Welcome to Planet Kiev
20 May 2008
Welcome to Planet Kiev...where the indigenous Kievans have so much money that they stack it in the street..
Actually it is a very eye-catching but equally insensibly extravagant way of advertising...I saw several of these bus stop ads throughout Kiev and marveled at the near authenticity of the fake money they put between the glass.
Good work..
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 5:25 PM,
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Politics...anywhere to hide from it?
07 May 2008
I have been very comfortable with keeping politics out of this blog for a while since writing politics in Russia is like describing the way to the machinist of the train on a one way track. The miserable country had gone through so much from the wrath of the tsars, the eversharp blades of bolshevik bayonets, communist repression and the clout of the capitalism so they cling on to what they have for rescue at all costs (even the freedom of speech) . They love Putin and everything he has brought to the country that they have been longing for generations: stability and respect (and also something to put on the dinner table with vodka) and this eventually have brought a political standstill and a lax environment to Russia.
I was very surprised to see that people have almost forgot about what is going on in Kremlin in a way that things were going all right (as if their uncle was running the country...no wonder why they call him Uncle Putin) but in Ukraine, I felt like home again. Everybody from cradle to grave was deeply involved in politics and predicting the next day in Verkohna Rada (National Assembly) was as hard as guessing the result of a soccer game in Tadjik 2nd Football League. The nation seemed to be encamped between two parties, which one represented closer ties with and an eventual accession to EU and NATO and the other one is strongly opposing the other and dreaming of the good old days when they were in the same bed with Russia.
Timoshenko...Grace Kelly of Post-Soviet PoliticsThe Pro-EU party leader and the prime minister (and also the most beautiful politician to grace the arena) is Yulia Timoshenko. There is no need to say more about the 47 year old Ukrainian business-woman (and an alleged oligarch from gas industry) who co-led the Orange Revolution that shook the country to its very foundations and opened the way for Ukraine to ride on the highway to EU and USA. As the country was suffering from the series of artificial crisis that left the once best industrialized, educated and richest soviet republic into ruins, the citizens were helplessly watching the once-soviet-but-now-democratic old leaders sipping riches of the country out to their swiss bank accounts and The Orange Coalition of Victor Yushchenko (now president) and Yulia Timoschenko (now prime minister) was a sign of relief and an imminent turn from the ultimate economic and political destruction of the country. People believed in them but like with every american-backed color revolution (see Georgia and Kyrgizstan) which replaces a russian-led old soviet politician with an american-led young soviet politician, nothing has changed bu the people sipping the riches. It took almost 2 years for the public to realize that and turned their lonely eyes to the battle hardened Yanukovich (whose endless political conspiracies fired the match for the orange explosion) and the country came to a standstill with his "Party of Regions" and Yulia Timoshenko's "Yulia Bloc" (very modestly named) having almost similar results in latest elections in 2007 and Timoshenko being inaugurated as the Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Timoshenko with her soviet hairstyleUkraine is a very interesting country in which there is visible demarcation lines for language, culture and money. As you may have guessed, the line divides the east and the west where east has all the legacy of the soviet industrial might, aeronautics & space technologies, collective massive farmlands and Russian immigration...etc and the east with its mainly newly sovieticized population in deep hatred with USSR had nothing better from the east but more KGB torture chambers, russification and cheap tickets for a freezing ride to Siberia. That is why the east, the homeground of Party of Regions, advocates Russian as a second language, opposes ukrainization and even dares to speak up about the secession of Crimea and the East Ukraine to Russia, which would ultimately make Uncle Putin the happiest uncle in the world.
Yanukovich describes how big the vodka bottles in the Eastern Ukraine are to the audience in the West during his political campaignAs of Industrialisation, one mustn't think about the happy old industrial towns of Scotland but of the grey, gigantic and smoking cities which are actually based around big industrial complexes founded near the Donbass (Donetsk Coal Basin) area. These industrial complexes are also famous for their schooling of communist party bosses (the Dnepropetrovsk Clan) and even putting one of their own (Brezhnev) in the throne of USSR so the tradition of the industrial managers being the party bosses hasn't changed even decades after the dissolution and even now the citizens (the workers) in the industrial east have no sensible option to elect their bosses to the parliament (just like the Kurdish population who elect their own tribal chiefs as their representatives to the Turkish Assembly) since they virtually depend on their goodwill for their contracts or their basic survival.
There is also the case of Yushchenko, a literally iron man who have managed to stay alive after various poisoning events that transformed him from a charming man to a soviet prisoner of war in a german camp. He as the President of Ukraine keeps a conflicting political profile. Before comparing it to Turkey, let me describe the government system in Ukraine. It is a semi-presidential system with both the President and the Prime Minister have a say on the things. This is almost resolved in France where president leaves all domestic actions to the prime minister and takes the international tasks and his beautiful wife on hand; but in Ukraine these power lines have not been clearly drawn and the previous parliament with two rival faction leaders in power (Yuschenko as President and Yanukovich as the Prime Minister) ended up in a political turmoil in less than a year. Now that two old comrades-in-orange are in office (just like in Turkey; but Turkish President is just a figurehead or so he thinks) things seemed to have calmed down gradually.
Yuschenko...before he challenged the might of Russia
Yushchenko..."From Russia with Poison"And we have always complained about the politicians we have voted for and questioned the political system in Turkey; it is almost the same case back in Ukraine. If a deep down analysis of the background of the politicians could be done, the result would be a bunch of power-hungry rich business people with questionable background of communist party lines and even criminal records. So why do people elect them? Is this answer has any relation to the question of life itself?
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 3:47 PM,
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TsUM of All Fears
01 May 2008
Note: I have changed the title of this post from "Is Kiev the New Moscow" to "TsUM of All Fears" because I will be detailing the differences between Kiev and Moscow in future in detail.
I know I have been lagging for while to add new posts but I have been well trapped into my new contract and it is always fun but exhaustion in learning something new (and getting paid for it)
Lately, my comrade-at-arms Chris has posted a lovely article about Moscow being the new New York and he shed his fistful hate of this city and saved all for NYC. I know that all expats oscillate between total loathing and endless love of Moscow but as far as I have seen ( and I have seen many) Chris was doing rather fine in both living standarts and business. I event considered myself in a parisian condo when I woke up in his flat after one of our LF stormtroopings in Moscow...I hope he stays that way.
So Moscow is in a heartstopping pace to be the NY of Eurasia and his little bother Kiev (Boring Note: Kiev was the third biggest city in USSR after Moscow and Leningrad) shows no hesitation to join the race of post-soviet cities for ultimate capitalist downfall.
I was expecting a little bit of nostalgia and an odd mediterranean feeling that I have felt in Odessa years ago and was disillusioned with the scenery so familiar in Moscow. A lot of advertisements of virtually everything that is sold for an amount of money and a showcase of fast money. Although Ukraine has minuscule amounts of what Russia sits on as a soviet legacy: the natural resources and been through multiple times of economic turmoil, luxury cars and SUVs roam the downtown and oligarchs or wannabe jerks in their bumer (Russian Mafia Hype) outwear appear in every posh cafe or restaurant that has menus with 100$ bill dishes.
Combined with a busy schedule of business networking and solution providing to my colleagues that varied from ordering in restaurants to begging ukrainian passport police to let them in, I had a limited time to discover the city but did my best to pack all soviet legacy and monuments in a day and quenched my historical thirst.
So what is the difference of Kiev? Actually this unfortunate city has seen itself shaken to its foundations twice as in 1941 the fleeing soviet army hid radio operated bombs (and lots of them) in the cellar and waited as the Germans dig in and blew them off...no need to say that the Germans in 1943 did the same as they fled away from Dnepr beachheads (link). The city was destroyed to the limits of Warsaw or Berlin and ordered by Stalin to reach its pre-war beauty as he had it in his sick mind. This beautiful romantic city became another Stalinist architectural battleground as they mixed stone, concrete and nauseating taste to build up Kiev from scratch. Now everything except the TsUM building (which I will come later below as the scene of my adventure) which had defied every attack including the foreign fashion trends, was rebuilt.
Milla Jovovich for Moscow TsUMReminding me about Tverskaya Street (Gorky Street in Soviet times), the high street of everything in Kiev is Kreshatyk Street, starting from the Bessarabsky Market where I had a lot of fun comparing the names Ukrainians give to the fish..exactly the same as we have in Turkey. This street houses all the street fashion, beauty, extravagance and decadence Kiev can offer. Especially in summer, as they told me, Kreshatyk attracts all small town beauties in search for a rich and preferably foreign husband...
Speaking about TsUM (Universal Central Store) as the zenith of soviet shopping, Kievan TsUM also differs radically from its Muscovite sister. In Moscow, TsUM is located near the Red Square and in a shouting distance to the GUM (State Universal Store) whose facades were upholstered with red posters on every communist holiday. After the disposal of socialism it quickly transformed itself back to its roots (It was a luxury department store called Muir & Mirrielees when Tsars were ruling) and became the halfway marker for our regular friday evening walks from Mayakovskaya to Kitay Gorod with Saim and Tamer. We often stopped by this gem of the Petrovka Luxury Area and feasted our senses of touch by the ubersilky Hugo Boss suits (that quadrupled our combined salaries) and the sense of sight by the store personnel that seemed to be recruited directly from the Milano Fashion Week.
GUM in Red Square, MoscowHowever, The Kievan TsUM, first marked my urban memory as the only building standing after the war in Kiev, was just another capitalistically spoilt soviet memorial for me until I had to buy a suit for a business event (Don't ask me the reason that made me buy a suit in the most absurd place in the most absurd time...). I was very short of time and needed some apparel to blend in the Ukrainian business community so I made my way into the closest department shop to my hotel which happened to be the TsUM.
Inside Kievan TsUM...quantity beats quality at every cornerTsUM with its gloomy vestibule with decaying marbles and grand staircase was so similar to the central post office in Moscow that I remembered the time when we lost our way and entered a modeling agency instead of a travel agency in the same building. (Oguz, my comrade in our assault to Balkans, and I lost balance as we saw all the slavic beauty of the federation converge in a small room.) Despite the muscovite sister, it hasn't lost its soviet feeling and the management must have focused on quantity rather than quality as a reproach to the perestroika times when shelves were empty. Now they are fully stocked but by chinese or lo-quality european stuff and the store personnel seemed to be directly recruited from State Collective Farm No:12 Cow Milking Contest in 1964.
Kreshatyk Street before the war...where elegance meets classic architectureIt took me a while to figure out the Ukrainian placeholders and panicked through the maze of the floors to the 3rd floor where I was directed to by some extra helpful and dying shop keepers trying to sell dusty needlework to some odd lost japanese couple.
The third floor was half lit and had virtually no customers since it was the "men's" floor (Men in post-soviet world either have the same clothing: dangling fake adidas black trainer bottoms, black stout leather shoes and a dirty white t-shirt and they buy it from the street markets or they pay handful of hundred dollar bills to anything wearable with a D&G sign on it.) Like the eggs in Alien movies that sense human movement and start to move, the shop personnel appeared from the dark shadows and stared at us as if we were strangers entering a saloon in the wild west. They made us feel that we weren't wanted there although we, the customer, are the prime source of their income but it is like expecting gratefulness from a hungry cat as to expect customer care in an ex-soviet republic. My worries dampened down when I saw a huge corner clad with suits with one brand "Mihail Voronin" and asked for a personnel nearby to help me with my size. As of my pure soviet luck, the personnel with the "most customer kills" badge came to me and told me that I was a size 58 (do I look that fat?) and immediately handed me a 58 size suit in foul gray color. I tried hard to tell her that I wanted a black suit but tried it anyway to learn about my right size. She led me to a fitting room that I myself could hardly fit. Of course the 58 size is a "bit" big for me but she insisted that a suit must be a little bit "relaxed " on the body. I turned around myself to show her that a regular red army infantry soldier could fit in this suit, with me in it; but she didn't step back from her 50+ years of service in the front lines of the glorious soviet textile industry. I literally had to convince her to give me a size 54 and a black color after a series of discussions that included Boris Yeltsin, food prices, coal mining in Donetsk Basin and sovetsky champagne.
Kreshatyk after the war...size matters! notice the TsUM building on the far leftAlthough not 100% satisfied with the latest design of Mihail Voronin 2008 collection (that would kill Karl Lagerfeld with a stroke in seconds), it fit me well and I hurried to pay the bill and leave the premises. But of course I forgot how red tape involves with everything soviet and cursed as I took a handwritten note by the personnel and led my way to a paying booth where I got the note stamped and gave it back to the hero of the socialist textile. I wanted to get it tailored and fetch it in the evening but she told me that the fastest tailoring service for the trousers is 2 days (remember that this is the central universal store...). I told her that in 2 days i would be out of the country but she looked at me with so empty eyes that I could see the Siberia behind them...
But sometimes speaking Russian, especially the one that people use in the streets (in a way to compliment women) has its uses and I played my last deck of cards on her to find a tailor. Maybe it was my compliment on her smile (she seemed like she didn't smile since soviet tanks rolled on the Prague Spring) or her total boredom on me that she gave me an address nearby where I could get the trouser legs fit. I saluted the last remaining soviet legacy and left the building carrying the odd suit.
I don't know why but now I am emotionally bonded to that...
Note: By the way, I have used the word "soviet" 16 times in this article.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 12:46 PM,
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Bridebasket
11 April 2008
I have stumbled upon a great site that calls Ukraine "The Bridebasket of Europe" in ironical analogy to its former name as The Breadbasket of Europe. Check it out, it is hillarious...
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 3:15 PM,
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Labelfucker IV
19 March 2008
Although this time I will not be behind the project, Labelfucker Saga lives on with Chris, the misterious but legendary party mastermind in Moscow, where we are not against labels; we just don't care about them. (but it is better to forget about your labels before the party)
Here is Labelfucker IV...check out our site for details.
Note: Please don't msg me for invitation. I will not be attending the party so why not find a fellow labelfucker victim and get addicted? This is not a cheesy party for cheesy strangers...the name speaks for itself.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 2:48 PM,
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Ukraine (A Short but Twisted History)
18 March 2008
“What Ukrainians are to Russians is roughly what Americans are to English” said one of my friends in Moscow during a filthy expat gathering party. Severely drunk on cheap beer, he also felt the need to make it clear because of my questioning eyes and added “Most of the americans are the ones shipped off from britain or endeavoring enough to live in a foreign wasteland an ocean away from home. Although they almost look the same, they have distinct cultures and different dialects of the same language. I bet no london gentleman can dig in a dialog with a redneck from Louisiana. Ukrainians, the ones you see with a funny ponytails on shaved heads and Lech Walesa mustaches are nothing more than Russian rough riders, or cowboys as you know it.”. That was rather an unexpected cultural addition to my mindshelf of slavic culture but all our academic revival in the middle of a party in moscow was interrupted with another semi-drunk friend, who happened to serve 3 years in an american political missionary team (which they boast to call themselves democratic civil action groups whereas they are pure underachieving spies) and he cried while tossing sweaty beer bottles “My friend...Lemme tell ya what's all about: Ukrainians are Russians with breasts”...no wonder why he came up with that conclusion because people in the living room (there were 15 people in a russian living room, which makes it more or less crowded as a moscow metro train in the rush hour and the same drunk-to-sober ratio) were chanting to a FOB song “Thanks for the memories” but in a rather kinky way to change “memories” into a a word that describes a part of female body...
I have been to Ukraine once before I ever set foot into Evil Empire aka Russia and was fairly satisfied with everything that I have lacked for more than 2 years in Moscow: Sun, fair pricing, fresh food and smiling faces...So what is Ukraine anyway and what makes it so different than Russia where a lot of people think that Ukraine is a city in Russian Federation?
The word “Ukraine” or “Ukrayina” has an ancient slavic meaning of “Borderland” and has been actually a no man’s land for some time between the forest tribes of slavs and the western people (the polish, the lithuanians...whatever). Another interesting fact is that the first capital of slavic civilization (not the one that you may imagine as cheap prostitution, vodka and nuclear warheads) was Kiev (or Kyiv as it is now, again, called). So it is rather true to say that Ukraine as we know today is the birthplace of the slavs and I have no clue why they tend to shift their capitals up north gradually to Moscow and then to St.Petersburg and back to old Moscow again.
As the mighty tsars rolled their eyes to the arctic emptiness of Siberia (maybe they have prophesied the riches lying underneath) and the dusty steppes of Central Asia, a group of people would find their way to the vast lands between the Russian forests up north and the Black Sea down south. They would rush to these fertile lands (which is called Chernozem, black earth) and live a life not dissimilar to those in the Wild West. So my friend’s analogy was not really incorrect and the subculture they developed came with a name of “Cossack”. Although being farmers, those guys were well fed and well educated fighters with a bit of vodka to light up the mortal spirits, so they became the slavic cowboys and formed a roaming posse that took more than 3 centuries to suppress. Watch the film Taras Bulba with Yul Brynner (who is actually a Russian) where they resist to the evil Polish and Russians by not shaving off their signature ponytails and pay homage to an authority other than a hetman, a leader of a Cossack subcommunity.
Yul Brynner as Taras Bulba, the mighty Cossack
The Ukrainians,Cossacks in particular, formed colonies through the mighty rivers that ran through the black earth and developed a dialect of Russian that would sound funny to every contemporary Russian speaker (but interesting to me) and stick to a peasantville life of nature, horilka (a form of vodka that better shortens life) and a unique cuisines (Every food now that is served as Russian is actually Ukrainian, except McDonalds). That is why their upscale cousins that freeze their asses in the north and boast of the scariest capital ever built (Russians) find them backward country-dwellers with no culture, no science and a funny language.
A typical Ukrainian love scene
After unification by Russia, Ukraine became a part of Russian Empire and Russians, as the biggest imperialists of Asia, began a massive cultural revolution and Russification. Ukrainian language was banned from public places and many Russian immigrants flocked to the Ukraine. The only place where the Ukrainian language and culture flourished was the countryside and the West Ukraine (or Ruthenia, a part of Poland that time).
Everything changed in the country with the Revolution of 1917, where a handful of half-mad bolshevik men led by Lenin took power in the country with a shiny promise to change it into a dictatorship of the proletariat. This didn’t mean a lot for the peasants of Ukraine since every change in the government office in Moscow meant a havoc among the country and it didn’t take long for the breeze in Leningrad to make a tornado in Ukraine. One of the promises of communism was the collectivization of agriculture and massive industrialization at all costs. Since Ukraine had a lot of farmlands on the most fertile soil on Earth and enough manpower to man the machines of heavy industry, it took the burden of the first blow of communism, many of which will later follow to shake the country to its knees.
What we mean by collectivization is simply taking anything and everything from the peasants (land, machinery, housing, livestock and even cutlery) and push them into Kolhozes (Collective Farms) so that the government will have a good night’s sleep in Kremlin, knowing that it has supreme control over all crops, cows, donkeys, horses and poultry in the country to make inefficient and wasteful central plans and create more human misery. Not all peasants would, of course, peacefully hand over all the generations’ worth of wealth accumulation to the new government who cry out revolutionary slogans of international fraternity of all peasants and workers. So they had to be led in gunpoint to the Kolhozes and many died trying not to. A lot of rich peasants were branded as enemies to revolution (or Kulaks, Fists in Russian). As the uprising rose to critical levels, Stalin, the father figure of all communists, made one of his deadly decisions about Ukraine and ordered an artificial famine (or Holodomor as the Ukrainians call it). Everything that has digestive value in Ukraine was confiscated to be shipped out to other soviet republics and not even a grain of wheat was left for Ukrainians, the people who produce it, so eventually more then 3 million people died from starvation and agriculture in Ukraine and USSR in particular came to a deadly stop in 1930s. This is rather unknown in the west because no or little information leaked outside and western authorities paid no interest to an “internal” affair of a lucrative business partner.
This is what communism promised: every comrade will be full and Kremlin will be happy
This is what communism delivered: every comrade will be starving and Kremlin will be happy
As dust settled in Ukraine, another misfortune was gathering wind outside the borders and making deals with the Soviets to carve up Poland. USSR jumped into this juicy opportunity to get a piece of Poland and unite all Ukrainians under the glorious red banner of socialism; but the Western Ukrainians, who lived in a comparatively prosperous life than their mortally hungry eastern cousins resisted to everything the Soviets brought under their arms: Poverty, Famine, Oppression and Russification. That is the main reason why the Western Ukraine is unlike the East, where everything is Russian. That was the biggest milestone in the cultural and political division now felt in Ukraine.
The misfortune aka Nazi Germany, who failed to invade Britain, with most of its Luftwaffe lying in pieces under the Channel Sea, switched strategies and stroke USSR which had a pact of nonaggression signed before. The fearsome panzers strolled their way through the borders with USSR: Ukraine and the Baltic States, which were under Soviet political and cultural invasion and this is one of the reasons why they had petty resistance to be virtually unopposed for miles through USSR for months. Many Ukrainians welcomed the German Blitzkrieg as a breeze of freedom from the evil Soviets but it didn’t take much for them to realize that what “Ukrainian Freedom” meant for Germans are no less than slave labor of untermensch for the Third Reich. Many battles and subsequent atrocities from both sides took place in Ukrainian soil for 3 years, where Nazis hunted Jews and Soviet Partisans, Soviets hunted Nazis and Ukrainian Partisans and no party took much prisoners during the killings. After the 4 year war, Ukraine has lost 90% of its wealth and half of its manpower, mainly men. The country saw two major sweeping operations in different directions: Barbarossa of the Nazis and the Soviet Grand Offensive to Berlin. So most of the cities were to be defended to the last men, lost with a lot of scorched earth tactics and had to be recaptured with heavy bombardment again to leave them in ruins at the end. For the avid historical travelers, it is hard to find buildings of the classic era in Ukrainian cities, especially in Kiev where whole streets or boulevards were wiped off the map.
A common heartbreaking scene in Ukraine after the war
After the war and especially the death of Stalin, signs of relief came with “the Thaw” where Khrushchev tried hard to eradicate the cult of personality, Ukraine was heavily invested and subsequently became the driving power of Soviet Union with Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) thanks to its modern agriculture output to feed hungry Tadjik comrades, modern science to build Soyuz space modules and mass tourism in Black Sea for the siberian comrades to dip their cold feet in hot sea water. As the Russification came to an end, Taras Shevchenko, a poet and a cultural icon for Ukraine, was highly praised (to win Ukrainian people’s hearts) and Ukrainian language appeared in public once more. Many Ukrainians rose ranks in the Communist Party (although not ethnic Ukrainians, Khrushchev and his successor Brezhnev was born in Ukraine) and they had a lovely gift of goodwill from Khrushchev in the meantime, The Crimean Peninsula. Although the heartland of the Krim Tatar people for centuries, Crimea was home to one of the major battlegrounds of WW2 (Siege of Sevastopol) and as an excuse to a humiliating defeat, Stalin blamed the Crimean Tatars for helping fascist pigs and deported them to a deadly march to the Central Asia and filled the population gap with Russians. So that is why Crimea is an independent republic within Ukraine (with the official language as Russian) and now trying its best to be “reintegrated” into the rich neighbor, Russian Federation.
Another deadly treat by communism was the Chernobyl Disaster. Built near the Pripyat Marshes between Belarus and Ukraine, Chernobyl was once a eye candy of the Soviet nuclear engineering and supplied a considerable amount of “clean” energy to the neighboring Belorussian and Ukrainian SSR. After a deadly error made during a test run in one reactor (they simply tried to shut down and run it again to see if it actually can be shut down but it didn’t and eventually blew up) countless radioactive debris spread around. The Soviet Union, which cared much more about its international reputation as the homeland for accelerated progress to communism in the galaxy than the wellbeing of its citizens, not only kept the leak as a close guarded state secret but also organized cheerful May 1st Labor Day Parades in Kiev and other surrounding cities under the rain saturated with radioactivity. The children herded into the parade with red banners were meant be showered with revolutionary high spirits but nonetheless were soaked with pure communist radiation instead. The tragedy was designed to be hidden inside the ironclad borders of USSR until Swedish scientists woke up the other morning to receive delirious readings of radiation coming from somewhere south. Gorbachev, maybe the first time cursing on his Glasnost (Openness) policy, had to make a public speech on TV to name this accident as a misfortune and assured that everything was done already to save soviet citizens’ lives. Actually, people lived under constant bombardment of radiation for some time until they were to be crammed into army buses to be taken away elsewhere. There were also naive but heroic attempts to put down the nuclear fire by local firefighters who swiftly melted away by high radiation. After the incident became high news, it was understood that the nuclear cloud, with a twist of fate, didn’t go south to the highly populated Kiev but north to the marshlands and dispersed its heavy particles in the forests. It took soviet engineering a considerable amount of lives and materiel to cover the sizzling reactor but it had already made the last strike to the bleeding beast of the Soviet Union which eventually collapsed and left Ukraine with half of the Soviet Navy with most of the nuclear and conventional arsenal and a huge heap of inefficient heavy industry with ancient technology.
Ukraine didn’t have any piece of time with independence (excluding the short-lived Ukrainian Republic between the world wars which was destroyed by the valiant Red Army) and many must have considered going back to the caring embrace of the big cousin, Russia (and some still do); but here we are, after a series of economic blows and widespread corruption that siphoned nearly all the wealth out of the country, Ukraine now stands tall but irritated once again between two opposing forces, now not armed with tanks and howitzers but with economic and social values...maybe it is her fate as a Borderland between two opposing forces.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 9:23 AM,
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Back again...
11 March 2008
So you thought that I would leave more than 2 years of brand loyalty in the levels of mindless dedication, obscene insanity and vulgar profanity of life in Russia behind? Well my fellow reader (whom I think that you have nothing better to do now that you have somehow stumbled upon to my blog or just keep on reading for more than a year in a fading hope that I would post some slavic nudity on this blog) you are wrong...
As I have hinted on my temporary departure from the alice's wonderland of virtual publishing, I would be back with more boring stories and thoughts from another slavic realm. Please applause Kiev, or the capital of Ukraine as you know it.
Fate has many twists that make you fall in abusive love with cocaine addict movie stars, fall asleep before a crucial final exam or work in companies that you or your family heritage has never heard of for generations to come. At last, my brief corporate slavery in the retail business came to an end where things are slightly more complicated than your fellow grocery store (like physics to mathematics). Every single minded person with a hint of intelligence and a never ending passion for office theatrics can survive in this industry. Intelligence, because a buyer must think if the product that the avid seller has on his lap is already on the shelf or not and office theatrics is needed to play the never ending role of Mr.No, because a buyer who can say "No, Can't, Nope, Mmmm, No way" in a split second without slipping up is prone to rise high in the retail career chain that is slower than the tibetan ascent to nirvana...very painful, slow and the thing you find up on the stairs is a thousand year old monk that says that you are not ready yet. (I think I have to write my memoirs..like Memoirs of a Retail Geisha..he he)
So far for my deep hatred for my last job and a warm welcome for my new contract. I will not dwell deep in it because it is another field of human labor that you may not even heard about but may have spent some time with my fellow colleagues during nearly %25 of your pathetic customer experience in your lifetime. I will be accepting lucky guesses in my private email and will not be offering any rewards for the ones who have a time so much to waste, but will show fake appreciation for their brilliance.
My new job, which is the next step in the evolution of my corporate slavery (not that they pay me exponentially more but they show more respect and supply every homo sapiens under their roof with anything a homo sapiens need to work...excluding an irritant boss and neverending senseless stress) will take me back to my beloved northern part of the 3rd World...or Ukraine. As I certainly know that majority of my readers are now up to the civic level that USSR has ceased to exist and many new countries that doesn't bear the name Russia or Communist Pigs have emerged from it. One of them and maybe the most beautiful is the Ukraine.
I will be writing more about Ukraine and Ukrainians in the coming episodes so stay tuned or whatever...
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 12:15 PM,
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Is this the end?....of Turkish Invasion?
09 January 2008
Dear Friends,
I am deeply sorry to announce on the 637th day, 14th hour and 8th minute of the Turkish Invasion of Russia that the Invasion is now officially over and Dinc will be kicked back to motherland on 15th January 2008...
The French failed to invade Russia in 1812It has been the second most interesting experience of my life (the first was being born). I have met with a lot of interesting people with most of whom I made incredibly strong friendships and spent wonderful time together. Formed strong alliances with 16 different nationals (including Russians), Seen maybe the worst and the best man made places on Earth (both happen to be in Russia, Been to a lot of clubs that would surpass any wild nightlife form on the planet, drank considerable amount of vodka and derivatives, Tasted and loved practically every singly kind of Russian food, studied and excelled in Russian language (but still cannot interact with the grizzly cashier in local market), Visited many big and small Russian cities (that most of you haven't even heard about)...
The Germans failed to invade Russia in 1943So...is this the end of Turkish Invasion? Apparently no, of course...We, the Turks, may have retreated from all the lands that we have conquered 500 years ago; but we learn from our mistakes :)
Now I am making a fresh new start with a new contract that will take me back to the Slavic lands...check back regularly (maybe in a couple of months) to see what I am experiencing in the other Slavic countries (Ukraine in particular)
This little "pause" doesn't make this blog useless at all...prospective visitors and expat wannabees are invited to read my past articles to understand the life and more about Moscow and Russia...It helped many and hope it will guide you as it is one of the most authentic around in internet.
I wish you all the best. Thanks for all your comments, feedback and I even loved the mails from the jerks in N.Novgorod (иди к черту!)
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 5:36 PM,
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Moscow Never Sleeps
28 December 2007
Maybe one of the most popular club anthems in Moscow for several weeks was "Moscow Never Sleeps" by DJ Smash (who also made miraculous remixes to soviet pop songs like я вспоминаю (I remember) by Yuriy Nikolaev, which has a signature intro with "Vladivostok-Mosvka..")
The video tells a lot about the Moscowite life: Flatmaids with fishnet stockings go crazy, Blonde carwashers abused by plump oligarchs and Monument guards with male stripper groomings joining them and passing a Third Reich face control to get in the club (which is Club Opera actually). I have totally no idea about the human-cat hybrid...it is even beyond any sickest fantasy.
As 2007 draws to a close, the clubs are already full of people who got their prepaidf complimentary salaries and this also explains why each and every one of the shops in Moscow are already with empty shelves (not like the result of the disastrous soviet economic policies in 80s but because of an economic boom beyond anything the world has ever seen).
By the way, I wish all my loyal readers (even the jerks from St.Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk who abuse my inbox and contribute to my coverage of Russian slang) a good, properous and healthy new year.
Dinc, the prime invader
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 6:16 PM,
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Bitter encounter with the Soviet Industrial Might
25 December 2007
As we were kicked out of our old office because the ever hungy capital developers needed that space for a shopping mall, we were looking for a new location for our company but in Moscow (where for Russians a standart office space is now more valuable than Ukraine itself) it took almost half a year to find a new one for a budget that would buy a quarter of any midsized Turkish city.
Ostankino TV Tower and the usual yellow-grey Moscow skyAlthough it was a new building with better hygienic standarts (unlike the old one with soviet fittings just brushed up to look like European -what we call here a Yevroremont-), the real problem was imminent when I emerged from the already crammed Metro in Nagatinskaya region, the south of Moscow.
Make factories closer to homes or vice-versaLike all mega cities, Moscow also has a air pollution problem and the ever increasing number of passenger cars (most of them are Ladas that are not allowed to enter any civilized country roads) are obviously not helping the solution.
This is the safe heaven for socialism for youI guess the real problem of Moscow lies beneath its historic communist city planning, where the soviet planners visibly spotted heavy industry inside the cities (Boring Info: in Soviet Union, the cities were created around big industrial complexes like Chelyabinsk, which produced the tanks that destroyed Nazis and Tolyatti, which still produces Ladas of 1952 design).
A view of the Moscow river from my office. This is where the river gets its radiactive contentThe way that Moscow is not different than those dark cities far away on the siberian plains is easily understood from the names metro stations like Avtozavodkaya (Automobile factory) or Elektrozavodkaya (Power plant). Most of these pollution centers are situated on the south-southeastern axis (as away from the Kremlin as possible) and this creates a grey zone in the city where the rents are lower and sky is greyer. The southern skyline is dominated by high chimneys and subsequent clouds of all chemicals known to man.
A Russian colleague has made a joke that in this office his coffee always stays warm in smart way that he noted the high radiactivity in this region.
So we have been working in this district for more than 2 weeks and still alive...hopefully.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 10:25 AM,
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Sushi Craze and my first attempt in Japanese Cuisine
24 December 2007
Sushi was already a phenomenon when I first arrived in Moscow where it was a little bit hard for me to switch from toast with cheese and braised meat (the Turks' best after party delight) to cold and badly prepared sushi at 4am. It is not only enjoyed here by hungry clubbers but also as an all day round delicacy by the Russians who subsequently lack a dominant cuisine of their own (All they favor as their national eatery are Ukrainian borscht soup, supposedly French crepe and Central Asian dumplings)
So no wonder why there are always queues in front of nearly all Japanese food serving restaurants and the especially visible queue at Gino Taki in Tverskaya where hapless Russians and expats alike wait in freezing blizzard to be able to let in the already huge restaurant. The reason is not that it has face-control (like all posh places) but the restaurant is always full capacity all day round. This maybe makes Gino Taki the most profitable food service company after McDonalds in Russia.
So what happens to when a business idea ripens in Russia? It gets its inevitable subsegments: The VIP and The Masses.
The VIP sushi has the ironic Russian touch in a way that now every single one of an elite food serving facility in Russia has the utter obligation to add sushi to its menu (regardless of being a top notch grill or an Italian pizzeria). So people maybe make reservations in weeks advance or wait for hours in the lounge of a famous restaurant of anything regardless of japan and eat sushi there.
Even the premium Tinkoff brewery had to replace frankfurter with sushiThe Masses came as a branch of the food tycoon Rostik Group (which also operates KFC-like Rostiks where you can feel the cholesterol clog your arteries as you eat the fried chicken and the Il Patio chain which serves the worst Italian food in the solar system). The Planeta Sushi chain is now almost in every district, shopping mall and high street in Moscow and serve Japanese and Chinese food in a preferably reachable prices. That is why it is always full of hungry customers.
Maybe another Tadjik cook in Japanese Sushi chef disguiseWhat makes sushi so popular in a city where any kind of food from any corner of the world can be found (especially the indescribably delicious Caucasian cuisine)? The answer hasn't yet to be found...
Another thing you have to learn in Russian nowadays is "Shall we go and eat sushi?"The thing that tickles my engineering senses is the broad range of pricing that the rolls have throughout Moscow. As the ingredients are so simple and the preparation technique doesn't really include a culinary magician, I wanted to rebuff my cooking abilities and make a rough estimate of the production cost of a roll.
It is still cool to pose with designer sushies...as they are more expensive than a half pound t-bone steakHere is what I have used to make more than 25 pieces of a standard roll with salmon and cucumbers:
4 leaves of dried seaweed (a 5 pack costs 15 rubles~0.6$)
2 sachets of rice (a 5 pack costs 40 rubles~1.6$)
1 pack of smoked salmon (costs 150 rubles~6$)
1 cucumber (a 4 pack costs 50 rubles~2$)
vinegar, salt and sugar
Rice is boiled for 20 minutes and allowed to cool a bit. Then a solution of vinegar-salt-sugar is added slowly to act as a wax and a separating agent of individual rice bits (and this is cooking for engineers). This warm rice is allowed to cool and then rolled into a seaweed leaf with salmon and cucumber sticks (you can add anything you like for the flavourings..i just found these in my fridge). This technique need some mastering and you definitely need a bamboo roller than you can buy in any supermarket
The rolling is an art of itself...i have ruined some of the ingredients in my first rolls.Here is the result...
I name this sushi...DINCHAKUNot counting some unknown number of bits that are ceremonially sacrificed as a result of the my starters' bad luck, a single bit of sushi costs roughly 8 rubles (191 rubles for 25 bits) and a standard serving for rolls is 6 bits which makes the raw material cost of a total 48 rubles (1.95$).
As far as I know, a kind of a simple sushi roll like this varies from 150 to 600 rubles throughout the town. Adding an estimated overhead cost to an each sushi is hard to produce (but easy to guess that it is not as high as a lot of sushi restaurants employ central asians in the open kitchens and present them as real Japanese chefs)...it is clear how profitable this sushi thing is.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 4:42 PM,
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Russian New Year
As 2007 drives to a close, Moscow is getting ready for another capitalist showdown, a vague but highly successful attempt to boost the sales and reduce inventories and also called as the New Year's Day.
HAVE YOU BOUGHT PRESENTS?!As all artificial celebrations including birthdays or days to celebrate the presence of a member of a family (father's day, mother's day), I am not a big fan of New Year's Day in a way that it relights my inner fires of my romantic resistance to evil capitalism.
For more than 26 years I have tried more than 26 ways to "celebrate" that day and failed more than 26 times to spend a day that will mystically calibrate the quality of the upcoming year it represented. Regardless of what I tried (including endless discussions of history at family dinners, a mountain, a freezing Istanbul street, a highly toxic night with high school friends and even sleeping off that day) that night had never set a memorable event like those that most of my friends keep on describing for the first half of the new year.
Although it is not my first year in Russia, which mathematically indicates that I should have spent at least one New Year's Day in here, I chose to join my family in Turkey last year. This year I will stay and co-organize a party that will feature the next episode of a highly anticipated chain of house parties...at least it will be a change.
So how is the New Year spirit in Russia?
In 1963 we will bury the capitalists..next year there will be a red flag in Times Square, NYUnlike the other capitalist holidays, this one has indeed a history in Russia, which means that it was celebrated in the Soviet Union.
Ded Maroz and SnegoruchkaThe first difference that catches an eye in a Russian New Year scene is a Santa Claus-like old man in blue and an accompanying Russian girl in a blue-white and highly laced costume. That comes from an ancient pagan traditions where дед мороз (Ded Maroz/Father Frost) and снегоручка (Snegoruchka/Snowfairy) has originated from winter spirits and represent the Russian Winter (I would personally select other things to represent one of the worst weather catastrophes that God has created).
This Ded Maroz need a closer shave...Only in the 19th Century these figures were selected to be the figures of New Year celebrations from a list of western figures that included a Santa Claus.
Ded Maroz is actually a KGB agent in a bad disguiseWhen the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 with a sound belief to clear the fertile soviet minds from all western and christian propaganda, they banned all Christmas and new year celebrations and Ded Maroz and Snegoruchka were to disappear from the soviet households for ever. In 1928, Ded Maroz was even declared as a class enemy and a kulak (which means that it must be exiled to Siberia...if caught alive)
Ded Maroz and the Union of Soviet PlumbersThe scholars and enthusiasts of Soviet and Russian History are accustomed to many sharp turns in throughout the turbulent years in 20th Century and therefore the reintroduction of Ded Maroz to Soviet life will not be a surprise. In 1935, when Stalin invited Ded Maroz to Palace of Unions for the New Year celebrations, a new communist figure arose from ashes and in a new "blue" costume (to be distinguished from the class enemy Santa Claus in red). Like all other soviet exports to the eastern europe like oppression, mass murders and poverty, Ded Maroz was another implied celebration to the conquered nations of the Soviet Bloc. No need to say that it was ditched immediate;y as the red stars vanished from the flags.
Capitalist Santa has beaten the Ded MarozNow this tradition lives on in Russia but in a slightly different way. Now tremendously rich Russian elite host the rapper Ded Maroz and Snegoruchka strippers in posh clubs and pour vodka over the blue costume...by the way, Uncle Lenin, Happy New year!
Even Yuri Dolgorukhiy (the founder of Moscow) got a New Year costume last year.
posted by Dinc Arslan @ 12:02 PM,
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Labelfucker New Year Party
21 December 2007
Hello Friends,
Most of you must have been devoting a lot of productive time to your New Years' Day celebrations in Moscow nowadays. I know that Moscow offers a variety and a diversity of opportunities but I want to invite you to our New Year Eve Party "a la Labelfucker".
Where else could you enjoy the end of the year and the beginning of the new one, than in our Frunzinskaya Penthouse with windows to both sides overlooking Moscow. Enjoy the fireworks and have a glass of champagne with your friends.
Good Music, Good Food, Good Friends...that's what I'm talkin' about. You will also have a chance to see me in my soviet santa costume. Our next party, the Labelfucker Episode IV (A New Hope...for 2008) will be on Monday Dec 31st from 10 PM to 4 AM (or longer) for a special evening with your friends.
Location will be a familiar one ...our notorious Frunzinskaya Penthouse (10th & 11