April 15, 2024

From the Club to Ukraine?


From the Club to Ukraine?
People dancing at a party under purple lights. Vyacheslav Argenberg, Wikimedia Commons.

Russian nightlife – from hookah lounges to karaoke venues to bars and clubs – made headlines on April 12 after a deputy in the State Council proposed mobilizing those who attend clubs on Fridays to the frontline in Ukraine.

State Council member Eduard Sharafiev, who represents Tatarstan, declared himself a party pooper after announcing on his Telegram account, "I proposed a one-day mobilization! It must be done across the country on Fridays in all nightclubs." Sharafiev added that those with medical exemptions found inside a club should also be drafted, because "their health status allows them to visit a club" — the logic being that, if you can dance, you can fight.

Rumors are swirling around a possible mass draft. In late March, reports emerged that the Kremlin was planning to call up 300,000 reservists after the elections were over. Pro-government blogger Vladimir Romanov posted on Telegram that more people would be mobilized in May, but government authorities quickly denied his claims.

Sharafiev decided to call for this unusual draft method to address Russia's mobilization crisis. According to the Tatarstan State Council member, commanders in the army are holding back from mass enlistments due to labor shortages in certain sectors of the economy.

In his post, Sharafiev recognized that his proposal was unlikely to be accepted. However, the deputy added, "On the other hand, why not? After all, those people jumping around at the nightclubs are pretending nothing is happening. So, we will open their eyes to what is happening!"

Sharafiev traveled to the frontline in Ukraine in the fall of 2022 and April 2023. His visits inspired him to propose sending dance groups and artists to combat zones. The deputy has also justified his absences from the State Council's meetings as "military missions." 7x7 Gorizontalnaya Rossiya points out that politicians often go to Ukraine to strengthen their political positions, wait out a scandal, or avoid prison.

You Might Also Like

Migrant Flow Slows to Trickle
  • February 25, 2024

Migrant Flow Slows to Trickle

Immigration into Russia from Central Asian countries has slowed since the start of Russia's War on Ukraine.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

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.
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

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.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Marooned in Moscow

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.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.

About Us

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.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955