Monday, April 16, 2007

I've finished posting April 14 photos.



It's depressing to be looking at so many cops (for the second day in a row), while also watching Kill Bill on Channel 1.

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Below are some of my favorites:



George Michael is coming to Moscow.

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Kto kuda, a my zhenitsa.

Someone's wedding, interrupted by a traffic jam near Pushkinskaya. Terrible timing.

I also saw a young woman in a maroon Mercedes with the wheel on the right side - she was trying to drive out to Tverskaya from one of the little streets, but the cop told her she had to back up and take a detour, and she replied, in a slightly hysterical but totally serious way, "But I don't know how to drive backwards!!!" - and the cop looked absolutely bewildered, and even asked her, earnestly, "But what can I do about it?"

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"A million dollars into one pair of hands."

That's a casino sign, on Pushkinskaya.

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"V mire zhivotnyh" - "In the Animal World"

An ad for a popular TV nature show with Nikolai Drozdov. (I mentioned him a while ago, in this post.)

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This is Aleksandr Potkin, aka Aleksandr Belov, leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration.

I wrote a little about the movement here; and about Potkin-Belov and the Russian March here.

(Also, remember I was trying to locate the link to a Russian blogger's post about that wonderful old lady who went to every rally there was? - I've found it, thanks to Potkin-Belov!)

At the rally, he told the crowd about his car: an old Mercedes with the driver's door broken - so he has to get in through the passenger's door.

He also said he was sure the police would join him and his supporters when they march onto Kremlin - but not this time, later. Judging by his "bodyguards," it must've been a joke - though it's interesting that they arrested Kasparov for much less, yet didn't touch this idiot.

He was also screaming something like "Churki, out!" - churki is one of those offensive terms for the non-Slavic population.

He and Rogozin also believe that 70 percent of Russia's voters would vote for their new party ("Great Russia" or something) in the upcoming election. If they are one of Putin's "projects," the goal must be to get as many people as possible thinking, "If this is what the alternative to Putin looks and sounds like, well, maybe it's better to have Putin stay where he is."

Or maybe not, because why would Garry Kasparov want to invite Limonov and Anpilov to his bloc? And why should everyone anti-Putin worry about the fate of the leader of something called the Vanguard of the Red Youth? (Another ally of Kasparov, he was detained yesterday, too.)

Zyuganov's Communists have been doing pretty well in the regional elections lately - and perhaps freaks are what people here really want, and all the riot police gathered in Moscow for no reason are not making Putin himself look too adequate, so here you go.

Seriously, though, Russian politics is incomprehensible and too crazy, even crazier than what we have in Ukraine.

4 comments:

  1. I like that sculpture in the top pic. Whould you happen to know who was the artist?

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  2. George Michael in Moscow? You gonna go?

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  3. Random question - Have you faced any problems photographing any of these events? In a lot of your pictures, I've noticed other photographers as well... The Western media (which, as usual, isn't paying all that much attention to the goings on in Russia) is making Russia out to be a terrifying police state right now. While the arrests of protestors does seem to support that, the appearance of so many photographers (at least in your images) seems to belie that claim. Let me know your thoughts!

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  4. so true about Russian politics. I've totally given up on it. It's really hard to believe Lewis Carroll was not writing about Russia--but then, he was in Victorian England where things were a tad weird too.

    Murky power struggles are only fun for those in them, and everyone else has to sit around and wonder what's coming down next and where the corpses will show up.

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