Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, currently a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) champion in the lightweight category, is set to fight MMA star Conor McGreg~or (Ireland) in October, in what could be the biggest event in history of mixed martial arts, following public spats and taunts between the two fighters.
Nurmagomedov hails from a mountain village in Dagestan, and is the first Russian citizen – and the first Muslim – to hold a UFC title. The 29-year-old was initially trained by his father, a coach in the Russian martial art of sambo. In April, an undefeated Nurmagomedov got the UFC title after it was stripped from McGregor due to the Irishman’s inactivity.
Alexander Golovin, newly famous for one of the most beautiful goals of the 2018 World Cup, departed the CSKA football club to join the Monaco squad. Formerly mentioned as a potential transfer to Chelsea (owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich), the 22-year-old midfielder was snapped up by a club that competes in French football’s top tier, which offered the young Russian more favorable terms.
At €30 million, the contract set a record for Russian soccer (football). Golovin hails from Kemerovo Oblast, where his coal miner father introduced him to football when he was just six. His contract with Monaco is for five years.
Russia’s latest high-profile investigation into remains believed to be those of the Romanov family, assassinated by the Bolsheviks in 1918, has confirmed that the remains do indeed belong to the royal family. Seven out of 11 bodily remains have been identified as the Russian emperor, his wife and their five children (the other bodies belong to the family’s servants). The Russian Orthodox Church however is still reluctant to recognize the results.
As the controversy rages on, The Romanoffs, a new television series that comes out this fall, will focus on the lives of people around the world who believe they are Russian royal family descendants. The series is being produced in the US by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. So far the (problematic) teaser for the series (which debuts October 12 on Amazon Prime) reveals that the main roles will be played by Aaron Eckhart, Amanda Peet, and Diane Lane, among others.
bit.ly/rl1809-romanoffs
A new private museum is opening in Moscow to showcase part of businessman David Yakobashvili’s private collection of antique musical instruments and curiosities. The museum, called Sobranie (Collection), will be located at the intersection of Yauzsky Boulevard and Solyanka Street in the city’s Kitai-Gorod neighborhood. At press time, the museum was finishing its exhibits and promised to open in the fall.
Yakobashvili, who founded Russia’s giant food manufacturer JSC Wimm-Bill-Dann, has amassed some 20,000 mechanical and wind-up musical instruments, including pipe organs, automaton dolls, and intricate musical boxes. The museum will exhibit the most interesting items and allow visitors to listen to audio recordings of historic instruments from its archive.
mus-col.com
Steven Seagal, the action movie star skilled in Japanese martial arts who supports Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been officially named by Moscow as a special representative for humanitarian relations with the United States.
Seagal has been a Russian citizen since 2016 and is often a guest, clad in his signature silk robes, at various events, from festivals to Putin’s inauguration. Plagued by accusations of rape and sexual harassment in the US, Seagal will “assist continuing development of US-Russian relations in the humanitarian sphere, including culture, art, youth exchanges, etc,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
After a delay of many years, the Russian government has finally pushed through a long-anticipated reform raising the retirement age. It will increase by five years for men (from 60 to 65) and eight years for women (from 55 to 63), and will be phased in over the next few years.
To bury this controversial news and avoid a public backlash, the announcement was made during the euphoria of the opening game of the World Cup between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Several demonstrations were subsequently held to protest the hike, as incomes and quality of life remain considerably below those of Europe for most Russians, and many pensioners must continue working to supplement their pensions (the average Russian pension is about R14,000, or approximately $220, per month).
Pollsters registered slumping ratings for the ruling party, and even Vladimir Putin himself saw his Teflon 80%+ popularity slip to 67% in July (according to Levada Center), the lowest level it has been since early 2014. By press time, a petition addressed to the president asking that the reform be stopped had gathered nearly three million signatures.
Compounding the problem of small pensions is the fact that Russians over 50, especially women, are much less likely to find a job, and, facing a disproportionately larger hike of eight years, women over 55 are likely to see their economic well-being suffer.
Russians tend to lower their age on resumes because employers simply don’t call in older candidates for interviews, according to recruiting companies. The controversial reform has also split the ruling United Russia party and led some politicians to raise the possibility of a national referendum on the subject.
Кому верить, а кому не верить и можно ли вообще верить? Никому нельзя верить.
“Who can you believe and who can’t you believe, and can anyone believe anything at all? You can’t believe anyone. Why would you think that President Trump trusts me and that I fully trust him? He is looking out for US interests and I am looking out for the interests of the Russian Federation.”
“I have been a professor for almost three decades. Almost all my research has been about Russia. I cannot do research in Russia anymore… I am on the sanctions list right now, and even if I’m lifted from the sanctions list, I can never go to Russia, so my academic career, writing and doing research… is over."
Бьют жестко дубинками, кулаками, ногами, заставляют сидеть на корточках по 4-8 часов вне зависимости от возраста и состояния здоровья. “All these years all the men and even women in Jail No. 2 in Rybinsk, known as Sofiyka, have been victims of torture and beatings. They are beaten with batons, fists, feet; they are made to sit in a crouching position for 4-8 hours, regardless of their age and health.” Former Yaroslavl Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov, an oppositionist now in prison on charges of graft. (Novaya Gazeta)
Бьют жестко дубинками, кулаками, ногами, заставляют сидеть на корточках по 4-8 часов вне зависимости от возраста и состояния здоровья.
“All these years all the men and even women in Jail No. 2 in Rybinsk, known as Sofiyka, have been victims of torture and beatings. They are beaten with batons, fists, feet; they are made to sit in a crouching position for 4-8 hours, regardless of their age and health.”
Владимир Владимирович [Путин] никогда не даст приказ стрелять по людям.... Стрелять по врагам — да, но мы же внутри одного государства находимся.
“I would like to say that Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] would never give the order to shoot at people… There cannot be such an order… What does that mean, to shoot into a crowd? To shoot at enemies, yes, but we are all in one country.”
Человек, который дольше находится в строю, он, как правило, по своему биологическому возрасту моложе тех, кто рано оставляет профессиональную деятельность.
“A person who is professionally active for longer is, as a rule, younger biologically speaking than those who finish their careers earlier.”
Kira Muratova, director of absurdist and original films since the 1960s – many of which were not released until the perestroika period, due to Soviet-era censorship – has died at the age of 83.
Muratova is best known internationally for the film Asthenic Syndrome (Астенический синдром), about a school teacher who is under so much stress from daily life and work that he develops the named syndrome and starts constantly falling asleep, eventually ending up in a mental asylum.
Muratova was born in Bessarabia, in what is today the Moldovan town of Soroki, to Communist political activist parents who served several jail sentences prior to the region’s annexation by the Soviet Union.
Muratova’s career mostly developed in Ukraine’s Odessa, where she worked for the local film studio. Her movies frequently tell stories of eccentric, downtrodden and downright criminal characters in bizarre circumstances. She announced after her 2012 film Eternal Homecoming that she had stopped making films.
Vladimir Voinovich, a writer and Soviet dissident who spent a decade in the West after being forced into exile, has died in Moscow at the age of 85.
The author is best known for his satirical novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, about a soldier in the Red Army. The book was printed in Paris in 1975 after years of samizdat circulation in the Soviet Union. Its publication in the West spelled the end of Voinovich’s Soviet writing career: he was expelled from the influential Writers’ Union and exiled to West Germany five years later.
Voinovich lived in Germany and the US until his return to Russia after his wife passed away in 2004. He continuously expressed politically oppositional views, and his dystopian novel Moscow 2042, published in 1986, was a searing takedown of communist privilege that some called a classic of the genre and others called prophetic of the coming Soviet collapse.
In 2000, he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his book Monumental Propaganda, a satire exploring how the vestiges of Stalinism continue to shape the Russian psyche to this day.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
