Loss for Words

Surprise Fireworks Show Cancelled

The day was ruined for several Moscow maintenance workers by the discovery of a between 800 and 2000 unexploded WWII artillery shells in a cache beneath the road where they were planning to replace waterpipes. RIA Novosti reports that "between 200 and 300 unexploded aviation bombs, artillery shells and other ammunition is found in Moscow each year." Mad props to the worker that stopped jackhammering in time.

Sympathy for the Citroen

This is one of those stories that gets legs and won’t stop running.

Two weeks ago, the vice-president of Russian oil giant Lukoil was in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes when it crashed head-on into a Citroen killing the two women in that car. The police blamed the Citroen for the accident but [Russian hip-hop artist] Noize MC has his own version of events.

…and that version has now gone viral on YouTube, which is important since Ekho Moskvy has apparently been banned from playing the song.

But we're not.

Say what you will about the decline of Russian culture, but we're pretty sure Rimsky-Korsakov never thought to combine guerilla dissent with a hip-hop cover of the Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil...and South Park?

Bulgakov is smiling from hell.

Medvedev: Russia Must Tap That Arctic Resource

AP MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia must defend its claims to mineral riches of the Arctic in increasing competition with other powers.

...claims which have a dubious basis in international law. But hey, Rock Hudson had a dubious claim to being a submarine captain. And that didn't seem to stop him.

Future Headline: AIDS Epidemic in Uzbekistan

According to CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, sex education is now illegal in Uzbekistan, evidenced by the fact, in September, Maxim Popov, was sentenced to seven years in prison apparently as punishment for his work to raise public awareness on prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and the promotion of healthy lifestyles. Why report on something that happened in September in March? Because it was just made public today.

In any case it looks like Uzbeks will have to learn sex ed the hardway. Unless of course they have access to HBO or Cinemax.

Face Value

An Imedi network report in Georgia yesterday broadcast the news that Russian tanks had invaded the capital and that Saakashvili was dead...What they didn't mention clearly enough was that this broadcast, complete with footage from the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict, was a simulation meant to imagine what would happen if Saakashvili was killed...

When the "War of the Worlds" series was first broadcast on radio on October 30, 1938, people panicked in the belief that Martians really were invading Earth. But people have learned since then not to accept things at face value right? Broadcast journalism has learned the importance of that fine print please do not panic button at the bottom of the screen right?

Apparently not..but I guess Imedi got high ratings that day

See the report here.

Happy Martenitsa!

What the hell is Martenitsa?

Armenian Genocide, the Sequel

Here we go again:

"The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, in a closer-than-expected vote of 23-22," moved to recognize Armenian Genocide.

Poor Ambassador Tan. We hope he didn't have plans to be in Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival. He just got recalled to Ankara in protest.

Long Gone: Tsarist Russia

More haunting pictures from the archive of Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (c. 1915) and the Tsarist world in twilight.

Pinkhus Karlinskii stands by a ferry dock along the Mariinskii Canal system (now the Volga-Baltic Waterway). He was eighty-four years old when the photo was taken, having worked the canal for sixty-six years. (That's ten three years longer then the total life expetency of a Russian male living today.)

Ethnic Russian settlers in the South Caucasus. (Are the faces that different from Dorothea Lange's photos of American Okies during the Great Depression?)

A rail push-car near Lake Onega, Petrozavodsk. Prokudin-Gorskii is one of the figures on the car.

Comming Soon: Jersey Shore, Russian Edition

We kid you not.

According to the NYPost, producers claim their new reality show (tentitivly called Brighton Beach) will be “a cross between the Jersey Shore and Anna Karenina.”

A cross with Anna Karenina?

Unless this means that we can expect to see an orange Bolivian little person throw herself in front of a rush-hour A Train because Count Vronsky didn't like her hair extensions -- then we're not watching.

Have the producers even read Tolstoy?

Crossing Jersey Shore with Anna Karenina is like trying to cross Mein Kampf with Hello Kitty’s Nighttime Storybook Adventures. Then again, people would watch that too.

Serbia is Going After Alleged War Criminals…

…but only if they're Bosnian. Specifically, former Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic.

And yes, the UK’s permissive legal system (where anyone and everyone can be arrested as a war criminal) is involved.

No word yet if Serbia will also seek the arrest of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for aiding and abetting a war criminal when she served Ganic a cup of tea during their meeting in 2006. However, the legal department reminds us that providing material support and comfort to a war criminal could also be a punishable offiense.

Not on the list: exploiting international legal systems for domestic political gain.

Bureaucrats of the World Unite

Part of photographer Jan Banning’s series, Bureaucratics, featuring bureaucrats and their offices from around the world.

Russia

Bolivia

Yemen

This Teddy Bear has Claws

This week Medvedev went Soviet on us. According to ESPN, Medvezhyonok has demanded that sports officials step down over the country's dismal performance at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Russia placed 11th for golds and sixth in the overall medal count. For shame. Medvedev said if those responsible for preparing the athletes don't resign, then the decision will be made for them. I think I'll keep track of the hockey coach's fate.

*Picture provided by Ellustrator.

Russian Chimp is Drunk as a Monkey

Let me start by saying, this article has everything I've ever wanted in a story: booze, addiction, monkeys, and Russia.

So according to YahooNews, the Rostov zoo has sent Zhora, one of its chimps, to rehab, because he can't kick his beer-drinking and smoking habits.

"The beer and cigarettes were ruining him. He would pester passers-by for booze."

And yes, of course passers-by at a zoo in Russia had booze on them. Who goes to the zoo park without some beer? And for those of you who don't know, the Russian language is so awesome it actually has a verb that means "to get an animal drunk." The imperfective is опаивать, and the perfective is опоить. Yes, this is the Russia I fell in love with.

Cold War Flashback

If you’re interested, there’s an awesome retrospective on the bitter architecture wars which erupted between east and west during Cold War-era World Expos.

At the 1959 World Expo in Moscow, GE's canary yellow “modern kitchen” sparked the Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debates. (Is that Leonid Brezhnev eyeing the self-cleaning oven?)

The Soviets responded with this monster pavilion at the 1967 Montreal World Expo, featuring the exhibition’s largest restaurant (stuff it GE).

Which, if anyone is keeping score, was a shameless rip off of Eero Saarinen’s 1958 design for the Main Terminal at Dulles airport.

Orange and Blue, Together at Last?

Only in the eyes of a Siberian Husky competing at this year's European dog sled championship in Donovaly, Slovakia.

(JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)

So I started watching the Russia-Canada game...

...10 minutes ago. The score was 4-1 Canada, which I'm like, wow, I only missed the first period and it's already a blow out. The score is now 7-2, Canada. So here's the thing...

1. It's the Olympics. This is supposed to be close competition
2. It's now 7-3, but still really bad, Russia
3. I miss the Soviet Union athletics program! I want crazy competition back!

All the same, go Canada!

Lenin Had a Sex Life?

We might have just found a new motto for Eternal Remont, compliments of Helen Rappaport’s new biography of Lenin during his pre-revolutionary exile:

“There it is, my fate. One fighting campaign after another — against political stupidities, philistinism, opportunism and so forth."

Amen, brother Vlad.

So why is everyone talknig about the biography of a Kremlin lawn ornament? Well, Rappaport jumps head first into Lenin’s sex life, particularly his long-whispered affair with Inessa Armand (pictured). Rappaport writes:

"His sexuality, seemingly, had long been subordinated—along with his emotional needs.”

Get Fabio on the cover and you've got a best seller.

EU Visa Regime Weakens

Don't worry. The EU still hates Turkey.

So after the meeting of the EU top diplomats in Brussels, the Italian Foreign Affairs Minister, Franco Frattini, reported that the EU will propose a visa-free regime for travel inside the Union for Ukrainian citizens. The EU wishes to establish strong relations with the administration of the newly elected President of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, known for being a bit more pro-Russian.

So Ukraine is being rewarded for picking the candidate the west didn't want? Ukraine, why didn't lean east earlier?

Montenegro Wants Its Own "Watermelon"

Not content to watch Serbia and Croatia fight it out over Serbo-Croatian, Montenegro now wants its own language.

"Montenegrin is different in many ways…Take the word for 'milk', for example. In Serbian it's 'mleko', in Croatian 'mljeko' and in Montenegrin 'mlijeko'."

Yeah, totally different. So different, in fact, that it’s hard to understand how Yugoslavians were ever able to communicate with each other. Ask for 'mleko' in Split and someone might just hand you an toilet brush.

"In Serbian, they say 'dinja' for melon, but in Montenegrin, that actually means 'watermelon.'"

Excellent point.

It might also explain why Yugoslavia disintegrated. I ordered watermelon!