina, Octavia and I made a small excursion to Vyborg on the Finnish border. Unfortunately we were disappointed by promises of crowds of drunk Finns, but the city was otherwise a rather nice place to walk around. Castles, strange parks, deserted and crumbling streets, and a whole lot of neat graffiti. We found a building from the 16th century, the ruins of something destroyed during world war two (probably) and a Kruschev-era five story monstrosity (“Kruschjeba” which combines the name and a word for slum) on one strangely quiet corner. Now that I’ve fixed the flat tire on my bike (acquired during an epic ride ’round the city) maybe I’ll make the next zagorod adventure to Pushkin or Pavlosk, something like 20km to the South. At any rate, the nice weather alongside slowly dawning realizations that my time here is draining away are kicking at my impulses to travel.
As I mentioned below, we’ve had an unprecedented streak of sunshine and heat, which ended, incidentally, today with some chilly temperatures and a quite decidedly overcast morning. The weather and the extended sunlight (we’re pushing past 10 o’clock) make a fellow want to do nothing more than take a walk, drink a beer, and read a book in some sort of park. Cases of the sun-crazies, on the other hand, are taking more and more of a toll.
Other than all that I’ve resumed my steady diet of pasta, I’m still listening to a whole lot of old Russian rock (send your hip music suggestions this way), and I’m trying to scheme a plan for my trip about Europe this summer.
And in conclusion, I’ll just say that the BBC world news service just used the word “Testicles.” It was in reference to today’s democratic primaries….
