Eastern Radar #19
Destroying Tajikistan’s Soviet past, going to Lugansk without a local registration, how Big Tobacco entered the former Soviet Union and more
Beeps
Quite a few cool podcasts this week: Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed interviews Oksana Kis about her book “Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag,” Kevin Rothrock talks to journalist Sergei Khazov-Cassia about his investigative report on the theft of oil in Russia, Sean Guillory asks Anne Lounsbery “why so many great works of 19th century Russian literature are set in some anonymous, drab, and non-descript provincial town of “N”” and Mark Galeotti digs into the latest scandal involving Russia’s military intelligence.
Also, take a look at this amazing thread showing why AI-colorized historical pictures are trash, using the example of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s wonderful color photos of imperial Russia.
Meanwhile:
🌼 Scientists discovered in Siberia a unique orchid hotspot, where they found 14 species, some of which had never been registered before in this territory.
🖼️ Russia secured in late March the extradition from Austria of Boris Mazo, a former official in the Culture minister accused of embezzling 900 million rubles (around $12m) meant for renovation at the Hermitage museum.
₿ Ukrainian officials currently hold a total of 46,351 bitcoins worth over 75 billion hryvnias ($2.66 billion), according to the country’s latest round of asset declarations.
🛫 Antonov Airlines transported last week 80 tonnes of automotive parts on a route from Indonesia and Vietnam to Ohio, USA. The trip was reportedly made under the Open Skies agreement signed between Ukraine and the US, not to be confused with the Open Skies treaty.
💨 Information about properties owned by a man suspected of having been part of the FSB hit team that targeted Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in August has disappeared from the state database Rosreestr.
Under the Radar
Transforming Tajikistan: Between a Soviet past and a Tajik future
Sher Khashimov, Tahmina Inoyatova | Al Jazeera | April 14 | 3,000 words
A string of high-profile demolitions soon followed across Dushanbe. There was the Jomi cinema, which when it was erected in the city’s main square in 1956 was one of only five panoramic cinemas in the Soviet Union. Then, in March 2017, the city administration building – built in the 1950s in a style that combined classical European and local architecture – fell. In October of the same year, the city tore down the lively Shohmansur market, colloquially known as the Green Bazaar. A year later, the city decided to tear down the Green Theatre, a 1933 building that in the 1940s had hosted theatre troupes evacuated from Leningrad and Moscow during the Nazi invasion. With each demolition, the public outcry grew quieter as people lost hope of stopping the destruction.
How to enter Lugansk without a local "registration." Instructions [RUS]
Realnaya Gazeta | April 12
The "Luhansk People's Republic" (LPR) group currently limits entry to its territory, a measure it justifies by the coronavirus epidemic. Those without a residence permit in the uncontrolled territory have to write a special application and wait for its approval. The group gives detailed instructions. First, a blank letter is sent to the specified address. An auto-reply will come with a link to the questionnaire, which must be downloaded and filled in Russian. You need to fill out the form in a text editor (not by hand). It must be an editable file, there should be no typos. Applications in Ukrainian (or any other language other than Russian) will not be accepted. You then need to send scanned copies of documents. The separatist authorities warn that more applications will be sent but you do not need to fill them — these are automatic answers that they don’t know how to avoid sending.
Houses destroyed by shelling. Who received compensation, and who is still waiting [RUS]
Novosti Donbassa | April 16 | 1,800 words
Since September 2020, Ukrainians who had their homes destroyed by shelling can apply for compensation. So far, 74 people have received an average of 269,000 hryvnias (around $9,700). The amount depends on the surface of the house or flat that was destroyed, but cannot exceed 300,000 hryvnias ($10,700). For Lilia, whose father died from a heart attack after seeing his house destroyed by shelling, 300,000 hryvnias would be enough to buy a nice two-room flat in Toretsk for her mother.
Bashkortostan wants to protect children from “western values” [RUS]
Daria Kucherenko | Kommersant | April 16 | 1,000 words
Inga Yumasheva, a 36 years-old State Duma deputy from Bashkiria, called for tougher responsibility for LGBT propaganda and to ban the internet propaganda of bisexuality, transgenderism, abortion as well as calls to undermine the political situation. She announced this today in Ufa during a roundtable titled “destructive content as a tool for destroying families and children's health”. Yumasheva is planning the creation of a working group in the Duma that will develop legal mechanisms to combat "dangerous" content. Roundtable participants rejoiced that the Nasiliyu.Net center (one of the leading Russian NGO addressing domestic violence and LGBT rights) was labeled a “foreign agent”, called sex education in schools “murderous poison,” spoke in favor of simplifying the blocking of websites and limiting the work of TikTok, and worried that the West was “devastating” Russia with the help of transgender people.
Research, Culture & General Nerdistry
Report: Russian Book Market Down 20 Percent in 2020
Eugene Gerden | Publishing Perspectives | April 13 | 750 words
A report from the Russian Book Chamber and its statistics division has indicated that in the pandemic year 2020, the publishing market fell by 20 percent. In units, this represents a decline of 83.7 million titles in Russia. The overall turnover of published books and associated content fell by 19 percent last year, the report says, from some 435.1 million copies in 2019 to 351.4 million copies. Hardest hit was the religious book sector, which reported a 34.5-percent downturn, to 4.7 million copies. Scientific literature slipped 11 percent, to 6.7 million copies.
Irina Bogat, director of the independent Zakharov publishing house, has a particularly bleak take on the situation and the outlook for what’s to come: “fewer and fewer people are buying books in Russia. This is the major reason for the current situation in the market, which was significantly hit by the pandemic. [...] Many people have lost their jobs because of the pandemic and they don’t have money to buy books. The price of paper and other materials has increased more than 30 percent in just the last three months, which is a record. [...] As a result of this, books have become a luxury item in Russia. We do not expect any restoration or growth this year.”
Building the Nation Through Celebrating the Nation: A Comparison of Holidays in Russia’s Regions
Katie L. Stewart | Europe-Asia Studies | April 2021
Holidays can unite a population under the regime’s national narrative, thereby enhancing regime support. In Russia, there are all-Russia holidays and regional holidays, leading to potential variation in their nation-building capacity. Using media coverage and observations from fieldwork in Tatarstan (2014, 2016) and Karelia (2015–2016), I compare how regional governments, public figures, and citizens support and celebrate holidays in each case. When Moscow has firm control over the form and message of the spectacles across the regions, holidays can be an effective nation-building tool. When divergent narratives arise, holidays become less effective and provide openings for competitive nation-building.
How Soviet Children’s Books Became Collectors’ Items in India
Divya Sreedharan | Atlas Obscura | April 14 | 1,300 words
For Indians who grew up in the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s, love of Soviet-era literature is a binding force. Translated books from the Soviet Union were readily available and extremely affordable via book fairs and exhibitions staged by local distributors and book houses in small towns and bigger cities. Across the country, local publishers such as Navakarnataka distributed Indian-language versions of everything from Russian classics by the likes of Gorky, Chekov, Tolstoy, and Pushkin to books on philosophy and popular science, as well as textbooks covering mathematics, physics, chemistry, and engineering. Kids met the elderly Baba Yaga and various other characters in vividly illustrated children’s stories.
From newspapers to TV shows: 30 years of political advertisement in Ukraine [UKR]
Dmitry Cheretun | Chesno | April 13 | 4,500 words
The Chesno movement prepared an overview of the way political campaigning has changed in Ukraine over the past three decades, looking more particularly at the presidential and parliamentary elections and tracing the evolution not just of normal campaign advertising but also of “counter-agitation” and black PR.
A B Gilmore, M McKee | Tobacco Control | June 2004
This paper highlights the considerable priority attached to the former Soviet markets and the disingenuous tactics the TTCs use when negotiating entry to new markets. It highlights the dangers of a rapid transition from socialist to market economies when the supporting institutional structures are not in place and the investing companies use business practices that fall short of international standards. We have previously suggested that empirical studies of the impact of tobacco industry privatisation should be performed before privatisation is recommended, that where privatisation proceeds, health impact assessments should be undertaken and tobacco control measures implemented before tobacco industry privatisation occurs.135 Here we suggest that governments must be aware of the tactics highlighted in this paper, wary of flawed economic arguments, and better informed of the true economic and health impacts of tobacco in order to make more informed decisions.