Being in St. Pete felt like running into an ex-boyfriend and spending a day walking around innocently with him.

An ex-boyfriend that I spent years with and then dumped because I'd just had enough to bear it any longer. A beautiful boyfriend - but totally fucked-up, irrepairably fucked-up.

After a few years apart, it feels nice, even wonderful, to hang out with him - he's a sweet guy or else why would I have wasted all that time on him. Some of that time was way cool, by the way, and it's awesome to recall things now. But it's as wonderful to realize that it's over and I don't have to return to this guy.

This is what St. Pete felt like to me - after living there for two years and being away for seven months. Couldn't find a better comparison than this...

I'll post some photos later - I don't have many, but St. Pete loves being photographed, so I do have enough that I like a lot.

Mishah and I are leaving for St. Pete in two hours, for a few days. I don't think I'll have enough internet access there to write - but maybe I will.

It'll be the first time in St. Pete for me since we moved back to Moscow in February, so I'm kind of nervous.

All the very best to everyone,
Veronica

We are absolutely shocked by what's going on in New Orleans and other areas affected by the hurricane, and we feel so sorry for the people there, and we hope the suffering ends as quickly as possible, and I don't have anything more to say about it - except that Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, seems like a totally amazing guy...

Different Ends, Same Violent Means is the title of Masha Gessen's Sept.1 column in the Moscow Times, in which she writes about the recent attacks on the National Bolshevik Party activists and Polish citizens here in Moscow:

[...]

What, besides repetitiveness, ties these stories together? There are credible claims, made both by eyewitnesses and by analysts, that at least some of the attacks on the NBP and the Polish citizens were inspired by the Kremlin, and possibly carried out by members of the Nashi youth movement. That may or may not be true, but at this point it does not strike me as the most important common denominator. The most important one is this: it is violence as a way of doing business, violence as a way of settling scores, violence even as a way of conducting international relations.

The next time I scroll through the news wires and see a headline about NBP activists getting attacked, or about a Polish citizen or another non-Russian getting beaten up in broad daylight, or even about a huge gang fight in the middle of the city, I will not be very likely to click on the items: I feel like I already know these stories. And I think this is how I will remember summer 2005 in Moscow. It was when stories of violence blurred into each other and became old hat. It was the summer when violence stopped really being news.

I went to the NBP site right after I finished reading Masha's column: what if they've changed their image since I last looked through their materials; what if I've missed their wondrous metamorphosis from reckless, tough bigots to peaceful, non-violent sweethearts? I mean, I almost felt sorry for one or two of them right after the beating - they were in a hospital room, showing their injuries to reporters, looking so innocent and so hurt...

***

Well, first of all, I checked if their posters were still on the site. Yes, they're still there, and here's a tiny selection:

***

Next, I scrolled down to the very bottom of the page and took an NBP survey:

In Daghestan, state officials are being murdered:

- Good
- Bad
- Not enough
- The sooner it starts happening here, the better!
- We wish there were some stability...

Bad, I responded, very bad: it is very bad to kill anyone, even if it's someone who's kissing Putin's ass. Then I looked at other people's replies:

Good - 65 (6.14%)
Bad - 112 (10.58%)
Not enough - 61 (5.76%)
The sooner it starts happening here, the better! - 567 (53.54%)
We wish there were some stability... - 254 (23.98%)

***

This is so annoying.

With posters like these, you'd expect them to be able to stand up to any offenders, regardless of who they are - Nashi or not. Instead, the NBP kids act like sissies.

You'd also expect Masha to mention NBP's views on violence - but then it'd be obvious that they don't belong with the Polish journalists and diplomats.

***

Here's part of their program:

ESSENCE OF NATIONAL-BOLSHEVISM
1. Essence of National-bolshevism is the incinerating hatred to antihuman SYSTEM of the trinity: liberalism / democracy / capitalism. The man of uprising, national-bolshevik sees his mission in destruction of SYSTEM up to the basis. On ideals spiritual courage, social and national justice the traditionalistic, hierarchical community will be constructed.

ENEMIES
2. Foreign enemies of National-bolshevism: the large Satan - USA and mondialists of Europe, incorporated in NATO and UN. Internal enemies: a class of "jackets" - boyars - bureaucrats, marauders - "new Russian", cosmopolitan intelligentsia.

[...]

"Cosmopolitan intelligentsia" sounds like something out of the late Stalin years - and out of Masha's book about her Jewish grandmothers... Ah well.

***

Among NBP's "friendly sites," I've found one dedicated to Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Would I be surprised if I found a "friendly" link to the FSB there? No - because here's what I wrote a year ago:

The FSB has a website (in Russian); closer to the bottom of their front page I found a note from 2003, which tells us that on Sept. 11, Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of what later became known as the KGB, the predecessor of the FSB, turned 126 years old. How nice.

They have more in common with Putin than they want everyone to believe.

***

Here's how they're recruiting new members - they pretend to be the Ukrainian Pora...





***

Finally, something nice.

There seems to be one useful thing that the NBP is capable of doing: Russian lessons!

Looks like the state is very scared of Marina Litvinovich and is using its heavy artillery against her: the 9 pm news on Channel 1 (ORT).

In a story about those for whom the Beslan tragedy is just a means to further their political careers, Litvinovich was portrayed as some kind of a monster woman: she is not only promoting her version of the truth as the only one out there by having created a site called PravdaBeslana.ru, the Truth of Beslan, but she is also Garry Kasparov's advisor!..

A tiny, hour-long opposition rally at Lubyanka Square. Nothing to write about, really.

Some toys, water and flowers laid by the Solovki Stone.

They were hoping to hold the rally tomorrow, but the city authorities refused to give permission.

Most flags had SPS (the Union of the Right Forces) logos on them, but there were also a few orange ones, though I couldn't read what was written on them.

At least one guy was wearing a Khodorkovsky Go Home t-shirt.

To show that Ria Novosti and some others were lying yesterday, Marina Litvinovich has posted a scanned copy of the appeal for political asylum on PravdaBeslana.ru - with 87 signatures so far.

The scans are too huge (over 1 MB each), but here're the links anyway: page one, page two, page three, page four, page five.

Of the weekly news magazines, I normally buy Kommersant Vlast, but yesterday I bought this week's Russian Newsweek as well, because of its cover:



"Beslan, a year after" - and a Reuters photo that I posted on this blog exactly a year ago, of Elbrus Gogichaev carrying the 6-month-old Alyona Tskaeva, one of the 26 kids released with their mothers that day. Alyona's mother, however, stayed with her two other children inside the school and died there the next day. Alyona is being raised by her grandmother, and Elbrus, the special forces guy, is now a friend of what remains of that family.

There's a bunch of other photos of survivors - a year ago and now - and a text (in Russian), which I can't bring myself to read - here.

***

But before you reach that "now and then" section in the print issue of the Newsweek, there are four and a half pages of small portraits of everyone who died in Beslan a year ago.

The photos have been gathered by the Mothers of Beslan committee.

Faces and names, nothing graphic whatsoever.

Smiling faces, most of them.

Arranged alphabetically, but I only realized that at the end.

Made me weep for I don't know how long.

You can download a .pdf file with these portraits here (33 MB), though they have not been scanned in too carefully...

Via Marina Litvinovich and PravdaBeslana.ru (in Russian) - according to the findings of Stanislav Kesaev's investigative commission, these two men are responsible for spreading false information on the number of Beslan hostages: Dmitry Peskov, first deputy of Vladimir Putin's press secretary, and Pyotr Vasilyev, deputy director of the "Vesti" Informational Programs Directorship (RTR, a state-funded TV channel).

[...]

A. Torshin's parliamentry commission's report confirms this information: when journalists began reporting the unofficial number of the hostages on Sept. 1, 2004, those responsible for contact with the press were Ossetian interior minister Dzantiyev, head of the department of the federal security service Andreyev and Dzasokhov's press secretary Lev Dzugayev. The regular supply of information to the mass media was carried out via D. S. Peskov, a representative of the president of the Russian Federation.

It was these lies about the number of the hostages supplied by these people that led to the rebels' aggressive behavior and their shooting of the people. After the rebels learned that the media were reporting a total of 354 people being held, they stopped giving water to the hostages.

[...]

***

According to his official bio (in Russian), Pyotr Vasilyev earned a Ph.D. in Communication from School of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1998. From 1996 to 2000, he was an executive producer at ABC News and frequently worked on assignments from ABC's Primetime Live and Nightline.

Hard to believe this is true, hard to believe the world is so small, too fucking ironic that a man with access to some really important and disgusting state secrets and lies had spent four years working for a TV company that is now not allowed to work in Russia...

***

David McDuff at A Step at a Time has translated part of an interview with Stanislav Kesaev, conducted by Marina Litvinovich.

I needed to check something, so I went to my Sept. 2004 archive - and got stuck there, re-reading the Sept. 1, 2 and 3 entries...

It does not feel like a year ago, it feels like I've just finished watching the storming of the school live on TV...

Here's one thing I never wrote about then but which I'll never forget:

After it was over, I went outside, to buy cigarettes or something. I was walking toward Sennaya Ploshchad (we still lived in St. Pete then), people around me seemed unreal, but I did pay attention to two teenage girls walking ahead of me. They were dressed up in that careless, teenage, way, one had blue nails and the other had purplish hair, and they were talking about school and boys. One thing I caught was about their classes having been cancelled that day. Which didn't surprise me at all. Then the mother of one of the girls called her on her cell phone - she wanted to know when her daughter would be back home, and she wanted her back home soon. The girl sounded annoyed and whiny, she said she wouldn't be too late, but it didn't look like she meant it. And her mother probably insisted, and finally I heard the girl say, reluctantly, Okay, mama, I'm on my way home. And I felt something of a relief - because if she'd continued pissing her mama off on a day like that, I would've caught up with her and explained what kind of things her mama had just spent an afternoon watching and how that was more than enough reason for her to want her daughter back home early...

Today's Beslan photos and stories of the survivors (in Russian), on Natasha Mozgovaya's LiveJournal. Also there, photos from the Beslan cemetery where the victims are buried.

***

Six Reuters photos on Gazeta.ru.

A New York Times piece on an HBO documentary about Beslan children, to be aired in the States tonight - The Horror of Beslan, Through Its Youngest Survivors...

[...]

A small boy recounts how one terrorist's grenades exploded, and "he blew up and his brains hit me in the face." Another wished that Harry Potter would arrive with his invisibility cloak and wrap him up, and together they would escape.

[...]

The filmmakers' questions to the survivors went beyond the details of the siege, including, for example: "Did the events affect your belief in God?" One boy, Mr. Woodhead said, told them: " 'I don't believe in God. I believe in the Russian military.' "

Only one parent refused to allow a child to be interviewed. The filmmakers were welcomed into the homes of Beslan, with tea, cakes, vodka and often entire meals spread out for them.

[...]

Here, NTV is showing a documentary of their own on Saturday, also about the kids. I'm not sure I'll be watching it.

From the Guardian:

[...]

A group of the victims' relatives delivered a symbolic public rebuke to the Russian government today, releasing a petition signed by more than 400 people requesting political asylum "in any country where human rights are respected".

The petition states: "We, the parents and relatives ... have lost all hope for a just investigation of the reasons and the guilty parties in our tragedy, and we do not wish to live anymore in this country, where a human life means nothing." [...]

And from the Russian state-funded Ria Novosti news agency:

The Mothers of Beslan committee, a group of women who lost their children in the hostage-taking tragedy last September, has denied any role in an appeal for political asylum that was disseminated this morning in the name of the committee, the chairman told a news conference.

"It is an opinion expressed by several members of the committee rather than a collective decision," Zhulieta Basiyeva said.

"We have seen the statement and considered it, but we never intended to distribute it," she added.

The statement, which was distributed among foreign journalists during mourning ceremonies in Beslan, contained an appeal for political asylum "in any country where human rights are upheld." The statement said 500 signatures had been gathered in support of it, but nobody has actually seen them.

***

The full text of the petition, published in Gazeta.ru (in Russian), is rough, not too coherent at times, and reads like screaming:

[...]

We've been waiting patiently for almost a year to be told the truth about the cruel killing of our relatives, and for those responsible for it to be held accountable. But time and the officials' behavior have shown us that we'll never be told the absurd and horrible truth. Many of us were held hostage inside the school and we witnessed the extermination of the people. We were present at the trial of the terrorist [Nurpasha] Kulaev, and the state prosecution has been trying to put all the blame on the terrorists only. Yes, a terrorist act took place, the rebels shot 21 men inside the school. They were not killing women and children. And who was it then that shot the rest, more than 300 people, mainly women and children? Whole families were being killed. Why?!

They do not want to tell the obvious truth to us. But we know it now. We know who did it, we know who used our children and relatives in their own dirty politics. We know who chose not to negotiate with terrorists and sacrificed the lives of our relatives for the sake of their ugly political image. Yes, on September 1-3, 2004, the federal authorities have achieved a cynical and bloody victory over a bunch of terrorists, the victory that was both a military and an informational one. After this, terrorists would think twice before taking children hostage, because they've been shown that nothing can stop the federal authorities. But why were they liberating us so cruelly?

It is obvious that for the federal authorities of Russia we're nothing but "persons of Caucasian ethnicity." The hostages were treated like cattle at a slaughterhouse. [...] The federal authorities justify their actions by the lofty ideals of Russia's integrity. And what are we supposed to do? What are our children guilty of? Such a mass slaughter of hostages may be repeated anywhere anytime.

We think that the primary reason for the spread of terror in Russia is the cruel war against our own people in Chechnya. Corruption and bribery have turned into a cancer on the body of the Russian state structures. This tumor has affected the whole society and serves as rich soil for crime and terrorism.

We, mothers, fathers, relatives and close ones of the hostages who were cruelly tortured by the terrorists, have been betrayed by our politicians, officials, law enforcement, and our "president," we are desperate and we've lost all hope to hear the truth about the main culprits guilty of extermination of our relatives; we are asking you to accept us in your country where we would be law-abiding citizens, respecting your laws.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to you and your peoples for sharing our pain during the September 2004 tragedy. We hope that this time you will treat our appeal with sympathy and understanding. We will be grateful for your response.

[...]

Desperate and sincere, naive - that's what I think of it, even though I've read some people's opinions that it's a well-prepared move by Garry Kasparov and other opposition activists, blah-blah-blah.

I do hope there'll be a country that will have the guts to grant these people and their children asylum.

(Could Ukraine be this country? Would they agree to move there? Somehow, I doubt it...)

A six-year-old, Sept. 1999 Kyiv Post piece on anti-Semitism in Ukraine - and a recent picture of the Mandarin Plaza underground pass - at Abdymok...

According to Radio Echo Moskvy (in Russian), relatives of those who died in Beslan have addressed leaders of foreign states through foreign journalists present in Beslan today, asking for political asylum.