What dominated the media in your part of the world? Photo: ShironekoEuro/Flckr

To mark the passing of 2010, we’ve asked some of our editorial team and contributors what the top stories in their countries were.

 

Angry Russian on the most important story of 2010 in Russia

Russian climate skeptics in 2010 suffered a major blow – at least two of those, actually – to their (un)creed with not only summer temperatures hitting an all-time high and holding it there at +40C for weeks, but also the worst forest and peat bog fires ever. European parts of Russia were engulfed in a terrifyingly thick, lung-busting blanket of smoke, thousands of homes were destroyed and millions of acres of crops obliterated .

Then, just to show how much of a bitch it can be, Mother Nature also hurled a series of snowstorms on Moscow in late December, halting both ground and air traffic  and thoroughly humiliating everyone who thought that at least we could handle a bit of extra snow, unlike those wimpy Europeans . And there wasn’t a single sarcastic “If it’s the global warming, why is it so goddamn cold?” to be heard. 

Allied Irish Bank on Grays Inn Road, London. Photo: Daniel Ross

Ireland

By Rachel McGovern

For Ireland, 2010 goes down as the year of the bailout. After taking a battering in the bond markets throughout November – money is expensive when you’re broke – the EU/IMF stepped in and the Irish government was given a €85 billion loan. The Irish government denied that it was in talks for the money with one minister memorably declaring that the rumours were “fiction”. A week later the deal was done. The UK provided £7 billion direct loan as part of the package with Chancellor George Osbourne calling Ireland “a friend in need”.

Ireland’s financial difficulties were exacerbated by the global financial crisis but with a top heavy banking sector exposed to a domestic property bubble, the UK’s neighbour was in trouble of its own. The Irish are the UK’s largest immigrant population, making up three percent of London’s populace.

Hong Kong

By Carmen Kong

2010 marked one of the darkest moments in Hong Kong’s history. In August, the whole world witnessed the tragedy of a bus of Hong Kong tourists being taken hostage in the Philippines by an armed former police officer, who was angry about losing his job. The event ended with a dramatic police standoff, causing the deaths of eight tourists on board and wounding of many. What was meant to be an exotic summer holiday in the Philippines took a disastrous turn – many children on the bus witnessed the death of their parents and were turned into orphans overnight.

Later, the Filipino government admitted misconduct and it was suspected that at least six of the tourists were shot by police arms, and not by the gunman, contrary to previous official statements. Facebook and Yahoo! Hong Kong joined the month-long mourning by switching the log in front page black.

Denmark

By Kathrine Anker

Vejle Fjord got 30 tonnes of unexpected visit this year. Photo credit: wikimedia commons

Denmark doesn’t normally get whales, but this year in June, the world’s oldest whale got lost and swam in to the fjord of Vejle in the Danish mainland. The whale, estimated to be between 135 and 140 years old, got up on shallow water and was unable to swim back out. The authorities decided not to help him swim back, so he died on the shores of the Danish mainland, watched till his last exhalation by thousands of upset Danes.

The authorities then started arguing about where his bones should be exhibited. The locals wanted to keep him and the national museum of zoology was also interested. They ended up sharing him. The whale weighed 30 tonnes and his penis was 2 metres long.

India

By Rijuta Dey

The Indian Exchequer lost $39 billion in the 2G spectrum scam; officials in the government of India illegally undercharged mobile telephone companies for frequency allocation licenses to create 2G subscriptions for cell phones.

But the skeletons kept tumbling out; ‘Radiagate’ exposed the influence wielded by corporate power players, evident from the telephone conversations of Nira Radia, a professional lobbyist and politicians, corporations and journalists that were taped by the Indian Income Tax Department in 2008-09. The recordings showed them to be hand-in-glove in the matter of 2G allocations.

The best bit? The news gained prominence on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook against an attempted blackout orchestrated by prominent Indian TV channels and newspapers.

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

The Chap Olympiad, a return to the UK's elegant past? Photo credit: Maja Kucova

We Russians, angry or not, have a rather funny perception of England and its dwellers. It’s largely formed of 19th and early 20th century novels – Dickens, PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie etc, all widely available in the USSR in superbly done translations by some of the best Soviet writers and poets – and the classic screen version of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series.The latter is so great that Her Majesty herself bestowed an OBE on the leading actor, Vassily Livanov. And all the while the Soviet-British relations were neutral at best.

But we somehow insisted on thinking of England as of some retro-themed fantasy land stuck in the times when everybody was buttoned up and mannered and calmly humorous whatever the circumstances. This notion is, of course, centennially away from the current state of affairs.

I’m running a Russian-language blog about Britain and London as a separate country within her and it’s moderately popular (about fifteen hundred subscribers at the time of writing). But what really pushed my blog upward in the ratings was the translation of an old article from The eXile, undoubtedly the best and sincerest newspaper in Moscow which owed its glorious existence to the sole fact that no one at the Russian Minitruth at the time could read a word of English (for a story of The eXile as concise as practically possible see this article from Vanity Fair. It was about chavs, the English counterpart of Russian gopniks, the kind of proletarian youth that wears tracksuits with massive junk jewellery, binges on cheap liquor and pollutes the gene pool by means of rapid and almost instinctual procreation.

So the chav story became an instant hit on the Russian internet, having been reposted at least two hundred times so far. Almost everybody’s image of Britain seemed to have been hopelessly shattered. Could it really be Sherlock Holmes’s grandkids or the Hugh Grants of the world who are pissing on walls after downing six super strong lagers at a children’s playground? I almost felt a collective sigh of relief. We (Russians, internationals, whatever) aren’t that different from the rest of the “civilised world” after all. Others (mostly those who have never been in England or at all abroad) were utterly disappointed and really angry at me for ruining their dream.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Photo credit: Maja Kucova

Rekindling a Chap’s dream

But alas, not too much is lost, apparently, thanks to a wonderful thing called The Chap Olympiad. It’s run by a magazine appropriately titled The Chap which is all about fancy retro dressing, fabulous moustaches, shaving with razor blades and smoking pipes. So the Chap Olympiad at Bedford Square on Saturday was like being in a park full of Bertie Woosters and Pauline Stokers. In fact, I looked quite out of place in my dull plain clothes and not in an impeccably stylish tweed suit.

It’s funny because there’s no aristocracy in modern Britain to speak of, and most of these people are common office clerks in their normal, non-retro mode, but it still all looked incredibly organic. It’s probably some kind of a genetic memory, because when a Russian holds a Victorian-themed party, everybody ends up looking like a constipated Dracula. And if it weren’t for party spoilers like me and a couple of other journalists in crumpled jeans, you could really forget that you were indeed in 2010.

Anyway, the Olympiad part consisted of silly but quite fun “competitions” like bicycle jousting with umbrellas for lances or moustache tug war, but most people seemed to be more interested in a beautiful weather and a good opportunity for a picnic. The only things that were sort of disappointing were the low turnout of the barbeque stall and one lady who knocked over my gin and tonic and didn’t even offer to buy me a new one. I mean, that happens all the time, but probably wouldn’t in the fancy era they all pretended to live in. I will definitely go again, but not without proper preparation this time.

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

When the penis is mightier than the sword. Photo credit: Alexey Plutser

Life in Russia, as you might have already guessed from my rants, is no walk in the park, at least for the common man. Even when we’re not fighting the bloodiest war in history or staging a revolution against whatever corrupt, unelected government that is lining its pockets with our taxes, the people of Russia have never really known the quiet life of prosperous Western countries. Save for the tiny elite, of course, who keep their money in Switzerland and kids in private schools in London.

But there’s one thing that we do really well: that’s sticking it to The Man in various creative ways. Radical political art in Russia has been flourishing since the early 90s. Here’s just a few examples that are internationally known:

A Brief Russian Art Protest History

In 1991 a group of young people who called themselves ETI (“THOSE”) lay on the Red Square, arranging their bodies in a big FUCK YOU (it’s three-letter word in Russia) in front of the Mausoleum before being arrested.

Nine years later, before the elections to the third State Duma (Russian parliament), another group ascended the Mausoleum itself with a white banner saying AGAINST ALL.

The 'Against All' action itself lasted about 20 seconds, but its glory prevails. Photo credit: Andrey Stvolinsky

To put it in proper political context, it was the third ever instance that the people of Russia were allowed to vote after literally hundreds of years of being told to just shut up and work – and they technically had the option to just say “You know what – screw the lot of you”. They could vote against all the parties and if the number was bigger than that of the candidates, the whole election would be recalled, with none of the participating parties allowed to take part in the new one. Yours truly was in the 1999 “Against All Parties” campaign, where in the next election 600,000 more people voted thusly, and in 2006 the ‘Against All’ option was abolished from the bulletins.

This obvious lack of political choice was exchanged for a brief period of relative stability, with even some hints of ‘normal European’ life with mortgages, Toyota Lancers, trendy cafes and other things that only begin to matter once you don’t have to stand in a queue for food for three hours or live in permanent fear of becoming collateral in a gang war. Coincidentally, most radical art degenerated into piles of pretentious shit that you had to pretend to ‘understand’ because you’ve got an office job and you want to impress colleagues and your girlfriend with your cultural prowess.

The Angry Russian Phallus

But then it became apparent that nothing had really changed, and the content and satisfied life was still an illusion. Scratch the surface – and you still saw a country on the verge of hunger riots, with an incredibly corrupt and ineffective government on all levels and, as of recently, rising religious fundamentalism . The correct artistic response? To draw a gigantic penis.

Russian radical artist: if you see him, cross the street. Photo credit: Maja Kucova

The collective behind the most hilarious and ballsy artistic stunt is called Voina, or War, and they’re also behind the recent rise of radical political action that seems to draw much more attention than conventional protests which inevitably end in everybody being batoned down and arrested. Well, of course, you also can’t expect courteous treatment from the police when you paint a massive penis on a drawbridge that faces the windows of the most powerful law enforcement agency, but still the latter definitely gets your point across much better than standing on a square with placards. Alexey Plutser, the group’s ideologist and spokesperson, says: “What we are doing is not trying to communicate with the power. We are just shoving a dick in its face. A dick that is 65 meters tall, 23 meters wide and weighs about 400,000 tonnes.”

You can’t talk to the power rationally, Plutser adds, because it will just drown anything you say in lies and propaganda. But how can you deface a 65m tall penis? Or run a smear campaign against people who participated in a political orgy called “Fuck for the Little Bear, the heir!” (a pun on the name of Russia’s president; “medved” means “bear)?

An overview of Voina’s coolest performances with YouTube videos can be found here. Naturally, they keep being arrested and every member of the group faces several charges of public indecency, disturbance etc. ‘Human rights’ is a very rarely used phrase in Russia. You mess with a cop, even a mall one – you get beaten up, that’s it.

Europe meets Voina

But when Voina extended their artistic and social experiment to Europe, that’s where it got really interesting. One of their latest performances is titled ‘Revolution in a supermarket’. They wander into a large supermarket and just start eating stuff off the shelves. When the security people approach, Voina tells them that they are poor and homeless and they need to eat something otherwise they die of hunger. Thus they test the level of social cohesion and empathy in each country and simultaneously protest against the community-destroying advance of soulless superstores. This happened all over Europe to vastly different results. The most violent and abusive reactions were, naturally, in Russia and Ukraine, while in a Sainsburys here in London nobody even raised an eyebrow. Probably they are reasonable enough to understand that even if a whole regiment of crazy Russian performance artists descends on their store and starts stuffing themselves with discounted chicken tikkas, it still won’t even put a dent on the amount of food the store just throws away every day. Or they just don’t care.

Would you like to see Voina in your local supermarket? Photo credit: Voina

But there was one episode that really, really fucked up everybody’s perception of Western Europe as a calm, safe and human rights-conscious place. There is a town in Dutch-speaking Belgium called Leuven. There, Plutser and his wife Yana were not only violently interrupted duruing their ‘homeless and hungry Russian immigrant’ act – they were detained and, wait for it, escorted to a judge at gunpoint while handcuffed. They are now charged with robbery and facing eight months in jail and being subjected to the worst Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare imaginable. All of this for eating a couple of sandwiches.

So this is basically a letter of support to them. Come on Belgium, seriously! Don’t mess with Angry Russians who are also radical performance artists. Something tells me you have worse problems with real immigrants to worry about.

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

'Happy May Day, comrades!' shouts a not-Angry Russian. Photo Credit: Boris Zelensky

The first thing I ever remember about myself is this: I’m about four years old and my grandpa takes me to the demonstration (which was, like many other things in the USSR, obligatory). It’s a sunny but windy day, so I’m wearing my warm coat. I’m too short to see what’s going on around me, so grandpa puts me on his shoulders and I see a sea of red flags. There are portraits of old bearded men everywhere and long red stripes of cloth with white symbols I don’t yet understand. Somebody’s speaking on the megaphone, music is playing in a distance. Everybody seems happy, and I’m happy too.

Then, after 1991 and onwards, May Day seemed to be about the same flags, banners and speeches, but mostly about unhappy people. They wanted to go back to the times when everything was decided for them and they wouldn’t have to do anything: getting a job, paying taxes, worrying about health insurance, etc. The Soviet state provided everything. They wanted it back, those miserable old ladies clutching bunches of pink and portraits of Lenin, as if hoping that the leader of the Bolshevik party would emerge from his marble tomb and set things right.

Angry Russian as an angry youth

Then, in my 20s, I used to be a leftist-anarchist-that sort of thing angry young man with enough piercings in my body to set off airport metal detectors. I lived in a squat with lots of artsy revolutionary types, punks, vegans, and the like. We used to do quite reckless things by today’s standards. One day, the night before the 1999 elections that saw the Communist party seize power for the first time after the break-up of the Union, we, a bunch of drunk hippies, punks and whatnots, grabbed a dozen of spray cans and went on a graffiti rampage. On every vacant space we could find we painted the slogan “Against all parties!”. Amazingly, it took at least 40 minutes for the police to finally notice those huge black letters on every big billboard in the middle of a four-lane avenue. “Against all parties” went on to be the fourth most popular candidate with six-something per cent. Today things like that would guarantee any of us some serious battering at the station and, quite likely, a jail term.

May Day protest in Russia circa 2000. Photo Credit: Andrey Stvolinsky

But the most exciting moment in that freewheelin’, dope smokin’ life was when an artistic group called SVOI2000 (svoi means something like “one’s own” or “kin” in Russian) applied for a May Day parade and, in a very bizarre twist of fate, their application got approved. It was one of the best days of my life: we are in the very centre of Moscow, between two columns of hard-line, old Communist grannies – a bunch of several hundred mischiefs holding huge banners with complete gibberish or simply flower dotted bedsheets. The whole idea was that May Day had to be reclaimed  from the obsolete political bores and be simply a celebration of sun, spring and whatever. I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Here’s the photo album from that great day. Try to find yours truly in those photographs.

The next year we decided to change the agenda from simply fooling around to something more serious but equally hilarious. May Day in Russia and other post-Soviet countries is called Labour Day. Fine, we thought, then we’ll just celebrate labour, what we can do to contribute to the society. We all wore suits and bore banners advertising our skills and services, from non-linear video editing to construction work. We had a punk brass band heading the procession, it was a another great, sunny day. Check out the video and, again, try to spot the Angry Russian:

Angry Russian versus May Day in London

I would probably be equally happy yesterday here in London if I were some ten years younger. But now, having had my share of anarchist fun, I think that this is just one sorry bunch of idlers. At Parliament Square there was at least fifty different “organizations” with a hundred of different slogans, from demands to end all wars at once to equally impracticable demands to stop killing some critters or whatever. None of those made a single fucking bit of difference, and to most of those ‘protesters’ the whole thing seemed like a good excuse to get stoned and lie about on the grass listening to crappy techno on a portable soundsystem.

The only more or less coherently appealing thing about the whole ‘protest’ was the claim that all politicians were corrupt bastards – oh, the enlightenment! – so everybody should just spoil their ballots (which is, by the way, what many Angry Russians have been doing for the past several years since the abolishment of the “none of the above” article). As if someone cared about your opinion.

Anyway, now I seriously think that the one-party system like what we have now in Russia is so much more practical and honest than the carousel of hypocrisy and complete waste of public money and time that I’ve been observing here in Britain for the past few weeks. By the way, I always wanted to say this out loud: you are a bunch of losers to grill a man – a politician, for dear God’s sake! – for actually saying what he thought once in a while. That lady WAS a bigot. Gordon, I’m with you here. And you, demented witch, just shut up. We evil forunurs are here to steal your fucking biscuits.

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

Photo Credit: Nikolay Kopeikin

The whole idea is that Russian culture doesn’t necessarily have to be all about excruciatingly long, depressing novels. We Russians love to have good fun, even if it culminates in a throbbing headache the next morning. We also don’t march in uniforms or stand in lines for bread and toilet paper, the climate is not that different from Canada and, while we’re at it, we’ve never actually had Communism, which is a purely theoretical concept. But we do laugh at “In Soviet Russia…” jokes because self-deprecating humour is a very important part of Russian culture.

And since it’s impossible to rule out every single national stereotype, yes, we will be serving vodka on our opening night (Thursday, April 22), the way it is drunk in Russia (which is the only right way), with lots of classic savoury snacks like brined herring with spring onions, smoked lard and pelmeni.

Culture-wise, we have a great selection of young artists from Moscow, St. Petersburg and London. In rock festival terms, the headliner is obviously Nikolay Kopeikin from St. Pete. He’s responsible for the visual side of NOM, one of the most popular “joke rock” acts in Russia with a genuine cult underground status. Kopeikin paints in a crude style that is (probably) influenced by anything you can think of, from French Fauvists to editorial cartoons through German expressionism, masterfully mocking everything from everyday Russian life to international affairs. Don’t be fooled by his almost naïve approach: he’s got quite an ideological punch, maintaining an idea that the content is more important than the form.

The Angry Russian in the flesh. Look out for icicle jokes... Photo Credit: Maja Kucova

Kibersekta (Cybersect) is a three-strong artist collective from Moscow who have achieved a somewhat cult status with their Agitprop-style posters with sharp social and political commentary.  Photographer Maja Kucova captures everyday life in Moscow suburbs, finding unexpected beauty even in the most unmpromising places, while Larisa Golubeva gives the same treatment with oil paint to the other Russian capital, her native St. Petersburg. Nikolay Vasilyev and Stas Kazimoff both explore the possibilities of pop art to some extent, with Vasilyev sticking (pun intended) to Scotch tape to create portraits of random people.

We’ll also be screening some of our favorite stuff, starting with Kin Dza Dza, a late Soviet cult classic which had so much influence on at least two generations of Russians that you can wake up anybody in the middle of the night and they’ll be quoting whole scenes from the film. It’s part steampunk sci-fi, part bizarre comedy with so much unclassifiable but amazing stuff inbetween that it’s a huge shame it never came out in the West. But fret not—we are here to correct that cultural mistake. We’ll also show some dark comedy from NOM Film (for most of which Nikolay Kopeikin is responsible), London resident Janna Kuzmova’s short film and comedy sketches, and VBS.TV’s great recent documentary on Russian “Parallel Cinema”.

There you have it, your official invitation. Now come and have fun, folks!

Opening Thursday 22 April, 6 pm at The Foundry, 86 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3JL

More from our Angry Russian:
Angry Russian on Compatriots
Angry Russian on Maslenitsa
Angry Russian on the ‘Big Freeze’
Angry Russian on vodka literacy
Rants by an Angry Russian

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

By Vasya Lozkhin

Oh, sure. Apparently, there are ‘new visa rules’ implemented to at least try and avert the situation where just five Tube stops from Her Majesty’s fairy castle you can barely see a white face or hear a single word of English. And I am to blame for that.

Anyway, there is this new requirement about sacrificing a black goat under a full moon while offering your soul to the Dark Lord. But, of course, you have to used a UKBA approved ritual dagger that costs 666 quid or something. Then you have to wait an eternity in darkness until a demonic voice declares your fate. To their credit, the ladies at the embassy were quite understanding and agreed to make a personal exception for me, so I just had to bite the head off a live pigeon in front of a huge, raving audience.

But, having spent another eternity in various queues in Russia, I can say that this was indeed a bureaucratic nuisance but still a joke. Now, most of my compatriots will agree that if you want to find the worst place in any country, go to your nearest Russian embassy. Not that anyone would really want to do anything like that in the first place, but we just goddamn have to. For example, obtaining a new travel passport – a procedure that takes a couple of forms and a few days of waiting in most countries – is an elephant-sized sore in the arse of every Russian.

By Nikolay Kopeykin

After collecting piles of incredibly detailed stamped and signed papers and enduring hundreds of hours in queues to fat, angry women, one has to wait for another sixteen hours in a tiny, dark, unventilated room with no chairs to finally file their application. And then wait for six months and pray that they don’t lose all your documents or misprint your name. And the worst part is meeting people whose jobs exist simply to make life even more desperate and frustrating for those who don’t have enough useful connections and can’t offer any favours in exchange.

No nation hates Russians (and we aren’t exactly the most popular guy in class) as much as Russians themselves. When we go or live abroad and hear Russian speech, many of us will cross the street or switch to English. When we do have to meet compatriots, this is arguably the most unpleasant experience of being in a foreign country. A visit to the embassy to pick up the most minute paper promises so much stress and humiliation that you have to start psyching yourself up a week in advance. I have a theory that explains the universal mutual resentment, at least as far as Russian embassies are concerned:

Anything that has to do with Russian diplomacy is shrouded in incredible corruption and nepotism. This dates back to Soviet times when only the most privileged had the right to travel abroad, so students of Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) considered themselves the crème de la crème of Soviet society. They still do, arrogant pricks. Anyway, you have to bear in mind that these people – or more exactly, their parents – had spent millions of rubles, years of scheming, bartering and arse-licking to get them first through a prestigious college and then into an embassy that was not in some God-forsaken Camelshitistan, but in Paris or London. And then, gleaming with self-importance, they are quite reasonably annoyed at hordes of those begging petitioners who dare to distract them from enjoying their glorious top-of-the-world positions.

This also explains why Russia’s international policy is such a fucking embarrassment, like a drunk uncle who you barely know bragging at a family reunion how he used to wipe your arse when you were four. It’s almost ironic how they at some point have to face the fact that actually there is a goddamn job to do. Please keep in mind that we never elected these ugly mugs, their bad suits or their comically broken English to represent us. They are usurping, lying, incompetent fucktards and the finest move they’d ever come up with is threatening to turn off the gas; or fuck up some ridiculous little republic because they friggin’ can.

(That, by the way, is not said to reinforce the traditional British sense of superiority: eat your greens and don’t choke on Uncle Sam’s lollipop.)

We will gladly credit this photo as soon as we find the photographer

In many aspects we are still living under the Mongol yoke and that pretty much defines all vertical relationships in Russian society. In 99.99% of all cases,  people with just a microscopic bit of power abuse it at every little opportunity. Power is used for little else than gaining some advantage over thy neighbour.

In most Russian offices, official institutions and Metro stations, there is a man in an ill-fitting uniform (okhrannik) or an elderly woman (babka) whose sole function is to reduce unemployment numbers. While in pragmatic societies, the entrance is controlled by magnetic cards and turnstiles, this Soviet artefact will in the most uncompromising tone demand your passport – woe is upon he who does not have the habit of carrying it everywhere! – and then copy your personal data into a greasy notebook. By hand, naturally, and with utmost deliberation. They have all the time in the world and it’s not their problem that you don’t. If you so much as squeak to protest against this invasion into your privacy, prepare to be petrified with the sarcastic “Cho, samiy umniy?” (“You’re the biggest smartarse, aren’t you?”).

It’s still a puzzle to me why anyone in their sane mind would ever want to go to Russia; or why anyone would want to live there in the first place; or why we love our bullying, alcoholic, saggy-titted motherland so devoutly, especially from a safe distance. But that is probably the thing they call the great mystery of the Russian soul. Dabro pazhalovat v Rassiyu, druzia!

More from our Angry Russian:
Angry Russian on Maslenitsa
Angry Russian on the ‘Big Freeze’
Angry Russian on vodka literacy
Rants by an Angry Russian

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

Russian carnival carnage!

“The spring will show who shat where” – Russian proverb

In many senses, early spring is even shittier than mid-winter. Everybody is depressed and vitamin-deficient, and every day seems longer and longer. Which is why our ancestors from pre-Christian, pagan Russia used to engage in what is now called ‘sympathetic magic’ by eggheads in fancy lab coats: they would bake sun-shaped pancakes (blini) and burn straw effigies of an old ugly hag which is, obviously, Winter. And of course— they would also get piss-drunk on mead and fuck like animals.

This wonderful way of celebrating spring with drunken, fiery mayhem is one of the few pagan traditions that survived not only Christianisation, but all the other -sations that blighted all kinds of older traditions. It is now known as Maslenitsa, which can be roughly translated as “The Butterweek” (nobody quite knows why exactly) and is somewhat equal to Shrove/Fat Tuesday, although with more booze and hilarity. Oh, and it’s longer—it lasts the whole week before Lent.

Blini cakes galore

Like all carnivals, Maslenitsa is centered around food and is famous for its numerous cases of lethal overnutrition. Ivan Andreevich Krylov, one of Russia’s greatest poets whose fables we all learn before even starting to walk, died of a stroke on Maslenitsa after downing over eighty pancakes. Before dinner, that is. And we are not talking those ridiculous little crepes – a proper Russian blin is at least half a foot in diameter and stuffed.

The essentials for Russian blini (and life). Photo Credit: Dmitry Chernishev

Blini stuffing is a science in itself, but the five most popular (as illustrated in the blini pyramid) are zgushchonka (sweet condensed milk), smetana (thick soured cream), selyodka, smoked salmon (or brined herring), honey, and caviar. Since real sturgeon caviar is virtually non-existent these days and thus costs almost its weight in gold, the red variety is its most common substitute.

The most traditional occasion of eating blinis is at your mother-in-law’s dinner, where you compete with your other in-laws to eat as many as possible—all the while washing them down with cold vodka. This combination is not as gross as it sounds – chemistry-savvy readers know that ethylene alcohol breaks down fats. For a classic description of a Maslenitsa dinner, please refer to Chekhov’s short story “On temporality” (a synopsis can be found here).

Maslenitsa offers much more entertainment besides overeating. Russians also split in two teams that defend or besiege a gigantic castle made of snow, engage in mass fights, go to banya to wash away all the excesses and generally use every opportunity to have fun and meet friends.

A London Maslenitsa? Bah!

Since there are more Russian-speaking people around the world than in Russia itself (that includes Ukrainians and Belorussians who are effectively Russians in most aspects except for comically distorted versions of our language), Maslenitsa is widely celebrated in every major city. Naturally, there will be a Maslenitsa in London—albeit only a pale semblance of its glorious self, I imagine. There’s not enough snow in London to make a snowball to hurl at your mates — let alone a castle to besiege— and the effigy burning will most probably be banned due to some ridiculous ‘fire safety regulations’.

What’s left is, of course, blinis, vodka and music. The official London Maslenitsa programme is usually beyond kitsch—all these excruciatingly awful faux-folklore acts like Nadezhda Babkina or other shit you can’t pronounce anyway. The only reason for including these is ‘popular demand’, although yours truly would like to stress that he tries to stay as far as possible from people who demand such things.

To this year’s organisers’ credit, there are some genuinely interesting bands on the line-up. Don’t forget to check out Pelageya, a rock chick slash folk diva with an incredibly rich voice and Terem Quartet, a sort of ethno-jazz project with traditional instruments like the balalaika. Which is, by the way, incredibly hard to play despite having only three strings. Another act worth listening to is Billy’s Band, the closest a Russian singer has ever come to emulating Tom Waits (who is, curiously enough, a well-known Russophobe).

It all may look and sound wacky, but that’s the way we are—and proud of it! Happy Maslenitsa and see you there.

More from our Angry Russian:
Angry Russian on the ‘Big Freeze’
Angry Russian on vodka literacy
Rants by an Angry Russian

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

In the last few days, yours truly has been observing somewhat sarcastically the national  “catastrophe” that my hometown of Moscow, Russia, wouldn’t even notice, let alone other parts of Russia where a metre of snow overnight is just another day. For an average (OK, not so average) Russian snowfall check out these examples of Russian winter.

Photo Credit: englishrussia.com

Russia, as you probably know, is a very cold and snowy country. One thing we’ve learned is that you should always treat General Frost (nicknamed long before he won WWII for us by introducing the German army to frostbite) with respect. And respect means no fear.

So I can’t help but grin when I read all these panicking headlines about hundreds of schools closed, flights cancelled and roads blocked—all of that at zero degrees and not much more than a couple of  inches of snow.

I remember one single instance when our school was closed due to extreme weather conditions. Moscow was hit by the coldest winter in a century and the thermometer dropped to -39C. The temperature that they close school at is -35C.

My mother sent me to buy some bread from a bakery across the road (after wrapping me in three layers of clothing, of course) and I had much fun trying to spit as high as possible to make the gob freeze in mid-air. You know you’ve been outside for too long when you can barely move your lips, can’t feel your cheeks and your eyelids are getting heavier because the icy mist of your breath is stuck to your eyelashes.

I remember that day very clearly even now, 20 years later. The air was so crisp and the sky so blue that it almost hurt the eyes. And in this glowing, endless sky I witnessed the most majestic and terrifying sight I’ve even seen: two giant suns slowly drifting toward each other across the horizon. An extremely rare atmospheric effect, my dad told me later.

Actually, I wanted to praise the virtues of frolicking around in snow, building ice castles and sweating in a banya at 110 C, but all of those have already been wonderfully described here by Edward Lucas, a Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist.

So I’ll keep it short. Winter, cold and snow are here, and if you slip and fall, it’s your own personal problem, not something that you can blame on the government. I think most Canadian readers will agree with me on this—just stop whining and deal with it yourselves.

Here’s what you need to do. Go to a hardware store and buy an axe blade (you don’t need a shaft) and an iron rod approximately 1.5 metres long. Preferably solid, but hollow will also do. Remember, you need to increase the force of impact, and what do we remember from our school physics lessons? Force equals acceleration multiplied by mass, so the heavier, the better.

Now go to your nearest chop shop and ask that nice Turkish guy to weld the blade to the rod. The result should look something like the picture below.

Ready? Now put on some warm but comfortable clothes (jeans, a fur vest and a woolen cap will do just fine) and sturdy boots, grab a bucket of sand and a snow spade, go outside, outline a territory and start hacking.

Your new personal snowplough. | Photo Credit: www.ati.com.au

Crack a couple of square meters of ice, shovel away, sprinkle, repeat. This is a physical exercise almost as rewarding as chopping firewood that you collected yourself and brought home from the forest on a sled.

And what’s even more important is that you control the situation, not a two degree temperature fluctuation or your inept and apathetic government. And learn to properly insulate your homes, for the love of God! These draughts are awful. My grandmother would be terrified. And she survived the winter of 1943—the one that won the war.

Follow this link and this one to see more Russian ways of enjoying the snow.

If you have any thoughts on how to deal with the snow or stories of how people get through it from home, let us hear them by adding a comment or emailing editor@thefirstpint.co.uk.

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Rant II: Vodka literacy

The other day I met up with a friend from Moscow. We spent the morning in quirky Broadway market bookshops, had a nice lunch in a Thai place in Islington, then went to a Afrojazz gig in Notting Hill. Then I walked him to his hotel on Tottenham Court Rd – but how can two Russians part without a farewell drink?

Now, I must note that we both can be qualified as ‘pretty boring’ on the party animal scale. I had my share of wild clubbing in my early 20s, while he just hates it altogether. So we wanted just a nice, quiet place to drink a couple of pints over a laid back talk. Oh, did I mention that it was midnight on a Saturday?

It took us half an hour of aimlessly wandering around Soho with its hordes of bike rickshaws and annoying promoters to realize that our choices were limited to the direct opposite of our goal: incredibly noisy and crowded ‘clubs’.

The pubs were closed already (why, by the way?). OK, we thought, let’s call it a day, buy a bottle and drink it in my friend’s hotel room. But guess what? The stores wouldn’t sell booze after 11PM! How come there were so many people around us barfing and pissing on the walls? Seriously, I partied pretty hard in the early Noughties in Moscow, but I’ve never seen so many teenagers drunk beyond the ability to walk, speak and look human.

Not only teenagers – I saw a woman well past menopause in a gorgeous evening gown leaning her head against the wall, pool of puke under her feet, high heels and handbag lying around. This was a truly horrifying sight. We went to bed sober.

Now let’s get to the point. There was a comment to my last column from another Angry Russian complaining about this ever-present stereotype: vodka. Indeed, in at least one in three cases of talking to Brits, this topic invariably comes up (the other two are, of course, Putin and polonium).

‘Oh, you’re Russian? So you must drink a lot of vodka!’ Ha. Ha. Ha. Here’s some groundbreaking news for you: Brits drink more than us. Please refer to WHO statistics if you don’t believe me (for a quite concise list of Russia- and vodka-related stereotypes, please refer to this VBS.TV ‘documentary’).

So please read this carefully: Smirnoff is NOT Russian vodka. Absolut is NOT vodka. Polish v(w)odka tastes like glass cleaner. Vodka on the rocks: WRONG. Downing shot after shot at a party until you collapse: no. Mixing it with Red Bull: sheer blasphemy and an insult to the memory of Dmitry Mendeleyev, the guy who invented it (and who, in a freak drinking accident, also invented the periodic table of elements).

Vodka must be drunk with dignity and it must be Russian (although we are perfectly content with some Ukrainian brands as well). Finns and Poles will definitely disagree, but who cares?

There are several schools of thought on this matter, but the prevailing one is that vodka has no taste of its own and is drunk to intensify the taste of the meal it accompanies. So in Russia it’s all about the snacks. The classic is soup. Please keep in mind that we in Russia eat proper soups, with lots of solid pieces and big chunks of meat, quite unlike these pathetic little cups of processed snot that pass for soup around here.

The perfect Russian meal goes like this: before you is a huge, steamy bowl of borsch, the kind of beetroot, cabbage and beef soup which is also the subject of fierce debates between Russians, Ukrainians and Poles (shchi, another cabbage variety, or spicy Caucasian hartcho will also do perfectly). For real class, garnish it with cracklings, pressed garlic cloves, chopped fresh parsley and sour cream (smetana). Brined mushrooms and cucumbers, chunks of salted herring, paper-thin slices of salo (smoked and spiced lard) on coarse black bread and dill-sprinkled cooked potatoes humbly await their fate.

An (almost) perfectly laid table

Shot glasses filled to the brim with chilled (but not frozen) vodka, cloudy with perspiration, are already on the table, but don’t drink just yet. Now, wait for others to settle at the table, take the glass in your left hand and the spoon in the right one, scoop a nice, generous spoonful, look around solemnly, exhale, sip and then, not giving your taste buds a chance to come to their senses – mind the timing! – put the spoon in your mouth.

This will also do

Oh, this cathartic moment! Then follows a minute of contemplation and ponderous chewing. Somebody must get busy pouring a second round. No, it’s not too soon: there’s a golden rule that says “There’s only a small gap between the first one and the second”. And never pour into a glass in midair! We are not the most superstitious nation in the world, but pouring in midair is almost as grave an offense as whistling indoors (bad, bad, bad luck).

After those first two things take their pace, there are lots of hearty and elaborate toasts (remember: we never say ‘Na zdorovye’; it means “to your health” which doesn’t make much sense in case of drinking vodka), compliments to the hosts and general camaraderie. In some sense vodka is the essence of alcohol, crystal-clear and chemically perfect, so please drink it with the respect it deserves. And quit these stupid jokes, for God’s sake.

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Photo: Maja Kucova

There’s an old Russian joke; a saint buys a package tour to Hell. He likes it there a great deal, lots of booze, drugs, sexy sinners…

‘Wow’, he thinks upon returning, ‘Heaven is so boring, it’s just sitting on a cloud all day reciting psalms.’

So he packs his stuff and buys a one-way ticket to Hell. The moment he puts his foot in the first circle, a squad of imps grabs him and throws him into a huge pot of boiling tar while a huge horned demon with a pitchfork pokes him. “But why?” screams the saint, “It was so cool last time I came here!”

“Don’t confuse tourism and emigration, my friend”, replies the demon.

OK, being a tourist, watching the Big Ben, drinking overpriced horse piss in a tiny dark room, annoying locals with your cluelessness on the Tube – it’s awesome!

But now, having lived in the kingdom for a couple of months, I have a different perspective on things. There’s a whole list of things that piss me off here, so I’ll start with the most obvious one – being a Russian in England.

I didn’t really understand Orwell’s line about all animals being equal, but some more equal than the others before I came here, but now I think old George made a perfect point, albeit about a completely different country back then.

One guest lecturer at our university spent a whole minute apologizing to the only Saudi girl in the class for calling her religious (as in ‘decapitate for having a beer’ religious) compatriots ‘Wahabis’, but then went on to mention Dubai which is full of alcohol and ‘Russian hookers’.

There were at least three Russians present in the room, two of them girls. Excuse me? So you think it’s offensive to call a spade a spade, but is not to equate an entire female population to prostitutes?

Can you imagine the shitstorm that would break loose if he, say, mentioned that some country was full of Arab terrorists? But a wee bit of Russophobia makes everyone feel better about themselves.

It’s not like these guys are going to riot and burn Union Jacks, right?

Another teacher asked to give an example of misrepresentation in the media, and I started explaining how ‘the West’ basically screwed over a whole country while its mass media portrayed that country’s people as a band of bloodthirsty thugs in leather jackets selling drugs to fund their war crimes (see Layer Cake and every third episode of 24 that features a ‘Serb terrorist’).

By the way, we are talking about a nation that gave the world Nikola Tesla, Mila Jovovic and some hundred NBA players. Anyway, I was cut off quite abruptly because this was my ‘personal obsession’ which is not very journalistic, apparently.

My council tax letter comes in 10 languages, but not Russian. What, are there so many Albanians in Haringey that the council had to hire a translator to accommodate their not-speaking-English-ness?

It was real fun to watch the public grilling of one unfortunate British politician a while ago. Come on, people, the man is making a fool of himself because he doesn’t know any better! While you are making even bigger fools of yourselves, explaining in minute detail what his heretical doctrines are really about, so that somebody doesn’t accidentally fall for them.

It’s like “Don’t think about a white monkey” (pun intended). And what a silly joke that “shut off the oxygen of publicity” claim is that and being offended on behalf of other people.

So basically freedom of speech in Britain is being able to say anything you want, as long as a bunch of self-righteous pricks approve it.

And oh, so racism is bad? I’ll tell you what racism is. It’s having to fill in a 17-page visa application form with all sorts of humiliating questions to prove that you’re good enough to pay twice as much for your education as British students do.

I’m not sure how many of you have seen a Home Office UK Visa application form, so I’ll give you an idea. The whole page 6 repeats in all sharps and flats one very important question: “Are you a terrorist? No, really, are you? Are you sure? Do you know anybody who is a terrorist?”

The last question is – I shit you not – “Have you engaged in any other activities that might indicate that you may not be considered a person of good character? If Yes, please provide details”. Holy fuck, what kind of genius came up with that?

Racism is when you have to wait an additional week to set up a bank account because people from ‘certain countries’ require additional checks. I’ll tell you what is ‘certain’ about my country: it’s a rival empire rather than a colony.

The most valuable lesson I have learned about Britain’s multicultural society: it works in different ways. And I am on the wrong side of it.

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