March 21, 2019

A Dog and a Muscovite Come In from the Cold


A Dog and a Muscovite Come In from the Cold
No guns, fast driving, or killing in this new video game. Ilya Mazo, Alexander Ignatov

Throwback Thursday

Today in 1839, the composer of Boris Godunov, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Night on Bald Mountain was born. Happy 180th birthday, Mussorgsky!

Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky. / Wikimedia Commons

It’s Snowing (Wholesome) Cat and Dog (Stories)

1. “It’s Winter”: the coolest new game on the block. Produced by Moscow-based poet Ilya Mazo, “It’s Winter” is an avant-garde video game where all you do is make tea and watch TV in a suburban Russian apartment. And while most English-speakers only know about the game, “It’s Winter” is just one part of a multimedia digital opera. Fans of the game’s timeless yet uniquely post-Soviet feel can read an ebook or watch “It’s Winter: The Movie,” an eight-minute film where ordinary people intone everyday phrases to the accompaniment of buzzing lights and humming washing machines. We think it’s weirdly creepy, but chillingly beautiful.

2. Stop kitty, go kitty. Since the last time we wrote about Zelenogradsk, the city’s love of cats hasn’t lessened. On the contrary, Zelenogradsk has installed a new traffic light eschewing the traditional walking man for images of cats. There is some controversy over whether it’s a good idea. Some believe it is “simply super!”, while others lament that at this rate, Zelenogradsk might as well be renamed “Zelenokots.” Regardless, kitties are here to stay. Even if the traffic light goes, the new sculpture of cats at Zelenogradsk’s entrance isn’t leaving anytime soon.

Cat stoplight
Go kitty go! / overhear_zlk

3. Siberians to the rescue…in America! Two dogs fell into an icy pond in Yonkers, New York, but luckily, a Siberian-raised swimmer just happened to see them. Russian immigrant Timofey Yuriev thought of calling an ambulance, but “I was looking at them and I realized […] the rescuer, they will come maybe in 10, 15 minutes,” he said. So summoning the wisdom of his grandfather, a hunter who had taught him to swim in icy waters, Yuriev took off his shirt and dove in to save them. His loyal golden retriever Kira followed him in, nudging along the two dogs until everyone made it back, safe and sound. The pond may have been icy, but this story has a heartwarming ending.

Yuriev, Kira, and one of the dogs brave the chilly swim back. / Melissa Kho

Blog Spotlight

Robert Blaisdell reviewed Friedrich Gorenstein’s Redemption, a novel about a young woman who betrays her mother and courts a Jewish lieutenant in a town recently liberated from the Nazis. Read his review here.

In Odder News

Slapping championship
Aftermath of the winning blow in Tuesday’s slapping contest. / NTV
  • If you slap someone hard enough, you might just win $500. In Krasnoyarsk, one man won 30,000 rubles ($465) in a slapping championship.
  • Being vegan in Russia can be tough, but it’s worth it. Just ask these five people.
  • In the Novosibirsk Zoo, a polar bear gave birth to twin cubs. The men in the slapping championship may want to learn from the bear mother’s tenderness.
Polar bear cubs

Twin polar bear cubs. / V. Shadrin

 

Quote of the Week

“There’s a point on our arms that you can push, and suddenly, your nervous system gets reactivated. My grandfather, a hunter from Siberia, taught me this.”

— Timofey Yuriev, explaining how he braved the cold of an icy pond to rescue two drowning dogs

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Some of our Books

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices
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Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka
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Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.

A Taste of Chekhov
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White Magic
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White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.

Steppe
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Steppe

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.

The Little Humpbacked Horse
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The Little Humpbacked Horse

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.

Moscow and Muscovites
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Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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