Russia: Vasily Alexanyan

Global Voices Online
Sunday, February 3, 2008

On Jan. 30, Robert Amsterdam, legal defense counsel for jailed ex-head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, announced on his blog that his client had gone on a hunger strike in protest against the treatment of Vasily Alexanyan, another jailed Yukos executive, who is said to be dying of AIDS and lymphoma cancer, but is being denied life-saving treatment.

On Feb. 2, Amsterdam blogged on why most international NGOs and human rights groups remained silent about "the murder-in-progress of Vasily Alexanyan":

[...] Why on earth won't anybody say anything about this poor, unfortunate victim of Kremlin injustice? This is the question often put to me in recent emails and comments. Of course I have my theories which I shall outline below, but I certainly do share their outrage and disbelief.

Consider the facts: He's been unlawfully held in pre-trial detention for two years without conviction, denied urgent medical care to treat his condition (which the prosecutor illegally disclosed to the media as HIV), and he has been offered relief and medical care only in exchange for invented false testimony against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other Yukos prisoners. Not to mention that the Russian Federation has ignored three separate orders from the European Court of Human Rights regarding his medical care.

The man is on the brink of death, yet apart from a barely publicized Amnesty International note back on Jan. 18, almost no one in Europe or North America has said any thing in his defense. [...]

In the Russian blogosphere, however, a campaign has been launched by LJ user rikusha to name government and law enforcement officials who are believed to be "killing" Alexanyan, in one way or another. The blogger writes (RUS):

One day, this list will definitely prove useful.

And in Moscow, some 200 people showed up at Novopushkinsky Square on Feb. 1 to support Alexanyan.

LJ user nl posted eight photos and this brief report (RUS) from the rally:

[...] Flags of the [United Civil Front], [Oborona youth movement], [National Bolshevik Party] and [Stop Chechen War anti-war movement] soared over the crowd. Slogans ranged widely from "Freedom to political prisoners!" and "FSB [Federal Security Service] is Russia's disgrace!" to "Moscow without [mayor Yuri Luzhkov]!" and "We'll teach you how to love the Constitution!"

After rallying for exactly an hour and a half, the crowd dispersed.

[8 photos]

Here is one of the conversations about Alexanyan and Khodorkovsky that took place in the comments section of nl's photo report:

sergracha:

And who is he?

annuak2005:

[a link to a selection of Russian-language news stories about Alexanyan]

But I still don't understand what he was being tried for.

dao_b:

He hasn't been tried. There hasn't been a trial yet. He's spent two years in pretrial detention center. They keep failing to beat a testimony against Khodorkovsky out of him.

annuak2005:

Do they need more testimony against Khodorkovsky? He's in jail already, isn't he?

herald:

Not much is left of his sentence. That's why the regime is preoccupied with securing another jail term for him.

LJ user drugoi also attended the Feb. 1 rally, and his blog entry (RUS, eight photos and a video) has received 543 comments so far. While many bloggers expressed hostility towards Alexanyan, as many seemed to be shocked by such an attitude.

Below is a rather typical exchange:

lucysd:

Out of six comments, five are hateful. The extent to which you've been brainwashed by Putin's propaganda. People laughing at the terminally ill are subhuman.

butch_ara:

People who are making their fortunes by looting natural resources are also subhuman. But if you steal, you should be prepared that sooner or later they'll bust you.

Russia: On Xenophobia, Again

Global Voices Online
Thursday, March 1, 2007

Here's the translation of one of today's top-rated posts at the Yandex Blogs portal, written by LJ user nl, one of the most popular Russian bloggers:

The degree of xenophobia in our wonderful land tends to remain underestimated right until you collide with its fruit and feel the shame for it with your own skin.

[My wife] is looking for a babysitter for [our baby daughter Maria]. She gets in touch with yet another potential babysitter and gives her the details in brief: the child's age, what kind of work, the amount of it...

Do you know what the first question of the potential babysitter is?

She asks:

- Tell me, have they informed you that I am not Russian?

[LJ user kmaka, nl's wife] says this question put her in a state resembling shock.

An elderly [ethnic] Armenian [originally from Azerbaijan's capital Baku]. A philologist. "I haven't lived in Moscow for a long time - 17 years or so."

Me, I had just returned home from the latest [political debates] held at Bilingua (where I had the pleasure to observe a group of young people who were yelling [Sieg Heil] for about 20 minutes), and I tried to explain to [kmaka] that there's nothing whatsoever to be shocked about here, and moreover, this is how it's been for a long time.

So far, there are 638 comments to this post.

***

The debate nl is referring to was between Yulia Latynina, a Russian journalist and writer, and Maxim Kononenko, best known for his satirical vignettes on Vladimir Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich™); the debate's topic was "Where are the democrats?"

At least two of the neo-Nazi guys who interrupted the event are also bloggers, and their posts describing the fun they had that night are - just like nl's post - in the top 30 at Yandex Blogs today.

I choose not to translate anything from their posts, except for Yulia Latynina's retort, which both of them quote, in two slightly different ways:

tesak-f18:

"If such creatures - I can't call him a man - keep killing Tajik girls and get drunk on beer, this isn't going to help Russia in any way."

***

rusns:

Latynina replied: "Here's how brave they all are. They must be the same guys who, in group of 20, are capable of nothing but killing one Tajik girl."

The Tajik girl Latynina was referring to is the 9-year-old Hurshida Sultanova, who was stabbed to death by a group of neo-Nazis on Feb. 9, 2004, in the heart of St. Petersburg.

***

On a different note, unrelated to xenophobia, Lyndon of Scraps of Moscow has recently translated into English four of Maxim Kononenko's Vladimir Vladimirovich™ pieces - here and here.

Last month, Kononenko switched his LJ identity from mrparker to maxim-kononenko, deleting his highly popular blog (which, surprisingly, is still rated #5 at Yandex Blogs). Gone with the old blog is Kononenko's cruel remark about the Beslan mothers who lost their children in the school siege of 2004, the post dating back to September 2005, around the first anniversary of the tragedy. Though now erased, it features in many Russian blogs whose authors were outraged at the time; also, there's a mention of Kononenko's remark in the article by Yuri Saprykin in the Bolshoi Gorod magazine - whose translation Lyndon of Scraps of Moscow has recently posted as well:

In spite of its apparent democratic spirit, ZheZhe [LiveJournal] is more and more structured along the lines of TV: there are the ratings leaders, hooked on the feeling of their own importance, and an amorphous mass following their every move. The leaders set the key items on the news agenda (see the Ivannikova case, the story about the NBP members getting beaten up, or the one about Minkin and Latynina getting pelted with tomatoes), and the masses approve (or disapprove) with a discordant rumble. And as for the idiocies of the rating leaders, well even the [Russian TV stars] Malakhovs and the Solov’yovs of the world couldn’t dream of them. Just consider the (already paradigmatic) phrase about how “the mothers of Beslan should just have more children.”

Russia: Thoughts on LiveJournal/ZheZhe

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Second Blog War continues in Russia.

Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal's creator, has now joined the discussion over at sup_ru LJ community: in English, he offers some explanations and apologies here (and receives 248 comments so far) and lists the bloggers' most common questions and concerns here (123 comments so far).

Stepping aside for a moment, away from politics and the general noise, here are a few notes on what the Russian LJ represents for some bloggers - and why it would be such a pity to lose it.

LJ user kmaka (wife of LJ user nl, one of the best-known Russian bloggers) attended the party held for Brad Fitzpatrick during his visit to Moscow last week - Fitzvecherinka, the Fitz-Party, as she called it. She writes (RUS):

[...] I didn't see Fitzpatrick in person. I only heard him. But I was happy to see a whole bunch of people. This, in general, seems to be the essence of LJ to me - it's a major tusovka [hangout place]. And everything works according to the laws of tusovka. It'd be good to remember this. The panic attack has moved past me somehow. First, because for a long time I've been following the principle once formulated to me by nl - I write what I think, but I think with caution. Second, I believe in common sense. And third, there'll always be time to escape. And by the way, if Sup's first step would be to introduce a possibility of a journal backup, it'd be nice. [...]

Oleg Kuvaev - LJ user samoleg, creator of the popular cartoon Masyanya - records two hilarious video parodies (RUS) of random LJ entries by apolitical female bloggers. He explains:

Anyway, I've created this fun game: everybody knows that video blogs are the coolest and most progressive thing on the web now. Like, broadcast yourself! It has reached us, too, I guess. [...] I've also wanted to experiment with this for a long time, but I'm somehow better at written posts... I don't know what's there to say in front of the camera... and why... But into my silly head came an idiotic idea of such an experiment: we pick a random user and create a video blog for him... we transform his [blog] into the video format... I read a lot of [LJ] friends, even though I rarely comment... I'm digging more like an explorer, sort of... [Don't read most popular blogs except for two of them.] It's a lot more interesting to read ordinary, and especially female, blogs... Sometimes it's absolutely impossible to understand what they're talking about... :) But it's clear they are writing genuinely... And I hope this is gonna show in my experiments... :)) The mind of a female is [a mystery]... :)

[...]

For this experiment, I've taken two posts from my [LJ] friends and I REALLY HOPE that these people have a healthy sense of humor... Because, needless to say, I haven't been too gentle with their texts and I didn't ask permission... Well, what can I do, I had this urge to do something naughty... :) The texts of the posts have not been altered at all, I didn't add or take anything out! I won't say who authored the originals, it doesn't matter, there are plenty of posts like this in LJ...

These are more like the typical samples of posts by females - charming, naive, confusing and a little funny...

If the authors ask me to, I'll erase this right away... I've made comedy out of it, of course, but so what - was I supposed to turn it into drama? take it easy... its just fun.. [sic]

[Two YouTube videos of samoleg posing as female bloggers; topics include: catching cold; having one's mood ruined; being accused by men of acting childish; feeling sleepy all the time; not getting what's being said, even when it's in Russian; being driven nuts by dumb co-workers; craving and eating red caviar; being allergic to pollen.]

LJ user nikadubrovsky writes this (RUS) about samoleg's exercise in video-blogging:

The hero of our times (again)

Oleg Kuvaev has come up with the funniest joke: he's posted a video voiceover of the posts of anonymous female LJ users.

The result is Masyanya in a new format.

The face of the LJ generation of 2006-2007 is perplexed, folklorish and poignant. And Kuvaev himself is so popular (no matter what he sets out doing) exactly because he is not afraid to be a loser.

His heroes, all of them, are the characters that [don't belong].

I've been saying this for a long time: the Hero of Our Times is a loser. Because to be a selebritya [celebrity] (a word out of Kuvaev's LJ) is extremely idiotic.

[...]

By the way, changes that have occurred in LJ this past year - re-sales, abuses, departures - they'll result in the Real Ones leaving, but the fake ones, the numerous selebritya, staying.

They'll speak/write exactly like Oleg depicts it.

Only they'll MEAN IT.

Russian-Language Blogs: Miscellanea (2)

Global Voices Online
Friday, August 25, 2006

Victoria Shcherbina (LJ user saint-autere) reacts to the news of the August 22 TU-154 crash in eastern Ukraine, which killed all 170 people on board, by writing (RUS) about the death of her father - IL-86 navigator Valeriy Shcherbina - in a crash at Moscow's Sheremetyevo four years earlier, on July 28, 2002.

Her post has already received 1,682 comments...

[...] Papa was gone. But he did have a premonition... On July 15, two weeks before the crash, on the 30th anniversary of [my parents'] wedding, when they were at a restaurant, he suddenly began speaking about it, about his death: what would need to be done, how he would like to see it. Mama interrupted him, but he managed to continue with this topic.

It's true that their equipment was on the verge [of collapse]. The crashed IL-86 RA-86060 was made in 1983 and had flown 18,370 hours - and this type of plane can be used for 20 years. Only the so-called human factor was capable of dealing with problems arising in the air, not vice versa, as is commonly believed. How many times he spoke of those problems! One of the scariest episodes happened during the flight over the ocean, from New York, USA, to Shannon, Ireland. It was a miracle that they reached their destination, they did it [manually], because the navigation broke down and they were going blind. He didn't worry for his life, but for the lives of 350 passengers behind him.

He used to say: "I'll go quickly... I'll crash... I'll be shown on TV... Your children will be proud of their heroic grandfather!" And this is what did happen.

He promised to bring mama a bouquet of exactly 30 flowers from Sochi, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their wedding. They must have been gladioli... Here, they aren't as beautiful, and they are expensive, too...

[...]

I was there, at the site of the air catastrophe, in the fall of 2002... I wanted to see it... By that time, I was prepared to see it. It is so close to the airport. The snow covered all the horror a little and only a modest cross stood over the dug-up part of the field and the forest. The ground still smelled of kerosene, and there were still torn pieces of metal underneath my feet. And above my head, very low, flew the planes... Up and down... I'll never be able to forget this.

Both crashed planes belonged to the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Airlines, a company saint-autere has no kind words about:

Do you know what a pilot's life is worth in our country? Because, it turns out, pilots are insured! The whole $3,000 received each family of the dead pilots, regardless of the number of people in these families. And do you know how much the company received for the plane - because it was insured as well? Two million dollars, which is twice as much as the plane's remaining cost. So it's a very profitable business to lose a plane! Well, they also had to pay the pilots' salaries to the relatives, as [the law] requires, but it's incomparably less than the profit they received, isn't it!

A 28-year-old graduate of St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Equipment, saint-autere goes into a lengthy explanation of the technical issues neglected by Pulkovo Airlines, which may have led to the plane crash that killed her father. She also writes about the biased coverage of the tragedy and her futile attempts to restore justice.

***

LJ user nl (Norvezhskiy Lesnoy, whose blog is rated (RUS) by the Russian search engine Yandex as the 5th most-read blog) comments (RUS) on the coverage of the plane crash and the complex relationship between the mainstream media and bloggers:

[Radio Echo of Moscow], in a story on the TU-154 crash near Donetsk, quotes from this post, attributing to it like this: "as they write in blogs." I remember how some seven years ago, NTV [people] would rather shoot themselves than cite Gazeta.ru as a source, using this formula instead: "as has been reported on the internet" - and Lyokha Andreyev suggested that in response, we should replace our links to NTV with this: "as some chick in the TV set reported..."

A discussion follows on how some LJ users' nicknames are just too obscene, unpronounceable or don't make sense at all to be cited as sources by the "serious" media. Still, according to nl, it's really up to the journalists - and some do deserve praise:

[...] Stories on how it is inhumanly difficult to pronounce urls are as many years old as Sasha Plushchev's [LJ user plushev] recitations of the most [unpronounceable] site addresses on his [radio program] Echonet.

***

A 26-year-old Chechen journalist Elina Ersenoyeva was kidnapped in Grozny on August 17, in broad daylight, and is missing still. Russian online publication Gazeta.ru reported (RUS) that Ersenoyeva, a freelancer for the Chechen Society newspaper and a representative of an HIV/AIDS prevention project, could have been married to Shamil Basayev, allegedly killed by the federal forces in July.

Timur Aliev (LJ user timur_aliev), editor-in-chief of the print/online weekly Chechen Society (Chechenskoye Obshchestvo), writes on his blog (RUS) that the allegations of Ersenoyeva's ties to Basayev only aggravate the already difficult situation :

For the last few days I've been busy with Elina's case more than with anything else. At first, I was answering phone calls and meeting with journalists, telling them what I know about the kidnapping of this female journalist. Simultaneously, I was trying to give some advice to Elina's mother, Rita, who was also constantly calling me and stopping by at the office. The woman was catastrophically helpless - only on the fourth day it turned out that she hadn't yet reported the kidnapping to the [Ministry of Internal Affairs]. We've also helped her to write a letter to the prosecutor's office - she didn't know where it's located. Her husband, from whom she is divorced, was of little use, too - when Rita fainted in our newsroom and a thin intern and I barely managed to drag her to the couch in the office next door, he just stood there and [did nothing], while the girls were calling the ambulance, fanning her with a fan and pouring [a heart medicine] for her.

In general, both parents, instead of [persistently visiting various law enforcement officials], the [Federal Security Service], and getting the relatives involved, kept coming to us - help us, save us, recommend something, find a way for us to meet with [Ramzan Kadyrov]. I told them to visit Elina's primary place of work - the youth affairs committee - because Ramzan loves them, and they'll find a way for [the parents] to meet him. But they [the parents] were saying - no, they won't help.

It's been a couple days, though, since Rita stopped coming. On the first day I thought that maybe it's because the mobile connection was terrible - impossible to reach anyone by phone. Today, however, I received many calls, but not from Elina's mother.

Anyway, I was even more busy today than in the previous days. Reports have appeared that Elina is Basayev's widow. And everyone started contacting us for comments.

At first, it seemed funny to me - to imagine Elina in this role was difficult. She was spending all her time in her youth committee, and even Ramzan stopped by there pretty often, and sometimes Elina wrote something for us, and she attended UNICEF's seminars from the committee - and it seemed she wouldn't have the time to take walks in the mountains with Basayev.

Then I felt uneasy - when people are calling you about it, you turn into a person who has to provide some explanations. I re-direct all callers to [Elina's] mother and to her primary employers - like, what nonsense, please contact them for more details, I don't know anything - but they are still calling me.

What's going to happen tomorrow, I don't know.