I wish I had the strength to announce that this blog is kaput, but I can't.

Global Voices takes up too much of my time, and then there's Facebook, and Odnoklassniki.ru - where I somehow have 85 friends already, and most of them are probably mad at me by now, because I tend to vanish right after the initial greetings.

It's amazing how much I remember about most of these 85 people - but ask me what date it is today and I'll have to consult a calendar. A few days ago I was really shocked to realize that the Russian election is this coming Sunday. I thought we still had a week or two. Must be because of all this Kosovo madness.

I wish I could at least write about Marta here - but I'd have to translate, and I have enough of that at GV.

Well, there's one thing that doesn't require translation: Marta has somehow learned to say 'fuck' - and since she somehow knows it's a very bad word, she keeps saying it all the time. At first, I thought it was so amusing - like, wow, I still remember very vividly the time when she didn't know how to smile, and now she's cursing - and in a foreign language! But now I'm a bit worried, because I'm not sure how to unteach her. I know I should try to ignore it and then she'll get bored and stop saying it, but it's just something that's too funny to ignore. Reminds me of my dear Armenian friend who once left her beautiful little daughter with her teenage brother for a few hours - and when she came back, the beautiful little girl was cursing left and right like a man - in Russian, I guess.

Marta can also count from 1 to 10 in English, with a little bit of help from me. And she knows how to say 'cat' and 'dog' in Turkish.

The rest of it is mainly a Russian-based language of her own - and there's lots of stuff. She's really fluent now and it's unbearably cute to have all those conversations with her.

One more thing: I'm getting very good at telling her bedtime stories. At first, Mishah was making them up, and I was kind of jealous, but then he got tired as well as discouraged by the fact that his stories weren't making her any sleepier, so I had to take over. It took me over a week to actually start making stuff up - it happened after I had finally exhausted all the "non-fiction" animal stories that I had in my head. Now, it's pure fiction, and I'm extremely proud.

Moscow hasn't had any winter this season - it's been raining for the past few days, and on Sunday or Saturday, there was even a real thunderstorm. Too gloomy to take any pictures.

I miss this blog so much, but I'm tired of being so sporadic.

And I've a feeling that some people who are still coming here expect me to write about politics, but the problem is I'm so disgusted with what's going on both in Russia and in Ukraine, I don't want to waste my time and get myself upset.

Watching Dora the Explorer with Marta is such a torture: it's in Russian here, with some English, and here's how it sounds sometimes:

"Skazhite 'more faster'!"

And Dora is called Dasha here.

P.S. And Diego is singing: "You need swim, you need swim!" - which, I guess, means that he wants the turtle to swim...

Is the English-Spanish original as horrible, I wonder?

This Ukrainian lullaby, performed by Nina Matvienko, moves me to tears:



My other favorite is this Yiddish lullaby:



The whole project - www.lull.ru - is totally wondrous and amazing.

***

And here are three audio clips of Mykola Fokin, a Ukrainian singer, who was also my maternal grandmother's cousin:

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Де ти бродиш, моя доле?
Муз. Марка Кропивницького, обробка для голосу і ф-но В.Заремби
Дует з П.Кармалюком

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Київський вальс
Слова А.Малишка, муз. П.Майбороди
Хорова капела та симфонічний оркестр Українського радіо
Солісти: М.Шевченко, М.Фокін

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I've just finished a GV translation of the Russophone reactions to Kosovo - here.

An earlier roundup of the English-language reactions (along with 20 or so comments) - here.

***

AP's Mike Eckel has done a piece on the Russian blogosphere (a somewhat truncated copy - here), and below is my very sketchy supplement to it (all links are, obviously, in Russian):

- There are plenty of LJ blogs that are more or less like RTR - run by hateful propagandists of a variety of ideologies. Some of them support Putin's regime in one way or another (Rumol/Nashi activists, Gleb Pavlovsky's folks like mrparker/Maxim Kononenko - he seems a bit more subtle now, though, than he was a year or so ago), while others, like all those DPNI and neo-Nazi folks, happen to oppose it - which makes it even more depressing. I try to stay away from these bloggers as much as I can, but since they are always present in the comments to some of the blogs I read, it's hard to avoid them altogether.

- I actually prefer intuitive approach to LJ-monitoring. I regularly check the top-ranking entries at Yandex Blogs - tons of trash, but there's always something relevant there, too.

The beauty of LJ is that you always seem to stumble upon some truly relevant stuff, you keep discovering lively discussion at some pretty obscure blogs. One example of such unsystematic but lucky browsing is here. But this is also something that's really depressing about LJ - there's so much stuff there, you need a few dozen of clones to follow it all.

- Pictures of the recently vandalized walls of a few of United Russia's offices in Moscow, re-posted from the NBP site - at the blog of varfolomeev66, an Ekho Moskvy guy.

- A virtual rally launched by tanya-ogf (OGF is, I guess, United Civil Front) - here, here and here - a bunch of slogans, from Freedom to political prisoners! to Russia without Putin! to an unlikely one from Murmansk, in Ukrainian: Out with "democracy"! Long live Freedom! :)))

- LJ user drugoi is a good resource because even though his entries are often neutral and laconic, everyone seems to consider it his/her duty to leave a comment, to express his/her view on the issues he chooses to bring forward, and the result is often like impromptu opinion polls, very telling. He blogs a lot and on everything from the Russian politics to the Russian orphanages to the U.S. elections to the Norwegian royal family - so it's good to stop by at his place a few times a week to check for the most heated discussions. Lots of idiots leaving comments, but lots of decent people as well.

- Of the weird stuff, candidate Andrei Bogdanov isn't just a freemason, he's also a blogger: LJ user bonych...

- TsIK has an LJ community, too - http://community.livejournal.com/izbircom/. In one of the recent posts, geeks are arguing on when exactly the "www.medvedev2008.ru" domain was registered, in 2005 or more recently... :)

- A collection of spoiled ballots from the parliamentary election. Warning: many of them carry nazi symbols or other nasty stuff - http://soberminded.livejournal.com/242696.html

- Marina Litvinovich (abstract2001) - Kasparov's aide

- Valeria Novodvorskaya - http://vnovodvorskaia.livejournal.com/

- Boris Nemtsov - http://b-nemtsov.livejournal.com/

His first post, back in October, drew over 350 comments, and part of his reaction, in his second post, was: "Have read through the comments. Turns out there are so many mentally ill people in LJ. Well, but I'm not going to ban anyone - SPS is for freedom of speech, for everyone including the mentally ill. Also, insanity of some is being lavishly sponsored from the state budget."

- Dmitry Galkovsky on the parliamentary election - http://galkovsky.livejournal.com/115802.html

- Pyotr Favorov is trying to figure out why "the bloody regime" needs Alexanyan scandal - http://favorov.livejournal.com/316208.html

- Young Russian politicians/bloggers who were thought of as Russia's Pora back in 2005 (Oleg Kashin's old piece about them in Bolshoi Gorod is here):

Ilya Yashin, Yabloko's youth wing - http://yashin.livejournal.com/

Irina Vorobyova, fired from Russkoe Radio, now with Ekho Moskvy - http://vorobieva-irina.livejournal.com/

Nastya Karimova - http://karimova.livejournal.com/
she's running for local government now - http://karimova.livejournal.com/677216.html

Masha Gaidar - http://m-gaidar.livejournal.com/

Oleg Kozlovsky, the one who got drafted illegally - http://welgar.livejournal.com/

- Who is Who in LJ, by Ilya Peresedov - lots of valuable links - http://peresedov.livejournal.com/601178.html

I've just finished reading the Putin-related part of Kommersant-Vlast's translation (RUS) of the transcript of what is said to be Badri Patarkatsishvili's secretly taped conversation with Irakli Kodua, head of Special Operations Department of Georgia's Internal Affairs Ministry - very interesting stuff.

And now Patarkatsishvili is dead, allegedly of a heart attack.

Kommersant-Vlast's full translation (RUS) is here.

P.S. A quick GV translation of Sergei Dorenko's take on Patarkatsishvili's death is here.

About a week ago, I tried leaving a comment on Paul Goble's Window On Eurasia blog - but since he chose not to publish it, I'll blog about it here.

In Goble's post on renaming streets in the former Soviet Union, there's this mention of Ukraine:

[...] But it is in Ukraine where name changes may generate the greatest number of problems in the near term. On Friday, President Viktor Yushchenko directed the authorities to identify streets and other locations that could be renamed to honor Bogdan Khmelnitskiy (http://unian.net/rus/news/news-234179.html).

That will offend many ethnic Russians who view the leader of Ukraine’s national liberation war in the 17th century as anything but a hero. [...]

It's some Poles, not Russians, who might get offended, I wrote to Goble. I sent him a link to a Wikipedia article on Bohdan Khmelnytsky, too.

Ukraine's history isn't 100 percent about Russia, and the country's ethnic Russians, so often portrayed as this overly sensitive biomass, should be given a break every once in a while.

***

Goble ends his post with a report by an Azeri news site on how Lviv Armenians want to rename the city into Aryuts. It's so crazy, I'm not sure how to think of it: a mistranslation? a joke? propaganda? Whatever.

A Moscow-based foreign reporter has complained to me that much of the stuff found in the Russian blogosphere seemed "juvenile."

Boris Nemtsov, who's been a "blogger" since Oct. 2007, seemed to have been as disappointed after posting his first entry - which drew more than 350 comments. In his second post, he wrote (RUS, my very rough translation):

Have read through the comments. Turns out there are so many mentally ill people in LJ. Well, but I'm not going to ban anyone - SPS is for freedom of speech, for everyone including the mentally ill. Also, the insanity of some is being lavishly sponsored from the state budget.

This, I guess, might be useful when I'm asked to write my job description or something.

Another journalistic marvel from RTR (the first one's here), from the Dec. 23, 2007, show.

First, in Russian:

Тандем идет на выборы

На благо Родины

На прошедшей неделе стало ясно, что новогодние праздники страна проведет, уже абсолютно понимая, что ждет ее дальше. "Единая Россия" официально подтвердила выдвижение Дмитрия Медведева кандидатом в президенты. А президент действующий, хотя и мог сохранять интригу до мая, уже дал согласие в случае победы Медведева возглавить правительство. Точки расставлены.

Таким образом, для обеспечения преемственности власти выбран самый что ни на есть законный, но самый что ни на есть трудный путь. Восьмилетний срок президентства Путина был таким, что им и так можно было гордиться. Страна действительно стала совсем другой. И вот ответственность за выполнение задач, поставленных на будущее, берут на себя те же, кто эти задачи и поставил. Для политической системы "Путин плюс Медведев" это конечно двойная прочность, но для них самих - двойная ответственность. Поэтому вместо предвыборных лозунгов - лишь слова президента: "Нужно просто засучить рукава и работать. Работать без всякого чванства и амбиций". [...]

And a quick translation:

The tandem bound for election

For the benefit of the Motherland

Last week, it became clear that the country would spend the New Year's holidays absolutely understanding what awaits it in the future. United Russia has officially confirmed the nomination of Dmitry Medvedev as a presidential candidate. And the acting president, even though he could have kept the intrigue going until May, has already agreed to head the government should Medvedev win. All the i's have been dotted.

Thus, to secure the continuity of power, the most lawful and yet the most difficult path has been chosen. Putin's eight-year presidential term would have been something to be proud of anyway. The country has indeed become totally different. And now, those who have set the goals for the future are taking responsibility for fulfilling these goals. For the "Putin plus Medvedev" political system this, of course, means double endurance, but for each one of them it is also double responsibility. And so, instead of election slogans, only the words of the president: "We just have to roll our sleeves up and work. Work without any effrontery and ambitions." [...]

I really like the "double endurance" thing: good to know that ad writers are getting promoted this high in the pre-election Russia.

Our Marta always insists on picking stuff to wear herself - and her sense of style is truly peculiar :)))



She turned 2 years and 2 months old five days ago.

I rarely watch TV now, but today I've spent about half an hour glued to Vesti Nedeli on RTR (Rossiya TV Channel). It's a gorgeous show, a great example of how perverted journalism has become here. Too bad I can't find any video to support my claim. They've got partial transcripts of all their items on their website, of course, but you really have to hear and see it, not just read it. If I, God forbid, ran this country, I'd introduce a feature similar to sign language translation that would accompany every show, with a tiny Victor Shenderovich sitting in the corner, translating everything as he sees fit: this way, everyone - not just the majority - would be satisfied.

Here are the main highlights of today's show (all links in Russian):

- OSCE is acting up, "once again threatening not to show up" for the election. Russia's foreign affairs ministry "has called this demarche 'sabotage'." In the same piece, that clown Andrei Bogdanov, presented as Russia's pro-European presidential candidate. The message: take a look at him, people, take a look at his hair - and you'll know right away what piece of crap this whole "eurointegration" thing is.

- Foreign spies pose a threat to the democratic nature of the upcoming election.

- In Serbia, things are more complex than we may lead you to believe - but: "If democrat Boris Tadic wins, Serbia loses Kosovo, but joins the EU - a humiliating peace in exchange for economic benefits. If radical Nikolic wins, Serbia will give them a good fight for Kosovo. Serbs will most likely lose the EU, but instead they'll keep their national dignity." But hey, it is, of course, more complex than this.

- Ukraine: "Proud to betray." The piece is about Mazepa and how we are re-writing history. And about our government's Russophobia: "The famine suffered by the Soviet peoples is now known as holodomor - a genocide against Ukrainians only, committed by Russians."

- Detroit: "Forgotten, barely alive." An incredibly apocalyptic piece. A masterpiece of idiocy. I really hope someone will upload it on YouTube. One thing that's not in the transcript is the mention of Eight Mile - as a "once flourishing neighborhood."

- Those dirty, sick, deceitful Central Asian migrant workers, eating all from one pan, not washing their hands after taking a leak - Russia's true enemy within. Says Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Russian Federal Center for AIDS Prevention: "A whole army is needed to track down which ones of them are HIV-positive, and who's got syphilis, and where they are now. We should be working harder to educate these people. They bring in HIV infection, and they should be taught to use condoms, so that they don't infect Russian citizens."

I first read Anne Applebaum's column on the beautiful Russian women very quickly - so quickly that my only reaction was, "Oh, how nice it is to read something relatively apolitical and more or less positive about this part of the world."

Natalia Antonova's reading of Applebaum's piece was anything but superficial. Here's just one quote from her insightful and passionate response, posted at Global Comment:

I’m not against beauty culture. I do think it’s been, and continues to be, unfairly used against women - especially those who have no interest in participating. Applebaum’s piece has reminded me of the fact that beauty culture can also obscure the issues of traffickers and other exploiters.

I understand the sort of piece that Applebaum was trying to write. She was having fun. I like to have fun too - and get very irritated when pious wailing about Oppressors and Oppressed overwhelms me, because, not every single damn piece of writing has to be incredibly serious and somber and grave. If it was, we’d all shoot ourselves in the head and let the cockroaches take over.

Yet, if you’re going to rely on ridiculous generalizations, your piece is no longer fun. It’s merely tacky. And, quite possibly, damaging.

While in general I agree with Natalia on most points, I nevertheless have a slightly different take on Applebaum's piece, now that I've re-read it.

Applebaum's married to Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorski, and knowing this, it's hard not to think of the Polish Plumber hype and other labor migration issues while reading her piece - and especially its last paragraph:

Beauty is a matter of luck, but the same could be said of many other talents. And what open markets do for beautiful women, they also do for other sorts of genius. So, cheer up the next time you see a Siberian blonde dominating male attention at the far end of the table: The same mechanisms that brought her to your dinner party might one day bring you the Ukrainian doctor who cures your cancer, or the Polish stockbroker who makes your fortune, too.

For all I know, Applebaum is doing part of her husband's job here, trying to persuade the folks in the West to be a little bit more optimistic about the recent Schengen Zone expansion.

Because, obviously, there's plenty of pessimism out there.

Take this piece by Mark Franchetti, which appeared in the Sunday Times on Jan. 20 - "Britain is target in Ukraine’s people smuggling bonanza. With most border controls in Eastern Europe now gone, people smuggling has become easy business in the Ukraine."

Here's the first paragraph, a description that, I hope, explains why I'd rather read a dozen pieces like Applebaum's:

Chewing slices of pork fat at his house less than two miles from the border with Slovakia, a Ukrainian people smuggler broke into a grin studded with gold teeth as he predicted a sharp increase in trade this year.

My Global Voices translation of some of the reactions to this piece is here.

Russian Channel 1 (ORT) is so unbearably cute: according to their man in Kyiv, "85 Ukrainians" are opposed to joining NATO.

I'm not in Kyiv and I couldn't visit my father's grave when it was six months since his death. Instead, I took myself to Vagankovskoe Cemetery here today, to lay flowers to the graves of Vladimir Vysotsky and Rufina Nifontova (link in Russian), two people who, in different ways, have always meant a lot to our family, and so, in a way, I felt as if I got to spend some time with papa.





Actor Aleksandr Abdulov, who died of cancer on Jan. 3, is also buried there:

This picture of Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul appears in the beautiful new edition of Afisha's Istanbul guide. I took it in May 2007.



I'm so happy, and honored, even though when printed, the photo doesn't look as good - and they've also identified me as Veronica Smetana, instead of Veronica Khokhlova - a totally logical mistake, as they know I'm Mishah's wife, but have no idea I've kept my maiden name. It's a pleasant mistake, too, so much better than being misspelled 'Koklova' or 'Khoklova' all the time...

I originally posted the following as comments to the previous post - but now, in the morning, Mishah says it's too long and would probably look better in a post of its own, so here goes.

***

Thanks, Sasha, for posting these Svoboda Slova clips:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

***

Henadiy Moskal is unbelievable.

When a high-ranking official responsible for fighting corruption publicly accuses another high-ranking official of some pretty outrageous crimes, but then does nothing to prosecute him and instead announces that he's not scared of any slander lawsuits that Chernovetsky may file against him - that's crazy. No wonder the country's such a mess.

It's also very amusing to hear Moskal call those who run the country "amoral" - as if he's forgotten what year it is now and that he's a member of the government-forming parliamentary majority.

Oh, and calling the Lutsenko-Chernovetsky fight no big deal - "dva muzhyka povzdorili" - is brilliant, too.

***

I wrote the previous comment after watching the first clip, and now I've seen all three.

The second one isn't interesting, except for Teryokhin's rather dignified comment.

The third one's got Lutsenko in it - and I think Lutsenko should get himself an image coach, the way Yanukovych did after 2004, perhaps.

Someone who'd explain to him that it's wrong to interpret the "People's Self-Defense" thing so literally. Someone who'd explain to him that it's silly to allude to the "Sicilian Mafia" the way he does when he's talking about Chernovetsky's son and his alleged involvement in the housing construction scam:

I said, "Mr. Chernovetsky, I don't fight with children, that's my principle. This is inappropriate." I ordered Kyiv police to interrogate Mr. Stepan Chernovetsky, the son of today's mayor, after the election, so that it couldn't be used to further political confrontation. And when he today brutally used it against me, turned white into black, I was shocked. I said it was a lie. [Twenty minutes later, when the meeting of the National Security Council was over and the President thanked everyone and left], I approached Mr. Chernovetsky and told him that he was a liar, that he was mean ["brekhun" and "padlyuka"], and that normal people don't act like this. I had acted as a human being, knowing that even the Sicilian Mafia wouldn't fight with children, let alone the Ukrainian government. And for this, I got stabbed in the back [...]."

At the beginning of his explanation, Lutsenko mentions a few times that when he was telling the president of those outrageously illegal land deals, he didn't name any names, never pointed at Chernovetsky directly. And then he tells us how kind he was to Chernovetsky's son. And the general impression is that Lutsenko has been working so hard to protect Chernovetsky and his family - and now Chernovetsky has betrayed him.

It's disgusting to listen to Bogoslovskaya and Dovhyi, but it's as disgusting to realize that once again Yushchenko's team is doing everything to help their opponents to discredit them.