Uncategorized – Generation P: Edward Crabtree's blog.

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

THE INTRIGUER, THE MINDBLOWER AND THE ROMANCER: A Look Back at Three Soviet period Science fiction writers

Leaving aside the translated works of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and, to a lesser extent, those of Alexander Belyaev, the science fictioneers of Soviet period Russia are not much trumpeted in the Western world.

So what a pleasant thrill it gave me to chance upon, in an expat bookstore, three compendiums of translated science fiction stories by authors new to myself and from that period.

Thank you Raduga.

From their base in Zubotsky Boulevard in the Park Kultury region of Moscow, Raduga (`Rainbow`) Publishers began making available foreign language imprints from their inception in 1931 up until the end of the Soviet Union. These publications included children’s books, language guides, photographic albums and popular fiction. As a part of a series called `Adventure & Fantasy`, Raduga brought some representative science fiction authors to the Anglophone world in the era when glasnost and perestroika where being spoken of in the Kremlin.

A futuristic doppelganger tale.

Vladimir Mihanovsky’s The Doubles was first published by Progress Publishers in 1981 but Raduga bought the story six years later when the Ukranian writer was 56 years of age. By this time Mikhanovsky had been a teacher of Maths and Physics at Kharkov University and penned a few tales speculating on humanity’s relationship with robotic technologies.

The intriguer: Vladimir Mikhanoivsky [esu.com.va]

Mikhanovsky’s stories – there are four in this collection -take place in an urbanized future that appears to be somewhere in America (`the Rockies` get a mention in one story). Interplanetary travel is a part of daily life (but not integral to these tales), domestic robots grace every home and the cities are crisscrossed with moving walkways. The Land of Informa is the exception, being a charming Wellsian tale of a man stumbling on an alternate world near a railway station outside of Moscow. The Violet is a sometimes zany detective tale set in the aforementioned future world (indeed the author would later devote himself entirely to the detective genre).

The title story – The Doubles – seems to have as its title a play on Dostoevsky’s tale The Double (1846) – the quintessential doppelganger story. In it we meet Newmore, an obsessive and gifted scientific researcher who, very much like Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll, dreams of isolating the more virtuous side of man’s psyche away from his baser part. He employs the latest in particle physics to do so and creates a sort of ethereal anti-human entity (which he calls `Alva`) which has the capacity to absorb the worst of a human being and turn into their negative doppelganger in the process. However, the original person and their Alva must never meet as this will result in mutually assured destruction in the form of an explosion – yet the Alva is drawn by magnetism to seek out it’s opposite and so needs must be avoided at all costs.

Despite these drawbacks, Newmore finds an all too willing guinea pig. Arben is a man desperate to rid himself of the guilt and irascibility that has overruled his life so far.

Indeed, after Newmore’s procedure, Arben does gain a new life: he receives a new approval from his workmates, forgets his guilts, gets back with an old, now adoring, girlfriend, acquires a swish new automobile and so on. However, the Alva is always Out There, seeking him….

Soon he is begging Newmore to reverse the whole experiment, particularly as his double seems to be breaking the expected rules in its urge to meet him. With a heavy heart Newmore agrees, but will the Alva get to Arben first?

Mikhanovksy tells a fine up-tempo tale even if some of the dialogue (in translation at least) reads like something from a television soap opera. His writing – not all that `Russian` really – resembles an Asimov but with a more vivid appreciation of the pitfalls of technological development.

Signals from a doomed species.

The Odessa born Segei Snegov died at the age of 84 in 1994 after having become best known for his space opera extravaganza People as Gods which he tapped out between 1966 and 1977 delighting many fans in Eastern Europe who resonated with his galaxy spanning quasi-Biblical excursions.

The mindblower: Sergei Snegov [Yandex.Zen]

First appearing in Detskaya Literatura in 1977, Snegov’s addition to the `Adventure & Fantasy` series consists of twelve stories which revolve around Roy and Henry, two scientific investigators tasked with getting to the bottom of inexplicable events or unusual crimes involving technology.

They live in a future world not unlike Mikhaonovsky’s. We are not given a location but weather is controlled, we have interstellar travel, robots of course, and a hinted at world government. The means exist to record and project the thoughts and dreams of the human mind and this features in a great many of the stories.

In the title story Ambassador Without Credentials Roy’s job has become personal. He is investigating the mysterious crash onto Mars of a spaceship which was carrying Hemry, his brother who is now lying comatose in a hospital on Mars.

Events accelerate when it transpires that the catastrophe had defied the laws of physics. The crew were befuddled by receiving warning signals that had reached them at faster than light speeds (an impossibility). Meanwhile, in his coma Henry is dreaming about physical and mathematical concepts which are way beyond his own capabilities….

The plot, as brilliant as it is preposterous, goes on to encompass an imperiled civilisation trying to reach out by using pseudo-humans planted into Earth’s society and by moulding the dreams of performers who sell their own dreams for entertainment purposes. We also get an alien visitor masquerading as a monkey that feeds off electricity and the use of an invisibility suit.

The tone is upbeat, even jocular at times, yet it is a very homosocial world. There are no women in this story, not even there as objects of desire. Despite this Ambassador Without Credentials delivered one of the most fun reading experiences I have had for a long time whilst playing with such solemn themes as the nature of Good and Evil and personal responsibility in the face of cataclysm.

An archeologist’s Mediterranean mission.

The still living Yuri Medvedev, from Krasnoyarsk, is the youngest of the three and his reputation still precedes him. Type his name into Yandex.ru and you will encounter shadowy insinuations about this writer including him being a key player in the “defeat of Soviet science fiction` no less.

The romancer: Yuri Medvedev. [swarogfond.livejournal.com]

Such accusations, which he has rebuffed, seem to refer back to his time as the Editor of Molodiya Gvardira . He steered this publication in the direction of pan -Slavic nationalism and in so doing set himself up in opposition to such figures as Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.

This was all some time ago and it is now difficult to sort out the facts from the gossip so – to the texts themselves!

The first and longest tale in The Chariot of Time (a collection introduced by the cosmonaut Vitaly Sevastyanov!) is called The Cup of Patience, a sort of science fantasy folk tale narrated by a young archeologist called Oleg Preobrazhensky.

In the Far East of the Soviet Union, Preobrazhensky had unearthed the dwelling and preserved body of a legendary princess called Snow Face. Later, however, his breakthrough discovery gets buried under the rubble of an avalanche triggered by an earthquake.

Later an imperious teacher of his sends him on an unexplained errand in Sicily, where most of the action will henceforth unfold. In Sicily a strange epidemic is underway and there is talk of UFO sightings and fires that seem to be caused by them. Nearby there resides an American military base. What part does this play in it all?

Preobrazhensky then meets up with Snow Face – except she is really the representative of an intergalactic community bent on safeguarding the Earth’s environment….

This itemization of the main plot elements does little to convey the experience of reading it. Medvedev seems to be a part of the Ray Bradbury school of science fiction which has a lot of poetic ruminations throughout. Stylish and sophisticated though his prose is, it is also high-falutin and over-romantic and I came close to returning the book to the shelf unfinished. The Cup of Patience does reach a kind of focused conclusion however, and it seems to be a simple `Yanks Go Home` one (and which had already dated by the time of the translation of this story in 1985).

A Challenge to Stereotypes.

Encountering Soviet Period culture can so often be something of an eyebrow raiser, failing, as it often does, to conform to our prejudices. The only writer here with a clear ideological axe to grind is Medvedev although even his brand of Pan-Slavism meets Green consciousness was not exactly the party line in the Eighties. As for Mikhanovsky and Snegov, they were very akin to their Western science fiction counterparts of their day. They even gave their protagonists Western sounding names.

Mikhanovsky, Vladimir The Doubles (Moscow: Rasduga Publishers, 1987) (Translators: Raisa Bobrova, Miriam Katz, Katherine Judelson).

Snegov, Sergei Ambassador Without Credentials (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1989) (Translated by Alex Miller).

Medvedev, Yuri The Chariot of Time (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1988) (Translated by Robert King).

ON GOLDEN CLOUDS: ELIZIUM LIVE AT ADRENALINE STADIUM.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD’S LOCAL HEROES HAVE BEEN BLASTING OUT THEIR UPBEAT SOUND FOR OVER TWO DECADES. BUT WHAT ARE THEY SO HAPPY ABOUT?

So it is up the Green line to the north-west of Moscow to the Adrenaline Sradium, one of the live music venues to have come out of the other end of the Big Stop.

The hype for this event had only been an on-screen one: I saw no posters about it, but what hype it was! The event – billed as `Twenty Five Years in Space` was to be an Anniversary bash and was evoked with nostalgic fanfare:

`It seems like yesterday we were putting on plaid shirts and mohawks and the walls of the Nizny Novgorod `Manhatten club thudded together with any musicians we could…`

And so on. Yet despite this generational framing, the assembled masses lining up outside the club on 17th September prove a nondescript bunch in terms of style and of all and every age. I catch sight of one man who seems to be accompanied by what might be his septugenerian mother. Conversely, another mother in her forties accompanies her daughter – who looks perhaps not yet sixteen – to as far as the entrance to the show.

Another incongruous aspect to the set up is the fact that a vaccine passport( in the form of a QR code) proving that you had had the Sputnik V jab is demanded for the privelege of them taking your money to see them. (The band, or their management are, I suppose, entitled to make such stipulations if they want but my ferverent wish is that such schemes do not become viral throughput Moscow).

Power Pop Dance.

ELIZIUM first took to the stage in 1995 in the tourist town of Nizhny Novgorod on the river Volga. The bass player Dmitry Kuznetsov, who took up music after having taken two degrees, is the kingpin and together with the singer Alexander Telekhov forms the mothership of a band that is characterised by a revolving door of contributors coming and going.

The band, somewhat lionised in their local city, boast some ten albums and, for all the line up changes, a distinct sound. `’`Space rock` (as they sometimes style it) it is not – or at any rate not if this term puts you in mind of Hawkwind and the like. (The only cosmic part of their performance lays in the numinous electronic ambient introductory soundtrack as the band enters the sage). Nor, nowadays at least, could the sound be pigeonholed as `punk` or even `ska punk`: it is too polished for that. If pressed I would call it `Power Pop Dance music`.

Sporting a mohican doesn’t make you a punk.

Heads up all the way, they deal out big slabs of melodic sound held aloft by peppy rhythms and enthused vocals. They are a slice of cherry pie swimming in cream and perhaps with some smarties in it. Their very name, which they are weary of being asked about, is the Greek word for `bliss`.

Jamboree.

ELIZIUM comprise the usual string and drum set with two horns and a keyboardist, making them a seven piece plus backing girl singers and an occasional electric cello. With so much going on on the stage they do not add any dry ice or strobe lights or anything of that kind. They are of indeterminate age and favour skinny jeans, casual shirts and shades giving the proceedings a beach party ambience.

Doing some synchronised hopping from one foot to the other, they sustain an unstoppable dance machine for three hours or so. Some of the best performances are provided by the audience. In front of me a shapely peroxide blone bombshell girates about with her uber-chad boyfriend. It was what they had come for.

One of the band’s songs features a chorus which translated as `Golden Clouds` and this seems to pretty much encapsulate the carefree ethos which they are determined to put across.

This being a birthday do, there are guest stars too. Among those that I recognised are Lu Gevorkyan, the leade singer of LOUNA . She materialises, quite without preamble, looking chunkier than I had remembered, and her trademark roar seemed a little askew amidst all the froth. Likewise, isn’t that the dimunitive form of a pink haired version of SLOT’S Daria Stavrovich that I see before me?

ELIZIUM are self-conscious crowd pleasers and the devoted punters reward them for it. Even the brass section, it is refreshing to see, can bask in some of the kind of love more often given to guitar heroes. Searching my lexicon for a pithy word or two to pin them down I come up with `brassy` and `vaudevillian` and I think that about nails it as much as I can.

However, the brassy vaudevillianess is diluted a bit by the presence of several television camreras on and offstage. I sense that the quality of the musician’s playing has a detached feel about it, as though they are performing for on-screen posterity more than for us.

Without waitng fo the encore, I clamber out into the wide and dark boulevards outside feeling a bit out of sorts. The `golden clouds` may have been covid-free, but there was a kind of toxic positivity about them. I find myself sickening for some kind of confrontational bite – of the kind that a band like ICE3PEAK or, sometimes, PILOT can deliver. This seems vanishingly rare in the rock-pop world of Russian in the fourth term of Putin.

2020: WHEN THE KISSING HAD TO STOP.

`Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel` – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

In wishing you and the other guy that reads this All the Best for Etcetera, let us revisit some of the more promising signposts in sight and sound that were served up in these last leaden twelve months.

I opened last year with a write-up of the film Invasion and in this opined:what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!
Alas, it seems that we are not so much in the Roaring Twenties as the Rasping Twenties!

Aspects of this – the Zoom pandemic year – were presaged by the grim military fantasy Avanpost from 2019 with its quarantine zones, mass infections and blackouts but even more so by the television series Epidemia (from the same year) – starring The Sniffer’s Kirril Karo – which was serialised on Netflix with subtitles earlier this year.

There have been some small mercies. The Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin only visited one Big Stop on us all (between late March and early July). There have been no more since then.

So – I never thought I’d say this -but a Big Thank You to Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin for not being a fanatic for Big Stops! He may have put an end to Gay Parades in Moscow, but he hasn’t put an end to the gay parade that is Moscow life itself.

The main casualty of Rasping Twenties so far has been the ability to join a crowd and see rock/pop artists perform in front of you in darkened halls. Even the venues for this are being decimated: Glav Green Club is limping along but Red Club is an empty property and Mumy Troll Music Bar is likewise hollowed out.

(The same is true for pivbars. Kamchatka – the street mecca of central Moscow – closed its doors forevermore last December in order to be replaced by yet another Adidas retail department. The Kruzhka chain is still around though).

I did however manage to turn up to see the theatrical cosmic rock act Sunwalter. They were playing alongside fellow nu-metal exponents like Blackthorn in an event styling itself Metal Against Corona at Live Stars on 2nd October – just before further restrictions would have made such an event impossible again.

The cinematic breakthrough of the year has to be Sputnik. Premiering online last April during the Big Stop, it made it into the cimemas in August and has been welcomed with a string of appreciative comments by Western European and North American cineasts.

Let us hope that its vaccine namesake Sputnik V proves to be every bit of a success!

(By the way, if you like scary Russian movies then join me on my Facebook page Russian Horror is Cool. This gets more hits than this here blog, which is damned annoying!)

Although I have yet to review it The Man From Podolsk must constitute the other significant film of this year. A Harold Pinteresque absurdist take on culture rifts in contemporary Russia, it reminds us that literate and awkward films can still make it in the current environment. It is the Zerograd (1989) of our time.

As for the popular novel, I was a latecomer to the Labyrinths of Echo series. This is not my genre and I will not be thumbing through the whole series, but fans of Fantasy should make the acquaintance of Max Frei. Apart from anything else, his sense of fun is so contrary to our times.

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GENERATION P: alone in uncovering significant cultural signposts from the Other Russia and subjecting them to the critical gaze of a Western European.

Do stay onboard for this quirky but important guided tour!

FOR MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN NATIONS IN 2O21!

THE EXCESS FIVE GO ASTRAY IN RUSSIA.

A Fresh look at the Superfluous Men of Nineteenth Century Fiction – and what they can tell us today.

`Nature clearly did not intend on me putting in an appearance, and as a result has always treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest` (The Diary of a Superfluous Man, p-10).

Plough through any of the writings of the Golden Age of Russian literature and, within its pages, you will bump into a recurring archetype. This consists of a man in his twenties or thirties, highborn (but often in reduced circumstances), influenced by European cultures, unlucky in love and in general at odds with the social mores around him.
Meet the Superfluous Man. Sometimes translated as the Excess man, this term was propelled into Russian conversation of the mid- to late Nineteenth century by Ivan Turgenev in his The Diary of a Superfluous Man from 1850.
The label, then slapped fictional characters from earlier in that century, might be seen as a Russified cousin of the Byronic hero that existed in European culture at that time. On the other hand, the Russian one is less of a personality type and more of a sociological study – and literary trope.
The Bradford born translator of The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Michael Pursglove, traces the type as far back as 1831 with the play by Alexander Griboyedov called Wit from Woe which features a acerbic idealist called Chatsky.
In any case, it was in 1859 that the influential critic Dobrolyubov nailed the Superfluous Man to the mast by listing them in an article called What is Oblomovism? (This being an allusion to Oblomov – the lethargic landowner in Goncharev’s 1859 novel of the same name).

I set myself the task of re-acquainting myself with five translated paperbacks which feature Superfluous Men. I aimed to cut through the barbed wire of literary criticism which surrounds these works and emerge with their still palpitating hearts…

Tragic lovers.
Exhibit A constitute the doomed romancers. Let us beging at the beginning. A novella, first published in censored form when Turgenev was 32, The Diary of a Superfluous Man takes the form of the memoirs of a young man in the throes of an unspecified sickness. Written in the first person and spiced with autobiographical references, the events occur in and around Oryol, Turgenev;s own birthplace (some 368 kilometeres south-west of Moscow).
Chulkaturin is a respectable but socialy awkward civil servant who finds himself drawn to a young girl residing in the estate of a wealthy family that he visits.
It is not long, however, before the girl’s head is turned by the sudden arrival on the scene of the charismatic and high-ranking Prince N.
The battle for her affections can only be setttled, Chulkaturin comes to believe, by the inevitable duel.
The duel goes ahead and leaves Prince N. with a small wound. It also leaves him with a moral victory and the ability to appear magnanimous in defeat, whereas Chulkaturin gets cast in the role of a petty, spiteful man on the eyes of Oryol high society.
Chulkaturin rages against the hostile and insurmountable obstacle between him and his feelings and thoughts(P-10).
What happens next is that Prince N. lets the object of his affections down, however, upsetting her a great deal. Even so, Chulkaturin seems unable to profit from this turn of events. Another man, a colourless minor character up to this point, offers his sympathy to the young lady and wins her hand in marriage. The protagonist’s role in the whole affair has been that of an uneeded and discarded extra.
Ferocious in its intropection, this deathbed confession offers a very desolate picture. Indeed, the novella could be a caricature of all one might expect Russian literature to be like.

Ralph Fiennes as Onegin in a decent film adaptation of `Eugene Onegin` from 1999 [de.fanpop.com]

Eugene Onegin could not be more different. Penned by Alexander Pushkin a decade earlier, this first saw print in serialised form between 1825 and 1832.
Most Western people’s knowledge of it comes about, I suspect, via Tchiakovsky’s weighty opera adaptation of it from 1879. In Russia, meanwhile, it is a set text in state schools and the kids are expected to learn sections of it by rote.

Having read some bits and pieces of Pushkin’s before and being unmoved by them, I put Pushkin in a box marked Doesn't tranlate so well.
It was during a winter holiday trip to St Petersburg that I chanced on Eugene Onegin, left by a traveller at a hostel. I scanned the opening lines where Onegin makes cheeky remarks about the slowness of the death of his uncle and I was hooked. Meeting up with the actual Eugene Onegin is like expecting to drink a cup of bitter espresso coffee and finding, instead, that is is cocoa – with a marshmallow in it.

The tale, told in sing-song verse, catalogues in episodes, the life and times of a St Petersburg fop. (This might well be a self-projection of Pushkin himself, but the narrator is supposed to be a friend of Onegin’s and one with different views and habits).
Still in his twenties, Onegin inherits his uncle’s country estate and transforms into a country gent but is nagged by ennui throughout:
His passion soon abated/ Hateful the world became and His malady whose cause I mean/It now to investigate is time/Was nothing more than British spleen/Transported to a Russian clime (p-27-28)
In short, is Byron’s Childe Harold in Russified form. Indeed Vissarion Belinsky, the Russian critic, dubbed the poem an encyclopedia of Russian life
Throughout this frothy romp – in which Onegin will alienate his lover Natasha, slay his bosom pal in a hasty duel, have a change of heart about Natasha and fail to win her back – there is something for everyone: romantic transcendence, bawdy archness, jocular japes, Gothic terrors and brooding reflections and all within the commonplace environs of St Petersburg, Moscow and rural Russia, but described with vividness.

The Wandering Prophets.
I call Exhibit B the wandering prophets, not because they too do not have failed love affairs too, but because these excess men are peripatetic and given to soliloquising.

Scene from a Russian TV adaptation of `A Hero Of Our Time` [filmprov,ru]

The provocative phrase A Hero of Our Time forms the title of the poet Mikhail Lermontov’s sole novel. The protagonist, Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin, is another Byronic typepar excellence.Cynical, self-interested and consumed by boredom, he has few virtues, except for an ability to philosophise:

Passions are nothing more than ideas at the first stage of their development. They belong to the heart's youth, and he is foolish who thinks they will stir him all his life(p-182)
Other observations have quite a contemporary ring to them:

I saw that fame nor happiness depended on it [learning] in the slightest, for the happiest people were the most ignorant and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be clever (p-61).

The narrative is episodic, with much of it being related via Pechorin’s own journal in racy prose. What is more, unlike the previous two novels the setting is exotic. The events occur in the misty peaks of the Ossetian mountains, and Lermontov squeezes every ounce of romance from this.

We follow Pechorin as he claims a young Ossetian girl as his own, thus coming into conflict with the elders of her community, stumbles across a bizarre smuggling exercixe on the coast, is almost drowned by a femme fatale and witnesses a Russian roulette challenge. What stops all this from being just a tale of derring-do is the character study at the core of it.
The novel attempts to place Pechorin alongside a whole generation who came of age in the 1840s. An older acquaintance of his, when asked about Pechorin, responds: there were many who speak the same way, and that most likely some are speaking the truth (p-163).

Turgenev’s Rudin (1857) functions as a more developed revisiting of his earlier novella. Of all these novels, in fact, this is the one with the most sophisticated plot.
We are back in country estate territory. Rudin is introduced to it by dint of being the messenger who has to apologise to the hosts for the non-arrival of a long awaited guest.
Thus he is a stand-in, but however, his smooth intelligence soon charms the wealthy socialite who owns the house and her circle of acquaintances, so he becomes a long term resident there and shares the story with a witty misanthrope and a conventional landowner type, with whom he is compared and contrasted.
In true Superfluous Man style, he embarks on an affair with the young daughter of the Lady of The House. When she discovers this, she expels him.
Rudin is revealed to be a victim of his own eloquence: his love for the girl was all theatrical talk. However, those around him now characterise him as a chancer and a sponger, which is less true.
Rudin tries to explain himself by letter to his disappointed young lover (My fate is a strange one, almost a comic one. I give myself comnpletely, heartily, fully - and yet I am unable to give myself p113). She is unimpressed by this.
When Rudin goes off back to his wandering life, one of his opponents has a change of heart and says this of the man He posseses enthusiasm and...this is the most precious quality in our time (p-125).
Later on, we meet Rudin again. Now he has become an insurrectionist in the 1848 June uprising in France. Here he meets his end – as a hero, of sorts.

The Malcontent.
Chekhov’s short story The Duel, from 1891, is separated from the others by some decades.This fact is reflected in the self-conscious portrayal of the material. The Superfluous Man here calls himself such and makes reference to some of the works mentioned here.
We are back in an exotic locale: this time it is the Black sea off the coast of Southern Russia.
Layevsky, however longs to return to what he sees as the civilised North, feeling that his relationship with a beautiful but flighty young woman is stifling him. He attempts to borrow the money to do so from a good-hearted doctor friend but it opposed by an earnest zoologist influenced by Darwinist notions. This latter, Von Koren, has this to say about Layevsky:
I told him off, asked him why he drank so much...his sole reply to all my questions was to smile bitterly and say I'm a superfluous man...or he'll spin a whole yarn about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron's Cain, Bazarov, calling them our fathers in spirit and flesh (p-268).

This enmity to what he sees as a self-justifying weakling leads to yet another duel. This one, however, turns out to be a seriocomic travesty and there are no victors (and is later followed by a kind of reconciliation).
Chekhov’s character – Exhinbit C-the malcontent -is the least likeable one in this parade but he is well served by the author. There is a reason why Chekhov is revered as a master storyteller and here you do see why.

Echoes down the century.

Danila Kozlovsky as Max in the film`Dyxless` from 2012[timeout.ru]

When you strip away th historical paraphenalia, you feel struck by the freshness of these novels, and their ongoing relevance.
The Superfluous Maan never really left us: he just went global and more downmarket. Ernest Hemingway was known to be a devotee of Turgenev’s. In The Sun Also Rises (1926) we meet a post First World War Superfluous Man in the form of Jake who is impotent as a result of that war.
Nor has contemporary Russia abandoned the Superfluous Man. What about the redundant advertising compywriter turned mass killer in Headcrusher (2002) or the messianic adolescent in Sense (2012)?
In film, Max in Dyxless (2012) owes something to Onegin, albeit one projected onto the Moscow playboy milieu of the early noughties.
In this age of the redundant male perhaps we are all a bit Superfluous these days!
For myself, I just want to shout out a loud spasiba balshoye to these eminent Men of Letters for putting these relatable misfits onto a marble dias for us all to see.
Every dog has his day!

Sources:
Chekhov, Anton The Steppe and other Stories, 1887 -1891 (Penguin Group, London, 2001) Translated by Ronald Wilks
Lermontov, Mikhail A Hero of Our Time (Karo, St Petersburg, 2017) Translated by Martin Parker.
Turgenev, Ivan The Diary of a Superfluous Man and other novellas (Alma Classics, Surrey, UK: 2019) Translator: Michael Pursglove.
Turgenev, Ivan Rudin (Alma Classics, Surrey, UK :2012) Translator: Dora O’Brien.
Pushkin, Aleksander Eugene Onegin (Karo, St Petersburg,2017) Translator: Henry Spalding.

TEXT AND BE DAMNED: The Russian film TEKCT.

Anger is not something we expect from Russian cinema – but it is here at last.

TEKCT enjoyed a Decent run in the Moscow film theatre but I could only get to see it a week after its 24th October release at the Rodin theatre in Semyenovskaya.

With its train station-lie dowdiness and the Hammer and Sickle still there above the cash desk, and the harried staff, this place proved to be a fitting venue to catch this social realist fable. In fact I just nabbed the last available place in the twenty seat capacity projection room which had been set aside for the film.

TEKCT constitutes a drama thriller some two hours in length and with an 18+ certificate (hence featuring a lot of irritating bleeps over the bad language). Set very much in the Moscow of today, this picture represents an adaptation, by the author himself, of the novel By Dmitry Glukhovsky (of the Metro franchise) – which has yet to be translated into English.

General Partnership were the distributors, and the man in the high chair was one Kilma Shipenko who was behind the docudrama Salyut 7 (2017).
The soundtrack, which alternated between electronica and sombre classical owes to the prolific forty something composer Dmitry Noskov whose previous credits include the soundtrack to Attraction (2017).

Star vehicle.
Russia’s man-of-the-moment, the Yaroslavl born thirty-year old Alexander Petrov fills the shoes of the iconic role of the film’s anti-hero. (He seems to be cornering the market in troubled youths: whetther it is his role as the hotheaded insurgent in Attraction or his depiction of one Nikolai Gogol in the Gogol franchise (2017 -2018) ).
His co-stars include 29-year-old Ivan Yankovski, who cropped up in Queen of Spades: Dark Rite (2016) – as the Golden Boy hate figure – and the 27-year-old Kristina Asmus who has been setting pulses racing in the television medical comedy Intern since 2010.

The new Brat?
TEKCT was competing in the Russian box offices with Joker. It would be egregious of me to draw too many parallels between these two distinct products. I do, however, feel that they partake of the same zetgeist. Both highlight the plight of – and potential danger of – troubled young men on the margins of society.
Another comparison already being made is with the much vaunted earlier Russian movie Brat (Aleksei Balabanov, 1997).
An article by Anastasia Rogova in the (hard copy) newspaper Vechernaya Moskva (24th – 31st October issue) finds TEKCT wanting in relation to the other legendary film. However, the mere fact that the films have been bracketed together at all implies to me that TEKCT is a film that Russians will be discussing still for some time to come.

A Hero of Our Times?
Ilya Gorunov (Petrov), a graphic design student, attempts to blag some money off his mother so that he can hit the town with his girlfriend.When she refuses he takes the money anyway…
Next we see him a standard young man about town with his girlfriend in tow and in a trendy nightclub. His fun is interrupted when the politisia carry out a drugs raid the premises and seem to take interest in his woman. He protests, and then, in a scene which calls to mind Midnight Express, is himself arrested after a stash of cannabis seems to be found on his person. (We know the cops have planted this on him).
Seven years later, after having been imprisoned for drug trafficking, the hapless youth is released from his provincial jail and back into the real world.
Returning to Moscow, now a shambling figure in a parka and ill-fitting trousers, Ilya finds that his mother has passed away and that his friends have moved on.
He then tracks down his persecutor – Pyotr (Yankovski). In a fit of rancour he slaughters him by accident. He hides the corpse down a manhole and takes off with the victims cellphone….

Window on the other half.

Ivan Yankovski as the Golden Boy.
[newsmyseldon.com}

Here the Metro author’s gift for simple but ingenious plot ideas comes into play.
Ilya begins to experiment with the shady lawman’s phone. He begins to watch the many videos the man had downloaded showing his life of conspicuous consumption. He indulges in envious voyeurism at the lifestyle that he has been deprived of. He even pleasures himself over proxy sex with the man’s girlfriend (Asmus).
He becomes ever more embroiled in the man’s stolen identity living a sort of substitute existence. He answers text messages – explaining his absence by saying that he is in Columbia – and connects with the girlfriend.
This film shares the same concern with the loss of identity that social media can encourage in the much more stylish film Selfie (Khomeriki 2018).
Another resonance is with the Garros Evdomikov novel (as I reviewed earlier) Headcrusher (2003). This also evokes a lawman who wins female trophies and an oustider who gets to tangle with the games of the Big Boys. Ilya may be somewhat pathetic but the kind of modern Russian freeloaders that he is up against are far, far worse than he is.

Howl.
The film closes on a defiant note with a denouement that has shades of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) about it.
This could not be called a lovable film and I would not hurry to see it again just yet; however it is unflinching in its honesty and of importance in its themes – all qualities which Russian cinema too often lacks.
Petrov has turned in a fine, vigorous and physical performance in a film in which the camera is almost always on him.
Some gratitude is also due to Glukhovsky who, in his fortieth year, has Hollywood knocking on his door but has still retained his oppositional spunk.

Trailer to TEKCT (Russian).

Main image: bel.kp.ru

Vot Eta Da!

SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF 2018:

The exhibition of Modernism without Manifestoes, Chapter 2: Leningrad at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. A reclaiming of the experimentation that was bubbling under during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods.
The doppelgänger thriller Selfie by Nikolay Khomerki from last February. A Russian film noir with a fine wintry ambience. Trailer (English subtitles) here. My review here.
Lena Katina (ex tATu) live at Mummytroll in March (reviewed below in tATu retrospective) in which she showcased her single `Silent Hills` in which she takes a promising new `Adult Oriented pop` direction.
The release of Rusalka: Lake of the Dead last July. This confirmed that Svyatoslav Podgaevsky – after Queen of Spades and The Bride is becoming the new standard-bearer of Russian Horror cinema – and is revitalising old Slavic folk myths to do so. (I intend to review this director’s films in unison soon). Trailer dubbed into English here.
The announcement that Dmitry Gudkov is to join forces with Ksenia Sobchak to form a new political party – The Party of Changes. (Although it remains to be seen what their full platform is going to be).
The introduction of the dark writings of Leonid Andreyev to the Anglophone world via the Publication of The Abyss and Other Stories (Translated by Hugh Alpin) by Alma Classics. The Silver Age of Russian Literature can now be appreciated anew.

Some things to come:

It looks set to be a good year for Russian cinema. In science fiction we have Coma and the Gemini Project and Attraction 2 to look forward to. In horror there is The Stray, Dawn, a sequel to Queen of Spades and Svyatoslav Podgaevsky’s latest Yaga: Nightmare in the Forest. The cable car disaster movie Breakaway looks very promising too.
A review of the Rayonnist Mikhail Larionov at the New Tretyakov.
And the fabulous Swan Lake at the…NAH!