Christ has risen!

On the holy day of the Orthodox Easter, Sunday, 5 May, indeed as the situation required, I thought of God. Then I thought of the seventy years of the soviet times when the Mighty Position had been secured by Vladimir Lenin with a twenty-year interim intermission of the ever more almighty, loving and punishing - Stalin.
Thinking back into the history, Russians have always had an extremely grievous and hard relationship with God, which, combined with the inherent mysticism and fatalism as parts of the national character, engraved religious traits even on the all-negating stoned stance of the atheists.  

In the Orthodox religious tradition the icons - the depictions of God and the saints - were present in every house. According to the rule they were positioned in the so-called "red corner"  ("red" in the old Russian language meaning "beautiful", "honorary" - c.f. the Red Square). The icons were supposed to be in the Eastern corner of the house, as praying, sending our thoughts and talking to God we face the appearance of the sun and, thus, symbolically greet the Advent.

In the Soviet years religion becomes quite a dangerous puppet in the hands of the master - just think what a believer may do for the God. Some clever man, unfortunately the history keeps his name a secret, offered - no, no, not just to abolish God - that would be impossible for the country where religion was so tightly intertwined with the everyday life - but to replace Him. And who comes into the picture?

The decision was exceptionally smart and worked for many decades. Even the honorary red corner was kept to fit yet another deity.

The portraits of Lenin were adorning the walls of every institution, every establishment, every official room, on a frequent occasion enforced by the bronze or gypsum busts, the honest and strong look coming from the different sizes. The Bible, the Testaments and the Gospels were banned, instead we were given the Stories of Lenin - now I cannot tell what part of truth was there, but looking back I realize how much of a hagiography or menology (the lives of the saints) it reminded of and certainly served the purpose well. There was even a children's version of the Acts with pictures - just like Noah's Arch story.

Interestingly, the religious rituals were still kept going - we baptized children, painted eggs for Easter. But the pure religious meaning of them was a bit tarnished - baptism, for example, started to bear more of a pagan belief of the holy water protecting a child from the illnesses. Still, most of the children were baptized - secretly, at home, by an isolated priest. Consequently, we even had a mummified deity (whose remains are still by the way kept uncommitted to earth in the Red Square, the spirit haunting economy and politics - so far the only obvious, undeniable, unquestionable explanation of the ongoing Russian misfortunes), a religious doctrine - a successful mold of communism and spiritism, a set of rituals - books, learnings, common meetings, portraits -"icons", in other words, even when we didn't have it, we had it all.

Nowadays, the busts are on the dump, the pictures faded in the cellars. With the life so cruel and grim, fiercely grinding people by its millstones, people are seeking for the alleviation and looking for God once again...

In Russia on the holy day of Easter we greet each other with the traditional words: "Christ has risen!" and for many He has finally risen indeed.




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

One girl, one island

"The greatest is best seen from the distance" - once and quite rightly a famous Russian poet said. Last week my very good friend from quite distanced Russia was visiting Iceland for the first time in her life. Being quite an experienced traveler and having seen most of Europe and beyond, she shared her thoughts and impressions about Iceland before and after. 

...most of all I was impressed by the nature - unique, virgin, untouched and severe. I have seen Gullfoss, Geysir, all the touristic routes, I was hiking in the mountains, but the most beautifully striking place for me became Reykjanesviti. I never thought there are places so completely remote and secluded in this world, where one simply unites with the nature.

...in Russia we deprive ourselves of many things, including a simple smile. Icelanders struck me as very friendly nation, in a narrow street a complete strangers will greet you.

...people take pride that they are Icelanders. The country itself has a rather limited history compared to Russia or other big European nations; it had less than a million of population in all its history, and, nonetheless, Icelanders take pride in the smallest detail, which could easily have been left unnoticed. People take pride in the place they were born.

...the thing which struck me most was that this is a society which is fundamentally different not only from Russians, but more or less from the Europeans in general. This is a small society, everyone knows each other, the telephone book is organized by the first names, and they treat each other as one big family, where everyone is a relative - and they actually are. Even the language, as we know, reflecting the realities of life, devised a word, which defines male relatives frændi and female relatives frænka, not to go into detail of cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and so on - it is just one family.

...I have to mention the language and the concept of Linguistic Purism in Iceland. Many countries have the policy of preserving their language, but in Iceland they have special list of the Icelandic names, which you can name a child, anything else has to be approved by a special linguistic committee. Once again, they value their heritage and identity.

...and everyone speaks English. France, for example, has the policy of protecting the language as well, they also create French equivalents for the new words. At that people learn and speak English very reluctantly. Icelanders are not afraid to go beyond - to enter globalization and keep their national identity.

...I was also surprised by rather high social standards of living in Iceland. Maybe because we have a stereotype of  well-off Norway and hardly expect anything of a small nation in the North Atlantic.

...feminism is obviously not a bad issue, especially in Iceland. In Russia a man considers it beyond his self-esteem to help the woman with cooking and with a baby. Probably it is not even the fault of men, as women themselves consider proper to work, make career, and take care of the family, children, cooking and a husband. A man has to work and make money, a woman stays at home. It was very surprising to see otherwise.

...the same as the baby in the family: in Russia when a child is born a mother falls out of life for 2-3 years completely: no parties, no friends, no travel. Here life just goes on and the quality of life doesn't change much.

...the concept of Icelandic family with many marriages, all kinds of spouses, kids from all sides is another point of astonishment - it is so far out of the Russian culture. We are more traditional - of course infidelity happens and rather often these days, but men very rarely leave families. The ones which do keep hardly any contact with their children.

...Reykjavik struck me as having rather plain architecture - simple and unsophisticated. Reykjavik can not be compared with French, Italian or most of European cities, where "every stone breathes history", or even with St. Petersburg, where every house is an architectural masterpiece. Here houses are simple, plain, primitive and functional. But it goes together with the nature: severe, minimalistic, plain.

...my perception of the museums is defined by the Russian museums - you have to spend days in the Tretyakov Gallery, weeks in the Hermitage. Once again we are so proud we have so much to show, that we drown foreigners in our culture. Here, the National Museum of Iceland is fascinating in combination of simplicity, functionality, importance and interest it arises and the questions it answers. The paradox is - there's no La Gioconda in Þjóðminjsafn, but still it is the one of most interesting museums I have ever visited.     

...Russians know very little about Iceland. Of course it depends on the education but in general many people hardly make any difference between Iceland, Ireland or Greenland. Of course, they realise these are completely different countries, but in conceptual understanding "it is all somewhere there". The stereotypes include: volcano in 2010, snow and Bjork - her last name is not possible to pronounce even by people with the linguistic education. The older generation know Reykjavik as the meeting place of Gorbachev and Reagan.

...Icelanders are very active. There's a lot to do: hiking, swimming, horse-riding, music, skiing, even dancing tango. One of the paradoxes for me was that skating rinks are indoor, swimming pools are outdoor. This is shocking to me, but when I mentioned this to Icelanders, they were completely surprised, explaining that it would be too cold to skate outside.

...Icelanders take life easy and it is shown in everything. Hiking in the mountains may be quite a dangerous thing but people just go. Children are not over-treated with medicine, massages and over-care and running naked in frost and wind in the outdoor swimming-pools. Museums are not overloaded with information, but simply showing the life itself. And I can go on with many examples.

...to me Iceland is a country where Scandinavian minimalism and functionality genuinely combine with breathtaking severe beauty of the nature, easy-going and warm attitudes of Icelanders and all these make it truly unique land, a small polished piece of lava - a beautiful gem of the North Atlantic.

My dear friend went back to Russia leaving me alone with the thoughts of gratitude for this unique opportunity of being able to live in both countries, share both cultures, enjoy both worlds the difference of which is so sharply defined by the distance.



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

And then he asked "Why?"

And then he asked "Why? Why do people long for the old times? Wasn't it just for the better that these turbulent 90s brought freedoms of all sorts, democracy, goods to the shops, money to the wallet, free thinking, free press, new economy, private enterprises, private property, travel, the hoards of brokers, shoppers, marketologists, merchandisers, business advisers, analysts and agents with endless possibilities and what not...?" 
A shining fluorescent neon word "globalization" sparked above yet another "window to Europe" instantaneously finishing the decades of GULAGs, Stalin, oppression and stagnation. So, why haven't we just been jumping in the highest exaltation possible on this new glistening trampoline of freedoms since?

Then I started to feel that I owe an explanation.

source of the photo
My (moderately handsome) husband, having read the previous post and being a product of a completely different system, asked me this seemingly simple and logical question. The Western World for the decades of the Cold War and beyond was showing a dull, hungry and uneventful world of the Soviet State, where all of us were wearing ear-flapped grey hats with a red star on the forehead, marching in lines in the grey empty streets, eating cold potatoes with its grey skin - a sort of James Bond- or Schwarzenegger- movies with ludicrous and stupid military Russians and non-existing realia.

On the other side we were shown "the decaying capitalism", where poor decent people were dying in the streets under the cold and impersonal lights of advertisements.

Most interestingly, it worked. We were sympathizing chained Afro-Americans, exploited by the fat ugly millionaires in "that rotting America", so that even we - children - pioneers - were collecting our lunch money to send to them. And no one was stupid, no one was to blame: the propaganda worked well yet again.

History is a fickle mistress, who willingly changes its stories by the wish of the client: time, age, geography, events, attitudes, relationships, anything. I realize that, but having lived there I have the right to tell my story.

I was born in 1979 in the depth of the soviet stagnation (this story of a Russian girl could easily be mine, as well as of millions of other soviet children). These were the last years of Brezhnev and the General Secretaries started to fall like leaves on a windy day, being too old to rule for more than a couple of years, until Gorbachev started in 1985 and finished the Great Soviet Epoch as the first and the last President of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Understand me right - I do not thoughtlessly applaud to the good old days, but I certainly miss them. The life itself was simple, uncomplicated, non-criminal, non-chaotic, with no hatred, no fuss and stress, no unpredictability. In short, it was a strictly organized society built by a majority of simple uncomplicated honest people who worked all their lives.

Yes, we were deprived of the freedom of expression - everything had to be approved by special committees. Instead, we had free education, which was one of the best in the world, free kindergartens, free swimming pools, free after-school activities.
We were (relatively) deprived of the freedom of speech - we couldn't praise the life abroad or criticize Soviet routines. Still my father had self-made copies - the so-called samizdat - of the famous soviet exiles: Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn, Dovlatov.
We were short of the products in the shops. But the quality of what we had was impeccable - no chemistry in the food, no toxins in the plastic. Apples and oranges were always there with tangerines and bananas always for the New Year´s Eve, sometimes even with Pepsi.
We couldn't travel abroad. But the local flights were so cheap, my mother was taking planes from our city to Moscow going shoe shopping; we were regularly flying to the Black Sea resorts; people were coming to see us from Vladivostok. The countryside with villages and farming industry was flourishing.

I could go on with this list, but there's something which most of the Russians share today - a longing for the stability and safety - the most basic needs of a human.

Of course, it wasn't the best state in the world, as it was ringing in every song we were singing, but it was certainly the state where its people shared kindness, compassion, honesty, hard work and eternal humane values, most of which are conveniently forgotten now.

So we didn't have a freedom of speech... but we were happy and, therefore, free.







links with photos about the soviet times which you may find interesting to see:
http://offline.by/o-nashem-detstve-v-sovetskom-soyuze/
http://offline.by/interesnoe-puteshestvie-v-istoriyu-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/razval-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/deti-sssr/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHW0zL9dSMM


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Magnificent. Depressing. Ugly. Most Beautiful - all rolled into one

Yesterday a two-minute reference to the social situation in Greenland in a Danish popular series pushed me into thinking about the present-day Russia.

In the above-mentioned episode a Danish Prime Minister was visiting Greenland following a US-influenced internal conflict. After some emotional conversations Greenlandic Premier took the representative of a dominion oppressor to face the evidence of the indelible political wrongs accumulated by centuries by meeting Greenlanders. On the background of the benumbed and frosted graveyard stubbed by numerous white impersonal crosses on the most breathtaking landscape of snowy and mountainous Greenland, the following conversation evolved:

"Our biggest problem that we are going to die out as people. The birth rate is dropping. Our young people leave Greenland. But the worst thing is skyrocketing suicide rate - all the young men are killing themselves."

"What have you done about it?"

"We have tried almost everything: suicide hotlines, psychologists, anti-depressants, but it's just getting worse. 20% of Greenlandic youths have tried to commit suicide. It's a tragic world record." 

"Why is this, do you think?" 

"Suicide have always been a part of our culture. People threw themselves off a mountain, which was called "the place where you fall down". But they were old people who had become a burden to their families. Back then a suicide was an act of pride. Maybe our young commit suicide because they take pride in nothing. Why do Greenlanders drink? Why our children are abused? People have forgotten who they are." 

Right there, thunderstruck by these words my mind instantaneously beamed out a parallel to the realities of my life:

In Russia, the turbulent 90s swept away seventy years of stability and unyielding routines with the last decades of pure stagnation. If we think of the country and political decisions in terms of its people, one can easily imagine what a personal catastrophe of enormous proportions almost everyone was undergoing: my grandmother, my parents, we, children at that time, who could not understand why mother was taking heart drops and father was lying in bed for days.

Now my grandmother warmly remembers the hardest years of her life, which include no less than famine, war and the death of children. My parents, as well as the whole generation at the time being in their forties, have never really adapted and recovered in their new life. As a child I spent all my free time outside, running and playing in the streets of a big city, nowadays very few parents will let their children or even teenagers out alone after six.

The birth and death rates have just broke even in 2012 after plummeting down for years, the average life expectancy is 67 years: 76 for women and 63 for men. Almost world's lowest population growth. Almost all of my students left to the capitals or abroad after their graduation. "But the worst is the skyrocketing suicide rate - the young people are killing themselves" - just to rephrase the Greenlandic fictional character's grave words. I am not mentioning alcoholism, drugs and abuse just to keep a live analogy.

The change as rapid and fast could not fail to provoke fatal repercussions, damaging the whole generation, which could not withstand its magnitude and force, irreversibly changing the future of once a great country. Therefore, we are where we are: old values have been washed away, the new valor impositus and freedoms have grown as mutants. Hence, drugs, drinking, abuse, mortality, suicides, in other words: "we take pride in nothing, we have forgotten who we are".

As I was watching the episode on, the hope glimpsed for a short moment:

"I have a plan for my country. If I am to succeed, we must give our people back their self-respect. I want suicide rate to drop. Let Greenlanders have a say in the major issues." 

"Political security matters and foreign affairs?"

"But you cannot let us, can you?"... 
...

When the Danish PM returned home, she talked to her husband:

"How was Greenland?" 

"It was magnificent. It was depressing  Ugly. I think it's the most beautiful place I have ever seen. All rolled into one." 

And within that brief moment I realised - that's exactly how I feel about my country: Magnificent. Depressing. Ugly. Most Beautiful - all rolled into one.

"...and no worries either"

Source of picture and an interesting blog as well

"...and no worries either", as my moderately handsome husband added :-)

What doesn´t kill you makes you stronger?

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" - persistently was persuading me Kelly Clarkson, as I was trying to mutilate myself on a treadmill, finding pain in the parts of the body which were dormant for most of my life and feeling aching organs that I had no idea existed in my body before.

Source of photo (and an interesting blog about running)

Being half-conscious, to divert my mind from the pain purely out of survival precaution, I started thinking if is that really so - do we really need pain to grow? Does a person, who is blessed by a peaceful and quiet life, undisturbed by any sorts of turbulence, come up as an physical, emotional, spiritual cripple? And to follow the other extreme: going to the hell and back creates, basically, a superman? (oh, sorry, I meant a superwoman).

What happens if one doesn't get enough pain through life? Lets say, there's a moderately happily married life with 10 years on the back and two kids on the front. Then, one day there comes a realisation that the chest starts sliding down and actively forming a paunch, social networking becomes the most exciting thing, beer and caffeine have replaced water, in general - things have got out of control.

And there it starts - subconsciously,  persistently,  methodically we start to generate our own suffrage to get out of the couch and back on a horse: to be emotionally fit one gets an unobtainable love object - the wife of a neighbour will do, a colleague with its regularity of meetings is even better. After all the person doesn't matter - it is just is to train emotions, as Robbie Williams was confiding into my ears: "just want to feel real love, feel the home that I live in".  Next step is to ruin the family, get a divorce, see kids once a month, live alone and start looking for the meaning of life - all of these  to be spiritually fit and growing even further.

But what if we stay motionless in your moderately happily life? We stop being interesting to people - the absence of drama makes us lose colours and mimicry with the life itself. The most interesting people, writers, artists, politicians, actors, even "that nephew of the guy who lives next door", are the people with the wretched life and an ongoing crisis.

And we still think we are going for pleasure? That's our eternal shallow delusion, a trick formed by our refined inventive artful psyche, which wraps a bitter pill into the sweetness of a minute pleasure. "Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure" - floated the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald somewhere in my already half-conscious mind.

By following our unnecessary immediate wishes, overindulging in foods, sweets, tastes, with all sorts of social infidelities, we are methodically paving the way to our own abyss, so that later we would have a chance to apply all our strengths to get out of and become stronger, fitter, smarter. Or drown and die.

So, stating the obvious for everyone but me, I came to a conclusion, which helped me to finish those last minutes on the treadmill - that we need regular injections of pain, leading to suffrage, produced by our internal striving for crises. "Everything in moderation" - refrained Ancient Greeks in my head to beautiful Kelly, and I decided that was enough for the day.  

The song ended, treadmill stopped, I took out the earphones, and with a feeling of standing on the way to perfection, went home thinking about mundane things as what to cook for dinner for my moderately handsome husband who was babysitting our inquisitive beautiful baby-daughter, secretly thanking Providence for all that boring uneventful life that I was blessed with, hoping I was done with my pains at least till my next gym.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Hi, I am Olga and I am a barbarian!

This Friday, the 8th of March, in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk, an atrocity of the prehistoric range happened in the open daylight as a pack of stray dogs tore apart to death a 7-year-old boy.
(for the Russians and other interested here's the link to the news).

    Source of photo
The boy was torn apart in minutes, as witnesses (obviously standing and watching, but who would easily dive into a hellball of swirling mad dogs, and a screaming little fellow, really, guys?) claim, the head was bitten out, the ambulance, which came later, had nothing more to do as to pick up together the blooded remains from the ground. The dogs disappeared. And, oh, Dear God Almighty, I have not made this story up.

Being a long-time dog-lover and having been following the news ever since it happened, I still cannot decide what I am shocked by the most: by the fact of an unbelievably monstrous, brute and nonsensical death of a child, by the horrors which actually happen on the streets of a more-or-less european city in the broad daylight, by the fact that it actually happened in the twenty-first century, by fact that the animals are still in the open, by the reaction of the witnesses, by the reaction of the authorities, by the reaction of the people, or by the mentality of my tribe in general.

For several days by now the discussion has been going on, and the dogs are still there, only two of them having been found and shot. As the mayor still sleeps peacefully undisturbed by the events, the society divides now into radicals and more radicals, who now raid the streets with air guns and deadly rat poisons, giving no chance to any animal, dog, cat, rat or armadillo, if they find any. Add up here slightly and not-so-slightly mentally disturbed people and possible dangers coming from them holding guns and rat poisons. Add up also numerous wounded dogs and dogs dying from the poison in the worst possible agony, hiding their corpses which no one attends. On the other side of the trench there are poor bullied animal protectors, who, within a night, have become the scapegoats.

A bit more educated people have dipped themselves into homey coziness of the vasts of the Internet and deliver aggressive or not-so-aggressive comments into the Universe, taking part in numerous polls and voting for "taking poor animals into the animal shelter".
Here, I would like to make a small diversion: of course there is a dog shelter in a 300 thousand city. The shelter with 180 dogs (currently) is going on despite everything due to the persistence and good-will of several volunteers. Minimally it costs 150 rubles (5 USD) per dog per day, and it is not financed by the city at all. On the other hand, there is no proper service for capturing stray animals as well. No one wants to take a stray home, very few want to seem brutal and unfair to the animals. So we have a full circle and an eaten boy.

And I am no better - in the homely Internet, typing out my shock of what has happened and the frustration of why it has happened. Why there are so many stray animals in my city and in every city in my country? Why we learned to brush teeth in the morning and use the toilet, but not to take the responsibility for an animal? Why is it possible that teenagers put a fireworks detonator into the dogs muzzle and blow it "just to see what happens"? Or burn a kitten, or throw the dog from the top floor onto the tarmac? What has gone wrong with people? Why no one is responsible for the death of a child?

It is deeply sad and hurtful to write all this about my people. Or we are just a tribe and under the cover of the night we all have become barbarians...



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson