Edward Crabtree

A LEGEND FOR THE LOST.

On a street in Almaty there is a brass statue of Viktor Tsoi. Here’s why.

You stroll along the wide street called Abay Avenue which leads towards the Abay monument (dedicated to the poet, composer and reformer Abai Qunanbaiuly). You have a different poet and composer in mind, however, and just before you reach the gaping mouth of the Abay metro, you hang left and find yourself facing a large statue of a seated man and behind that an impressive fountain.

This is the entrance to the street which you take. The statue was of the composer Mukan Tulabaevich – the first Kazakh classical composer and author of the Kazakh national anthem. You, though, have another monument to another musician in mind and continue down the street You find yourself on a downward incline with trees on either side of you.

All of a sudden you are in the midst of some familiar verses as you are flanked by plaques all along the leafy pathway and these feature quotations from certain songs. You recognize some words from the legendary song Change.

Then you encounter the dark bronze statue. It has its back to you so you pass it and turn and find yourself facing an iconic tableau of a man in the centre of the path in the act of lighting a cigarette. Beneath him are the engraved word `Igla` – `The Needle`.

Soviet Cinema’s turning point.

From Kazakhfilm in 1988, The Needle was a film which kickstarted an all too brief trend of Kazakh New Wave cinema. Taking its cue from French New Wave films, this trend was willing to grapple with less than ideal social conditions (The Last Stop from 1989 about a soldier returning to his home town is another key example from this era).

For all its Avant-garde gestures The Needle brought in the punters, becoming the most watched film over the coming year. Furthermore, it made a superstar out of the leading man, who plays a character just known as Moreau. He is played by Viktor Tsoi, the lead singer and songwriter of the band Kino. Soviet Screen hailed this relative newcomer to the silver screen `the cinema actor of the year`.

Directed by the then 34-year-old Rashid Nugmanov, The Needle was shot in Alma Ata (then the capital of Kazakhstan, now known as Almaty and relegated to being `the capital of the South`) and took the St Petersburgian Tsoi to the land where his Korean father grew up. (There are many Koreans in the Central Asian states having resided in the Far East at the end of the Nineteenth Century).

One one level the film is a topical thriller. In it, an enigmatic stranger returns to his hometown to meet up with a past girlfriend and becomes embroiled in a feud with drug dealing gangs (this theme being something of a hot potato of the late Soviet period). Then again, the narrative uses the stylistics that are more common to modernist theatre than popular cinema. For example, Moreau’s girlfriend spends one sequence wearing a mask without explanation. In another scene, Moreau and some allies arrive to make a revenge attack on one of the drug dealers who is in a bath house. The men simple stand stock still on the edge of the pool and in this way some kind of violence is implied rather than depicted. Moreover, extended shots the parched wasteland of what was once the Aral Sea anchor the whole production in a dreamlike landscape.

Nor is The Needle just a showcase of Kino’s music. Sure enough, there is the presence of Kino’s mid-tempo interwoven guitar melodies here, but the songs do not dominate the tale. (Review of a Kino Album here)

The most famous song (written for the film) is `Blood type` which plays at the film’s denouement when Moreau stops to light a cigarette just before being knifed by one of his drug baron enemies.(This is the very scene recreated by the statue – which has been erected on the precise locale where it had been filmed some three decades earlier).

Eurasian superstar.

Viktor Robertovich Tsoi came into the world in June 21^st 1962 into a respectable family composed of an engineer father and P.E teacher mother. One crucial fact is that he spent his formative years in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). The proximity of this city to Finland made for a lot cultural interpenetration between it and Western Europe. Tsoi, somewhat set apart from his peers by his Asiatic appearance, came to idolize Bruce Lee. He was also enamored of the pop-rock scene of the Eighties in Britain and was familiar with such bands as Joy Division, The Smiths and Duran-Duran. He would flog his own hand-drawn reproductions of album covers to people in his circle.

Later under the moniker Garin and the Hyperboloids – a reference to a Spy-fi thriller by Alexei Tolstoy which was both filmed and serialized on Soviet television -became a part of the officially sanctioned Leningrad Rock Scene (a period of history examined in the film Summer – my review here).

We should be grateful for the Soviet policy which insisted that bands could not do covers of Western songs but had to write their own material – without this edict one feels that Tsoi and others of his ilk might well have remained cover bands.

Instead, throughout a twelve-year period, from 1978 to 1990 Tsoi, with a lean black-clad rock-hipster-cum-Kung fu fighter persona, put Russian rock on the map through his guitar, bass and piano playing and, of course, his portentous low register voice – but above all his zeitgeist laden lyrics. Kino would release some four hundred songs, many of them still sung by young buskers throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They played to a huge crowd as Luzhniki stadium in Moscow before Tsoi met his end in a car accident in Latvia in 1990.

In the meantime, a great deal of `Kinomania` had been generated. It is said that some fans took their own lives on hearing of the loss of their hero. In the longer term, conspiracy theories abound as to the exact nature of Tsoi’s death. There is also much lively debate about just what Tsoi would have made of the end of the Soviet Union, which he had got so close to but never got to see.

There is also a deep irony in the fact that some of Tsoi’s songs have been requisitioned by the Putin regime and turned into pro-war anthems sung by military choirs! (Needless to say, Tsoi was a draft dodger).

Metal Ghost.

In the presence of Nugmanov, the lead guitarist of Kino band Yuri Kaspyarin and (a real sign of the times) the Mayor of Almaty, the statue was unveiled on the thirtieth anniversary of The Needle’s release – June 21^st 2018. The sculptor – one Matvey Matushkin was born on the year that Tsoi embarked on his musical career.

Tsoi’s metal ghost continues to haunt this former country of the Soviet Union, forever lighting a cigarette in grim reflection….

A CHILD WITH SECRETS.

The film DETECTOR is a state of the art psychothriller that offers some cold comfort in its cloistered outlook.

The 47-year-old Kostas Marsaan, hailing from a village in the far North East of Russia, Yakutia, made a name for himself with his folk horror film Ichchi from two years back and has since become identified with a `Yakutian horror` scene in film.

His latest motion picture, a wintry puzzler called Detector is neither a horror nor set in Yakutia but yet bears many of the hallmarks of his more niche debut. Released in Russia early this March, the film consists of a psychological thriller with some modern Gothic trappings. Like Sisters it might also be said to partake a little of the much talked about trend of `Elevated horror`. In short, meandering between mystery, thriller and chiller, this is not a film that aims to have you jump back into your seat.

The main writer – Ivan Stanislavsky – is known more for comedies. He was responsible for Predators from three years ago and this is a wacky comedy crime caper.

The cast, on the other hand, is an ensemble one composed of performers notable for their involvement in this film genre.

The 38-year-old Nizhny-Novgorod born Ekaterina Vilkova resurrects her tough-but-endangered police investigator from the TV series Cold Shores. Likewise, the 48-year-old from Tallinn – Kirill Kyaro -appeared in Teach Me to Live (2016) and the TV series The Consultant (2017) as a psychiatrist and finds himself once again typecast in that role.

Detector is not set in Yakutia but in the more relatable (to many) edges of Moscow and, whilst not as exotic, the bare trees and snowy expanse of this do enhance the foreboding mood that the story builds up. Also, the setting in a four storey luxury dacha (which – Fun Fact –was the one built and lived in by the cosmonaut Alexey Leonev, no less!)

Juvenile messenger.

Viktoria, a police operative (Vilkova) is on the chase for a cold-blooded murderer. Ignoring advice from her colleagues, she enters a derelict building where he may be present. It is when she discovers a headless corpse that she is lunged at from behind and then slashed in the belly a few times. Her assailant leaves her for dead.

Viktoria recovers but is traumatized and has to accept the fact that she can never bear children. In the meantime, however, she has fallen in love with her psychotherapist. Novel is a wealthy man and she shacks up with him in his plush dacha beyond the capital.

Kyaro and Vilkova as the Ideal Couple in an aspirational abode [KG-Portal.ru]

On deciding to adopt a child they pay a visit to an orphanage. While they are looking, a head nurse shows a drawing made by one of the children. It depicts a brutal attack on a woman. Viktoria is struck by how much it reminds her of her own ordeal She decides there and then that the orphan who produced this is the one that they will take.

Dasha seems an odd and withdrawn child and this may owe to the fact that her own mum and dad perished in a domestic conflagration. She continues to produce sinister sketches – even putting them on the walls of her room. Viktoria is convinced that they depict scenes involving the murderer that she had been hunting.

Is the girl clairvoyant or does she have some kind of inside knowledge?

Viktoria returns to her police colleagues full of stories. She is met with unenthused doubts but, perhaps out of loyalty, they do assign a young investigator – Kostya (Gela Meskhi) to the case.

Together they find themselves running up against a series of blind alleys while Viktoria’s obsessive quest puts a strain on her relationship. Indeed, Novel has long since decided that Dasha should be sent back to her orphanage. When the girl stabs him in the hand matters come to the boil….

Distraction by numbers.

The bare bones of the premise do call to mind Olga Gorodetska’s supernatural thriller from 2019 Stray. However, Detector then takes an almost opposite direction. In fact, the plot could almost be a truncated season of Cold Shores. As is the way with this subgenre there is a final reveal that intends to induce gasps of shock but which can be seen coming.

Light on message, heavy on atmosphere.

The tagline for this film is `Take a Closer Look at Who You Live With`. That might, in fact, be the sole insight that one can take away from what is a rather domestic and insular thriller. Wider resonances about Russia or of the world Out There are hard to find here. That in fact may be part of the film’s appeal. I myself savored all one hour forty minutes of this creepy detective yarn, with parts that might have been written by Chat GPT but which oozed a well sustained macabre ambience throughout.

Indeed, the online user reviews, which more often than not are given over to sneering and cynicism have been positive and almost gushing for once.

For example, a Dmitry, writing on Megacritic.ru had this to say:

`The film `Detector` makes the viewer sit on the edge of the chair….The plot is unusual and unexpected…and the actors played their roles perfectly…Her [Vika’s] experiences and emotions are conveyed to the viewer so vividly that it is difficult not to be interested in what is happening on the screen…

And so on. This review was not an exception.

Nevertheless, in the cinema in Almaty (in a district calling itself `Moscow`) I found myself, for the umpteenth time, to be the only person in the hall.

Main image: Kladez Zolota. Livejournal.com

ALL SOUND AND FURY: THE FILM MIRA

THIS APOCALYPSE YARN, FILMED ON LOCATION IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, IMPRESSES WITH ITS BANGS AND WHIZZES – BUT WHERE’S THE SUBSTANCE?

Last December, an ambitious extravaganza, part disaster movie and part science fiction epic, reached Russian screens in time for the winter holidays. (I would have to wait another three months for it to get to Almaty in Kazakhstan).

MIRA after spending a lot of time on the launch pad, came caparisoned with illustrious associations.

Dmitry Kiselyov (not to be confused with the execrable T.V pundit of the same name) was the man with the megaphone. His resume shows that he helped to edit the iconic NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH films (2004 and 2006) and directed the quintessential family adventure-romance BLACK LIGHTNING in 2009. He has also taken us into the cosmos before with FIRST TIME (2013), a credible biopic of the first man to walk in space, Alexei Leonov.

One of the key roles is filled by a fifty-year-old Ukrainian Jew Anatoly Bely, a well-regarded stage actor who also has appeared in a great many television serials. He acts alongside a relative newcomer – Veronika Ustinova. Hailing from Ulyanosk, this seventeen-year-old has been compared by some to Margot Robbie. Here she showcases her talents as the cosmonaut’s daughter.

The film needs an epic score to complement its scenario and Yuri Poteenko is just the man for this. He also provided the score for NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH and has form with disaster movies in the form of METRO (2013).

Girl interrupted.

In Vladivostok, Lera, a fifteen-year-old malcontent, lives with a divorced mother and her paunchy lummox of a new stepfather and an exasperating younger brother. Only in her races – she runs for events in a local stadium -does she come alive.

However, her father, Arabs, works as a cosmonaut and spends much time in orbit with his Russian colleagues in a space station called Mira A. With the futuristic assistance of an A.I computer – with the titular nickname of Mira -this absent father is able to manipulate technologies down on earth and thus keep watch over his daughter. Unimpressed by this, Lera gives the middle finger to a street C.C.T.V camera that Arabs has commandeered in this fashion.

A hard rain.

Scientists on board Mir A have been attempting to warn those down below of an impending cosmic hazard in the form of a cluster of meteorites en route for our blue planet. (The actor Igor Kriphunov, best known for his work with Svyatelsav Podgaevsky, has a well-cast cameo role here.)

Their warnings meet with deaf ears….When the meteorites arrive, they disable the Mir. A space station and kill most of the staff, leaving only Arabs and Mira functioning.

Meanwhile Vladivostok is laid waste by the onslaught and Lera is rendered homeless and loses her little brother. It is here that the father and Mira’s creepy magic takes centre stage and a new father-daughter bond is forged. Together, using whatever visual and sound portal they can find, they relocate the lost brother and, while they are at it, also prevent an off shore tanker from detonating and taking half of Vladivostok with it.

Defiance of odds.

MIRA seems to lay down a heroic ethos. We learn that Lera exhibits a phobia of fire and that this originated from a time she was trapped in a burning lift, which her father could not rescue her from. This time, though, she will have to face down this terror – by joining forces with her dad.

Even her boyfriend – with something of a `woke` twist – boasts a prosthetic arm and must overcome the feeling of stigma this gives him.

Aside from motivational homilies, what can we take away from this tale? That remote parenting can work? That surveillance technologies might be used for the betterment of humanity?

Convincing mayhem.

I took this film in on the second row in a hall in the Chaplin cinema in Megapolis, Almaty. This featured a sizeable screen with Sensurround and, whilst I have never been one to salivate over FX the collision sequences in this film – all falling masonry, explosions and skidding vehicles – were among the most effective I have experienced.

Carboard cutouts.

If only the human input had been as animated. Ustinova delivers a performance which exudes dignity and seems believable and she represents the discovery of a new female lead in cinema. The rest of the cast, however, function as cyphers of family types: the caring but out of touch mother, the annoying but cute little brother and the cloddish but well-meaning stepfather.

Even Bely feels, in a strange way, insipid as though he had found that the script had not given him enough scope. Instead, he puts on dark glasses whenever he needs to convey a bit of character.

Perhaps this explains why MIRA, despite having some affecting scenes, stopped short of jerking my tears as much as it intended. I can say, however, that it did earn my unflagging attention for all of its long 150 minutes running time.

Magpie approach.

Refreshing though the Vladivostok setting is, the film is otherwise a stitch up of borrowed ideas. The Hollywood offering ARMAGEDDON springs to mind as one of the models (meteor shower, Mir space station and father-daughter issues).

The creators did not only draw on American precedents though. The conceit that forms the science fictional hub of the whole thing – a space station with the capacity to gatecrash earth side technologies – recalls the ATTRACTION sequel INVASION (2020) where a sinister intelligence in orbit could do the same.

Unpleasant resonances.

Above all, the meteorite attack scenes could not help but to put me in mind of the horrific shelling of certain Ukrainian cities by the Russian military. This, together with the very name of the film (which means `peace` in Russian) could even cause some to suspect that this film has a subtext.

One man who might like to think so is Anatoly Bely himself. After denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, he left the Moscow Arts Theatre last summer and now resides in Israel.

POLICE AND THIEVES ON THE STREET.

A raw Kyrgyz gangster-movie-with-a-heart makes waves in Kazakstahn thanks to a Russian translation.

Police and thieves on the street

Oh, yeah

Scaring the nation with their

Guns and ammunition. Junior Murvin (song)

To date the only modern cultural association that I could make with Kyrgyzstan was the charming pop band Gorod 312. I doubt that I am alone in knowing very little of Kyrgyz cinema. That which comes to the attention of the world’s stage tends to be the kind that pleases the niche viewership of cineastes who like films from this part of the world to be contemplations on village life and so on.

Against this background, the emergence of RAZBOI (Robbery) this year represents a refreshing green shoot – not so much in Kyrgyz cinema but in its acceptance outside of its own country.

(TRAILER HERE).

This film is urban and concerns the here-and-now and can speak to anyone from any culture.

A movie with a 50,000-dollar budget, RAZBOI however, has not penetrated the art house cinemas of New York, London or Paris yet, but, thanks to the ongoing lingua franca which is Russian it has begun wowing a new audience in Kazakhstan.

The film has been gracing Kazakh cinemas since 19^th January of this year and the director of Kinopoisk and Kinoplex cinemas (who are responsible for the screenings) Yurlan Bukhurbaev told Mail KZ (February), after noting that the showings drew good crowds, that ` a certain excitement has developed around the film. `

Made in Bishkek.

After being shot in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, RAZBOI then got professionally dubbed into Russian in a studio in Moscow. Running for 84 minutes and released with no age certificate, it is very much not a `family movie`.

The stark title says it all: this is a `criminal drama` just as advertised, having something in common with both the gangster and heist subgenres, as well as the `police procedural`. The creators claim a genuine news story from Bishkek as their starting point.

The directors are the 48-year-old Maksat Zhumaev, who hails from Naryn in Kyrgyzstan and Azamat Ismailov, both quite new to the game. Likewise, many of the players seem to be new faces – at least outside of their home country. Atai Omurbekov starred in Empty House (2012) a bleak social realist fable (which I have seen) about a young woman’s attempt to escape from the poverty of her milieu. I have drawn a blank on the other names, but they include: Adyl Bolorbekuulu, Zhyldyzbek Kaseyinov, Bek Bostonbaev and Uchkun Absalamov.

Armed greed.

One late winter in Bishkek an assortment of five ruthless outlaws are busy committing a string of robberies throughout the city. Their modus operandi is as simple as it is bold. They intercept vehicles transporting hard cash from bank to bank and take off with the loot. These mercenaries are also cold-blooded killers who show no scruples about gunning down whoever should stand in their way. Life is cheap for them.

Meanwhile, a police task force is not quite hot on their heals and indeed, seems to be outwitted by their quarry. The relationship between the cops and robbers is one of a kind of Cold War. Espionage even plays a part in the proceedings with an attractive young police officer in plainclothes used to elicit the phone number of one member of the gang so that he may be tracked and a street cleaner who is an undercover cop.

In this `man’s world` of phone calls and car trips, both sides have to contend with issues. With the robbers there is the question of trust: who of their posse can really be relied upon? The police have girlfriend and wife problems, with their lovers feeling abandoned as the twenty-four-seven demands of the hunt take its toll.

The stakes are high and the contemptuous killing of one of the law enforcement brethren during a stake out forms the centerpiece of this film. We get to see a dignified police funeral juxtaposed with the man’s would-be fiancé in the process of marrying a rival suitor.

Of course, the men in uniform will vanquish the baddies, but will pay a heavy price in so doing….

Tragic realism.

Despite some tense, indeed harrowing, sequences RAZBOI is no action movie. The narrative is more of an unheroic slice-of-life one. Enough screen time is devoted to the criminals to get across the fact that they are all too human. We even get a hint as to their motivation: we see one of their number, on the pretext of going out to buy groceries, call on his ailing mother in a rundown country bungalow.

In fact, it is only the violence instigated by the gangsters – shown in an unvarnished but not gratuitous way -that identifies them as obvious wrongdoers.

The film showcases some explosive acting and this is supported by a classical-electronic score that plays throughout all of the film (the exception being the police funeral which makes use of Kyrgyz rap to good effect).

RAZBOI climaxes in a way reminiscent of a Jacobean revenge-tragedy with needless slaughter all round. The consequences of violent crime are brought home and the trigger-happy bling-centered lifestyle of the gangsters is far from glamourised. The film is not cynical though: the end credits name check an actual policeman – Marat – who lost his life in the real life crime case which inspired this film.

Flagship success.

In the same interview quoted in Mail KZ Mr. Bukharbaev went onto to say:

`This is an example of the fact that huge budgets and state support are not always needed to realise a hit production. `

Indeed, the 75% full cinema that I attended on February 3^rd was quite new to me. I also noted that the audience was not quite what I might have expected. I had envisioned this as being a film for youngish men – yet behind me sat a row of chic unaccompanied Kazakh ladies.

Lead image: Instagram.

OF RETIRED GENERALS,VOX POP CHANNELS, ARMISTICE AND….LINE BREW.

MY NEW YEAR’S MESSAGE AND HOPE FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT FOR THE RUSSIO-UKRAINIAN WAR IN THE `YEAR OF THE RABBIT`.

…..`So why is there a war at all? ` asks Tjaden.

Kat shrugs. `There must be some people who find the war worthwhile.’

`Well, I’m not one of them`, grins Tjaden.

`No, and nor is anybody else here`….

`And I bet there are other people behind it all who are making a profit out of the war’ grumbles Detering.

`I think it’s more a kind of fever’, says Albert. `Nobody really wants it, but all of a sudden, there it is. We didn’t want the war; they say the same thing on the other side – and in spite of that, half the world is at it hammer and tongs`

`They tell more lies on the other side than our lot though,’ I put in. `What about those leaflets the POWs had on them, where they said that we eat Belgian babies? People who write things like that ought to be strung up. They’re the real villains`.

From All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Wilke (1929).

The news death of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev at the end of August last year in a hospital in Moscow came loaded with a dreadful symbolism.

Here was a prominent figure, who in spite of some quite obvious weaknesses, had dedicated much of the latter part of his life to internationalism, peaceful co-operation between East and West and disarmament. His official send off in his own country seemed paltry and almost begrudging – with the President himself too tied up in matters of war – to even put in an appearance.

Salivating generals.

This is a great time to be a retired military man in the West. You will be much in demand as a hired talking head wheeled onto an endless raft of online radio channels and YouTube stations with your every word hung on like never before. Your task is to foresee the imminent implosion and `break up` of the Russian Federation – something that NATO, as one of the sponsors of this awful conflict – has long set in its’ sights.

Since the Western public’s appetite for this costly drawn out war of attrition is not that great, the narrative also has to be spiced up with claims that the Russian troops are leaving behind booby trapped toys for Ukrainian children to stumble upon and have been setting up torture chambers for children too. These lurid claims, circulated with little concrete corroboration, are as about as convincing as the propaganda to the effect that the Huns were gobbling up Belgian babies in the First World War.

For this last year I have contemplating getting down in writing my fervent desire for a diplomatic political settlement to this war, for an armistice at least – yet I have always hesitated before adding my voice to the mix. I feel as if I am somehow not yet equal to the task. It appears, after all, that I am just a simple guy who likes novels, films and rock/pop.

Still, for those with eyes to see there are already fresh takes, with a bit more perspective, to be found on what is happening in the Ukraine. Jeffrey Sachs, Kate Hudson, John Pilger, Russell Brand, or even – if you can stomach his brand of `Red Fascism` – George Galloway…to name a few.

It is harder to feel any optimism about assistance coming from Russia itself: The Brain Drain afflicting that country was an issue long before the war but, of late (and particularly since the mobilization of last September) this exodus of the intelligent youth has been exacerbated in an exponential way.

And yet…and yet rock bands who have taken an antiwar stance continue to tour (the band LOUNA came to Almaty this week – alas I could not attend this time for health reasons) promising and original films (albeit conceived before 24^th February last year) continue to be produced and distributed in Russia and beyond (see above).

Another promising sign is the ongoing phenomena of Russian You Tube Vox Pop channels. One example is the indefatigable 1420 but there are others. In these shows there are a significant number of Russians on the streets of cities and towns who are not afraid of expressing sentiments critical of Putin’s war.

Whilst we must appreciate those Vloggers who have set up shop in nearby countries the better to continue to get news and views out without fear of molestation –Inside Russia and NFKRZ – come to mind, a special call out needs to made for those oppositional vloggers who have made a point of staying put, such as a young woman going by the name of Agent Nesty.

Observation post in KZ.

This issue is close to the bone for me as I am one of those who – after a lot of prevarication -took the nearest exit. I had a life in Moscow but the kind of freedoms I felt I needed both as a blogger and private citizen were more and more in question there.

I am now basking in the polite hospitality of the good people of Kazakhstan, where there a range of delicious types of Lagman to try, a decent local beer (Line Brew) and some affordable ballet.

Better still, even if the Kazakhstan leadership seems as corrupt as they come, their foreign policy does contain much to admire. Kazakhstan is one of the few nations to have volunteered to rid itself of nuclear weapons. The nation now pursues a `multisector` approach to international relations. This has allowed them to be neutral-cum-critical in their stance on Russia’s invasion. Anti-war protests have been given the green light in the cities of Kazakhstan and not only that but Almaty staged a concert featuring many Kazakh artists called Voice For Peace on July 31^st last year. Furthermore, Tokyaev has told Putin to his face that he will not recognize the legitimacy of territories seized by Russia in their land grabs.

So, it seems that I am safe here to continue as before. Now however there is a slight new twist to what I am about. Russia has become one of the most despised – and isolated – nations in the developed world and my job is to now pull from the fire some of the most hopeful cultural embers that come out of that nation and put them on show.

I will do so to build bridges. The stark fact is that, sooner, or later, this hellish civil war will just have to grind to a halt. When it does so the West will need to resume relations with Russia again and, on the way, will need some stepping stones to help them cross. We need to avoid repeating the history of what happened to Germany following the end of the First World War and its subsequent spiral into Nazism, which led to further wars.

And, who knows, I may start to incorporate some of the colonized Central Asian cultures of the post- Soviet period into my remit as well – such as those of the Kazakhs.

The `Year of the Tiger` may not have been the End of Days that it seemed Something good may yet emerge on the Eastern front – and you will read about it here.

WISHING YOU INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION FOR 2023!

Artwork representing a world cultural mix – on show at the stae Museum of Art in Kazakhstan.

Lead imge(of the International Space Station – the last outpost of Russian-Western co-operation) – is from Wkimedia Commons.

TWO DARK HOMETRUTHS: the films `LIKE A MAN and SISTERS.

Marriage and the Male Mystique come under the spotlight in these two fresh psychological dramas.

This November a pair of cinematic dramas from Russia arrived in Kazakhstan to add to the winter chill. They seem to be plotting parallel vectors in that they both lay bare the murkier ends of what is expected of men and women in our times. They do so in an entertaining way, minus anything in the way of sociological agit-prop.

Po Muzhski – the title gets translated as either `Manly` or `Like A Man` (I prefer the latter) -was released by Central Partnership on November 10^th and seemed to come out of the blue with a rookie director and a lead actor best known for online comedies.

This is by no means a comedy, however. Indeed, it comes under the label of `drama-thriller` which is as good a pigeonhole as you can get. Nevertheless, there were a handful of people to see it at the Almaty cinema where I went and it has garnered appreciative responses from the online feedback forums.

Like a Man was directed by Maxim Kulagin who has been responsible for shorts until now. The protagonist Gleb, is the 36-year-old Anton Lapenko who hails from the Moscow satellite dormitory town of Zelenograd. A redoubtable talent, he created a fanbase with `Inside Lapenko` on Instagram – a satirical character driven comedy which draws comparisons with Monty Python.

The 34-year-old Ekaterina Shcherbakova takes the part of Gleb’s stunning wife Polina. (With exquisite irony she also turned up in the comedy (Not) Ideal Man from a few years ago).

Whilst the film triumphs in not featuring obvious villains, the 28-year-old actor Sergey Vasin, who has done television work before, portrays a chilling and believable low-life antagonist.

Gleb has it made in today’s Russia. A managerial-cum- entrepreneurial type, he is rewarded in the form of a moderne and swanky dacha on the outskirts of the city. He and his wife have invited some friends over and, while they quaff some choice wines, he cooks on a wok.

Then it happens. A local youth hurls a bag of rubbish into their enclosed back garden. The resulting confrontation with this man of lower economic status leads to Gleb’s wife getting slapped. Gleb responds in a rational manner by herding his party back into the dacha and away from further harm.

A spiral of descent on Gleb’s part ensues. He begins to watch instructional street fighting videos, start trying to lift weights beyond his capabilities at the gym, and takers up smoking again, roaming the streets to cadge a cigarette. Then he buys a gas gun….

True enough he does make some attempt to bring closure to the matter in a civilized way. He goes to speak in person to the miscreant and befriends the man’s wife. However, his own wife continues to feel under threat and his more hothead friends urge him to deal with this `gopnik` with less compromise. Soon the dividing line between his own behavior and that of his enemy becomes ever more blurred.

Clichés are eschewed: this is no Straw Dogs, despite some similarities. Even with Andrey Bugrov’s stormy score setting the mood, Like a Man does not revel in depictions of gratuitous violence.

In fact, there is – as they say – a lot to unpack here. What is foregrounded is the contradictory demands that a modern males face – still mired in his provider/protector role but not expected to display brute shows of strength -but there is also something here about the yawning chasm between the aspirational middle-classes and those who are less successful. Also, whisper it, but I found it hard not to view the film as functioning as some sort of parable concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

In any case, despite problems I had with the language level, I was kept rivetted throughout the film’s 105 minutes and it has stayed with me since.

Sisters.

This proved a hard film to get to see. The showing was in a far-flung, vast shopping mall in which the cinema was not signposted. Then the cinema itself failed to advertise that they were showing the film. In short, I reached the booth as the opening credits were rolling. I was alone in the place.

Sisters (Sestri) released this November, constitutes a thriller laced with fantasy elements and was directed by Ivan Petukhov who is responsible for many comedies (and has worked with Uma Thurman). However, in 2020 he was inspired by the quarantines to produce Locked Up which revolves around similar themes of isolation that Sisters involves.Released by Baselev’s Studio/Magic Production Studio and Event Horizon Company, the film provides a meaty role to Irina Starshenbaum (Invasion, Summer,Sherlock in Russia). As well as being Russia’s sweetheart she is a known opponent of Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine. As `creative director` she also must have had a fair bit of input into the product.

Another old hand of stage and screen (who also can be seen in Summer) joins her: Nikita Efremov.

The action opens in media res with Anya (Starshenbaum without cosmetics and looking a little older than her thirty-years) attempting to flee from further physical abuse from her businessman husband, Andrey, with a toddler in tow. Later, after her husband has left for work, she discovers that she has been locked into her flat. Then, in her attempt to reach out for online help she stumbles on a sisterhood who offer assistance. This coven of once abused women hide horrifying powers. They have the means to turn the tables on toxic men with a spot of human combustion….

Throughout the film’s 110 minutes the pace is slow and the mood unsettling. As with Like a Man what we get here is a domestic drama zooming in on the reactions of the main players.

Despite it’s 18 + certification, the cruelty and physical violation that forms the core of the tale is kept off the screen for the most part. Efremov plays Andrey with restraint: he seems calm and even loving at times and yet somehow menacing throughout.

Sisters represents an exercise in ambience. It is a spectral ambience brought about by the interplay of illumination and shadow in the photography and a celestial score from Misha Mishchenko (known for his work with the band Evendice) which provides the nucleus of this state-of-the-art Art Horror project.

The film was released to coincide with something called The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the director’s own comments and the statistics about domestic violence put up on the screen as the story closes all suggest that this has pretentions to being an `Issue Movie`. They seem to be trying to do for domestic violence in Russia what The China Syndrome did for the American nuclear industry – that is, blow the whistle on it.

Sisters is, for sure, unsentimental about life in Russia right now yet I am not so sure that its intended message will seep through. Something more social realist than magical realist might have fared better. Then again, Gogol’s The Overcoat – a ghost story – raised the question of lower-middle class poverty in its time.

The bigger question is this: will those interested in the West ever get to see these important films now?

Lead image: Kinomail.ru

KIS-KIS BANG! BANG!

The saucy Mumble Rockers draw an oversized crowd at Zhest Club in ….KAZAKHSTAN.

I now reside in Almaty, the largest city in the Russian speaking former Soviet nation of Kazakhstan. This is the first experience that I have had of seeing live rock music here since arriving here just over two months ago.

Kis – Kis (their name, rather than being a reference to sucking face, has the sense of `Kitty Kitty`) originated in St Petersburg. Throughout their four years in business they have already amassed (as I would discover) a dedicated following.

The four-piece personnel consists of Sofiya Somuseva who supplies most of the vocal element and her buddy Alina Olesheva hits the sticks while Yuri Zaslonov (`Kokos`)grinds out the chords and Sergei Ivanov (`Khumny`) pumps out the bass.

Their 2019 album, `Punk Youth`, alerted the Russian rock public to their existence and their latest release, of this year, glories under the title of “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living`.

Of late the quartet have been hawking their wares in the major cities of Central Asia. Before I caught them on the 26^thNovember they had already entertained the kids of Astana (Kazakhstan’s capital in the North of the country) and then done the same on Karaganda in the central region. Then, after playing for me, were due to make their way to Bishek, the capital of Kyrgystan and Tashkent of Uzbekistan.

Excess demand.

I had already expected that by getting to Zhest Club by 8pm – the time given on the ticket – would provide me ample time to chill with a glass of Line Brew, the local beer, and find a good spot to get some visual record of it all.

In the event, on reaching the unlikely street, with its endless rows of eateries and food stores, I gasped on seeing a queue coiling down the street. This would be my home for the next hour, as a diverse set of punters, not all ethnic Russians, joshed each other with bonhomie while concerned looking members of staff, walkie-talkies in hand, emerged from the club to see how their clientele was burgeoning. For the first time that year, it began to snow and we were all well dusted with it by the time the line had inched its way to the entrance.

`Zhest` means `tin` and, indeed, this twelve-year-old venue resembled a huge sardine tin, and, as the supply had exceeded demand (reaching a thousand rather than in the hundreds), we were to be the sardines.

Some had opted to leave their coats in a pile in a corner but I opted to keep mine on. Getting to the bar involved more tortoise like movements and getting anywhere near the front proved impossible as the true fans, taking the precaution of having got there early, had long since squeezed up to the front.

Kittens and heavies.

I was adjusting to all this palaver when the brassy and copper haired Somuseva strutted onto the stage wearing an asymmetrical skirt, one side being longer than the other. Flanking her were two identical men, built more like roadies than the string section that they were, hidden behind ski masks (a la Moscow Death Brigade).

The modelesque Olesheva sat on a raised platform behind her drums and a wind generator rippled her pink hair as she drummed. This was a blatant bit of theatrics but she did look very fetching and provided much of the ensemble’s most memorable visual impact.

Only Rock and Roll.

They ran through their hits and other songs “Girlfriend`, `Kirril`, `Mincemeat` – and so on with some impressive synchronized pogoing throughout the two hour show. The crowd was kept engaged, anticipating each song as it came.

The two girls talked a lot. They sprayed the crowd with water. They collected the bras that fans hurled at them. They encouraged us to chant Rock! Rock! Rock! They told us to crouch down and then to all leap up on command.

Then Kokos took over as the drummer and another guitarist materialized so that Olesheva could launch herself into a sea of upraised hands. They quaffed some cognac (The rules must be more relaxed here as I never saw the like on a Russian stage).

Then Alina and Sofiya went for a clinch in a show of `spontaneous` affection for each other.

Of course, this stunt calls to mind the faux-lesbianism of tATu in the early noughties and no doubt they are already tired of this comparison. (The frisson that this had at that time is hard to recapture now, but the band are doing their best by, for example, recording an audio version of Maxim Sonin’s `queer` novel Letters Until Midnight of 2019).

Slick.

For a four- piece, the band bang out a full sound, albeit they add some prerecorded keyboards to the mix. This is garage rock with elements of rockabilly and alt -rock, but all spun on a power pop framework. They are competent players well versed in their own upbeat genre and yet have no signature style of their own. (Kis-Kis have been bracketed in with a supposed rock trend dubbed `Mumble rock` which was initiated in Ukraine in 2016. However, it is difficult to say what the defining features of this journalistic invention are apart from a general cheekiness of attitude). For all their show of street rough-and-readiness the band aim straiight at their teen demographic, leaving nothing to chance.

Like Zveri before them they offer up a world which is cleansed of depressing oldies and which is full of parties, crushes, friendships, experiments and adventures.

A Kick to Kill the Kiss.

On this tour, perhaps Kis-Kis are playing at being cultural ambassadors to Russia. If so they are doing so at a time when many Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan in particular, are drifting away from the belligerence of the Great Bear. What can these two vixens, and other bands like these, do to bridge the gap and offer the youth of the former Soviet countries?

A punk ethos hides a very calculated approach. [Shazam.com]

The thrill of transgression? Maybe so, yet the band’s insolent naughtiness is ever more out of synch with the direction of the new wartime Russia and it even remains to be seen for how long it will be tolerated in their own country. Teen spirit? That’s a closer fit, yet the pair are now well into their twenties and I wonder how long they can sing as though they are in their first flush of youth. `Female empowerment`? Yet they appear accompanied by two body guards masquerading as guitar players. Rock and roll? This is the best suggestion, although the closest musical and stylistic comparison I can come up with is that of the Canadian teenybopper from the noughties – one Avril Lavigne.

Lead image: Mobilelegends.net

Daydream trippers.

REVERSIBLE REALITY is an all too plausible glimpse of the future but offers no surprises – however, it is as timely as hell

The teaser for this `fantasy thriller` enjoins us to picture a world where you can -among other things -`settle scores with a hated boss…all without consequences`. Indeed, in the dark but comic opening scene an overwrought employee does just that. The street below his office gets littered with the corpses of his repeatedly vanquished boss in his virtual fantasy.

Dmitry Konstantinov, the 57 year old director-cum-screen writer responsible for Reversible Reality (Obratimaya Realnost) has a history of involvement in crime thrillers. For all its being set a few decades hence and tickling us with some wacky science, this is another one.

This 84 minute film got a 12+ certificate release this year, two years after its completion. It incorporates noir elements alongside a boardroom thriller within a science fiction framework. Some bankable actors have added the icing on the cake by adding their names to it. Heartthrob Pavel Chinarev provides the lead and the multi-award winning Timofey Tribuntsev (The Island, 2006) makes a great theatrical bad guy. Meanwhile the alt-pop outfit Mojento lay on some musical interludes.

Virtual addiction.

The film is a glimpse of a hyperurbanised Russia of tomorrow. Here Virtual Reality know-how has advanced to the degree where pundits can immerse themselves in interactive parallel realities.

A Virtual Reality corporation called New Life has found itself riding on the crest of a wave of demand for its services. Citizens are content to vegetate in their free time, with what are called `Adventures`, tightrope walking across a gorge, scoring a goal for a major football team and so on instead of hiking and dating.

Blissed out commuters enjoying their Adventure.[En.Kinorium.com]

However, glitches are starting to appear and these sweet dreams are starting to become more like nightmares as a cell opposed to virtual living have found a way to hack into the system. Is the grand scheme of New Life in jeopardy?

Cybercop.

Enter Mihail (Chinarev). A specialist in online crimes, he gets tasked with infiltrating New Life as an employee and to seek and destroy the `antivirts`. Suspicion has fallen on one Vika, an employee of the company who commits such flagrant breaches of propriety as reading hard copy books on the metro (Zamyatin’s We, no less!)

Mikhail though is soon mesmerized by Vika’s gamine charms. With her as his new squaw he begins to uncover New Life corporation’s dastardly plot to extend its powers. (They are even confiscating people’s household pets the better to minimize any competition with their Adventures!) In the process the boss of the corporation is clubbed to death – or so it seems – and the fingers all point to Mikhail.

This multilayered whodunnit is rolled out with a fast pace and much talk. The septic New World was one that I haver seen countless times before – not least inBladerunner with its nocturnal cityscapes overseen by vast video displays. The technological marvels of it are kept to a wise minimum – although the downloading of Mikhail’s mind into the body of the boss – will play a part in what transpires.

Fifty costumes were designed for this show. Their sleek quality adds to the general texture of the film as do the transparent computer screens. The virtual reality appliances are represented by a bar of light hovering before the punter’s eyes.

The actors seem to be doing their own thing, but in a good way. Chinarev is a fisticuff trader whose bedroom features models of motorbikes. Tribuntsev acts his socks off as the despotic CEO (as well as others who come to inhabit his body). Vera Kolesnikova (100 Days of Freedom, 2018) is doll faced and impassive and it is easy to see how Mikhail could become spellbound by her. We also get a cheering cameo from Vladimir Yumatov who plays a seedy antediluvian sleuth given to announcing his presence with a loud blowing of his nose.

Old World Futureworld.

Overall this conformist and automated anti-utopia took me back to Hollywood films from two decades back such as Equilibrium and Minority Report (both from 2002). I found this to be a bedrock of reassurance. The theme explored here is a very old one (one could go back to Huxley’s `feelies` in Brave New World from a century ago) and one far from reassuring, but the film engages with it in a style and format I could relate to with ease.

About time.

The appearance of Reversible Reality in the cinemas seemed like an answer to a call. The news is full of stuff about how Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual reality scheme – Meta – is faltering owing to over-investment and people are losing their jobs because of it. Perhaps you and I are not so willing to trade in our old real lives for new virtual ones. Perhaps, like Mikhail and Vika at the close of the movie, we would rather be sitting on an actual boat floating down an actual river on an actual summer’s evening. In an interview for Kinoteatr.ru Chinarev commented:

` After all, we look into the monitor screens more than we do each other’s eyes`

Postscript. I have received news that the release of Hamlet Dulyan’s long awaited adaptation of Evgeny Zamyatin’s influential dystopia WE has yet again been cancelled. (It was supposed to reach cinemas on December 1st of this year following many delays). No reason has been forthcoming. This echoes the cancellattion of the release of the film EMPIRE V (From the Viktor Pelevin novel) last March.This represents a disturbing new trend in Post February 2022 Russian cultural life.

The lead image is from Mobilelegends.net

SHADOWY, TWISTY AND MUST-SEE.

Russian television goes Scandinoir – and it works.

Caught between the pincers of the pandemic on the one hand and the war with Ukraine on the other, the television psycho-thriller Cold Shores (Holodniye Berega) and its second season of July 2022 Cold Shores Return (Holdniye Berega: Vozrasheniye) first reached the Russian viewing public on October 14^th three years ago in the form of 8 fifty minute episodes.

Coming from the unexpected source of Star Media, purveyors of heartwarming family melodramas, this small screen classic is what I would show to someone should I want to provide them with an example of Russian television at its best.

It says a lot that the user reviews of this show have been positive, even if some of the local critics have been a bit guarded. The biggest caveat I can make to add to the endorsement which follows is that this glitzy whodunnit does owe a great debt to certain crime dramas that have been coming out of Denmark and Sweden for the last decade.

Monster in a gated city.

Set in the closed off plutonium enriched city of Ozerk, the show was in fact filmed in Rybinsk in the Yaroslavl region.

The core premise – even with all of its misdirection – could not be simpler. In the winter months, a serial strangler of women is menacing the city. The perpetrator targets women with a particular look and removes their wedding rings and sometimes disfigures them.

A rookie police investigator and Daddy’s Girl (whose father is a top brass in the force himself) comes to be charged with overseeing this perplexing case. Her name is Alina Novinsky.

Ekaterina Vilkova is Alena Nevisnky [E.Kinorium.com]

You will get no spoilers from me and just reiterating the plot details could not do justice to the impact it has anyway. Suffice it to say that Alina’s friends and family are all sucked into the case which follows. She falls for one of the suspects who has lost his wife. This new lover later meets a carbon copy of this missing spouse leaves and then Alina for this new woman. Meanwhile, her father becomes disabled and retires and her colleague’s wife is slaughtered by the killer…and so on. Throughout it all a string of near watertight suspects needs to be discarded as so many false leads.

Select line up.

Ekaterina Vilkova, the 38-year-old actress from Nizhny Novgorod, made her name as the Dreamboat Girlfriend in the frothy Boy’s Own fantasy adventure Black Lightning (Chornaya Molniya, 2009). Ten years on Vilkova seems to have gained gravitas, being more striking than pretty and with an ability to suggest shifts of emotion with almost imperceptible alterations to her face.

The brooding 49-year-old from Krasnoyarsk, Kirill Safonov, takes the part of Alina’s new love interest whereas the Ukrainian born 34-year-old Alexander Gorbatov is his would-be paramour. The distinctive craggy looks of one Igor Kriphunov (best known as a permanent fixture in Svyatoslav Podgaevsky’s horror movie cycle) also appear.

One of my favourite actors, Alexander Yatso shows up for the sequel and he more or less reprises the role he portrayed in Akademia – a criminal psychologist.

A special call out should go to the man who played Alina’s father – Sergei Puskepalis. I remember this chunky actor for his role as the severe and stony-faced military officer in the disaster film Ledokol (Ice Breaker) from 2016. Alas, in an off -screen disaster this talented screen presence passed away in September of this year following a road accident in his home town of Yaroslavl.

R.I.P Sergei Puskepalis, 15th April 1966 -20th September 2022 [People’s. RU]

Son of the strangler.

Cold Shores: The Return catches up with the same cluster of characters three years on. Now, however, another depraved maniac is leaving a trail of female corpses in the snow in what appears to be a copycat of the previous case. Nevinsky has moved on to being a psychologist but her association (and notoriety) in connection with the earlier case brings her back into the fold of police investigation.

D.V.D cover of *Cold Shores: The Return*. [Kinopoisk.RU]

This time she has to contend with the cynical prying eyes of a popular blogger. She has a demanding teenage son who composes electronic dance music and has fallen out of love with her returned husband… and much else besides. Again, the narrative teases us with an identity parade of credible culprits. Then an ingenious rationale is given for the least expected one being the actual criminal.

Deluxe.

It might seem that the Cold Shores franchise (if we can already call it that) represents a standard issue post -Scandinoir Whodunit thriller in a market already saturated with this subgenre. Yet from the opening montage of the misty ice encrusted roads and bridges of Rybinsk-cum-Ozersk and the corresponding ruminating score by Vladimir Mayevsky and Mikhail Khimakov, the viewer senses something superlative is on the way.

The tale, told via the point of view of a number of characters, has enough of a measured pacing so as to allow the script to breathe and the characters to unfold. Attention has been paid to detail. For example, one of the investigators has the stimming habit of opening and closing a cigarette lighter. All this and the eerie mood music, the borderline exotic location and the spaghetti junction of twists and cliff hangers leads us to overlook any contrivances of the plot.

Just another crime thriller? [Kinopoisk.RU]

The U.S.P here is domestic melodrama (of the kind that Star Media does so well) spliced with a psychological thriller: a Dostoevsky tale told in a Hitchcockian style and set in an up-to-the -minute world of ever vibrating mobile phones.

Scandinavian or not?

The producers of Cold Shores have taken copious notes from the Scandinavian noir rulebook. One: get a lead who is a glamorous but relatable young woman. Two: plonk her in an overlooked but photogenic city. Three: surround her with a cast of tried and trusted character actors. Three: pile on the revelations and unmasking. Then throughout it all assume that the audience possesses some intelligence. It works, for sure.

Where they have differed from this template is also the very way this show can be marked out as Russian. It lies in the lack of any kind of sociopolitical slant. Unlike Trom (Denmark/Faroe Islands, 2022)or The Bridge (Denmark/Sweden, 2011) and, in particular, Henning Mankell’s Wallander (Sweden, 2005 – 2010)there can be seen no tilt at overarching corporate power – and this in a drama set in city notable for its secretive involvement in nuclear weapons production! Instead we get a family melodrama – complete with aspirational interiors – glorified as a suspenser.

Unlike so much of contemporary Russian small screen fare though, Cold Shores does not fall back on sidearm and shoot out porn to keep up the interest. Also the bleakness of its world view is much redeemed by the sense throughout that all the flawed characters really need each other.

REVERSAL

The Day my Dream of a Modern Russia Died.

So, I am back again, despite lack of popular demand and with a post that I never wanted to write.

It seems appropriate that the first warning of the catastrophe that was to come came out of the mouth of a xenophobic court jester – one Zhirinovsky. It was sometime in the winter of the previous year when he said something about Russia becoming great again and something about war, and this would start around the 22^nd February. The ravings of a moribund loon.

Then in the January of this year American military intelligence were often being quoted in the Western press about an imminent invasion of the Ukraine.

It was easy to shrug this off as panic porn. We had become weary of this since the pandemic years.

Then on February the 24^th came the headline news: Russian soldiers and tanks were barging in to a neighboring Slavic sovereign territory – and not just to safeguard Donbass but were heading to Kyiv.

Many Russians (let alone expats) have since insisted that their home country crossed the rubicon on this date and became a different country.

For myself, it felt as though all the background noise of Russian life from the past decade – the national exceptionalism and autocratic authoritarianism – which I had been polite enough to overlook, had all of sudden become the foreground. We had entered Sorokin’s The Day of the Oprichnik.

As Russia ranged itself against the West despite all the all too obvious repercussions, a numbness set in across the land. The day after the news everyday small talk became impossible. In the days that followed people scarcely talked about the new war – and if they did it would be to claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that it would be a short one.

I spent every morning unwilling to get out of bed, scrolling through as many news channels as I could find, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, hoping against hope for some kind of negotiated settlement.

All around us dark rumours swirled like whirlwind ready to suck us in: soon it would be impossible to cross all land borders as martial law would be imposed and the internet would only function within Russia.

These never happened but, then again, many flights out of Russia were no longer available, access to sites such as Facebook became restricted and frightening new rulings were passed making any kind of public discussion of what was happening well-nigh impossible. You could be caged for up to 15 years for even mentioning the war – as opposed to the `Special Military Operation`.

Novoya Gazeta, was subject to threats and had to leave the country. Moscow Ti mes – the voice of liberal America in Russia – took the precaution of making themselves scarce in advance. Radio Doszhd was closed down and Meduza could only be accessed with a VPN. This was not the `developing,` if `managed`, democracy that I had signed up for. Had I been backing a losing horse for the last fifteen years?

With that came the fast forwarding of one unfortunate facet of Russian reality: the brain drain. Many young Russian professionals decamped to nearby C.I.S countries and many of my immigrant colleagues got onto the net and booked journeys out by the nearest exit and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Mute witness.

I did not join them. I had already invested too much to jettison it all. Meanwhile, I learnt about my own limitations – that I lacked the guts to join in the sporadic protests that began to appear on streets near me. As for this blog, I could think of nothing reasonable to say that would not now be actionable.

I became like any ordinary Russian citizens, keeping my views to myself. Reassuring myself that I had not panicked like so many acquaintances of mine, I doubled down on `Russianness`: I visited the Bolshoi theatre a few times and took in some ballet and I got around to finishing Brothers Karamazov.

But something felt wrong.

Violation.

Now that my gag is off, I can tell you what I think about this `Special Military Operation`. The invasion of the Ukraine represents an arrogant violation of international law. It is an act of imperialism and there is nothing that the people of the Ukraine have done to bring it on.

The grim ordeals of the Ukrainian people – the shelling of peaceful cities, millions of people being made homeless and the executions – have been well documented. Yet it is not only Ukrainians who have been exposed to needless tragedy. If the BBC is to be believed then 3, 052 Russian soldiers had been slaughtered as of May 31^st of this year (and this number only includes those whose full names could be confirmed).

Then there has been the inevitable blowback against Russian `soft power` – the very thing that this blog was so bound up with. Tchaikovsky has been removed from the playlists of some Western orchestras, Dostoevsky airbrushed out of the reading lists of certain universities, even the Crufts international dog show disallowed Russian dog breeds and an American mustard museum took out it’d display of Russian mustard. The most egregious aspect of these cancellations is the fact that that from Malevich to Gogol to Vera Brezhneva -many `Russians` are Ukrainians or have Ukrainian ancestry. Trying to separate Russian and Ukrainian cultures is akin to trying to remove the egg yolk from a cake mix. As the French actor, and now Russian citizen, Gerard Depardieu said: `This is a fratricidal war`.

Furthermore, now that the West seems hell bent on supporting one side in this civil war, it is one where there is an all too real possibility that weapons of mass destruction may be flung around. We have entered The Day of the Oprichnik and may well also end up in the world of Metro 2032 and The Slynx as well.

There seems to be two ways that we can wake up from this nightmare. One is for one side to vanquish the other. There are many reasons why the world should not want this outcome.

The other way out is for a negotiated settlement and one which would lead to a long-term ceasefire and a diplomatic peace agreement. This would need a lot of earnestness and grown up statecraft to happen.

I hope and pray for this outcome though and also grieve the many opportunities for such an agreement that have already been chucked away.

Provocations.

My condemnation of the actions of the Kremlin does not mean that I am unaware of the role of the Western military machine in this global disaster too.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was set up as a response to the perceived threat of the Eastern Bloc back in the late forties. The latter formed the Warsaw Pact as a countermeasure. NATO has now 30 member states under its wing and the Warsaw Pact zero. In 1991 as the Soviet Union folded, and with it the Warsaw Pact, not only did NATO fail to soften its approach, it began to push its boundaries out further to the East, covering an eventual 800 miles.

In March 1999 Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic became a part of this aggressive military bloc.

Then in 2004 Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia followed suit. (Estonia being only 200 kilometres from Sant Petersburg).

Albania and Croatia joined up in 2019 as had Montenegro in 2017. But it didn’t end there: NATO sent troops to Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

In 2010 NATO had begun speaking of a `new strategic concept` and this included in its remit `out of area activity`. Ignoring the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, around 150 US B61 nuclear bombs had been positioned around Europe by 2012.

The warnings of august diplomats such as Henry Kissinger that this behavior would only lead to further tensions went unheeded.

This looks more and more like a proxy war in which Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are used as cannon fodder in the long-standing desire for NATO to ensure that Russia is humiliated.

Green ribbons.

In the light of all that, we can be grateful that not all Russians have become zombified by `Uncle Vova’s` megaphone which is the state media and press which lays out a diet of bloodthirsty and rash militarism.

As well as the brave rallies which have resulted in sweeping arrests, some of Russia’s Great and Good have made some unexpected contributions. The Georgian heartthrob-crooner Valery Meladze got in early to speak out against the war. He was rewarded by some of his shows getting withdrawn.

Popular singer Valerie Meladze [MA Regnum]

On similar lines the bow-tied chat show host Ivan Urgant (think Jonathan Ross) let his feelings be known on this. He too has been taken off air in disputed circumstances and there are unconfirmed rumours that he has since fled to Israel on a permanent basis.

Popular TV chat show host Ivan Urgant [Armur Info]

Of the political parties, the disenfranchised liberal club which is Yabloko could be relied on to critique this foolish vainglory. However, there are also reports that the much more loyalist Russian Communist Party has experienced some tumult as its younger members question the official narrative and even talk of `Imperialism`.

In the rock world, there are some acts that we would expect to nail their anti-war colours to the mast and these include D.D.T, Zemfira and, of course, Lumen. Others have simply gone quiet. The hip-hop genre has acquitted itself quite well with one of its prominent exponents – Oxxxymoron becoming something of a tribune for anti-war sentiment.

Many gestures by `ordinary people` have been small but significant. Someone in my local area of VDNKH (Moscow) went around putting up photographs on walls showing scenes of ruined Ukrainian cities after shelling operations. A man in St Petersburg a man called Alexey Lakhov has been filing complaints with various government agencies for their use of `Z! symbols in public places – and has put many of them on the defensive.

New symbols of resistance have gone viral after being promoted by the internet savvy young. Green ribbons have been tied around the bannisters of public buildings and a `new Russian flag` has gained some traction. This consists of the colours `White-Azure-White` and represents an alternative peace-loving Russia.

Evacuation.

For the last four months I have kept the company of people who have buried themselves deep into their daily routines, their work, their families, in hobbies, in food and drink, in books and films and declined to engage with the blood that is spilled in their name on their doorstep. We were revelers on the decks of the Titanic.

I still cherished my life in Russia and could with ease have carried on living the way I was there. What nagged at me was that I was unable to either freely speak my mind in any public arena, let alone this blog, with impunity. Freedom of speech became a concrete issue for me.

So, after investing a lot of my rubles in dentistry and packing the rest away in a portable safe I joined a colleague in taking a fast train to Saint Petersburg. There we whiled a few days away before catching an overnight coach to the small and charming city of Estonia. From there I got a Flight to London Heathrow with no idea of what lay in front of me on the other end, and arrived there in June.

We took our leave without interference from any of the guards who stopped our coach numerous times en route. The Ukrainians and Russians who were with us were not so lucky.

I wish to return to Russia as soon as it is feasible to do so. Meanwhile, the show is not over. I have internet access, some Russian contacts and a backlog of experiences still to draw on.

Lead image: Floridagoodfriday.com