Andrei Khristoforov aka Drevarkh the Enlightened. Photo courtesy of Mr. Khristoforov’s social media page via Mediazona
Fifty-nine-year-old environmental activist and Shiyes defender Andrei Khristoforov, also known as Drevarkh the Enlightened, has died in Arkhangelsk. The news was reported on his page on the Russian social media network VKontakte.
In late April, Khristoforov said that he had been admitted to hospital with severe cirrhosis of the liver.
In Arkhangelsk, Drevarkh was involved in environmentalism and was the leader of the Plant Your Own Tree movement. He wore white wings and a tree-shaped cap during his protest actions.
In 2022, the Ust-Vymsky District Court in the Komi Republic sentenced Khristoforov to a year of probation on charges of “violence against a law enforcer” (per Article 318.1 of the Criminal Code). Police investigators claimed that, in the summer of 2019, Drevarkh had attacked a policeman who was filing a report on him because he had, allegedly, pulled the emergency stop of a train at the Shiyes railway station, where protests against the construction of a landfill were underway.
Drevarkh said that the police officers had themselves beaten him during the arrest. Video footage of the arrest was posted online by other Shiyes activists: it shows police officers shocking Khristoforov several times with a stun gun.
Video footage of police detaining and electrocuting Drevarkh the Enlightened in 2019
After charges were filed against him, Drevarh was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Arkhangelsk for a forensic medical examination. The psychiatrists concluded that Khristoforov suffered from borderline personality disorder, but during the scuffle on the train he “would have been aware of the danger posed by his actions” and did not need compulsory medical treatment. Drevarkh then hurriedly left for Ukraine, where, according to him, he also planted trees. In the summer of 2021, however, he decided to return to Russia.
Upon arrival, the activist was placed under house arrest, and then released on his own recognizance. “The Creator thus sent me feedback via the Russian Investigative Committee, for which I am grateful to the former and the latter,” explained Drevarkh. Police investigators had written to Drevarkh via social media, after which he bought tickets home.
In May 2019, Drevarkh was fined for taking part in a protest march against the Shiyes landfill. He was later detained for ripping the epaulettes off a policeman’s uniform during one of the rallies. “When the brothers started pushing me back, the epaulettes flew off them. But they blamed me for the whole thing, saying that I was the one who had conjured it up. It’s like leaves falling off a poplar tree, that’s how the epaulettes fell off,” the activist said at the time.
That same month, “after firing several warning shots in the air,” Khristoforov shot his own urine at private security guards using a toy automatic rifle and smeared feces on the porch of a temporary police station. After he was detained by police, the activist dubbed the contents of his toy gun a “Drevarhh cocktail” and complained that “the [gun’s] clip was too small.”
In June 2020, Arkhangelsk Regional authorities announced the closure of the project, promising to terminate the agreement with Technopark. The investor announced the final abandonment of construction only in October 2020, promising to return the land where the works took place to its original state.
The Russian army’s meagre successes in Ukraine – such as taking the ruined town of Avdiivka, at horrendous human cost – have produced a new round of western politicians’ statements and commentators’ articles about possible peace negotiations.
Hopes are not high, because the Kremlin shows no appetite for such talks. Its actions, such as nightly bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, speak louder than political and diplomatic words on all sides.
The desire and hope for peace is widely shared, and I share it too. How can it be achieved?
Among “left” writers, the “campists” and one-sided “anti-imperialists”, who deny Ukraine’s right to resist Russian aggression, say that peace talks could start now … if only the western powers did not stand in the way. (By “campism”, I mean the view that the world is divided simplistically between a western imperialist camp dominated by the US, and another camp comprising China, Russia and other countries, in which some progressive potential resides.)
Mariupol, after the siege. Photo: ADifferentMan / Creative Commons
The “campist” case is made by literally ignoring what is actually going on in Ukraine, and Russia, and focusing – often exclusively – on the political and diplomatic shenanigans in western countries.
In this blog post I will look at seven recent articles by “campist” writers. All of them call for peace talks; and all claim that the main obstacle is the western powers.
I will cover (1) the selection of subject matter by these authors; (2) what little they actually say about peace negotiations; and (3) why the claim that the western powers sabotaged peace talks in April 2022 is less convincing than they believe it to be.
None of the seven articles says one word about Russia’s political system, its politicians’ nationalist rhetoric or its war economy, which are among the central causes of the war. Not a word. Only one of the articles (Alexander Hill’s) attempts to assess Russian war aims; one more (Andrew Murray’s) makes glancing reference to these.
Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) touches on what Ukrainian people are thinking or doing. None of the other six articles says a word about this, despite Ukrainian popular resistance being, by any measure, a key factor in the war.
Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) says much about what has happened on the battlefield. One more (Branko Marcetic in Jacobin) has one paragraph on Ukrainian battlefield losses, but no mention of Russian losses. Two more (Murray’s, and Wojcik and Atkins’s) have very brief references to this.
While saying almost nothing about what is going on in Ukraine, or Russia, all seven articles discuss statements bywestern politicians, diplomats and/or military leaders. At length.
Five of the articles (by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, by Hill, by Wojcik and Atkins, and two by Marcetic) focus on a peace deal that was supposedly on the table in April 2022, and claim that western politicians, who twisted president Zelensky’s arm, wrecked it (see last section). On the other hand, only two of the articles (Hill and Murray) make any suggestion about what peace talks might look like (see next section).
Dear readers, I can hear you say: but you have just picked seven articles at random. No. It’s a fair sample. I searched the largest-circulation English language “left” web sites; these were the most visible articles by don’t-support-Ukrainian-resistance writers.
The key point is that none of these writers mention how the Kremlin works. No reference to Vladimir Putin’s attitude to the world, or whether it has changed. No assessment of the deranged nationalist, even genocidal, rants about Ukraine by him, his close colleagues and high-profile Russian TV personalities. No mention of whether Russia can be considered an imperialist power or not. Not a word about the way that its invasion of Ukraine not only breached international agreements and laws, but also offends the principle of nations’ right to self-determination that socialists have held dear since the 19th century.
It is telling, too, that these “campist” writers have no interest in what Ukrainian people say or do. Nor Russian people. They don’t pretend to look at the interaction of social, political and economic forces. They are concerned largely – some of them, exclusively – with the western elite. They see themselves as its opposite and its nemesis. Russian or Ukrainian soldiers, Russian anti-war protesters, Ukrainian trade unionists on the front line, Ukrainian refugees – these are bit part players in a drama played out in Washington, London and Berlin.
The result is a fantasy world that bears only indirect relation to reality.
When I say “campists”, I mean a very narrow group among “left” writers, who embrace a fake “anti-imperialism”, historically descended from 20th century Stalinism.
They do not speak for the labour movement more broadly, or for the millions of people in western countries who think of themselves as “left wing”, or who vote for Social Democratic parties. These are powerful forces for change. But the “campist” influence is dangerous and divisive.
Of course many journalists in the mainstream press also focus exclusively on this elite world of diplomats and politicians. But they usually see themselves as part of it. The “campists” sees themselves in opposition – but only to the western powers, the US above all. For them, the American empire is the only empire worth fighting.
Whether Russia might have traits of empire, whether China might seek to construct some sort of empire, whether bloodthirsty dictators like Bashar al-Assad are tied to imperial interests – all this is excluded from the conversation. Real struggles that confront the American empire, such as the Palestinians’, are welcomed; those that face other enemies, such as Ukrainians resisting Putin, or Syrians and Palestinians resisting Assad, are shunned.
What could peace negotiations look like
Andrew Murray writes:
Moving from ceasefire to a permanent peace will of course be challenging. Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state, and Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO and self-determination for minorities within its borders.
The Stop the War coalition, in which Murray is a leading voice, sets out its policies in the form of calls for UK government action. So it’s fair to assume that this, too, is a call for the UK government to take a particular stance – in this case, the most pro-Russian stance possible. Going through the points in turn:
1. “Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state” is meaningless. It did so, in the Belovezha accords that dissolved the Soviet Union (1991), and the Budapest memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (1994). Since 2014 Russia has been pounding Ukraine militarily, in breach of those agreements. Any attempts to stop the fighting in Ukraine diplomatically would have to start by recognising that reality – which is why a peace treaty, as opposed to a ceasefire or simply “freezing” the conflict, is extremely unlikely.
2. “Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO” is essentially a demand for NATO to allow Russia to decide which states join (why no objection to Finland and Sweden?!). The UK government may indeed be cynical enough to take such a position, but why should the labour movement encourage it to do so? What sort of solidarity is that with the Ukrainian population – which before 2014 was in its vast majority opposed to NATO membership, but has largely come to see it as the only security arrangement that can prevent their country being invaded again and again?
President Zelensky in Bucha, April 2022
3. “Self-determination for minorities within its [Ukraine’s] borders.” This is a distortion of the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, historically embraced by socialists. Self-determination includes the right to secession. (It is relevant that Russia killed tens of thousands of people in Chechnya in the early 2000s, to help ensure that this right would not be exercised.)
From 2014, the extreme right in Russia called for the establishment of a new state, “Novorossiya”, in south-eastern Ukraine, effectively a demand for “self-determination” of Russian people there – but the Kremlin refused to support this. Moscow was aware that the vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians neither wanted “self-determination” nor regarded themselves as Russian. The exception was Crimea, where a referendum on annexation by Russia (a strange type of “self-determination”) was held under military occupation.
Long before 2014, there had been support in eastern Ukraine for greater autonomy within the Ukrainian state, and distrust of Ukrainian nationalist politicians in Kyiv. The Kremlin did its best to whip up divisions among Ukrainians on this basis. It engaged in a long campaign of disinformation, claiming to support the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. (I wrote about this e.g. here.) But on a diplomatic level, until 2022, the Kremlin pretended that the Russian army was not present in Ukraine, although it was, and left the status of the Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” vague. All this changed in 2022, when the Kremlin recognised the “republics” and invaded Ukraine.
In 2022, people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhyia voted – sometimes literally looking down the barrel of a soldier’s gun, and always under the shadow of the biggest military operation in mainland Europe since world war two – on accession to the Russian federation. This is the Kremlin’s version of “self-determination for minorities within Ukraine’s borders”. The Stop the War coalition has been conspicuous in its failure to denounce this violent abomination.
Why, then, demand that the UK government raise the issue of “self-determination for minorities” in peace talks? Andrew Murray can not believe there is the least chance of them doing so. The point is to preserve the fantasy world in which “campism” lives, in which Russian imperialism, Russian assaults on democratic rights and the Kremlin’s distortion of democratic principles for its political ends do not exist.
Alexander Hill writes:
The key outcome [of peace talks] will be the separation of the Russian-dominated Donbass and Crimea from the remainder of Ukraine – something that will hopefully be the cornerstone of a lasting peace in the region.
Although Hill clearly favours a ceasefire, and the Stop the War coalition opposed the Russian invasion in 2022, that is not what is under discussion here. Hill is envisaging the outcome of peace negotiations. Why endorse the imperial power’s demands in this way? Where is the evidence that, if these demands are met, “lasting peace” will ensue? How is this in the labour movement’s interests or the interests of international solidarity?
What happened in April 2022
The idea that peace talks have been blocked solely by the western powers – rather than by Russia’s war strategy – has been repeated over and over again by the “campists” over the past two years. They claim, in particular, that a deal was on the table in Istanbul in April 2022, that Ukraine was ready to sign, but that Boris Johnson, then UK premier, visited Kyiv and persuaded president Zelensky not to do so.
This version of events was demolished by Volodymyr Artiukh and Taras Fedirko in October 2022. They showed that the single source for the claim, a report in Ukrainska Pravda, had been misinterpreted, and that a mass of evidence suggested that the talks failed due to Ukrainian and Russian political factors, and the dynamics of military operations. Commentators who focus on “a magic turning point when everything could have gone otherwise” ignore that “in Russia’s repertoire, diplomacy has consistently been subordinated to the use of force”, they wrote. I urge readers to read this thoughtful, rounded argument.
Recently, accounts of the Istanbul talks have surfaced from people who were involved: the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, and the Ukrainian politicians Davyd Arakhamia and Oleksiy Arestovich. The “campists” have cherry-picked lines from these sources to revive their narrative.
Branko Marcetic of Jacobin claimed that an interview given in July last year by Bennett, who had been in touch with the Russian and Ukrainian governments, was a “bombshell”. Bennett said that in April 2022 there had been “a good chance of reaching a ceasefire”, and when asked “had they [who?] not curbed it”, “he replied with a nod”.
While it is unclear what that nod meant, and who “they” referred to, Bennett’s statement that the April deal was killed off by the revelation of the Russian army’s massacre of civilians at Bucha, outside Kyiv, is unequivocal. In Marcetic’s own words:
“Once that [Bucha] happened, I [Bennett] said, ‘It’s over,’” he recounts. Bennett pointed to the potential for such an atrocity to emerge and derail the political prospects for peace in Ukraine as proof of the importance of making haste on negotiations at the time. The Pravda report likewise pointed to Johnson’s visit as only one “obstacle” to peace, with the discovery of the Bucha killings the other.
Marcetic, writing in early August last year, chose not to look more widely at the circumstances in which Bennett gave his interview. Shortly beforehand, in June, the leaders of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and other African nations had met with both Zelensky and Putin to propose peace talks. Putin had told them that one of their proposed starting-points for talks – accepting Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders – was unacceptable. (During this meeting, Putin held up what he claimed was the draft of the April agreement, although this has not been published before or since.)
A proper account of the failure of peace initiatives would mention not only the western powers, who of course influence decision-making in Kyiv (in recent months increasingly to constrain the war effort), but also Russia’s real intentions. Marcetic ignores that.
In November last year, Wojcik and Atkins sculpted another piece of evidence that Boris Johnson, and the western powers, were the obstacle to peace, from an interview with Davyd Arakhamia, one of the leaders of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. They quoted Arakhamia reflecting on the Istanbul talks as follows:
“[The Russians] were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality like Finland once did. And we were ready to make a commitment that we would not join NATO. When we returned from Istanbul, [then-British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said: ‘Do not sign anything with them at all; just go to war,’” Arakhamia said.
Now let’s look at what Arakhamia actually said, as reported by the Russian opposition web site, Meduza. Wojcik and Atkins have cut out a key passage, after the words “would not join NATO”. I have put it back, in bold type.
“They actually hoped until nearly the last moment that they could press us into signing this agreement, adopting neutrality. That was their biggest priority. They were willing to end the war if we took on neutrality, like Finland once did, and gave assurances that we wouldn’t join NATO. That was essentially the main point. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about ‘denazification’, the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah,” Arakhamia said.
When asked why Ukraine didn’t agree to Russia’s terms, Arakhamia was resolute:
First of all, to agree to this point, we would have to change the [Ukrainian] Constitution. Our path to NATO is written into the Constitution. Second of all, we did not and still do not trust the Russians to keep their word. This would only have been possible if we had security guarantees. We couldn’t sign something, walk away, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief, and then [Russia] would invade, only more prepared this time — because the first time they invaded, they were actually unprepared for us to resist so much. So we could only work [with them] if we were 100 percent confident that this wouldn’t happen a second time. And we don’t have that confidence.
Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we wouldn’t sign anything with them at all, and that we should just fight.
Oh dear! The really important part – that Ukraine needed guarantees that Russia would not once again break its word and invade – went missing!!
This reminds me of Soviet censors who, when a Communist party leader fell out of favour, would cut the unhappy has-been out of official photos. Snip snip snip.
Arakhamia’s statement, in full, suggests that, with Russia’s brutal invasion at its height, the Ukrainian side needed a more substantial security guarantee than Putin’s piece of paper.
Of course, what Arakhamia said should be treated with scepticism, as should all statements from all politicians. But it shouldn’t have vital parts surgically removed, to make it say the opposite. All the more care is needed, given the efforts by Russian state propagandists to distort Arakhamia’s meaning.
In March this year, Benjamin and Davies cited a third source – Oleksiy Arestovich, Zelensky’s former spokesman – in support of the claim that Putin’s Istanbul deal had been negotiated and “already had the champagne corks popping in Kyiv”. Again a politician, and one whose words need to be treated with special care. Readers should read his interview themselves.
But to pretend that Arestovich’s account shows that the western powers wrecked the peace talks is deceitful. Asked if Johnson twisted Zelensky’s arm, Arestovich says:
I don’t know exactly if that is true or false. He came to Kiev but nobody knows what they spoke about except, I think, Zelensky and Boris Johnson himself. I think it was the second of April, and I was in Bucha the next day. The president got in [to Bucha] one day later. […]
Arestovich here underlined his point that: “The president was shocked about Bucha. All of us were shocked about Bucha. […] Zelensky completely changed face when he came into Bucha and saw what happened.”
My conclusion is not that news of the Bucha massacre alone changed Zelensky’s mind. My best guess is that Bucha, combined with the other brutal Russian offensive operations in progress – especially the attack on Mariupol – focused the minds of Zelensky and others on the issue of security guarantees outside of NATO. And they could not see clearly what these were.
Despite the importance attached to Bucha by Bennett, Arakhamia and Arestovich, none of the “campists” mention it – except for that one dismissive reference by Marcetic (see above). They live in a fantasy world where Russian imperialism is absent, and its crimes of no consequence.
And that is not really a problem about Ukraine, but about the deep political malaise of a section of the western “left”. There is no path to real international solidarity and effective anti-imperialism through this fantasy world. And no path to peace either. SP, 8 April 2024.
Novocollege, a private educational institution in Novosibirsk, will close, its founder Sergey Chernyshov announced in a video posted on YouTube on Saturday, 27 April. According to him, the college and its subsidiary projects—Novoschool and Inotext Foreign Language School—will close in July 2024, immediately after the academic year is over and all paperwork has been completed.
Explaining the motives behind the decision, Chernyshov said that the college remained the only educational institution in Russia where “there had never been a single propaganda event” and where “[people] spoke openly about their attitude to what was happening.”
“I believed and still believe that my colleagues [at other colleges and schools — editor, DW] bear a huge blame for normalising the war in our country: for [holding] Important Conversations, [making students write] letters to the front, handing out [military draft] summonses, for engaging in propaganda and celebrating former murderers and rapists as heroes. None of this has ever occurred at Novocollege,” he said.
“It is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country”
According to Chernyshov, over the past year the college has been subjected to constant inspections from various government agencies, which have made it almost impossible to keep the college running. Meanwhile, many of the college’s lecturers and students would be willing to take part in “patriotic” events in exchange for accreditation and state-issued diplomas, the former head of the institution said.
Under such conditions, Chernyshov sees only two options for Novocollege. The first is to turn it into “a typical Russian college with propaganda that is ingratiating to officials, a beautiful cover, and what they want to hear from it.” The second is to recognise that “it is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country.”
In June 2023, Novocollege was denied government accreditation, despite the fact that the college had scored the necessary number of points and fulfilled other formal requirements. Chernyshov himself was placed on the list of so-called foreign agents by the Justice Ministry in May of last year, after which he resigned his administrative duties at the educational institution.
Sergei Chernyshov, “‘It’s impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country’: Novocollege is shutting down” (in Russian; no subtitles)
For a modern and free college to run well, modern and free people are a vital prerequisite.
If we now polled the students and teachers at [Novocollege] about whether they would be willing to hold Important Conversations, invite veterans of the so-called special military operation to visit, applaud the speeches of propaganda ministers, and march to patriotic songs in exchange for accreditation and government-minted diplomas, how many people would vote in favour? I am quite bitter to admit it, but I think it would be a majority.
We acknowledge that it is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country. Neither I nor my colleagues (many of whom have left [Russia] due to the threat of mobilisation or arrest; many of whom have had family and friends arrested or killed) can pretend that everything is normal. No, everything is not normal. Even if all our colleagues in education pretend that things are normal, I repeat: no, things are not normal.
Therefore, I am announcing that Novocollege, Novoschool, and Inotext Foreign Language School will cease operations as of July 2024, immediately after the end of the academic year, graduation, and [completion of] all paperwork.
And yet, there are unique teams of students and teachers at Novocollege who have voiced their willingness to continue working, knowing that the external pressure will only increase, that the college will increasingly not resemble the country in which it operates, and that there will most likely never be any accreditation. They are primarily at the Tomsk branch and in the distance learning department. Perhaps there will be other teachers and their students who are willing to continue to live and study with a team of free normal people—and we will help them organise their work.
Impact of Discrimination on Integration of Emigrants From the Aggressor Country (with Ivetta Sergeeva)
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, up to one million Russians fled their homeland, marking the most significant brain drain since the Soviet Union’s collapse. While some host countries view the highly educated and politically active migrants as an asset, integrating nationals of the aggressor state has presented challenges. Many migrants face institutional restrictions aimed at sanctioning Russia, alongside varied experiences of discrimination from local populations. This study delves into the effect of discrimination on the assimilation intentions of Russian migrants, focusing on language learning as a key indicator. Laitin’s model of identity building suggests that migrants’ willingness to assimilate depends on the perceived benefits, including acceptance by the host society. Following the model, Sergeeva assumes that discrimination signals to migrants that the host country’s society does not accept them, making learning the local language a less rational choice.
Utilizing a cross-sectional panel survey, the study establishes a link between discrimination and integration, differentiating between the effects of discrimination experienced from local citizens and local institutions on language acquisition. Findings reveal that societal discrimination significantly dampens migrants’ willingness to learn local languages and diminishes their trust in and attachment to host societies, unlike institutional discrimination, which shows no such effect on language learning. These insights contribute to an understanding of the impact of nationality-based discrimination, highlighting the role of societal acceptance in the successful integration of political migrants.
This event will be hosted in person and virtually on Zoom. Register for the Zoom meeting here. Non-NYU affiliates must RSVP for in-person campus access.
Ivetta Sergeeva is a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence. She specializes in political behavior, civil society, and Russian emigration. She is a co-founder and co-principal investigator of OutRush and ViolenceMonitor (a series of surveys on intimate partner violence in Russia). She also has eight years of experience supervising projects in civil society and human rights organizations in Russia. Website: www.ivettasergeeva.com. Email: ivetta.sergeeva@eui.eu.
Date: 29 April 2024 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Speaker: Ivetta Sergeeva
Location: Jordan Center, 19 University Place, New York
Professoressa on the Pole* is the result of Polina Kanis’ investigation into the perceptual transformation of the female body in Russia following the onset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent ideological shift within Russian society. As part of this investigation the artist trained as a pole dancer and worked at a strip club.
The exhibit includes photographs documenting Kanis’ three-month stint at a strip club, the club’s rules of conduct for strippers, and a video re-enactment of the artist’s stage performance. The project marks the latest chapter in Kanis’ ongoing research into the changing role of a female teacher in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, where limitations imposed by the state can only be counter-balanced by imagination.
*Professoressa (Italian: female teacher) refers to the 1967 manifesto Letter to a Teacher (Letters a una Professoressa), which harshly criticizes the power structure and classism of the educational system in 1960s Italy.
location: Expo
price: €5, tickets for a performance of the CARTA ’24 festival give free admission
duration: 5h
extra info: wed – sun: 14:00 – 19:00, evening performances until 22:00
Nadya Tolokonnikova, an artist who is founder of the feminist collective Pussy Riot, has long been persecuted in Russia for her conceptual performances and artistic protest against the Putin regime. Her performance Punk Prayer in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, recognized by The Guardian as one of the most important artworks of the twenty-first century, ended for her and her colleagues with imprisonment for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
OK LINZ is bringing Nadya Tolokonnikova’s art to the museum, presenting her haunting works dealing with resistance, repression, and patriarchy for the first time to the European public.
Tolokonnikova’s oeuvre encompasses objects, installations, and performative works in which she processes her traumatic experiences during her life under Putin. Out of a state of repression, she has developed a visual language that rebels against aesthetical and political realities: anarchic and radical, yet also moving and witty.
“Being from Russia brings me pain. Most of my life, even after 2 years imprisonment following my art protest, I chose to stay in Russia, even though I had plenty of opportunities to immigrate, I tried to change Russia, make it a country that I would be proud of—peaceful, prosperous, friendly, democratic, loving, a country that values human life, art and happiness. First with Voina Group, later with Pussy Riot, I’ve been in performance art since 2007, for 17 long years—years filled with joy of protest and comradery, harassment, arrests. I watched my friends being murdered and revolutions suffocating under Putin’s boot.“ —Nadya Tolokonnikova
An oversized blade hangs like a sword of Damocles over visitors to the OK. “Shiv” is the title, American prison slang for an improvised knife. It stands for the precarious situation of artists and activists in Russia who, like Tolokonnikova herself, live in constant fear of persecution by the Russian judiciary. The exhibition will spotlight a selection of Situatioinist actions by Pussy Riot. At the center is Tolokonnikova’s 2022 performance Putin’s Ashes in which she joined forces with twelve women from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia who experienced repression and aggression at the hands of the Russian president to burn a portrait of Vladimir Putin in a desert, collecting the ashes in small bottles.
“This art is a weapon,” says Tolokonnikova of her works, analyzing and exploring in this way the role that her art and she herself can play in the context of international power structures.
Curators: Michaela Seiser / Julia Staudach
Source: e-flux mailing list, 22 April 2024
Akhmatova’s Orphans International conference Princeton University 3-5 May 2024
May 3
4:00 pm–5:00 pm. Location: Firestone Library
The Anatoly Naiman Papers. Visit to the Special Collections
Presentation by Thomas Keenan-Dormany, Slavic Librarian
5:00 pm–6:30 pm. Location: McCosh 50
Rock. Paper. Scissors (2023)
Documentary film screening
Q&A with the co-author Anna Narinskaya
7:00 pm
Reception at the Levings’ residence (Shuttle provided)
May 4
Location for all talks: 245 East Pyne
9:30 am
Breakfast at East Pyne
Session 1
10:00 am–12:00 pm
Veniamin Gushchin, Columbia University
Late Akhmatova and Philology: Intertextuality, Interpretive Communities, and Effective History
Evgeny Soshkin, Free University / Brīvā Universitāte (Latvia)
Akhmatova’s Dead Orphans: Toward the History of a Paradox
Gleb Morev, Independent researcher
Akhmatova and Brodsky
12:00 pm–1:00 pm
Lunch
1:00 pm–1:40 pm
Keynote speech
Roman Timenchik, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem / PrincetonUniversity
Akhmatova’s Orphans and the Literary Orbit of the 1960s
Session 2
2:00 pm–4:00 pm
Dmitry Bobyshev, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [via Zoom]
On the so-called ‘Akhmatova’s Orphans’
Emily Lygo, University of Exeter
Dmitry Bobyshev’s Poetry of the Turn of the Century
Marco Sabbatini, University of Pisa
“Out of the Magic Choir”: Viktor Krivulin and the Leningrad Underground Poetry on Akhmatova and her Orphans
4:00 pm–4:30 pm
Coffee break
4:30–5:50 pm
Sofia Guerra, Princeton University
Anatoly Naiman’s Translations from Giacomo Leopardi
Benjamin Musachio, Princeton University
Estrada as a Fault Line: Akhmatova and Company vs. Evtushenko
6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Location: East Pyne 010
Akhmatova’s Orphans. Disassembly (2024)
Documentary film screening
Q&A with the director Yuri Leving
7:30 pm
Dinner
May 5
Location for all talks: 245 East Pyne
9:30 am
Breakfast at East Pyne
Session 1
10:00 am–12:00 pm
Maya Kucherskaya, Jordan Center, New York
Solo in a ‘Magic Choir’: The Case of Joseph Brodsky
Michael Meylac, StrasbourgUniversity [via Zoom]
An Enchanting (!) Chorus (?): Different Poets of Dissimilar Fortunes
Alexander Dolinin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Brodsky’s Poem “Darling, I left the house today…” in the Context of Poetic Tradition
12–1 pm
Lunch
1:00 pm–1:40 pm
Leningrad Poetic Circles of the 1960s Through the Camera Viewfinder
Roundtable devoted to photography of Boris Shwartzman, Mikhail Lemkhin and Lev Poliakov
Session 2
2:00 pm–4:00 pm
Polina Barskova, Berkeley University [sic!]
Depiction of Links and Ruptures of Time in Evgeny Rein’s Poetry
Oleg Lekmanov, Princeton University
On Evgeny Rein’s Poem “In the Pavlovsky Park”
Anna Narinskaya, Independent researcher, Berlin
The Orphans and Jews
4:00 pm–4:30 pm
Coffee break
Session 3
4:30 pm–6:45 pm
Translating Poetry of “Akhmatova’s Orphans” into English
An Open Workshop: Kathleen Mitchell-Fox, Emma George and Ilya Kaminsky, Princeton University
Lev Oborin, Berkeley University
Anatoly Naiman’s “Vegetation”: Towards Poetology of Branching
Maria Rubins, University College London
Is Brodsky a Poet for Our Time?
6:45 pm
Dinner
Organizing Committee:
Yuri Leving, Chair
Ekaterina Pravilova, Ilya Vinitsky and Michael Wachtel
Sponsored by REEES, PIIRS, and Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University
“Adios, America! Now it’s only this way (tacos). End of story.”
This ultra-patriotic gem was just beamed to me by my fellow Petersburg psychogeographer V., who found it forlornly pasted up in the former “party zone” on Dumskaya and Lomonosov streets in downtown Petersburg, a quarter which was thoroughly purged last year by the local powers that be for no good reason.
A quick scan of the QR code leads to the now-equally shuttered website El-Chapo.rf. According to the restaurant review site Restoclub, El Chapo is “closed indefinitely.” But what it must have been back in its heyday, during the first year of Russia’s glorious war against fascist Ukraine and its Western puppet masters!
Dance bar with Mexican cuisine on Lomonosov Street. El Chapo serves Mexican cuisine: quesadillas with oyster mushrooms, burritos with shredded beef and shrimp in coconut. To try the spicy chimichanga tortillas with meat, you have to sign a special contract. Here they mix cocktails based on tequila, rum and house-made tinctures. At the bar you can have your photo taken with local star Frida the Pig. El Chapo hosts DJ sets and parties, and plays Mexican rap, funk, and sometimes disco.
The once lively (and, in the early 2000s, avowedly ethnically and internationally tolerant) Dumskaya bar district is indeed now a ghost town, as witnessed by another snapshot which V. sent to me. ||| TRR
After breathing a sigh of relief, this was the first question that popped in my head:
Who are the 112 U.S. representatives who thought it was a great idea to unilaterally disarm Ukraine, an ally that is fighting for its survival against a U.S. adversary?
The list was published almost immediately.
My reflection is not about these particular people in particular, but the fact that in Washington, and in capitals across Europe, a hefty number of our democratically elected representatives are brazenly siding with Russia, a totalitarian state which has the aim of not only weakening our democracies but bringing defeat to our entire system and the international rules based system. They are siding with the destruction of a sovereign state, Ukraine, and the occupation of its territory and citizens.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the company of Matteo Salvini (head of the League), Giuseppe Conte (former Italian PM), and so many other European politicians who may be motivated to side with Russia for a variety of reasons. It speaks to the penetration of Russian capture in some cases, or industrial and commercial interests influencing our political base. Since Russia has no ideology at the present time, I’m assuming they agree with the neo-realist worldview which would see large states eat up smaller ones by force simply because they can, throwing out the entire concept of state sovereignty.
If they have been captured and are working for a foreign adversary, there is no indication that any of them (at least in Italy) are under investigation. The only way we can rid our system of elected representatives working openly in the interests of an adversary to the detriment of our national interests is to vote them out. In Italy, that isn’t possible because even if a head of a party loses an election, he/she can still remain in their place and continue working in the interests of Russia: see Salvini and Conte.
This is why I am overjoyed that the House has belatedly passed the aid to Ukraine bill, but unspeakably frustrated with our inability to rid ourselves of people who are ready to throw our security, and Ukraine, under the bus.
Dmitri Medvedev meltdown: He’s hoping for a civil war in the U.S.
No one doubted that American lawmakers would approve “aid” to a gang of neo-Nazis. It was a vote by the joyous bastards of the state:
a) in favour of continuing the civil war of the divided people of our formerly united country;
b) for maximising the number of victims of this war.
We will win, of course, despite the 61 billion bloody dollars that will mostly go down the throats of their insatiable military-industrial complex. Strength and Truth are behind us.
But in view of this Russophobic decision, I cannot but wish with all sincerity that the United States would plunge into a new civil war as soon as possible. Which, I hope, will be cardinally different from war of the North and the South in XIX century and will be conducted with application of planes, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all kinds of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the ignominious collapse of the vile evil empire of the XXI century – the United States of America
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian to get the brand new iPhone 4, which are to go on sale on Thursday.
The Russian leader received the smarthphone [sic] as a present from Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his visit to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
At 9.3 mm the iPhone 4 is 25 percent thinner than its predecessors and the thinnest smartphone on the market. The gizmo also boasts a state of the art battery, with seven hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby.
According to the Russian mobile operator Beeline, the brand new device may appear on the Russian market no earlier than September.
During his visit to the Silicon Valley the Russian leader also visited the U.S. office of the Russian search engine Yandex.
The Yandex Labs center, based in Paolo Alto, California, is involved in scientific projects concerning mainly the optimization of online search technologies and other advanced research activities.
The president was accompanied by Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh and the chief technology officer of the Silicon Valley-based Yandex Labs, Arkady Borkovsky.
Dark Matter contained a re-recorded version of his Emmy award-winning song ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’, which was used as the theme song for the television series Monk. The album tells countless humorous tales. However, one of its most memorable cuts is the track ‘Putin’, which sees Newman sarcastically attack the Russian president.
The song pokes fun at Putin’s efforts to appear macho, with Newman singing, “And when he takes his shirt off/ He drives the ladies crazy/ When he takes his shirt off/ Makes me wanna be a lady.” A chorus of ‘Putin Girls’ chime in to sing, “Putin if you put it/ Will you put it next to me?”
To accompany the scathing lyrics, Newman uses chaotic instrumentation that sounds like the perfect theme for a cartoon villain. The musician explained that he wrote the song when “all those pictures were appearing of him with his shirt off, and I couldn’t understand why. What did he want?”
He continued: “I think it was just personal vanity of some kind, like he wanted to be Tom Cruise. It wasn’t enough to be the richest and most powerful. He wanted to be the most handsome and a superhero, throwing young people around and wrestling.”
Newman claims that he originally wrote a much harsher version but had to tone down the insults. In 2018, the song won the singer his seventh Grammy, this time for the relatively obscure category of Best Arrangement, Instrumentals and Vocals.
Source: Aimee Ferrier, “Remembering Randy Newman’s satirical warning about Vladimir Putin,” Far Out, 14 October 2022
“RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA HAS MADE ITS WAY into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” That acknowledgement from Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was echoed a few days later by Michael Turner, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. “It is absolutely true, we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” Among the falsehoods that GOP members of Congress are repeating is the notion that the Ukraine war is actually a battle between NATO and Russia. “Of course it is not,” Turner told CNN. “To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle.”
What makes it even more difficult to see reality plainly is the presence in the GOP of dunderheads like Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who gushed to an Alabama radio show that “Putin is on top of his game,” while scorning U.S. media accounts of Russian behavior. “The propaganda media machine over here, they sell anything they possibly can to go after Russia.” Tuberville may be the dimmest Putin booster on the Hill, but he is hardly lonely.
It has been two months since the Senate passed, in a 70–29 vote (including 22 Republican yes votes), a $95 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House, by contrast, has been paralyzed. Stories leak out that Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently influenced by high-level briefings he’s received since capturing the gavel, has changed his posture and wants to approve the aid. But Johnson leads, or is at least is the titular congressional chief, of a party that contains a passionate “Putinwing,” and so he dithers. This week, Volodomyr Zelensky has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved. Yet Johnson is heading not to Kyiv but to Mar-a-Lago.
Pause on that for a moment. The Republican party is now poised to let a brave, democratic ally be defeated by the power that the last GOP presidential nominee save one called “without question, our number one greatest geopolitical foe.” One member of Congress has sworn to introduce a resolution to vacate the speaker’s chair if Johnson puts aid for Ukraine on the floor. And the entertainment wing of conservatism—most egregiously Tucker Carlson—has gone into full truckling mode toward the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin.
It’s worth exploring how the Republican party, the party of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” became the party that now credulously traffics in blatant Russian disinformation while it flirts with betraying an important ally—along with all of its principles.
To some degree, people’s foreign policy inclinations are reflections of their domestic views. During the later years of the Cold War, large numbers of liberals and Democrats were more sympathetic to leftist regimes like Cuba (see Bernie Sanders) and Nicaragua (see Michael Harrington) than were conservatives and Republicans. I wrote a book about liberal softness toward left-wing authoritarianism and, though I haven’t yet read it, I gather that Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book does some similar spelunking about conservatives’ tolerance for right-wing dictators. Certainly some conservatives were more inclined than any liberal to go easy on South Africa because it was perceived to be a Cold War ally. On the other hand, Republican administrations did push allies to clean up their act on corruption, democratic elections, and other matters where they could (as for example in El Salvador).
Trump’s particular preferences and ego needs play a starring role in the GOP’s devolution. Cast your minds back to 2016 and the revelation that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. To rebut this damaging development, Fox News conjurers got busy inventing a tale about CrowdStrike, the company that documented the hack, alleging that the servers had been mysteriously moved to Ukraine so that the FBI could not examine them. In his infamous phone call with Zelensky, Trump fished out this debunked nugget and asked Ukraine’s president, who was then already fighting Russia in the Donbas, to do him a favor before he released the weapons Congress had approved:
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike. . . . I guess you have one of your wealthy people. . . . The server, they say, Ukraine has it. I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
This was bonkers. As the Mueller report made clear, the FBI did get all the data regarding the DNC hack. There was never a shred of evidence that the servers were moved to Ukraine, and in any case physical control of the servers was unnecessary. But what was Zelensky supposed to say? He promised to look into it just as a courtier to a mad king will say, “Yes, your majesty, we will look into why your slippers are turning into marshmallows when the sun goes down.”
As Fiona Hill told me, Tom Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security advisor, tried “a million times” to disabuse Trump of this Ukraine myth, as did CIA Director Gina Haspel, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, and many others, to no avail. It was, Hill notes, “a too-convenient fiction.”
Because Trump regarded any implication that he had received assistance from Russia as impugning his victory, he latched onto the idea (perhaps whispered by Putin himself in one of their many private conversations) that, yes, there had indeed been foreign interference in the election, but it was Ukraine boosting Hillary Clinton, not Russia aiding Trump. Now, it’s true that Ukraine’s friends reached out to Clinton, but why wouldn’t they? Trump’s campaign manager was Paul Manafort, a paid agent of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader.
Trump nurtured his misplaced grudge for years. Recall that when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s initial response was that it was a “genius” move.
I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word “independent” and “we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.
A non-sociopath would say it was raw aggression of the worst kind. A normal Republican of the pre-Trump mold would have been outraged at the attempted rape of a peaceful, democratic neighbor.
Most Republican officeholders are not sociopaths, but they take their marching orders from one and have adjusted their consciences accordingly. The talking point J.D. Vance and his ilk favor is that they cannot be concerned about Ukraine’s border when our southern border is also being invaded. Of course it’s absurd to compare immigrants looking for work or safety to tanks, bombs, and missiles, but that’s what passes for Republican reasoning these days. In any case, it was revealed to be hollow when Biden and the Democrats offered an extremely strict border bill to sweeten aid for Ukraine, and the GOP turned it down flat.
Russia’s fingerprints are all over the Republicans’ failed attempt to impeach (in all senses of the word) Joe Biden. Their star witness, Alexander Smirnov—who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden had been paid $5 million in bribes by Burisma—was indicted in February for making false statements. High-ranking Russians appear to be his sources.
Whether the subject is Ukraine, Biden’s so-called corruption, or NATO, Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history. If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin it’s hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the GOP than anyone other than Trump. GOP propagandists indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through: Ukraine is governed by Nazis; Russia is a religious, Christian nation; Russia is fighting “wokeness.”
Republicans are not so much isolationist as pro-authoritarian. They’ve made Hungary’s Viktor Orbán a pinup and they mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin must be pinching himself.
Putin recommends reviving ‘Come On, Girls!’ contest, following Uralvagonzavod’s example
Following his visit to the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, President Vladimir Putin instructed regional heads to explore the initiative.
This isn’t the winner of the Come On, Girls! contest in Nizhny Tagil, but a stock image that Rabota.ru figured was good enough.
The list of the head of state’s mandates includes holding corporate Come On, Girls! contests, as is already being done at Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, where Putin met with the event’s winner.
Top officials have until November to submit a report detailing how they have implemented the mandate.
Come On, Girls! was a televised Soviet competition that aired from 1970 to 1987. Members of particular professions competed both for the title of best specialist and in creative contests.
During the same visit to Uralvagonzavod, it was suggested to Putin that excursions by schoolchildren to industrial enterprises be made mandatory. For the time being, authorities are drafting labor education lessons for pupils modeled on the Soviet system.
The trailer to A Shaman’s Tale (Beata Bashkirova & Mikhail Bashkirov, 2024). Thanks to Pavel Sulyandziga for the heads-up
A Shaman’s Tale
A modern-day shaman sets out across Siberia to Moscow on a protest march and is gradually joined by others. How will the Russian authorities react?
Alexander Gabyshev, a shaman from Yakutia in the Russian Far East, has a revelation: God has chosen him to be a crusader, whose role is to exorcise a demon – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin – from the Kremlin. He’s willing to sacrifice his life to fulfil this task, which will lead to a new and bright future for Russia. Alexander’s walking pilgrimage captures the attention of many people as well as the police. He discusses his ambitious plan with passers-by in remote parts of Siberia and with lorry drivers travelling on the endless roads. His 8,000 km journey offers a mosaic of current pro- and anti-Putin opinions, and highlights the social instability in both the eastern and the western parts of Russia.
Five years ago, in the spring of 2019, Alexander Gabyshev, who calls himself a warrior shaman, set out on foot from Yakutsk to Moscow. When he arrived in the Russian capital, he wanted to perform a ritual to exorcise Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. Along the way he was joined by kindred spirits, and he held numerous protest rallies.
The shaman’s trek was cut short: Gabyshev was detained on the border of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region and charged with “calling for extremism.” In October 2021, a court ordered him to undergo compulsory treatment at a special psychiatric hospital.
The Memorial Human Rights Centre placed Gabyshev on its list of political prisoners, and Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Despite an international campaign in his defense, the shaman remains in a psychiatric hospital.
The documentary film A Shaman’s Tale details Alexander Gabyshev’s plight. It was made by documentary filmmaker Beata Bashkirova (née Bubenets) and her husband, playwright Mikhail Bashkirov, who live in France. Bashkirova joined Alexander Gabyshev on his trek, while Mikhail Bashkirov wrote a play about the shaman. Performances of the play at Moscow’s Theatre.doc were disrupted by Putinists. This was not Bashkirova’s first clash with ultra-patriots: in 2017, screenings of her documentary film Flight of the Bullet, about the soldiers of the Ukrainian Aidar Battalion, fighting in Donbas, were disrupted in the same way.
This conversation with Beata Bashkirova for the Radio Svoboda programme “Cultural Diary” was recorded after the film’s premiere at the One World International Film Festival in Prague.
Beata, how did you meet the shaman Gabyshev?
I first heard about the shaman in March 2019, when he had just set off on his journey. At that time he was not yet known throughout Russia, but he was beginning to gain popularity in Yakutia and in the Amur Region. He initially gained popularity thanks to truckers: they shot videos [of him] and posted them on their own network, then on YouTube. When I went to Yakutia in the spring to look for an idea for a film, my friends sent me videos of the shaman, recommending him as my future protagonist. But I decided to film him only in June. That was when Vlad Ketkovich, an independent documentary film producer, contacted me. He had made many political films and not only offered to be my producer, but also contributed his own money to my project. We dreamed of making a road movie about the shaman, of filming for two years on the roads of Russia. It was a beautiful idea, which unfortunately didn’t come to pass, because it ended up being film about the political crackdown. In recent years, nearly all films from Russia are about that.
Did you become friends with the shaman?
Yes, we developed a very good relationship. When we were filming in Yakutsk, we were probably among the people closest to him.
He didn’t mind you filming?
He welcomed us filming: he wanted more people and different people to talk about him, to spread his ideas. He was accompanied by a lot of bloggers, and journalists were heavily filming him. Although in the beginning he didn’t let us in so easily. The distrust was not on his part, but on the part of his entourage. They were wary of us, but later everything was fine.
Gabyshev and his squad marching toward Moscow
The shaman is certainly a charming man. But you can’t say that about some of the people in his entourage, judging by your film. Colourful personalities, I guess, always attract strange people, to put it mildly.
Yes, he had a very motley entourage, and he realised it himself. He gave everyone who joined him fabulous nicknames. He called his first two companions Raven and Angel. One was a good, happy man of the new world (the shaman divided the world into the new world and the old world), while other was a man of the old world, a dark character; he had been in prison before, he was this maverick. Raven had many conflicts with other members of the squad. The shaman told me often that yes, there are very different people walking with me, but this is Russia, you have to accept them as they are. Yes, they are different, everyone has their own peculiarities, not all of them are the nicest people in the world, but at the same time they are not the most terrible evil, which they all oppose.
In the film, Gabyshev tries to explain to a Japanese journalist how he became a shaman. Why did he decide to go to Moscow and exorcise the demon Putin?
The poster for the film “A Shaman’s Tale”
He studied at university and served in the army: he had an ordinary life. Then he got married, but his wife was quite ill and died, and that was a huge blow to him. For some time he went to live in the woods: he lived there for several years. Naturally, he knew who Putin was, but he was not interested in politics. As he says, at some point he heard the voice of God telling him that Putin was a demon and you should go and exorcise him from the Kremlin. It was a very clear thought, a realisation that this was his mission. It didn’t come to him in 2019, when he set out, but much earlier. He started preparing years before his trek, but he prepared in secret; he didn’t tell anyone that he had this mission. He practised martial arts — not to fight, but for the spiritual benefits.
And for quite a long time he travelled unhindered, and the authorities didn’t immediately realise what was happening?
Yes, in fact, not many people took it seriously at first: everyone thought it was a joke. But then people started joining him. A few months later, when we were walking with him, there were thirty people with him, and new people were joining every day. His squad grew quite quickly. Two theories as to why he was stopped. The first is that after a few months there would have been hundreds of people walking with him, and that would have been a political threat. But the second theory is that the authorities were afraid of his mystical power. The closer he got to Moscow, the worse things went for Putin, the more protests kicked off. The protests in Belarus began around the same time. Putin was allegedly having health problems — again this is a matter of rumor. So, perhaps, the shaman has now been exiled to the farthest point from Moscow, not even to Yakutsk, but even farther away. That is, as he got closer to Moscow, the Russian authorities lost their grip on things.
Yes, they say there is a lot of superstition in the Kremlin. And in your film, the lawyer Pryanishnikov also explains that the authorities were afraid of the shaman’s mystical power.
That the authorities are superstitious is, of course, a hypothesis — Putin doesn’t perform rituals for us, and there are a lot of myths around this. It is known that one of his closest associates, Shoigu, is a Tuvan and he practices shamanism. So it is quite possible. My Yakutian acquaintances often said that an acquaintance of their acquaintance performed rituals for Putin himself. But, of course, this is all very secret and impossible to prove. I would not claim that Putin performs shamanistic rituals.
Did you have the feeling that Gabyshev actually has supernatural powers?
The first time was in 2020. When the year 2020 came, the shaman kept saying: guys, new times have come, everything will be different now, this year the worldview of all people on the planet will change. And in 2020 there was a pandemic, and mankind did indeed transit into another reality. His words proved prophetic.
Filmmaker Beata Bashkirova
People who met Rasputin spoke of his incredible magnetism. They say the same thing about many prophets and magicians. Did you feel something similar when you conversed with Gabyshev?
He is very kind and very open, and there were people in his entourage who believed in his mystical power. I am a rather skeptical person in this sense, but still I noticed a good energy emanating from him.
Did people in his entourage regard him as a prophet, as a saint?
Yes, of course, there were people in his entourage who believed primarily in his mystical power. The Moscow crowd, the opposition-minded liberal intelligentsia, basically sympathised with him, but regarded him ironically. If we’re not talking about Moscow, but about the rest of Russia, I had impression that people believed in his mystical power.
When you presented the film in Prague, you compared Gabyshev with Navalny. This is a quite unusual comparison: in Moscow, few people would agree that these people are cut from the same cloth. Why do you think it is possible to put their names in the same sentence?
At the time, it had been forty days since Navalny’s death. Navalny in his last years seemed like a loner who was fighting the system. Our protagonist is also a loner who fights the system. In this way, I think, they are similar.
Were you present at the moment when his journey to Moscow was finally thwarted?
That was 19 September, and I was not with him on that day. Eyewitnesses say it happened at night, and very quickly. For the first few days nobody knew where he was; there were various rumours. Then it transpired that he was in Yakutsk. We met almost immediately, and he was in pretty good spirits despite what had happened.
Why did they decide to permanently isolate him?
He was going to set out again in the spring. Members of his squad had come to see him. I don’t know whether that’s why they decided to shut him down permanently.
Maybe it was the New York Times article, the attention from the West?
Maybe, but that was in September. The first time he was detained, in the spring of 2020, he was taken away from his home, but then he was released. They finally decided to close him down in early 2021.
The Shaman in the Theatre.doc production of A Shaman’s Tale
In the film, you show excerpts from a performance about the shaman at Theatre.doc. Did your husband direct this production based on his own play?
Yes, my husband wrote the play, and he and I staged it together. It was an experimental work. We decided to make a puppet show, a fairy tale, because the shaman conceived his own story as a fairy tale: he gave fairy tale names to all the folks who accompanied him, and he gave Putin a fairy tale name. That was the reason for our fairy-tale production, which did not last long, because on opening day pro-Kremlin provocateurs came and tried to disrupt it. Every time [the play was performed], they put obstacles in the way: they would come in a big group, stage a performance in front of the theatre, call the police, and start shouting from the auditorium during the performance. The owner of the premises where Theatre.doc was located became afraid that he would face consequences nd broke his lease with the theatre. It became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to perform the play.
Beata, when did you leave Russia?
We left in late March 2022.
And it was only in France that you decided to edit the film?
The film had been in post-production while we were still in Russia. The shaman predicted that he had to reach Putin in 2021, because otherwise there would be a catastrophe not only for Russia but for the whole world. Principal filming wrapped in early 2020, but we realised we had to wait. We were editing the film and discussing it with the producers. The producers suggested releasing the film in 2020, when it became clear that the shaman would not be allowed to go [to Moscow], but we understood that the story was not finished: the drama had already been defined by the shaman himself, and we would have to wait until 2022. The events that followed affected how I saw the story; I started to look at it differently, if we’re talking about the mystical aspects. The shaman had been right: he was talking about war. He was saying that there would be a physical war, not a spiritual war, if he wasn’t allowed to reach Moscow. It’s amazing that somehow he knew all the dates.
Did he have a premonition there would be a war in 2022?
He spoke about the fact that mankind, Russia had two ways to evolve. The first way was the good way, the happy way. If he were allowed to reach the Kremlin, Putin would simply resign peacefully, the regime in Russia would change, and then people would move to a new level. If they didn’t let him [reach the Kremlin], a dark path would ensue, the path of warriors, and that meant war. He didn’t say that there would be a war between Russia and Ukraine. He said that there would be a war and only by military means would it be possible to overthrow Putin.
He’s been transferred from one hospital to another several times. What is happening to him now?
He is in a psycho-neurological clinic in the Maritime Territory (Primorsky Krai). Since this system has several levels, the lawyer is trying to ensure he is transferred to Yakutsk, where he can be released through the court. A legal fight is now underway that is aimed at achieving his release step by step.
At first they held him in a high-security facility and tried to “treat” him with haloperidol?
At the very beginning, in Yakutsk, he was given harsh drugs that did have a negative effect on him. Things in the Maritime Territory are now easier: they give him medication, but it’s not so heavy.
You wrote that he knew about the film’s premiere in Prague and conveyed his greetings to the audience. Are you able to correspond with him?
Yes, we communicate through intermediaries; the lawyer Pryanishnikov has the most access to him. His friends talk to him on the telephone from time to time: he is able to call once a week.
What’s his condition? Haloperidol and other serious drugs can be very harmful to a person’s health.
Fortunately, they are not injecting him with these drugs now. He always tries to be in a cheerful mood. You can write him a letter or send him a card. He is very much encouraged by the thought that people remember him. He is, of course, happy that the film has come out because it is a continuation of the message he preached. His emotional state is also very much affected by whether his mission can be completed.
For several years he had many supporters who were will to march with him to Moscow. Did this circle disperse or has the core group remained intact?
We can say that the core has been preserved. For example, Viktor Yegorov (aka Father Frost), who makes videos (you can watch them on YouTube), is constantly in touch with him. Other Yakutian friends of his also continue to support him. There were those who walked with him, and those he met on the road, but there was also the rest of Russia, which did not walk with him, but followed him via YouTube. People still even ask me about him, and so I feel like there are a lot of people who remember him and support him.
“Father Frost from the Shaman’s Squad Appeals to Vladimir Putin,” 25 September 2019 (in Russian; no subtitles)
Did you ever suspect that he might be mentally unwell?
No, never. He’s a fairly well-educated man, he has a broad outlook, and he is quite self-deprecating. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I haven’t detected any mental abnormalities in him. I much more often encounter people on the streets who are crazier looking than he is.
It is quite difficult to make films on Russian topics nowadays: Russian directors are viewed with suspicion in Europe because they are seen as representatives of an aggressor state. Was it complicated for you to make this film?
Yes, it was indeed difficult to make the film because of the tendency towards boycotting. I think that this boycott helps Russian propaganda first of all, because the voices of independent, opposition filmmakers are not heard, but the voices of the propagandists, who cannot be influenced by this boycott, are heard. Consequently, propaganda wins out in the information sphere. The boycott of Russian culture works in favour of Russian propaganda, it seems to me.
Will Russian viewers be able to see your film?
We’re in the festivals stage of screening now. The film will later be shown on Current Time, but it’s hard to say when yet. Current Time broadcasts to a Russophone audience, and so one will be able to watch the film on the internet in Russia.
The St. Petersburg Natural Resources Management Committee has stopped signing up volunteers willing to carry gray toads across the road at the Sestroretsk Wetlands Wildlife Preserve. The committee was able to recruit the number of volunteers it needed in a single day.
The committee itself reported the end of the volunteer enrollment, thanking all those who had responded to the call to help the amphibians.
“Registration has been temporarily suspended, as enough volunteers have been recruited for the coming weeks,” the committee stated in its message.
Delovoi Peterburg learned that officials received an unprecedented number of calls and appeals during the day. Six hundred volunteers signed up to save the gray toads.
The largest population of gray toads in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region lives in the Sestroretsk Wetlands. Annually in early spring, they migrate en masse to the eastern shore of the Sestroretsk Reservoir to lay their eggs before returning to the forest [sic]. They cross the highway during their migration and can be hit by passing cars.
The Sestroretsk Wetlands Wildlife Reserve announced on April 8 that it was recruiting volunteers to ferry the amphibians over the road. Volunteers are allowed to carry amphibians across the highway after special training. Passersby who have not been trained are asked not to touch the toads, as improper actions can traumatize the amphibians and even cause their death.
Specialists consider toads to be particularly useful amphibians. According to scientists, toads consume about three times more pests than do frogs.
Russian volunteer Alexander Demidenko, who helped Ukrainian refugees [cross the border with Russia], has died in a pretrial detention center in the Belgorod Region, report Vot Tak and iStories, citing sources. It is claimed that Demidenko died on April 5, but news of his death was made public only today, after his lawyer had informed the deceased man’s wife and son.
The cause of death has not been reported, and there have been no official comments from the authorities yet.
Alexander Demidenko had been in custody since mid-October [2023] on charges of illegal arms trafficking. According to iStories, the authorities were planning to transfer Demidenko to St. Petersburg, where he was to have been charged with more serious crimes.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the 61-year-old Demidenko had attended anti-war pickets and helped Ukrainian refugees return to their homeland, driving them to the border and hosting them at his home. As many as 900 people who needed a place to sleep stayed in his home, as the border checkpoint was often closed due to shelling, Mediazona writes.
Demidenko disappeared at the Kolotilovka border checkpoint in the Belgorod Region on 17 October [2023]. According to volunteers, he had driven an elderly woman to the checkpoint, but in the parking lot he was stopped by two members of the the territorial defense forces. Subsequently, communication with Demidenko was lost.
Three days later, police officers brought Demidenko home and conducted a search, during which they allegedly found a grenade and detonator fuses from the 1940s. There were numerous bruises on Demidenko’s body.
On 20 October, Alexander Demidenko was jailed for ten days on administrative charges of drinking alcoholic beverages. He was released on 31 October, but the next day he was detained again and jailed for thirty days. During the second administrative arrest, he was arraigned on charges of illegal weapons trafficking and remanded in custody in the pretrial detention center.
In November, it was reported that Demidenko had also been charged with high treason. His lawyer, however, denied these reports. The volunteer’s stay at the pretrial detention center was extended several times on the original weapons charges.
In Russia where 14 million Muslims reside as of 2017, Eid al-Fitr is often known as Uraza Bayram (Russian: Ураза-байрам) and is a public holiday in the republics of Adygea, Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Tatarstan and Chechnya. Most festive dishes consist of mutton, but salads and various soups are also popular. As the Muslim population is diverse, traditional festive dishes differ between regions – for example in Tatarstan pancakes are popularly baked.
Russian Muslims go to festive worships at mosques in the morning of Eid al-Fitr, after which they often visit older relatives as a sign of respect. In the North Caucasian republics, children popularly go past various houses with a bag to get it filled with candy, specially stored by locals for the celebration. In Dagestan, eggs with bright stickers is a popular traditional dish served there during Eid al-Fitr. People generally dress more during this day – women choose bright dresses with beads while older people would wear papakhas. In many places in the country master classes are also hosted where families take part in activities such as embroidery and clay making.
The festival of Eid Al-Fitr, or “Uraza Bayram,” marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan in Islam. This year 180,000 worshippers marked the event in Moscow, a figure below half of last year’s number.
First broadcast in 1981, this Hidden Treasure play by Dennis Potter stars Denholm Elliott as Harris and Ian Ogilvy as James. It has not been heard for over 40 years.
In a dingy flat in Moscow, he sits alone — a traitor to his family, his friends, his colleagues. Then the international press descend upon him and he gives his first interview — an interview which brings forth terrible, haunting memories.
Adapted for radio and directed by Derek Hoddinott A BBC World Service Drama production
With thanks to Keith Wickham, Dr Steve Arnold, Ruby Churchill, Louisa Britton, Alison Hindell, Matthew Dodd, Claire Coss, Carl Davies, Helen Toland, Richard Culver, Andrew Jupp, James Peak, BBC Archives and the Radio Circle.
On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”
Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”
Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.
Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”
Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.
Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.
Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”
Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.
Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”
The Russian Reader 