August 15, 2019

A Legal Message in a Bottle


A Legal Message in a Bottle
Cheers to strange connections between America and Russia, the past and the present! Tyler Ivanoff / Facebook

Quote of the Week

“And in demonstrations, in gatherings,
Your rights are guaranteed.
And to participate in meetings
You are always free.”

– A version of the Russian Constitution recently written in verse for children. 

Protests for free and fair elections continue, and many people have been arrested and injured over the past few weeks in Moscow. Read about the 17-year-old girl who became the symbol of the protests by reading the Russian Constitution to policemen, and take a look at one artist’s take on the protests. 

 

Save our ship, our heads, and our vegetables!

1. The “heartfelt” feelings of Soviet sailors had been bottled up for exactly fifty years, until an American from Alaska found their message in a bottle. The writers were part of the Far Eastern Shipping Company based in Vladivostok, and asked whoever found the message to get in touch with the whole crew. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the writers probably thought that ship had sailed and the bottle was forever lost at the sea. As it turns out, however, their wishes for good health, long life, and happy sailing were at last fatefully received by a citizen of the Soviet Union’s arch enemy, who happened to have studied enough Russian to recognize Cyrillic and recite a bit of Russian poetry to his curious children. 

2. Putin has been getting hell for lacking a helmet at a biker show organized by the motorcycle club the Night Wolves. A Russian lawyer and a Crimean Oblast Council deputy complained about the issue on Facebook, and the latter sent a formal letter to the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office, requesting that the issue be investigated and Putin be fined $15. This isn’t the first time Putin has neglected his safety on a moving vehicle, ignoring seat belts and life jackets. Given that this happened against the backdrop of much bigger issues, like the simultaneous protests in Moscow, and the whole Crimea thing, something tells me Putin will ride out this moto-scandal just fine.

Putin on a motorcycle without a helmet
The motor-cycle of unsafety continues. | Kremlin.ru

3. Help for the elderly is growing in Yekaterinburg. A businessman started selling the food products grown by pensioners on special shelves in his food store, which will help keep them from having to sit outside in the heat and cold, trying to earn some extra money. He has previously used the store, appropriately called Zhiznmart (“Lifemart”), for other good deeds, such as selling expired food products and leftover food to the hungry. 

Pensioner food products in Russia
Producing opportunities for pensioners, one jar of jam at a time! | Ivan Zaichenko / Facebook

 

In Odder News

  • The latest monument to Pushkin will be erected in the capital of Ethiopia, the home of the poet’s great-grandfather. 
  • A man in a town in Vladimir Oblast didn’t just want to go to the bathroom; he wanted the bathroom itself, and proceeded to steal a toilet seat from a cafe. 
  • A whale seems to wave hello to some bears, and a Russian caught it on camera.

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

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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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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.

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This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.

 
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Russian Rules
November 16, 2011

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From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.

The Latchkey Murders
July 01, 2015

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...

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June 01, 2016

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Murder at the Dacha

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At the Circus
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