Конвейер работает непрерывно, и не суть важно, кто ты – чиновник, домохозяйка, продавщица, журналист, ученый. Подойдет любой, кто хоть каким-то образом контактировал с иностранцем. Любым.
“The conveyor belt never stops, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a government official, a homemaker, shop attendant, journalist or scientist. Anybody who has had contact with a foreigner in any way will do.”
The Russian government has escalated its campaign against dissent, placing investigative journalists on a list of “foreign agents” and effectively banning Proekt, an investigative outlet that has, in recent years, authored some of the hardest-hitting reports, including on members of Putin’s inner circle.
The “foreign agent” designation, when affixed to individuals, means that any of that person’s communication online has to be prefaced by an all-caps, 24-word disclaimer, even if that person is just inquiring about the price of an item of clothing they want to purchase through Instagram. Over two dozen journalists have been thus branded since 2017 under a law that designates as a “foreign agent” anyone who receives money from abroad, for example, in the form of a salary, and participates in disseminating “foreign agent” media (media which is funded from abroad). The move was explained as a response to the US requirement that the Russian state channel RT register as a foreign agent with the US Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
For Proekt, the government went even further, placing it on the register of “undesirable” organizations that undermine the Russian state. “Undesirables” are not only banned from activities in Russia; anyone collaborating with them is also deemed liable and criminally prosecuted. Collaboration however is a vague concept that may even include reposting something on social media. Effectively, the law can be used selectively against any entity, although the list of “undesirables” has so far contained mostly foundations supporting civil society and political opposition. Proekt is the first media outlet to be targeted.
Russian film director Klim Shipenko, whose film Serf (Холоп) last year grossed more than any Russian film in history, is on track to make a feature film in space. Shipenko and the actress Yulia Peresild will be blasting off to the International Space Station in October after months of training, with Shipenko shedding 15 kilograms (33 pounds) for the flight.
The film is called The Call (Вызов), but for the moment not much else is known about it, only that some 40 minutes of shooting time is planned at the space station. In fact, it is not clear how the shooting will take place, technically-speaking, as only Shipenko and Peresild are confirmed to be boarding the Soyuz spacecraft, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov. Actress Alyona Mordovina and cameraman Alexei Dudin are in the backup crew.
Shipenko already made one successful film about space, the 2017 critically-acclaimed Salyut-7, based on real events surrounding a Soviet orbital station that lost power. Shipenko is therefore competing with US director Doug Liman for the “prize” of making the first feature film in orbit. Liman is planning a similar feat this year with Tom Cruise and the help of NASA.
Russia has drawn both ire and ridicule after President Vladimir Putin signed a law declaring that only Russian-made champagne can be sold in Russia as “champagne,” while all imported varieties (including from Champagne, France) would have to bear the name “sparkling wine.”
The move was initially met with a strong response by drinks giant Moet Hennessy, which controls the legendary brands Dom Perignon and Veuve Clicquot. It first threatened to suspend all exports to Russia, only to flip-flop a few days later, promising to attach new labels to its bottles.
Champagne in Russia predates the Russian revolution (see Russian Life Sep/Oct 2008). Russian Prince Lev Golitsyn launched production in Crimea at the end of the nineteenth century, and many of that region’s historic vineyards are now owned by winemaker Massandra, formerly a state-owned Ukrainian company that was swiftly privatized after the peninsula was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
In the Soviet era, the ubiquitous fizzy was Sovetskoye Shampanskoye: sweet, foamy and churned out on a massive scale using an industrial method developed in the 1920s.
French champagne makers have tried to protect the designation “champagne” worldwide, arguing that only champagne made of grapes from the Champagne region has the right to bear it.
Gymnastics phenom Oksana Chusovitina has announced her retirement at 46 after competing in her Eighth Olympic Games.
Chuso, as the athlete is affectionately called in the gymnastics community, was mostly competing against women younger than her son, and tearfully made a heart symbol with her hands after her last performance in Tokyo.
Chusovitina started her international sports career as a member of the Soviet team and competed in the Olympics for her home country of Uzbekistan as part of the transitional Unified Team in 1992. She has also competed for Germany, where she lived for several years while her son Alisher was being treated for leukemia. Her vaulting skills have led many different elements of the sport to be named after her.
She retires with two Olympic medals and eleven World Championship medals. Though she has previously announced her retirement only to return to competition, this time it seems for real. She subsequently announced her intent to run for a seat on the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission.
По данным Москвы, трансляция в интернет в течение трех суток обошлась бы столице почти в миллиард рублей! Представьте только: миллиард — для удовлетворения простого любопытства «диванных наблюдателей»... Готовы ли избиратели… пустить такие средства на виртуальный ветер?»
“In Moscow, three days of streaming [the elections] over the internet would cost the capital almost a billion rubles! Just think, a billion, only to indulge the curiosity of ‘couch observers’... Are voters ready to throw these funds to the virtual wind?” (RBC)
Moscow has unveiled its latest modern art venue, GES-2. Opened on the site of a decommissioned electric station on the Moscow River, it is based on a plan by acclaimed Italian architect Renzo Piano.
The massive building will house galleries, a library, restaurants, a stage, and various artists’ workshops. Now painted bright white with blue chimneys, the building is elegant and reminiscent of nineteenth-century train stations, like Kiev Train Station. A newly-planted birch grove will be open to the public. The project is part of V-A-C Foundation and is bankrolled by Leonid Mikhelson. It will host its first events in September.
A revamped WWII museum dedicated to the female partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya has been shortlisted for one of the world’s most prestigious architecture prizes. The museum, now renamed the “Zoya Museum,” is located in Petrishchevo, a village not far from Moscow. It was created in the 1950s to commemorate Kosmodemyanskaya, a teenager who volunteered to be sent behind Nazi lines as a saboteur. Tasked with burning down Petrishchevo, where German troops were stationed, she was captured in the process, tortured, and executed. In the process, she became a folk hero in Soviet propaganda campaigns, sometimes referred to as the “Russian Joan of Arc.”
After occupying a simple village house for decades, last year the museum reopened in a completely new building. White, streamlined, and combining elements of Greek temples and Holocaust memorials, the building immediately became a draw for Instagrammers, despite the museum’s somber content. Now it has been shortlisted for this year’s World Architecture Festival, in the Culture category. The museum, meanwhile, plans to dedicate its exhibits to women more generally, as well as the quest for a world without war.
Open Tuesday-Sunday, Admission R500 , mk-zoya.ru
The number of divorces in Russia this year. This is the highest number in the last seven years and 44% more than one year ago. Interestingly, the biggest increases were registered in the Northern Caucasus, in the traditionally conservative republics of Ingushetia (a 350% increase), Chechnya (270% increase), and Dagestan (210% increase). In several regions, the number of divorces surpassed that of marriages, including Leningrad Oblast (by 31.2%), Kalmykia (by 22.9%), Saratov oblast (20.3%) and others. finexpertiza.ru
Palekh, a small town in Ivanovo Province, has historically been known for its intricately painted lacquer boxes featuring miniature scenes from folk tales. Now it is on its way to becoming a new tourist destination boasting a vibrant cultural scene fueled by the many artists who call it home.
While its iconography and folk art traditions, as well as a handful of museums, have always made it a stopover destination for those travelling in the region, Palekh now aspires to be more than that. Its main square was recently revamped by the Moscow-based urban planning bureau Strelka. Transportation from Moscow has also become less intimidating after the launch of express trains.
Some 15 percent of Palekh’s population is reportedly employed in artistic professions. And art is a so-called “town forming enterprise,” just as a factory would have been in the Soviet past. The town’s artist cooperatives last year used a regional government grant to host a festival called Russian Narnia, and this year they opened a brand new cultural center to host concerts and workshops. At press time, another festival bringing together artists, actors, and musicians was set for August. Moscow-based media took notice. The Art Newspaper called the cultural renaissance “the Palekh Anomaly” and Republic, a popular news and commentary website, made it a flagship story in its new rubric “Not the Capital” (Нестолицы).
«У нас своих вакцин хватает.” “We’ve got enough of our own vaccines.”
Russian rock musician, actor and beloved eccentric Pyotr Mamonov passed away at the age of 70. A cultural icon since the 1980s, Mamonov was brought up in central Moscow and worked random jobs after a stint in Moscow’s Polygraphic Institute.
He only became a part of the underground music scene due to his friendship with music critic Artyom Troitsky. Eventually, he formed the band Zvuki Mu with childhood friend Alexander Lipnitsky. (Lipnitsky, 68, died earlier this year, having fallen through the ice while crossing a lake on skis). The group joined Akvarium, Kino, and other underground collectives in being inspired by “forbidden” music smuggled in from the West. Zvuki Mu was unlike any other group in the country, famous for absurdist lyrics and Mamonov’s phenomenal showmanship. In due time, this got the group noticed abroad, and the influential producer Brian Eno collaborated on some of their albums.
While Zvuki Mu eventually fell apart, Mamonov also began acting in films, including three directed by Pavel Lungin: the mega-hit Taxi-Blues, the highly successful religious drama The Island, and Tsar, in which he played Ivan the Terrible.
In recent years, Mamonov lived in a small village, having retreated into Orthodox Christianity, though he continued to perform on stage.
Vladimir Menshov, 81, an acclaimed actor and director known for his Oscar-winning film, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, has passed away. Somewhat of a dark horse at the 1981 Academy Awards, Menshov triumphed over films by Francois Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa with his melodrama about three Soviet women’s lives, careers and romantic entanglements. The movie was a huge hit with Soviet audiences, seen by 90 million people when it first came out. His next movie, Love and Doves, was also a love story and fan favorite.
Though he didn’t make movies in the current century, Menshov worked as an actor and had been an influential cultural figure, renowned for his dramatic refusal to hand an award to the 2006 WWII film Bastards, throwing the envelope on the floor of the stage at the MTV movie awards ceremony and calling the movie “shameful.” As the head of Russia’s Oscars Committee, he also opposed the highly influential filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov by refusing to back his film, Burnt by the Sun 2, an unquestionable flop, as Russia’s foreign film Oscar contender.
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