UK-Russia Crossviews

Medvedev changes tack over Ukraine

August 27, 2009 RBTH, Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia in Global Affairs

The economic crisis didn't have the effect on Russia that the West was anticipating.

Western optimism, eastern pessimism

August 27, 2009 RBTH, Boris Kagarlitsky, economist

Germany and France recently announced their latest victory over the crisis. Both countries showed slight economic growth of 0.3pc over the summer months. Enthusiasm that they had pulled out of recession revived stock markets, fueling their upward climb. In actuality, there is no reason to start talking about the end of the recession.

Let's say something good

August 27, 2009 RBTH, George Feifer, commentator

If I were Russian, my country's statements and stances vis-a-vis America would give me much to criticise. That would include the difficulty Americans have in recognising their country by what they read and hear about it when visiting Russia. But since we can do nothing about shallowness and silliness expressed in Cyrillic, I'm more troubled by the same, and sometimes worse, in American pictures of Russia that are drawn in often stupid or jaundiced English. More than merely illiterate about everything Russian, beyond its rule by Stalin and men with fond memories of him, many of us are positively prejudiced. America good; Russia bad. America virtuous and benevolent; Russia backward and benighted.

The great American picnic?

August 26, 2009 RBTH, Jennifer Eremeeva, Russia Now

Iced drinks? Sitting on the ground? Jennifer Eremeeva's American-style picnic is a wash at her daughter's horse show in Moscow.

Mister viola

August 26, 2009 RBTH, Elena Fisher, Russia Now

Thanks to the talent of violist Yuri Bashmet an underappreciated instrument is now wanted and in demand

First victim of the second World War

August 26, 2009 RBTH, Leonid Mlechin

Strictly speaking, the Second World War started because of the town of Danzig (known in Polish as Gdansk)...

THE GENESIS OF GAFFES

August 25, 2009 Dmitry Divin

Chernobyl memories

August 18, 2009 RBTH, John Glad

"It is October 1990 and I am standing 150 yards from the "sarcophagus" ─ the concrete and steel structure hastily erected to entomb the remains of the exploded reactor"

The Moscow pedestrian mal

August 18, 2009 RBTH, John Glad

"It is Monday morning, the nineteenth of August, 1991, and I am standing in front of the mirror in my room in Moscow's newly renovated Metropole Hotel, knotting my tie in preparation to go down to breakfast"

A hot summer in the Cold War

August 18, 2009 RBTH, Jack Masey

Fifty summers ago, the world witnessed a remarkable cultural face-off between its two superpowers

The Russian wives of foreign husbands

August 18, 2009 RBTH, Svetlana Smetanina

Something strange is going on with Russian women. Suddenly they've stopped wanting to marry foreigners

Press review (3-9 August)

August 11, 2009 RBTH, Sergey Merinov

Russian-Chinese relations, the closure of Moscow's Cherkizovsky wholesale market and the farewell statements of the outgoing NATO Secretary General

Overlooked Russian classics

August 10, 2009 RBTH, Irina Lyubshina

The NYRB Classics series has reintroduced many remarkable books, among them a large number of international classics, including Russian. Russian literature is, of course, one of the world's greatest. The Russian novel is central to the history of the novel, as otherwise only the French and English novels are. Russian poetry remains a beautiful rumor to those of us who don't know the original, but the richness and suggestiveness of what comes through, however inadequately, in translation, is enough to hold the imagination in wondering thrall. In the NYRB Classics series we try to reflect something of the range of Russian literature. The Stray Dog Cabaret, Paul Schmidt's extraordinary assembly poems by Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetayeva, Khlebnikov, and Mayakovsky capture the ferment of poetic activity that preceded and followed the disaster of Revolution. Robert Chandler's meticulous and inspired translations of Andrey Platonov in Soul and Other Stories bring to life in English a twentieth-century genius who deserves to be as universally celebrated as Kafka. The Observer wrote: "Rarely does literature come this close to being music." Chandler's translation of Vasily Grossman's immense Life and Fate, a great humanist's unflinching testament to the darkness in man, also appears in the series, as does Yuri Olesha's trim Envy, with its astringent clowning melancholy, and Nina Berberova's Moura, a legendary biography of the ultimate survivor. Books by more recent authors include Tatiana Tolstaya's The Slynx, a vaudevillian-dystopian novel, set 200 years after an apocalyptic disaster has destroyed Russia; also Vladimir Sorokin's Ice and his ingenious The Queue - both are works of fantasy, prophecy, parody, and wild paranoia. We are currently preparing a new collection of remarkable stories by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, a rediscovered classic from the 1920s and 30s, an "unsung genius", translated by Joanne Turnbull. Russian Literature is, in other words, an essential component of the NYRB Classics series, as

Cycling all the way to London

August 8, 2009 Alexey Berezin

A jet airliner covers the distance between the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals and London in about six hours; a car, in 110 hours. But has anyone ever wondered about riding a bicycle over this distance? The participants in the bike race Challenge 2009 rode 5,200 km (3,231 miles) from Yekaterinburg to London via major Russian and European cities in exactly one month.

The Russian abroad

August 3, 2009 RBTH, Svetlana Smetanina

"That is the principal difference between the Russian and European mentalities: why begin with the cheap stuff if you can go straight to the top of the line"

An order of mutual trust

July 23, 2009 Tarun Vijay, Expert

On the third table from my seat, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, the power centre of a new world order that refused to accept a unipolar system, was passionately in discussion with Indian ex-Prime Minister Vajpayee. I was the 13th editor of the newspaper where he began his public life; maybe that gave me the strength to breach protocol and head over to Putin's table to take his autograph on the Kremlin banquet's fabulously decorated menu card. It was November 7, 2001. A surprised smile appeared on Putin's face and his signature was in my hands, as the magnificence of the Alexadria Hall, with its lustrous gold-plated walls, reverberated with to the sounds of Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker and Swan Lake - and Raj Kapoor's Mera Joota Hai Japani.

International words in Russian: A few tips

July 13, 2009 RBTH, Allison Quinn, Russian Translation Company

To the great relief of any foreigners, finding themselves in Russia for the first time, there is a fairly long list of international words in use by Russians. Take, for instance, any poor foreigner running wildly around a giant shopping centre in search of a toilet: he'll be glad to learn that although the Russian word for `toilet' certainly has a very different sound - `too-al-yet' - it's similar enough that within a few seconds of gesturing wildly while repeating `toilet,' he'll successfully locate the toilets.

Moscow presses the "red button"

July 8, 2009 RBTH, Vladislav Vorobyov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta

People's diplomacy makes the "launch" button work in an unusual way

Russian public wary of Obama

July 7, 2009 RBTH, WorldPublicOpinion.org

When President Obama arrives in Russia for the Moscow summit he may face a cool reception. A new poll of Russians, conducted by the Levada Center as part of a larger WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, finds that just 23 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, while 55 percent say they do not have confidence. This is one of the most negative ratings of Obama out of 20 nations polled around the world.

Russian-U.S. summit: between skepticism and hope

July 6, 2009 Sergei Merinov, Russia Now

The Moscow meeting of the American and Russian presidents, Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, undoubtedly ranks as one of the summer's most important international events

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