Thrown Out, Thrown Back

Natalia Vodianova, the supermodel and philanthropist, has taken Russia’s discussion of disabilities to a new level after her younger sister, Oksana, who has autism and cerebral palsy, was seriously mistreated at a cafe in Nizhny Novgorod.

“Suddenly the owner of the cafe came and rudely demanded [of Oksana’s caretaker]: ‘Go away, you are scaring away our clients. Go and make your child healthy and then come out into public,’” Vodianova said, describing the event.

The rights of people with disabilities have always been a low priority in Russia, where most public spaces fail to provide wheelchair access and where discrimination is common. But the involvement of a celebrity immediately propelled the discussion onto national television. Overzealous investigators launched a criminal probe against the cafe, but the family asked that the case be closed, instead inviting all cafe employees to have tea at the local center for special needs children run by Vodianova’s Naked Heart foundation.

In a separate scandal, a public school eighth-grade textbook has been pulled from the market because of an offensive passage about people with disabilities:

“Let’s think about this. Imagine a person who suffers from a serious psychological illness from an early age. He is not able to study, work, create a family, or do anything that contributes to the spiritual makeup of a person… in other words, this person is not a person (он не является личностью).”

After a public uproar (which included accusations of ‘fascism’), the publisher, Drofa, said “the textbook will be sent for an additional evaluation. The publisher is ready to pull the textbook and provide schools with a different textbook if it does not get experts’ approval… We pay close attention to public opinion.”

thrown back

In September, the Russian internet was awash with pictures from the 1990s, as users partook in an extended throwback-Thursday “flashmob,” sharing via Facebook and Vkontakte old pictures from the 1990s. The fashions and the poverty of the era were front and center as thousands posted photographs – often mobile phone snapshots of ageing prints. Many were posted by actors, musicians, and politicians.

The idea originated with the organizers of the festival “The Island of the 1990s,” held in Moscow’s Muzeon Park and featured lectures on the era’s music and media, concerts, a cutout of Boris Yeltsin for photo ops, and fashion shows involving lots of sequins, sweat pants and the period’s mafia attire – the малиновый пиджак (crimson jacket).

The event stirred up a political tempest in the capital’s samovar, with some accusing the festival curators of propaganda, of whitewashing an era that was rife in crime and turmoil. State TV channels accused “liberals” of being bought and paid for by sponsors, and of wanting to bring back the chaos of the bygone era.

“So what if it is a source of nostalgia for many. Why not? Are we not allowed to be nostalgic for the 1990s, but only for some mythical Soviet Union?”

Publisher Irina Prokhorova (Ekho Moskvy radio)

“The whole flashmob with 1990s pictures on social networks and the festival itself… should be looked at alongside the reaction to it, which can best be described with a quote from Mark Twain,* ‘The buzzard-roost astonished!’ …What it reveals is this: the concept of the 1990s as ‘crazy’ is a central bulwark of the regime, and any praise for that era is seen as a protest.”

Journalist Anna Narinskaya (Meduza)

“The goal is clear: to play on people’s nostalgia and to go back in time. Go back to everything. Destruction, collapse, war, hunger… The 1990s were indeed dark, because there was no money for lighting. Only every second street lamp was working, and only just barely.”

Komsomolskaya Pravda columnist Ulyana Skobeyda, known for her aggressively conservative views

“Idealizing the 1990s: What are the organizers of the Muzeon exhibition trying to achieve?”

Headline on an evening program
on the state channel Rossiya

“Everybody remembers this recent past from the point of view of somebody who either found a boot or lost one. But back then we all walked around with just one boot.”

Writer Lev Rubinstein (BBC Russian)

* From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.