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Tag: russia

  • What is the real cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics?

    Hamid Ismailov investigates the underside of the Sochi Olympics for PEN Atlas: while the Western media focuses on LGBT rights, there is also the shocking unheard story of migrant labourers held in captivity, mercury and uranium deposits from construction work, jingoism, corruption and worse

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the Olympics, be it in the summer or winter, and this includes Sochi. From a very early age, in our Soviet childhoods, we were encouraged to wake up in the middle of the night to watch our ice hockey team playing in Sapporo or Calgary, cheering when they would beat the Canadian team and weeping as they lost to the Czechs. There was an iconic Soviet song at the time: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’. Nowadays, with hindsight, I’m a bit disturbed by these words.In my novel, The Dead Lake, published by Peirene Press this February, I looked at the Soviet nuclear site in Semipalatinsk, which was one of the key sites in the nuclear race between the USSR and the US to produce the deadliest bombs – another example of when we didn’t give a damn about the cost. What I tried to describe in this book is what happens when countries and their elites try to jump higher than the rest of the world – speaking figuratively, it results in their trousers tearing. And those who are left to pay the price or who are left naked in the metaphor are not the elites themselves, but the little people.I find the same disturbing signs with the Sochi Olympics. Here again, the Russian authorities, under President Putin, took up the same motto: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’ – in order to establish the image of Russia as a re-emerging global super-power.First of all, the literal cost of this Olympics is, at a modest estimate, over £30billion – this is as much as all previous winter games combined. When I ask my Russian friends why it’s so excessive, as though the organisers are going to present every single participant and spectator with a personal hand-made snow-flake, they reply with this popular Russian joke:’There was once a tender put out to build an object, and three organisations bid for it. First, an organisation of migrant workers put forward their application: “We’ll build the object very quickly for three million, but no warranties.” Then the state organisation offered their bid: “We’ll build it for six million, but slowly and with guarantees.” Then a bunch of crooks and gangsters bid for the same tender: “It’ll cost nine million: three million to you, three million to us, and then we’ll hire the migrants to build it for three million.”‘Russian authorities vehemently deny allegations of corruption, but both Russian and Western journalists have reported many cases reminiscent of this joke… My BBC colleagues Lucy Ash and Anastasia Uspenskaya are running a series of investigative programmes looking into this problem, as well as other problems regarding the so-called ‘cost’ of the Sochi Olympics. Their conclusion is: the Olympics have brought to Sochi, and to Russia as a whole, an array of new first-class sports complexes, hotels, jobs, entertainment, as well as amnesty to Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, yet in the shadows of that shiny, glossy and encouraging facade there are many untold, darker stories.The Western media have focused a great deal on LGBT rights, but after President Putin’s confession to Andrew Marr that he ‘has gay friends’ it seems that the issue was dropped from the headlines… Less is known in the West about the issue of widespread abuse of migrant workers’ human rights, workers who’d been building the Olympic complex in great numbers. There are reported cases of migrants being severely beaten-up by Cossack vigilante groups, encircled like cattle and kept in metal hangars for several days without food and water, in the middle of the cold winter. Many of them were later deported by force and without any payment for their work.The unpredictable environmental costs of this showcase of Russian might are another worry for local and international activists. On the one hand, activists are worried about the proximity of the gigantic Olympic facilities to the Caucasian and Sochi National Park, with its rare plant and animal species, some of them under threat of extinction. On the other hand, facilities built on the hills by the seashore are under threat of landslides, according to activists, and the excessive use of concrete foundations and stilts may affect the structure of the ground and of the underground aquifers of mineral waters. There were also many concerns about the newly-built cargo port and fears that mercury and uranium deposits might become hazardous because of inappropriate construction work on the slopes. Moreover, while building these facilities on the shore, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary people’s houses were demolished without their consent and in some cases without any compensation…Once again, the same philosophy: ‘We seek after gain so much that we don’t give a damn about the cost’. These poor people are still campaigning for a boycott of the Games. Their voices though remain unheard.About the authorHamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan. He published dozens of books in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages. Hamid Ismailov translated Russian and Western classics into Uzbek, and Uzbek and Persian classics into Russian and some Western languages.Additional informationThe Dead Lake will be launched with three events. The author, Hamid Ismailov, and his publisher, Meike Ziervogel, would be delighted if you could join them. Booking is essential.Tuesday 25th February: Peirene Experience, with music & dramatic performance at Big Green Bookshop.Thursday 26th February: Peirene Supper Club at Book & Kitchen. Join the author for an evening of delicious food, good conversation and great literature.Saturday 1st March: Peirene Salon: An evening of literature, dinner and drink at the publisher’s house.

  • The duty to write

    Journalist-turned-freedom-fighter Mikail Eldin writes for PEN Atlas on his experience of the Chechen wars, and how writing a memoir is a way to honour fallen friends, who risked their lives to ensure he might live to tell their story

    Translated from the Russian by Anna Gunin

    When I began working on my book The Sky Wept Fire, my friends would often ask if it was wise to write about all this so candidly. I agreed with them, it wasn’t wise, but added that it was something I had to do. It wasn’t wise in terms of my own safety, but I had to do it. It was a duty of honour. While I was undergoing that never-ending hell of war, I filmed and photographed everything I could, yet remained aware that all the footage and photos could go missing. And that is just what happened. I was left with nothing but my memories. And it wasn’t a hankering after fame that motivated me to write a memoir. Writing about myself simply seemed more honest, more truthful, because you didn’t need to rely on other people’s sources. And what’s more, writing in this form allowed me to loosen ever so little the red-hot chains of the memories of that hell. To survive a war doesn’t mean you know how to live an ordinary civilian life. You become painfully, profoundly aware of an abyss between you and the world. People don’t understand you, and you have difficulty understanding them. And this abyss cannot be bridged, neither by you nor by them. That’s why it was so important to tell people that we are the same as them. Or we were, at any rate, before our souls were chewed up by the war… We shared the same joys and dreams, the same hopes for love and domestic warmth. We were defending not just our principles, our right to our dreams, but also the right of all people everywhere to have them, and we paid with our dreams, with our messed up fates. This isn’t an attempt to reproach peaceful civilians in their peaceful lives. It’s an attempt to offer a hand to the world across the abyss of alienation. We didn’t choose the war. But the war chose us, chose our generation. And so our generation had to dive into its fiery crater at the turn of the century.Steering clear of the politics, I tried to focus on the war itself. Or rather on the transformation undergone by a peaceful and apolitical person. Looking deep within yourself helps you see that metamorphosis better, understand it more clearly. In war, a person is forever poised between the human and the diabolical, between cruelty and mercy. And your choice, your ability not to lose your humanity is what determines your duty for the rest of your life. Your knowledge of your own self. When you write about war, it is so very hard to be objective. At moments like that it’s important to remember you’re no longer a warrior, you’re a journalist now; an impartial chronicler and witness. And then you have to remember that even in the hell of the concentration camp, you came across humans, true human beings. But it’s simply impossible to be impartial in the proper sense of the word.Here in exile you cannot get used to living simply for life’s sake, to a life without the usual circle of friends, without your beloved albeit dangerous work. It’s hard to adjust to being merely one among thousands of immigrants. Without any name, experience or education, without a motherland; with a dark and suspicious past and a shaky, nebulous future. It doesn’t matter if in reality you are experienced and educated … The initial intoxication of freedom passes. Then you sober up. And you find yourself drowning in a swamp of depression. Yearning for everything that you can never get back. For your motherland, who rejected you merely because you had principles that you were willing to defend. And then you involuntarily return to that life where you meant something to yourself and to the world. Where you did something needed by the people and the motherland. Something we believed in.So what is this duty of honour? It is the chief, perhaps the only reason why I took up writing – the duty I owed to my fallen brothers-in-arms. We were idealists; our only aim was freedom. We learnt to believe in God during this war. To believe genuinely. For belief helped keep insanity at bay. This writing was what my comrades had wanted me to do more than anything. And it was why they tried their hardest to help me survive. Often risking their own lives. This was their dying wish. It was important for me to get through to people: None of us sought war for war’s sake or for the sake of glory. War cripples the souls and breaks the fates of everyone, including those doing the fighting. This should never happen again, not in any land. We will only be able to call ourselves rational beings when we learn to understand one another. And so my writing is an attempt to talk candidly about that hell, to help people understand us. It is not just my own story, but that of all those who will never be able to tell theirs.About the authormikail eldinMikail Eldin worked as a journalist, before taking up arms himself in the conflict with Russia. He eventually left Chechnya in fear for his life and secured political asylum in Norway, where he now lives. His most recent book is The Sky Wept Fire.  About the translatorAnna Gunin is a Russian literary translator. Along with poetry, film and theatre translation, she has translated authors such as German Sadulaev, Denis Gutsko and Pavel Bazhov. Her most recent translation is The Sky Wept Fire by the Chechen poet and journalist Mikail Eldin.  Additional informationMikail will be appearing at the ‘Writing in Conflict’ event at Woolfson & Tay, on 26 November, from 7pm. For more information and how to book, please see here. 

  • Worlds apart: Russia online and offline

    In this week’s PEN Atlas piece, Arkady Babchenko writes on freedom of speech, media and the internet in Russia

    Freedom of speech in Russia remains only on the internet. In fact, Russia exists in two parallel worlds, as it were, two roughly equal parts. According to the recent statistics, the number of internet users has matched the audience of the state-owned TV Channel One, which is the main propaganda tool of the authorities today. These two worlds do not cross at any point. A person who tries browsing the internet once will never go back to television. Internet users no longer want to watch the low-quality Russian TV which offers cheap propaganda of the sort that probably does not exist even in North Korea. Russian TV has been reduced to a downright rubbish heap. When my daughter was born five years ago I unplugged my TV and have never had any need for official TV news again. The Internet is much faster and provides more accurate and objective news. Moreover, it is not censored yet.

    On the other hand, television still enjoys enormous influence in the country and the government effectively uses it to brainwash the public. Not a single piece of news can seep through if it is undesirable. All the information is carefully filtered and presented in the intended light. No live shows are permitted.

    If you were to compare the news on the same day on TV and the internet the difference would be colossal. It’s as if they showed two countries. The online and offline Russias are worlds apart. People who get their information from the Internet will hardly find a common language with those who get it from the “zombie-set”, as the TV came to be called here. They would simply have different points of reference as facts are shamelessly distorted on TV.

    One recent example to illustrate the difference between the censored TV and the uncensored internet view of the same event is how differently the opening of a bridge by Medvedev was reported. The TV showed Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (former president replacing the current president and former Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) pompously opening a new bridge in Vladivostok, which was specially erected for the summit and declared to be the largest suspension bridge on earth. It would seem we have a great cause for pride and celebration. However, it was not mentioned anywhere, except on the internet, that after Medvedev’s departure the bridge was immediately closed because it was not properly finished yet and was unfit for driving. Moreover, the newly built road leading to the bridge (which cost one billion dollars!) was simply washed away by the floods.

    There is also no news in the official media about the hundred- and two-hundred-strong anti-Putin rallies taking place not only in Moscow but all over Russia for the past few months. As if they never happened. You will not learn how the governor of the Krasnodar Region, where Sochi is situated, the venue for the Winter 1914 Olympics, stole several hundred hectares of preserved forest, fenced it in and built a mansion there for himself while two ecologists who tried to protect the national preserve were tried and convicted. You will only learn the truth from the internet, the sad truth of how top officials steal from the state while their children become managers of state corporations and banks, how opposition activists are languishing in prisons, how elections were brazenly forged, and much else. Instead, the Russian TV tells you some nonsense about a handful of discontented individuals who come out to protest against the universally adored Vladimir Putin because they’ve been paid by our enemies from the US State Department and personally by Hilary Clinton. This is not a joke – such is the level of information at the official Russian TV. These programs are interspersed with all sorts of rubbish, such as appalling films full of vulgar humor, violence and sex. The rhetoric of the Stalinist times is coming back to Russian TV. The authorities are obviously aware of an imminent catastrophe and in their attempt to hold on to their feeding troughs they are losing their minds and any sense of reality. We can speak today about a new iron curtain, this time in the sphere of information.

    As a result, increasing numbers of people boycott the TV. I personally stopped having anything to do with TV journalists – all my interviews were crudely put together from random phrases taken out of context so that my ideas were completely distorted. The internet presents real danger for the authorities today. I think either the authorities will have to do away with the internet or the other way round.

    The situation is much the same in the print media. Prior to publication any text has to pass three levels of censorship. The first is the general political censorship existing in our country. Everyone is aware that there are forbidden subjects and forbidden names. They are well known and no clarification is necessary. Putin’s friend, Yuri Kovalchuk, is buying one newspaper after another and establishing strict censorship there. At the same time they publish private correspondence obtained from hackers, recordings of private telephone conversations from bugged phones, and other illegally obtained dirt. All this is dug up with the help of the secret services, but none will lead to public enquiries and possible downfall, as in the case of Rupert Murdoch because the demand comes not from the public, but from the powers that be.

    The second level of censorship is the internal editorial control in the media, not officially imposed by the government, and which functions differently depending on the media. For example, the media who wish to be independent, but have to play by the rules or disappear, like Yandex. They started as a search engine and soon became a starting point for the entire ru.net and a powerful information resource, a Russian alternative to Google. Yandex sincerely wanted to behave in a civilized manner but finally was obliged to introduce censorship. A few days ago all the top news lines were devoted to Putin – welcome to North Korea!

    Then there is truly independent media. But the problem is that they are no longer objective.  In the absence of a political field in Russia the media no longer perform the function of an information source as such. And since, as is well known, nature abhors a vacuum, the media has assumed the aberrant role of political parties. Nowadays readers choose periodicals not on the basis of their quality, but according to their political orientation and compatibility with their own views. For instance, the readers of the Zavtra (Tomorrow) will never subscribe to Novaya Gazeta (New Paper) even if Hemingway himself were to publish there. Or vice versa.

    It goes for the journalists too – a text contradicting the views of the editors will never be published. Journalists, generally known here for their lack of principles and for moral pliancy, know this factor very well and make good use of it. For instance, if you write for the opposition media, you are supposed to avoid mentioning certain things and emphasize certain other things while some word combinations would be taboo altogether. For the liberal-minded media you can get away with just mentioning the “bloody regime”. For the patriotic-minded press the word “regime” should be replaced with “NATO” which naturally should also be called “bloody”.

    If you observe only these rules of censorship, you can get any text published, however mediocre, even on the front page. If you don’t observe these rules and write what you really think and how you actually see things your text has very little chance of publication.

    In today’s journalism your intellectual abilities and your talent are of the least importance – the main thing is the tendentiousness of your text, and a required orientation. If you play by the rules you’ll be in clover.

    In apolitical periodicals there is another form of censorship – the format. In my understanding there are two types of texts: good or bad, interesting or boring. But the difference between the right format and the wrong format is something I don’t understand. Or perhaps I do. This is the editors’ pretext to reject articles, a reason well known the world over, a kind of a soap bubble: pretty on the outside and empty inside, a trendy envelope with zero content.

    To sum up: I’m sick and tired of selecting the correct words. I’m sick and tired of taking into consideration the editors’ views and political orientations. I’m sick and tired of kowtowing to them so as to be able to publish some banal rubbish instead of producing intelligible and well-written articles about really urgent and interesting things.

    Therefore, I abandoned the media in favour of the internet and now I use a simple scheme which is already functioning in many countries. Essentially, it boils down to a short formula: “I write what I think and you pay what you can.” In other words, I write my texts with maximum objectivity, without taking into account any editorial policies, I share my thoughts and ideas with the reader without regard to format, and the reader evaluates my texts in the form of a direct payment, bypassing any middlemen and editorial offices with their correct policies and incomprehensible formats.

    I’m satisfied with this relationship and it seems my readers are as well. In my blog I can write what I want without thinking whether the editors will accept my texts or not, whether I’ll be promoted or discharged. And it gives me a sense of freedom.

    Moreover, now that I’m only writing for my blog I have not fallen out of the information space but, on the contrary, I’m now more actively involved in it. Due to the vacuum in the media “Live Journal” (Zhivoy Zhurnal) in Russia has grown into a powerful independent resource, at least for the time being. My articles came to be reprinted by many leading information agencies and periodicals.

    This involves some personal risks, of course. As an active oppositionist calling on people to fight for their freedom I have had a court case opened against me, accusing me of “instigating mass riots”. The secret services are watching over me, my telephone is bugged, and when I make myself a cup of tea I hope to god there is no polonium in it. But as we say in Russian: “He who is afraid of wolves should not go into the forest” – that is, nothing ventured nothing gained.

    In fact, thanks to the internet, everything becomes public now. The journalistic community rose to my defence and so I do not feel alone in the face of the regime. There are many bloggers like me and victory will be ours. Long live the internet, a perfect space for freedom!

    About the Author

    Arkady Babchenko was born in 1977 in Moscow. A lawyer by training he was drafted to the army while still a student and spent three years fighting in Chechnya (Northern Caucasus). After demobilization he finished college and wrote his famous war memoires now published in 22 countries. He has mainly worked as a war correspondent for various media, including for Novaya Gazeta. The last two years he has been an active blogger and opposition activist. He lives in Moscow, is married and has a little daughter.

    One Soldier’s War in Chechnya was published by Portobello Books and English PEN’s Writers in Translation Programme supported the book in 2007. Arkady Babchenko’s blog can be found here.

    About the Translator

    Natasha Perova is the publisher of Glas, a magazine for contemporary Russian writing and a coordinator of international programme for Debut Prize Foundation.

  • The Debut Generation

    Alisa Ganieva writes about the republic of Dagestan, winning the Debut Prize, and the moment when the identity of the mysterious author Gulla Khirachev was revealed…

    In Soviet times there was a concept known as ‘young writers’. It was in fact a class concept. A budding writer was expected to descend from the working class and to glorify the Soviet regime. All facilities were provided for this purpose, such as the Gorki Literary Institute, founded to teach workers creative writing.

    Today, a life of a young writer in Russia is very different. Writers of the younger generation don’t belong to any creative trade unions, they do not rally round any single idea and they don’t accept any authorities. We grew up in the period of chaos, with social and state institutions falling apart around us. As a result, the works of 20 and 30 years-old writers are marked by split consciousness, a feeling of total estrangement and rejection of all authorities (including parents and elders).

    My literary career was strongly boosted by the Debut Prize, which I won in 2009. The Debut was founded in 2000, when for a young unknown author it was next to impossible to be published or noticed.The introduction of this prize changed the literary life of many writers from Denis Osokin, Igor Savelyev, Arkady Babchenko, Polina Klukina to Aleksander Snegirev, Natalya Kluchareva, Irina Bogatyreva, Aleksey Kachsheev and many others. In 2010 Olga Slavnikova, the 2006 Russian Booker Prize winner and the Debut’s Director, initiated an international translation and promotional program to introduce Debut Prize winners to overseas readers. As a result all of these authors are now published in many languages by well known publishing houses from Gallimard to Suhrkamp, as well as by Natasha Perova in English by GLAS.

    I am from Dagestan, but now I live in Moscow. At first I used a male pen name: Gulla Khirachev. There were two reasons for this. First, in our literary circles, I was well known as a critic and I did not want my reputation to influence the Debut jury. The second reason was more important: my writing describes the male-dominated world of today’s Dagestan and the hero is a young man, so I wrote my initial piece of prose under a male pseudonym, because women in Dagestan are not supposed to write about street life and men’s issues.

    So, when I sent my manuscript to the Debut Prize, everybody was deluded. During two months, while the jury was working, journalists didn’t stop making conjectures and suppositions about the unknown Gulla. I remember how Aleksander Ilichevski, the Russian Booker Prize winner, who was in the jury that year, began to ask me: “Do you know this boy? Is he well known in your region? Is he at least handsome?” After the short-list was announced, I opened myself only to Olga Slavnikova. Finally, my identity was revealed during the award ceremony, and the public was so shocked, that some of them continue talking about the real author of my stories, slaving in a basement. Since then I have had a torrent of very different letters from Dagestan, lots of them accusing me of “betraying my motherland” and “slandering my place of birth”.

    The Caucasian mountainous republic of Dagestan is populated by approximately 100 nationalities, each with a language and ethnic characteristics of their own. Most of them are represented by fewer than 1,000 people. The capital Makhachkala is a melting pot of all of them. All sorts of climates and landscapes coexist and all sorts of ideologies clash. Well educated, progressive-minded people, lowbrow Islamic fundamentalists, followers of the local brand of Islam known as Tarikat (which means The Way), former communists, urban outcasts and country bumpkins; also strong are the Wahabis who believe that an independent Islamic state will solve the problems of unemployment,  lawlessness, gang rule, and all-round corruption.

    In my Debut winning novel, Salam, Dalgat!, I wanted to show the split personality typical of young Dagestanis today: on the one hand, they live in a secular state at the time of globalisation with all the benefits it provides; but on the other hand, the conservative Caucasian mentality is still strong in them.

    The plot of my novel Salam, Dalgat! is simple: a young boy Dalgat moves about the city searching for a relative meeting all sorts of people and witnessing various events.  Full of street scenes and conversations in a peculiar Dagestani version of Russian, local expressions, dialect, and Arabic words, Salam Dalgat! reflects our contemporary society with all its contraditions and difficulties.

    In Dagestan, traditional closed society comes into conflict with modern, open society. To my great regret, Dagestanis are increasingly losing their age-old inimitable culture. Each mountain village looks like a castle or a beehive, clinging to a rock, and almost each village is famous for its craftsmen: goldsmiths, silversmiths, potters, carpet-makers and felt makers. Young Dagestanis are forgetting their native languages and customs, turning to the East, especially to the Arab world, for imitation. However, in the past Dagestani culture was closer to the European world. Now Dagestan is a tangle of painful problems and in my stories I try to show the main ones, to inspire a public discussion.

    My next novel Festal Mountain will be published in Russia in June. It describes an imaginary, but not impossible situation in Dagestan when the North Caucasus is suddenly and stealthily cut from Russia with a wall, and people have to adapt to a new life full of struggles between contradictory forces. Unfortunately, nobody is writing about modern life in Dagestan. The few elder writers, members of the Writers’ Union, keep working in their tradition, surviving from previous decades. Most of them use their native languages and suffer from a lack of good translators. Although I would like to mention original, bright and exceptional writers like the poet Adallo or the writer Gazimagomed Galbatsov.

    My peers for some reason do not describe what’s going on now, maybe because it’s hard for them to distance themselves sufficiently to describe what they see. Nevertheless, there are a few interesting young poets, for instance, Fazir Djaferov or Vadim Keramov, but they all have moved to Moscow over the last few years. Intellectuals leave, and a lot of people who stay are trying to aggressively impose their vision on others. In every conversation they ask if you pray, and if not, why not, they endlessly lecture you, being neophytes themselves. It’s wearisome. I believe that creating new worlds – is a good strategy for escaping and even transforming the reality. I hope that the ‘Debut’ generation in Russia will manage this task in the near future.

    About the Author

    Alisa Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but soon moved with her family to their native Dagestan. A graduate of Moscow’s  Literary Institute, Ganieva has since won numerous awards for her prose and also a prize for her literary criticism.  Salam, Dalgat! her first novel won the Debut Prize in 2009. This book  was written under a pseudonym of  Gulla Khirachev, a Dagestani male name. Alisa uncovered her true identity only after the announcement of the award of the Debut Prize.    Salam, Dalgat! has since been translated into English and is available in Squaring the Circle, an anthology writing from the Debut Prize winners.

    Additional Information

    Alisa Ganieva, Salam tebe, Dalgat! (Russian) : Astrel, 2010

    Debut Prize – Martin Amis and Olga Slavnikova

    Publishers Weekly report – Debut Prize

    Arkady Babchenko, One Soldiers War in Chechnya

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