Dividing My Time

The Easter Tin Hunt

 

Orthodox Easter cuisine in Russia keeps pace with the liturgy’s potent symbols of resurrection, the triumph of light over darkness, and the return of spring.     During Holy Week, Russians bake a light, dry traditional Easter bread, called kulich, and color and decorate hard-boiled eggs, which sadly fewer people these days seem to do in the traditional manner with the skin of yellow onions boiled in water.  Orthodox Christians bring their eggs and kulich to their parish church for a Pascal blessing.  Together with a sweet, rich, creamy curd cheese mold, spiked with spices, candied fruit, and citrus zest called paskha, these are the fundamentals of the Easter meal, right after the lengthy service, which culminates in the joyful Easter greeting “Xhristos Voskres!” or “The Lord Hath Risen!” to which the faithful respond, “He is Risen Indeed!” In Church Slavonic, this phrase is rendered by the Cyrillic letters “XB,” a motif which appears on eggs, kulich, and the paskha.

I remember my first Russian Easter as a frantic hunt, not for eggs and chocolate, but for bake ware.  Although I have a sizable arsenal of pots, pans, pie and tart dishes, and other baking paraphernalia, none of them is suitable for the Easter confections.  I wanted to do the thing properly: kulich is tall and cylindrical with a slightly puffy mushroom-like cap on top.   Paskha is traditionally prepared in a special trapezoidal mold called a pasochnitsa decorated with elaborate “XBs” and Orthodox Crosses on each panel so that the chilled mold retains the imprint of these seasonal decorations. 

In Russia, sourcing things never comes quite as easily as it does in the rest of the world.  Figuring the pasochnitsa would be the harder of the two to run to ground, I started my search there.   I prowled supermarkets and specialty kitchen stores to no avail.   I checked the farmer’s markets and found nothing but got lucky with some local knowledge.  Since the primary ingredients of paskha are cream, curd cheese, or “tvorog,” eggs, and butter, I threw myself on the mercy of the rosy-cheeked ladies who peddle these items at the market.  

“Try the Churches,” they advised, leaving me wondering why I hadn’t thought of that simple solution.  I’d got the scent, and after a slight detour to the three churches in my neighborhood and the Danilovsky Monastery gift shop, I headed strait towards the source:  the Sofrino Ecclesiastical Store in Central Moscow where you can buy anything and everything having to do with the Russian Orthodox Church from a slim 2 ruble candle to a 13 million ruble marble baptismal font.  There was one pasochnitsa there and I held my breath as four priests cut in line in front of me (apparently they can) to stock up on holy water and wedding crowns, but I was in luck, and, precious pasochnitsa in hand, I literally skipped down the stairs and out into the.

The kulich tin proved even more elusive.  The church store didn’t have them.  I trawled up and down the aisles of department stores and supermarkets.  I found tube pans and charlotte moulds, both of which were too short, and baba cups, which were the right shape, but too small.  Back at home, I burst into tears of frustration.

“What’s wrong?” asked my Russian husband.  Hiccupping slightly, I explained that, thanks to my lack of a kulich tin Easter would be ruined – completely ruined.  To my surprise, he burst out laughing.  He disappeared into the pantry, still chuckling, then emerged with four metal tins of various sizes, which held tomatoes, coffee, beans, and pickled mushrooms.  

“Kulich tins,” he said.    I dried my eyes and let out a chuckle of my own.

“Kulich tins, indeed.”

Paskha:

Paskha is the tangible proof that Lent has ended, combining, as it does, all the forbidden foods in one delicious confection.  The smooth and rich creaminess of paskha is a perfect foil to the drier kulich, and one without the other doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Don’t let the lack of a traditional pasochnitsa deter you from trying this recipe.  An agnostic but serviceable mold of any kind will do the job.

Ingredients:

750 grams of full fat tvorog (curd cheese)

500 gms of caster sugar

5 egg yolks

450 ml of heavy whipping cream

500 grms of sweet butter

2 cups of chopped candied fruit and peel

2 Tbl of vanilla extract  

3 Tbls of a sweet liqueur such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Directions:

1. Whip the egg yolks together until slightly thickened.  Add the sugar and beat until smooth.

2. Cream the butter in a separate container and then add to the egg yolks and sugar.

3. Drain the curd cheese through a fine sieve, and then mix it well into the butter, sugar and egg yolk mixture until smooth.

4. Add the cream, vanilla and liqueur and mix until smooth.

5. Fold in one cup of the candied fruit and peel, 

6. Line a mold with plastic wrap or cheesecloth.  Pour the mixture into the mold, and then weight the top with a pot lid or flat plate and a heavy weight such.  

7. Chill at least 12 hours in the refrigerator.

8. Unmold the paskha and decorate with the remainder of the candied fruit and peel.  Keep cool until serving.

Kulich

Ingredients

2 packages of active dry yeast

1,5 liters dry flour + 1 tablespoon

¾ teaspoon of salt

350 ml of caster sugar + 1 tablespoon

5 large egg yolks at room temperature

300 ml of whole milk, scalded and cooled to 50°C

225 grams of butter, melted and cooled to 45°C

2 large egg whites at room temperature, whipped to stiff peaks

6 strands of saffron dissolved in 2 tablespoons of rum

2 cup of candied fruit (I use a mix of raisins, candied ginger, dried cherries, candied orange peel)

1/3 cup of slivered blanched almonds

Extra butter

Glaze made of egg yolk, vegetable oil, and water

2 cups of icing (I used a confectioner sugar glaze)

Directions

1. Butter aluminum tins, then line the bottom and sides with buttered parchment paper.

2. Combine yeast, 6 Table of water, 1 tsp of sugar and flour in a bowl.  Cover and set to rise in a warm place with no breeze.

3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until combined, then vigorously for approximately 5 minutes.   When the mixture is thoroughly combined, add the milk, then flour and the salt.  Knead or mix for 2 minutes.

4. Add the proofed yeast, beating for 2 minutes to combine.  

5. Add the melted butter gradually, beating a moderate speed.  Let the dough rest for two minutes, and then test for elasticity.  If needed, add more flour.

6. Add the egg whites and saffron and rum mixture.  Once the dough is thoroughly combined, add one cup of the candied fruit.

7. Cover the dough to rise in a buttered bowl placed in a warm place until it has doubled in size (2-3 hours)

8. Knead the dough lightly a few times, then return it to the bowl and cover for another 2 hours.

9. Divide the dough between the aluminum tins so that the dough covers slightly more than ½ of the tin.  Retain 1 cup of the dough.  Cover and let rise another hour.

10. Preheat the oven to 180°C.  

11. Take the retained dough and form it into strips.  Place two strips across the top of the dough in each tin in the form of a cross.  This will enhance the top of the kulich.  

12. Glaze the tops of each tin and place in the preheated oven.  Cook for 15-20 minutes.  Then raise the temperature to 200°C.  Smaller tins will cook faster than larger ones.  Kulich is finished when a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.

13. The final step is a little local peasant wisdom that seems to work an extra bit of magic:  cover a soft bed pillow with a towel and gently place the kulich tin onto its side on the pillow.  Gently roll the tin back and forth over the pillow to ease the kulich out of the buttered tin.  Cool the kulich on its side on the pillow for at 40 minutes.  Then place it upright and frost with the glaze of your choice.  Use the remaining candied fruit and almonds to decorate the kulich in any way you wish!

Priyatnogo Appetita!

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A version of this article first appeared in Le Figaro in French under the title, "La Chasse au Moule" on April 19, 2011.   An online link to that publication may be found here.

 

Day of Bribery/День взяток: More Blessed to Receive.

 “There is thy gold--worse poison to men's souls…”

~William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)

Today is Bribery Day!  Since pagan times, Russians and their ancient Slavic forbears have set aside the Spring new moon to celebrate the strength of the grey economy.  As ancient and venerable as Ivan Kupala and Maslentisa, Bribery Day has its roots in the agricultural pagan worship of the trickster god Otka.  Otka was a Slavic version of the Greek God Hermes, guardian of thieves, messengers, traveling salesmen and merchants, and from his name, the modern word for “kick back” in Russian, “otkat’” is derived.  On this day, as the winter slush finally left the soggy fields, as the Primary Chronicle of Russia recounts, the peasant elders of each village brought the last of their winter stores as offerings to their landowner, who dressed up as Otka.  In an elaborate ceremony, each elder made lengthy speeches praising the god and the landowner, while their sons and grandsons placed their baskets at the feet of the landowner’s family.  The speeches over, the landowner then announced the allocation of the narrow strips of soil called the “barshina” to the various peasants.  Over time, whoever brought the largest donation would receive the most advantageous strips of land, which were adjacent to one another.  This meant that the peasants could work the land without the hassle of traveling long distances between their different strips.

After the Baptism of Russia in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church gradually incorporated worship of Otka into worship of St. Nicholas The Miracle Worker.  The Tsar held a grand levee on the first Sunday of April to receive the homage and elaborate ceremonial gifts from each head of the regional “gubanatoriya,” a tradition, echoed today in the annual Russian banking conferences in St. Petersburg, Sochi and London.

Revolution, famine, and the repression of the peasant kulacks during the forced Collectivization of the 1920s and 1930s severely curtailed celebrations of Bribery Day in Central European Russia, although stealth observations were recorded in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Far East. After the Great Patriotic War, Stalin’s death, and Kruschev’s “Secret Speech” however, authorities gradually relaxed their more stringent regulations and by 1960, Bribery Day was reinstated and today is as much a part of the rhythms of the Russian  year as New Year’s, Maslenitsa, and the November holidays.

Here is a confession: I personally suck at bribery.  Even after two decades, I never quite get the nuances, the timing, and I can never gage the right amount of money to proffer.  Since free-lance writers are almost never on the receiving end of bribes, that has rarely been an issue for me.  Back in the day, I did get what was an unmistakable approach in late 1994:  I was offered the sum of $17,000 if I awarded a contract for services to a certain company.  None of it was feasible:  the company was laughably incompetent, and they had foolishly underestimated my influence in the decision making process.  $17,000 was intriguing, though.  To this day, I’m still wondering whether that was minus an $3,000, $7,000, or $8,000 kick back for the person who offered it to me.  So I’m not a big time disciple of Otka, although I once confused the word for kick back (otkat) with the word for sunset (zakat), which HRH found hilarious.   To this day, during the summer, we mix up some nice gin & tonics and head out to watch the “sun’s kick back.”

And that’s how I like to worship pagan “Otka.”  So, mix yourself up your tipple of choice, and join Slavs across the globe in raising your glass to the ancient worship of the grey economy!!

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This post is not strictly part of The Stunt.  

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Hey there readers!

Do you have a bribery story?  My story about the 17K is true and I love it.  Let us know about yours, won’t you by clicking on the comment button below.  You don’t need to use your real name, but it would be great to hear from you!

 

International Womens' Day/Международный женский день: Clara and Rosa Turning in their Graves!

 

When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.
~Clara Zetkin

This week was of course the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day – or 8th of March, as it is better known in Russia, one of the most important dates in a calendar chocker block with important holidays.   

8th of March was originally conceived as a day dedicated lobbying for equal rights for women, universal suffrage, and the abilities and achievements of women throughout the world.   It was first celebrated in Russia in 1913, and, after the revolution of 1917, quickly became a fixture on the calendar for the new Bolshevik government.    On the 8th of March, men are supposed to take on all the tasks traditionally assigned to women.  They clean the house, make a meal, or possibly look after the children.  Today, however, in this more mercantile post-perestroika era, celebrations have strayed a little bit far off the mark.   8th of March has become an obligatory gift giving extravaganza.  The gross national product of Holland shoots up a number of points due to all the flowers sold on 8th of March, and restaurants do a brisk business for those International men who can’t quite face the kitchen.   

This year, Russia held its national beauty pageant and crowned a “Miss Russia,” and this alone would have the socialist pioneers Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxumburg turning in their graves.  In what are politely called penal facilitates, Russian women prisoners also held beauty contests to crown a “Miss Prison Russia.”   Russia’s favorite redhead spy, Anna Chapman, who for some reason is still making headlines, launched a very silly website, and Russia’s infamously unpleasant traffic cops declared a one day cease fire on pulling women over for minor traffic offences.  This pulled the GDP of Russia down a few points.

Celebrating 8th of March this year was a three-day event thanks to the way the holiday fell in the middle of the week.   For the uninitiated used to bank holidays and first Mondays, this may seem a trifle confusing, but follow me if you can:

Saturday, March 5th was a working day, meaning that Russians worked a six-day week.   We had to work on Saturday so that Monday, March 7th could be a day off even though Tuesday, March 8th was the actual holiday.  Does that make sense? Vintage Russian public holiday stuff.     If the holiday is on a Tuesday, you have to have the Monday off as well so you can get a three-day weekend.  Even though you have to work on the previous Saturday.   Where that gets us, I don’t know, but I’m not sure anyone comes out ahead.    Joe Biden is town this week and he’s talking about Russia’s accession to the WTO but if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) if they let that warped individual who sits in his windowless room in the Kremlin massaging the calendar keep on with this stuff, Russia doesn’t deserve to join the WTO.

On Saturday, I actually came in from London – a flight time of just over three hours.   It took me about that amount of time to get from Domodedevo Airport to my flat in Moscow.  HRH, my “horrible Russian Husband” was unable to meet me since he was at work, so Tolya my driver and I sat in a traffic jam that was more than usually insane.

“Yep,” said Tolya, “Everyone’s out congratulating the ladies.”  

Saturday may be a working day, but most of it is given over to kicking off 8th of March in fine style, with lots of champagne, chocolates and flowers.  Legions of delivery trucks leaned on their horns and tried to cut off their competitors through the gridlock.

Tolya told me he’d heard on the radio that you could hire an official emergency service ambulance as a taxi service for 6000 rubles and hour, which comes to about 200 USD per hour.   

“I don’t approve of it,” he said.  Neither did I, but we both agreed that it require a leap of the imagination to understand that it was actually happening.   

My HRH hates to shop for anything – he becomes grumpy and impatient buying a newspaper at a kiosk, or a loaf of bread at the nice French bakery across the street from us.   But, each 8th of March, he girds his loins and plunges into the maelstrom of baffled men trying to club together ingredients for a home cooked meal.

“Keep it simple,” I advised as we parked the car at a new place I’d heard about, called The Farmer’s Bazaar.  I had high hopes of it turning out to be the Whole Foods of Moscow, which of course was delusional of me.  It turned out to be a token supermarket on the 5th floor of what used to be a perfectly respectable food market on a central Russian street.  Closed for a number of years, it had recently re-opened as a glitzy shopping mall.  Because that’s just what Moscow needs – another glitzy shopping mall.   And who in their right mind puts a supermarket on the 5th floor of a glitzy shopping mall?   

Farmer’s Bazaar was definitely not Whole Foods.   Far from it.  It was like any overpriced Moscow supermarket:  you needed to take a second mortgage to afford some of the items.  I clocked a small package of white beans, which are admittedly hard to find here, retailing for just over $12.  A packet of Earl Grey Tea would run you $20.   HRH had that “I knew this would be a nightmare” look on his face as I steered him over to the fish counter.   He was mildly mollified by some fresh fin de Claire oysters, reasonably priced at about 3 bucks a pop, and ordered a few dozen.  These were carefully packaged in plastic takeaway containers with a bed of ice, but the problems was that they only fit 3 oysters to the container, so we ended up with ten takeaway containers.   I then queered the deal by asking if I could buy the heads and spines of some beautiful fish one of the charmingly nautically clad fishmongers was gutting.  This appeared to be the first time anyone behind the fish counter had ever received a request remotely like this, and it was met with a lot of suspicion.

Needless to say, I’ll be back to shopping on my own for the next calendar year.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hello There Male and Female Readers!

How did your 8th of March pan out?  Did you get anything nice?  Did you encounter any baffled men?  Let us know 

Instead of some links to other posts, today, have a listen to a live radio interview I did with Voice of Russia by clicking here.

 

Масленица/Maslenitsa: Parties, Pancakes, and Punch-Ups

With enough butter, anything is good.

~Julia Child

Today is the beginning of Maslenitsa, Russia's version of Mardi Gras!

I wrote this piece for one of papers I write for, but they went with something about bears in Trafalgar Square which I didn't feel was nearly as informative, nor indeed entertaining.  Looks like Olga Quelque Chose strikes again...So, here it is for fans of The Stunt:

There are a number of non-negotiables about life in Russia.   You can’t have the window open—ever.   You have to take your shoes off when you enter any residential dwelling—always.  And, if you plan to earn the respect of your family, you need to learn how to make bliniy or pancakes---well.  Particularly this time of the year.  It has eluded me, in the past but this year, I promised myself I would master the art of the elusive Russian pancake in time for Maslenitsa.  I rolled up my sleeves.  I delved into 19the Century cookbooks.  I cornered old women at the farmers’ market.  I contemplated calling my mother-in-law.

“I have to work today, “ said my workaholic Russian husband last Saturday.

“Perfect,” I muttered, “I need you out from under my feet.  I have to crack this bliniy recipe, and it is going to take me all day.”

“Don’t overdo it,” he cautioned hastening out the door.

“Don’t you dare have anything to eat,” I yelled after him, “because we’ll be having sixty pancakes for dinner!”

The pressure is on.  Maslenitsa is upon us! Russia’s riotous Mardi Gras: a week of partying, pancakes and punch-ups which celebrates the end of winter, the beginning of Lent, and the promise of spring.  Half-heartedly absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Calendar, Maslenitsa is really a tenacious rite of spring belonging to a much older, more pagan culture of nature worship, agrarian traditions, and a heightened awareness of the change of seasons.

Maslenitsa was originally pegged to the vernal equinox, that moment in early spring when the sun passes directly over the equator, making day and night equal length.   Of the four points of the calendar (the solstices and the equinoxes), the vernal equinox was most revered by ancient societies, because it heralded the return of the sun and life after the darkness and death of winter.  Many ancient monuments such as the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem were oriented such that the rays of the vernal equinox sunrise would fall directly above the High Alter.  

Pagan Slavs interpreted natural phenomena in their religious worship with stories of human love and betrayal, sex and separation, and life and death.  In a popular myth reminiscent of Egyptian Isis and Osiris, Russia’s Yarilo and Morana are brother and sister lovers who represent life and death, fire and ice, and spring and winter.  Their courtship reaches a fever pitch during the summer solstice, only to spiral into betrayal in autumn, and separation and death in the winter.  Spurred Morana turns into a fearsome hag, spreading death and frost in her wake. Crops wither to dried straw as Yarilo retreats to the underworld. As spring returns, the faithful burned a straw effigy of Morana on top of the snow to call forth Yarilo back from the Underworld.   As the flames of the straw Morana crackled, pagan Slavs celebrated the return of spring by dancing, wrestling, and feasting on life-affirming pancakes, symbolic of the sun and eternal life.

Christians, ever-efficient recyclers of other people’s holidays, have nevertheless found Maslenitsa an awkward fit in the liturgical lead in to Easter.  In agrarian Russia, Lent served as a handy spiritual excuse for a Spartan diet as it excludes meat, cheese, oil, eggs, alcohol, and butter, all of which do a lot to spice up plain buckwheat kasha.  The forty days of Lent coincide with the period when the staples of winter stores had dwindled down to a bare minimum in Russia.  Nowadays, of course, you can get mangos and quail in aspic at any supermarket year round, but many Russians proudly go through “The Great Fast,” as a way of clawing onto some moral high ground and dropping twenty pounds in less than two months: both goals easy to achieve if you are subsisting on buckwheat porridge and cabbage soup. Maslenitsa contains the word “maslo” meaning butter, although some scholars argue that it is a more ancient version of “mysia pust’” meaning “empty of meat.”  Whatever the explanation, it is a time to gorge on butter, cheese, and cream, and is to Russia what Shrovetide is to the Anglo-Saxons and Carnival and Mardi Gras are to the Spanish and French: a public celebration of the return of light and warmth and the last gasp of fun and fat – and pancakes of course-- to be had before the onset of Lent.  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This piece first appeared in La Russie D'Aujourd'hui and Le Figaro on February 16, 2011 in French under the title: "Les blinis sans états d’âme"

Photos (and pancakes) by the author.  All Rights Reserved.

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Hello Readers!

Have you had a pancake today?  Want to know the very best pancake recipe ever (much better than any of the ones posted that I've seen?)   Hit the comment button below and I'll let you in on it.  Not for the faint hearted!!!

To revisit a Maslenitsa that went horribly wrong, try this post.

Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland/День защитника Отечества: A Hymn To Him

As you spend February 23rd (Men's Day), so shall you spend 8th of March (Women's Day).

~HRH (and a lot of other Russian men I know.)

A friend, who is perhaps not the brightest bulb on the tanning bed, has just figured out the double entendre humor I use in referring to my “Handsome Russian Husband” as “HRH.”

“You know,” she said, “That can also stand for ‘His Royal Highness’. Like Prince William.”

Really?

The moniker HRH is eminently applicable to Russian men, who are all brought up by their mothers believing that they are, indeed, royal scions and therefore above such plebian and unmanly concerns like housework.  In Russia, they are still teaching Home Ec to the girls and Shop to the boys, with no reform in sight – and certainly not regarding the impending gender-specific public holidays.  In place of one messy, gender-neutral love fest on February 14th, Russians are suiting up for the very separate Men’s Day (February 23rd) and its companion piece, International Women’s Day (March 8th.)  

I’m a Russian historian, so I like to delve into the origin of national holidays. Men’s Day is very interesting.  Its full, and characteristically overblown, name is “The Day of the Defenders of the Motherland,” and it celebrates the 1918 rout of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces by the just-that-day-drafted Red Army.  The name eventually morphed from “Red Army Day,” to “Day of the Soviet Army and Navy,” and in 1995, as part of a re-branding campaign to drop “Red” from everything, ended up as “Day of the Defenders of the Motherland.”  In HRH’s family, we take the 23rd of February very seriously indeed, since we are a military family:  HRH and Dedushka both served as officers in the Red Army – as did Great Uncle Boris, and several others, dating right back to that Red Letter Day in 1918.  Interestingly, this list also includes several gutsy great aunts and great-great grandmothers, who served, with distinction, in the Red Army as border patrol guards, field medical officers, and behind-the-lines guerilla fighters in Occupied Ukraine.  Nevertheless, February 23rd remains devoted exclusively to the men of Russia, who, ipso facto, are all obliged to defend the Motherland as part of their mandatory military service.  

On its current web site, the Russian Consulate in Houston, TX offers helpful guidance on the celebration of Men’s Day: “On this day,” it says, “the entire masculine population - from boys to old men - receive special greetings and presents. Women have a wonderful opportunity to convey their warmest and kindest feelings to the loved ones and to indulge them with sings (sic) of attention and affection.”  

Translation: Women: shop, cook, clean.   Lather, rinse, repeat.

HRH, in mufti, is not a force to be reckoned with on the domestic front, although he does open wine bottles, which, along with driving a car, is what well-brought up Russian men consider “man’s work.”  I once begged him to empty the dishwasher.  He sighed deeply, went to the sink, and stood, his back to me.

“Darling,” I said quietly.

“What – “ he barked, turning around to glare at me.

“Just that, the dishwasher, you know, is the appliance on your left.”

  HRH and Dedushka won’t be emptying anything except a bottle of premium whiskey this week – as we women convey our warmest and kindest feelings.  I’ve bought HRH a new super sonic corkscrew, Babushka has the sweet Sovietskoye Champanskoye warming up in the vegetable steamer, and Velvet is on dishwasher duty, so we are all set to indulge our Defenders with the royal attention and affection they deserve.

But I refuse to sing.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This post first appeared as an article in Russia Beyond The Headlines on February 10, 2010.

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Hey there readers!

This may well have been the post that started me down the rocky road of profprazniks.   Did you have a nice men's day?   I decided to put all my chips on one number and spent a large part of Tuesday night making bliniy and all kinds of good stuff.  Then everyone got sick.  So now the house is full of food.  Any Defenders out there still looking for a good meal?

Students' Day (Tatiana’s Day)/День студентов (Татьянин день): A Very Russian Toga Party

 “This year they drank out everything but the Moscow River, and only because it was frozen over!”

~Anton Chekhov (writing about Tatiana’s Day in the 19th Century.

Today is Tatiana’s Day!   January 25th (January 12th Old Style) is commemorates the death of the 3rd Century Christian martyr, St. Tatiana of Rome.  St. Tatiana was a pious young woman, who was brought up by her father as a Christian and became a deaconess of the fledgling sect in Rome, when it was still in hiding from the authorities.  She was captured and ordered to make a public renunciation of Christianity by making a sacrifice to the Roman deity, Apollo. Legend says that Tatiana prayed for deliverance, and an earthquake shook the ground, toppling and smashing the marble statue of Apollo.  The Romans then gouged Tatiana’s eyes out with a hook and threw her into a pit with a hungry lion.  The lion curled up at her feet and purred peacefully.  Ignoring all these really quite obvious signs that she knew what she was about, the Romans then beheaded her.

Tatiana and the day commemorating her death might have slipped unnoticed into the Church calendar as yet another saint’s day, but historical events took over.

On January 25 (January 12 Old Style), in 1755, Empress Elizabeth founded Russia’s first University: Moscow University, noting that: “Any good comes from an enlightened mind, and evil is eradicated thereby.”   Credit for founding the University goes to Mikhail Lomonosov, a prominent Academician and Professor of Chemistry, and the well-connected courtier I.I. Shuvalov, who served as the university’s first Curator.  Prominent alumni include writers Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev, Nobel Laureate and Politian Mikhail Gorbachev, and the artist Vassily Kandinsky.

In the early years, the University offered a general course in Philosophy and liberal arts from which students went on to a concentrated course in one of three branches of study: law, medicine, or philosophy.  The University was housed for most of its history directly opposite Red Square, in the yellow and white classical buildings on Mokhovaya Street which today house the faculties of Journalism, Asian and African Studies and Law.   In 1949, construction began on the monumental new building of the University Complex in the Sparrow (Lenin) Hills, the largest of the “seven sisters” or “Stalin Wedding Cakes” high rises which are an integral part of the Moscow skyline. Until 1990, this was the tallest building in Europe, and until 2005, the tallest in Moscow.  In 1953, the doors opened for the first academic year.

Today, Moscow State University, or “MGU” is the largest University in Russia with over 40,000 students who study in 39 departments, under the tutalege of more than 10,000 professors.  Fees begin at € 5 900 per year which has to be the educational deal of the century.

The association with Saint Tatiana and students endures to this day, and all over Russia, January 25th or “Tatianin Deyn’” is considered “students’ day,” and marks the end of exams and beginning of the winter break.   Divine service is held in the Chapel of St. Tatiana, followed by speeches, prize giving, and then unfettered partying in the city streets, beginning with a traditional honey-based mead, and moving on to anything the students can get their hands on!  

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This post is part of The Stunt

Note that traditional celebrations for Tatiana's Day have been cancelled on Janaury 25, 2011 out of respect for the victims of the bomb blast at Domodedovo Airport which took place on Janaury 24, 2011.

Today is also The Day of the Naval Navigators!

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Dear Readers:

As you can see above, the traditional merriment that accompanies Tatiana Day have been cancelled out of respect for the victims of the bomb blast which took place last night at Domodedovo Airport.  Very fitting.   Thanks to all who e mailed and sent messages of concern.  Our friends and family are all fine, but our hearts go out to all those injured or killed in yesterday's tragic attack.

Today is also the “Day of the Naval Navigators,” which you won’t want to miss, especially if you are married to one of those guys who never ever ever asks for directions!  And after you’ve enjoyed that, stick around and enjoy some more posts about the world’s largest country!  Like these:

Day of the Medical Workers/День медицинского работника: Breezes, Bribes, and Bubonic Plague

Day of the Chemists / День химика: Russia’s Unquestioned Contribution to Civilization

Day of the Military Translator /День военного переводчика: Strategic Communication In The Line of Fire

Old New Year/Старый Новый год: Enough Already!!!

 Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

~ Popular saying, referencing Trojan War.

Today is Old New Year.  That’s right – Old New Year.   Old in the sense of “what used to be.”   As the leading (read only) chronicler of Russian public and professional holidays, I’ve explained the 13-day discrepancy between some Russian holidays, but for those of you just joining Dividing My Time, here is my authorized version of just how this discrepancy came about.

Old New Year is the final push to the finishing line of my Christmas marathon, which begins around December 10th, around about the time my friend Gail guilts me into buying a gazillion tickets to the Moscow Oratorio’s annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” and ends – deo gratis – tomorrow.   And not before time!  

While the Valentine’s Day décor goes up in the West at approximately 2 pm on Christmas Day, the Russians drag it out until the last gasp.  Today, at Goodman’s Steak House where Tancy and Tanya and I got together for a girly lunch, they still had Ella Fitzgerald singing “Sleigh Bells Ringing” full blast, which made me want to throw my 9 oz New York steak across a room filled with plump businessmen having catch up lunches with their secretaries.  Readers, it’s time to pack up Christmas and be done with it.  Lent is just around the corner.

In this spirit of de-cluttering and de-Christmasing, I attacked HRH’s staggering range of Corporate Gifts with all the relentless zeal of my new heroine, Clutter Buster to the Elites, Barbara Reich.   

Corporate gifts, like birthday gifts, in Russia have a culture uniquely their own, which has a lot more to do with the giver, rather than the giftee. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I run through some of the more outrageous ones I’ve encountered in my day.  The list was long as it was, but this year, it got a stunning new addition that no one could see coming down the shosse.  

I’ve written before about clutter busting in Russia (and gotten my hand nicely slapped for it) but at this rolling time of the year, as Dickens would say, there is a very real danger that one could end up buried under all this…seasonal bounty.  So, with that in mind, I offer, below, a practical guide for wives, trailing spouses and secretaries as to what you can expect to receive, and more importantly, what you should do with it.   

1. Shiny carrier bags with the logo of the giver emblazoned on the front:  

Disposition: empty these of their contents, being sure to remove the business cards stapled to them so you can remember to thank the giver.  Write the contents of the carrier bag on the back of the business card.  Collate with rubber band to give to your minigarch. HRH tends to not take this any further, but I figure this is his business.  

When the carrier bags are emptied, flatten them out and give them to your cleaning lady.  She will be over the moon and use them as you or I would use a tote bag for the remainder of the calendar year.   On no account should you use them to “re-gift” an item, because you won’t get any of the credit.  Duh…

2.    Booze:  

Booze at New Year’s is a wonderful barometer of how well you are doing professionally: the higher you go up the corporate ladder, the better the quality of the booze swag.   Russians, despite all the patriotic rhetoric you hear these days, are serious snobs about their alcohol, preferring the imported to the domestic.  So, if you got a wooden case of three bottles of really nice French red wine, you are doing well. If you got one bottle of Super Sladkoye (sweet) Shampanskoye, not so much.  

Disposition: Consume (in the case of the good wine, cognac, and scotch) or (in the case of the Super Sladkoye Shampanskoye or the Cough Syrup Cranberry Liqueur) re-gift down the social scale to those who will appreciate it.  The exception to this rule is vodka, which often comes in a witty custom-branded bottle with the firm’s logo on it.  Keep this and pour it into the hole in your car where the windshield wiper fluid goes and you’ll be all set.

3. Banya accessories:  

Newcomers to Russia are often surprised to find they’ve been given dried branches, felt caps, wooden buckets, a small wall thermometer, or a long-handled ladle as presents, but in no way should this be perceived as an insult or a slur.  Quite the opposite, these gifts indicate that the giver perceives you or your minigarch as a bit of a lad, one of the boys, and an all around good egg.  

Disposition:  If you have a sauna, then stick them in and put them to work.  If you don’t, hand them over to your driver, who will think that you think he is a bit of a lad.  No bad thing.

4-7:    The paper products/A5 junky diaries:

No Russian company worth its salt will go one year without producing an A5 diary, calendar, or outdated business card holder of some kind.  During my time at the The Firm, I tried to get rid of them, but no dice.   These can range from tasteful real leather blank books (and as you can see from the photo, some companies are wising up and producing A4 or letter-sized diaries) to the really heinous faux-suede stuff. As for the business card holders – another reason why, if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) Russia will never join the WTO – everyone knows you need a Rolodex to keep those in any kind of order.

Disposition: Cull vigorously, keeping the A4 ones for yourself.  Gift the A5 ones to the Accounting and Security Departments, who can’t seem to live without this kind of thing, and the faux suede ones to your driver.

8.   PR-shicki get creative:  

Sometimes the PR-schiki get creative and you end of with some one-off items.  These can be clever (a boxed set of really good Soviet classic movies) or tasteful (a silver-plated USB charger – my own idea one year), or downright silly like Christmas tree ornaments.  Who the hell wants a Christmas Tree ornament from ROSGOS something or other?

Disposition:  Think carefully about how you might use this on a day-to-day basis and act accordingly.  Re-gift if you possibly can, though you will have to do it down the social scale, since all of these items will be aggressively branded.   

9.   The inexplicable:  

Sometimes you just can’t fathom the mindset of the person in charge of this kind of thing.   I mean, who in their right mind gives a grown man and potential minigarch what can only be described as a doll?   A shiny, expensive doll, to be sure, but a doll nonetheless.  I can only think that in this case, the empty-headed, long-legged secretary of the Top Guy was allowed a free hand.  

Disposition: I give this kind of thing to my mother-in-law.

Happy Old New Year to All!!!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

*Part of an article entitled “So, Is this Christmas?” first published by Russia Beyond the Headlines and The Washington Post on December 15, 2010.

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Hey there readers:

What was your most outrageous Christmas/New Year’s gifr?  

 

New Year's/Новый год: Is This Christmas??

Happy New Year's, Readers!

No prizes for guessing what today is...apart from being 1/1/11 which is pretty cool: It's New Year's!  Hands down the brightest star in the Russian holiday firmament! It's been going on very steadily since about 1918 and it is for everyone!   

Foreigners get confused about Russian New Year, Russian Christmas and all the things that go with it.  I wrote a piece about it for Russia Beyond The Headlines and it seems appropriate to reprint it here:

So, Is This Christmas?

“Is this a Christmas Tree, or a New Year’s Tree?” asked my five-year old daughter Velvet, as I struggled with a tangle of fairy lights.

“It’s both,” said HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband,” who was lying contorted on the floor, trying to get the tree to stand up strait in its holder.

“Nastia says,” Velvet informed us, referencing her infallible best friend “that Santa Claus isn’t Santa Claus at all – he’s called Ded Moroz and he comes on New Year’s.”

“Tell Nastia,” I responded through gritted teeth, “that in our very fortunate family, Santa comes on December 24th, and then his cousin, Ded Moroz comes on New Year’s Eve.”

“Nastia says Christmas is on January 7th,” said Velvet, still confused.

“That’s true too,” said HRH, brushing pine needles off his hands.

“Why?” asked Velvet, and they both looked at me expectantly.

Christmas in our American-Russian family is a marathon, not a sprint.  Since Velvet was born, HRH and I have worked hard – he writing checks, me sifting the dry ingredients -- to fuse the varying traditions of Russia and the West into our family celebrations.  The result is a month-long slog, from December 15th, when my friend Gail guilts us all into buying tickets to the Moscow Oratorio’s rendition of Handel’s “Messiah,” through January 13th, or “Old New Year” in Russia, at which point, I am ready to lock Prince Albert, Charles Dickens, and Pyotor Ilyich Tchaikovsky into a small, windowless room and throw away the key.   

Russian Christians adhere to the Eastern Orthodox calendar (see sidebar), which lags 13 days behind the modern day calendar.   This discrepancy was corrected in 1918, by the fledgling Bolshevik regime, but Christmas never reverted to December 25th in Russia, because the Bolsheviks began a systematic campaign to phase out traditional religious holidays and replace them with Soviet ones.  Christmas was shifted to New Year’s Eve.  At the beginning, stringent measures were put in place to see off any holdover of the old days:  Christmas trees, introduced to Russia by Tsar Peter The Great in the 17th Century, were banned in 1916 by the Holy Synod as too German.  The Bolsheviks kept the tree ban in place.   Stalin declared Ded Moroz “an ally of the priest and kulak,” and outlawed him from Russia.

“Like the Burgermeister Meisterburger outlawed Kris Kringle in ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town?’” asked Velvet breathlessly, referring to the seminal 1970 animated American Christmas classic.

I cast a careful look at HRH who was now struggling with the star on the top of the tree, “Exactly like that,” I whispered.

  But you can’t keep the likes of Ded Moroz down for long.   In 1935 Pavel Postyshev, Stalin’s architect of the collectivization program, possibly concerned about his lasting legacy, published a letter in Pravda asking that “New Year’s Trees” be erected in Pioneer Palaces and that Ded Moroz and his granddaughter and helpmate Sneguritchka be allowed to return to the children of the Soviet Union on New Year’s Eve.  Ded Moroz and the trees were rehabilitated in 1937.  Although Christmas and other Orthodox holidays were reinstated on the Russian calendar in 1992, New Year’s Eve remains firmly entrenched as the primary holiday.  

Although Christmas itself was banned, Russians recycled traditional pagan and Christmas traditions as a template for the New Year’s Customs.  In Old Russia, when the first star appeared in the sky, symbolic of the Star of Bethlehem, families gathered to break their 40-day fast with a twelve course “Holy Supper,” featuring “kutya” or grain porridge sweetened with honey and dried fruit.  From pagan times, this dish symbolized life, hope, sweetness, and blessings to the home. You can still find kutya on the tables of today’s Russian New Year’s celebrations, along with lavish zakuski (hors d’oeuvres.) In the Soviet Era, New Year’s always saw the arrival of rare tropical fruits such as tangerines, which for HRH is the smell of his childhood New Year’s.   After the Holy Supper, the faithful in Old Russia returned to church for an All-Night Vigil.  Today, Russians gather around their tables in front of the TV to greet, not the Redeemer of Mankind, but President Dmitry Medvedev, who will hoist a glass of champagne and wish everyone health and happiness for the coming year.  Then fireworks will explode all over Russia and all the bells will peel, as Russians exchange three kisses and good wishes: “New Year, New Happiness, New Luck!”

Sidebar:

Why is Russian Christmas on January 7^th?

Dates and holidays are often confusing in Russia because of the historical split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches over the reforms to the Julian Calendar by Pope Gregory XII in 1582.  Most of the world rushed to adopt what became known as “The Gregorian Calendar,” which introduced more effective leap years and more precisely calculated the length of the year not as 365.25 days, but rather 365.2425 days, a difference of 11 minutes.   The Eastern Orthodox countries, however felt that the Julian calendar more accurately plotted the spring equinox and Easter, and refused to buy into the Gregorian reforms.  If you think 11 minutes doesn’t make a difference:  think again:  over three centuries, as the Orthodox Christians doggedly stuck to the older, less accurate calendar introduced by Julius Caesar, a time lag developed.  By 1918, when Lenin decreed that Russia should join the rest of the world, the lag was 13 days long: the most severe jet lag in the history of mankind.   Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church still adheres to the Julian calendar, though it has indicated it is ready to make the shift in 2100.  Orthodox Christmas is 13 days behind what Russians call “Catholic Christmas.”  Russians, who believe that when it comes to holidays “more is more”, also celebrate “Old New Year” on January 13^th as well as “New Year” and Orthodox Christmas on January 7^th.  To ensure the season is indeed jolly, Russians enjoy a ten-day national holiday from January 1 – 10^th!

This piece first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on December 15, 2010 and a link to the original online version can be found here.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Happy New Year Readers!

Hope you are having a good one!  If you aren't, here is a nice tip:  if you make Bloody Marys with Aquavit and Clamato instead of vodka and tomato juice, they are a.) much better and b.) cure the bite a lot better.  Which is about all the wisdom I've gleaned over this holiday season.  

What are your New Year's Resolutions?   Be the first in 2011 to weigh in by hitting the comment button below.    

I mentioned Bees Rees in my last post, that uncrowned queen of Moscow.  She collected over 15,000 Russian Christmas/New Year's Tree ornaments which is outrageous.   She used to send e mails out to get everyone to come and help her unpack them...and THEY DID.   Oy-veh.  I don't have as many as Bees, but I have some nice ones and here they are:

 

Thanks For Nothing

         Velvet is itching to go to the stables and I sense a narrow window of opportunity. 

“I’ll drive you over,” I bargain, “if you write your Christmas thank you letters.”

“Mooooohhhhhhmmm…” she wails, “I’ll do them after.”

“Do them now,” I say, “Non-negotiatiable.”

“Can I e-mail them?” she pleads.

 “Certainly not.” 

 Velvet grimaces, but silently takes the list, box of writing paper and roll of stamps I have ready for her.   She slumps at the kitchen table and scratches away diligently, but unenthusiastically for forty minutes, occasionally asking how to spell “quilted” or “polartech.”   

In the car, Velvet comments that she never has to write thank you notes in Russia.

 “That’s true,” I say, “but only Babushka and Dedushka give you things in Russia, and you are always there with them, so you don’t have to write them a note…and anyway, if you did, it would probably never reach its destination anyway…what with the postal service being the way it is.”

 Velvet skipped off to go for a ride and I swung the car back towards home, contemplating the thank you note zeitgeist.   What makes me hold a gun to my daughter’s head and deprive her of leisure and enjoyment until she puts pen to paper to thank someone for a gift or a visit, a favor, or simply going out of their way? I suppose it is because my mother held a gun to mine, and her mother held one to her head…all the way back to the Flood.

You never ever get a thank-you note in Russia. Not even via e-mail or text, so you can’t blame it on the   They have no place in the strictly mercantile favor exchange in Russia.  A credit history is built up with favors rendered.   Direct debit involves sourcing someone who knows someone, who can get to someone who has what you need.   It never occurs to Petrov to thank Ivanov.  

Russians have learned, however, that many foreigners release favors for free: like the Dior scent sample sandwiched between the pages of Vogue, or the basket of hard candies at the doctor’s office.   So they help themselves.

In college, my Russian teacher, a recent arrival to New York from Odessa, got me to hire her absolutely clueless sister, who spoke no English at all, as an office assistant at the law firm where I did night typing.   A National Guide from the State Tourism Committee I’d worked with landed at JFK to find that her (male) sponsor hadn’t turned up (Mrs. Male Sponsor had found out), and she ended up living with me for six months.    One of HRH’s military school buddies had a sister on an exchange program at Syracuse.  We invited her for Christmas break, a three week period, during which she spent the entire time lying on the sofa, eating Cheerios, watching videos, never once offering to help with any domestic chores.  No thank you notes from any of them.

Bees Rees, the uncrowned Queen of Expat Moscow sent me a breezy e-mail requesting a command performance to meet with “a really gifted Russian colleague,” who wanted to explore opportunities in PR.

“No,” I wrote back, “And that does mean no – this is not be a diplomatic fob off.  The answer next week will be the same.  I don’t do that anymore.”

Bees, who normally has the final word on everything was flummoxed.

“Why?” she asked finally.

“You know, I am just fed up with doing things for a crowd who can’t put “thank” together with “you” when I do it.  A Russian wants something -- or decides that he or she can get something from you, so they beg, plead, wheedle, and cajole you in that slightly breathless voice.  They flatter you; say you are the only person who can help them.  You provide the necessary, and then, once they’ve got the contact, the quote, the copy or the e-mail of someone who can do even more for them, you never hear from them again.  I feel like used Kleenex. I don’t expect them to put a stamp on good stock writing paper, but an e mail or a phone call wouldn’t kill them.”

“Wow,” said Bees.  “Wow.”

I just say no.  I don’t help Tom’s 18-year old Russian girlfriend du jour re-do her resume.   I say “no” to Russians in the USA who expect me to take stuff to their relations in Russia.  “That’s why God invented DHL,” I tell them.  I’m done spending hours copyediting emails for HRH’s turbo-charged female relations to their boss’s boss.   

Thank you notes are never going to take off in Russia.   I once asked this Gorgon at a Russian company I worked for to send a personal thank-you note to a very senior executive from a Fortune 100 company for a face-to-face meeting. Olga Vladimirovna clearly felt it was a big waste of time but handed me this:  

[Company Letterhead]

Letter # 49/2001

LETTER OF THANK YOU TO ABC COMPANY

Respected Mr. O:

The General Director of XYZ company, Ivanova, Olga Vladimirovna, conveys her respect to you and your organization and extends her gratitude for the, carried out by you, meeting on 19.08.01 in the city of Moscow to discuss company ABC’s mutually profitable business negotiations with XYZ.

We assume that continued mutually convenient business partnerships will be in the future.

With Respect

Ivanova, Olga Vladimirovna

[Place for Company Stamp]

City:  Moscow

See what I mean?

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Ahoy There Readers!!

How did your Christmas go?  What is your take on thank you notes?  Outdated, old-fashioned and obsolete or never more charming and prevalent than in this edgy digital universe we inhabit?  Have you ever been on the receiving end of a Russian thank you note like Olga Vladimirovna's?  Weigh in by hitting the comment button below!

QHU9UZ9RM353

Always Winter, Never Christmas

 

“Meet me at the Diner for lunch,” said Joe Kelly over the phone  “I need to ask you something.”

I was happy to take a break from writing and oblige: lunch with Joe is always a treat.  A former linebacker from Ohio, he fills the strategically positioned hexagonal booth at the Starlight Diner with his effusive bonhomie most afternoons, massaging his iPhone and running his business between a cheeseburger and jovial encounters with his many friends.

“So,” he said after I slid into the booth next to him, “here is what I want to know – what is it like to spend New Year’s in Russia?”

“Armageddon,” I responded automatically. “You aren’t really considering staying here, are you?”

“I might be,” said Joe, talking a restorative sip of his Diet Pepsi.  “Tanya would like to go to her mother’s dacha, and she’s made it clear she’d like me to stay.”

Tanya, Joe’s longtime girlfriend is the original tough cookie -- like a titanium chip cookie.  If Tanya wanted a Russian New Year’s, she was likely to get it.

“Spending New Year’s in Russia,” I said, shaking the ketchup bottle vigorously, “is very much like working for a Russian company:  most expats try it once, and then give it up because it's way too dysfunctional and the food is terrible.”

“Tell me what you really think,” said Joe mournfully, dropping his head in his hands.

“I spent New Year’s in Russia once,” I said, “and almost got divorced as a result.”

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Seriously,” I said snitching one of his French fries and pointing it at him for emphasis, “It’s like Narnia – ‘always winter and never Christmas.’   No stockings, no carols, no wassail, no eight tiny reindeer – none of that.  Christmas, when it happens is in January and it is no big deal.   Do you really want to sit here on December 25th while the civilized world sips Bloody Mary’s and egg nog and opens presents, and you are at work where some beefy accountant called Olga makes you do your expense report --?”

“Jen,” said Joe carefully as I was in mid-harangue, “I am self-employed, that wouldn’t be my experience.”

“-- And then when you finally get to December 31st, you have to spend the entire day with your mother-in-law cleaning the entire apartment while she makes herring under a fur coat.”

“Is that the one with potatoes and carrots?”

“No, Joe,” I responded sternly, “herring under a fur coat is the one made from layers of beets, chopped hardboiled eggs, pickled herring, potatoes, glued together with polyester mayonnaise, all topped with grated cheese.”

“Yuck,” said Joe.

“Yuck doesn’t even crack the surface, my friend.  And then, when your husband finally – finally -- comes home after an afternoon of racketing around Moscow congratulating government ministers and police chiefs – he falls senseless onto the couch for about four hours until its time to get up and turn on the TV. And what’s on TV?  Russian variety musical shows, that’s what – hours and hours of cheesy Russian rock stars singing horrible music.”

“Well, Tanya doesn’t know any police chiefs,” said Joe grasping at straws.

“Not that you know of,” I cautioned, “but come New Year’s Eve, she’ll unearth some.  And then, just when you’ve had about enough, the horrible sister will arrive: the most self-centered narcissist in the galaxy, not lift a finger to help, and proceed take a four-hour nap.  And then you will begin to get why everyone is taking all these four hour naps around 9:30 pm, because you aren’t going to eat anything until 11 pm, and when you do eat, it will be herring under a fur coat and sweet champagne, and trust me – those two aren’t a culinary match made in heaven.”

“What happens at midnight?” asked Joe.

“Ah well,” I said, “the big dénouement is that President of Russia comes on and makes a five minute toast.”

“That’s it?”

I racked my brain.  “I think so,” I said, “Yes, that’s all, but you know I’m not sure.  I was so knackered from it all that I fell fast asleep at 12:01.”

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This article first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines on December 14, 2010 online.

Hey Readers!

Do you stay in Russia during what passes for Christmas and then through New Year? What’s been your experience?  Or do you sensibly flee?  Where to?

If you felt in synch with this post, try a few more like it:

Day of the Teachers and Workers of Nursery and Pre-Schools/День воспитателя и всех дошкольных работников: Moscow Moms and Pioneer Parents

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

Hide and Seek

Hey Readers, a gentle reminder in this season of giving: Dividing My Time has been nominated  in two categories (Best Travel Blog and Best Humor Blog) in the 2010 Blogger's Choice Awards!  If you enjoy Dividing My Time, please consider voting by clicking on the icons to the right of this column, or by following this easy link  and this one too.  It’s quick, easy, doesn’t cost anything, and its really all I want for Christmas!  Thank you!

 

Grandfather Frost’s Birthday/День рождения Деда Мороза: Russia’s Santa Claus Is a Year Older!

He sees you when you’re sleeping,  

He knows when you’re awake

He knows when you’ve been bad or good, 

So be good for goodness sake

~J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie 

Today is Grandfather Frost’s birthday!  This is a huge big deal: way more important than any of the naval fleets, or the cryptographers, or even my buddies who jump out of parachutes, because Grandfather Frost is Russia’s Santa Claus!  

I know…I know, trust the Russians to have their own Santa Claus.  But since they have their own calendar, alphabet, and Olympics – why should Santa be any different.

Dyed Moroz lives further south than Santa – in Velikii Ustyug, the heart of Russia’s dairy belt along the Volga River.  In medieval times, Velikii – or Great -- Ustyug was a principality of great importance, and a major trade hub.  Today, it’s on the map as Dyed Moroz’s hometown, which was made official in 1999.   I would love to see the legislation, wouldn’t you?   Presumably, as a Russian citizen, Dyed Moroz votes for United Russia and, like all other Russians, is currently trying to come up with a name for Vladimir Putin’s new dog.  

In appearance, Dyed Moroz is longer and leaner than Santa, more Slavic and more stern, no doubt because he is the elder of the two:  Dyed Moroz is more than 2000 years old, while Santa Claus, who was born the Greek Nikolaos of Myra is only 1740 years old, or, as my friend Judy pointed out, perhaps much much younger – only 187, if you, like Judy, attribute Santa’s emergence as a brand from the publication of “The Night Before Christmas” in 1823.   Not being the patron saint of sailors, thieves, merchants, archers and children, Dyed Moroz lacks the kind of infrastructure Santa has built up:  he has no elves, no workshop, and no Mrs. Claus to help him out.  He does have one helpmate – his granddaughter, Sneguritchka, or Snowflake, a classic Russian beauty, who is traditionally dressed in an ornate blue Russian sarafan.  Together, they make personal appearances in the run up to New Year’s Eve to hand out presents, which means that children all over Russia actually get to meet the great man.  I don’t know why they feel they can drop the veil like this, but it may have something to do with the fact that Dyed Moroz doesn’t have the kind of transport, which Santa does.   There is no sleigh, no reindeer, and certainly no Rudolf to help guide the sleigh when the weather gets bad, as it so often does in Russia.  “America,” Dyed Moroz must sigh, as all Russians do when contemplating the ease and comfort of our life compared to the hardships of life in Russia.   

The lack of transport also accounts for the fact that Dyed Moroz runs 6 days behind Santa, coming, as he does, on December 31st rather than December 24th.   This is a holdover from the Soviet period, when the Russians replaced the Christian Christmas with secular New Year’s.  For a while, Stalin tried to even outlaw Dyed Moroz, declaring him in 1928 “an ally of the priest and kulak.”  Certainly, there have been moments in Russia’s history (and there may well be more ahead) when the concept of “he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good,” might be less than a desirable state of affairs. But, even Stalin (the Burgermeister and Heatmiser of his day) can’t keep the likes of Dyed Moroz down for long.  Dyed Moroz was rehabilitated in 1937 – though with one important wardrobe change:  during the Soviet period, he and Sneguritchka wore blue fur trimmed outfits, as opposed to red so that Russian children would not confuse them with Santa Claus.

On November 18th, each town in Russia opens a ceremonial mailbox for Dyed Moroz, and he receives official (really – official) delegations from all over Russia.  Instead of writing letters explaining that they’ve been nice, not naughty, and a lengthy list of Christmas wishes, Russian children wish Dyed Moroz a Happy Birthday, and then move on to the lengthy list of New Year’s Wishes!

So, if you are in Russia today, be sure to drop Dyed Moroz a line to wish him a very Happy Birthday!

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Dear Readers!

The holiday season is upon us!   Have you ever met Dyed Moroz and Sneguritchka?  More importantly, how are you going to do your Thanksgiving turkey?  Have you ever brined?   Is Dr. Pepper a good brining agent?  More importantly, do you have a gravy story?  Do you have big fights about the gravy…I’d love to know about those for an upcoming column.

Let me know, won’t you, by hitting the comment button below and leaving me some ideas.

And when you’ve done that, stick around and enjoy a few more forays into Russian history and culture:

The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity/Всероссийский день семьи, любви и верности: Happy Families

St. George’s Day /День святого Георгия Победоносца: Cry God For Vovka, Russia and St. George!

More Blessed to Give, Than to Receive

Day of Victory over the Swedes at Poltava / День воинской славы России — Полтавская битва (1709): The Peter (The Great) Principle

'Twas after dread Pultowa's day, 


When fortune left the royal Swede - 


Around a slaughtered army lay, 


No more to combat and to bleed. 

The power and glory of the war, 


Faithless as their vain votaries, men, 


Had passed to the triumphant Czar,

~ George Gordon (Lord Byron) "Mazeppa"

 “If I say, Battle of Poltava to you, what immediately springs to mind?” I asked HRH.  It’s been very hot lately, and I don’t do well in that kind of weather.  I need some inspiration.

“Peter The Great?” he asked, taking another hefty swig of cold beer.

“And?”

“The Swedes?” he ventured.

“Anything else?” I asked.

He scratched his head and thought a bit.

“We won?”

Russian History is neither HRH’s core interest, nor part of his skill set.  He confuses the Nicholases, the Alexanders and the Catherines (though at least he does not make the common mistake that Catherine The Great was married to Peter The Great).  But he got full marks on The Battle of Poltava, and bonus points for a succinct distillation of the salient points about today’s holiday: Peter’s victory over the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava on July 8, 1709, and their ultimate surrender on July 10th.

When last we encountered Peter The Great, he was also engaged in a contretemps with the Swedes, the naval victory in 1703 which secured him the strategic mouth of the Neva River on which he built his dream city, Saint Petersburg.   If that was his first modest victory against his primary adversary, Charles XII of Sweden, Poltava was the zenith of Peter’s emergence as a military might, as he triumphantly hurled the might of his newly re-organized Western style army of 45,000 troops at Charles XII and the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Mazeppa.  Ukraine gave up its dreams of independence (what else is new?) and Charles XII and Sweden had to cede their preeminence as the most significant player in the region:  they limped away and spent three centuries crafting a new strategy to invade Russia, which would ultimately prove successful.

Today is one of fifteen “Days of Military Glory,” victories, which were recognized by the State Duma in 1995 in legislation entitled “About the Days of Military Glory of Russia” (so, now you know what the Duma does all day) as “playing a significant role in the history of Russia, and in which Russian troops have earned the honor and respect of contemporaries and grateful memory of posterity.”

I was interested to read, recently (in Bruce Lincoln’s The Romanovs) that Peter was not weaned until he was two years old, which, for me, explains volumes: not only his vigorous health, but also his addiction to instant gratification. “Boats,” you can see him thinking when, as a teenager, he and his Dutch tutor found the rotting remains of a keeled sea vessel in 1688, “Boats…hmmmm…I think I’d like a navy.”  Never mind that Russia was completely landlocked. This could also explain his impatience with anything that stood in his way: a meddlesome older half sister as Regent during his minority?  Overthrow her and stick her in a Convent.  Boring conservative first wife?  Rinse and repeat.   Long traditional kaftans getting in the way?  Adopt Western clothes. Money tight?  Tax people for keeping their beards.   Moscow seeming a little backward? Abandon and create a new capital on a mosquito-infested swamp.  Church getting a little too powerful?  Cut it down to size and make it into a government department, and, for good measure, mock it, holding a mock Synod entitled “The Vastly Extravagant, Supremely Absurd, Omni-Intoxicated Synod,”  (and you have to wish they’d revive that particular Petrine tradition.)

Dictatorial?  Da.  Effective?  Definitely Da.   This is the kind of ruler the Russian people understand, expect, and ultimately admire.  Larger-than-life, clear on what he wants, and slightly crazy. Certainly no one, except perhaps Stalin, has so thoroughly dragged Russia kicking and screaming into the direction of his choice by sheer force of his own personal will power

Peter The Great is the impossible standard against which all other Russian rulers must measure themselves, and I can’t think that, in their heart of hearts, they feel they are in danger of outstripping him in any way.

Peter, for example, would never have tweeted.   Never.

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Greetings Readers!

Had you heard about The Battle of Poltava?  Did you know that Sweden was such a military power in the 17th Century? What’s your take on Peter?  Do you buy into the breast-feeding idea?  Let me know, by leaving a comment below.   If you enjoyed this post, linger a while and read some more just like it:

The Day of Victory /День Победы: "In defeat, unbeatable: in victory, unbearable"

Russia Day /День России: No, It’s Not Independence Day

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity/Всероссийский день семьи, любви и верности: Happy Families

A family is not just husband and wife, but also Granddad and Grandma and, most importantly, kids.

~ President Dmitry Medvedev via his Twitter account, KremlinRussia_E on 3:36 AM Jul 2nd via web

Today is the All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity, and not before time, either, after the chaos and naughtiness of yesterday’s St. John’s Eve, or Ivan Kupala.  Today’s holiday affords a timely reminder to any tempted to stray from the bosom of the family, what an awfully big mistake that would be.  Take Anna Karenina, for example, who’s tale of descent into adultery begins with Tolstoy’s immortal observation that:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Staying faithful to your spouse (whether he or she has to be a member of the opposite sex is not mentioned, nor is any detail gone into as to the nature of the conception of the children) is the watchword of this holiday, which was introduced recently, in 2008, with the support and encouragement of Russia’s First Lady, Svetlana Medvedeva, (who I suspect wears the pants in that particular family.)  Mrs. Medvedeva is known to be a big supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church (none of this childhood obesity nonsense for her) and the choice of date for The All-Russia Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity was not random: today is a 780 year old Orthodox holiday celebrating Saints Peter and Fevronia, the Prince and Princess of the ancient city of Murom, near Vladimir, who were canonized in 1547.  This makes it a nice Public Service Message brought to you by the State-Church joint venture.

The story of Peter and Fevronia is a perfect fusion of simple peasant girl marries handsome prince after over coming adversity in the shape of a dragon/ happily-ever-after / fairy-tales, pagan and chthonian (I know, I had to look it up too) symbolism, and good old- fashioned Russian family values.   I first read the entire story as a university student in Serge A. Zenkovsky’s "Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales," which is about the first thing they thrust at you when you embark down the path of Russian Area Studies. It is now on-line, so, if you really want to, you can read the whole thing too, but should you prefer a pithier synopsis, here is one:

Prince Peter, the brave and righteous younger brother and heir of Prince Paul of Murom, does battle with the devil disguised as a serpent, to defend the honor of his sister-in-law.  Smiting the serpent, Peter is splashed by its blood, which covers his body with sores and ulcers.   He searches the land for many years in vain for a cure until he encounters the simple peasant girl, Fevronia, weaving at her loom.  After a symbolically packed exchange of riddles, promises, and Peter’s eventual cure, they cut to the chase, marry, and settle down as the ruling couple.  Happily ever after, however, eludes them, as the wicked boyars (nobles) are not content with Fevronia, a simple peasant girl, taking precedence over their own wives.  So they begin to stir up trouble.  One particularly wicked (and married) boyar tries to take advantage of Fevronia during a sea voyage.   Fevronia reprimands him sharply, asking him to taste the water on either side of the ship, and note the difference.  He does so, and claims that there is no difference at all.

“And so it the nature of all women.”  (Replies Fevronia) Why then do you want to leave you wife and think about another woman?”

Having thoroughly squelched the boyars with this withering remark (?), things calmed down considerably for Fevronia and Peter, who went about the business of ruling in a pious, generous, and just manner.  They loved each other so much that they prayed to die at the same hour, and prepared a joint tomb.  To seal the deal, she became a nun, and he a monk, and they did die at the same moment, only the crowd in charge prepared to bury them in separate graves.  On the next day, however, their bodies were gone, ultimately found in the double tomb, where they remain to this day in the Church of the Holy Virgin in Murom.

I wondered to myself if Mrs. Medvedeva wasn't pushing the envelope a little on this one.   Russia already has a lot of holidays along these lines:  Men’s Day (February 23rd) and International Women’s Day (March 8th) as well as Catholic St. Valentine’s Day (February 14th) which Russians have taken up with the same fervor they have sushi and mojitos.  But, as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church when he was Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad noted, “February 14th (Valentine’s Day) is the Day of Those in Love, and being in love does not necessarily guarantee love, nor family, nor, for that matter, faithfulness.”

With which sentiment, I am sure, both Fevronia and Mrs. Medvedeva would heartily agree. And, for that matter, Tolstoy too.  Things like this don’t hurt.  They might help.  You never ever know, do you?  Still wondering if this covers same sex families though...

Happy Day of Family, Love, and Faithfulness to everyone who is in to that kind of thing. 

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This Post is part of The Stunt

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Hi There Readers:

Is there a holiday like this where you come from?   Do you think it is over the top, or a good thing?   Or does the idea of family values make you break out in hives.  Let me know, won’t you, by leaving a comment below.  Thank you for stopping by and for your patience as you can see we are playing catch-up again (pressures of family life have kept me occupied).  Stick around, if you like, and enjoy a few more posts just like this one:

Hide and Seek

World Wide Metrology Day/Всемирный день метролога: He’s Metric: I’m Imperial: How Can Love Survive?

Day of the Philologists /День филолога: Language Learners, Lovers, and Luddites

St. John’s Eve/Иван Купала: Ferns, and Fires, and Flesh: Oh My!

Get your kit off!

~ Prefers to remain anonymous

Today is St. John’s Eve, or, in Russian: “Ivan Kupala!”   This is Russian Midsummer, with all the same accompanying mischief, magic, and misdemeanors, as anywhere else in the world, just thirteen days late, because of that Gregorian – Julian calendar thing we’ve discussed before.  So, we’ll be expecting wild sexual midnight revels; naked bathing, bonfires, and all that will all make a refreshing change from Anna Chapman.

It is nice for me, as well, to take a tiny break from the more modern Russian institutions such as the traffic cops and the veterans of the custom's service, and harken back to ancient pre- and early Christian Russia: wallow a little in all the Dan Brown/Bloodline conspiracy/St. John Worship/Freemason stuff.  If you are into that kind of thing (and I am) today’s holiday can be an endless font (pun intended) of fascinating information.

St. John’s Eve in the Christian calendar celebrates the night before the birth of Jesus’s cousin, St. John.  Scripture tells us that John was about six months older than, and “prepared the way” for Jesus, so that fits nicely: if you buy in to the idea that Jesus was born on December 25th (or January 7th according to the Russians).   St. John’s Eve, and its counterpart in the calendar, Christmas, are actually, as Alexander Hislop argues convincingly, replacements for much older pagan rituals surrounding the juxtaposition of light and dark. Jesus’s birth was set by the early Christians to replace the pagan Saturnalia or Winter Solstice, when the days begin to get lighter; John’s birthday replaced the Summer Solstice, when the days begin to grow darker. This neatly captures the "twinned" or juxtaposed relationship between John and Jesus. St. John, a wild and zealous desert preacher, rigid and ascetic in his beliefs, was an annoying thorn in the side of both the Romans and the Jewish King Herod.  John publicly denounced Herod for his marriage to his brother’s widow, Herodias. John condemned this as adulterous and incestuous.  King Herod, famously beheaded John at the request of his step-daughter (so also niece) Salome, after she did a very effective dance of the seven veils (making her the Anna Chapman of the piece) for his guests.  The head, then, is served up on a platter.

St. John remains a shadowy and puzzling figure, associated historically with controversial and secretive organizations such as The Knights Templar and the Freemasons, at the heart of bloodline conspiracy theories, and mysterious symbols and hidden messages in art and literature.  The fact that his birth, and not his death (August 19th in the Catholic calendar) is the key holiday is also significant, since most saints are celebrated on the day of their martyrdom or death, and not the birth. Jesus and John are not.

St. John’s Eve in Russia was, and still is in some parts of the country, celebrated with the traditional focus on fire and water:  elements, like Jesus and John, who stand in direct opposition.  At dusk (which comes very late this time of the year), huge bonfires are lit to guard against the evil spirits, witches, goblins, and other fey creatures who, as the world turns to darkness again, begin to gain in strength and power.   Men compete against one another to see who can jump the highest over the bonfire, ensuring the winner happiness and luck throughout the year.  Young women gather the traditional “Midsummer ferns,” which are woven into garlands and wreaths, worn throughout the evening and then dried, and kept to ward off evil spirits throughout the coming darkness.  In another long-standing tradition, young women float their wreaths of Midsummer ferns with lit candles into the river, and the one, which floats the longest, ensures its maker happiness in love, long life, and good health.

"Night of Ivan Kupala" by Genrikh Semyradski 

As the night lengthens, and a brief darkness hovers over the Northern sky, tradition says that the trees move about and speak to one another in the breeze, and the important water element is incorporated by naked bathing in ponds, rivers and streams to purify both the body and the soul. 

Things can begin to get slightly out of hand, which is wonderfully captured in Nikolai Gogol’s breakthrough short story “St. John’s Eve,” which you can download here, and Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain,” which might sound strangely familiar to any of you with small children:

In closing, here are a few other interesting facts associated with St. John’s Eve, which may dictate the way you plan your day today:

1.    Traditionally, in Russia and other countries which celebrate St. John's Eve, there is a not-unsurprising spike in the birthrate during the month of March.

2.    As I wrote in a recent article on Russian superstitions, witches will not come into your house if there is a needle or something sharp in the doorjamb or other portals to the house. This is particularly true on St. John’s Eve, so housewives scatter thistles or roses on their windowsills to keep the witches at bay.

3.    It is very important (Velvet, are you listening?) to lock up your horses on St. John’s Eve, lest the witches or goblins spirit them away...to Bald Mountain!

4.    If a girl collects seven different kinds of flowers and puts them under her pillow, she will dream of her future husband.

5.    If you climb over twelve garden fences during St. John’s Eve, your wish will come true.

Can you find a garden fence you could actually climb over in Russia?

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author’s Note:

Lots of research went into this one, and I am grateful to:

Astrology On The Web

“ And dedicated to the Holy Saints John: An inquiry into the designation of the Saints John as Patron Saints of Freemasonry”, by W. Bro Harry L. Ward Jr. PM on Pietre-Stones: Review of Freemasonry

Secret Societies, by David V. Barrett

Cracking The Symbol Code: the Hidden Message Within Church and Renaissance Art, by Tim Wallace-Murphy

The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop

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Well then, Readers,

What have you got planned for tonight?  Let me know, won’t you…you don’t have to identify yourself in the comments…really.  Make up a name, go on!  Be clever, reference Shakespeare:  Hermia, Helena, Bottom, Titannia, Puck...or be current, and call yourself Anna Chapman.  You get the idea.

I know this one was a little academic for some palates, so here are a few ones in a slightly lighter vein.

Day of the Legal Profession /День российской адвокатуры: Russia’s Pornographic Portia

Day of the Chemists / День химика: Russia’s Unquestioned Contribution to Civilization

International Museum Day/Международный день музеев: Which Museum Would You Run Away To?

Russia Day /День России: No, It’s Not Independence Day

Russia also declared its independence. This was approved by the Supreme Soviet, and you know and remember that there was the Declaration on the Independence of Russia. 

~ Boris Yeltsin 

Today is Russia Day!  

 
 At a gathering at my home in Moscow on Friday, I was not surprised that a survey of Russians polled (HRH and Joe’s very clever girlfriend Tanya) had absolutely no idea what Russia Day is in aid of, even though today marks the 20th anniversary of the original Russia Day.  Ask them about Border Guard Day, or Victory Day, and they are letter perfect, but Russia Day?  But this is why nation building – to say nothing of being a groundbreaking chronicler of Russian holidays -- is such uphill work.

So, as a public service message, here is the skinny on Russia Day:  Russia Day marks the moment on June 12, 1990 when (and pay attention, because this is slightly tricky) the Russian parliament declared Russian sovereignty over Russia.  And if that sounds like a bunch of people who don’t have enough to do getting together to have a party, it actually was a significant moment for the newly-minted Russian Federation, which had been the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the largest of the 15 Republics that made up The Soviet Union.   Declaring State Sovereignty over this body made the Russian Federation a new nation, independent of the other 14.   While the name of the country would be ratified later in 1991 (we’ll come to this in December), Russia Day marked the true moment of the birth of a nation.

But you can see why people like HRH (44% of Russians actually, according to a recent poll) remain confused about the holiday and refer to June 12th as “Independence Day.”   This is understandable if you are French or American and you look at the color scheme and the choice of a summer date, as well as the fireworks in the evening.  Reminds you vaguely of some other holidays celebrating that kind of thing around this time…though sadly the menu isn’t as wonderful.  

“But,” asks Dee Dee Jansson, who hasn’t been here that long, “independence from whom?”

“That’s easy,” I say, using my favorite joke that never gets old, “independence from Georgia, Armenia, the Baltics, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the Stans.”

 Being a fairly young holiday, Russia Day does not have a lot of engrained traditions, beyond the classic “Red Day on the Calendar” playbook:  streets blocked off to cars, metal detectors in Red Square, cheesy bands playing in the squares to small exhausted looking children half-heartedly clutching Russian tricolors.  As Russia Day falls this year on a Saturday, needless to say, we get Monday off, so most everyone I knew took advantage of this by either leaving Russia altogether (preferable) or going to the dacha, which I think they will regret as the forecast suggests violent thunderstorms that will very possibly be made worse by the cloud seeding that happens on days like this.   A handful of  journalists took the opportunity to craft some well-written opinion pieces like this one by Vladimir Milov, which I recommend, while the gang in power handed out some prizes for poetry, music, and science.  Cheesy loud concert in Red Square followed by fireworks.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now, if we could just introduce some fried chicken, cole slaw and potato salad into the mix somehow…

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Hey Readers!

Happy Russia Day!  What did you get up to?  What would be your ideal Russia Day menu? Don’t you think it should feature red, white, and blue martinis of some kind?  Any suggestions?

Thanks as always for stopping by, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the form of a comment, which you can leave by clicking the comment button below.  

Or, stick around and enjoy a few more posts like this one:

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

St. George’s Day /День святого Георгия Победоносца: Cry God For Vovka, Russia and St. George!

Day of the Black Sea Fleet /День Черноморского флота: The Boys Who Brought You The Battleship Potemkin!

Day of the Beer Brewers /День пивовара: Quantity Trumps Quality

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."


~Frank Zappa

 Today is the second Saturday in June and since 2003, that has meant one thing:  Beer Brewer’s Day!

I’ve been writing, for my sins, a monthly cooking column about Russian food, which I don’t actually like to either make or consume, but I have found it interesting to learn that most dishes that we think of as “classic Russian,” are, in fact, not native to Russia at all. We don’t know that, because Russia has so claimed these meals as their own, that it doesn’t occur to us to question their origins.  Take Beef Stroganoff, which seems to account for an astonishing number of hits to this blog, which is French; or shashlik, which comes from the Caucuses, or, indeed, Russian pelemeni, which were brought to Russia originally by the Finno-Ugric tribes of the North.

And so it is with beer.  Russians certainly did not invent beer, in actual fact the Iraqis did (for all the good it did them), but today Russia is the third largest beer market in the world!  Russians stumbled upon beer fairly early on in the form of kvass which beer expert Michael Jackson argued is an early form of beer.   Kvass is a lightly fermented drink made from any old grain or stale dark bread, yeast, and flavored with berries and other fruits.  It’s mostly consumed in the summer by the older generation, whereas everyone consumes beer in Russia, 24/7, 365 days a year.  

Russians like their beer strong, and I was interested to learn that the strongest stout ever, was made for Catherine the Great, and called “Imperial Stout.”  The theory was that the high alcohol content of the stout ensured that the sub zero temperatures in winter would not freeze the beer as it made its way from Great Britain to Russia.

Today, Russian beer is a dynamic sector of the economy.  The national brands of Baltika, Siberian Crown, Stariy Melnik and others are never going to win any prizes for quality, but they remain viable because, in Russia, the main driver, as the economic geeks say, is quantity rather than quality.

I know this, because, like most women in Russia, I live with a beer expert.  

HRH is very fond of beer, and, because he’s been exposed to beer in countries like Switzerland and Jamaica where they focus more on the quality, rather than the quantity of beer production, he’s discerning.   He prefers European draft beer to American bottled beer, which he feels is on a par with Sprite or 7-UP in the beverage line up.  The happiest I have ever seen him was in the Sultanate of Oman, where we spent one Christmas.  Slightly concerned about our dwindling reserves of Duty Free gin and whiskey, we were invited to Christmas lunch by a charming couple, who ran the (tightly controlled) alcohol concession in the Sultanate.  Tipped off by our friend Annie, Debbie and Samir unearthed a case of Heineken, which they wrapped in festive paper and presented to him as the, hands down, best Christmas present he ever received.

So, to an industry facing possible crippling tax hikes and the ever-menacing specter of another government-sponsored anti-alcohol campaign (because the last one went so well), let’s raise a glass of imported Newcastle Brown Ale and wish the Beer Brewers a very happy profpraznik!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author's Note:

The wonderful picture of Russian beer and dried fish (the peanut butter and jelly of Russian summers) was found on the Google by Mr. Kunglay. 

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Hey Readers!

How are you enjoying Beer Brewers’ Day?  Does your country have both beer and an airline?  Mine does, but both are pretty lame.   What’s your favorite tipple?  Leave me a comment and let me know!  Thanks for stopping by.

Did you enjoy this post?  Here are some others you might also enjoy:

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Horse Shows: Don't Forget The Maps and The Martinis!

Russians En Route

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Today is Northern Fleet Day!  Put on your party hats, let’s play pin the tail on the submarine, because the Northern Fleet is the baby of our bunch.    Construction of a northern naval base was begun under Nicholas II in 1895, but like so many things started by Nicholas II, it was left to Josef Stalin to finish it off.  The Northern Fleet considers its founding dates to a visit to the Zapolarniy (meaning just below the Pole), in 1933, which makes it 77 years old today.  

Young they may be, but the Northern Fleet has distinguished itself as a formidable force, winning numerous battles in the Great Patriotic War and the recent unpleasantness with Chechnya. It is, however, their continued ability to literally make me wave a white flag of surrender each June that is the subject of today’s post.

HRH, who went to military school and served as an officer until 1991, has a bunch of friends who are still actively serving in braches of Russia’s military, all over the country.  We see a lot of some of them, and less of others, but summer is always ushered in by the simultaneous arrival of Borya from Zapolyarniy and the pukh.

Pukh, (pronounced “pooo-kuh”) which fellow blogger Potty Mommy described very well in a recent post, is the fluff from a sexually frustrated female poplar tree.   After World War II, Russian authorities hastened to make Moscow green again, by planting a large amount of poplar trees.  It was one of those moments when the people who knew better were afraid to speak up, and so the authorities planted only female trees.  Poplars, like holly, are both male and female, and you need a few of each to keep the others happy.  Moscow has only female trees, which each June release their snowflake-like pods into the atmosphere where they swirl and whirl in a summer snowstorm, like a million Carrie Bradshaws looking for Mr. Big.  Muscovites rush to close their windows, since the pukh gets into nooks and crannies, wily evades the vacuum cleaner, the broom and the duster.  It creeps into your nostrils and down your throat.  You find it lurking in corners, and if you are at all prone to allergies, you don’t even go outside until the week or so passes.

As soon as the first bit of pukh sails through the air, HRH announces that Borya is on his way down to from Zapolyarniy and will be staying a few days.  

I have learned that, in the case of HRH’s friends, it is better not to lead with polite chitchat about their work, such as “So, Borya, how goes it with the Northern Fleet?”   Though we’ve not discussed it, this is what I assume Borya does for a living, and one does not need to be the Head of the CIA to work that out.  The clues are there:  the naval tank top, the fact that he hails from Zapolyariny: apart from the Naval Base, there isn’t a lot else going on. There isn’t, for example, an IKEA at Zapolyarniy, despite its relative proximity to Sweden.   Then there is the final and clinching evidence: Borya enjoys an annual summer vacation of forty days.

That’s right, forty days.  People who work for the government in Russia, who live above a certain latitude (and Zapolyarniy is so far north that it tends to be obscured on any globe by the knob one uses to rotate the globe) get a government subsidized vacation of obscene length to the Black Sea resort areas of Russia: the theory being that they need to soak up the vital vitamins contained in the sun’s healing rays.  So down they go, unencumbered by sun hats or sunscreen, to lie flat on their backs, turn beet red, and gorge themselves on fresh fruit and sweet Crimean champagne.  Borya had stopped off in Moscow en route from Zapolyarniy to Sochi to change trains and catch up with some of his childhood friends.

That first year, I had just started working at The Bank and was putting in 15-hour days trying to figure out the difference between Fixed Income and Asset Management.   Nevertheless, when HRH told me his friend would be arriving for dinner, I spent some time the night before to make what I thought was a good menu for a scorching June evening:  gazpacho and raspberry chicken salad. I left two bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, emptied the ice trays into precious zip lock bags and refilled them.  The next morning, I extracted a promise from HRH that he would shut all the windows against the pukh and buy whatever staggeringly large amount of beer he felt was appropriate, grabbed my coffee mug and headed into the pukh maelstrom.

Fast-forward fifteen hours.  Tired and limp in my crinkled linen suit, I dug my car out of pukh spores, climbed in and cranked up the air-conditioning.  Switching on a book on tape, I eased into the evening Moscow gridlock, looking forward to a cool shower and the nice dinner I’d prepared.

 I opened the door of our flat and was flattened by a gust of hot air and a cloud of pukh that immediately settled in my inner ears and nostrils with the precision of a Murmansk nuclear submarine.  But the overwhelming sensation was one of affixation by a lethal combination of dried fish, flat beer and human sweat.

“Darling,” I called out in English, “what’s up?”

HRH poked his head around the living room door.

“Hi Sweetie!” he said, “Come on in and meet Borya!”  He enveloped me in a clammy, shirtless embrace.

The shirtless thing is one of the first hurdles you face making your marriage to an HRH work.  You have To Be Very Firm about that not being acceptable outside the bedroom, or before you know it, there will be a coterie of nearly naked men in your living room. Like not in a good way.

Which is what I had that night.  Resplendent in only a pair of Turkish track suit bottoms, hunched over a coffee table spread with newspaper and what looked like most of last month’s catch-of-the-day from Murmansk, sat Borya, his round face shining with sweat.  With some difficulty, he focused his Windex-colored eyes on me disapprovingly, making a “tsk tsk tsk” noise with his tongue and shook his head.

“What time do you call this?” he shouted over the boom of the television, tuned to Russian MTV.  

I didn’t know him from Adam.

I wondered if it was a trick question and consulted my watch as I picked up the remote control for the air-conditioner.

“Nine thirty?” I responded.

“Not any time for a woman to be getting home from work,” boomed Borya, “I don’t let my women come home at this time.”

“I see,” I said, moving towards the window to shut it.  HRH bounded over the coffee table to stop me.  

“Borya is concerned about getting sick from the air-conditioner…the breeze,” he explained.  

“But it’s like 92 degrees and the pukh is everywhere,” I said in English.

HRH gave me one of those Slavic shrugs that speak volumes.  Wordlessly, I retreated to the kitchen, opened the fridge and poured myself a hefty glass of the chilled wine, adding a few of the untouched ice cubes (also very bad for your health) for good measure.  After a long cold shower and another glass of wine, I cranked up the a/c in my bedroom, pulled a Nancy Mitford book down and climbed into bed wearily.

I am no match for the Northern Fleet.

Congratulations to Vice-Admiral Nikolai Mikhailovich Maksimov and all those who serve under him!  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

Author's Note:  I found that superb picture of the pukh on hub by Jim Sheg. It's actually China, where apparently they have the same problem, but it is a great visual!

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Dear Reader:

Be honest, men shouldn't go shirtless in the public areas of the domicile should they?   Have you ever come home to find an impromtu male bonding thing going on?  What did you do?  Leave a comment and tell us about it!

Day of the Legal Profession /День российской адвокатуры: Russia’s Pornographic Portia

The one great principle of the…law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.

~Charles Dickens (Bleak House)

Today is Legal Profession Day!   This holiday was introduced to Russia by the once and future President Vladimir Putin relatively late in the game in 2002.  It marks no special legal occasion or milestone that I could discern, but rather reflected the rise in importance and prominence of the profession, keeping pace with the hyper-development of Russia’s economy in the early oughts.

Russia has very few famous lawyers.  The equivalent of our Attorney General, the General Procurator, is a uniformed position, usually occupied by some portly guy who speaks that horrific officalspeakski the Russians developed somewhere in the 1950s and 1960s, after all the people who knew how to deliver lofty rhetoric had been killed in the war (or other places), died of natural causes, or fled the country.  My friend Tess made the excellent point that it was probably what a lot of badly educated peasants thought intelligent people should sound like.

Sentences are delivered primarily in statacco phrases, which intone up and down for emphasis.  The speaker generally employs a condescending tone, as if it is a total waste of his very valuable time to read off his prepared statement.  The language he employs makes as full a use of the past tense as possible, as well as the full names of companies or government organs, and the speaker, characteristically avoids eye contact with the camera or audience, and waggles his hand up and down in a chopping motion to underscore his words. So, for example, an official, keeping his eyes firmly to the left of camera might say something like this:

“I, Ivanov, Yuri Borisovich, Deputy Head of the National Carrier of the Russian Federation can confirm that, in compliance with Law # 648 of the Federal Aviation Services of the Russian Federation, by the National Carrier of the Russian Federation, all scheduled flights for today, May 31, 2010, were carried out and executed by the National Carrier of the Russian Federation on time and on schedule.  And what is more, I can add that by me, Ivanov, Yuri Borisovich, Deputy Head of the National Carrier was received a personal congratulations from the Stepanov, Vassily Dmitrievich, the Head of the National Carrier of the Russian Federation.”

Rhetoric in Russia is sick puppy, so it’s no wonder there aren’t any famous Russian lawyers, apart, that is, from the two who currently run the country.   You don’t have any real live Clarence Darrows or Alan Dershowitzes.  There isn’t a golden thread of Russian legal fiction to give us Rumpole, Atticus Finch or Jarndyce and Jarndyce.   There aren’t even any lawyer jokes.  Because the law in Russia isn’t funny.  It’s tedious and plodding and Byzantine and changing.  Russian lawyers enrage me.  They charge a gazillion dollars a minute and used to muck up my beautifully written press releases with their legalese just to get their fingerprints on to some document.  

What Russia can boast, however, is a Pornographic Portia.  She wasn’t made in Russia, but she’s certainly made it in Russia, many many times. 

Deidre Dare is an American who worked for Alan & Overy in Moscow, which has to have been very dull work indeed.  To spice things up, Ms. Dare went out a lot, got up to all kinds of things, and wrote about it in an erotic novel (not the very best of that genre, but still).  She published the novel in her own name in weekly installments on her web page, each chapter charting her escapades with men of varying nationalities. In 2009, her bosses at the law firm asked her to take down the web site; she refused, and was sacked.  For about thirteen and a half minutes, this was Headline News. It looked like book deals and film rights would rain down on Ms. Dare, who made some outraged statements, which were much better crafted than her erotica or, of course, Russian officialspeakski, about suing the firm for slander or liable or something.  

The book deal may be in place, but the lawsuit seems to have fizzled out.  I have to admire Ms. Dare, though, for staying in Moscow and parlaying her exploits into a weekly column in The Moscow News called Sexpat (not the very best of that genre, but still), which you can find here.  People keep threatening to bring her to my dinner parties, and I may just pluck up the courage to say yes.  She’s obviously not stupid, has no reservations, and is enjoying being a writer much more than being a lawyer. 

Rumpole would have adored her…

Congratulations to all of the lawyers in Russia!  If you want some unsolicited advice, try some Cicero or John Mortimer...read To Kill a Mockingbird, or watch Inherit The Wind.  Rhetoric, people...rhetoric!!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Dear Reader:

What do you think of Deidre's work?  Come on!  I know you looked!  Leave me a comment and tell me...

Day of the Border Guards /День пограничника: Big Borders: Big Booze Up

Good fences make good neighbors.

~Robert Frost

Lock up your daughters and batten down the hatches...today is Border Guards' Day!   If you were thinking about invading Russia, today might just be the optimal day to do it, since all of Russia’s border guards will be otherwise occupied:  

photos courtesy of pics.livejournal.com/drugoi

 

Some Russian holidays we have seen, like the Day of the Defense of the Fatherland, are nation-wide extravaganzas where even the weather is micromanaged, while others, like yesterday’s All Russia Library Day pass with relatively little hoop-lah.  Today, however, is the first of our massive-scale casual piss-ups and one of the best of the genre.  

May 28th commemorates the day in 1918 when the Border Guards were officially formed during the chaotic days following the Russian Revolution.   The holiday was first officially celebrated in 1958 in the Soviet Union, and confirmed as a fixture of the calendar of the Russian Federation in 1994.  Though the window dressing of statehood may change, Border Guards and Border Guard Day traditions have remained. The day is spent in watching formal displays of the border guards military prowess, evening witnesses fireworks Moscow and all of the “hero cities, and between those two events, the border guards hold mini-reunions around the fountains of parks of major cities.   These are opportunities to hook up with friends one made during mandatory military service, share a few cocktails, and kick back.  Sort of like a high school reunion…on steroids.  

Russia’s border guards are responsible for patrolling and protecting the world’s longest border, which has very few natural barriers such as rivers, oceans, or mountain ranges to define them or add to the ease of protecting them, and thus the borders have ebbed and flowed over the centuries: retreating back in lean years, and expanding out in the flush years, such as after The Great Patriotic War, which, as we know, didn’t work out so well.

At the moment, Russia has 14 neighbors, and not all of them are the kind you could pop over and borrow a cup of sugar from.   Some of them didn’t bring a casserole over when the borders shifted in the 1990s.  Here they are in metric, because, as we agreed last week, metric is the way to go: Azerbaijan 284 km, Belarus 959 km, China (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, Estonia 294 km, Finland 1,340 km, Georgia 723 km, Kazakhstan 6,846 km, North Korea 19 km, Latvia 217 km, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast) 280.5 km, Mongolia 3,485 km, Norway 196 km, Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast) 232 km, Ukraine 1,576 km.* Thanks to the Bering Strait and the Tsars needing a quick cash influx, Russia does not share a border with the US, but let’s not forget that Sarah Palin can see them from her house…which is always a cause for concern.

The Border Guards have a mixed agenda: some years ago, they were assiduously focused on keeping their own citizens inside the borders, which I, for one, feel they might want to revisit as a key concern.  Border Guards are always concerned with the wrong type of people getting in to Russia:  invading armies, undocumented workers, people who have spelled “Saint Petersburg” incorrectly on their three page visa applications, and, of course, people with leprosy.

But all in all, I like Day of the Border Guards.  It’s nice to see so many people who have so many concerns kicking back and enjoying themselves.  It’s nice to see them act human for a change…with unbridled frivolity and mirth.  It makes a change, as anyone who has ever waited in line at passport control knows…Border Guards don’t always roll out the welcome mat with unbridled enthusiasm…even for VIP guests like these…(this video is highly highly highly recommended and you need no Russian to understand it, the title reads, "Long Awaited Burger King") 

Happy Border Guard Day to all those who patrol and protect Russia’s borders!

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This post is part of The Stunt

Author’s Note:

*information on Russia’s borders courtesy of www.nationmaster.com

photo credits above

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Dear Reader:

Do you have a border-crossing story?  Of course you do!  Share it with all of us by clicking on the comment button below, and the one who can claim the longest wait at passport control will win a guest blogging gig here on Dividing My Time…until I stock up on those Russian Christmas Tree ornaments to dazzle the mommy bloggers with, that is.  Then we’ll be in warp factor nine!  Thanks, as ever, for dropping by on another Russian holiday!

Day of the Freelancers / День фрилансера: The Pajama-Clad Workforce

The spouse who has the free-lance gig is always the one who picks up the dry-cleaning.

~Nora Fitzgerald 

Finally a holiday made for me!  I’m accepting congratulations in the form of comments below!   Maybe HRH will remember to send me a bouquet of flowers (which, as I mentioned earlier, he’s just learned how to do – blown away by the technology!)  This is one of those relatively new holidays, and takes its cue from the founding of one of the “oldest” freelance web sites, which, like every “innovation” in Russia in the past 15 years, is a direct lift from a pre-existing site in the West (they even tried to copy The New Yorker, can you imagine?).  In any case, Free-lance.ru was founded on this day in 2005.  They act as a cyber-exchange primarily for web designers, and something called an “optimizer” which The Oxford Russian Dictionary does not recognize.  Any thoughts?

I’ve been a freelancer for about the same time Free-lance.ru has been around, though, of course, a number of the “full time positions of responsibility” I had in Russia were, in fact, technically free-lancing gigs, since no one had the time, knowledge, or inclination to do the paperwork needed to make it official.  

I have to say, freelancing is harder than the pajama-clad Nirvana HRH seems to think it is.   It takes a lot of motivation to stop alphabetizing your DVD collection, or perfecting your sorrel soup recipe, and get down to work without the stimulus of a boss or snarky colleagues surrounding you.   Deadlines help, as does a faux office such as Starbucks to “go to” each day, which you realize early on is the only way to get anything done.  At least, I’ve found it so.   Home, as I have mentioned before, is way too distracting.

I don’t want to reveal any secrets of the guild, but the fact of the matter is that Russia is a freelancer's Klondike.   If you are a native English speaker, you have opportunities.  If you are a native English speaker with a passing knowledge of the rudiments of English grammar, you can live very comfortably.   If you are a native English speaker who knows Russian, and therefore can interpret what Russians are trying to say and express it better than Google Translate, avoiding mistakes like the opening salutation of a letter reading, “Expensive Mr. Smith,” then you can start planning for a second home.  And if, like me, you can do all those things AND you worked at A Bank and know how to use words like “synergy,” “expedite,” and “galvanize” (concepts which do not really exist in Russian and thus are often used erroneously by thrusting Russian bankers and lawyers), then you can allow yourself the delicious luxury of having this kind of conversation with Olga Quelque Chose, who calls you up on a Friday afternoon from Minigarch Trust in desperate need to have her Annual Report translated from English by Google Translate, into English by me:

Me:   Well…my schedule is pretty tight at the moment.  How many pages is it?

Olga Quelque Chose:  it’s 50 pages double-spaced, but there are a lot of charts.

Me: You know, I don’t take any responsibility for the content of your charts.

Olga Quelque Chose:  Well, we can have our lawyers do that.

Me:  Hmm…that never really works well, does it?  And I hope Dee Dee told you that I don’t do second drafts to incorporate non-native English-speaking lawyers’ comments.

Olga Quelque Chose: Yes, she did. We’re okay with that. How much would you want to be paid?

Me:  Twenty-five thousand…

Olga Quelque Chose:  [a sharp intake of breath]

Me:  Euros.

Olga Quelque Chose:  That seems a lot.  We’ve had other bids of ten.

Me:  [sigh] Yes…I’m sure you have.  I’ve had a number of contracts to clean up work in that price range lately…but it’s up to you.

This halcyon period of my life in Russia was incredibly satisfying, not to mention obscenely lucrative.   Come to think of it, I can’t think why I gave this up to write my own stuff.

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Congratulations to all those who toil between school runs, manage to perfect sorrel soup, and don’t forget to pick up the dry-cleaning!  

This post is part of the The Stunt.

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Dear Reader:

Thank you so much for stopping by Dividing My Time on my very own personal holiday.    Are you a freelancer too?   What’s your favorite story?  Do you want the recipe for sorrel soup?  No, you want Olga Quelque Chose's e mail, don't you?  

The Day of Victory /День Победы: "In defeat, unbeatable: in victory, unbearable"

But what good came of it at last?

Quoth little Peterkin

Why, that I cannot tell, said he,

But ‘twas a famous victory

-Robert Southey:  The Battle of Blenheim

Today is Victory Day!! I usually put the entire name of the holiday in the title of the post, but this one doesn't fit.   Once again, post-perestroika political correctness at work:  День воинской славы России — День Победы советского народа в Великой Отечественной войне 1941—1945 годов (1945)  which translates as Day of Russia’s Military Glory – The Day of Victory of the Soviet People in The Great Patriotic War 1941 – 1945. 

What can I say about Victory Day that hasn’t already been said? As you know, May 9th  of course commemorates the glorious moment in 1945 (choreographed by Stalin with the tacit agreement of Roosevelt and Churchill, who no doubt just wanted the whole thing to end one way or the other) when the Soviet Army triumphantly marched into a vanquished Berlin.  

World War II, or “The Great Patriotic War,” as any Russian schoolchild will tell you, was a conflict primarily fought in the Eastern European theater of war:  starring the Russians as the Good Guys and featuring the Nazis as the Bad Guys.   As guide books say : while many millions of brave and patriotic Russians perished, the Soviet Forces ultimately triumphed over the powers of Fascism, and peaceful productivity was restored to the peaceful-loving Soviet people.   Footnote: there were, perhaps, other skirmishes taking place on the periphery of this major conflict such as a minor air battle over the English Channel, and some unpleasantness in the Pacific, but they do not cover this in national curriculum of Russia, even in elite officer-training military academies such as the one HRH attended.  As I have written before, HRH was baffled and unable to identify D-Day as an historical event during a screening of “Saving Private Ryan.” I rashly suggested that D-Day had been the turning point in World War II, with dire consequences.   

On May 9th, there is a huge parade through Red Square. Huge ostentatious military parades complete with goose-stepping have rather gone out of fashion, so Moscow's parade is one of just a handful of opportunities left on the planet to experience this live.  I recommend it, if only to see the bizarre moment when Very Senior Military Guy tries to remain standing in the 1950's style convertible car at the beginning of the parade, as the car clatters over the uneven cobblestones of Red Square.  Velvet feels, and I must say I agree with her, that there is really no excuse for this sort of thing: Very Senior Military Guys should be on horseback, like Field Marshall Zhukhov who led the first May 9th parade astride a pure white charger, and here is his statue just outside Red Square:

 In case your local TV station didn't cover the parade in as much detail as you'd hoped, here is a link to the 2009 parade.

We always watch the parade at home with Bloody Mary's and smoked salmon, and avoid going out on the streets since you can hardly move thanks to crowd control brought to you by the Ivan The Terrible School of Civil Defense.    After the parade, the veterans march down from the Belorussian Railway Station to the Bolshoi Theatre and have a big piss up.   Rather nice fireworks later in the evening.  Barack isn’t coming, which is a blow, although my Very Good Friend The Famous Newscaster interviewed him the other day and he wished all the Russians well.   There is this issue of Moscow's pint-sized mayor seeding the clouds to ensure good weather which is true.  No one believes it, but its true: helicopters fly up the sky and put something in the clouds and they go away for the day, ensuring bright, hot sunshine on the day, and cold, cloudy, clammy weather for the next week after.   The estimated cost of this, according to Moscow News:  45 million rubles, and that never seems like a lot in Monopoly money does it: but is actually $1,474,208.58 USD or  £996,858.62 Pounds Sterling.  Seriously.

May 9th this year happens to coincide with Mother's Day in the USA, but I'm not expecting HRH to remember to send floral tributes my way (he recently learned how to purchase floral tributes on the Internet and send them places...was astonished by the technology) since he is hosting a small gathering in our apartment, so everyone can enjoy the five second moment when you see the fighter planes come from Tyushino Airport at the speed of sound right towards our large living room window.  Then you see the same thing on the TV and then you see red, white and blue smoke from the opposite window as they make their way over Red Sq.  Prime real estate.

Since all my clever readers know about World War II (if not, see Cliff Notes in Paragraph 2), in lieu of a history lesson, I'll tell you a very funny story about  what happened to our family on May 9, 2005 in Malta:

Sometimes, if I want to make HRH rein it in, I need only cock my eyebrow and say, “Darling, let’s not forget Malta 2005 now, shall we?” He nods, shudders, puts down the shot glass and, tail between his legs, moves to fizzy water for an hour or so.

Malta was my choice for our annual May Holiday getaway.  I had always had a hankering for Malta, which I vaguely wanted to test drive as a possible second home for when we struck it rich.  On paper, it seemed to combine a number of things which are high up on my list:  Italian culture, British history, a glamorous Order (with a capital “O”) of Knights, stone architecture, the San Antonio palace connected with Marie of Romania etc.  It seemed like a win-win travel destination for the whole family, offering Velvet and HRH the opportunity to sun and swim while I poked around Valetta. The food, I felt sure, would be heavenly Mediterranean.

Disappointment ensued.   Not the stabbing kind of disappointment that motivates you to pen an outraged letter to the New York Times; rather a dull sinking feeling that pervades you like soy sauce spilled on a white cotton T-shirt, that this travel destination is not the travel destination of your dreams.  Yes, the ornate hotel was nice and comfortable, and sure, Valetta offered up some of its interesting history, but the sea was cold, the beach rocky, and the “charming” port town of St. Julian was full of brassy British expats, loud sunburnt German holiday makers, and shifty looking Eastern European youths from the myriad Maltese language schools.   The blocks of flats looked depressing, the drink of choice was Belgian lager, and the plat du jour tended to be lasagna and chips.   As I poked through Valetta’s streets with the growing awareness that even Dan Brown couldn’t conjure up an ancient Maltese secret, at the hotel, HRH and Velvet fell into a nodding acquaintance with a group of disgruntled Russian tourists from Perm, fellow refugees from the cold sea, they pulled deck chairs around the hotel pool and shared their general disappointment in the entire experience.

This cordial entente continued until the evening of May 9th, arguably the most important holiday in Russia.  Returning to the hotel after yet another fruitless foray out into St. Julian to find something more appetizing than lasagna and chips, we found about sixteen of the Permites had taken the liberty of rearranging the hotel lobby’s furniture into a stereo-typical festive Russian living room configuration: couches pulled up around two coffee tables.  They motioned to us to join them, and have a Victory toast.  

It seemed vastly ill mannered on the 60th anniversary of Russia’s unqualified victory over Nazism to flee, although this was my immediate gut reaction.   Since nothing as major as the 60th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War could possibly be put to bed in a mere half an hour – I braced myself for a lengthy session in the trenches.   We squeezed onto one of the couches.  An elegant Maltese waiter immediately approached to ask what I wanted to drink, and I mentioned a local wine I’d tried and liked.  HRH ordered a cognac and we secured Velvet a Fanta.

“Lissssssssen,” Arkady, the ringleader, hissed at us knowledgably.  “No need to pay those bar prices…just order juice, look see what we have!” He motioned us to look between his legs, which I felt might not be completely appropriate for 8-year Velvet, but I followed his eyes to the bottle of Duty Free Chivas under the table.

This under-the-table tactic was one I knew well: having successfully employed it frequently, off-duty, during my misspent youth as a tour guide in the late 1980s in Eastern Europe.  It’s a good trick, if somewhat obvious, and yet somehow, as a full paying guest in the “oughts” it seemed somehow awkwardly out of place.

“Um…” I began, but HRH gave me a no nonsense warning look, and I just smiled.   Arkady deftly topped up eleven orange juices with Chivas and we hoisted our collective glasses to victory: “Za Pobediy!” 

This all-too-familiar ritual was repeated about six or seven more times.  I was getting woozy, and I could see Velvet was on the verge of collapse from the gassy combination of stodgy lasagna and chips and three large Fantas.  I cast a few pleading glances at HRH across the coffee table, but he ignored me, deep in a conversation about the 900 Day Siege of Leningrad with an older men who’s face was borscht red with sun and drink.  We drank to the Soviet Army a number of times, and Arkady was kind enough to indicate, that, of course, America had had a role in World War II, so a toast was drunk to me, which I tried to acknowledge gracefully.

A discreet cough.

“Madame,” said the suave waiter in English.  “Madame, may I speak with you?”

“Of course,” I said, welcoming the interference, but wary about the conversation I felt sure would ensue.  I awkwardly extracted myself from between Sveta and Aniuta, who were on either side of me, and went to join the waiter a discreet distance from the group. My tour guide days had made me feel an intense solidarity with hotel staff, and I smiled encouragingly.

“Madame, I realize your friends are guests of our hotel, and as such are most welcome in the lobby bar.  They are, we recognize, celebrating a national holiday, but we cannot allow them to continue to top up their drinks from under the table.  There are a number of hotels and hostels where this kind of thing is permitted – even encouraged -- but this is not one of them.  It is not our custom to allow such things.”

I sighed; feeling much as I imagined Roosevelt must have done at the Yalta Conference.

“I understand,” I said, “and I will try to get them to move the party elsewhere, but I fear these things are –“

“We know, Madame…we have many Russian guests.  If you could explain that they are very welcome to order their drinks from the bar, I’d be most grateful.”

He had the impeccable manners to hand me a complimentary glass of wine and we exchanged watery smiles.

I returned to the couches and explained, as sweetly as I could, that the guerilla tactics with the Chivas under the table had been outed, and I thought it best that they repaired to someone’s room to continue the party.

Arkady shook his head and, thumbs tilted at right angles to his body, pounded his upturned wrists in the universal gesture of Russian emphasis.

“Urodiy!” he spat out, “Italian Axis Power BASTARDS!  But what can you expect…all these other countries can’t stand it that we won the war…and look at it now…EU money while we…”

“Besieged,” I whispered, miserably, but with the confidence of one with a complete tour of the Valetta History Museum under her belt, which I (correctly) conjectured Arkady wasn’t, “Malta.  Under siege by the Germans from 1940-1942.  British Naval Base.  Allied forces all the way.”

Abject silence ensued, as seventeen pairs of eyes squinted in suspicion and an effort to focus vision.   The suave waiter gave me a big smile and a nod of acknowledgment.  

“I think Velvet and I are going to say good-night now, she seems very tired.  Once again, congratulations on victory in The Great Patriotic War.”  I beat a hasty retreat, dragging Velvet, now on a sugar high, behind me.

HRH lurched in around 9:00 the next morning as I was trying to decide whether to go to breakfast or call the Maltese police first, while simultaneously trying to reassure Velvet that Papa had just stayed awake with the nice people we’d met the night before.   HRH stood in the doorjamb, swaying back and forth.  I felt a rush of relief that he was alive, which is all that matters in moments like this.

“Vraaaaaaagggg-eeeeee…” he drawled, in is his standard morning-after condemnation and accusation of the external forces – or “enemies”, which have forced him, unwillingly, into a drunken stupor the previous evening.

“Allies, surely.” I quipped as he fell senseless onto the bed.

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Happy Victory Day to everyone...where ever in the world you may be!  

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Author’s Notes:

The phrase “In defeat unbeatable: in victory, unbearable,” is attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, who used it in reference to Lord Montgomery, not The Russian Federation.

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Dear Reader:

Happy Victory Day!  Unless, of course, you don’t celebrate Victory Day, and there are those who don’t.  There are those who already celebrated it yesterday, but anyway. What’s your take on seeding the clouds?   Do you think I was right to get Velvet out of the Maltese lobby?  Did you think the waiter was being churlish?  Thanks for making it through a long story…but hopefully a funny one.  You can tell me to “edit edit edit” which is what my Mom always says to my Dad, by clicking the comment button below and leaving me your thoughts!  Stay with me as we set sail (hint hint) for next week’s exciting line up of Russian professional holidays!

Day of the Creation of the Military Forces of the Russian Federation / День создания вооруженных сил РФ: Whatever.

We aren't going to give a lot of attention to this CYA post-perstroika footnote holiday. Not when today is also Radio Day, which is a lot more interesting.

But, a stunt's a stunt, so:

Today marks the 18th anniversary of the Creation of the Military Forces of the Russian Federation, which happened on May 7, 1992.  It's a post-perestroika, sign the decree thing.

Which is an excuse for a lot of 40, 50, and 60-something alpha males to kick off the REAL holiday on Saturday a few days early.  I can see the logic -- make sure their hangovers are well and truly cured before the rigors of the big day.  Stay tuned!

Wait a minute....18 years?   That long?   This is where I came in...

YIKES!

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Dear Reader:

Unless you are a military buff, I don't think you'll have much to say about this...neither do I, but thanks, as ever, for tuning in!

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

 Today is May 1st, which is a big deal in a number of cultures and countries for various reasons. Foremost is the coming of Spring, as celebrated by the Romans at the Festival of Flora, the Celts at Beltane, and the good old Germans at Walpurgisnacht (I once went to a memorable Walpurgisnacht celebration in Bristol, England, and haven’t been able to face sweet dessert wine since).  

In the “Former Socialist” or “New Capitalist” world, May Day is associated with solidarity of the working classes, and in the USSR, May 1st used to be known as "Day of Solidarity of the Workers."  What the Russians won’t tell you, though Wikipedia and I will, is that this was actually dreamed up by…the Australians.  Go and figure.   Which is interesting, since May 1st for them doesn’t designate the coming of Spring at all, but nevertheless, in 1856, they came up with the idea of a universal holiday for the working classes.  

On the other side of the world on May 1, 1886 in Chicago, at a three-day-strike at a factory got out of hand and police fired on the crowd of striking workers, resulting in twelve deaths and world-wide outrage and subsequent sympathy for the plight of the working people.  May 1st became a day of solidarity with the cause of workers’ rights, and gained a solid foothold in Europe.  Russian workers first held demonstrations in 1891 in St. Petersburg, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the holiday was firmly entrenched as the national day of celebration of the workers’ state, with massive parades through the streets of major cities.

 Northampton celebrates the beginning of May too... in its own particular way, which also has to do with solidarity.  This is known simply as "Pride" and it was getting going this evening on main street, under the benevolent protection of Noho's four cops.  This is a regional celebration, it seems, which was brought home to me today when Velvet called from school to say she was sorry that she had not called me in the morning, but they were observing a morning of silence, "...you know in solidarity with people don't live in as understanding a community as ours."

I said I thought that was just great, and then suggested she might not want to go into a lot of detail about that to HRH.

Sadly, I will miss my opportunity to show solidarity with people who live in the most understanding of communities,  in downtown Northampton, because, needless to say, I am going to a horse show.

In Russia, May 1st kicks off a series of holidays bundled up together as “The May Holidays,” which actually just include May 1st and May 9th (Victory Day), but the Russian Government in its infinite wisdom massages the calendar so that these two holidays run into one another and Russians end up with most of May off, although they usually have to work an eight day work week to compensate for it.   You can read about it in my inaugural humor column.  The one that got me in to so much trouble with Olga Quelque Chose

All this free time, combined with fairly reliably good weather, mean one thing for any Russian worth his salt pork:  it’s time to head to the dacha!     I hate dachas.   I'll explain why tomorrow.

So off you go, Russia, to your shashlik and your dachas, Noho - enjoy Pride.  I'm going to be in solidarity with the other Pony Moms.

This post is part of The Stunt.

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Thank you for stopping by and reading this post.  Although I know my Russian audience will be firing up the kostor and too busy, I'd love it if everyone else could let me know what you thought about this post by clicking on the comment button below.  Tell me, how are you going to spend May 1st?  

Добро пожаловать! Welcome BlogTrotters!

Today I’m the featured blogger on Blogtrotting!  This is very exciting and it is my pleasure to welcome you to my blog and the country where I spend a lot of my time: The Russian Federation.   This post will give you a little bit of the skinny on me and Russia, as well as Me & Russia: a long-term, somewhat choppy relationship, which for better or worse, and richer or poorer, is set to last a lifetime.  I've left a few breadcrumbs to follow to some classic posts via links, and I hope you'll stay a while and browse.   

I’m an American who fell in love with Russian language, history, and culture when I was a bored 13 year-old and read Robert Massie's “Nicholas and Alexandra.”   After The Wall came down, I majored in 19th Century Russian Studies, graduated, and set sail for Russia just in time for the main act of perestroika.  To my extreme shock and horror, Russia in 1989 looked nothing like “Nicholas and Alexandra."  You could have knocked me over with a feather.   I almost left, but it was all too compelling to give up.  So, here I am, 17 years later.

In 1992, I settled down in Moscow with the man who would become HRH (which, in addition to meaning “His Royal Highness” can also mean, depending on my mood, “Horrible” or “Handsome” Russian Husband.”) After a suitable interval, we were joined by our daughter, Velvet, who, at the age of six months made it abundantly clear to us that her life would be dedicated spending as much time with horses as possible.   To better facilitate this, we’ve sent her to school in rural Massachusetts and we now divide our time between Northampton, MA and Moscow, and when people ask me what I do, I tell them, I'm a Pony Mom.  We have many frequent flyer miles, but not enough to fly through volcanic ash.

We are an eclectic extended household, which includes some stock characters such as HRH’s parents about whom he says:  “They’re trying,” to which I respond, “and that’s not all they are…” our housekeeper, and our long-suffering driver. If that seems like a lot of staff, well, Russia is a human resources rich country.

“How do you like living here?” Russians ask me all the time.  “It’s never dull,” I tell them, and it isn’t.   Everything you try to do takes strategic planning, on-the-ground know-how, and sheer guts.    What for example, would you do if confronted with this situation? 

Or this one?

 Or indeed, this one?

Though I am pretty sure you would know what to do in this situation...

 

 “What has been the best thing about living in Russia for seventeen years?” asked an American lawyer.  

“Smoked salmon,” I replied promptly.  

“What can’t you get in Russia?” people often ask. The answer used to be everything from A-Z, so much so that I would play that game “I packed my grandmother’s trunk…” when I couldn’t fall asleep.  Today, it’s just zip lock bags and Eileen Fisher.  Yes, I’ve seen a lot of changes.

My blog is about finding the funnier side of life in Russia, which isn’t always easy, but incredibly satisfying when you do. Even the Russian TV Guide is funny.   I found a guy so desperate to find a girlfriend that he dressed up in absurd clothing and was photographed in a truly tacky 18th century palace.   You don’t see that every day, but you can see him here.  

I have a thing about the Uniformed in Russia.  I also am on a mission to chart all of Russia’s professional holidays, which include everything from the Day of the Cosmonauts to Customs’ Workers Day (and how I am going to find anything nice to say about them, I don’t know...stay tuned!).

Moscow is a huge sprawling city that has very beautiful parts of it, like the Moscow Kremlin, and some really awful parts of it, like the raw open wounds of chaotic construction all over the city.   It’s a brusque, businesslike place, where traffic is often gridlocked and the weather is often grey.   Moscow doesn’t welcome you with open arms, but you can find a lot of interesting things if you are willing to look.  I take a lot of pictures in Moscow of the things I see – mainly the things that stand out at me as very ironic, very funny, very sad, or very typical of the Russian approach to life, which is often a combination of all of the above.  I hope you enjoy having a look around.

I love to cook, and living in Russia, oddly enough made me a good one.  I prefer to shop at the Farmers' Markets, which isn't for the faint of heart, but the best place to get fresh produce, meat and fish.

 

 
  
 

  

It is hard being a photographer in Russia, because very few people want to have their pictures taken, especially people in uniform, which is why I really treasure these shots:

 
Moscow cityscapes:

 
 
 

 
 
 

 The women who made Hitler cry...

 
 
 A man who helped...

 And the most enduring image of them all...with the ubiquitous crane...

Author's Notes:

Photos by Jennifer Eremeeva, with sincere thanks to the administration of Dorogomilovskaya Market for allowing me to take pictures of the farmer's market.

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Dear Reader:  I close my posts by thanking readers for stopping by, and telling them how much I value their feedback about Dividing My Time. If you would like to leave a comment, please feel free to click the comment button below.  This is especially true today, when I look forward to welcoming new readers!  I would also like to thank Blogtrotting for their interest in featuring this post:  Большое вам спасибо: Russian for Thank you very much!

 

Kosmonauts' Day/Всемирный день авиации и космонавтики: Per Ardua ad Astra

Today, we inaugurate the “Russian Public and Professional Holidays” section of “Dividing My Time.”April 12th is The Day of Aviation and Cosmonauts.

*Photo credit: Henrietta Challinor

Per ardua ad astra, or “through adversity to the stars” was carved in faux Gothic lettering over the elevator up to the boys dorm at the prep school I attended (and this is a singular example of that school not taking itself a leeetle bit too seriously) and it is a good motto for today’s holiday honoring all those involved in Russia's Air and Space industries.   Given recent events featuring aspects of Russian aviation, (awwwwwkkkkkkwaaaaaard!!!!) I anticipate that the mood this year could possibly be a bit subdued.  I hope not, for HRH’s sake, since from our balcony we usually get a great view of the fireworks from the Tuyshino Air Field honoring Russia’s significant achievements in this area, but just to be on the safe side, let's focus on the space, rather than the air. 

During my misspent youth, I worked as a tour guide in Russia, and my tourists were often quite taken aback to learn that, although America was the first to put a man on the moon, Russia was the first to put a man in space, which significantly ramped up the space race.   

On April 12, 1961, Yurii Gagarin became the first person to travel in Space in Vostok 1 to massive elation back in the USSR.   We should also recall the contributions of Laika, the first dog in space, and the first woman in space, Russian Valentina Tereshkova.

There are lots of monumental commemorations to this striving for the stars in Russia: the largest of which is “The Monument to the Conquerors of Space” in Moscow.  Pictured here, the main part of the 350-foot monument is a massive obelisk sculpted in the shape of a rocket, launched dynamically into space with its smoke tail.  The titanium plates, which coat the construction, shimmer in the day.   The monument was the most common view I had as a tour guide, living at the Cosmos Hotel during my Moscow stays, and we often met dubious individuals behind the monument to pick up Bolshoi ballet tickets, caviar and military watches: the Holy Trinity of mid-1980s Russian tourism.    The Cosmos, which boasted restaurants called things like “Galactica” and “Evening Cosmos” and was one of the most rump-sprung awful fleabag places I’ve ever spent time in, but it was the epicenter of the tourism world.  HRH and I spent most of our courtship there, and I worry that emotion will overtake him and he’ll book a room for the nostalgia factor.   But, knowing HRH’s complete inability to plan this kind of thing, it seems unlikely.

Today, Russia is a big player in the International Space Station, and has pioneered space tourism for very wealthy individuals.  “Space,” as President Dmitry Medvedev said today, “remains a priority.”

Congratulations to everyone in the Air and Space industries.    

*Photo credits to Henrietta Challinor, who captures beautiful images of Russia and can be reached here while her website is finalized.   I look forward to showcasing more of Henrietta’s work here!

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Thanks for taking the time to read this post.  It means a lot to me, as does your feed back.  Do you have a Russian Air or Space experience you'd like to share?  Do you remember April 12, 1961, or did you score Bolshoi Theatre tickets behind the Monument to the Conquerorers of Space? Whatever your input, I'd love to read it.  Leave a comment by clicking on the comment button below.  

A Hymn to Him

    A friend has just figured out the double entendre humor in referring to my Handsome Russian Husband as HRH.

    “You know,” she said, “that can also stand for His Royal Highness. Like Prince William.”

    The moniker HRH is eminently applicable to Russian men, who are all brought up by their mothers believing that they are, indeed, royal scions and therefore above plebeian and unmanly concerns like housework. In Russia, they are still teaching Home Ec to the girls and Shop to the boys, with no reform in sight and certainly not regarding the impending gender-specific public holidays. In place of one messy, gender-neutral love fest on Feb. 14, Russians are suiting up for the very separate Men’s Day (Feb. 23) and its companion, International Women’s Day (March 8).

 

    I’m a Russian historian, so I like to delve into the origin of national holidays. Men’s Day has a full and characteristically overblown name—The Day of the Defenders of the Motherland—and it celebrates the 1918 rout of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces by the just-that-day-drafted Red Army. The name eventually morphed from Red Army Day, to Day of the Soviet Army and Navy, and in 1995, as part of a re-branding campaign to drop Red from everything, ended up as Day of the Defenders of the Motherland. In HRH’s family, we take the 23rd of February very seriously indeed, since we are a military family: HRH and Dedushka (my daughter Velvet’s grandpa) both served as officers in the Red Army, as did great-uncle Boris, and several others, dating right back to that Red Letter Day in 1918. Interestingly, this list also includes several gutsy great aunts and great-great-grandmothers, who served, with distinction, in the Red Army as border patrol guards, field medical officers and behind-the-lines guerilla fighters in Occupied Ukraine. Nevertheless, Feb. 23 remains devoted exclusively to the men of Russia, who are all obliged to defend the Motherland as part of their mandatory military service.

 
On its current Web site, the Russian Consulate in Houston offers helpful guidance on the celebration of Men’s Day: On this day, it says, the entire masculine population,from boys to old men, receives special greetings and presents. Women have a wonderful opportunity to convey their warmest and kindest feelings to the loved ones and to indulge them with sings (sic) of attention and affection.

    Translation women: shop, cook, clean. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    HRH, in mufti, is not a force to be reckoned with on the domestic front, although he does open wine bottles, which, along with driving a car, is what well-brought-up Russian men consider man’s work. I once begged him to empty the dishwasher. He sighed deeply, went to the sink and stood, his back to me.

    “Darling,” I said quietly.

    “What,” he barked, turning around to glare at me.

    “Just that, the dishwasher, you know, is the appliance on your left.”

    HRH and Dedushka won’t be emptying anything except a bottle of premium whiskey this week as we women convey our warmest and kindest feelings. I’ve bought HRH a new super sonic corkscrew, Babushka (Velvet's grandma, of course) has the sweet Sovietskoye Champanskoye warming up in the vegetable steamer and Velvet is on dishwasher duty, so we are all set to indulge our Defenders with the royal attention and affection they deserve.

    But I refuse to sing. –

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This article first appeared in Russia Beyond the Headlines on February 24, 2010

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