That's Liza with a '3'

Back in the (former) USSR

Where've I been? Busy month, including a recently completed trip back to the U.S. of A. to get my Russian visa renewed. Going back for the first time in 11 months was quite a trip... some observations:

America has gotten kinda pudgy...: Here in Moscow you often hear jokes about fat Americans, but it seems that the kernel of truth behind this really is the size of a watermelon. This is what happens when you insist on development that forces you drive everywhere.

... But it still smells nice: I noticed something alarming on the escalator descending into a Washington Metro station. It was that strange, chemical cleanser odor these hermetically sealed concrete tubes have at certain times of the day. It takes me back. If you've seen photos of Moscow's Metro, you know all about the chandeliers and the charming bas relief depictions of Soviet labor. You don't see that every tiny corner stinks like urine (despite, oddly, the overwhelming number of cops standing around at all hours looking menacing). Plus, every subway car once fully loaded (which is always, basically) smells like dirty laundry, B.O., and sweated-out booze.

America really is a Bennetton ad: I had a very long layover at JFK, and spent a little while at a bar in the terminal. Now, for many months in Moscow, it felt like I kept seeing the same person over and over again. So when I first got off the plane, it was quite disorienting to interact with the three people working behind the bar. Mostly it was because it had been a long time since I'd met service industry workers who smiled, chatted, and made eye contact. But also, I couldn't seem to figure out what ethnicity they were. I asked: one El Salvadoran immigrant, one African-American/Dominican, one Italian/Puerto Rican. I think this is awesome.

Crap, that economic crisis is for real: The only firsthand experience I have of the collapsing American economy is watching the dollar's horrendous slide in the past few weeks. But seeing all the "for sale" and "foreclosure" signs around was a real eye-opener. And gas prices!

People seem to have tuned in to politics for a sec: Since all my political news comes from the Internet, an on-demand medium, I was happy to see that everyone back home really seem to be paying attention. I saw it in the media mostly, and granted I was in Washington, but I actually overheard people having heated discussion on the street about Obama and Hillary. (And I have to say, it was an honor to have heard Obama's speech in Philadelphia about the "Wright Controversy." I'm amazed that an American politician in this day and age would take the chilling risk of speaking to the people like they are adults. I hope it doesn't backfire on him.)

Sour cream is still not a major food group: I ate a variety of foods and never once ingested smetana. I also ate seasonings other than dill, including some spices native to warmer climates that caused me no long-term damage. I am still alive.

Three cheers for "Plain Janes": Russian girls lately have developed a reputation for being more "glamorous" than their western peers, and frankly, they can keep it. Not once in the States did I see a woman wearing clothes with unnecessary buckles, frills, straps, corsets or precarious and dangerous heels. Many girls did not appear to have spent an hour on their hair that morning, nor that they applied their makeup with masonry tools. And despite such post-feminist carelessness, there were lots of pretty girls out there. Go fig.

Thank god there is still a place where no one knows what the "World Fashion Channel" is: In Moscow, every single public eating space will feature at least one -- usually more -- mounted plasma screen television tuned to something called the "World Fashion Channel." It is some kind of satellite channel that specializes in endless loops of models strutting on the catwalk, and interviews with various fashion "celebrities" in exotic European locations. I don't know what secret hypnotic power it holds over Russians when they wolf down their borshch and black bread in public, but I suspect it is really dangerous.

'Don't be afraid to turn the corner...'

All those copy-editors nervous about fitting "Zhirinovsky" in a banner headline can sleep easy. Dmitry Medvedev won, and which ever number the Central Election Commission settles on tomorrow is academic. We knew all along it would be in the low 60's -- well over the threshold to avoid a run-off, safely below Putin's 70 percent in 2004.**

As I noted earlier, there was no real excitement or interest in this election. Why bother? Elections here at best ratify previously made decisions; you don't choose anything. There's no uncertainty or drama. The only question was turnout, which if high enough could add some legitimacy to this particular episode in the development of "sovereign democracy."

But you'd still go see plays by Shakespeare or Chekhov even though you may know them by heart. So, how'd the most stage-managed transfer of power I've ever seen up close go off?

All day was like any other Sunday. It's been warmer here lately -- a little over 0 degrees. So it is the season of wet and melting already, when the four months-worth of cigarette-butts, beer cans, bottle caps, and gum wrappers that have hibernated in snow banks resurface. It is by no means spring, but isn't as clear and precise as winter either.

The television channels were set to begin election coverage at 9 p.m. We had on First Channel, and they had an elaborate count-down clock to tick off the seconds until the hour came. When it did, we saw numbers very similar to what the polls had predicted. Amazing.

There was really no point in paying close attention to the talking head chatter. We were busy feeding our daughter, giving her a bath, and checking in every now and then.

It seemed there was a concert near Red Square, where a who's-who of shitty pop singers were lip-synching along to songs about Russia "charging forward." Among them was Dima Kuldun, who my readers may remember for his performance at Eurovision 2007 -- for Belarus -- "working his magic." (That song, by the way, was written by Fillip Kirkorov, who last week was named a "People's Artist of Russia." That honored title now officially means nothing.)

A little later, I checked in with the 'Vesti' channel, a state-run all-news program. They actually ran a 25-minute long segment about how Russian celebrities voted. Not about how they voted, but just that they did actually vote (Remember, choices can be engineered, but turnout is much harder!). We saw director (and jackass) Nikita Mikhalkov, ballet legend Maya Plisetskaya, figure skater Evgeny Plushenko, and other stars of stage, screen, government stage, etc.. For each, they were shown walking into their polling place, where they'd produce their passport (just like ordinary people!) and then insert their completed ballot in the box. Then they would say something soulful about the importance of speaking out for RUssia's future.

It rapidly became difficult to pay attention anymore. We vaguely watched on First Channel more coverage of this concert. It was held in a strange location: down by the river, with the stage facing away from Red Square, and the crowd looked up to the stage with St. Basil's and the Spassky Tower behind it. It was immediately clear from the camera angles that it was impossible to tell precisely how many people were there. The ones that were were obviously the Nashi hardcore -- no doubt protected by several cordons of OMON civil servants. You could tell by the abundance of these weird, 10-foot long flexible polls that waving around from key points in the crowd. The flags atop them were a who's-who of obnoxious pro-Kremlin 'political technologies' like "Young Russia" and "Myestnie."

On stage was Lyubeh, the 'gopnik' heroes whose rock-folk-nationalist shtick is increasingly becoming a kind of official soundtrack. They were in the middle of their anthem "Davai Za" when... what's this...

The camera suddenly shifts to the Kremlin's Spassky Gate, and two lone figures are walking out... Can it be? ... why, it's Vladimir Vladimirovich... and Dmitry Anatolyevich!

President and successor stride through a curiously empty Red Square, through a gloomy mix of wet snow and sleet. They are alone together (save for the official state television camera), marching with satisfaction and pride to meet the people down by the river. A few minutes later they are on stage. They say nothing interesting. They go back into the Kremlin. So it goes.

Russian rock legends Mashina Vremeni took the stage next. They cut away after two songs so I don't know what they played next, but if their playlist included their legendary anti-Soviet anthem "Povorot," it would be criminally ironic ...

"We've told ourselves Not to depart from the straight path, But it was destined And frankly, everyone's afraid of change, But here it's all the same"...

"And there's no reason to be afraid If you men have strength within, Set out for this gate, And don't be afraid to turn the corner, Let this road be good."

Meanwhile, I actually can't sleep because I'm so worried about the primaries in Texas and Ohio. ** UPDATE (3/6): Well by golly, the CEC says Medvedev actually won 70.22 percent of the vote. I am actually surprised at how surprised I am at being surprised by anything about these elections.

Getting out the vote

Early this afternoon, my cellphone chirped that I'd received a new SMS message. It was from my service provider, MTS, reminding me to vote this Sunday. I should've written back that my Metro card has been reminding me about it all month.

A few pics...



In case you were wondering who Moscow's tacky and sleazy mayor is supporting, well, he is for Russia's future. Got it?

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District representatives from Putin's United Russia party who are standing in Sunday's municipal elections.

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Our candidates after embellishment by local critics.

Two presidential elections

As both nations are in the midst of choosing a new president, I took a look at how the American primary process appears from Moscow in an oped in The Boston Globe.

UPDATE (3/2): A recent article in Novye Izvestia about the primaries makes a subtle point. In passing, it reports that Barack Obama won the "Democrats Abroad" vote in Russia by 77 percent, and wryly obvserves: "Curiously, it is unknown why a Russian-language website in [Obama's] support is far more detailed than the sites of Russian presidential candidates."

(At left: It seems Moscow Metro cards this month have been put into GOTV service)

Like a galley slave

Russia is known for its bold, sweeping, intimidating, and ultimately pointless gestures. Presidential press conferences are no exception. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin met with over 1,300 reporters in the Round Hall of the Senate building in the Kremlin, and fielded an even 100 questions for a total of four hours and forty-five minutes.

Because my desk at the office faces the newsroom television, I got to catch almost every minute of it. Sure, no one would have mistaken the event for the Oxford Union, but just as a stunt it was remarkable. It would have turned George W. Bush into a weeping mess. No breaks, no notes. He met specific concerns with vague wonkishness, threw out glimpses of his uniquely coarse humor, and petulantly swatted away the handful of confrontational questions thrown at him by the western reporters who got to ask their questions.

The two things that stuck out most to me relate to how I imagine Putin's extensive spy-training must have helped him. First, he said an awful lot, but divulged incredibly little actual information. It is a real skill to be this glib. Second, just the sheer stamina of it. The lights, the attention, and to not so much as break a sweat. I actually wonder if they train for this kind of thing.

Anyway, my favorite quote was when Putin allowed his modest side to peek through...

"I can see no serious failures, I have achieved all my goals and fulfilled every task. We restored the fundamentals of the economy on a new market basis.I have nothing to be ashamed of before the citizens who twice voted for me... I have worked as hard as a galley slave in the past eight years."

Primary day

Everytime you go to vote it's a little democratic adventure, especially when it happens in an unlikely place. Today the Russian chapter of the "Democrats Abroad" held their primary, giving me a chance to drop a ballot in this year's fierce race. There are 22 delegates up for grabs to be decided by Democrats living outside the U.S., and we'll know the results sometime midweek. Here are some pics...



First a word about getting out an about in Moscow: there are always adventures. The nearest Metro stop to the polls was at Paveletsky Station, which has you can see is undergoing a major round of renovations. Specifically, this interesting train station used to have a big public square in front of it, which is now a vast construction sight. The current thinking in central Moscow is that empty space is useless space. So they are putting up a mall, because you can never have too many places for bored New Russian housewives and mistresses to buy shiny baubles and whatnot. We've been promised that the new mall will somehow reflect the train station's design -- which judging from this awful, recently built clocktower on the right, is almost certain to be yet another architectural catastrophe.

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The view looking up Kozhyevnichyeskaya Ultisa from the station.

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A view of the Vodootvodny Canal

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"Business centers" in Moscow have a lot of things in common: soulless, cookie-cutter modern architecture that appeals solely to 'biznesmen' who grew up in soulless, cookie-cutter Soviet architecture; lots of entrances, car-parks, and gated courtyards; and a battalion of security guards to give former security service personnel something to do with their day.

So I admit I was unsure about finding the place, let alonw what hassles would await to get inside. Turns out I needn't have worried: Russian media interest in the primary and American politics in general has been very high. So I knew when I saw the satellite trucks that I'd found the place.

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Ballot box, Moscow-style.

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You never really get far from the past in Moscow. A detail of the decorative plates atop the columns in the Paveletskaya metro station as I was heading home.

Hopemongering

I am not a big fan of hope. When you are stranded on a desert island you “hope” a plane will pass by and spot you. When you are looknig for a particular book or album or brand of cognac you “hope” that the store has it while you’re walking over. This feeling implies a loss of agency, that things have slipped beyond your control. It’s passive, irrational, and unproductive.

So I have had a hard time grappling with the fact that the Presidential candidate I am backing talks so much about it. Obama’s detractors say that he relies on a gauzy idea of “hope.” I’d agree it is a bad choice of words.

It is a more complicated thing. I was struck by what writer Michael Chabon said recently at an Obama rally in San Francisco:

"You know what I needed to do before I could decide to support Barack Obama for president? I had to give myself permission to feel hope. That's almost kind of sad, isn't it? I had to tell myself that it is OK. That it would be all right if I allowed myself to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation. That we can aspire to be more than merely secure or predominant. That we could apsire to build and to heal not just to patch and prop up. We can aspire to come together not just come to terms."

So on Tuesday there is a clear choice between Obama and Clinton. It is an incredibly rare opportunity for the poliics of vindictiveness, double-talk, self-pity, self-absorption, “inevitability,” and “triangulation” to be routed once and for all in just a few hours.

Hillary is running on experience, but what she accomplished as the junior senator of New York other than voting for a disastrous war is beyond me. In 2000, the NY Democratic party cleared a path for the wife of the president, and she roundly beat heavyweight Rick Lazio that November. When she says “experience,” she’s actually talking about living in the same house as a president whose greatest accomplishments were pissing away a critical historical moment and alienating every left-leaning American from the Democratic party. What is to be proud of in all this?

And this time around, the Clintons have not campaigned in a way that makes us proud. Just prior to Nevada, the Clintonoids began going on about Obama’s remarks that the GOP has been the party of ideas for the past 15 years. He didn’t say he agreed with them, just that they have set the agenda – and it is impossible to deny this. The only ideas the Clintons have given us we could do without – semantically proving that blow-jobs aren’t really sex, and that crying on command is a new method of feminist empowerment. I hate the way the Clintons make me think about politics and my country.

An obnoxious meme has been making the rounds is an appreciation of the Clintons’ sharp-elbowed, knee-in-the-crotch style of politics because it is the only way to beat those mean old Republicans. This is bogus from the start. The only Democrat the Republicans are not afraid of is Hillary – they’ve been fighting this fight for 16 years. They know how to handle this, and are itching for the opportunity to rally the nation against her.

There are important principles at stake here. We should take a page from the great leaders of non-violence resistance, whose basic guiding principles I feel can be summed up simply: You need to believe in your cause strong enough that you will survive setbacks. You must believe that a reasonable person acting in good faith, if given all the facts, could be persuaded to see your side of things. And you must never stoop to the other side’s level. When you do, a major firewall between right and wrong vanishes, and the fight becomes about cynically and nihilistically beating the other guy, rather than creating something better.

We’ve stooped a lot with the Clintons, and look what it got us. We achieved a number of tactical victoires – they kept Republicans from destroying Social Security, they fought off a bogus impeachment effort. But strategically, the party has suffered nothing but a string of defeats since 1968, which was accelerated by the Clinton administration.

The pundit class has made much of Obama’s refusal to play dirty. For over a year now they’ve sniped that he isn’t tough enough. But here’s the thing: this is what a clean and honest campaign looks like. This is exactly the thing everyone who has been turned off by modern politics has been waiting for. It is something to be proud of.

And it is not something that is merely nice and pleasant and quaint. It is essential. I think Chabon hit the nail on the head with this. Obama has given us a chance to think beyond the nuts and bolts, and to actually reset the whole system.

I think most people who have dealt with a larger-than-ordinary case of the blues know the feeling that comes after a while, when you realize that you’ve come to like being miserable too much. It’s easy, it’s something you can count on. But sometimes, you are blessed with a moment when you have the right kind of eyes and the right set of circumstances, and you can see that all you need to do is stand up and walk out of it. That it is all up to you, see things like new, to take the Joy Division disc out of heavy rotation and pop in the Polyphonic Spree or whatnot, to realize how much you love the family and friends around you, the place where you are living, the weather and the light on that given day, and on and on.

Obama in 2008 is the political equivalent of that moment.

"We choose love!"

One enduring feature of Russian public life is the effort to address complicated social problems with awkward agit-prop. In the face of Russia's perilous demographic crisis, 2008 has been declared "The Year of the Family." It will be celebrated by increased payments for giving birth, and apparently every Muscovite born this year will get a special medal. It also includes a major ad campaign, including this giant billboard on Zubovsky Bulvar:



This poster is on my way to work, and the more I think about it the more I am amazed at its silliness. Consider the centerpiece, a cute little girl, appropriately decked out in Russian winter fashion, i.e., excessively. She's holding her hands up dutifully in keeping with the logo of the "Year," and flashing her best goofy kid smile. But then look at the parents...

Let's start with mom. It is a fact well known that nothing inspires as much concentration and soulfulness in the heart of a Russian woman as having her picture taken. Every Russian worth her salt practices her look in front of the mirror when she is alone. Our mother in this photo is trying to say: "No, parenthood is not easy. It is struggle. Only another mother can possibly understand. We do it because we must." (cynical westerners may raise some additional questions, but such an analytical approach to the "Russian soul" is off limits here. "Russia cannot be understood with the mind..." blah blah blah). The father is simpler: "Why did I let my feeble-minded wife talk me into this? I have many more important things to do. In fact, I am leaving at once!..."

My question here is why this photo was chosen for this particular gigantic poster. It is the same reason why I wonder how come character actors with grimey, dark yellow, crooked, nasty teeth are deployed to try to sell me toothpaste.

The "have more kids, comrade" theme has been around for awhile. But at least in Soviet times you had much better message discipline. From 1968 ("One kid is okay, two is better") ...

In the footsteps of Grantland Rice...

With the new year comes a new gig: I've been talked into writing a sports column for The Moscow News.