artovitch

If you have iTunes you can take this virtual tour of the new exhibit, From Russia at London's Royal Academy.


More here

And also: I'd like to be a merchant prince, too please.

if marie antoinette were filmed in ekaterinburg, and funded by soviets.

high school graduation photos via english russia:

i take it back!

I WOULD vote for Putin!










Since it would mean losing my job, if I didn't.

kleptocracy!

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck I'm a COMMUNIST!

Russia's commies are poised to come in second place in the next election, after Putin's journalist-killing United Russia Party.

With the Russian Liberal party barely in existence anymore, the country has basically become a two-party state. And if I were a Russian citizen, there is NO WAY I'd vote for Putin, who's suspected to attempt to try to hold onto power next spring, despite the fact that his legal term as president would be exceeded if he were to do so.

Putin has restructured the electoral system in Russia, doing away with constituencies with plurality voting systems, and raising the required percentage for getting into the State Duma from 5% to 7%, making it more difficult for independents to be elected. The only party presenting any real opposition are the Communists, with about 1/6th of Russian voters behind them.

When asked if Russia was still a democracy, one official shrugged and said "Not really."

I'm going to read Bend Sinister again, in solidarity.

dogs!

Putin visits the Bushies in Kennebunkport. I am crossing fingers that Cheney flies in for a nice hunting trip!

star wars

At least Reagan had Alzheimer's as an excuse:

I read ink

I've been reading Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle since I found it last week in a used book store in London. Shockingly, its fucking depressing. Like Sylvia-Plath-writing-about-terminally-ill-children-in-the-Sudan-depressing. Its a 400+ page novel that describes the minutiae of three days worth of living in a part of the Russian gulag designated for professionals and academics. While they aren't made to do hard labour like the other prisoners, they're still captives of Stalin's Soviet government. The title references Dante's first circle of Hell and the limbo-like state these guys live in. I'm at the part where its looking as though they are about to sacrifice themselves to the hard labour camps in Siberia in order to make some sort of moral point. I'm missing Nabokov, he never moralizes.



Anyway, it was all getting to be a bit heavy and doing absolutely nothing for my mood, so I switched. I'm now re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I find it hilarious. It makes me laugh out loud, which books rarely do. But I've read it already, and everything I bought last weekend is in the same depressing vein as The First Circle, with the exception of the Anais Nin, but I don't think I can deal with her right now... so basically this was a long-winded plea for summer reading recommendations/book loans. I can deal with "dark" or even "bleak", just not "hopeless" or also anything with the word "Shopaholic" in the title. Go.

meow-ovitch

omg my loves for russians just surpassed my hates for cats.

I'm so alone.

I locked up my bike on Queen St. today and was gone for about 4 hrs before I got back to find that I had left the book I had just bought in my bike basket. It was Nabokov's Glory. Does no one else like Russian Lit? This is Toronto, not Pleasantville. Why the fuck didn't anyone steal it?

na zdorovia, boris

Russia's first democratically elected, post-soviet leader died today. Famous for forging ties with the West and infamous for sinking his newly capitalist country into economic disaster, Yeltsin was a true Russian. By which I mean that he was drunk. In public. Frequently.

Sportsovitch: Yeltsy playing tennis with a cosmonaut.


Danceovitch: Presh!! Yeltsy rocking out at a concert. I couldn't love Russians more.


Diplomatovitch: The drunk and the cheat. And yet still, somehow infinitely preferable to Putin and Bush.

cold war nostalgia

In 1978 Georgi Markov was killed in London after being stabbed with a poison dart that was fired from an umbrella. A Bulgarian dissident, Markov was suspected to have been killed by a team made up of Russian KGB officers and Bulgarian secret police. The dart was filled with the poison Ricin, and Markov was dead in four days.

In 2001 the US attempted to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar. A major 100-man commando raid in tandem with an air strike killed his son and two brothers while hitting a Red Cross station and killing several civilians. Mullah Omar was unharmed.


In early November of last year, a former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned in London by a radioactive material called polonium 210. It appears that he ingested it, perhaps at a sushi bar. It caused his body to react as though he had been receiving intense chemotherapy treatments, as his hair fell out and he lost weight rapidly. Some scientists liken the poisoning to the ingestion of a tiny nuclear bomb. While many in London, who may have come in contact with Mr. Litvinenko are undergoing testing for exposure, Litvinenko is thus far, the only person to have fallen ill.

The US has a policy against assassinating foreign leaders, instead they invade a country and kill hundreds of thousands of civilians? Personally, I would prefer to read headlines like "Saddam killed by exploding wrist-watch" or "Taliban leader falls victim to ebola-laced goat meat" rather than the "Deadliest day in Iraq since (insert random milestone here)" line the NY Times seems to run daily.

It isn't that I condone what the Russians did, I just like their style. They didn't bomb the London subway system, they just cheffed up some nuclear sushi and took out their target.

I miss the Cold War.