Eastern Radar #35
Kazakhstan's crypto-mining boom in trouble, Kolomoisky's adventures in Cleveland, homophobic discourses in Belarusian politics, cheese in tsarist Russia and more
Radio Chatter
“Our Fake History” has recently become my favorite comfort podcast. Here’s a great episode (published two years ago) looking into the many, many myths and legends surrounding Olga of Kiev and her infamous, bloodthirsty campaign of vengeance.
If you speak Russian, Belarusian political analyst Artyom Shraibman spoke to Meduza about Alexander Lukashenko’s latest constitutional reform and what it could mean for the country’s future.
Finally, a fascinating interview with Anna Babinets, co-founder of the Ukrainian investigative media Slidstvo.Info and regional editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, about investigating corruption in Ukraine and beyond.
Beeps
🎄 Ukraine’s National Police is investigating why employees of the state “Ukrzaliznytsia” railway company failed to erect on time the traditional New Year tree in Kyiv’s central railway station. Investigators are alleging possible embezzlement.
♟️ 17-year-old Uzbek chess player Nodirbek Abdusattorov dethroned Magnus Carlsen as World Rapid Chess Champion in Warsaw.
⚽ The Lokomotiv Moscow football club extended the contract of player Boris Rotenberg, the 35 years old son of Russian oligarch Boris Rotenberg senior. Playing as a defender, Boris Rotenberg has only appeared in 10 matches since he first signed with the FC Lokomotiv Moscow in 2016.
®️ Kyrgyzstan's president decided to rename a town near the Tajik border after a venerated first secretary of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, an “unambiguously nationalist gesture that comes at a time of heightened tensions with neighboring Tajikistan”.
🏳️🌈 Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published an op-ed with the headline “France is ruled by transgender people”.
Under the Radar
How Russia loses architectural heritage and gets high-rise buildings [RU]
Alesya Marokhovskaya, Alexandra Zerkaleva | iStories | November 29 | 3,400 words
Russia loses between 150 and 200 “objects of cultural heritage” (OKN) every year. Old cities, which have become centers of tourism thanks to their architectural features, suffer particularly. Since 2008, more than 70% of buildings classified as OKN in the Vologda, Ivanovo, Tyumen and Kaluga regions have lost this status that guarantees them protection. This means the state is free from the expensive duty to restore historical buildings, and owners suddenly have the right to destroy them. As a result, high-rise buildings are now rapidly replacing ancient architecture in the city centers.
Kazakhstan's crypto mining boom fizzles over power supply strain
Paul Bartlett | Nikkei Asia | December 28 | 900 words
At the start of 2021, the Central Asian nation was a relatively minor player on the global crypto scene. But as China moved to wipe out the industry, Kazakhstan went from accounting for 6.17% of the world's hash rate -- a measure of processing power used to mine cryptocurrency -- to 18.1% by August, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. The blame game started in October, when the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC) partially pinned an outage at three power plants, including the country's largest facility Ekibastuz-1, on increased demand from digital mining companies. The following month, the energy ministry brokered a deal with KEGOC and the Data Center Industry and Blockchain Association of Kazakhstan to guarantee power supplies to registered miners. But after KEGOC reneged on the agreement and started turning off the lights, miners began shutting down operations and voting with their feet.
PG Special Report: With shadowy money, Ukraine oligarch became Cleveland’s biggest landlord
Michael Sallah, Ashley Murray, Tanya Kozyreva | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 26 | 2,800 words
Mr. Kolomoisky’s venture into Cleveland was launched in 2008, when he and others moved $12.9 million into the country to buy one of the city’s most visible high-rises: 55 Public Square, U.S. prosecutors say in a forfeiture suit. In 2010, they transferred millions more into the country through four different offshore bank accounts to buy the Huntington Building, with vaulted ceilings and ornate columns in what was once called the world’s largest bank lobby. The price: $18.5 million. Cleveland leaders said they were buoyed by the presence of an out-of-town investor at a time when the city was hit hard by double-digit unemployment and a home-foreclosure rate that was one of the highest in the country. The city “couldn’t get a pot to piss in,” said Jay Westbrook, then a councilman who served for three decades. “It was just on the heels of the foreclosure [crisis]. You’re just saying, ‘I gotta have this. You got money — we’re the town.’” Mr. Westbrook said his colleagues in elected office did not know where the money was coming from.
Research and Culture
Jennifer Wilson | The New Republic | December 28
Just before the first chapters of Crime and Punishment were to be published, newspapers began to report details of a strikingly similar murder case. In Moscow, Birmingham recounts, “a law student named Danilov murdered a pawnbroker in his apartment.… As he was ransacking the place, the pawnbroker’s servant unexpectedly arrived, so he murdered her, too.” In the novel, Dostoevsky places Raskolnikov, both as a writer and reader, into the media landscape of the era. [...] In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky used the public’s appetite for crime stories as a kind of Trojan horse, a way to launch a polemic under the guise of titillation. Dostoevsky denies Raskolnikov the glamour of a martyr and presents him instead as an angry and confused young man, humiliated by poverty and acting out of shame. Or at least that is what he thought he had done. In something of a plot twist, following the success of Crime and Punishment, defense attorneys in nineteenth-century Russia began comparing their clients to Raskolnikov in an attempt to garner sympathy with the jury.
‘Better to be a Dictator than Gay’: Homophobic Discourses in Belarusian Politics 🔓
Matthew Frear | Europe-Asia Studies | September 2021
The use of homophobia to attack individual members of the opposition and attempt to discredit them was more prevalent in the early 2000s, when Lukashenka styled himself a ‘macho man’. Since the outbreak of anti-regime protests in summer 2020, some opposition protesters have resorted to homophobic statements to attack Lukashenka, which is a newer development. ‘Natural’ family values have been invoked by both the regime and certain sections of the opposition to justify homophobia. The national democrats and the Christian democrats on the right flank of the opposition, such as the BCD and BPF, have invoked traditional, conservative, religious values in their discourse against LGBT issues.
Putin says the U.S. planned Russia’s partition in 1918. It’s true. (And Lenin was on board!)
Semyon Bashkirov, Alexander Etkind | Meduza | December 28
The concept of breaking up Russia into smaller independent states was the product of President Wilson’s broader thinking about self-determination, Etkind told Meduza. Modeled on the creation of the Balkan states from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wilson envisioned border demarcations, followed by referenda on which territories belonged to what state, followed by elections and the formation of governments, and ending with recognition by the League of Nations. Trying to craft a plan that would satisfy all sides of the conflict, William Bullitt proposed the partition of the former Russian Empire into 23 parts. Some of these new nations, like Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, already enjoyed international recognition. Others would have been new, like Southern Russia, The Urals, Siberia, and Tatarstan. The Bolsheviks would have received control over Moscow, Petrograd, and eight surrounding provinces.
From Gruyères to Gatchina: the meaning of cheese in Tsarist Russia 🔒
Alison K. Smith | Food, Culture & Society | December 2021
Although Russia has an extensive tradition of dairy products including fresh cheese, ripened and aged cheeses were introduced from abroad at least by the seventeenth century, and they immediately took on all sorts of new meanings. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, cheese was a commodity, an object of international trade; it was the product of technology that Russians came to hope to master; and cheese was part of the world of taste and cultural change, finding its place on the tables of the elite and, eventually, of a wider population.
ICYMI
Stories from well-known outlets you might nevertheless have missed.
Wall Street Journal: Where Russia Once Triumphed, Ukrainians Prepare to Resist Putin
Financial Times: Air strikes or invasion: what are Putin’s military options for Ukraine?
RFE/RL: Canadian Firm Dismantles $12 Million Solar Plant In Ukraine Amid Dispute With Tycoon
Foreign Affairs: What Putin Learned From the Soviet Collapse
Wall Street Journal: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Lies in the Bones of an 11th-Century Prince
BBC: Emily in Paris: Ukraine complains over Kyiv character stereotype