Power in pictures

Last week, Buzzfeed published a set of photos from a St. Petersburg LGBT march that was, like most LGBT street actions right now, set upon by nationalist groups and ended in violence and arrests. I ran across it after a couple of friends (who don’t have any particular connection to Russia) posted it on Facebook. I’ve been glad to see that this area of conflict has been getting some coverage outside Russia, even reaching people who aren’t in general tuned into Russian current events. All the same, the photos and their presentation followed a very common pattern in coverage of LGBT issues in Russia.

Exhibit A:

Changing the points

The shunting yards

One Russian idiom that comes up a lot in conversations about politics is переводить стрелки, “changing the points,” [1] which originated (if I’m not mistaken) as a railroad term for changing the tracks to shunt a train onto a different set of rails. In politics, “shunting” refers to redirecting blame or guilt. It strikes me as a curious metaphor, as if blame for a given mistake or problem is as unstoppable as a train hurtling down the tracks. All one can do (if one is a shifty politician) is redirect it.

When I read the NYTimes’ coverage over the weekend of the “Bolotnaya Case” trials, “shunting” came to mind again.

Another day, another name: Nikolai Kavkazsky

18 April—Day of solidarity with Nikolai Kavkazsky. Nikolai, who earlier had actively given help to those held in the Bolotnaya Case, was himself arrested. Since July 25, 2012, he has been held in prison.

Nikolai finished school as a cellist and had prepared to become a musician, but his love for national history and the law outweighed that, so he went to law school.

Nikolai is a hereditary intellectual; his parents are musicians. He is young, but already well known as an activist and human rights defender. He positions himself as a left social-democrat. As a lawyer and consultant for the human rights organization “The Committee for Civil Rights,” Nikolai defended the rights of prisoners, the disabled, pensioners, followers of non-traditional faiths, and sexual minorities. He opposed infill development and supported environmentalists. Nikolai was a former member of the youth branch of the party Yabloko, ran for the State Duma, and worked in the precinct and territorial election commissions. Before his arrest, Nikolai supported “the prisoners of May 6”: he demonstrated in a picket supporting them before the Investigation Committee.

Another day, another name

[Being easily distracted, I have neither posted recently nor managed to start this series when it started. Even so!]

Bolotnaya case. One Day–One Name. Yaroslav Belousov.

The Committee for May 6 has been posting stories every day to recognize and share information about each individual who has fallen under the expanding criminal case involved participants in last year’s May 6 rally, which ended in clashes with police and arrests. As one might imagine, the story of who started the clashes varies dramatically according to who is telling it. The Committee for May 6’s stories are a bit sentimental, but even so it’s a neat exercise, expressing both the scope and the twisty methods of this particular series of repressions. Here’s today’s story (all translation mistakes mine):

Attacked in the metro

Many participants in the march covered their faces, presumably to hide their identities in photos like this one. Photo via RIA Novosti. Photograph by Ilya Pitalev.

This is an unpleasant story, but I wanted to share it because of what it shows about the current political climate in Moscow.

Since 2005, November 4 has been the Day of National Unity in Russia. Part of the new holiday tradition [1] is a massive “Russian March” in which nationalists and other far-right groups gather and air their views, including among other things xenophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT sentiment. Reports of this year’s march included word that some participants had even waved around Nazi-style swastika flags. Some of the activists I’ve been in contact with had organized an anti-fascism rally to show that was an alternative to the ideology expressed by the Russian March. I’d gotten word the day before that we would meet up in the center of the metro station at 3:30 for the 4:00 rally. This is typical; for rallies and marches participants often gather in a nearby station beforehand to check in, adjust plans, and make sure everyone gets to the right location together.

I hadn’t been to this station before, so when I arrived a few minutes early I walked around, admiring it. The hall itself was all hard surfaces, gleaming polished stone. A series of wide pillars separated the center of the hall from the train platforms. I photographed the beautiful black-and-gray marble mosaics of Dostoyevsky’s most famous works. The station was nearly empty with less than a dozen people milling around waiting to meet friends. At the time I wasn’t paying attention, but afterward it would seem unusual that there were no police in the station. They’re almost always on patrol in stations near the center, especially on days when big marches are planned.

We don’t need flowers

My new yoga studio gave all the ladies tulips for the 8th of March. Super nice!

Yesterday (March 8) was International Women’s Day, which was a major official holiday in the Soviet period. Official Soviet ideology had declared women equal to men shortly after the Revolution–Huzzah! Curiously, many women continued to feel surprisingly unequal through the rest of the century despite official statements. They pointed to the fact that women were not only expected to work full time, but also to do all the housework and childcare; they were also largely excluded from the upper echelons of political power. But every year on March 8, the tables turned: women were gifted with flowers and chocolate from the men in their lives!

This year, I attended a rally coordinated by half a dozen women’s rights groups, along with the gender section of the liberal party Yabloko, a meeting “For Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men.”