No Country for R&B

Leslie Loftis requested “that heaping scorn” on account of Vladimir Putin’s hiring of Boyz II Men to combat Russia’s sub-European birth rates.  I’ll try to not disappoint.

The R’n'B band is to play some sort of a part in Russian state’s ongoing effort to convince ordinary men and women to be fruitful and multiply:

The story comes from the Moscow Times, which writes: “The stylish trio of Boyz II Men, the most successful R&B group of all time, is coming to Moscow on Feb 6. The group will perform a selection of their classic and new romantic ballads, hopefully giving Russian men some inspiration ahead of St. Valentine’s Day.” The Times insists that the band will be lending their “powerful voices” to Putin’s fertility campaign. Whether or not the Russian kingpin personally got on the phone, tracked down their agent and demanded that they “do the show right here” is pure speculation on the newspaper’s part. It’s a little hard to believe … but it’s also not impossible to imagine. [My guess is Boyz have no clue about Europe's demographic woes.  Russian newspapers, however, are prone to overstatements. -- ed.]

For Putin has declared war on empty cots with classic Putin bravado. He’s often insisted that having lots of babies is key to Russia’s internal security, to Russia becoming more “influential” on the world state. Why have a great democracy or a flourishing economy when you can simply outnumber everyone else? Putin puts the desirable figure at three babies per household and, in 2007, one province helped things along by declaring a Day of Conception. The idea was that if Russians got the day off work then they might stay at home, put on some Boyz II Men, close the curtains and help bring back the good old days of Soviet hegemony. Women who gave birth 9 months later could win a refrigerator.

Which makes sense.   I can’t think of another top 40 band that’s all soft light and kitchen counters.

Boyz’s 1994 hit “I’ll Make Love to You”

If you, my reader, are a snob like me, you probably spend countless Friday nights complaining about the current sorry state of American popular music.  I hope you realize that much of today’s American pop sells very well abroad, and that even if Americans suddenly abandoned their music idols, many performers would do just fine.  Truth be told, American pop in decline does not sound that bad compare to what musicians around the world have to offer.

Russia one horrid example of horrid taste in horrid popular music.  The country’s President is a noted connoisseur of “popsa” (Russian slang for particularly annoying tunes).  Remember his inspirationally sexed-up 2012 Presidential campaign?  Well, in 2007/2008 it was Putin copying Obama, not the other way around.  Shortly after Obama girl went viral, Putin lent his likeness to a video with two babes who singing ditties about him:

A few years ago I went on a facebook-like Russian site where I found some old friends and made a few new ones.  Most of them were Russian-speaking Ukrainian women, about my age, college educated, either gainfully employed or with a husband providing for the family, and with a kid or two.  Often times our conversation turned to the little ones; specifically they wanted to know how much does the United States government pay to have a baby.  I got the impression that their sole reason for striking a conversation with an American woman was to pose that particular question.

Turns out, all Ukrainian women are promised a one-time stipend for each child — “promised” is the operative word here because in their experience the money doesn’t always materialize.  They were bitter, which was understandable.  I’m not sure how much sense it makes for the state to beguile its citizens short term.  Our government is also making promises on which it’s not going to deliver (think Social Security), but those are long term promises.  By the time the the populace realizes that its been had, the politicians who designed the system are long dead and buried.  Anyhow, Russia touts fertility measures similar to Ukraine’s, with second baby currently worth 9K.  Russian women find it equally easy to discuss such prizes.

Now, I’m all for people being practical about breeding.  People other than myself that is (I got pregnant with my first while on our honeymoon).  It’s just that on the surface of it, at least, the women in Russia and Ukraine do not appear to be practical enough.  I had to explained that in the US children are seen mainly as expenses.  It costs upwards of a half a mil to raise a child, which dwarfs any tax write off a middle class American family can possibly take advantage of.  Kitchen appliances are a sorry compensation when you have another mouth to feed.

What is interesting is when middle class American women think “how can I afford it”, their Russian speaking counterparts think “who pays better”.  That’s the difference between freedom and personal responsibility on the one hand and slavery and hand outs on the other.  Arguably, American fertility subsidies are obscured through our tax code.  We still have subsidies (as we should as long as the government provides for retirement), they are just not obvious.  Yet I don’t know a single family that would calculate exemptions prior to trying to conceive.

The fertility rate in Russia is up from under 1.2 child per woman at its 1999 low to about one and a half child for each woman of childbearing age.  The rate of population decline is down, and Putin is claiming victory.  I remember Russians here, in Cali, being surprised by that Russian style baby boom, and quipping that maybe it’s caused by mothers too drunk to get themselves to abortion clinics.  They were not too far off.  Then there is the argument that the uptake in fertility is partially caused by the increase in the number of ethnic minorities and the calls for awarding “maternal capital” to ethnic Russians only.  Still, the current fertility uptake is partially caused by the women born during the 1980s mini-boom now reaching peak childbearing age.  Once they age, Russia is due for another bust.

From Putin’s point of view it must be now or never.  He really does need to get as many children as he can out of Russian women today because, he must realize, there is no tomorrow.  The generous sums of money offered to moms at the time when state revenues are declining are really a sign of desperation.  Putin bought off Russia’s middle class with petroleum money, but with development of new technologies of oil and gas extraction, the world is not willing to pay top dollar for Russia’s resources.  Russian mothers might be looking for another owner.

Putin’s goal is to encourage every Russian woman to have three children, and this billboard, photographed in Moscow metro, is a part of the state’s natalist campaign. “Your country needs your heroic achievements,” reads the top. “Every minute, three people are born in Russia”. I don’t see Russians reacting to this poster with anything but laughter.  The talk of “heroic accomplishments” is reminiscent of the Soviet era mythical mother-heroines who gave birth to a large number of children.  Ordinary Soviet people didn’t know anyone like that.

And Putin might do better if he had a whole different population of women to work with.  Russian-speaking women are just not that into large families.  I personally know of five Russian-speaking women of my generation who had more than two kids, and by more than two I mean three.  Two of them live in Israel (one is an ethnic Russian), one is in New Jersey, but spent several years in Israel.  Another is in the Bay Area, and her third child was an accident.  And, by the way, had she stayed in Belarus, the boy would had been summarily aborted, and so would had been several of his siblings.  Only one lives (and has always lived) in Ukraine, but she was always a bit odd. Not that there is anything wrong with being odd.

It’s not just that tough economic times drove families to postpone parenting.  Russians have an easy attitude about divorce and out-of-wedlock birth.  A sizable number of Russian women would rather stay single than marry Russian bachelors.  Even those who marry and stay married simply don’t want large families.  One or two kids were a norm for generations, and it’s hard to imagine that this norm can change in the near future.

Depardieu To Adopt An Orphanage

Kidding.  I’m sure everyone heard about Gerard Depardieu’s decision to renounce his French citizenship and move — first to Belgium, and now to Russia.  For one, Russians offer a better tax deal:

If Mr. Depardieu chooses to take up Russian citizenship, he would potentially trade steep French income tax rates, which he said now claim 85 percent of his income, and even Belgian rates of 60 percent or higher, for Russia’s flat 13 percent income tax. The value-added tax, a sales tax on goods and services, is 18 percent in Russia compared with nearly 20 percent in France, while Russian social security taxes are 30 percent compared with 50 percent in France.

On its way out of communism Russia, like many other former Eastern Block countries, had adopted a flat tax. And if Gospodin Gepardieu thinks that 13% is too high, no worries — few Russians pay income taxes to begin with, and the country relies heavily on its oil and gas revenue.  Sure, Mihkail Khordokovsky is doing time for tax evasion, or so we are told, but given how the actor was caught admiring Putin’s foray into popular culture, I don’t think he needs to worry about such things:

If it’s the low flat tax rate that interests Depardieu, why not chose Georgia or the Czech Republic?  Putin continued:

But aside from tax savings, Mr. Putin suggested that French officials were too brusque in their response to Mr. Depardieu’s complaints and that he might find that Russians simply understand him better as an artist. “Actors, musicians and artists are people with a special, delicate psychological makeup and, as we say in Russia, the artist is easily offended,” Mr. Putin said at the news conference on Dec. 20. “So I understand Mr. Depardieu’s feelings.”

I assume he understands Pussy Riot as well.  Not to say that Pussy Riot is anywhere near Depardieu’s talent, but we are talking bohemian sensibility here, not talent.  Then again, perhaps Putin does know something about artists, many of whom, like our former Frenchman, like dictators.

Depardieu might want to review Russian ideas about immigration.  If a Russian is to renounce his citizenship, he’ll be seen as a traitor by many of his ex compatriots.  Actually, in that part of the world one doesn’t need to leave the country to rise to the status of Benedict Arnold.  When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, virtually any activity that involves moving from one group of people to another, like switching places of employment, was considered treasonous.  Things changed in the 90s, at least for a short time, but it looks like today’s popular opinion is back to the Soviet assumptions.

After the Pussy Riot “trial” last year, I was looking through Russian chatrooms.  The general consensus there was that the young women had it coming, and that in other countries the punishment for their performance would be even harsher.  One individual opined that Pussy Riot are traitors to their motherland, and that in the US they would be put to death for [high] treason.  It was a well-liked opinion.  Last November Putin broadened the legal definition of treason, giving himself a green light to go after dissenters.

Regardless the Russian views on dissent and treason, the new arrival will get to keep more of his money.  How will he show his gratitude?  Russians don’t have the tradition of charitable giving akin to the one we have in America.  When we arrived to the US, we were moved to see people donating their money, time and possessions to help us settle in the new country.  It was all new to us.  Perhaps Gerard Depardieu, a Westerner, knows how charity is done.

The Russian population of parent-less children is now greater than it was at the end of World War 2.  There are children starving in Russian orphanages, and now, because Putin is playing politics with their lives, they can not be adopted by American families.   Surely an actor known for creating humane characters can not remain indifferent.  He should contribute to an overhaul of the Russian orphanage system and perhaps adopt a kid or two.

Desperate College Girls

A few days ago I noted the eery resemblance between Putin’s party “Lets Do It Together” ad and Obama for America girls’ “do it in the voting booth” tees.  And now, in a desperate attempt to court them ladyparts, O released an ad starring somebody by the name of Lena Dunham comparing voting for a 50-year-old man with big ears to losing your virginity, which by some strange coincidence happened to be a remake of another Putin ad.  Behold:

The 26-year-old Lena had a chance to pull the lever for O[h-oh-oh] in 08, during his virgin Presidential election because raving about the 2012 early voting is like bragging about attending a Woodstock anniversary concert.  However, 08 shouldn’t be her “first time” either unless she missed the chance to vote for the guy who wed a ketchup heiress, which is hard to imagine considering her hard left tendencies.  Lying about her “first time”… tisk-tisk-tisk.

On Legal Insurrection we find an Aussie “first time” commercial, and learned that Ronald Reagan once joked about voting Republican for the first time.  I’m sure we can find more obscure instances if we dig deep enough, but how many of them obsess about virgin voting for a specific man?  It was Putin’s campaign that got a good deal of attention in the English-speaking world just a few months ago, not some obscure Australian politician recording that looks like a public service announcement. Plus, Dunham chirps about the voting booth curtains, which sounds like something from “Lets Do It Together” electoral orgasm.

She’ll probably be more flexible after the election

Towards the end of his vacuous 2012 campaign jump-started by “Putin’s Army” of shirt-ripping alleged co-eds, the Russian strongman issued at least three virgin ads.  The most famous one had a virgin discuss her “first time” with a psychic before heading to the polling place.  In the other two we watch virgins consult a doctor and a shrink.

I couldn’t find the ad with psychoanalyst, but the reference to it is here.  And speaking of psychoanalysis, wasn’t O[h-oh-oh]‘s mom’s maiden name Dunham?  Then we learn that whereas Obama virgin ad are cool and all, and, according to The Atlantic at least, only “old white men” can find a fault with it, Putin virgin ads were “creepy”.  Go figure.

Putin’s virgins were looking for a man who’d make them feel safe “like behind the brick wall”, but O[h-oh-oh]‘s virgin is looking for a man who’d make her safe with regulations like The Lilly Ledbetter Act.  (Lilly Ledbetter, is that her real name?)  Also, Putin ‘s quaint virgin was convinced that the first time has to be “for love”, after which anything goes, presumably.  O[h-oh-oh]‘s virgin wants “a great guy… who cares”.  She must be looking for an Earth-shattering experience… or not.

Etch-a-Sketch forever: Mitt Romney met his future wife in high school.  Don’t give up on love!

Even though Russian women outnumber their male compatriots by a greater percentage than anywhere else on Earth, Putin’s commercials are not geared towards women.  His ads were designed to project the image of masculine vigor and give Russian men something to identify with.  The Dwarf’s obsession with masculinity is a topic for a whole different story. The point I’m making here is that the women in his commercials are hot.

Obama, on the other hand, is targeting the single white female vote.  Dunham’s ad is described “sexy”, but it’s not sexy at all.  It is safe.  It stars a gal whose heterosexuality is not immediately obvious making innuendos about a non-threatening man twice her age.  She’s supposed to be the cool big sis — if parroting Putin is cool.  It might help the President to get out the desperate college girl vote, maybe, but he should have had this demographic bagged by now.

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if O[h-oh-oh] would produce a Slutwalk Army, sort of like Putin’s Army, but Putin rented his girls from a modeling agency.  OFA will turn out moderately overweight chicks who spend their spare time filling out applications to grad schools.  And in grad schools they will, once again, find themselves outnumbering the men.

Russian Grrrls Infiltrate IKEA

There was that old rumor that IKEA doesn’t know how to do business in Russia — you see, they have no experience in bribing.  And now IKEA website published a picture of women in colored balaclavas, like that of the imprisoned dissident rockers Pussy Riot, and angered the country’s owners.

The caption, which reads “New life at home”, was provided by IKEA.  Not planed by the grrrls, but just perfect in terms of delivering the message.  The casual yet menacing posture of the models is excellent too

The offending picture was entered the contest for a new catalog cover by somebody who goes by “Starovoitova” in Yekaterinburg.  After nearly a month online, the picture was replaced with the message “Photo removed.  IKEA is a commercial company and acts outside politics and religion.  We cannot allow our advertizing to be highjacked for propaganda of any kind.”  Oh, I don’t know about that “any kind” bit.  I think the good Swedes would allow some political and religious content.

Anyhow, this is what the contest page looks like now:

As you can see, the Pussy Riot photo was winning, although as of today it’s likely to be overtaken Klechko on lower left, who is doing some sort of fun dress up gimmick.  They were previously in 4th place, but now boasting 1407 “likes”

Good luck to “Starovoitova”.

Russian Grrrls Need Better Friends

UPDATE: Welcome Legal Insurrection readers!  many thanks to Professor Jacobson for linking.

In my previous post about Pussy Riot I wondered what was the point of being a Riot Grrrl in Russia.  Since then three of the women, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were sentenced to two-year prison terms for their performance of a “punk prayer” at the church of Christ the Savior during which they asked the Virgin Mary to rid the country of Putin and accused the Patriarch of Moscow of selling out.  They were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility.  Hooliganism I can see, but religious hatred?  And by the way, similar activities in London earn one an 18 pound fine, which, admittedly, is a bit low, but at least the case wasn’t dismissed.

Pussy Riot incarcerated

Russia was never a wholly Christian country.  Although it was officially converted by Prince Vladimir of Kiev in the end of the 10th century, the population of its vast stretches retained pagan traditions and believes.  The last Russian Tzar employed a shaman to help his sickly son.  The Soviet regime with its veneration of leaders, the official party line illustrated on every wall and, of course, the destruction of churches had many signs of idolatry.  The post-Soviet revival of Orthodox Christianity is largely superficial.  According to nationmaster.com Russia is at the bottom of church attendance with only 2% of population surveyed claiming to attend church at least once a week (the survey puts the world average at 26.2%).  I suspect the attendance among the minority non-Orthodox denominations is much higher.  Pussy Riot’s performance at the altar was about as much an affront to the spirituality of an average Russian as Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut was an affront to womanly dignity of an average American feminist.

That’s not to say that the Pussy Riot verdict is unpopular. I keep reading that Russians are up in arms about it, and some certainly are, but I get an impression that the authors who file the stories talk to their [classic] liberal friends who, like me, feel that the punishment is disproportionate.  On the other hand, a poll conducted a few days before the verdict showed that 44% of Russians found the judicial process “objective and unbiased” and 17% believed the outcome was handed down by the upper echelons of the government.  Just 6% said they feel sorry for the women.  I don’t know how reliable this kind of polling is in Russia, but if it is correct, then any expectation that the martyred women will stir up pro-freedom sentiment among Russians is bunk.

From what I can tell looking at Russian media, the polling is probably on the mark.  Pravda.ru embedded an editorial, for instance, lauding the sentence and assuring its readers that the young women are a part of some sort of a conspiracy, which is totally obvious because an incarcerated Jew expressed his sympathy, and surely somebody is behind the music collective.  That a free-thinking citizen might want to protest her government doesn’t occur to Pravda.ru editorialist who, while finding conspiracies right and left, doesn’t seem to think that Putin would interfered with the judicial process.  Of course you might say that one does not expect any other reaction from Pravda.  But it’s rather typical; and here is another one, accusing “liberals” of trading the country for Pussy Riot.  This kind of writing gets the overwhelming support of readers.

Ordinary Russians view the Orthodox church as an extension of state power, which it is — the Patriarch of the church is a Kremlin puppet.  The disproportional punishment is a confirmation of state power, and people respect it, including those in the opposition.  Not the [classic] liberal opposition, but the more numerous nationalist kind who dream of a dictator more “hardboiled” than Putin supported by the state church.  To them Russian Orthodoxy is a component of national identity.  (Not that there is something necessarily wrong with it; I suspect to the members of Pussy Riot who profess to belong to the Church, it is also an ethnic identity issue.)

The history of Russian Orthodoxy is rich with Holy Fools such, the Yurodivy, who behaved in a deliberately unconventional and provocative manner to draw attention to hypocrisy and abuses of power.  A number of them became saints.

Mikhail Nesterov “The Soul of the People,” 1914-16. Yurodiviy is in the upper third/left third of the canvasses.

And check this out, this is the Ukrainian women’s group Femen getting arrested for imitating yurodiviys in their anti-Putin protest in front of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in December 2011.

Pussy Riot, as far as I know, didn’t draw a connection between themselves and yurodivy.  Instead, they spoke about punk rock which, though not the riot grrrls kind (again, as far as I know), has a long history in Russia.  Perhaps there is a reason why it fits Russia so well.

Pussy Riot supporter Petr Pavlensky. That had to hurt

When Russians see the likes of Madonna posturing on behalf of Pussy Riot, they only get inflamed.  They know weakness when they see it.  They know she doesn’t matter and that she doesn’t care much about the fate of the three women. And we all know that celebrities suck up to Putin when convenient.

The international expression of popular support has been underwhelming.  Dozens of people showed up in front of Russian embassies in a handful of Western cities.  Mark Judge noted that seminal Punk zine Maximum Rock-n-Roll is disinterested.  And curiously the pro-Pussy Riot protesters in Washington were most definitely not punks.  Truth is, punks don’t care.  You’d think they’d be up in arms if three of their own get so unfairly prosecuted by a tyrant — for doing what punks do, but the show of force simply wasn’t there.  Compare the pitiful attendance of the pro-Pussy Riot demonstration to the multi-month #Occupy camp outs.  Could it be that the discontents of the Russian women are much more real than the little issues of the Western punks, and that makes the kids here uncomfortable?

And what good are the Western feminists who may pay some sort of lip service to Pussy Riot, rarely, but at the end will turn out to vote for the man who promised Putin to be more flexible in his second term.  Because, as we all know, Obama will, like, have free Women’s Studies classes for all.

American feminist hero Sandra Fluke couldn’t find her way to Target Pharmacy to buy $10 worth of contraception to last her a month. We are talking serious people and serious issues here.

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, rock-n-roll was the forbidden fruit.  It stood for freedom, and people who listened to it were into liberties of all kinds, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free markets.  But in the West “youth” subcultures proliferated with the growth of welfare state because government dependency allowed the masses to lead bohemian lifestyles.  Punks might talk of freedom of expression, but nobody cares much about the brave women in Russia who dared to speak truth to power.  When they leave their prison cells a year and a half from now, they should look for better friends in the West.

Soviet City Youth in Kolkhoz

In the mid-19th century, about half of the peasants in the Russian Empire were serfs.  After the 1861 emancipation, former serfs gained control of half the land they cultivated.  In the late 1920s-early 30a, Joseph Stalin implemented collectivization, confiscating privately owned land, animals and grain and killing and exiling wealthy or unwilling peasants.  The resulting famine claimed the lives of anywhere from 6 to 8 million people country-wide, with an overwhelming majority of deaths occurring in Ukraine.  The famine bares the Ukrainian name Holodomor, literally “hunger kill”.

As a result of collectivization, agricultural production immediately plummeted.  Peasants burnt their warehouses and slaughtered their livestock rather than surrender them to the government.  Once herded into kolkhozes, they responded with theft, sabotage and a deliberately slow pace of work.  And yet posters with smiling peasants graced the walls of government buildings and stories of record harvests made yearly headlines in Pravda.  One of the common themes of the socialist realist art was women and ample harvest, especially grain. While the best examples of the genre were masterfully drawn and poignant, they had nothing to do with reality.

“Bread” by Tetyana Yablonska, painted in 1949, is a pretty good example of the genre. I remember it from my grade school textbooks.  Ukrainian peasant women,sunburned, stout and hardworking, are gathering grain against the backdrop of modern agricultural machinery.  The woman in the center of composition must be pointing at the bright communist future

“Bread” by Ilya Isupov, 2010

Collectivization restricted the movement of peasants who had to obtain permission of the kolkhoz leadership in order to move.  But when regulations were relaxed, people, particularly the youth, flocked to the cities.  Soviet country life offered few educational and vocational opportunities.  If there was little money to be made by the residents of Russian villages, there was also little to buy because the government preferred to prop up big cities with material goods.  Although they like to deny it, Russians are materialistic people — not that there is anything wrong with that — so they like to live in places with good shopping.  Living conditions in the countryside were (and still are) deplorable.  In the late 1950s, my mother was stationed in a village with no electricity.  Never mind that according to the official story, all of the Soviet Union was supplied with electricity in the 20s.  Running water and indoor bathrooms were a luxury.

This babushkas pictures you see on The People’s Cube shows the aging and heavily female population of countryside devoid of amenities

In the cities, peasant youth usually settled in nearly identical soulless suburbs.  Many newcomers filled the ranks of manual laborers and single mothers.

M. Kugach “To the City for Education”, 1965.  This hard-working girl from a nice village must be a budding intellectual. It’s amazing that a painting with so much humanity can be totally divorced from reality

Because of the shortage of people willing and able to work the land, city dwellers were directed to help the kolhozes.  Since we weren’t trusted with heavy machinery or the cattle, we ended up picking vegetables or working at the warehouses.  A few times a year my parents, both engineers, were sent to kolkhoz warehouses (na kohaty).  They always fretted both because they didn’t want to spend the whole day away from home and family and because it was hard to see how menial agricultural work was a good application of their skills. I once asked my mom how come she just didn’t blow them off.

“Somebody has to do this work.” She replied. “Otherwise we will have nothing to eat.”

There were more immediate reasons to go, though.  She usually came back with bags full of fresh vegetables for family and friends.  Technically that was theft, but in the country with a vast black market economy it was expected, and collective farm administrators looked the other way.

High school and university students, too, were ordered to the countryside where unlike the married older subjects we could spend long stretches of time.  I suppose we could get out if we’d put our mind to it, the way young men get out of mandatory military service, but as a rule we wanted to go.  My one and only time at kolkhoz was in about 1988.  It was during Perestroika, and some boys in my class had the nerve to ask to be paid.  From what I remember, it was explained that our earnings will cover room and board.  You see, we went for the whole month and were stationed in a dormitory near a lake.  In the mornings we were supposed to pull weeds out on a strawberry field, but the rest of the day was spent sunbathing, swimming and socializing.  In other words, it was a camp.

Harrison of Capitol Commentary mentioned that a friend of his remembers young women getting pregnant working in kolkhoz.  It’s easy to see how something like that would happen.  In our case, we were 15 and most of us still reasonably innocent.  We were housed in a dormitory with large rooms; I think there were four rooms for nearly 40 of us, and we were chaperoned by a teacher called class leader (klassnii rukovoditel).  We were begging for a disco, and it did happen, but only on the last weekend of our stay.  Mysteriously, one girl was sent home early.  But if anyone got pregnant, she didn’t carry pregnancy to term.  My mom, however, who went to kolkhoz multiple times in her youth, had all-girls assignments.

We thought we scored with that strawberry field, but when we arrived on location, we found that the field was so overgrown with weeds, there were no strawberries to save.  We kind of pretended to work, with our class leader watching over us.  Once we walked into the sunflower field nearby where were shocked to discover sunbathing semi-nude peasant women with their ugly white bras around their waists.  On the last day of our stay, a kolkhoz tractor drove through the field and cut down the weeds.

There was a saying in the Soviet Union “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”, but that particular strawberry field was a surreal example of non-exercise in futility of not-so-forced non-labor.  One of those things that makes you wonder why the Soviet Union fell.

City youth at a collective farm, “working”.  Judging by his sweater, this picture was probably taken in the 80s

In the 1990s, old Ukrainian collective farms were re-registered as corporate farms.  The land was not redistributed, and the management practices didn’t change.  Forced student labor persists in the former republics, like Belarus and Uzbekistan.  They harvest cotton in the later.  Ring any bells?

UPDATE: many thanks to Professor Jacobson for linking.

Somebody Please Explain To This Blogger What is the Point of Being a Riot Grrrl in Russia

In the West Grrrls get to behave like men — play loud music, make suggestive gestures on stage, so on.  They get to fancy themselves feminist revolutionaries and keep distance from the second wave party-poppers.

There isn’t much in the way of an authentic feminist movement in Russia.  In the Soviet time, women and men alike were required to participate in mock elections, so at the time real elections took place in the early 1990s, nobody was outraged by the site of both both sexes heading to the voting booths.  Broad majorities of Russian women worked hard outside the house.  It was true through Russian history, and because in the Soviet period specifically it was virtually impossible for an ordinary Russian man to support his family, wives and mothers were all not-so-gainfully employed.  Although housewifery was a distant dream, women typically controlled the purse strings.

Babushkas and physical labor: a typical Soviet city scene of the 70s and 80s. The soberer sex performing grueling tasks, often jobs rejected by men, was a fact of our lives. In the height of Perestroika Russian press lamented the fact that Soviet society treated its women so poorly, but when I talk about it to my American neighbors, many are wowed

An American woman can distinguish herself as a sex-positive feminist, but in Russia all women are expected to be “sex-positive”.   On one hand, because of the low life expectancy for men, the men to women ratio in Russia is the lowest in the world; Russian women put enormous effort to get and keep a mate.  On the other hand, Russia was never really a thoroughly Christian country.  Nominally it was Christian, of course, but its vast stretches were never properly converted, and the priests allowed peasantry to carry on with their pagan beliefs and traditions.  Russian peasant societies were patriarchal, to be sure, and the straying female was risking her reputation.  Communal bonds turned obsolete in late 19th century when with abolition of serfdom and industrialization women and men alike flocked to the cities.  About a quarter of births in the late Russian Empire were out of wedlock.

Soviets were shy to talk about sex.  In the late 80′s a middle age matron proclaimed on national television: “There is no sex in our country [only love]“, but the millions of abortions performed each year tell a different story.  Towards the late 80′s public culture became sexualized.  I wrote about sex and politics in Russia before.  In fact, groups like Femen or, in the article linked above, Pussy Riot are not doing anything radically different from Putin, style-wise.

When asked about their musical influences and ideology, Pussy Riot explained:

The difference is that Bikini Kill [a Riot Grrrl ban, -ed.] performed at specific music venues, while we hold unsanctioned concerts. [Enormous artistic difference, of course.  Pussy Riot must be learning from Femen, -- ed.] On the whole, Riot Grrrl was closely linked to Western cultural institutions, whose equivalents don’t exist in Russia.

Why do revolutionaries always have to sound like bores?  Anyhow, musically Pussy Riot is a standard example of the genre (NSFW, particularly around Russian-speaking co-workers):

The translatable portion of the song demands a Russian Tahrir, and concerned commentators certainly fear that that is where events in Moscow might be heading.

The Moscow Times article points out that Pussy Riot got a lot of comments on their YouTube video, and they did.  The more recent gushing comments are in English.  Most of the earlier remarks are the irate, typically America-hating viewers, and the band trying to outdo each other in their use of profanities (Russians consider their profanities high art).  Few point out that the video is too produced for Punk., and I agree.

Russian nationalists long resented their countrymen adopting Western ways.  The nationalists are mostly wrong, but not when it comes to Pussy Riot.  Maybe there is a point of being a Riot Grrrl in Russia, it’s just that it comes across as inauthentic.  One of the viewers checked out the band’s November 2011 interview and noted that he sees two cultured girls from good families.  Where is the hard core?  I get the impression that the ladies are copying Punk because it’s cool, but their ideology is not reality-checked.

The ladies claim to be lefties, and in America Riot Grrrls are lefties.  But ideologically the Russian left is different.  In fact, it’s naturally aligned with the American conservatism — pro-individual liberty, free market, pro-Israel and is opposed to tyranies.  Riot Grrrls and other anarchist-affiliated Western subcultures want handouts and are “anti-war”.

In a country where dissidents are punished it certainly takes guts to be in Pussy Riot.  The masks might be a bit too much given that since they’ve been arrested the police obviously knows who they are.  In that 2011 video interview they claim that their phones are bugged.  I don’t question the girls’ courage, I question their relevance.  Russia is a patriarchal country where men don’t fare very well, and where women have a lot to be upset about.  One reason Russian women are eager to marry foreigners is because Western men treat them better.  Anyhwo, Riot Grrrls seem to ring hollow for Russia… unless the true goal is to increase the prospects of marriage to a Western man.