Gorbachev advises a perestroika to the US

America is in urgent need of its own 'perestroika', says Gorbachev. Clearly, he's aiming at fucking up another country big time.

Hillary's Clitoris

Russia's Foreign Minster Lavrov was presented Hillary's Clitoris button by its proud owner. The Russian text instead of "reset" (perezagruzka) said"overload" (peregruzka). That did not stop both from laughing. After all, touching the clitoris is an enjoyable pastime for everyone!

For Russia, rubbing the button may mean the long expected cancellation of the plans to put American rocket control facilities in Eastern Europe. America in its turn hopes to defuse Iran's nuclear programmes.

Russian Hits: I Will Remember

An 80-s Russian rock ballad by Aleksandr Ivanov and Vladimir Presnyakov.

Russian Hits: The Last Thing That I'll Say

Another tragic Russian song: The Last Thing That I'll Say. The heroine dies later the same day rejected by her love and killed by the man who she rejected.

Russian Hits: I Will Never Forget You

A 1983 hit from Juno And Avos opera about tragic lovers: a Russian sailor and a Spanish noble lady in 18th-century California.

Russian Hits: Ne Otrekayutsya Lyubya

When Loving How Can You Renounce - a song to the lyrics by a tragic poet Veronika Tushnova from the 50s who died of unrequited love.

Russian Hits: Help Me Out

A classic 60s hit from one of the most popular Russian movies ever: The Diamond Hand.

Russian Hits: Fnishing The Circle

A New Year's anthem from 1987 USSR by the biggest stars of the time. Peculiarly enough, the lyrics were written by six (!) people.

Russian Hits: Vladimir Presnyakov - Zurbagan

Vladimir Presnyakov singing his own cover. It's a mid-80s hit Zurbagan named after a imaginary romantic port city from the books by Aleksandr Grin.

Russian Hits: I Want To Be With You

One of my most favourite songs when I was a teenager. The melody is beautiful but the lyrics are simply superb, possibly best modern Russian poetry. It is about someone who can't put up that his lover has tragically died and apparently ends up in a psychiatric ward after many attempts of suicide. Aleksandr Ivanov is singing a cover of Soviet 80's super star group Nautilus Pompilius. The title is I Want To Be With You.

Russian Hits: Alyona Sviridova singing jazz

This is one of my favourite Russian (well, technically, Belorussian) singers, Alyona Sviridova. The song is called I'm The Right One. It is a cover of an early 90s Russian hit. It goes about someone whose object of affection thinks she's out of his league (it's a guy's song originally) but he says that if given a chance he can prove he's the right one for her. Very nicely flowing, beautifully crafted lyrics.

Russia Says US Has No Right To Speak For The World

In response to Condoleezza Rice's Russia-bashing speech at the Marshall Fund on 18th of September Russian Foreign Ministry officially commented that no one gave her the right to speak on behalf of the whole world.

Miliband's Bitter Words And Sour Grapes Go Largely Unheeded

Not that anyone in the world cares anyway, but one day after the French- mediated ceasefire in Georgia British Foreign Minister David "Batshit" Miliband delivered a fiery vitriol against Russian involvement in South Osetia. The only reason it became known is because the CNN didn’t have to translate it to put it on so they just did.


In the best tradition of Mock The Week, let’s dub his philippic with what he really means by what he says. Hugh Dennis and Frankie Boyle would be perfect at it!

So there we go, what Miliband actually means is in italics.

"Russia had been trying to assert the concept of "ex-Soviet space", which was "not acceptable".
("We won’t accept it but we can do nothing about it. Our hands are too short to try and squeeze Russia’s balls.")

"Russia had adopted a 19th Century approach and "blatant aggression" in Georgia, when it should be asserting itself economically."
("However, last time they gently wrung our balls peacefully and cut off our gas supply, we were very, very pissed just the same. They should better try to starve Georgians to death like we did to the Irish.")

"It's not good for Russia to continue to believe that it is suffering a hangover from the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
("It took us 60 years to get over the British Empire. You should do it quicker.")

“There's no such thing as ex-Soviet space."
("It may overlap with ex-British space. We don’t like it.")

"The "new map" of Eastern Europe had to be defended in the interests of stability and it was in Russia's interests to do so.
("We have invested too much into our Eastern satellites even though we think they are quiet backward. Where the heck is Georgia anyway?")

"Countries on Russia's borders need to know their territorial integrity was secure."
("That does not apply to Serbia because it does not border Russia. And who but independent Kosovo could make sure our cocaine supply won’t run out?")

"It's not in Russia's interests to continue to hanker for a Soviet past because frankly, it's gone and it's good that it's gone."
("Actually, I am talking about our dear Empire where the sun would never set. Wish we had Russia's guts and never had to suck up big time to our former colonies.")

Nabokov And Dostoevsky

Nabokov's narcissistic excellence of style and a perfect imitation of hints of content makes him probably the first Post-Modern author. The dazzling brilliance of his narration made it possible to dupe armies of professional critics into believing that Lolita actually was a novel about something. However, if you manage to see past the blows and whistles, there is little but a calculated marketing effort to establish him in the Anglo-Saxon book market. What better ploy could one come up with than writing about Americans’ most sensitive spot – child abuse. It’s another topic why Americans are so fascinated with this particular theme that seems to both excite and disgust them. At any rate, Nabokov made the right choice to establish his writing career in the English-speaking world.

In this respect Nabokov’s outspoken hate of Dostoevsky is noteworthy because in a very fundamental way they are total opposites. On one hand we have Nabokov’s stylistic finesse and meticulous attention to detail coupled with the craftily masqueraded absence of content. On the other - Dostoevsky’s awe-inspiring insights into the abysses of human psychology and scarily profound eternal questions of humanity contrasting with feverish, at times even uncouth style, the literary equivalent of Van Gogh's paintings. Dostoevsky was exuberantly abundant in what Nabokov lacked spectacularly: meaningful content and purpose of the plot. Nabokov's sheer intellectual resplendence leaves little doubt that he must have been well aware of that fact.

It is only logical that Nabokov with his piercing analytical ability in linguistic and meticulous attention for detail in style was a translator par excellence. He was a perfect critique and renderer of other people’s works, but when telling his own stories he had to be a pretender, shrouding the absence of his own ideas in an exuberant toga of style with panache matched by a precious few, Oscar Wilde among them.

Nabokov is no doubt a fascinating read. He dazzles you with his intellect and style, carries you away with the enticing plot but at the end of the journey you feel peculiarly empty. All his big promises ends up in an empty flop, something akin to dining on fireworks: mind-boggling and exhilirating but leaving your stomach full of choking smoke. There is nothing in his writing warranting another go.

Dostoevsky's novels on the other hand overwhelm you with the depth and profundity of newly discovered meanings and revelations every time you open the book again. Once you get used to his angsty, strained style, he takes you away on journeys very much alike to Dante's Inferno trip.

To me Nabokov represents Satan's quantitative infinity: an endless entertaining variety for its own sake, metaphorically a beach rave party. When the crazy night of drug-frenzied frolicking wears off, you wake up in the ankle-deep waters amongst empty cans and other flotsam. Both Dostoevsky and Nabokov share the quality of greatness in that the former is the ultimate literary titan, while the latter is the ultimate literary fop.

Vasilissa The Wise and Russian Women

It was Russian Silver Age philosopher Berdyaev who said that Russian women love Russian men out of pity. National archetypes are best represented in folklore. The Russian fairy tale Vasilissa the Wise is one where the stereotype of Russian male-female relationship is expressed in an allegorical form.

There Vasilissa is a frog who turns into a beautiful and wise woman at night, unbeknownst to everyone but her husband Ivanushka. Under the frog's skin lives a beautiful princess capable of most amazing wizardry.

Her husband keeps getting various impossible tasks from the Tsar. Every time Ivanushka come back home lost at how to cater to yet another royal whim, his frog-wife reassures him she will take care of it. Whilst he is asleep, she turns into a witch lady and gets down to business of accomplishing all kinds of impossible feats such as baking a pie enough to feed a thousand or weave a silk carpet overnight. In the morning she turns back into a frog and creeps back into the padded box where she is kept while Ivanushka takes off to the court for another string of praise and accolades from the Tsar. When royal favour runs out, Ivanushka gets another task and the circle repeats.

Many Russian women bear their husband like a cross, as if a repentance for the sins of their past lives. Burdened with the double task of earning a living and running a household they are also expected to look sexy and sophisticated at all times.

The situation is not helped by the centuries-old reality of constant warfare and social cataclysms that has resulted in a female-to-male ratio of 13 to 10. With the average lifespan of 54 years for men and 72 years for women, perspectives of a happy family life for Russian women are, mildly put, bleak. Russian men are spoilt for choice and have no incentive to perform. Gender emancipation of the Soviet times also ensured a nearly equal female participation in the work force as well as easier sexual accessibility than in other traditional societies. The perceived social value of women is thus rather low.

Not surprisingly, Russia’s biggest export commodity after oil and arms are women. Educated, good-looking and demure, ready for hard work and sacrifices, modern-time Vasilissas depart in droves in quest for a husband.

Roman Abramovich - The Official Presiding Deity Of Conspicuous Consumerism

How do you know a natural born gentleman of means from a freshstart trying to pass for one? The latter gives too much tips.

New Russians feel that if something costs an awful amount of money, it simply must be good. Probably that's why clothes of comparable quality cost in Moscow 2-3 times as much as in Western Europe. Russians are considered best customers in Amsterdam's shopping malls, which locals consider too ridiculously overpriced to go to. Life is not a cabaret, it is a mall so Russians in Europe shop till they drop - as if the stingy hand of Communism were still having a grip on Russia's consumer supply.

Russia's presumedly richest man Roman Abramovich paid Amy Winehouse a hefty 1 million GBP (that's around 2 millions US bucks) to sing one hour at the launch of his girlfriend's art gallery in Moscow. That may come across as a sign of ultimate coolness in Moscow but Mrs. Wino must have been laughing in her sleeves not believing her luck: the Russian gig brought in about 10 times as much as a much longer regular performance elsewhere.

This guy looks like he can't believe his luck: Ivorian footballer Didier Drogba was plucked out of relative obscurity and handed 24 million pounds by Mr. Abramovich to join his favourite hobby horse: Chelsea F.C. - just one million short of Beckham's transfer fee to Real Madrid one year earlier. The kick of playing a fairytale prince who can turn people's fortunes upside down at his whim must be priceless.

Unrestrained in means and oblivious of real world prices, in football New Russians are pushing the prices up, just like in London's luxury realty market where they are responsible for 90% of purchases, pressing out the Japanese and Arabs.

In the country where 34 people own 75% of entire wealth, it is a never-ending ball for those 34 and their families. Brought up in relative austerity under Communists, they managed to grab hold of formally everybody's - technically nobody's - assets in what is probably the biggest swindling operation in history when world's second largest economy was privatized for next to peanuts. But it is also the same country where men officially are not expected to live to retirement (average life span is 56 years) and whose population is dwindling by 800 thousand a year from harsh labour and living conditions, unhealthy lifestyles, rampant alcoholism, drug abuse and diseases. But what of it, when you can sit back in your 9.5-million-pound London apartment and enjoy an 80-million pound painting that belongs to you and looks like shit.

Ugly Russian Nouveaux Rags-To-Riches

A British man I know who works in luxury hotel management once asked me: "Why are rich Russians such a pain in the ass? They are by far the most annoying, hard to please bunch of ego-tripping divas."

I am quite used to receiving soul-searching kind of questions about my compatriots as if I were their spokesman, so more often than not I am prepared to provide comprehensive answers.

Up to 95% of modern Russian adults were brought up in more or less equal economic conditions. Excesses of the Soviet elite were a far cry from the post-Communist extravaganza of golden toilet bowls and custom Maybachs. Most of time a nomenklatura boss's idea of wild time was limited to screwing a self-styled loose woman after a bottle of imported cognac in the sauna. Domestic servants, class and income bracket differences, high-and-mighty lifestyles were unheard of. Conspicuous consuming was not just frowned upon but universally discouraged.

So, basically, our only idea about how rich people should behave and what they should do comes from trashy Mexican soap operas that inundated Russian broadcasting in the late 80s and well into the 90s. The vile servant-abusing thick-moustached Don Manuels and hysterical foot-stomping coiffured Doña Maria's from those tedious cheaply produced telenovelas are the only role models that new rich Russians know of.

Science Don't Live Here Any More

While the Russian powers that be are busy advertising their proposed investment into nano-technologies, Professors Andre Geim and Doctors Kostya Novoselov and Leonid Ponomarenko - all Russian-born - from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester have built the world's smallest transistor - one atom thick and 10 atoms wide - out of a material that could one day replace silicon.

Once world's leader in fundamental and applied science, nowadays Russia is an "energy superpower". Translated from the Kremlin's beaurocratic newspeak, that stands for something like Saudi Arabia - happy to buy diamond-encrusted limos and golden toilet bowls off the oil riches while investing nothing in modernizing society, research or technological base.

Russian Argh (Review)

"Pretentious and meaningless" - that would be my two-word summary of this triumph of Russian Post-Modernism.

In more words: one hundred minutes of incoherent mono- and dialogues (at times, the actors repeat the same lines 3 or 4 times in a row), acting worth wooden marionettes, never-ending close-ups of famous paintings, shamefully clumsy or downright pointless allegories and a total absence of any plot line or script purpose except a tedious reiteration of the director's poorly hidden resentment for anything related to Soviet history.

It does achieve its 3 sole objectives though:

1) proving possible shooting a full movie in a single take;
2) proudly parading 2,000 extras in lavish period costumes;
3) showing off the best bits of the Hermitage's art collection.

Cleverly contrived to fool Western critics with Russian exoticism, it was released to a great acclaim - Rotten Tomatoes shows a staggering 88% approval rate. My guess is that the reviewers, half-expecting something really perversely artsy weird from a Russian director, must have fallen for the typical Post-Modern pretence at implying some far-fetched elitist message. Too ashamed that they didn't get it, they hasted to praise the flick and find sense in the nonsensical drivel that the actors spew, so that they, the critics, could come across progressive and elitist too.

Another factor that may also have played the role is the Americans' weakness for all things related to European royalty, which they invariably find quaint and endearing.

The film would be really best used as an MTV-style visual background for a pot-pourri of popular classical music. Having to watch it with the sound on would come in handy as a Guantanamo interrogation technique.

The Social Politics Of A Shaven Head

Years ago my Thai cousin Jim who is doing now her Ph.D. in Social Studies introduced me to such a sub-discipline as the "language of body parts", how non-verbal communication takes place by what meaning we as a society ascribe to our body parts and how it differs culture to culture and so on.

Bizarrely enough, before too long I had the opportunity to see how it works across cultures. I had my head shaven when on vacation in Bulgaria - locals were teasing me by chanting Hare Krishna wherever I went. A while on, when I went to the Thai Embassy in Moscow, they all took me for a Buddhist novice monk. But next day when I lingered on near the Yaroslav Railway Station in Moscow looking to buy something to bite on, I nearly got arrested by Russian police because they seem to have assumed that I was a freshly released criminal.

That was the last time to date when I had my head shaven.