Too Good To Be True

See how far you get in this before you say, "Too good to be true."  I must warn you that the perpetrator of this particular plan is Sergey Mavrodi, notorious in Russia for an earlier Ponzi scheme called MMM.  In the early 1990's he bilked millions of Russians out of their life savings.  When MMM collapsed, Mavrodi was punished. He was sent to some sort of prison for 4 1/2 years and fined the equivalent of $390. 

Anyway, Mavrodi has a new scheme, which he calls MMM-2012. Similar to social networks, Mavrodi says, he has created a financial network. "Can you imagine Facebook, but purely financial?" he asks on his website.  "Participants help each other, " he says, "by sending money to who needs it the most, but after a while the money is returned with high interest."

The plan is 100 percent legal, he says, and currently has 35 million participants. Mavrodi invites you to imagine how many participants there will be once the plan is available in Europe and the United States. "It is spreading across the globe at a faster rate than any network in the world."

As Mavrodi explains, "The current world's financial system is built by banks that are loaning us our own money. Contrary to that Social Financial Network allows to create direct mutual financial relationships between the participants. In essence the network is a pure, open financial pyramid like banks, pension funds etc. You "lend" the money to the network and it is used for payouts to other other participants. The deposited money is returned with very high monthly interest - 30%."

Note that Mavrodi admits he's running a financial pyramid. He says it's "a pure, open financial pyramid like banks, pension funds, etc." To many Russians banks don't seem any safer than Mavrodi's rather risky business. Older Russians remember the shock of bank closings in 1998 without deposit insurance to protect them.  There has been some payback since then, starting with the oldest depositors first, but 14 years later, as those in their 40s are getting some money back, it would need to be at least four times their original deposit to account for what inflation has done to purchasing power.  What they're getting instead is a pittance.

 Russians today still put little trust in private banks.  The state bank is safe but is perceived as paying less interest than the rate of inflation.  It's best to spend whatever money you have; however, what happens if an emergency comes up and you don't have savings?  Take your valuables to a pawnshop.  I saw one advertising a rate that was .4 percent per day.  You better hope to redeem your valuables quickly at that compounded rate!

The Russian stock market is highly volatile and corporate financial reporting opaque.  So given all the unsatisfactory alternatives, there is a real attraction to trying to get in early into a Ponzi scheme.  Those who missed out on MMM-2011 now have a chance to get into MMM-2012.

There's something wrong about MMM being 100 percent legal. The Duma appears to be too busy with other matters to address the continuing fleecing of Russian citizens. Yet I seriously doubt that Mavrodi has fooled 35 million people in MMM-2012.  His original Ponzi scheme is thought to have caught 5 - 15 million before it collapsed or was shut down. (Many Russians blamed the authorities for shutting it down, sure that the were about to receive big payoffs.  The authorities may have saved Mavrodi from being tarred and feathered.)

Igor Ogorodnev, a writer for the government-funded RT network, looked at MMM last year and said,  "Many see MMM-2011 as either an indictment of a hopelessly flawed people prepared to spend their life savings on magic beans, or a social system in which many would rather trust a convicted criminal than a bank."

Ogorodnev added, "And until there is a better way for Mavrodi’s misguided flock, there is every chance we will live to see MMM-2021."  So if you don't get into MMM-2012 you will probably have an opportunity to get into MMM-2013.

An Infomercial for a B & B

Consider this an infomercial for a bed and breakfast in Moscow. I'm passing on this information with some secrecy, because those of us in the know don't like to share our discovery.  Accordingly you will not get an address or telephone number here. We make recommendations directly to friends and to friends of friends, but not to the general public. The reason is that we are protective of our hostess.

Marina, as we shall call her, is two decades past retirement age in Russia. As she observes, a pensioner in Russia without additional income cannot afford something as simple as fresh fruit other than from her own garden in summer. Marina likes fresh fruit. She also likes to travel internationally. She can afford both indulgences by providing B and B services to select clients.

Marina has a regular client from Italy who comes on monthly business trips. She also gets referrals from some embassies because of her prime location, modern accommodations, and gracious hostessing.   A Spanish travel writer who stayed with Marina said that he would not publish a review of her place because she wouldn't want all the bother that would come with the publicity.  The business she has is enough for her.

I must admit than even better than being a client of Marina is to be her friend. Together we've gone to  several art exhibitions, traveled around central Moscow, and attended a wonderful concert at the New Opera Theatre.  Marina has fed me not only breakfast but also dinner and supper.

Here is a description of the first meal of the day:  an offering of homemade muesli, several types of yogurt, a basket of breads with a selection of toppings including smoked salmon, a pate, two kinds of cheese, and fresh red caviar. (I'm Russian enough to appreciate caviar any time of day.). After that comes Marina's unique interpretation of the Russian classic cirniki, cheese pancakes.  (I'm going home with the recipe.). Marina also had on the table an apple tarte she had prepared the day before, and a selection of vareniye, homemade jams.  In addition to Russian standard tea she also offered coffee -- Turkish style, or French, with chicory.

For lavish attention it's hard to beat what you get at this B and B.

When a Rose is Not a Rose

A rose is a rose, except when it is not.  In an alternate reality a rose might be… a Romanov.

Here is some history that didn’t happen.

Tsar Nikolas II was so happy upon the birth of his first born in 1895 that he declared her to be tsarevna.  (For this story I had to make up a word in Russian for a concept that never existed: future empress of Russia).  Little Olga Nikolaevna would one day be the ruler of Russia, whose title would be after his, making her Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias.

The people were surprised but also joyful.  After all, Catherine the Great had shown how well a woman can wield power, although in her case it was after she wrested the crown from her husband Peter III (Her grandson, Paul I, issued a decree that women could never be in line to become ruler, and it was this decree that Nikolas reversed).  The people eagerly passed on stories they heard about pretty little Olga as she grew up.

During her early childhood Olga was sheltered with her younger sisters, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and little brother Alexei (who in real life was known as tsarevich, future tsar of Russia).  The family tragedy was that Alexei was hemophiliac, a disorder known as “the royal disease” having come down from Queen Victoria of England through the bloodline of Alexei’s mother, Tsaritsa Alexandra.  The tsaritsa was understandably preoccupied with the precarious health of her youngest, and unfortunately fell under the influence of a rogue monk by the name of Gregory Rasputin who claimed himself to be more important than doctors in preserving the life of Alexei (“do not let the doctors bother him too much”  -- actually often good advice for that era). Finally Rasputin’s spell was broken by a church bishop, who disciplined Rasputin for his profligate ways, and sent him off to a monastery.

As we can find written today in Wikipedia, “Olga loved to read and, unlike her four siblings, enjoyed school work.”  Her French tutor, Pierre Gilliard said "She had good reasoning powers as well as initiative, a very independent manner, and a gift for swift and entertaining repartee." She enjoyed reading about politics and read newspapers. Olga also reportedly enjoyed choosing from her mother's book selection. When she was caught taking a book before her mother read it, Olga would jokingly tell her mother that Alexandra must wait to read the novel until Olga had determined whether it was an appropriate book for her to read.”

When Olga was 18 it was decided that she was old enough to think about marriage.  Although the tradition had been that Russian princes would look to Europe to find a consort, with both love and politics being involved in the decision, the circumstances for Olga looked different.  Besides, it was her desire to marry a Russian.  Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was suggested, but since a long trip for educational purposes was always an important part of training for members of the Romanov imperial house, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna decided to seek her future husband during a long tour around Russia. 

The grand duchess traveled with a large entourage, and at each stop there were cotillion dances and concerts and other social occasions in the evening where young people could mingle under proper supervision.  During the day Olga met with local officials, who were impressed when she sent their concerns by telegram to her father Tsar Nicholas II.  A court official, Alexander Mossolov, said that Olga was a person with an almost “angelic kindness.”

Olga met the man who would become her husband while she was in Bashkortostan.  Yusuf Arsal was the son of a prominent Tatar family, of high enough position to be worthy of being her escort.  But as a Sunni Muslim he was expected to convert to Russian Orthodoxy before marriage.  In an arrangement not dissimilar to what had been worked out for her German Lutheran mother, Olga allowed Yusuf to be converted to Orthodoxy without having to renounce his former faith.  As a consequence, Yusuf was seen regularly going to church with Olga, but at the time of Ramadan went back to Bashkortostan to visit his family of origin.

It was widely known around Russia, that unlike her arch-conservative father, Grand Duchess Olga supported the idea of Russia becoming a constitutional monarchy like the United Kingdom.  As a consequence when her father’s reign got in trouble, there were increasingly strident calls for his abdication and her elevation to the throne. 

Under great pressure Nikolas II did abdicate in 1914 in favor of his daughter, who at the time was just 18 and recently married.  Tsarista Olga Nikolaevna immediately had to deal with the consequences of the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  As Count Witte told the French Ambassador Paleologue, “from Russia's point of view the war was madness, Slav solidarity was simply nonsense and Russia could hope for nothing from the war.”  The tsarista informed her French and English allies that Russia would not rush precipitously to war.  And although Russia did eventually enter into the Great War, millions of Russian lives were saved by Tsarista Olga’s decision to build up Russian strengths first.

FOOTNOTE:  The above account is correct in the small details and wrong on all the big points.  
1.  Olga was never considered to be named successor to her father. Her invalid brother was next in line.
2.   Rasputin controlled the woman who controlled the tsar until the night of his murder.
3.  Neither Rasputin nor Empress Alexandra nor Tsar Nikolas II showed competence in running the country.
4.   Nikolas II didn't abdicate until 1917 when he was absolutely forced to do so.  By then his ruinous military campaign in World War I staggered the country with huge losses. Out of 15.5 million men mobilized, over half were killed or became casualties or prisoners of war.
5.  Olga and the rest of her family were assassinated by Bolshevik Communists while under house arrest in Yekaterinburg in 1917.  Olga never had the chance to be married.

I leave it to the reader to imagine how different 20th Century history around the world might have been if Olga Nikolaevna had become constitutional monarch of Russia.

Views of Yekaterinburg

One of the many new Othodox churches here

Before concluding this blog of time in Yekaterinburg, I will use it as a record of the menu for the big dinner I prepared for seven this weekend.  It was Russian in style, with some American elements.

The table was set with platters of zakuski, or appetizers. These included poached salmon with dill and lemon, salted mushrooms, avocado slices and cucumber spears, tri-color pepper rings, wedges of brie with toasted lavash, black bean-corn-tomato relish, ratatouille, quail eggs dipped in toasted sesame seeds, and two kinds of canapes.  After an hour or so came the hot dishes:  sliced pork tenderloin studded with cloves, buckwheat kasha with vermicelli, and sauteed Chinese cabbage.  For dessert we had bakery pastries, chocolate covered cherries, and a platter of grapes and plums.

My guests had never split lavash and toasted it, I learned, or had toasted bread of any kind -- Russians eat bread fresh.  The black beans were totally unfamiliar to my guests because they had come from the U.S. in dried form a couple of years ago, and I found them in a cabinet.   Vermicelli mixed into buckwheat kasha was different but acceptable.  The hit was the quail eggs. They are difficult to peel, and I was asked, "How did you peel them?"  The answer:  "Very carefully."  (It's important not to shatter the shell, and to try to get it off in just two or three pieces.)

A dinner party always means left-overs.  Tonight I don't have to cook!

Bronze statues in a pedestrian area

The sign says, "Legendarni vopper na gril"

Crazy Russians

In writing "Crazy Americans" I hadn't intended to follow it with "Crazy Russians," but events have overtaken me.  In this post I'm going to quote heavily from a piece written by Michael Boehm, opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.  He notes that the wave of anger in the Middle East over the anti-Islam video "Innocence of Muslims" may at its root have similarities to anti-Americanism in Russia. 

In both cases there is a rather successful effort to deflect popular discontent and blame the United States for whatever is wrong.  Secondly, regions that nostagically remember past glory resent the current king-of-the-hill.  And third, both these regions are populated with people who have a predilection for conspiracy theories. 

Here's what is said in Russia, as reported by Michael Boehm:
  
"Prominent journalist Maxim Shevchenko has suggested that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may have stood behind the production of "Innocence of Muslims." Shevchenko, who made his remarks on Sept. 13 on Ekho Moskvy radio, isn't alone in embracing this conspiracy theory, which has been circulated in the Russian blogosphere. The motive behind provoking the Muslim world with the video, Shevchenko reasoned, was to boost Obama's popularity two months away from the U.S. presidential election by creating a major crisis, much like the 9/11 attacks initially consolidated Americans around President George W. Bush and increased his ratings. This, Shevchenko said, may explain why there was so little security protecting the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and why the ambassador and three other Americans ended up dead.

"Russians' fondness for conspiracy theories is exceeded perhaps only by Muslims'. In Egypt, for example, 75 percent of Muslims believe U.S. authorities carried out the 9/11 attacks, according to a 2011 Pew poll. In Russia, the figure is 16 percent, according to a 2008 Levada poll, with 20 percent having difficulty answering.

"Clearly, flawed U.S. policies in the Middle East, including the Iraq invasion and decades of support for secular autocrats, have fueled anti-Americanism in the region. But Husain Haqqani, formerly Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, believes that anti-Americanism among Muslims has other important roots as well. In a Sept. 13 comment in The Wall Street Journal, he wrote: "At the heart of Muslim street violence is the frustration of the world's Muslims over their steady decline for three centuries, a decline that has coincided with the rise and spread of the West's military, economic and intellectual prowess. … The image of an ascendant West belittling Islam with the view to eliminate it serves as a convenient explanation for Muslim weakness.

"For Russia watchers, this should sound familiar. This phenomenon also underlies the anti-­Americanism stoked by the Kremlin. The only difference is that the Kremlin's propaganda hasn't led to angry mobs storming the U.S. Embassy or consulates. Rather, it is limited to anti-American comments by the nation's leaders and crude propaganda programs on state-run television. The latest example was "Provocateurs: Part Two," shown on Rossia 1 last week, and suggested that the West, along with self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovksy, organized Pussy Riot's purported attempt to undermine the country's cultural foundation and values.

"In addition, for months the Kremlin has carried out attacks against U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations, which have been labeled as fifth columns whose mission is to weaken the state and organize an Orange-style revolution. The Kremlin's campaign reached a climax this month when the Foreign Ministry gave notice to the U.S. government that the Russia office of USAID, a major sponsor of Russian NGOs such as Golos, must be closed by Oct. 1 because of USAID's "meddling in Russia's domestic politics."

Like in many Muslim countries, Russia's state-sponsored anti-U.S. propaganda helps boost ratings for the country's leaders and deflect attention from domestic problems. The irony, however, is that against the backdrop of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, dozens of Libyans stand in line every day at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to get visas to study or work in the United States. Even more people wait for U.S. visas in Moscow every day.

"There is another similarity between anti-­Americanism in Russia and the Muslim world: the need for Potemkin victories. Both Muslims and Russians want to look like they are successful in the absence of real international victories and development at home.

"Thankfully, Russia's Potemkin victories against the United States are not violent like in North Africa and the Middle East. But they do take the form of playing the spoiler role on the United Nations Security Council — Syria being the latest example — largely to spite the United States and to force Washington to acknowledge that key international issues cannot be solved without Moscow.

"The Muslim world's steady 300-year decline has arguably played an important role in shaping its worldview and, specifically, anti-Americanism. Of course, Russia's decline from its superpower status is more recent and less severe but hardly less painful.

"Still, Russia should take a lesson from Britain on how to recover gracefully from lost-superpower status. Much of Russia is, indeed, stuck in the nostalgia of the past — in an overglorified version of Soviet power and influence.

Boehm concludes, "The past is a bad place to be. There is no future in it."

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/islamic-fundamentalists-in-the-kremlin/468525.html#ixzz274Cr8OG8

Crazy Americans

I have been waiting for an excuse to put up this poster.  It gives a rather fractured view of America, and that is perfect for my topic of the day: Crazy Americans.

It’s no surprise to most Americans to learn that news coverage of the United States is skewed in some countries to unfavorable stories.  If there’s something bad happening, it will get a lot of attention.  A child who murders his parents, check. Rogue businessmen like Bernie Madoff, check.  Hurricanes and floods, check.  

In Russia there's an element of schadenfreude in the coverage of negativity to the U.S. at points around the world.  Troubles in Libya and Egypt?  The U.S. deserves it!  The U.S. meddles in the Middle East and meddles in Russian internal affairs and doesn't understand the resentment it causes.  How presumptuous it is for the United States to push its values onto other people!

American values are well known here -- America is all about consumerism.  Russians see American movies and American television shows and it is obvious that Americans live extraordinarily well.  Of course there's a criminal element and resulting violence in the U.S., but for the most part ordinary Americans live a rather trouble-free life.  

Judging ordinary life through what is shown in movies and on television may present a skewed view.    Two Russian women with whom I had tea yesterday got into a discussion of “Pretty Woman” and whether or not Julie Roberts accurately represented prostitutes in America.  (They quickly decided it would be highly unlikely to come across a suave client like Richard Gere.)

There is another type of impression that is fostered in Russia and perhaps elsewhere.  It is of crazy Americans and the weird things they do.

One news story this week was about a college professor in Iowa who asserts that Jesus Christ was a Muslim.  Since it didn’t make sense to me to think that Jesus could be an adherent of a religion that didn’t exist in his lifetime, I had to go to the Internet to check out the story.  It turned out that there is indeed a crackpot who redefined Islam as not dependent upon the primacy of Mohammed as a prophet.  The guy said that Islam isn’t really a religion but a system of social justice, and Jesus Christ was all about social justice, too.  Did American newspapers waste much ink on this story?  I doubt it.

Radio C broadcast a report about “an acoustic cat” that the CIA spent $20 million on to be a spy.  But on its very first outing, in Washington, DC, the cat went splat when it was hit by a taxi.  There’s a Wikipedia article about this apparently true episode from the 1960s, when miniaturization of electronics wasn't yet particularly successful.  The story has been around for years.  Why is it reported as news in 2012?

An article I remember from years ago in a respected publication called “Argumenti [and] Fakti” was a compilation of outdated laws that were still on the books in the United States. They were the sort of triviliality that gets ignored because they’re not important enough to repeal them.  A quick check of Google brought up some of these from LegalZoom.  In Missouri it’s illegal to drive down the highway with an uncaged bear in your car.  And when parking your elephant at a meter in Orlando Florida, you must deposit the same amount of change as you would for a regular motor vehicle.

Somewhere in the United States there is a very lazy Russian journalist.  He may be, as one person said to me today, “a couch tomato.”  Once a week he gets up and goes to a local supermarket and buys the tabloids.  He looks for news of the weird, and translates it into Russian.  On a slow news day he goes through his stacks of old papers or checks the web.  

This material may be true, but is it real?  What is the real America?

Veggi-tales

The Russian summer is short, but the days are long.  Fruit and vegetables grow and mature while you are looking at them.  The zucchini pictured above is big enough to feed two people for nearly a week –five days, to be exact.

What I really love are Russian carrots.  There’s a strong possibility that carrots which are home-grown anywhere taste entirely different from the farm factory type.  What you need to do is leave carrots in the ground until after the first frost, then harvest them and eat them as quickly as you can.  Crisp and sweet.  Ah!

When I get home I’m going to see if my Russian recipes with carrots turn out as good with American carrots.   

CARROT PUDDING

2 cups grated carrots, sautéed in butter

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 lb tvorog or farmer’s cheese

¼ cup white raisins

Salt and sugar to taste

Sour cream to top the pudding

Mix the first ingredients and place in a buttered casserole.  Top with sour cream.  Bake at 350 degrees about 15 minutes and then let cool.

The recipe may need some tweaking.  How much sugar?  Enough to make this dish into a dessert.  What about tvorog?  It seems to be available only at Russian markets, and “farmer’s cheese” may be known by other terms.  My version of tvorog is strained yogurt. 

Now, there are lots of recipes for carrot pudding.  The Eipcurious app on my iPad just found a few with wildly different ingredients.  I may experiment.

WINTER SALAD

1 lb carrots, grated

1 lb onion rings

1 lb pepper rings

1 lb tomatoes, quartered

1 T salt

1/3 cup oil

1/3 c. sugar

Vinegar to taste

50 grams of water

There are many variations of this salad, some of which use thinly sliced cabbage, and lemon juice instead of vinegar, and dill, bay leaf, and parsley.  Usually the vegetables are layered in a glass container, the dressing ingredients heated together and then poured on top.  It may be refrigerated for a few days before eating, or canned in glass jars.

CARROT MARMALADE

1 lb. carrots, grated

1 – 2 onions, diced

1 tomato, diced

Salt to taste

Saute in oil.  Serve as a side dish.  One of my favorites! I hope it works with American carrots!

An Ordinary Week

A rainy day in Yekaterinburg

Although I may be mistaken, it looks like this is going to be a rather ordinary week.  I'm not dealing with hallucinations from jet lag, and I am settled in here in Yekaterinburg.

There are some housekeeping matters to attend to.  Slava keeps the place pretty clean while he's here, but I've noticed that there are things that still need doing.  I may be sexist, but I don't think that men remember as often as women to empty the crumb tray on a toaster.  Window sills need dusting, and then there's ordinary cooking and cleaning to do.

Tuesday and Wednesday I'm having friends over for tea, and Slava's family will come over for dinner on Friday or Saturday.  I'm scheduled to go back two more times to the agricultural college, although I don't think I did so well the first time.  Thinking that the faculty might want to learn about land grant universities in the United States, I've done some research on how they were set up in 1862 under the first Morrill Land Grant Act, signed into law by President Lincoln.  It should be noted that half the U.S. population at the time lived on farms.

As we were dealing with the consequences of slavery, Russian tsar Alexander II decided to free the serfs, saying, "it is better to liberate the peasants from above than wait until they win their freedom by risings from below."  The Russian nobility was not in a position to oppose this measure, because to maintain their lifestyle and get cash, the nobles had mortgaged an increasing percentage of this human property.  When 23 million serfs became free to leave the property on which they were born, they found their freedom as hollow as did many former slaves did in the U.S. during Reconstruction.

I diverge.  It turns out I won't be talking at the agricultural college about the set up of land grant colleges in the U.S., and I certainly won't be talking about Russian serfdom,  I also won't be talking about the agricultural experiment stations established under the Hatch Act of 1887, which sent cooperative extension agents into rural areas.  I've been asked to talk about international relations.  I'm rather certain this means, "How can we arrange to send someone to the United States?" and "Can we get anyone to come here as a visiting professor?"

The Cold Comfort of Cynicism

I have some advice for would-be despots, and there always seem to be a few springing up here or there.  If you want to subvert whatever bits of democracy there are in your country, do whatever you can to promote cynicism.

The first step I recommend is to raise small hopes in people -- and then crush them.  No, not the people, just their hopes.  Be ready with a scapegoat or two for the troubles.  External scapegoats are safer to use than internal ones -- remember that people will become angry with those being scapegoated.

The next step is fun but a little dangerous.  You need to put incompetent people in positions of authority, and protect them behind-the-scenes.  You're then ready to make the public feel they're right to be cynical, and this is very important for the following reason:  It promotes passivity, which is just what you need.

Cynical people tend to think of themselves as "realists."  That's okay.  It inocculates them from hope.  If anyone from the outside tries to promote hope, the cynics will actively reject that approach because it doesn't fit their mindview.

  In Time Must Have a Stop, Aldous Huxley has a character say:

           Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

 A modern despot needs to remember that.  You can't maintain a situation that others would find intolerable unless you make sure that there is a good excuse for them to do nothing about it.  Cynical "realism" does the job.

Religious faith can be a threat to cynicism.  Even when there is no hope for change in the immediate future, a religious person can envision a world different from the existing one.  And a person may move in the direction of the vision.  That must be stopped!  Fortunately, it's fairly easy to do.  Promote hypocrisy.  Buy off religious leaders if you can, or point out some silliness that they do.  Demonstrate hypocrisy yourself.  Pretend to be religous.  Alternatively you can highlight extremism in the name of religion and call for rejection of religious people for that reason.  Deal harshly with any religious minorities; they're the most troublesome because they want a measure of independence. Fortunately dominant groups usually don't mind when only minorities are persecuted. 

You may worry that access to modern media will expose your people to ideas of freedom and responsibility.  Yes, that can be a problem, so do be sure to have some controls on the media.  There are lots of ways of doing this; just look around and see what other despots are doing. State television is your biggest friend.  You get to choose what is shown, and what is said.  The surrealistic looks real that way, and the cynical viewpoint can be reinforced again and again.

If your people wonder if there are genuine benefits to democracy that they are missing, you need to circulate some conspiracy theories about how things in democracies are not really as they seem on the surface. Talk about puppet masters and challenge your people to look for invisible strings that are being pulled.  If you've properly prepared them to be cynical, they'll see malevolence everywhere they look.

Young people seem to be idealistic and optimistic by nature, and of course those traits have to be snipped out.  Use your education system to do this.  Have teacher salaries be as low as possible and show indifference to the concerns of educators.  You want to have in the classroom adults who feel bitter and depressed.  Then make sure that the testing system is one that allows for widespread cheating.  Your young people will feel cynical in no time.

I haven't mentioned corruption.  It's something you want, and the more, the better.  Make sure that it's obvious that you reward loyalty over competence.  You don't need to take much for yourself, because you can command luxuries to honor your position.  You can allow those nearest and dearest to you to start sipping from government troughs as soon as you've loosened the democratic government bonds of  accountability.

Fortunately national governments have pretty much backed away from military conquests to gain territories.  You're fairly safe and don't have to spend a lot on military matters (unless you want to do so), as long as you remember that to stay in power you kill hopes, not people.

Diplomatic endeavors?  Mere hand-wringing.  If you enjoy trips to New York City and Geneva and Brussels and other foreign capitals, then do join the diplomatic circuit.  You may not be invited to all the social parties, but you can give parties for your own friends.

Economic threats?  Sometimes these can cause you pain.  Be sure to look out for them and take steps to protect your family and immediate friends. 

Ah, do I sound cynical?  Just surprised.  I hadn't realized how easy it would be in the 21st century to shrug off the progress of human rights.  But watch out.  Danger to you comes from people inside your country who reject cynicism as an excuse for doing nothing.

Views of Bashkortostan

The beginning of autumn

Bashkortostan has white birch forests intermingled with dark green pine.  There are trees that I cannot name in either English or Russian, but there is one tree of particular importance here:  the linden.  The linden tree flowers in the spring, and bees produce honey from the nectar of these flowers.  Russians regard Bashkirian honey as about  the finest in the land.

A meadow at the edge of a birch forest

 In winter this meadow will be covered with snow, because it is actually the end of a ski slope.  I looked up, up, up and decided it was a slope I preferred covered with grass.

Lake Bannoe

The photo shown here does not do justice to the dramatic look of the hills behind Lake Bannoe.  The low hills surrounding the lake are golden in bright sun, covered with the grass of summer that has turned yellow.  Behind these hills are higher hills shrouded in purple haze.

A Quiet Day

Although I've enjoyed the sauna in our hotel suite, I can imagine how important it can be for clients who come during the skiing season.  It gets bone-chillingly cold here -- actually, too cold to ski.  It can be -40 degrees Centigrade for a month.  An online calculator tells me that -40 C is... -40 Fahrenheit.  So imagine something about 60 degrees below freezing.

The recommendation was made to me to set the sauna for 50 degrees C, and to stay in it not more than 30 minutes.  Converted to Fahrenheit, that's 122 degrees.  I've found that after taking a shower in the morning, my hair dries really quickly in the sauna.

The enclosure has a reading light, however I've felt it would not be a good idea to bring in the book that I'm reading, Nicholas and Alexandra.  It's an e-pub from the Arlington County library, and reading just a few pages in the sauna would undoubtedly fry my iPad.

Slava had to leave the conference here in Abzakova to fly to Moscow for a meeting in Skolkovo with oil pipeline officials.  I'm semi-on-my-own.  Actually it would be hard to brag about my independence because of the affectionate guardianship I've gotten from Slava's deputy director, who has arranged several outings for me with an English speaking guide.

 One outing was to the Zoopark, the entrance to which is pictured above.  We saw a tiger, a bear, three camels, an ostrich,  an American bison, and rabbbits.  Actually there were more animals than I have space to mention.
 

Don't Leave Home Without It

A traveler atop Mratkino near Beloretsk

There's always a question about the most essential thing to take on a trip.  In this location a fistful of rubles is useful.  So is a credit card on a Russian bank.  Some people feel that they can't be without their cell phone,  Well, I don't have a cell phone with me.  I do have some rubles.  But in going to the top of Mratkino by cable car, I left something essential to me back at the hotel in Abzakovo -- my iPad.

As readers of this blog may have guessed, we have good wi-fi connection in the remote village of Abzakovo, population 3500.  Two years ago Slava and I were at a resort in the Caucasus with no Internet connection.  We had to walk to town to go to an Internet cafe.  Here I can read email, check the news, write "Travel Tales" and do lots more on my iPad in the comfort of my room.

There are some features that have suprised me in their usefulness.  TWC, the app for The Weather Channel, is perfectly willing to tell me what will happen in Abzakovo tomorrow.  I'm grateful to OverDrive, which lets me download e-books from the public libraries in Fairfax and Arlington Counties.  Hulu.com, however, is of no use.  Its website says, "Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States. Hulu is committed to making its content available worldwide. To do so, we must work through a number of legal and business issues, including obtaining international streaming rights. Given the international background of the Hulu team, we have both a professional and personal interest in bringing Hulu to a global audience."  Oh, well.

I asked Maps to find Abzakovo, Russia, and the app responded, "Did you mean Abzakovo, Beloretsky District, or Abzakovo, Baymaksky District, Republic of Bashkortostan?" Uhm, I guessed Beloretsky, and I was right.  It's actually New Abzakovo, built up around a new train station.  The resort facilities are here.  (Poor Old Abzakovo is like tiny towns in the U.S. by-passed by interstate roads.) 

Google Earth is fun.  It's posssible to zero in on the cross streets of Abzakovo or zoom out to see the town in relation to Yekaterinburg (225 miles northeast, on the other side of the Ural Mountains) or in relation to Moscow (840 miles almost directly west).  Unfortunately Google Earth doesn't make it easy for me to capture images and put them here.

Yelp tried and failed to find restaurants near my current location.

iTranslate is not bad.  And Google Translate is powerful. I have not, however, found a Rosetta Stone type app at the price I want to pay, which is nothing.  I might spend a few bucks on a language program that looks really good, but I haven't found that yet.

Spotify gives me a variety of music choices.  Russian radio tends to feature, well, Russian music.  The pop music is not unpleasant; it has more emphasis on melody and rhyme than American pop.  But I like instrumental music as background listening.

TED Talks are a great substitute for television.  The videos are entertaining and more interesting than most TV programs, anyway.

I'm expecting to use BigOven or Epicurious next week when planning a dinner party. I've already decided on zakuski appetizers and on the entree.  Dessert should be something that uses the famous honey from Bashkiria.  It's useful to have big cookbooks on my iPad.  The app recipes might not specify Bashkirian honey, however it's convenient to zip through recipes to find those that contain honey as an ingredient.

I won't bother to say much about the always useful apps such as Mail, Camera, Calendar, Safari, and Skype. There are at least a dozen others I use fairly frequently.

Unfortunately not a lot of Russians are able to experience the utility of an iPad.  I saw one priced in a store and realized that stiff tariffs on various imports make the price sky-high.  Now that Russia is a member of the World Trade Organization, protectionist tariffs are supposed to come down.  But salaries also need to go up.  The iPad I saw in the store cost 21,000 rubles, which is about $670.  The average monthly salary of a teacher as reported for 2005 was 5,500 rubles, or $169.  I don't know what a teacher's salary is today, but I believe it is below the reported 2012 worker average, which is 153,720 rubles annually, less than $4900.  If an iPad would cost you several months' salary, you're not likely to buy it.  On the other hand, there are some Russians with a great deal of disposable income.

Apple is moving ahead with technology, and from here I saw videos on CNN about the release of the iPhone 5.   The product looks great.  Yet I appreciate my iPad more and more. The iPad is Goldilocks' sized, just right for my purposes. When I go on a trip in the future I'll say to myself, "Don't leave home without it."

A Big Banquet

Tamada for the party

 Russians sure know how to throw a party.  The banquet table shown above was set for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the scientific center set up by Svyatoslav Anatoleyvich, a.k.a. "Slava."  The man shown standing is the party's tamada, which roughly, roughly translates into master of ceremonies.  The ta-ma-DA recognizes people who wish to make a toast, give a tribute, or make a joke. My ability in Russian is just good enough to tell the difference between those three activities and catch a few of the things being said.  Fortunately I was seated between Slava and the young woman shown below, who could help me better understand the goings on.

Civil engineering instructor and a speaker at the conference

A Russian banquet table is set lavishly with platters of zakuski appetizers, bowls of fruit, and various types of drink.  There can be several types of Russian salads, platters of smoked or salted fish, sliced meats, and canapes such as the caviar canapes on the table above.  When everyone is entirely full, the hot food comes.  I noticed last night that the head table was served something different from everyone else (they had scallops of meat; Slava ordered fish for us because it is his preference).  What we would call "the main dish" is not the important part of the meal -- the zakuski table is.  Accordingly dessert is not a big deal, and the fresh fruit on the table served as dessert.

Kudos for the party organizer

 

The Nightmare Begins

A friendly fella in the woods

I had gone to sleep around midnight without the help of Slava's little white pills.  Going to sleep was easy; staying asleep was not.

Around 3:00 am I awoke with a start, remembering a nightmare I had just had.

I was a stewardess in a large airplane, and Slava was a passenger up front.  In addition to the usual duties of a stewardess there was a passenger who really needed my attention because he was very ill.  He was emaciated, in a coma, and I was sure he was dying of AIDS.  He wouldn't last the trip across the Atlantic.  What to do?

I wrapped this young man in a blanket to keep him warm, sat down beside him, and enfolded him in my arms so that he might feel he was not alone.  He died, however, without ever regaining consciousness.

When the plane landed I was the last to leave.  Slava was nowhere to be found.  He was expecting to see me at home, but I had gotten word of back-to-back assignments, and I desperately wanted to get him the word.  I ran around shouting, "Where's Slava?" and people pointed me in various directions.  The smart thing to do, I thought, was to call his cell phone -- but I didn't have mine with me.  I asked a passer-by if I could borrow her phone, and it turned out that hers was the newly released smallest cell phone in the world -- a phone the size of a book of matches.  It had no buttons and worked by inserting a small card.  I couldn't figure out how to use it, but it didn't really matter because I didn't remember Slava's number (It was just something on speed dial on my absent phone).

Thankfully I saw Slava ahead of me, getting on a bus to take him to his car.  Running fast I caught up, and the driver asked where I was going.  At first I couldn't remember where my car was, but with some efffort I remembered that it was at 15th St.NW and New York Avenue.  The bus driver said it wasn't on his route, but he could tell I was upset and so would drive me there directly.  I was relieved.  My nightmare was over.

I know the source of many elements of this nightmare.  First, the frustration of helplessly dealing with a dying man.  That point was made in the book I was reading earlier in the day, Robert Massie's biography of Nicholas and Alexandra.  Empress Alexandra was much maligned in her lifetime and can be blamed for ignoring all signs that Rasputin was an evil scoundrel; nevertheless I was impressed in reading about her selflessness in nursing Russian soldiers returning from the Great War.

Massie quotes the empress' friend Anna Vyrubova who wrote, "I have seen the Empress of Russia in the operating room...holding ether cones, handling sterilized instruments,...taking from the hands of busy surgeons amputated legs and ams, removing bloody and even vermin-ridden field dressings, enduring all the sights and smells and agonies of the most dreadful of all places, a military hospital in the midst of war."

More mundane anxieties intruded on my mind.  Slava and I will have several separate trips over the next few weeks, and I'm worried about communication.  Having read speculation that the iPhone 5 will be bigger than any predecessor, in my dream state I imagined what the smallest phone might be.  And as my nightmare alerted me, I don't know the number of Slava's cell phone.

I don't think my nightmare was caused by anything I ate.  I might take a sleeping pill tonight, but I think I'll switch to melatonin.  It's worked for me before, and it might be all I need now.  Time will tell...

It Might Have Been Something I Ate

Photo of the place where we are staying

 First let me describe what I ate yesterday, and then I'll describe my nightmare.  It's 3:30 am and I can't sleep.

It may not be fair to blame the food.  We had breakfast at a nearby restaurant and were certainly hungry by the time it opened at 9:00.  (We tried to get in at 8:55 and were turned away.)  There was no menu; we were offered the standard breakfast -- fit for the downhill skiers who will populate this place in a month.

We started off with a nice plate of buttered oatmeal, followed by blini pancakes with swirls of sour cream and plum jam. Then we had yogurt and buttered bread with cheese.  I brought the yogurt back to the refrigerator in our hotel room, and skipped the bread and cheese. I had the lamentable thought that Russiian restaurants are following the bad American practice of serving too much food.

We weren't ready for lunch until 3:00 pm.  As I puzzled through the menu selections getting the Big Idea but missing the subtleties of preparation, Slava ordered for us. It was a four-course meal. Russian tradition is to have dinner in the middle of the day, to be followed by a light supper.  The meal we had in this out-of-the-way place was one of the best in my life.

The first course might have been called a salad, but the arrangement on the plate made me think of taking up still life painting. It was gorgeous and delicious.

Dinner, by definition in Russia, requires a soup. Ours was garden vegetable, and truly from fresh garden vegetables.  The broth was also vegetarian, so very light.

For the main course I had forel, which I think is steelhead trout, but nothing I can find on Internet tells me for sure. Anyway, this delicately poached fish was topped with champagne sauce and red caviar.

Dessert was not necessary, but Slava was in the mood for it, so he ordered apple strudel for us. Now I don't have many points of comparison to variants on apple strudel because I've never been impressed by it.  The Germans and the Austrians are proud of theirs, but I'd like to send them to this little place in Bashkiria to learn how to do it right. First off, don't prepare it in advance; make it fresh for each customer. Puff pastry is crisp and delicate when it first comes from the oven. When it's layered with cooked apples it becomes soggy in minutes. Serve the strudel before that happens.

Actually I took most of my strudel home because I couldn't finish it then. And predictably, just now when I sampled it, the puff pastry was not the same. But I could appreciate the apple filling better.  Ah...

Our last meal of the day was in the hotel at 8:00 pm. Everyone was served a cabbage salad (calling it cole slaw doesn't do it justice). Then we had some sort of fish, which was a little bit dry, and an intimidating mound of buckwheat kasha.  I do like kasha, but I had planned on eating light. With hot tea we were served fresh yeast rolls with gooseberry filling.

I'm going to go back to bed now and try to sleep. I think I'll describe my nightmare tomorrow, and you can decide for yourself if it was caused by something I ate.

What Happens in Magnitogorsk...

What happens in Magnitogorsk... stays in Magnitogorsk. 

I had hoped to write at least a drive-by account of this city, which was modeled to be like Gary, Indiana or Pittsburgh, PA, during Stalin's first Five Year Plan.   During Soviet times and modern times the city was and is the largest producer of iron and steel in Russia. 

When we landed in our small plane I was reminded of the airport in Altoona, PA, which I visited only a few weeks ago.  The  " magnet mountain city" of Magnitogorsk has a population of about 410,000, but I don't think many people visit it or leave. 

One reason not to visit or even live here is pollution.   By one ranking it is in the top 25 of the world in terms of pollution -- lead, sulfur dioxide, heavy metals, etc.  In 1992 a local newspaper reported (if you believe Wikipedia) that only 28 percent of babies were born healthy to healthy mothers. 

Ironically a short drive away is a area renown for ecological purity -- and that was our destination.  The town of Abzakovo is a resort area popular in the Urals for downhill skiing.   In September the weather is pleasant, and Slava selected this place as the location for a major conference and the celebration of the formation 25 years ago of his Science and Engineering Center for Large Systems and Machines. This celebration is the reason I came to Russia at this time. 

The conference starts tomorrow. Today we spent some time exploring the area. Abzakovo is located in the semi-independent republic of Bashkortostan.  Ethnics Russians are only 36 percent of the population, and the Bashkirs and Tatars which make up a solid majority are Sunni Muslim. Out of a population of 4 million, 1.4 million speak Bashkir, which is a second language here. 

Once upon a time Bashkir was written in Arabic, and in the 20th century the people experimented with the Roman alphabet. Now it's written in Cyrillic. Fortunately Russian is found everywhere. 

A Sign of the Times

A sign of the times, pronounced "Coffee House"

Russian is an easy language, some of the time.  The words that come from English may have a different look in Cyrillic, but phonetically they’re the same.  TYP is pronounced “tour.”  And if you know that, you might guess that UHTEPHET is “internet.“  It’s not too hard to figure out that OKEAH is “ocean.” 

 A new word, one that I don’t think existed two years ago, is XOYM.  If you know that XAYZ is a house, then you may be ready to guess that XOYM is home.  There’s a perfectly good word for “home” in Russian, but it does have multiple meanings, and “xoym” must be special.

I don’t remember seeing signs two years ago for СМАРТФОНЫ or “smart phones.”  They’re carried by every airline passenger who travels БИЗНЕС-КЛАСС.

The terms cited above have retained their original meaning, but sometimes that is not the case.  There is a well-known group of punk feminists who were sentenced recently to two years in a harsh labor camp.  The group has an English name, but according to a savvy Russian friend of mine, the Russian mass media have not dared to translate the name into Russian.  The group is disliked enough as it is.

Multi-lingual people can find Russian words with familiar roots, such as the French-derived ЭТАЖ, pronounced «etazh,” meaning the floor of a building.  Conversely, the French word “bistro” comes from the Russian word for fast, БЫСТРО, pronounced the same in French and Russian and English.  And some of the letters that are not Roman are Greek.  There are, however, some really unusual ones in Cyrillic. One of my favorites is Я, a backwards R, which happens to be a vowel called "ya."

If you’re ready for a big word that is made up of just two small ones, use your language skills to puzzle out ЖЕЛЕЗНОДОРОЖНЫЙ.  The first three syllables refer to “iron.”  The last three are for “road.”  An “iron road” is a railroad, right? Right!

Actually, I’m playing for some sympathy here.  Once again I’m plowing through my textbook, “Russian – Stage Two.”  I’ve been stalled at Stage Two for a long time.  As pathetic as that sounds, I have to admit that I’m even worse at tennis.  Every time I sign up for lessons, I’m in the beginner class.

A person could go through life without ever having to play tennis.  Most people can go through life without needing to speak Russian. But your life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it will!

Tea for Two

When I first came to Russia years ago I was intimidated by the social requirement of inviting people for tea.  What to serve?  How to serve it?

In the U.S. you can invite someone over for a cup of coffee and simply serve a cup of coffee.  When you invite someone for tea in Russia you prepare a mini-meal with several dishes.

The tea table pictured here is adequate but not special.  The teapot has delicate loose tea rather than the powdered grunge found in tea bags.  There’s a nice bowl of fresh fruit on the table.  The tea service is our finest.  Unfortunately, there’s no varenye on the table, and the sweets are store bought.

Varenye translates into “jam,” but varenye is supposed to be home-made from berries grown at your own dacha.  It is served in tiny bowls and eaten with a spoon.  Varenye has no added pectin, and I swear that in winter it has the taste of summer. 

Accompanying tea can be a wide assortment of things – open face sandwiches, small pizzas, homemade torte, cookies.  Once I learned that using your imagination is fine, I experimented with serving cinnamon toast, strips of French toast, and whatever suited my fancy.

I had tea twice today.  In the morning a Russian friend came over for the table you see above.  In the afternoon I was served a hearty tea table after I gave a lecture at a local agricultural college where a friend of Slava's is vice rector.  I had hoped to talk about something I know, however the assembled group wanted me to inform them about how agriculture classes are taught in the United States. I spoke for an hour and said nothing.  The unfortunate translator didn't have much to work with.

When I got back to our flat it took me less than five minutes to open the door.  I had a bouquet of white roses from the agricultural college to grace the dining table, and a container of fresh honey from the school to offer Slava with his evening tea.

When I’m back in the U.S. I think I’ll try making varenye from grocery-store berries.  I wonder if it will have the taste of summer.