#what little i have heard of soviet russia- we all know what happened to poor gleb

[csykora]

After ‘84, Igor felt the pieces were beginning to fall off the Red Machine. 

He hated being called a robot as much as he hated being called a soldier. He didn’t know what the world wanted the Green Unit to do on the ice or off it, how they had to behave, before someone would believe they had feelings. On the worst days they were too tired and numb to feel anything else.  

When he’d met Bobby Clarke, who he thought looked like a hockey angel with a blond halo and no teeth, Bobby commented about the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Igor didn’t know how to say that he’d definitely never been allowed to go to Afghanistan, and under the uniform he didn’t deserve to be a soldier, for good or bad. The national team was a tool of the Soviet government: at the same time it was a comfort for ordinary people in cold little apartments in mining towns where the players grew up and also a prop in the illusions that kept everything how it was. 

The illusion went skin deep: every time they left Russia, Igor was issued a snappy winter coat and brand-name Western clothes, so no one would think the Soviets looked poor.

[A black and white photo of the Green Unit posing, smiling except for Igor, in matching windbreakers with saddle shoulders and bold stripes. This was a hot look, about 10 years before the Soviet Union Costuming Department thought it was a hot look]

Underneath the coat or the beautiful red sweater, everything was a mess. At one point, at a tournament in Canada, a Canadian player would hit Igor from behind. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except the Soviet management hadn’t provided enough hockey pads. Igor was wearing a partial set he’d borrowed from a high school team that played in the host arena earlier that day. (Across Europe and Canada I bet there are grown men, still hockey fans now, who have no idea they once owned game-worn gear from the world’s top scorers. To Igor’s fans those pieces might be worth as much as he ever earned in his CSKA career.) He would play the rest of that tournament with broken ribs.

The only outsider he’d met who seemed to understand, however briefly, was their friend Vanya. Asked what it was like playing against those Russian robots, Wayne said, 

“Robots don’t hurt when they lose.”

By June 1985, Slava was recovering from that knee injury that had sidelined him for half the last season. He and his little brother Tolya, now a CSKA rookie, drove back for the start of training. Their car was hit, and Tolya was killed. Slava thought about leaving that season, but their parents told him to keep going, and just try to live for two people.

In November, the players at Arkhangel heard a rumor: someone had written an article, in a Soviet paper, that criticized the hockey program. Anything that wasn’t awe was criticism. Someone got their hands on a copy, and Igor, Vova, Sergei, and Slava huddled around their usual table that evening, hiding each other as they read it in turns. Igor reread it twice. He’d read Canadian and American papers that dragged the Soviet system, but never something like this, that got it--almost--right. It didn’t have all the details to understand the illusion--how they trained, how Tikhonov acted behind Arkhangel’s walls--but it guessed some.

Glasnost was beginning, a long rustling cracking thaw opening new streams of information and communication like Igor had dreamed. The Canucks drafted him that year, and then Vova. The Devils had dibsed Slava and Lyosha a few years before, and the Flames wanted Sergei. There was a place for them, waiting, if they could ever get to the NHL. But there wouldn’t be any thaw in Arkhangel as long as Tikhonov ruled it.

The ’85 World Championships were held in Prague, and ’86 in Moscow. Igor played both, and nothing else. For two years, no one saw him outside the Soviet Union. 

In December of ‘85, CSKA was supposed to tour North America. Igor was dressed and ready. Then he heard his passport, which he had used a hundred times before, had run into problems. Coach told him not to worry, but to stay behind in Russia and--how convenient--keep training for the championships in Moscow. Igor woke up at three in the morning to watch the games he was supposed to be playing. He learned that Canadian journalists were asking about him: apparently, he had tonsillitis. Igor wasn’t entirely sure where his tonsils were. 

Two months later CSKA played in Sweden. Strange, how his tonsils still weren’t better, and his passport was still missing. Two nights before they were set to leave Tikhonov called him into the office, in front of the team, and told him so. But the next evening Tretiak, now a more senior officer, came out to visit the barracks. He hugged Igor and promised him he would do what he could to get the passport by the time they were supposed to leave the next morning. Igor went to bed hoping. At 4:30 AM the coaches woke him just to tell him the passport wasn’t there yet, so the team really would be leaving without him. 

The third time it happened, he was told to go back to the passport office to file everything all over again--maybe he had fucked up his passport. He didn’t bother. Taking away travel had been one thing. But doing it in front of the team, in front of the Green Unit, so that he knew that they knew that he had let them down somehow, broke his heart. 

He was still allowed to play inside the Soviet Union. As long as he was with CSKA, the other Greens treated him the same as always. If they had known how bad things were going to get, Igor thought they would have done more sooner, but he knew that they didn’t understand what was happening. In between games, he spent his days in office buildings, being grilled about suspicious activities like listening to rock music, calling his mom too often, or kissing Canadians. 

“I was at fault all around. That I gladly gave interviews to journalists. That I liked the NHL...that I like rock music. That the living standard there impressed me. All this was raked up into a pile. I was the enemy. Because, you see, if I liked the American way of life, then in general I was an American by heart. All of this they said about me.

By nature, I am clearly a Russian. I do not like everything in America. It cannot be that somewhere is as in a fairytale, and somewhere else is total darkness.

Particularly, it seemed, my [friendliness] offended the preservers of government secrets….I also knew a little English. Therefore I had the possibility to rub elbows with whomever I might come in contact: hockey players, journalists and even immigrants. And, they assumed, to each of them I could give important information--everyone getting an equal share, no doubt, in order to be fair.”

He couldn’t talk to his friends from other countries, or his Russian friends either when they traveled without him. On the street outside between the rink and the party offices, none of his former fans would speak to him, except to ask or tell him their opinion if he really was a traitor.

He was wanted everywhere but home. Obviously, no other country believed that a 25 year-old athlete who had been the best in the world six months before had been brought down by tonsillitis multiple times in a row. There’s only so many tonsils a person can have. Obviously, every other country thought Igor must want to defect, the one thing he did not want and couldn’t convince anyone of. So each host on the international hockey circuit was bouncing on their toes, first Canada, then Sweden and so on, thinking maybe the Soviet Union would slip up and let him come to their tournament, he'd defect, and then they’d get to keep him. Obviously, the Soviets noticed that, and squeezed tighter.

Each time the team left on tour, he was told to spend his time alone training harder and hope. If he was good enough, maybe he’d make the next tournament. His body, always a battle-ground with Coach Tikhonov, became a hostage situation. The more Tikhonov told him to train, the less he ate. Eventually he was eating mostly fruit, and restricting his water intake. 

He stopped pretending to defer to anyone.  He used to be the sober one between his hot-head wingers, and now he egged every fight on. Sometimes he faked an American accent, calling Coach “Tikhonoff” the way American broadcasters had at the '81 Olympics.

One day at the rink he bumped into figure skater Lena Batanova, who “knew nothing about hockey and could not have cared less.” She had been through worse training than he had growing up, only to win two World Championships, and then be slighted from a third. They understood each other without having to say anything.

[Igor washing dishes in their Moscow apartment, turning to glance at Lena pressing up him.]

That summer he stayed up late talking with his friends, and realized he wanted to marry Lena. He asked her the next morning, and she said yes. Behind Igor’s back, Slava, Vova, Sergei, and Lyosha went to Coach Tikhonov’s office, and told him that they would play every other day of the year if they had to, but they would be going to Igor’s wedding. Coach wouldn’t allow the three days for a traditional Russian wedding, but he had to give Igor one.

Waking up the morning after the wedding, Igor checked the mail and found a summons to appear before the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His friends, who I imagine lying hungover on his and Lena’s new couch and floor, rushed for their unused books to help him study up on Communist doctrine, in case he got quizzed. This is presumably when Lena woke up, realized she’d married a whole line of hockey players for their one communal brain cell, and rolled back over. Igor reported the next morning, probably with flashcards Vova had made for him in his pocket.

The Party officials congratulated him on getting married and gave him the wedding gift they were sure no one else would have gotten: his passport. We have to guess the logic here, if there was one. It’s possible the Party thought he wouldn’t risk his wife, or that two years had just been enough to realize the team wasn’t working without him. 

But he was allowed to go to Canada for the Calgary Cup before the end of ‘86, and everyone had questions about his two years of tonsillitis. Igor, for the first time in his life, didn’t talk. But that just left the hockey world to gossip. Two months later it was announced he’d be in Quebec City for another tournament, and right before they arrived a Quebec newspaper printed a version of the night out with Gretzky--with quotes, they claimed, from Wayne. This time the tournament organizers called someone from every team up for a pregame presser. I imagine Igor shrugging at his KGB handlers and sliding away to the stage: nothing could stop him talking now.

Except the Canadian journalists. They wanted to interview Team Canada first. Igor stewed, and then looked up to see an oncoming Wayne. Someone had asked him about the alleged quotes in the article, which Igor had snagged a copy of to read the second they let him loose in Canada. Apparently Wayne hadn’t. 

“‘Believe me, Igor,’” Igor remembers Wayne blurting out. “‘I didn’t say what was printed in the paper. I’ll tell them it didn’t happen! But what is your position now?’”

“‘Do not worry,” Igor promised him. “‘Now, everything is okay.’”

“Oh, awesome,” (I’m assuming again) Wayne said. “So do you want to come over later and hang out in my mom’s basement?!”

“If the KGB pulls a gun, then call me.” --Wayne Gretzky

Weirdly, I’ve never seen this inspirational quote cross-stitched on someone’s wall. 

The next Canada Cup was held in August ‘87 in Hamilton, Ontario, which is like, basically next door to Wayne’s parents’ house. So the afternoon before the first game, Wayne sent his dad Walter to the hotel where the Soviet team was staying. Walter asked in Ukrainian if he could chat with Igor, who had to come down to the hotel lobby to meet him, since visitors were absolutely not allowed to wander up to players’ rooms. Walter invited his son’s friend over for dinner. Igor cut eyes at the KGB agent in the corner, and said he had to go upstairs and ask Coach. Tikhonov said no before Igor started talking.

Igor came back downstairs and apologized to Walter, who thought hard for a minute. He told Igor to ask what if the whole Green Unit went to Wayne’s house for team bonding? Coach Tikhonov considered, and said no, and Igor went back to Walter. 

Walter hitched up his suspenders, and announced to the KGB that he would talk go to Coach Tikhonov now.

He told Tikhonov he would be honored if Coach came to dinner at his house that evening, and if Coach felt like it, he might bring the boys over too. Tikhonov said he’d love to. 

Tikhonov, Igor, Vova, Sergei, Slava, Lyosha, and a KGB operative spent a delightful half hour packed in a car together driving to the Gretzkys' house, where Walter and Phyllis were throwing a cookout. Walter and some of his local buddies had barbecue and corn on the cob on the grill, and Phyllis had quizzed her son about his Moscow trip before throwing up her hands in despair and making a big batch of her mother’s Polish dumplings and sausage.

Nothing makes me happier than the image of Wayne Gretzky, beaming from ear to ear, handing famously fussy little Igor Larionov a piece of barbecued corn on the cob. Igor had to explain that yes, they had corn in Russia, but they ate it on a plate and not like squirrels. Walter offered him a beer, and Igor looked to Coach Tikhonov before saying no. Tikhonov allowed the players to have a soda.

Wayne started asking him how everything had been since the last time they hung out, and didn’t get why his friend wouldn’t talk to him at first. Igor might answer one question, and then act like he didn’t understand. Sergei and Vova really didn’t speak English, and kept elbowing Igor to explain what was going on and why Wayne was smiling at them like that, but Igor was still pretending he only spoke Russian and hesitated to translate for them. Finally Wayne realized Igor was clamming up every time Tikhonov got within earshot.

Wayne went to Walter to change the game plan. Walter would use his Ukrainian to ask Coach Tikhonov about his many amazing accomplishments, while Wayne told the whole party he wanted to show the other boys his medals, which were all down in the basement. Unfortunately the Gretzky family’s basement was very small, and housed Wayne’s many, many medals, so only two people could possibly fit down there at a time: one Gretzky, and one Russian. Tikhonov thought about it, decided he didn’t care about someone else’s medals, and gave the okay.

 Just in case, Wayne deputized his dad’s buddy Charlie, who did not speak Russian or anything like it but was somebody’s dad from suburban Ontario, to chat up the KGB agent.

So Wayne began to escort the Green Unit, one by one, down to his family’s basement. At the bottom of the stairs, he handed them a beer. The two of them chugged their beers together, trying not to take suspiciously long or laugh too loud, and then ran back up to change out for the next boy.

Nothing happened that night. It didn’t change anything, except that Tikhonov never found out. The Greens had been able to get one over on him, because they didn’t have to do it alone.

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#green unit #igor larionov #wayne gretzky #slava fetisov #sergei makarov #vladimir krutov

[theculturedmarxist]

For those that might not know, Grover Norquist is Washington’s anti-tax poster boy since the Reagan administration. Calling him an anti-tax lobbyist is missing the vast majority of other shit he’s responsible for or has had a hand in. He’s basically been integral in creating the immensely shitty situation in regards to a failed government and overpowered business lobby that we’re in today.

Anyway, I wanted to share the absolutely delusional bullshit these people say to each other, because it’s absolutely illuminating.

Grover Norquist On Taxes, Socialism And The Demonization Of The Rich

Grover Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer organization that opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle and has been leading campaigns for tax reductions since 1986. ATR was founded at the request of President Reagan and asks all candidates for office in the United States to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a written commitment to vote against any tax hikes while they are in office. Rainer Zitelmann spoke with him:

Rainer Zitelmann: In Europe, governments are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis and planning massive tax increases. In particular, there have been increasing calls for a wealth tax on the richest within society to pay for coronavirus measures and guard against future crises. Supporters of free market economics, on the other hand, are calling for tax cuts to get the economy back on track once the current crisis has abated. What do you think will happen in the United States? If Trump is re-elected, will he cut taxes again? And what will happen if Biden wins?

Grover Norquist: Once we’re looking back on coronavirus in our rearview mirror rather than having it flying at the windshield—then what? Little will happen before the November 2020 American presidential election. Democrats will demand higher taxes and massive spending, Republicans will propose tax cuts. But the Democrat-controlled house will block any tax reductions and the Republican-dominated senate and the Trump veto will block any tax increases or spending explosion. Should Trump win re-election, Republicans will move to enact their stated goal of reducing the corporate income tax to 15% from today’s 21%. They will push to index capital gains for inflation—so capital gain taxes would only be due on real gains, not inflationary gains. Should Biden win the presidency, and the Democrats capture the senate, Biden has promised $3.4 trillion of new taxes. That is three times what Hillary Clinton threatened/promised in 2016—and she lost for being too left wing. Spending will explode. Income tax will be increased, an energy tax will be imposed and eventually a Value Added Tax will be levied. Of course, this fork in the road would be exactly the same if there was no coronavirus. Republicans are the party of tax reduction and (modest) spending restraint. Democrats remain the party of endless tax hikes and endless spending sprees.

Zitelmann: In the United States, socialism used to be a dirty word—and it still is for many older Americans. In contrast, large numbers of younger Americans are committed to “socialism.” So why has anticapitalism become so popular in the United States, especially among younger people?

Norquist: The sad answer is that younger Americans do not know what socialism means. Millennials do not remember the Soviet Union. Or Stalin’s Gulags or the Warsaw Pact. They only know Russia. They could not even tell you what the initials U.S.S.R. stood for, or that Nazi is the abbreviation of National Socialist. Somehow, Bernie Sanders, who is well versed in Soviet history and Cuba’s tradeoff of “literacy” against political prisoners, has explained to younger Americans that “socialism” means Sweden and Denmark.

‘Sanders Had Already Won The Policy Debate’

Zitelmann: Sanders is now out of the race. However, you believe that his ideas have nevertheless prevailed. Why is that?

Norquist: You might think that Bernie Sanders’ withdrawal from the 2020 campaign and the likely victory of Vice President Joe Biden represents a move to the center by the Democrats. Sadly, no. I would argue that Bernie Sanders left the race not because he failed to get enough delegates to win but because he had already won the policy debate. Biden’s threatened tax hikes total $3.4 trillion dollars over a decade. That is three times more than Hillary Clinton threatened. Biden promises to ban fracking, plastic bags (he said plastic, let’s generously assume he meant only plastic bags), expand Medicare with a “public option,” meaning a door through which all Americans could be pushed into a one-size-fits-all, government-controlled health care system, and an energy/carbon tax. What is the difference between Biden and Bernie? They have the same Rolodexes. The same likely White House staffers. The same rhetoric.

Why The Rich Are Being Demonized

Zitelmann: In the Democratic primaries, all of the candidates seemed to be competing to outdo each in terms of their “rich-bashing” rhetoric. Even Michael Bloomberg, himself one of the richest men in the world, was forced to demand higher taxes on the rich before he was forced to withdraw from the race. Where does this hatred of the rich come from?

Norquist: The Democrats need trillions of dollars to buy votes to win the 2020 election. To do that they will require a great deal more money than the $3.8 trillion raised in taxes under the 2019 budget. And they can’t afford to admit that regular voters are the likely target of their new and additional taxes—an energy tax, a Value Added Tax and higher payroll taxes. So Democrat candidates, continuing the strategies adopted by Clinton and Obama, started by demonizing the rich and then promising to tax them—not you, the typical voter. Now, both Clinton and Obama did raise taxes on the middle class—but they talked so much about taxing the rich that even a well-educated voter could be forgiven for thinking that the new taxes were all on the rich. Every new tax voters heard about were announced as targeting the rich (or corporations which, of course, pass on their increased tax burdens to consumers in the form of higher prices and workers in lower wages). The left needs to demonize the rich. It is, after all, their justification for taxing them. Americans do not like the idea of taking money away from someone who earned it.

Zitelmann: A great deal of energy is expended on arguing that the “rich” did not earn their money.

Norquist: Yes, the logic is this: If the rich are only rich because they got lucky, then they never truly earned or deserve their fortunes. This is why Barack Obama told small businessmen in the 2009 campaign, “You did not build that,” when referring to their own small businesses. If you didn’t build it—it isn’t really yours. And, once Democrat logic is accepted, taking it away is not really theft. Nor wrong. Nor immoral. But demonizing the rich has a second advantage for the left. In addition to making it easier to tax the rich and trick voters/taxpayers into thinking they are not the true target of higher taxes, the war on the rich covers up the 50-year failure of the Great Society. The Great Society was launched in 1965 with the promise that the government knew how to help the poor become middle class and self-reliant. Government spending on housing, healthcare and education would instill the poor with middle-class values such as hard work, self-reliance and a willingness to work and save today for a better tomorrow, maintaining a long-term perspective. But the Great Society spent some $14 trillion in giving money to the poor, or more often paying well-paid government employees to “provide services” to the poor, and has little or nothing to show for it in terms of improvements in savings, income, education or work. So rather than admit that they wasted trillions of dollars and concede that they should shut down government job programs that only benefit the Democrat party’s base, the left pivoted to a new problem. Not that the poor are poor, but that there is a large gap between the rich and poor.

This new problem—inequality—can be solved without helping to lift a single poor person out of poverty and into the middle class. One only needs to reduce the wealth and income of the rich. That way we will be more equal. All worse off. But more equal. It is possible for modern Democrats to reduce inequality without doing anything to help poor people or communities. The middle class can suffer while we “reduce inequality.” That they can do. To tax the rich; first undermine their right to keep what they create. Demonize them. To avoid embarrassing questions about the failure of the left’s “war on poverty” you just need to shift the focus to inequality.

‘Immigration Is Our Strongest Competitive Advantage’

Zitelmann: Donald Trump has certainly done some positive things in terms of tax policy and deregulation. At the same time, however, he has increased what was already an extremely high level of national debt and is pursuing protectionist trade policies. I have the impression that Trump has no clear market economy compass. How capitalist is Trump?

Norquist: It’s not clear whether Donald Trump has ever read Hayek. But his tax cuts are straight out of the Ronald Reagan/Art Laffer/Milton Friedman playbook. His de-regulation goes further than all previous presidents combined. His judges will strengthen and repair America’s commitment to the rule of law for a generation. And his unwillingness to be dragged into every stupid idea some European intellectual thought up—windmills, solar to replace real energy that really powers a national economy—has been a godsend. Those who wish to embroil America in every war in every quadrant of the globe have no ally in Trump. Trump knows that war is the enemy of liberty and fiscal prudence. Free trade and immigration are issues where Trump departs from President Reagan and Adam Smith. But as President Trump said before the coronavirus crisis—we are running out of workers in the United States. And the higher wages and jobs growth he delivered reduced the grumpiness of American voters who no longer lash out at immigrants and foreign competitors suspected of stealing their jobs. Trump’s tax cuts, de-regulation, sound legal system and respect for property rights delivered growth to America before the virus and will return when the virus is behind us. Trump’s growth silenced the concerns that drive protectionism and tariffs and stoke fears of immigration. Yes, the wall will be built. America will gain control of its borders, but it will maintain large and open doors. Immigration is our strongest competitive advantage over China, Japan, Russia and most of the world. And yes, our trade agreements need to ensure that our intellectual property is not stolen and reduce the ability of governments anywhere to subsidize trade and disadvantage foreign competition.

Zitelmann: What are your thoughts on the Fed’s low interest rate policy? What does this mean for our market economy system?

Norquist: The danger of near-zero federal interest rates is that borrowing money is seen as “almost” free. The deficit is not the problem. Overspending is the problem. The deadweight cost of government is total spending. The deficit is one element of the problem—like the visible part of an iceberg. But it is the larger, hidden mass of the iceberg below the water line that ripped the Titanic apart. If deficit spending is held down, and taxes are not raised, then there is a limit on spending. That is good. But if deficit spending is “free” or “inexpensive” because interest rates (today) are low, then public opposition to more and more government spending is reduced and government spending will be allowed to increase and weaken the economy.

#republicans #grover norquist #subhuman #american politics #forbes #class warfare #class war #2020 presidential election #bernie sanders #bourgeoisie #bourgeois ideology #ideology #ideoloji #ideologia

[knowledgyy]

difference between #socialism and #communism. #Marxism is a little funky, but we’ll get there.

Socialism, in modern terms, is the sharing of wealth in society. You may here something like “western European countries are becoming increasingly socialist.” If you do, it usually means there's an increase in the exchange between a government and it's people. In Western democracies, this could indicate a socialist policy like universal healthcare (in which all individuals pay larger taxes for the greater benefit of a single health issue someone may have) or social welfare (in which each individual pays a certain extra amount, usually taken from their paycheck, to support the retired or unemployed). These are what constitutes the backbone of modern socialism, communal changes in income for the greater good. Basically, more sharing of wealth in society. Capitalism, on the other hand, is the opposite. Everybody is his own economy. Everyone operates individually. So what is socialism? What’s the takeaway? Think of socialism as sharing within a community. That’s all it is. Very simple. Communism is loosely based on socialism, and follows the same basic concepts of equality and sharing, but there’s one key difference. We’ll get there, but once you’ve finished reading this, you will understand.

Communism… is very different. Whilst anarchy is the extremist version of capitalism (every man for himself), communism is the extremist version of socialism (everybody has equal income). The big problem with communism is that it isn't feasible to have everybody on the honors-system and work for the common good. What do I mean by that?

The theory behind communism is that everybody takes what they produce and puts in a massive communal basket, then you take what you NEED back out of the basket. If everybody does this, we’ll have a nice little society in which we produce what we all need to live, and that’s it. It does not account for luxury items or anything more that somebody might desire, which creates a “good-enough” atmosphere lacking in personal ambition and quality of life. So what happens when somebody gets cheeky and takes a little bit more than he needs out of the basket? Or when somebody thinks its unfair that he gets so little in return from his toiling in the fields? This is the big krux with communism; somebody might always be benefiting unfairly from the hard work of an entire community, we have to make sure that doesn't happen! What's the solution to preventing such inequality? By having a massive government which oversees the whole country's processes! This is why you might hear many people say things like “communism doesn't work” or “Marx was an idiot!” Because having that powerful government which restricts it's people is by nature, not communist. The USSR saw a massive wealth gap, where 95% of the people were all relatively equal, working hard for a very poor quality of life in return; meanwhile, a top 5% Russian oligarchy took charge and controlled everything. And if the people lack ambition and creative drive (no extra production of technological development is happening), how can we compete with western nations? Enter Stalinism and Stalin's infamous 5-year-plans, the reality of communism. If you have a stagnant community in which everyone is equal, and people simply exist, then how does progression happen? The government employs forced progress. The Soviet Government set extremely high milestones for it's people, forcing them to reach quotas in food production, car production, weapons production, everything. In theory, this is also good, right? What's wrong with state-controlled progress milestones? It'll keep raising the quality of life, right? Well, millions died of starvation and fighting back against this system. Communism just… does not work out very well in reality. It is something which sounds great on paper, but simply does not carry-through into the real world.

So what's the big conclusion?

Well… if you want to stop reading here, my answer would be this: every country in the world is a mix of Capitalism and Socialism. Some sway more to one end than others, but every country is a mix. The two ABSOLUTE ends of the spectrum would be Anarchy (on the Capitalist side, every man for himself), and Communism (every man for one). Nations exist on all ends. Some nations, like Somalia, don’t even have a government to fend for itself, and therefore occupies one absolute end of the spectrum. Some nations exist on the other end too, the USSR was the closest example to absolute socialism, or communism. The ends of this spectrum are like an enigma, like the edge of the world, they are inefficient and simply don’t make any sense in practice. A balance must be struck between the two ends. So when you think of Socialism and Communism, just remember that Communism is a radical form of socialism. Just like monster trucks are a radical form of regular trucks. They’re based on the same principles and ideas, but they are not the same at all in actuality.

If you would like to read more about Communism, I’ve written some extra material about the 3 varieties of Communism. If you’ve ever heard of Marxism, Leninism, or Stalinism, and wonder what those are as well, then read below.

Now, I’ve read and annotated the Communist Manifesto on my own and with my own time, and I do not think Marx was an idiot by any means (a lot of people like to say he was). There's a few stages of communism you may hear about, and they're very important to understanding the topic: Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism. What do they each mean? I'm going to keep it simple because this is a topic which sparks a lot of debate.

Marxism is effectively the idea and the dream of communism. Wouldn't it be paradise if we were all just equal? And the inherent inequality and suffering in capitalism was no more? That's what Marxism is, it's the predictions he makes about what a Utopia looks like, it’s a dream. If you haven't actually read the Communist Manifesto, it's very short, and many people would be surprised to see that Marx really is not that insane, I found it a good read. I would say that 90% of the Communist Manifesto is Marx repeating the same concepts over and over… “capitalism will drive a wedge between people so deep that the proletariat will revolt against the wealth gap and establish a Utopian society based on the needs of the worker!” (paraphrased, of course). It sounds great. And he isn't wrong, either. Effectively, that's what happened in Russia (in concept) when the Bolsheviks revolted against the Tsar. In 1789, the French did the same thing. All the major revolutions in history canned be summed up with Marxism, they begin as a result of severe inequality between two peoples/classes, and are started and finished on the hope to develop something better. However, Marxism ends there. That's it. The buildup to what might become commusim, is Marxism. A lot of people don't know where Marxism starts and where it ends, so here it is. Marxism begins with the dream of creating a totally socialist Utopia, and ends right before the actual fighting breaks out. Another key feature of Marxism, which I don't think is very important but I should mention, is it's universality. As an added bonus to Marx's dreams, these revolutions will occur across the globe, until the entire working-human race is United under one flag of the proletariat. Anyway, to summarize, Marxism is a belief. It is the belief that a revolution by the working class will eventually result in a better life for all. It’s simple. Many people are confused by the term “Marxism” because they think its a form a government or something… but it’s just an idea, a philosophy, like Stoicism or Freudian-ism. That’s all it is.

So what's the next stage? Well, Marx planted the dream of communism, what happens when the dream is actualized? In steps Leninism. In 1917, the German Empire sneaks Vladimir Lenin (who was in exile in Switzerland) back into Russia to start a revolution which will hurt Russia so bad it'll knock them out of World War 1! A great idea by the Germans! Their plan worked, too! Leninism is the materialization of Marxist dreams. That’s what it is. Leninism is the revolution itself, where hundreds of thousands of Russian peasants rise against their wealthy minority counterparts, and retrieve the power they’ve always deserved. That's what Leninism is. It's a short event, but major. It isn’t a form of government or anything, but it is the explosive leap which propels communism into the seat of power. Once again, some people get confused because they think it’s a form of government, but once again… it’s more like an action. It represents the next step into forming the Marxist dream! We're so close! I can see the shining Utopia ahead, through the fog, it's just there!!

The next stage? Well, once the idea is accepted and the great revolution succeeds, we have to make this Utopia a reality!

Uh oh… here comes Stalinism. You can think of Stalinism as communism in motion, it is the reality of Marxism. While Marxism was just an idea, and Leninism was fighting for that idea, Stalinism is what happens when the dreamers try to make something effective out of that idea. Stalinism is what happens once all the sweet-sounding promises of Leninism and Marxism have paved their road into this empty slate, what do we do with it? I won't talk much about Stalinism. If you want to know more about why its such a devastating disappointment, go back and read the 4th paragraph, and you'll know what Stalinism is.

These 3 branches all fall under the encompassing title of communism. So now, we know what Marxism is, Leninsim is, and Stalinism. All three of these concepts fall under the branch of COMMUNISM. Marxism and Leninism are not forms of government, or political parties… they are the precursors to Stalinism. And all three of these ideas combined form what is communism.

Once again, tl;dr: Marxism is a simple dream, a concept. Leninism is making that dream possible, and fighting to make that dream come true. Finally, Stalinism is the evidence and proof of why, altogether, it all amounts to nothing more than just… well… a dream. An unobtainable Utopia. Why is it unobtainable, once again? Because it simply does not account for human nature. Greed, luxury, surplus, inequality, scarcity, bias… a lot of factors which slow down all the cogs in the machine, and make it a brutally inefficient system. Can communism exist? Yes, it sure can, just like Anarchy can. Is it efficient? No, unfortunately not.

Crd :

#marxism #communism

[another-mexico-oc]

HETALIA AND COUNTRYHUMANS: Pros and Cons

Hi! Before I start PLEASE DON´T MAKE A “WHICH ONE IS THE BEST” WAR, I personally enjoy both fandoms, and both have their good things, as well as their bad things. Also, this is not a “Who did it first” thing, because let´s be honest, national personifications are not a contemporary idea, they have been for several years, there we have Uncle Sam (U.S.A), Marianne (France), John Bull (U.K.), etc. 

So, without further more, let´s go with the analysis:

HETALIA: 

Pros: 

Being the work of a single author, the characters have an established design and personality.

The author, Himaruya Hidekaz, could have gone down a conventional path while writing the story of the manga, particulary during World War events, depicting some characters as the villains, and therefore, the others as the heroes who have to defeat them. But fortunately, he didn´t. Unlike some war movies and other media, where they try to portray some countries as the good guys who had to defeat the evil enemies, Hetalia is written as if it was only the rivalry of two groups, which give me the next point...

In Hetalia, no character tries to be portrayed as if it was the best or the worst country. Himaruya designs his characters based on both, good and bad stereotypes of the country. Everyone has their good qualities, as well as their own flaws. Personally, it´s hard to choose a favorite character, everyone is likeable and no one feels like a Mary Sue.

The country characters have no power over their bosses (presidents, kings, prime ministers, etc.). This is a way for Himaruya to justify some terrible events that occurred during History. The countries have to follow orders, or are influenced by the boss they have at the moment. Although sometimes it is show that countries can share opinions and discuss with their bosses. If they have something on their minds or want to do something, they have to consult it with their boss first, to get their approval. And sometimes they are even UNAWARE of their bosses choices!

Cons: 

Even if Himaruya tries his best to give every character a likeable personality based on the country stereotypes... he has also made some mistakes and inaccuracies. This caused hard consequences, like the government of Korea banning the anime and the manga, all because of the country representation, not to mention the rivalry between Korea and Japan. Also, some countries personality doesn´t seem to be accurate. For example, many people agree that, though Finland and Sweden characters are likeable, the author have switched their personalities.

You can find some historic inaccuracies in the manga and the anime, so don´t try to rely totally on Hetalia to pass your next history exam. For example, I heard many polish people complain about one episode, which takes place during Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The Poland character was depicted as weak, who gives up quickly and depends on Lithuania to win the battle. 

Giving all this information, Hetalia is not for everyone. Not all people are big fans of humor involving stereotypes or terrible events like war. Yeah, war is awful, but I think Hetalia partially mocks how useless war is. And there always will be the person who will say: “No! Not everyone in my country is like that! This does not represent me!” I´m mexican, and even if I don´t drink tequila or say common mexican phrases like “Wey, que pedo!” I can still laugh of my own country stereotypes (of course, those I don´t consider racist or denigrating). Talking about Mexico...

The lack of Latin and African countries, as well female characters. Yes, at first the Hetalia focus were the Axis and the Allies, the main countries who got involved in WW2, but then Himaruya started to introduce other nations, even the micronations! And yet we don´t have enough latinos or africans. In part I can understand why. For what friends who have visited Japan have told me, and for what I have seen on the internet, japanese people are still very unfamiliar with the latin culture. It´s a little sad, because, for example, my country has a very interesting story with other countries. And about the female characters, yes, we have Nyotalia, which is practically an AU where the characters are gender-bent, having the majority of them being girls, but in the normal Hetalia universe, we have more men than women. Himaruya had shared sketches of Portugal, Korea and Poland, who originally were going to be girls, but apparently he changed his mind and decided they were going to be guys. I don´t know how he chooses a character gender, but I think he should not be afraid adding more female characters, seeing some of the already existing are pretty badass. 

COUNTRYHUMANS: 

Pros: 

Apparently Countryhumans is free from copyright, so anyone can have their own depiction of their country, and can establish their own personalities and design... 

(Which is not very complicated, because the countryhumans designs consist in the country flag as their skin color, they usually don´t have hair and their eyes are completely white, so you just have to add the clothing).

The countries you don´t find in Hetalia can be found here! I love to see Mexico and all Latin America in this fandom, their personalities and their interactions between them and other countries.

The fandom from all the world can share more accurate historic events, as they have more knowledge of the history of their countries and what actually happen in those places.

Therefore, the personalities of the countries can be a little more accurate.

Countryhumans can be depicted as both, women or men. 

In conclusion, as you are free of copyright, if you are not happy with the representation of your country, you can design your own depiction and we all are content, right?

Cons: 

What can be a pro can also be a con. As Countryhumans has no what we can consider canon characters of all the OCs, we cannot decide which of the designs will be the most accurate or the most representative, as everyone has their own favorite depiction. And yes, there can be a lot of Mary Sues in the fandom. (There Mary Sues in the Hetalia fandom too, but those are created by the fans, not by Himaruya)

Oh no, here I come with the controversial issues... Remember what I said in Hetalia, that Himaruya tries to not to classify the countries as heroes or villains? Well, the Countryhumans has this problem... sometimes. For example, I have read fanfictions, and watched fanarts, in which Mexico is depicted as the poor victim of the evil U.S.A. who wants to control everyone, and also the mean Spain who slaved him for years. I am not saying U.S.A or Spain have never done something wrong, but as a Mexican I can tell that Mexico has also made mistakes in the past, and it´s not the poor victim some authors describe. 

Also, in Countryhumans, the way the authors justify the horrible events of the past, is separating the present country from their former one, and then we have: Nazi Germany and Soviet Rusia, who are completely different people from the Germany and Rusia of today. That´s not the problem, actually is a good way to justify the history of the country. The problem is how authors can represent this two polemic figures...

Therefore, Countryhumans is not for everyone either. There are still people who are very sensitive with the Nazism or the Soviet Union era, and watching this two depicted as “cute” or “cool”... can be creepy. Like I said before, in Hetalia at least they try to avoid political and social themes (the american dub and the dark Hetalia is another theme, the last one was created by the fandom itself), so Germany is never referred as a nazi, nor Russia is ever called Soviet, and both had to follow orders of their leaders orders, even if they didn´t want to, and the countries don´t have to represent the boss ideology.

In conclusion, both have good and bad qualities. Yes, both can have a toxic fandom, but they also have people who are interested in history and like to see how these countries can forget the past and live in harmony together. 

Hetalia satirizes history and mocks war and stereotypes, while the fandom and Countryhumans do the same, but also can explore the things Hetalia doesn´t, like other countries, dark history or other themes. 

In both cases, we can tell the World History is very complex, that is hard to be 100% accurate when you try to explain it with anthropomorphized countries. However, is more enjoyable to learn about other countries, their history and the culture through Hetalia and Countryhumans than a textbook. Even when you have watched both of these, reading a textbook is no longer boring. So, if you are an Hetalia fan or a Countryhuman fan, or both, enjoy your fandom and try to avoid the toxic part :)

#hetalia #Axis Powers Hetalia #APH #countryhumans #analysis #not war #peace #i love both

[pekorosu]

re: the 20-page interview with fujimoto yukari and yoshida akimi

it covers a wide range of topics including her other works which i’m not familiar with and a bit of her personal life, so I’ll only jot down some bf related parts. note that this isn’t a proper translation… consider it a rough one with lots of paraphrasing, interspersed with my own thoughts.

- we begin with the most pressing question: why did ash die? lol

- yoshida mentioned that she had made up her mind for him to die from the very beginning itself. she did get conflicted about going through with it as the series was approaching its end, but the reason for that was river phoenix’s death. she was worried it would be in poor taste.

- fujimoto: how would the ending where he’s alive be like?

yoshida: well nothing much, he’s just not dead (laugh).

fujimoto: so nothing in particular will happen with eiji and they’ll remain separated…

yoshida: yes, that’s how it would be. but in the end i felt like what i decided at first would hit the mark just right.

- (note: this sounds like the 2nd last chapter to me...)

- yoshida started out with the concept of ash dying young bc she thought it would be sort of cool. an average person would live up to about 70 yrs while ash only lives up to 19. but in reality, dying young is p cruel so she wondered if it might a bit not good. but in the end, ash is still a killer. he spilled the blood of others to survive, so no matter what the reasons were, he would have had to settle that debt with his own life. so eventually that’s how she decided to conclude it. she also felt like he wouldn’t have had a long life anyway.

- fujimoto: did news of river phoenix’s death shock you?

yoshida: it sure did! (laugh). it felt sort of like,“why did you have to die now?”

fujimoto: and the fact that it was because of a drug overdose… it must have felt like too much of a coincidence.

yoshida: that’s true. […]

fujimoto: but there are many ways of dying, did you originally plan for him to die that way too?

yoshida: yeah it was pretty much like that. like in “ashita no joe” (laugh).

fujimoto: feels like “the fight’s finally over”.

yoshida: well it’s not exactly like that, but i did plan to have him die in a way that looked like it was for nothing.

- fujimoto then brought up yoshida’s older work, “california monogatari” where a character dies in a similar fashion. she said that there are many great deaths in shounen works, but the protag or deuteragonist always end up dying pointlessly. she asked yoshida why she thinks the reason for that is? yoshida said that in her case, “midnight cowboy” had been a very impactful movie. it’s the reason why she started drawing manga too. there’s a shocking death scene in there and she wondered if maybe she’s heavily influenced by that “imprinting”?

- fujimoto asked whether the shock came from seeing a character die such a death, and yoshida said that’s not it, it’s more of an overall thing. the idea that you’ll die if your partner isn’t there with you. it’s that sort of connection between two souls that’s on the brink of something. it’s not just a physical death, but a spiritual one, or a death of one’s self, or a “total” death when you’re connected to someone a certain way, which is what the movie is about.

- yoshida mentioned that a friend she went to see the movie with just casually went “what a dark movie” so she doesn’t know why she experienced such a huge shock either.

- (note: i know nothing about that movie so maybe i’m getting some wording wrong here >< but it’s definitely a vital piece of context as to why she writes things the way she does lol)

- fujimoto mentioned that some creators find that it takes a lot of strength to kill off characters even if it’s all fictional. she asked how yoshida personally feels about it. yoshida said that she’s not really bothered by it. esp for ash, if it weren’t for river phoenix’s death she wouldn’t have thought much of it. to her, dying young is not necessarily a sorrowful thing. whether a person was happy or lived a good life isn’t measured by how long they lived.

fujimoto: that’s true. but i think it’s hard to say that ash’s life had been “happy”. but, he died while reading eiji’s letter so maybe to ash, that was enough.

yoshida: that’s why i thought, isn’t it the happiest way for him to die? i mean, it is because he died that he gets to have eiji for eternity. eiji will never be able to forget him. it does feel kind of unfair (laugh).

- fujimoto asked if writing the story became more difficult considering that many world affairs have changed during the course of the series. yoshida said that it was. from the start, it’s been about the cold war between the east and west, so it never had much of a sense of realism to begin with. but after the soviet union dissolved, it got even less realistic and harder to write.

- (note: i think by “realistic” she meant like… it didn’t really feel close to home for jp readers?)

- fujimoto went on to ask how yoshida came up with the setting of “banana fish” as a drug that takes control over a person’s sense of self. yoshida explained that it so happened that she had an interest in drug-related stuff in her school years. read lots of books and stuff on the topic, also stories about the cia wanting to achieve mind control, us-russia competition, etc. she found that stuff fascinating.

- fujimoto: by the way, i heard that in the beginning, it was planned for eiji to be a girl.

yoshida: that’s right. i think it would have been fine if he had been a girl, but for me… i actually dislike the kind of girls who immediately go all kyaa! during action scenes, or to get in the male protagonist’s way and yet end up in a romantic relationship with him (laugh). it’s irritating, and a total nuisance. that’s why i didn’t really want to have female characters. better make it a guy then, i thought.

- (note: DOESN’T EIJI DO ALL OF THOSE THINGS THO??? LMAO IM WHEEZING also this makes eiji a trans guy in spirit i don’t make the rules :x)

- fujimoto: you also explored this sort of relationship between men in “california monogatari” in the form of heath and yves (sp?). yves had sexual feelings, but heath didn’t. it felt like ash and eiji were walking quite a fine line there too (laugh) but was it your intention to portray it that way?

yoshida: well, somewhat. eiji being a girl would’ve been fine by me, but if that were the case, the drama would get really predictable, wouldn’t it? if it becomes romantic, that would be it.

after all, there are just different emotions involved in relationships between guys or between girls. of course, if they were lesbians or homosexuals it would be the same as a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, but how is it like to be connected by feelings that are not like that? to me, that’s an enduring theme to explore, after watching midnight cowboy.

fujimoto: so, you wanted to explore connections that aren’t sexual in nature?

yoshida: well, sexuality is definitely still a part of it. more like, what is a connection between souls like?

fujimoto: in other words, for you, a soul contains sexual elements.

yoshida: that’s right.

fujimoto: so you meant something different from the idea of the soul and the body being separate.

yoshida: that’s different. it’s all lumped together, you see. i’m not adept enough to explore that.

- (note:  honestly this part kinda stumped me. i’m confused bc on one hand it sounded like she chose to make this between 2 guys bc she sees that the feelings involved are different from a typical gay relationship (bc of the implication that romantic relationships are all similar regardless of gender). but at the same time she’s also saying that sexuality is still a part of ~the soul~ and she wants to explore this connection between souls… so…………?????? is she saying that the connection itself isn’t sexual even if the soul has those elements? damn i wish i had a better grasp on the language @_@)

- mention of yoshida being a tomboy as a kid and that she often went into the hills and stuff where there were pit vipers. apparently she had a cousin living with her at that time, a frail little city boy. fujimoto made a comparison that yoshida was like ash and her cousin like eiji. yoshida's like, yeah exactly! she found him extremely irritating bc he kept following her around and getting in the way. but if she didn’t look after him, she’d get scolded by her parents lol

- yoshida: eiji has the tendency to be indecisive and masochistic, but eventually when that reaches a breaking point he’ll tear everything down to shreds. he’s the kind of character who gets surprisingly bold when that happens. 

ash is the type of character who is like a tough, solid tree when facing a storm. he would go head-on against it. but eiji’s more like a willow (laugh), all soft and limp like grass. but in the end the one that can outlast the storm is the willow, while the tree gets knocked away. that’s why between the two of them, i get the feeling that eiji is the stronger one… or at least the one who’s bolder.

#banana fish #banana fish liveblogging #banana fish spoilers #peko tls #long post // #someone will prly come up with a better and more complete t/l soon lol i just found out the pages have been uploaded recently

[redditnosleep]

On The Russian Ice Road, You Always Help Your Fellow Travelers

by TheCityOfS

When people hear my wife’s Russian, they imagine a tall blonde girl with a funny accent who wears heels for every grocery run. Reality couldn’t be farther from the stereotype: Lana is dark haired, speaks better English than I do, and is completely obsessed with sneakers. She does meet ONE stereotype, though: she never gets cold, seeing how she lived in Russia until she was eighteen.

Not in Moscow, of course. Did you know that Moscow’s actually pretty warm? There are entire states in America where winters are far colder than anything Moscovites ever have to deal with. No, my wife comes from a tiny town far up Russian north, on the tundra. A dark, gloomy, and a very cold place inside the Arctic Circle, with extremely harsh winters and even harsher people. A place that meets the stereotypes.

I’ve met my in-laws all of two times including our wedding, both times as they traveled to the States. Frankly, I never had any intention of visiting my Lana’s hometown, until she got that fateful call nine days ago. My mother in law had had a stroke. While her condition was stable for the time being, the local doctor expected the worst could happen at any minute. Transporting her to a better hospital was out of question as she was in no state for the kind of a journey that you’ll see described below.

My wife made travel arrangements immediately. I had a valid Russian visa from a business trip to Moscow a few weeks prior so I decided to go with her. Now, getting to my wife’s hometown isn’t easy. You’re in for a flight to Moscow, then a connecting flight to Norilsk, one of the biggest cities in the Russian tundra. From there, it’s an hour long trip down the Yenisei river, by barge in summer and on cars over ice in the winter.

Urgently getting to Moscow wasn’t that hard. There, however, we faced additional difficulties. First of all, apparently I couldn’t actually fly to Norilsk with Lana as the city was closed to foreigners. Before we could even process that, we were told that Norilsk airport was closed for all aircraft due to poor weather conditions and the weather wasn’t expected to improve that week. I tried to console Lana as best as I could, but news of her mom getting worse drove her crazy. Soon, Lana suggested an “alternative”: it was possible to fly to a city a fair bit south of Norilsk which was safe from the storms. For a modest fee, a family friend living there was willing to take a day’s journey up the ice road to Lana’s hometown. Well, more like a night’s journey since according to him, it was better to travel at night by car’s lights than by what passed as daylight.

I told my wife she was insane. She, however, was adamant on her plan, saying she’s done zimnik (how Russians call their ice roads) many times with her dad and it was perfectly safe. She wouldn’t budge no matter how I pleaded and told me I was welcome to stay in Moscow. Obviously, that was not an option, and in the end I gave up.

We flew to our next destination, and the cold hit me as soon as I stepped out of the plane. It was a different kind of cold, invasive and ruthless, and it didn’t care about layers of sweaters and socks I had on. I shivered imagining how much colder it was going to get.

We met with the trucker who was to take us up North. He called himself Kolya, and my wife “Sveta”, the Russian version of her name. Me, he didn’t call at all, instead referring to me derisively as “Mister Amerikashka” whenever he spoke to my wife. Lana told me with a chuckle she didn’t tell Kolya I could understand Russian, although I don’t think he would’ve cared.

Kolya was supposed to be a few years younger than my wife but looked much older, his skin and posture worn down by the harsh conditions of his homeland. He laughed at our American shoes and coats and said he would pack extra jackets, woolen socks and valenki for us “just in case.” His brother helped load his truck, which looked like it had seen the fall of the Soviet Union, and then Kolya sat down to enjoy a shot of vodka. One for the road.

My wife saw me blanch at that.

“This isn’t New York, or even Moscow,” she said quietly. “People here are a bit behind in terms of DUI. Don’t worry, he won’t drink enough to get impaired, he’s seen that kill people on the road.”

Well.

Indeed, the first shot was the last and Kolya hopped into the truck. He offered my wife the shotgun seat which, as far as I understood Russian macho culture, was basically equivalent of throwing a glove in my face. Whatever. As long as he got us there.

The road was a dark stretch of ice and packed snow powdered by the fresh snow that had fallen that morning. Snowdrifts bordered both sides of the roads and leaked onto its surface a fair bit. Otherwise, it was the same barren flat surface for miles. In the first couple of hours, we saw a few cars going the opposite way to us. Then a car going in the same direction as us overtook us and disappeared in the darkness ahead at surprising speeds. It was a freaking tiny, rusted-through Subaru. I gave up on understanding Russians then and there.

Shortly after the Subaru guy, it started snowing. Just a bit at first, then more and more. Kolya didn’t seem bothered and I tried to stay calm as well, which I managed mostly successfully until the wind joined in. Unlike the snow, it started hard from the get go.

Have you ever heard wind howling and become unsettled by the sound? Now imagine the same, but in the depths of a black night lit only by your car’s headlights. Except for your own vehicle, the world around is silent and devoid of life, frozen until the spring. Not that you can see much through the thick snow that is now the wind’s plaything, flurrying around the car, blanketing the windows.

Our pace slowed to a crawl as Kolya swore colorfully in Russian. “Maybe stop and wait it out?” I suggested nervously.

“We can’t.” Lana said without bothering to ask our driver. “If we stop there’s a good chance the car won’t start up again, and we are stuck here waiting for someone to pick us up. And it’s been… empty today.”

The realization we were at a very real risk of freezing to death hit me like a ton of bricks. I leaned back into my seat and closed my eyes, wordlessly praying for the best. The only response was the wind howling – and it sounded so strange. It would start low and quiet and then get louder and louder until a yowling crescendo, then cut off abruptly. Then start again. And the sound came from different directions, each starting at a different time, like a pack of wolves howling.

I opened my eyes to obvious tension in the car. Lana and Kolya were both hunched forward, peering intently through the glass for all the good it did them. Kolya glanced back at me.

“Don’t worry, be happy!” Kolya proclaimed with a horrible Russian accent. “It is all OK! Don’t worry, America!”

He was lying. I might have been useless on the ice road, but I was a criminal defense lawyer, and a good one at that. And Kolya was a bad liar. There was sweat beading on his face and neck, and his voice was forced. He was very much scared – and that made me scared, too.

Kolya murmured something to my wife, too quick and quiet for my distracted mind to decipher. She nodded.

“What was that?”

“There’s a village maybe half an hour up the road, if we keep this pace. We get there and settle down until the morning.”

“I see. Sorry about the delay.” In reality I was extremely happy to hear that. “Bad wind, huh?”

Lana grabbed my hand, quick and sudden as a snake. “Don’t. Mention. The Wind.”

Another sound came through the storm. A long, tinny wail that sent shivers down my spine. It took me a few moments to recognize the familiar sound of the wind whistling through walls and chimney. And then another moment to realize there were no fucking walls around for the wind to whistle.

I opened my mouth to comment, and my wife’s grip tightened on my arm. In that moment, I knew to keep it quiet.

We drove in tension-filled silence as a cacophony of sounds erupted through the storm. Wails and shrieks, howls and cries – no way no fucking wind was producing all of that.

The sounds grew closer, grew louder. I grabbed my wife’s hands as we both stared desperately ahead. Through the flurry, we barely made out something – a large, dark shape reflecting our lights, or maybe piercing the darkness with lights of its own…

Kolya swore and swerved to the side. We were passing another car stuck in the snow. Its blinkers flashed.

“Stop.” Lana said, sudden and harsh.

“What?” Kolya asked, in Russian. “You insane?”

“Stop.” My wife repeated. “On the ice road, you help. That’s the rule, remember?”

Kolya gave her a long, hard look that I didn’t like at all. “That’s the rule on the road.” He echoed, and hit the brakes, slowing the car without actually stopping. I opened the door and peered outside. The driver of the stuck vehicle was already running towards us. I recognized the car itself as the Subaru that passed us earlier.

“Thank God you people were…” the driver began. “Get in, idiot!” Kolya shouted, and the guy shut up and jumped in. He was just a kid, no older than twenty, with dark red hair and a patchy little beard. He looked cold and terrified.

“Thank god!” He repeated, in a hushed whisper. “I was sure they’d get me.”

“They?” I asked, confused. Kolya and Lana turned to look at the kid in unison, and their looks could kill.

“They, yeah, I mean the wind and snow,” the kid corrected quickly. I had a sudden abrupt feeling that it was too late for that… even as I still had no clue what was going on. We drove on, and the interplay of howls and shrieks outside the car became unbearable in the silence.

“What’s your name, dude?” I asked him in my best Russian. He blinked.

“Sergei. Sergei Molchanov. My parents are… anyway, it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have been driving, but I wanted to make it to my girlfriend’s birthday, and…”

“Both of you shut up.” My wife barked, and we did. Immediately I noticed the change in surrounding sounds – they were much louder now. The highest pitch shrieks rang in my ears. The low, insistent howling seemed to surround the car. And every now and then, something that sounded like an actual roar cut through the night.

The car picked up the pace. I looked at Kolya and realized he was absolutely flooring the gas pedal, poor visibility be damned. His truck was lurching along as fast as it could manage in the conditions, and yet the encroaching racket made it obvious we were nowhere near fast enough.

Then the car hit something. We were all jerked forward as the truck came to a staggering halt. I hit my temple hard on the back of my wife’s seat.

“What… was that?” I groaned.

“Must have hit a chunk of ice or something,” Lana's voice sounded strangely muffled. I remember focusing on her lips, and how pale and thin they looked. The dull resounding pain in my head exploded into something hot and overwhelming, and I collapsed into the backseat.

“He’s passed out!” Sergei called out. I wanted to correct him, but my voice wouldn’t obey me. My lids seemed to weigh a ton each – I could barely open my eyes enough to see the trio of Russians huddled together, the car’s flickering light illuminating their pale faces.

“What now?” Sergei asked nervously.

“Well, let’s see,” I don’t think I would’ve been able to understand complex Russian in that state, if it wasn’t my Lana speaking, her voice so familiar down to every inflection. “Why don’t you go out and check what we hit and if we can clear it out somehow?”

“What?!”

“We helped you, didn’t we?” In the car’s light, Lana’s green eyes seemed very blue. “So why don’t you help us back. After all, on the ice road you help each other. That’s the rule.”

Kolya grumbled in agreement. Then he reached over and pulled out a rifle, and aimed it at the boy.

Sergei whimpered. “You know they’re out there!”

“Well,” Lana’s voice was impeccably calm. Cold. “I guess you’d better not speak about them out loud, then. Better not even think about them, really. ”

My eyes closed against my will. I heard a door swing open, and a rush of cold air. Finally, I passed out for real, and in my unconsciousness I dreamed of horrified screaming and a single terrible roar that filled the night.

I came to during the day, on a couch of some local family that agreed to house us for a bit of cash. My wife fussed over me. Once she was sure I was conscious and lucid, she rushed me into the car saying we could do the rest of the drive by day, and an actual doctor could look at me in her hometown.

I settled in the backseat of the car. Vague memories haunted me.

“Where’s the kid? Sergei?”

“What kid, darling?” Lana asked, in sincere surprise.

“There was no kid, we traveled alone,” Kolya added, in Russian. And I wondered how he knew what I was asking about, or that I’d understand his answer. But aloud, I could only say: “This young redheaded guy…”

“Sweetie, I’m getting really worried. You must’ve hit your head harder than I thought. We gotta get you checked out as soon as we get back to the States. Maybe even a good checkup in Moscow…”

I didn’t really know what to say after that.

We made it the rest of the way uneventfully. Unfortunately, my mother in law had slipped into unconsciousness before we even set out for our drive, and she passed away several hours after our arrival. Lana didn’t even get to say a proper goodbye. She is absolutely devastated right now, so I’m trying my best to focus on comforting her. We’re staying here until the funeral, and I can’t stay I’m looking forward to the ride back.

My father in law graciously gifted me a proper Russian winter coat, so I went ahead and packed my American camel coat that proved terribly insufficient for the weather. As I was folding it, I noticed a few curly red hairs stuck to the light beige fabric.

And I felt so cold.

#creepy #horror story #russia #author: TheCityOfS

[boreothegoldfinch]

chapter 5 paragraph xii

Before Boris, I had borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was. And I suppose if either of us had lived in an even halfway normal household, with curfews and chores and adult supervision, we wouldn’t have become quite so inseparable, so fast, but almost from that day we were together all the time, scrounging our meals and sharing what money we had. In New York, I had grown up around a lot of worldly kids—kids who’d lived abroad and spoke three or four languages, who did summer programs at Heidelberg and spent their holidays in places like Rio or Innsbruck or Cap d’Antibes. But Boris—like an old sea captain—put them all to shame. He had ridden a camel; he had eaten witchetty grubs, played cricket, caught malaria, lived on the street in Ukraine (“but for two weeks only”), set off a stick of dynamite by himself, swum in Australian rivers infested with crocodiles. He had read Chekhov in Russian, and authors I’d never heard of in Ukrainian and Polish. He had endured midwinter darkness in Russia where the temperature dropped to forty below: endless blizzards, snow and black ice, the only cheer the green neon palm tree that burned twenty-four hours a day outside the provincial bar where his father liked to drink. Though he was only a year older than me—fifteen—he’d had actual sex with a girl, in Alaska, someone he’d bummed a cigarette off in the parking lot of a convenience store. She’d asked him if he wanted to sit in her car with her, and that was that. (“But you know what?” he said, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think she liked it very much.” “Did you?” “God, yes. Although, I’m telling you, I know I wasn’t doing it right. I think was too cramped in the car.”) Every day, we rode home on the bus together. At the half-finished Community Center on the edge of Desatoya Estates, where the doors were padlocked and the palm trees stood dead and brown in the planters, there was an abandoned playground where we bought sodas and melted candy bars from the dwindling stock in the vending machines, sat around outside on the swings, smoking and talking. His bad tempers and black moods, which were frequent, alternated with unsound bursts of hilarity; he was wild and gloomy, he could make me laugh sometimes until my sides ached, and we always had so much to say that we often lost track of time and stayed outside talking until well past dark. In Ukraine, he had seen an elected official shot in the stomach walking to his car—just happened to witness it, not the shooter, just the broad-shouldered man in a too-small overcoat falling to his knees in darkness and snow. He told me about his tiny tin-roof school near the Chippewa reservation in Alberta, sang nursery songs in Polish for me (“For homework, in Poland, we are usually learning a poem or song by heart, a prayer maybe, something like that”) and taught me to swear in Russian (“This is the true mat —from the gulags”). He told me too how, in Indonesia, he had been converted to Islam by his friend Bami the cook: giving up pork, fasting during Ramadan, praying to Mecca five times a day. “But I’m not Muslim any more,” he explained, dragging his toe in the dust. We were lying on our backs on the merry-go-round, dizzy from spinning. “I gave it up a while back.” “Why?” “Because I drink.” (This was the understatement of the year; Boris drank beer the way other kids drank Pepsi, starting pretty much the instant we came home from school.) “But who cares?” I said. “Why does anybody have to know?” He made an impatient noise. “Because is wrong to profess faith if I don’t observe properly. Disrespectful to Islam.” “Still. ‘Boris of Arabia.’ It has a ring.” “Fuck you.”

“No, seriously,” I said, laughing, raising up on my elbows. “Did you really believe in all that?” “All what?” “You know. Allah and Muhammad. ‘There is no God but God’—?” “No,” he said, a bit angrily, “my Islam was a political thing.” “What, you mean like the shoe bomber?” He snorted with laughter. “Fuck, no. Besides, Islam doesn’t teach violence.” “Then what?” He came up off the merry-go-round, alert gaze: “What do you mean, what? What are you trying to say?” “Back off! I’m asking a question.” “Which is—?” “If you converted to it and all, then what did you believe?” He fell back and chortled as if I’d let him off the hook. “Believe? Ha! I don’t believe in anything.” “What? You mean now?” “I mean never. Well—the Virgin Mary, a little. But Allah and God…? not so much.” “Then why the hell did you want to be Muslim?” “Because—” he held out his hands, as he did sometimes when he was at a loss—“such wonderful people, they were all so friendly to me!” “That’s a start.” “Well, it was, really. They gave me an Arabic name—Badr al-Dine. Badr is moon, it means something like moon of faithfulness, but they said, ‘Boris, you are badr because you light everywhere, being Muslim now, lighting the world with your religion, you shine wherever you go.’ I loved it, being Badr. Also, the mosque was brilliant. Falling-down palace—stars shining through at night—birds in the roof. An old Javanese man taught us the Koran. And they fed me too, and were kind, and made sure I was clean and had clean clothes. Sometimes I fell asleep on my prayer rug. And at salah, near dawn, when the birds woke up, always the sound of wings beating!” Though his Australo-Ukrainian accent was certainly very odd, he was almost as fluent in English as I was; and considering what a short time he’d lived in America he was reasonably conversant in amerikanskii ways. He was always poring through his torn-up pocket dictionary (his name scrawled in Cyrillic on the front, with the English carefully lettered beneath: BORYS VOLODYMYROVYCH PAVLIKOVSKY) and I was always finding old 7-Eleven napkins and bits of scratch paper with lists of words and terms he’d made: bridle and domesticate celerity trattoria wise guy = кpymoŭ пaцaн propinquity Dereliction of duty. When his dictionary failed him, he consulted me. “What is Sophomore?” he asked me, scanning the bulletin board in the halls at school. “Home Ec? Poly Sci?” (pronounced, by him, as “politzei”). He had never heard of most of the food in the cafeteria lunch: fajitas, falafel, turkey tetrazzini. Though he knew a lot about movies and music, he was decades behind the times; he didn’t have a clue about sports or games or television, and—apart from a few big European brands like Mercedes and BMW—couldn’t tell one car from another. American money confused him, and sometimes too American geography: in what province was California located? Could I tell him which city was the capital of New England?

But he was used to being on his own. Cheerfully he got himself up for school, hitched his own rides, signed his own report cards, shoplifted his own food and school supplies. Once every week or so we walked miles out of our way in the suffocating heat, shaded beneath umbrellas like Indonesian tribesmen, to catch the poky local bus called the CAT, which as far as I could tell no one rode out our way except drunks, people too poor to have a car, and kids. It ran infrequently, and if we missed it we had to stand around for a while waiting for the next bus, but among its stops was a shopping plaza with a chilly, gleaming, understaffed supermarket where Boris stole steaks for us, butter, boxes of tea, cucumbers (a great delicacy for him), packages of bacon —even cough syrup once, when I had a cold—slipping them in the cutaway lining of his ugly gray raincoat (a man’s coat, much too big for him, with drooping shoulders and a grim Eastern Bloc look about it, a suggestion of food rationing and Soviet-era factories, industrial complexes in Lviv or Odessa). As he wandered around I stood lookout at the head of the aisle, so shaky with nerves I sometimes worried I would black out—but soon I was filling my own pockets with apples and chocolate (other favored food items of Boris’s) before walking up brazenly to the counter to buy bread and milk and other items too big to steal.

Back in New York, when I was eleven or so, my mother had signed me up for a Kids in the Kitchen class at my day camp, where I’d learned to cook a few simple meals: hamburgers, grilled cheese (which I’d sometimes made for my mother on nights she worked late), and what Boris called “egg and toasts.” Boris, who sat on the countertop kicking the cabinets with his heels and talking to me while I cooked, did the washing-up. In the Ukraine, he told me, he’d sometimes picked pockets for money to eat. “Got chased, once or twice,” he said. “Never caught, though.” “Maybe we should go down to the Strip sometime,” I said. We were standing at the kitchen counter at my house with knives and forks, eating our steaks straight from the frying pan. “If we were going to do it, that’d be the place. I never saw so many drunk people and they’re all from out of town.” He stopped chewing; he looked shocked. “And why should we? When so easy to steal here, from so big stores!” “Just saying.” My money from the doormen—which Boris and I spent a few dollars at a time, in vending machines and at the 7-Eleven near school that Boris called “the magazine”—would hold out a while, but not forever. “Ha! And what will I do if you are arrested, Potter?” he said, dropping a fat piece of steak down to the dog, whom he had taught to dance on his hind legs. “Who will cook the dinner? And who will look after Snaps here?” Xandra’s dog Popper he’d taken to calling ‘Amyl’ and ‘Nitrate’ and ‘Popchik’ and ‘Snaps’—anything but his real name. I’d started bringing him in even though I wasn’t supposed to because I was so tired of him always straining at the end of his chain trying to look in at the glass door and yapping his head off. But inside he was surprisingly quiet; starved for attention, he stuck close to us wherever we went, trotting anxiously at our heels, upstairs and down, curling up to sleep on the rug while Boris and I read and quarrelled and listened to music up in my room. “Seriously, Boris,” I said, pushing the hair from my eyes (I was badly in need of a haircut, but didn’t want to spend the money), “I don’t see much difference in stealing wallets and stealing steaks.” “Big difference, Potter.” He held his hands apart to show me just how big. “Stealing from working person? And stealing from big rich company that robs the people?” “Costco doesn’t rob the people. It’s a discount supermarket.” “Fine then. Steal essentials of life from private citizen. This is your so-smart plan. Hush,” he said to the dog, who’d barked sharply for more steak. “I wouldn’t steal from some poor working person,” I said, tossing Popper a piece of steak myself. “There are plenty of sleazy people walking around Vegas with wads of cash.” “Sleazy?” “Dodgy. Dishonest.” “Ah.” The pointed dark eyebrow went up. “Fair enough. But if you steal money from sleazy person, like gangster, they are likely to hurt you, nie?” “You weren’t scared of getting hurt in Ukraine?” He shrugged. “Beaten up, maybe. Not shot.” “Shot?” “Yes, shot. Don’t look surprised. This cowboy country, who knows? Everyone has guns.” “I’m not saying a cop. I’m saying drunk tourists. The place is crawling with them Saturday night.” “Ha!” He put the pan down on the floor for the dog to finish off. “Likely you will end up in jail, Potter. Loose morals, slave to the economy. Very bad citizen, you.”

#boreo #the goldfinch #the goldfinch donna tart #donna tart #boris pavlikovsky #theodore decker #theo decker #boris x theo #theo x boris #finn wolfhard #ansel elgort #oakes fegley #aneurin barnard #the goldfinch book #book #books #quote #quotes #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtqia+ #lgbt #gay #gay ship #gay ships #otp #mlm #the goldfinch quotes #the goldfinch quote #boreo quotes

[lindsay36ho]

Success, or Just a Sensation? Stuart Isacoff on Van Cliburn’s Moscow Win — 60 Years On

When Stuart Isacoff received an assignment to write a cover story on Van Cliburn’s comeback to the concert scene, this led to a friendship between the two that lasted until the pianist’s death.

Piano Street’s David Wärn has met the author of When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph and Its Aftermath, a personal and moving book presenting a sympathetic but honest account of the life of the legendary American pianist.

When Van Cliburn died on February 27 in 2013, the whole world was reminded of his sensational 1958 win at the inaugural Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Since then, two important biographies of Cliburn have been written. For the British historian Nigel Cliff, whose Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story was published just before Stuart Isacoff’s book, Cliburn’s death and the ensuing obituaries provided the first opportunity to hear the full story of the pianist’s life, a tale that he thinks resonates particularly strongly today: “while we contemplate talk of a new Cold War, it can be illuminating to recall that Russia and America have had a love-hate relationship for a long while.” Isacoff, on the other hand, had wanted to write Cliburn’s biography since the late 1980s — his basement was already full of material for the book, including taped interviews with Cliburn’s boyhood friends and relatives. Isacoff, with his stronger personal connection to the subject matter and his background as a pianist, unsurprisingly provides a more knowing and intimate portrait. He also a tells a more coherent tale, taking in the larger picture without losing focus on the main character and on the cultural, political and artistic significance of Cliburn’s life story. However, for those interested in as many details as possible about the political processes of the Cold War, Cliff’s book might be a good complement.

‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Van Cliburn’

In 1989, Van Cliburn returned to the concert scene after an eleven-year break. Isacoff received an assignment from a magazine called Ovation to do a cover story on Cliburn and his comeback. The magazine no longer exists; in fact it went under with that cover story, and Isacoff was never paid. “Van said it probably went under because his picture was on the cover. I said no, it was because of my writing.”

The editor wanted a negative story. He showed Isacoff a photo of Cliburn and said ‘look at that smug smile on his face’. Isacoff didn’t think it looked smug at all, but soon realized that Cliburn was looked down on by some people. “Van was considered sort of phony. You take a New York intellectual snob looking at him, and… he was just perceived as being a country bumpkin. He was very flamboyant, and sentimental — not an urban personality.”

Isacoff started to do research, listening to Cliburn’s recordings. “I thought, this is so beautiful… I can’t write a negative story about this man. I didn’t have it in my heart to do that. So I ignored that part of it. I flew to Fort Worth, Texas, and met with him there; it was one of the years when they were having the competition. He didn’t like to give interviews, and wouldn’t let me take him somewhere to talk privately. Instead, he stood in the middle of this room with people running over and hugging him, exclaiming: Van, Van…! He was taking time to individually hug each person and look in their eyes. He said: go ahead, interview me while I’m doing this. So I spoke with him and took notes while he stood there hugging people.” Isacoff called his article The Rise and Fall and Rise of Van Cliburn. “Van was really happy with it. His mother said there was never any fall, so she didn’t like that part.”

An utterly Van-like evening

In september that year, Cliburn performed the Tchaikovsky concerto at the opening of the Meyerson Concert Hall in Dallas. On the basis of his article, Isacoff was invited to Cliburn’s private dinner party afterwards, and was entranced. He decided that he was going to write a book about the pianist. Not only did Cliburn play like an angel: the history of what he had done, his relations with Kruschev and the Soviet people — Isacoff found all this extremely fascinating.

He went to Cliburn’s boyhood town of Kilgore, Texas, to interview the pianist’s old neighbors and boyhood friends. Cliburn also came to do a recital, in order to raise money for the Harvey Lavan and Rildia Bee Cliburn Scholarship. In his book, Isacoff writes about that “beautiful, strange, and utterly Van-like evening”: Cliburn always had terrible stage fright, and it was much worse in front of neighbors, friends, and family. His hands were shaking so badly that after barely making it through the first piece he left the stage. After about twenty or thirty minutes, he reappeared and continued, suddenly cool and calm. Later in the evening, a weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders. There was a little buffet in the gymnasium at Kilgore College, and Van was going around inviting people to go to the town church — this was around midnight — where he had convinced the organist to open up the church and give an organ recital in the middle of the night.

Stuart Isacoff

Isacoff had done several interviews with people in Kilgore and New York who knew Cliburn and went to school with him, when he found out that Cliburn really didn’t want him to write the book. “I had all these little tape cassettes, which I stored in my basement. I put it all away when I heard he didn’t want me to do it. Then, more recently, it seemed like it was time to take it all out again and start writing. All these years later, these tape cassettes still work, which amazed me.”

The American Sputnik

Van Cliburn was taught by his mother, Rildia Bee, herself an accomplished pianist who had studied with Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Liszt. He began giving recitals at four and made his orchestral debut at twelve, in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. At the Juilliard School of Music in New York, he studied with Rosina Lhévinne, and after winning the prestigious Leventritt award he embarked on a series of debuts with major American orchestras. But with his win in Moscow, the tall, 23-year-old Texan, powerful in performance yet radiating a kind of childlike innocence, became not only a successful pianist, but a symbol for American greatness.

The American victory came as a stunning surprise. The Tchaikovsky Competition had been conceived by the Soviet regime as a showcase for Russian artistic supremacy, illustrating what the poet Mayakovsky had described as the opposition between “the materially poor but spiritually dynamic Soviet Union and the rich but spiritually poor United States.” Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had been steadily rising since the launch in 1957 of the first Sputnik space satellite. But while his Russian rivals at the competition were extremely well trained, their performances paled compared to Cliburn’s heartfelt spontaneity and his enormous, singing sound. There was something different about Van’s art; also, it was obvious that he had a deep, genuine love for Russian music. Observers in both the Soviet Union and the United States began to refer to Van Cliburn as ‘the American Sputnik.’

According to Isacoff, this was a role he never wished for. “He didn’t care about politics at all. He was made an icon in the West because of the Cold War, and because of the fact that the US was behind in the space race. When he won, he was presented in the media as the American who conquered the Soviets. But he never saw it that way. He loved people; he just wanted to… spread the love. That’s partly why the Soviet people fell so in love with him. In fact, his friends in New York used to laugh at him because he was overly sentimental, gushing all the time. Everything was love… they were too sophisticated for that. He was perceived as being not real, while in fact he had no pretenses at all. But the Soviets ate it up, and returned those warm feelings to him. He was treated so beautifully there that he wanted to go back over and over again.”

Van Cliburn celebrates with Emil Gilels

‘Oh no, I’m not a success, I’m just a sensation’

When Cliburn returned from the competition, several reporters flocked to New York’s Idlewild Airport to meet him. You must think you are a big success, one of them threw out. Oh no, I’m not a success, I’m just a sensation, answered the young prize winner. He was received by a ticker-tape parade in New York, and soon made a million-selling recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto, but after some time critical misgivings began to be voiced. Everyone had expected his qualities to mature and deepen, but this never seemed to happen. Cliburn found the treadmill of a concert career less and less bearable, and his words at the airport tragically rang more true as his career went on. “He was not psychologically prepared for what happened, and burned out very quickly. It was overwhelming. He was not used to having to perform all the time, and they always wanted the same pieces: Tchaikovsky 1st and Rachmaninoff 3rd. He became almost like a robot,” says Isacoff.

“People like Kirill Kondrashin, the conductor, said to him: Van, you have to take time off. You need to relax and study, to deepen your understanding and not wear yourself out. But Van said: Kirill, I can’t stop, because if I do people will forget me. A lot of that probably came from his mother, who became his road manager and kept him in line. She was very strict — not an easy person, and not particularly nice. But he was devoted to her; she lived almost to a hundred, and he took care of her. But the psychological impact of that was not good.”

Other types of problems also rose in Cliburn’s life. “He was getting injections for a while from a doctor, Max Jacobson, who was nicknamed Dr. Feelgood. He administered amphetamines and other medications to famous artists, movie stars and politicians, including John F Kennedy. And Van got hooked on that. When that was over, he found other obsessions, like astrology. He was afraid to go on stage unless the stars said it was a good day to do it. He was always nervous, and had terrible stage fright. Recording was very difficult, because he pictured that students from Juilliard would sit listening to his playing, finding mistakes. He had all of these psychological impairments that accompanied him, and it wore him out.”

Happy endings

Even though Isacoff had to abandon the book project, he had a lot of contact with Cliburn in the years that followed and kept up with what was going on. “Van was a very generous person. I remember a birthday party for Joseph Bloch — a close friend of mine who taught piano literature at the Juilliard School for fifty years. All the people that went to Juilliard were in his class, including Van. But Van got an F in piano literature, because he never got to class. He couldn’t wake up in the morning. He stayed up all night, and in the morning he would call Bloch’s wife and say: Mrs Bloch, would you please apologize to your husband for me, I just can’t get out of bed. Bloch was in his 90s when he passed away, and I think it was for the occasion of his 90th birthday party, at Steinway Hall in New York, that I got in touch with Van and said: your old teacher who gave you an F is having a birthday party. Van immediately called this florist that he used near Carnegie Hall and had flowers sent over.”

While the tale of Van Cliburn has some of the elements of tragedy, Isacoff points out that there are also a number of happy endings to it. Van Cliburn created a lasting musical legacy and inspired love and admiration in generations of Russians, propelling diplomatic efforts between the rival superpowers. The competition and festival that bears his name is one of the world’s most important piano events, inspiring countless young musicians. On a personal level, the friendships formed in 1958 were lasting: for example, among the people who made a special journey to see him when learning he was ill was Liu Shikun, his Chinese rival at the Tchaikovsky Competition. Finally, what really made Cliburn’s end a happy one was Tommy Smith, the pianist’s life partner during his last two decades. Being with Smith, writes Isacoff, Van Cliburn “was no longer haunted by the past.”

The book on Amazon:

from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/success-or-just-a-sensation-stuart-isacoff-on-van-cliburns-moscow-win-60-years-on-9887/

[ukrainadian-blog]

Ukrainian-Canadian Identity and Ukrainophobia

Some days, saying I’m Ukrainian-Canadian makes me feel like a fraud. By blood I’m only a quarter Ukrainian, and while it may be surprising to people who follow me here, I did not embrace this part of my heritage until quite recently.

As a kid, I considered myself about half-Slav, half-Irish, like my mom. One, because I had and have very little number sense, and two, because I knew very little about my dad’s family and even then didn’t really feel I fit in with them (now that I’m older, and borderline estranged from my father, this is amplified). I knew my dad was Irish by descent as well, didn’t know he was half (probably Acadian) French until a few years ago. But blood isn’t culture. While significantly more of my DNA comes from Irish and French ancestors than Ukrainian ones, everything I know about Irish culture I learned from books, and everything I know about French-Canadians came from learning about it in school as a sort of foreign culture. Whereas some of my Ukrainian knowledge came down to me from family–making pyrohy and holubtsi together, learning to write pysanky at Easter from my mom, and learning about Soviet history with my baba.

Part of this is probably because of a fairly strong matrilineal line. I was always far closer to my mom than my dad, and also to my maternal grandparents. But I lost my grandfather when I was nine, so most of my life it was just my baba I could visit. And my mom, similarly, was closest to her maternal grandmother. Basically–it’s all about love for our babas in my family :)

But despite loving my baba very dearly, I was not a proud little Ukrainian girl. When asked where my family was from by friends, or in school projects, I would always proudly say I was Irish… aaand that I was a little Ukrainian and Russian. What I knew about being Ukrainian was food (pyrohy yum, holubtsi ew); pysanky (pretty and neat); and that it meant being poor, a peasant, and bullied. We don’t learn anything about Ukraine, Ukrainian-Canadians, or Eastern Europe in general in school in Canada (at least in my province, there may be more in the prairies). So I only knew my family history. My great-grandparents farmed, my great-grandfather was also a labourer in a quarry, and they were poor. My baba meanwhile endured enough taunting and beatings from Anglo kids at school growing up that she changed her name in the hope that Anne would attract less hate than the more Ukrainian Anna did.

When I was fourteen, we tried to visit Ukraine but couldn't get a visa. A year later, my baba asked if I wanted to go to Russia with her. I was really excited to leave the continent for the first time, but secretly disappointed we were going to peasanty Russia instead of, say, Ireland, where I desperately wanted to go. We spent two weeks in Russia, travelling up the Volga from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and I was stunned. All this fascinating history I had never heard of, imposing soviet architecture, and ornate Tsarist palaces--I'd finally learned that Eastern Europe was more than farms and vodka.

But only in Russia. I still knew very little about Ukraine, and that part of my heritage was shunted to the side again. Now when asked about my family, I was Russian, Irish... aaand a little Ukrainian. I learned everything I could about soviet Russia while in high school, and during my first year at university came very close to choosing to major in Russian history. I had Russian and Ukrainian textbooks my baba had given me, and while part of me felt I should try Ukrainian, especially because it seemed like the better textbook, I tried learning Russian for a couple of years (very unsuccessfully, the concept of prepositions being governed by cases made no sense in my pre-linguistics world).

When my baba passed, I regretted all I never asked and learned from her, and that I'd never learned enough Ukrainian to be able to speak to her. Enter @teensytigress and duolingo. Teensy was learning Portuguese, and I off handedly commented that if only they had Ukrainian, I would learn it to try to feel close to my baba again. It so happened that Ukrainian had recently gone beta, and she convinced me to study it so we could motivate each other. Duolingo was fun, Ukrainian was fascinating, and I finally had enough knowledge of linguistics for things like cases to be easy. I started learning more about specifically Ukrainian history and culture.

And then, I found my great-grandparents immigration records. In the year they landed, 1929, all passengers arriving by ship were logged with information about citizenship, ethnicity, language, health, occupation, etc. I knew my great-grandmother had been Ukrainian, and when I found the records there she was listed with my great-aunt. Polish citizens, ethnicity Ukrainian. My great-grandfather came over separately, to settle in Canada and get enough money to pay for their tickets to follow him there. I knew he'd been from a poorer family, and I had spent all my life under the impression that he was Russian. But I followed his line in the log--citizenship: Polish, ethnicity... Ruthenian. It turned out that I WAS NEVER ACTUALLY RUSSIAN. He was Rusyn, a Ukrainian who likely was from a Galician family.

After that, I stopped feeling guilty about learning Ukrainian instead of the """more useful""" Russian language that I had also believed to be my inheritance. I learned that Ukrainian culture is diverse and resilient, having stood up to repression both in Eastern Europe and in Canada. I learned that there is a ton of history we where never taught in school, from ancient cultures including those that may have inspired the Amazon myths?!, to being the heartland of Rus', through the Hetmanate Baroque, to Soviet and then modern independent Ukraine.

I regret not having embraced my Ukrainian-ness earlier, especially while my baba was here, but I'm glad to have got here eventually. I don't regret the years I spent thinking I was Russian--I learned a lot, and I'm sure someone at some point in my family tree was Russian if I go back a few hundred years given all the shifting borders and conquests.

So that's my story, of a lot of internalized Slavophobia and Ukrainophobia, and the near two decades it took me to get over it. This felt important to write (at five in the morning. Heh.), even though I doubt most people will read to the end of this novel. Perhaps I am just afraid of people here thinking I'm an authority on Ukrainian language or culture, when I'm very much not. I do a lot of research and reading and cross checking, but I started this blog as a way to learn, not as a platform to share established knowledge. I'm not a fluent speaker, and I've still never been to Ukraine, though I hope both of these will change in the future. In the meantime I'm always grateful to people like @tiger-manya who correct my mistakes!

And with that, I should probably sleep. Thanks for bearing with my insecurities. Good night)))

#Ukrainian-Canadian #ukrainophobia #personal #long post

[csykora]

hey i've been meaning to ask this, but would you mind explaining to me in general terms (or specific, if you're so inclined, i like detailed explanations but I don't want to give the impression that I expect them), like, What Happened With Alex Semin That Makes Everyone So Weird About Him? I know you've referenced a complicated legacy that makes caps fans weird about him, and maybe some way that caps fans/ western hockey culture/the nhl wronged him, but wikipedia was not very helpful (1/?)

3/3) None of that as presented seems, like, worthy of the level of weirdness/erasure that you've mentioned/hinted at, so I'm assuming there's a lot more complexity and detail involved here, which I would love to understand.

First, I need to say this, you are an utter doll. You’re out there reading and questioning and investigating further and it’s all so great.

And you’re right, on dry paper the whole thing is pretty weird.

There isn’t a smoking gun, here. I’m not going to point at a particular coach or GM and tell you, “They made a poor or a prejudiced decision, and the rest of us are fine.” A staggering number of things happened to happen to Semin. Each one of them didn’t mean so much by themselves. But I think the fact that they happened, and kept happening, and were expected to happen, all to him says a lot about us.

What there is is a context, and then there’s a story here. I think what a lot of us missed at the time, and are still missing, is how they fit together.

So I’m gonna drag us all through both. Congratulations: you get two posts.

I’m traveling through Montréal, so I come down to grab coffee in just a jersey and my little pink running shorts.  I’m not surprised when a man stops me. He asks what’s up, am I Russian, am I a Caps fan. “Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. They’re a great team every year,” he says, for the benefit of the man next to him. “No luck in the postseason though!”

The second man is Danish, and nervous, stuck between us. “You have a big rivalry?” he asks.

I have a personal rivalry with Les Habitants. “Oh, no,” I say.

I negotiate. If I admit I grew up watching the Canadiens as my hometown team, the first man will quiz me. So it’s friendly overture #2, angling towards him to show him the back of my sweater. The first man isn’t looking. “My favorite guy, Alexander Syomin, he played up here for a bit.”

I pronounce it that way, Сёмин, not an Anglicized eh. We can come back to that.

He admires my sweater. “Good player?” he tries.

“Oh, yeah, real skilled player,” the first man says, checking back in. And then, like he’s watching Semin backcheck right now, like the insight just struck him, “Lazy, though.”

“Oh, no,” I say, reassuring the Dane. “That’s just he plays Russian hockey, it just looks different than Canadian style, so some people think it looks like that.”

First man says, “Ovechkin doesn’t play like that.”

Of course he says that.

“Oh,” I say, laugh, cut him off. “Nobody plays like Ovechkin.”

(The Dane is looking between us like he’s about to ask how these people died.)

Something percolates through the first man’s mind. “Who’s your favorite player?”

And I turn around and walk away. He says, “Oh,” reading my shoulders. He hadn’t heard a word except the opening to tell me what he already Knew.

Listen, I don’t like feeling rude. But I was about to be late to interview for a graduate research position in hockey biomechanics, and I already knew I needed to go put on pants and fold Semin’s name back into a suitcase if I wanted them to respect me.

I’m not being dramatic so much as I’m trying to show the odd way that we all know things.  That man knew I wasn’t an expert, because I don’t look like one. We all know my favorite player isn’t a good player because he doesn’t look like one.

(And I don’t mean the ethnocentrism and neurotypical judgements we paint all over his face, although that’ll come back into it.)

G, you might be saying, that guy was a stock character of a misogynist hockey fan. Of course he only saw what he expected to. Well, here’s one thing: we all kind of think like that. Of course we don’t know when we aren’t seeing things that conflict with our view. Just keep that in mind when we talk about Russia.

And when we watch hockey, a good amount of the time, our eyes are telling us real persuasive narratives. There are certain visual cues in the game that we think mean good, make someone valuable. They signal to us that the player is playing ‘well’, and once we’re hooked on them that reading is hard to shake. Experienced analysts like Steve Dangle will talk about this: after decades watching hockey, they still get caught up in all the great-looking things a player is doing and miss underlying weakness, or get stuck on what a player doesn’t do and miss what they contribute overall.

(This is why statistics are valuable and controversial: they can be used to reveal patterns, like how a player who scores plenty of pretty goals is also on the ice for a suspicious number of goals against, and sometimes that conflicts with what seems obvious to the eye-test.)

Ethnicity comes back into it because what we think looks valuable depends where we’re from.

Later, I’m laughing over it to my buddy. She’s an older fan than me, and I admire her so much, because she listens to me, and she says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you—I don’t know what you mean when you keep saying Russian hockey.”

Context: Soviet and Russian Hockey

Any moment that I have the puck and you do not seems like it should be good for me.

But if you’re allowed to just come up and smash me, and I just hang out holding it, you’re going to try to take it away. Some of the time you’ll manage and then you’ll have it and you can score goals with it. So maybe I want to risk trying to score goals with it before you do.

That’s good old North American.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you want this? Did you want to try to score some goals with it? Sure, I suppose you can borrow it for a bit.  

Catch me first.

That’s Soviet.

This is a difference of philosophy; it’s a preference in coaching and play-making. There are some kids who weren’t considered particularly naturally talented who would be in Russia, and the other way around. But people also train to meet those standards, so by the time you’re in your teens or early twenties, you’re caught somewhere between the abilities and inclinations you were born with and the values you shaped yourself to try to fulfill.

Imagine a benchful of Evgeny Kuznetsovs.

Soviet hockey players were skaters first. At age 4 or 5, they would be learning skating fundamentals for an hour two or three days a week. Then an hour and half. At 10, they would skate every day. At 12, two practices a day.

“We put kids on skates at a very young age. Much earlier than in the U.S. and Canada. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. On one hand early development may influence game thinking, on the other skating may become a burden and be detrimental for the health.”—Sergei Gimaev (USSR champion)

I’m quoting Sergei because that’s my stance: on the one hand, and on the other. There’s a lot to say about the Soviet hockey schools. Athleticism was patriotism in the Soviet Union, as it is in many states, and the treatment of athletes was frequently disturbing—but it’s always more complex than a dystopia.

Their eerily effortless technical skating contributed to the outside image of the “Red Machine”, a North American narrative than Soviet skaters were only trained to be interchangeable pieces without any fun or independence or Canadian grit, but the Soviet style also valued a child-like intellectual creativity.

“Kids were always allowed to improvise on the ice,” according to Dmitri Efimov. “We surprised our opponents with the fact that we were difficult to ‘read,’ our actions couldn’t be anticipated.”  

This play, from hockey-graphs.com, is a great example.Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov, and Sergei Makarov skate so tightly they seem about to combine into a single giant mecha, luring in the Canadians, and then fly past them.

All that skill and creative energy fed into the endless, eternal, interminable passing. Each player on the line swung around each other, dragging the opposition into position until one of them found a chance to shoot. The goal of Soviet hockey wasn’t to score goals: holding possession and winding the clock down was pretty much an end in and of itself.

“For me, I would love to have empty net at end of season, then (have someone else) score a goal you know? For me, that’s how my father teach me and how my whole coaches when I grown up teach me. You better to give your partner empty netter than you score it. It’s in my heart.”

So, Evgeny Evgenyevich…if you’re always giving the goal to your teammates, who’s taking the shots?

Ovechkin isn’t like that

Kristi St. Allain of St. Thomas University wrote a dissertation on why people say this. It was adapted and accepted for publication by the Sociology of Sport Journal in 2016, it’s 43 pages, and it’s worth a read.  

There’s a more technical take, which I think is also interesting: yes, he is like that.

Ovechkin is a monster. He’ll be once in the world, not once in a lifetime. Comparing any Russian player to him is pretty pointless, but comparing him to them is actually useful, because we can see that Ovechkin plays a specific role in Russian hockey.

Hockey was at its lowest low in Russia in the ‘90s, after the dissolution of the Soviet national team. Everyone had gotten used to Soviet hockey, and that was over. The new nation was wondering what the new Russian hockey was going to be, and it mostly seemed like it sucked.

And then they got...these two.

The Aleksandrs revolutionized Russian hockey by building a new role for themselves: the specialized sharpshooter.

I’m not saying there weren’t skilled shooters before them in the Soviet system, but those teams made plays in a more balanced way, effective divvying up shot attempts between three fairly equal forwards.

Two years older than Ovechkin, Semin was the first player to prove what that shot could do. In 2008 he led Russia to the first World Championship gold since 1993, against Canada in Quebec City, ending over a decade of low self-esteem in a moment of transcendently wicked awesomeness to a generation who grew up after but still very much under the weight of the Soviet Union.

Arguably, he’s the one who told us all what Russian hockey was going to be. 

Sasha and Sasha both stood out from their teammates for their spectacular aim and strength. Semin’s wrist-shot was described “arguably the most powerful in the game” during his years in the NHL. (And that’s from SB Nation, not just me and Kuznetsov.)

Instead of skating and passing until they happened to be in position for a particular shot, both Semin and Ovechkin would deliberately take up a shooting position, and their linemates  would pass between themselves, dragging the opposition around until they could send the puck to the Sasha for a shot.

Taking those shots isn’t selfish: it’s a new way of using their unique skill to play for their teammates. 

At this point in his career, we often get to see Ovi skate straight to his office and crouch there in active waiting. He’ll slide a little up and down in search of openings as the other team chase his center and right winger: “he’s the best in the world at adjusting to passes.”

Semin would circle. He hovered over the blue line like some large and carnivorous bird, allowing him to either swoop in for a shot, or swing and pass back and forth with his center to set up his opposite winger. He could essentially shoot like a second Ovechkin or partner with Nick Backstrom to hold possession.

We can succeed

There’s something heart-wrenching to me about that quote from Kuznetsov. Because many Russian players don’t succeed in the NHL; they don’t fit in the spaces allowed for them in the Canadian conception of hockey. That should hardly count as a failing: like Kuznetsov said, Canadians don’t know how to play Soviet or Russian hockey. And they aren’t asked to.

Do you know how many Russian players are in the NHL right now?

It’s 39.

(Less if we set aside the goalies, which arguably we should here).  That’s barely more than one per franchise, and that shakes out to mean something pretty profound for players who have it in their hearts to try to match what their teammates are doing, but who by their late teens and twenties simply can’t reshape the entire way they play the game.

Semin is a spectacular player in context. So is Ovechkin. For most of his career Ovi’s context was Semin, and Ovi is quite honest about that.

Semin was the best possession player on the Washington Capitals in 2012, while also seeing the highest percentage of scoring chances. He was a 40+ goal scorer while being someone else’s main man for assists. 

I’m going to come back and to talk through his actual story in order, but this is the first thing to keep in mind: 

All that circling didn’t look good. When he looked for passes, waited for scoring chances, played high-scoring but still play-making Russian hockey, he looked lazy.

[wolvesdevour]

From Russia With Love

[Title is taken from one of the protest signs I saw today.] There’s a post I’ve been thinking on writing for awhile, and it’s a mix-bag of things, which makes it even harder for me to write. Also, by this necessity, it is very long. Sorry :/ I want to talk a little on American-Russian relations, and not simply on a White House-Kremlin scale, but on a citizen-to-citizen scale.

I think I first should say why Russians. My great grandparents moved to the USA during the first Russian revolution. They were nobility and fled, rather than be killed. They were hands the Tsarina. Upon reaching American shores, they quickly, purposefully destroyed their family culture. It is difficult to really research it through family, because no one  wishes to talk much about it. This isn’t the first I’ve heard of this tactic. In order to appear “legitimately American,” sometimes people attempt to erase all traces of their immigrancy. This is very depressing to me. From what I understand, they were Prussian-Latvian, although they also lived in Russia, of course.  A second reason for why I am interested in this is because, from an early age, I realized that even if a country has a dictator in place, that does not mean the people are supportive of the dictator. My grandmother spent time in Germany during the 30s and she often spoke to me about it. She was a tourist and student to Germany, young, and not fully understanding the trouble brewing. She was often a dark and gothic individual, yet strangely positive and naive at the same time. I think she believed the human species better than fascism and Nazism. I like to think she’s right, in the end, and that we may at times enter these states, but that as a species, we are inherently fascist.  My grandmother’s friends were some of the first to go into the CCCP and take photos and report to Americans about their troubles--starvation, oppression, imprisonment. As a child, I’d leaf through these photos, but in college, I finally got more appreciation for what was happening to the Russian people at this time. Everyone I have known has said that they hate Russians. They hate Russians because of Soviet Communism and their desire to rule/control the world. They hate Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin. They call them thugs, thieves, and look down upon their women as mail order brides. They call them hackers and spies. They call them oppressors and criminals. These are not the people I saw in the photos; these are not the people I have met. I do not disbelieve that there are bad Russians. There are bad Americans, too. Russia and the USA are brothers. Since our time in WWII, we have been strange brothers. We gave them aid, and Stalin used that aid to fund his gulags--to oppress his own people. They helped us win the war against fascism. We have always been both at odds and at help to each other, but we’re a brothership with a rocky relationship. I think that is Stalin’s work most of all. I do not think the Russian people should have reason to hate us--the American people; we do not have reason to hate them--the Russian people.  Russia, similar to the USA, has made bad actions. We have both warred and oppressed people. This is difficult to hear about one’s own country. This isn’t unusual for a country--I can think of many others who have harmed others that seek to deny their harm. It is particularly difficult for a people to know that their country did terrible things under the peoples’ noses. I went to a film event set by the Ukrainian embassy about the Crimean Tatars. There was a time when Crimea was occupied by the Nazis, to which  they could do nothing. However, they had fighter plane pilots who continued to fight for the Russian side against the Nazis. They Nazis left, then the Russians moved in. The CCCP then decided that the Crimean Tatars were all Nazis because they were occupied. So, they shoved them in cattle cars and sent them on the railroad. Many died in transit, packed shoulder to shoulder, unable to sit or lie down, with no food or water. They traveled through Moscow. No one knew. The trains were marked with symbols of cows. People did not think their government was deporting and imprisoning people like this. There were Russians who spoke against Stalin, but they often found themselves in gulags, killed, or sent abroad. I have friends whose family were ostracized to Kazakhstan until they eventually fled to the USA. Many poets or writers dreamed of winning clemency to flee to the USA. Some, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, spent time in the gulags. People died in those camps. Some prison camps formed prison camps. I cannot remember the name of the city at this time, so I apologize, but there is one prison camp that effectively became a prison city. It had its own prison. It had children and women. Life was prison. Poets wrote of their pain on rolling paper--used for making cigarettes--and burned them away. They memorized stories, unable to write them down, for manuscripts do not burn* and they hoped for a time when they could speak freely again. But what about modern times, right? That is all history? The first that I notice from people is that they say every modern Russian they have met has been overbearingly in love with their home country. Russians are in love with Russia. Which puts a lot of Americans off. After all, we are taught that Russia is the Soviet Union. That Russia is the spy-thug enemy. So we see that they are proud of being bad. Most Russians I have met? They love their country because they are Russian. Americans love their country because we are American. It is a very similar love.  From childhood, we are told to love our country. I think there is a line between love of country and nationalism--the bad, obsessive and oppressive love. Many may love their land, their people, their culture--all of which is what makes up a country--and there are others who think we must hurt and destroy others with that love, to be blinded in their love and see no faults or what harm their country is doing. We can love our land, people, and culture. As Americans, we can love it. As Russians, I think they can love theirs too. Indeed, Russians should love their land, their people, their culture.  Why should they, despite the issues their country has caused, should love their country? I do not think Russians should love their for the harm their politicians, the Kremlin, or their country--as a political entity--have caused. Do not ignore the harm, but do love for the good. There are lessons that the German people learned that I think we Russians and Americas both need to learn.** Post-Nazi Germany, they felt great shame and despair for the actions that they committed. And yes, they should feel shame for that. People within their country committed such great crimes against each other, against the world. For much time post-WWII, Germans felt shame and self-hatred. Yet, there was a time when the Germans were facing a major football/soccer cup win. My German professor gave a lesson on this, because in part, it takes a little understanding. The people were effectively afraid to be proud. The German people were scared to love themselves.  Because loving themselves too much led to the Nazi Party. After all, that’s what Nazism was. It was nationalist pride. It’s literally there in the title. Germans were scared because if they started to be proud, to say “YES! We are German! We won! We are amazing!”, they would instead be saying “YES! We are German! We are Nazi! We are proud of our atrocities and terrible past!” But this was also something the Germans needed. They needed to realize that there was good about Germany, too. There was bad, but there is always good as well.  This is what nationalism runs on, however. Germany turned to the Nazi Party largely due to great depression as a nation. They had lost their war. They were poor and in great debt. Their leader had promised to return their people to greatness and failed. Some of their economic oppression had been long term, other parts short term. There were good things happening in Germany. Except people couldn’t see it. They were unhappy and a man began to promise them a new way. He promised them to make them great again. He promised and was not part of the old guard--he was not nobility. He was from poverty, too. He was a common person. He could help them, and he knew there were people to blame. They were the wrong people, but this made the Germans feel better. It made them feel like they could do something. And they did. The wrong things, of course. Although some had their limits, and then they became the enemy, too.  So what I am saying is that even if there are bad things that a country is doing, the people are not bad. I think our generation should understand this. After all, do I enjoy the wars in the Middle East? Do I enjoy how we handled Syria? How we’ve handled our relations with African countries? Because we have also helped cause economic troubles there, too. This is the same with South American countries and Latin American countries. I hate how we have treated the First Nations and native peoples.  But I think we have done good as well.  This is the same as our brother, Russia. There is great depression there, too. And there is a feeling that no one cares about them. I used to talk to the vendors in D.C. about this, strangely enough. Those little flag pin sellers? In the metro stations? Many I met were Russian. I would talk to them, in my mangled awkward Russian, and they would typically say “Alright, let’s speak in English,” because my Russian was very crappy, but I think they were excited, too, to speak in English and practice it. They always would say “YOU are learning Russian? YOU have interest in Russia? You must be crazy. Why would anyone care about us?” 

When I spent time at the Russian embassy film events, I got a similar reaction--despite there being a lot of American students, just like me, most of the waiters, bartenders, and general staff assumed that the only people to have an interest in Russian films and culture were Russian.

This probably only fueled me to care more. It is not pity that I care for Russia, or want others to understand why we shouldn’t villainize the Russian people. It comes from sympathy. I have always hated myself, after all, and eventually learned that maybe, even if I hated parts of myself, I should recognize and love the good parts, too. This is why I do not support loving the good parts of Russia despite being transgender, bi/pan, queer, and a feminist, but because of it. There are Russians who are transgender. There are Russians who are LGBTQIA+. There are Russians who feminists. There are Russians who are good people. Being Russian doesn’t make you a bad person. Being a bad person makes you bad.   As our country heads into its Trump presidency, I think we need to keep this in mind, too. We are who we make it to be. I think there will be a lot of fight, but no matter how depressed we get, we need to remember that there are good parts to our country, but there are and will be many bad parts. We need to understand and talk about those bad parts. We need to make sure that those bad parts do not lead us to make further terrible decisions.  I think, as an American, our best bet isn’t to further ostracize ourselves from the Russian citizens. From citizen-to-citizen, we have tried a cold war. I believe this only made everything worse. From citizen-to-citizen, I think if we help each other, learn about each other, we can better both our countries.  Also, there are Russian immigrants as well as Russian students and tourists to the USA. I’d rather make them feel welcome than to continue villainizing them and their culture. Are there people who come here and do stupid, rude things? Eh, yes. I think this is a human condition, not a country-specific one. We should not be shy about telling them or talking to them about this, although perhaps patient or learn how to delegate--that is literally the reason why we have ambassadors, but even as citizens, I think we should learn about other cultures, considering that we’re a country of immigrants. Of course, we also go to other places and do stupid, rude, terrible things, so we need to check ourselves, too. This isn’t a new idea. This is seen in stories--Star Trek, Man From UNCLE. The more we work together, the better we are. I could probably write a lot of posts about stories where Americans and Russians work against each other and why that is terrible when they could have done so much better by working with each other--such as Iron Man 2--and about movies where Americans and Russians work together and why that is awesome, but that’s another post. You can love your culture, your land, your country and not be a fascist.  ________________ *This is a Mikhail Bulgakov reference. He was strangely beloved by Joseph Stalin. Bulgakov despised him and constantly applied to leave the CCCP. He was never granted this. The police had raided his home and kept record of his work. “Manuscripts do not burn” is a quote from The Master and Margarita and is a bit of a warning--there is nothing you can do that isn’t noticed or recorded. **There are other countries that I am not mentioning that I think could also learn this lesson, but that’s a different day, a different post.

#nwn talks #personal #politics #american politics #russian politics #long post