Russian Blog

«Для меня использовать презерватив также естественно, как есть» [For me to use a condom is as natural as eating].

The poster on the picture above I found hanging on a wall in one of the corridors of my university about a week ago. Since then I’ve seen two more posters like it with information about «ВИЧ (вирус иммунодефицита человека)» [HIV] directed at the youth of the Ural region (I’ll take pictures of the two other posters and post them here by the end of the week). I hardly think that I’m the first one to touch on the difficult and currently gigantic problem with HIV not only here in Yekaterinburg, but in Russia in general. Anyone who has ever applied for a Russian visa knows about the compulsory certificate proving that you’re HIV-negative needed in order to receive entry into the Russian Federation. Yet the results of letting only ‘healthy’ foreigners in are still unclear and it is far too early to tell whether or not the policy has had any positive effect in decreasing the number of infected Russians. This summer, right before I left to go home and ‘rest’ for two months, I saw a scary and huge poster by the side of the road with the words: «В этом автобусе с тобой едут 4 (четыре) ВИЧ-инфикцированных пассажира» [In this bus with you four HIV-infected passengers are riding]. Such information received in June makes it no surprise to me that the new state campaign to get Russian youth to use condoms loudly claims: «В Свердловской области каждый 25-ый от 15 до 29 живёт с ВИЧ» [In the Sverdlovsk Region (Sverdlovsk was the name of Yekaterinburg during the Soviet Union, and the region is still called that because, seriously, who could pronounce such a complicated word as «Екатеринбурская область» several times a day?) every 25^th person between 15 and 29 lives with HIV].

Another thing, that might not have too much to do with Russia, is how much HIV/AIDS has affected my generation (of the 80’s). When my mother speaks about the 70’s and everything they ‘did’ back in those days, I find it hard to relate. Not because I’m part of a boring generation, but because I’m part of a cautious generation, a generation well aware of the risks brought along with the Sexual Revolution. Actually, I have a lot more thoughts and reflections that I would like to share with the world about my own generation - the way I see it - but I don’t know how interesting/correct they are. Basically, we’re a cautious and frightened generation marked by the terror attacks that happened while we were still not old enough to be a part of ‘the world’ yet not little kids anymore, thus capable of understanding. My generation remembers both worlds - before and after September 11^th - and instead of settling for an insecure and mystical future, we’re highly inclined to search for secure and safe traditions of the past. Sometimes the values that we find for ourselves while we search the past (and I’m not speculating here: I’ve seen and heard and know many people who are just like this and don’t even think twice about it) are so conservative and traditional that we tend to ignore what’s been achieved since. And I’m not just talking Sweden here; I’m talking about the 80’s generation globally (from my narrow point of view). My predictions for us are as follows: we will get married and have children earlier, we will make decisions regarding career and town/country to settle down in early in life, and we will most likely be less prone to divorce than our parents or the generation before us (70’s); in general we’ll be the steady foundation on which the generation after us, the brave children of the 90’s and 00’s will build a new order. Though this is just a thesis - it might well be so that the financial crisis of the world right now hits the generation of the 90’s long enough to make the same effect on them that 11/09 had on the 80’s generation, thus making them also strive for the comfort of traditional family values.

Russia’s 90’s generation might be a little different, as the 80’s kids differ some from the rest of the world. I am very found of all the first year students that I see everywhere at the university - they were born 1992 and have never lived in USSR - because they’re all so individual and energetic, quite unlike the students born only a few years before them. Perhaps that’s because they were too small to understand just how bad things were during the 1990’s? Or because the future has getting brighter and better steadily ever since they started getting an allowance?

Anyway, this was not really my intention of today’s post… to go on for so long on the issue of generations… well, I suppose such things happen once in a while.

Of course I’m only kidding. Even in Russia VOGUE is still VOGUE, and not «ВОГ», though it would be awfully funny if that was the case. Once upon a time, in a far away past, when I lived in Omsk and used to buy last month’s old copy of this magazine «в подземном переходе» [in the underground passageway] for 35 rubles (those were indeed the days!), they printed a couple of pages with old pictures from the first (and we should also note - the last) photo session by Vogue in the Soviet Union. Back then, in 1982, they used «ВОГ» as the Russian translation of the magazine’s name. The photo session was, for various reasons, a highly «любопытный» [curious] thing - and it’s too bad that I didn’t save any of the pages that I tore out and taped up on the refrigerator in my Siberian dorm room - imagine the epitome of Western couture displayed in a landscape of communal and/or communstic farms, kitchens and factories. And then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Vogue managed to do in Moscow and Kiev, where they shoot the pictures some 26 years ago. Now a photo session with such clothes is no rare occasion in Russia, as this country has had its own Russian language edition of the fashion mag for 10 years. And for half of these years I’ve been buying copies of it, which is, yes, I admit, as a literary scholar, my biggest guilty pleasure. Many people, however, don’t really get Vogue. They often misunderstand Vogue. They think that it is what it is not. Many ask themselves (and sometimes me): “What’s the point of buying a magazine filled with shoes and clothes from stores that to you never will be anything but museums?” Or even worse: “Why buy a magazine all about luxury in a kiosk next to which a couple of «бабушки» are begging for a couple of rubles to buy bread, then go home and look at Наталья Водянова [Natalia Vodianova] wearing the latest Manolo Blahniks all the while you’re secretly in love with H&M’s shoe collection?” Reading Russian Vogue is, in my opinion, the essence of Russian life right now, at this moment in world history (being early 21^st century), being as it solely deals with beautiful, expensive things. But it’s not just about «роскошь», actually it is more about «искусство». Some might think that this is just my defense speech, that looking at pumps is alright if they’re shot by a famous photographer, and maybe it is!

In the beginning after moving to Yekaterinburg, and away from old cheap old copies of magazines, I couldn’t afford to spend about 140 roubles on a «глянцевой журнал». But last Saturday, while at home sick with the flue, I decided to pamper myself. And it doesn’t really matter that it looks like this where I live - because dreams are only as sweet as long are they’re not even close to reality.

But now for something completely different - or not really - art. Russian art. The October edition has a rather captivating and thoughtful, if somewhat too short, article on provocative Russian art. It was written by the director Evgeny Mitta. He tries to find answers to questions often asked by the Russian public concerning modern art. I don’t know about you, but I personally love to be offended. I don’t know why. Especially I love being offended in museums and art galleries. I blame my old art teacher for this, because she taught us that the worse a painting makes you feel, the more of your unknown or unconscious feelings does it portray. If that’s true, then we should all seriously give the whole affair that aroused around the «целующиеся милиционеры» “kissing police men” of last year a second thought…

«Что оскорбительного в гомосексуальном порыве вдух милиционеров?» [What is offensive in the homosexual impulse (alt. burst of homosexual emotion) of two policemen?]

And I just love the painting on the picture above, for obvious reasons perhaps, but isn’t it just so charming? Naked Russian writers in a paradise-like landscape, could a girl ask for anything more? From the left: Достоевский, Толстой, Маяковский, Гоголь, Ахматова, Цветаева. It was made by the artistical duo Александр Виноградов & Владимир Дубосарский, who have been working together since 1995, and done quite an impressive number of provocative works.

And for some reason I also very much like the painting on the first page of the article - chasing after a watermelon outside a GUGAL camp…

Everybody has their own relationship to art, I suppose. I was lucky enough not to only have an art teacher who told me that taking offense to a work of art was actually a good thing, I was also blessed with a grandmother who brought me to the art museum in Gothenburg and patiently thaught me the great art of looking at paintings. In Russia - увы! - there’s a big problem, though; almost all the ‘good’ paintings are in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and out in the ‘province’ where I’m living we’re left with the - yes, that’s right - the left-overs. Or local painters. And that’s not too bad, actually. They’re masters waiting to be acclaimed. Or so I presume!

Once again it is high time for a picture post here on the Russian Blog! Since my return «на Урал» [to the Urals] eleven days ago, I have found myself in a struggle to take in all of the changes that have occurred in the city since I left this summer. Russia changes fast these days; even more so Екатеринбург [Yekaterinburg] - the street I have walked to university for two years looks completely different now - as some big international ‘happening’ [I guess the more educated would call it ‘event'] is scheduled to take place here in 2014. That’s why they’re changing everything - roads, buildings, parks, public space in general (perhaps they’ll go as far as in «Питере» [Saint Petersburg] back when they had that international gathering with Bush in 2006; there were police on the street especially looking for poor, badly dressed or simply ‘ugly’ people in order to kindly ask them to go home and not ruin the general picture of beauty). Sometimes change can be a good thing. For example, they’re building another couple of lines to «метро» [the metro; the subway; the tube] here - Yekaterinburg has the smallest in the world with only one line and five stations - and hiding the construction sites with hideous concrete walls. To solve the problem of hideousness in the street landscape, local artists are invited to paint the walls and make the world look a little bit kinder. The pictures below are from a project called «Хорошая собака» ["Good Dog"], that really caught my attention, and equally - my liking and approval. «Наслаждайтесь искусством!» [Enjoy the art!] (And please try your best to ignore the graffiti on some of them…)

«Собака, которая думает о колбасе» [A dog thinking of hotdogs].

«Собака, которая желает смерть мышам и кошкам» [A dog wishing death to mice and cats].

«Собака, которая говорит о любимом дереве» [A dog talking about his/hers favorite tree].

«Собака, которая скучает по дому» [A dog who's home-sick].

«Собака, которая сердится» [An angry dog].

«Собака, которая хочет спать» [A tired dog].

«Собака, которая нашла след другой собаки» [A dog who found a trace of another dog].

«Собака, которая мечтает о крыльях» [A dog dreaming of wings].

«Собака, которая хочет есть» [A hungry dog].

«Собака, которая думает о космосе» [A dog thinking about space].

«О чём думает эта собака?» [What is this dog thinking about?]

«Собака, которая собирается пойти в магазин “Адидас”» [A dog planning to go to the Adidas store].

«Собака, которая говорит о яде» [A dog talking about poison].

«Разбитое собачье сердце» [Broken heart of a dog].

«Чего хочется этой собаке?» [What does this dog want?]

«Пахнет плохо!» [Smells bad!]

«Стихи о прекрасной собаке» [Poetry about the beautiful dog].

«Надо меньше пить» [One should drink less].

«Что за тёмные очки?» [What's with the dark glasses?]

«Собака, которая волнуется по поводу того, что между югом и севером такая строгая граница» [A dog worried because of the fact that there's such a strict line between south and north].

«Только трезвая Россия станет великой!» [Only a Sober Russia Will Become Great!] 

Since I’m back in Russia I am also fully and completely back in the blogging game, now that I once again can catch the country of interest in her everyday activities, like for example this poster above. I found it on the wall of a corridor in my university earlier today. The poster was not a complete shocker to me, as I and probably everybody else have known about Russians’ relationship with alcohol [i.e. vodka] for some time. Adding to this, last Saturday the first ever «день трезвости» was ‘celebrated’ here in Yekaterinburg. I didn’t find out about until Sunday night - as I was being served a vodka martini - but could at least pride myself at having been sober the previous day. But enough about me, let’s instead take a closer look at word of the week and it’s ‘relatives’, with ‘relatives’ meaning words that have some kind of relation to it.

трезвость = sobriety; temperance; abstinence

«трезвость ума» = cool-headedness

трезвый = 1. sober; not drunk, 2. colloq. who does not drink; teetotaling, 3. fig. sober; realistic

«У него взгляд на жизнь не очень трезвый» = His view on life isn’t very realistic.

трезво = adv. soberly

трезветь (impfv.) отрезветь (pfv.) = to sober up; become sober

«Под утро она начала трезветь» = Toward morning she began sobering up.

трезвенник = colloq. teetotaler

And one last very useful word when it comes to discussing sobrietry with Russians [but be warned - it is far from ‘literary' in any means, and should only be used among good friends or with strangers that could become good friends]:

«сухой закон» = ‘dry law’

«У вас сейчас сухой закон?» =  Are you drinking now (these days)? [lit. ‘are you having a dry law now?', a question that could be good to pose from time to time, as Russians will sometimes, not all, but some, try not to drink from in periods of sobriety].