vanya796515

serduchka shops at Century 21! spotted mr. danilko today getting out of an obnoxious moscow-style white limo on church street right in front of "new york's best kept secret".

"Жывой звук, потресающие танцевальные номера, острый сюжет о любви, измене, убийстве и славе не оставят Вас равнодушными!!! "

"завоевавшый шесть призов "Тони"

As seen on RussianNY.com

this is what bugs me big time: the prices on booze are very much the same throughout the country, with minor variations. cigarettes are a different story, however: $5.50 in Pennsylvania, $7.00 in Syracuse and over $10 for a pack of Marlboro Lights here in Manhattan. I already gave up my daily fix of vino. Which may be good in the long run. But letting my cancer sticks go at this point is not an option - too much work to do, including finding one, and turning into a chubby homicidal bitch is not particularly enticing either. Most of my habits are so goddamn unaffordable.

The TIME magazine published this article about yet another failed attempt at 'gay pride' demonstration in Moscow: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1899340,00.html?iid=digg_share .

I agree with most of the things the author conveyed in this piece. I wish there was more of a critical perspective on the issue, however. First of all, the author should have mentioned that the miasmic homophobic rhetoric that permeates the contemporary Russian sociopolitical discourse is not at all unique to that nation/state. Well into the 1960's most of the 'civilized' Western states, and the U.S. especially, promulgated very similar attitudes towards its 'deviant minorities', such as its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens. So what fostered the change of these attitudes in the West (let's pretend they did change)?

The integration of the homosexual milieu into the mainstream culture in the West did not happen overnight. While certain events, such as the famed Stonewall Riots, did mark an important threshold in the advancement of gay rights, no such development could have successfully occurred outside a larger social, economic, political, and philosophical context. I do applaud the brave queens in the Village who stood up to the police abuse. But had it happened a decade earlier, it would have remained nothing more than a local incident in the history of New York City and its gay community.

The context I refer to is the increasing liberalization of the Western world that could be effectively traced as of the early 1960s. The post-WWII philosophies of existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism laid the basis for the renewed appreciation of the individual existence. The critical re-evaluation of the citizen/state relationship, especially following the horrors of the two World Wars, assumed central significance in the modern thought. The advent of feminism, the de-colonization, and the Civil Rights movement unfolding in the U.S., have stirred the traditional bourgeois morals through a mass and often violent dissent (and there were the new wars and the opposition to them, and the Socialist ideas floating around, and the critique of Modernity at large as a failed project, leading to the revisions of the legitimacy of the Positivist epistemologies as such, etc, etc.)

None of this, however, could have happened without a particular level of economic prosperity enjoyed in the West at that point of time. It was through the implementation of the free markets that the liberal democracies were re-installed in Europe, for such state models were deemed as the only suitable options for the economic expansion, initiated, indeed, by the United States of America. For the free market society to function effectively, the inclusion should greatly override the exclusion. The example of the 17th-century Holland did teach us something, it seems.

I am not writing a book here, so let me be concise: before gays could start parading in the West, the three essential criteria were met: 1) the sufficient level of economic prosperity, 2) the increasing liberalization of the elite and popular philosophies alike, and 3) the open and often violent activism of the abused minorities, whether sexual, racial, or social.

And, by the way, the so-called 'tolerance' for gays is still largely an urban phenomena in general, and most often reserved for somehwat affluent social groups in particular.

I know it's a very general outline and I am purposefully omitting a number of factors that will require further explication. We can discuss it later.

So what about Russia? Well, as I've been writing and saying before, Russia's recurrent attempts at "Westernization" is an utter historical sham. The example of the post-Soviet Russia is the most blatant in its dysfunction. For an average modern Russian citizen, the notion of the "West" as a cultural entity does not consist of the parliamentary democracy; or respect for human life and freedom; or freedom of speech and conscious. The notion of the "West" still implies wrapping oneself in something that prominently spells out pricey Italian labels (even if it's a rather suspicious-looking PRADA), drive a BMW and eat sushi, or whatever it is in vogue in Moscow nowadays. Just like Peter the Great once "Westernized" Russia by building lavish palaces with slave labor, so does today's Russia "Westernize" herself by raising Marriott's and all those hideous skyscrapers that are supposed to rival the skylines of NYC and London.

Since Russia (to a certain degree) did join the international financial community, the ruling elites, who are in the business of milking the natural resources industry, had to provide for a limited liberalization of the society in order to A) create an internal market of services B) keep the population under control by marginally covering its basic needs C) fit, albeit formally, the international ethical standards. Even that got significantly curtailed as of the year 2000.

In conclusion, due to a number of factors, Russia failed to develop any significant liberal thought in its modern history, including, but not limited to, the values of civic and personal freedom. No true market economy ever came into existence. And, since I'm talking about gays here, there is no gay community as such in Russia, in a sense of a sociopolitical entity. And how could there be a community, if a positive social gay identity does not exist either? Nor could it exist, since the general ideological paradigm that could be auspicious for such a development is absent and has no chance to emerge anytime soon.

Therefore, 'gay pride parade' in Moscow is a preposterous idea in the first place. Such activities do not promote gay rights in Russia in any feasible way, but serve solely to encourage the state-sponsored homophobia. Gay prides are for gays with pride. Before you can feel proud, you should do something worthy to qualify. Neither gays, nor the majority of the Russian population today deserve the right to be proud about themselves or their country. So they should stick to what they do best - the military parades on the Red Square or any alternative nauseating 'patriotic' spectacles that do, unfortunately, fuel the pride in so many.

the views of Cologne after the Allied bombs were dropped.

some of my favorite Proust quotes:

"All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last."

"Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces."

"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind."

"In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things."

"Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way."

"The only paradise is paradise lost."

"Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness."

"We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full."

Caspar David Friedrich, "Cathedral" (c. mid-19th c.)



Moscow State University, Sparrow Hills, Moscow. Finished in 1953.

one show I would have loved to see:

http://www.saulgallery.com/chronicle/stephenson_vaults.html

http://www.art.net.au/art-results.asp?idExhibition=634

http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/stephensond/vaults/index.html

"Если человек не потерял способности ждать счастья - он счастлив. Это и есть счастье."

"... Мы вообще, должно быть, очень виноваты все перед друг другом. Но только при разлуке чувствуешь это. Потом - сколько еще осталось нам этих лет вместе? Если и будут эти лета еще, то все равно остается их все меньше и меньше. А дальше? Разойдемся по могилам! Так больно, так обострены все чувства, так остры все мысли и воспоминания! А как тупы мы обычно! Как спокойны! И неужели нужна эта боль, чтобы мы ценили жизнь?"

Иван Бунин, "Окаянные Дни".

can't gen enough of this community:
http://community.livejournal.com/spbroofs

breathtaking vaulting:



Western facade:

two jewels discovered at work today: An Anthology of Lesbian Bondage Fiction and A Guide To Poo, a comprehensive manual on deducing one's health issues from the looks of one's feces.