Former Soviet "borderlands"

This week I came across (purely accidentally) an interview conducted by Dominika Cosic with a Russian political scientist and Putin's advisor Gleb Pavlovsky for Wprost.

Not surprisingly, the interviewer brought up Belorus. While it is customary to bash Lukaschenko, Pavlovsky mentioned a crucial point: Belorus' economy has been steadily growing by 5% annually, not due to the expected export of natural resources (as in the case of Russia), but via the manufacturing and services industries! He admitted that the main receptacle of Belorussian exports is Russia, however this is partially based on the fact that the rest of Europe had decided to ostracize Belorus for ideological reasons and left it without much choice. He then expectedly warned against American/W. European democrazy exportation (as in the case of Ukraine election funding or even Iraq) and underscored the small respresentability of the new Belorussian opposition.

More important, Pavlovsky then emphasized the emotionality, which characterizes the current Polish foreign policy towards Russia (throughout the Kwasnievski / Putin rule), in contrast to the Walesa / Yeltsin period. He demonstrated this via maintained stereotype-based anti-Russian attitude in the Polish press, whereas Russia has no such anti-Polish attitudes.

This emotionality particularly affects the issue of the planned Russo-German gas pipeline: he explained that the pipeline is not a method of political circumscription (this is not the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, part II!), but a result of sober decisions with economic gain in mind, in which Poland is not even in question - for better or for worse.

The second issue that Pavlovsky attributed to irrationally driven foreign policy is the Katyn question and the current halt in the investigation procedures. He reminded the interviewer that Yeltsin already officially apologized for this particular example of Stalin's brutality - should every consecutive Russian leader be obliged to do the same? Historic tolerance is an essential democratic tool, and Kwasniewski initiated the ongoing faux pas.

Pavlovsky concluded that the current Russo-Polish relationship is classified by a vacuum, which explains the unnecessarily extended focus on the recent incident of the Russian teenagers' beatings in Poland / Polish diplomats' and journalists' beatings in Russia. If real issues are to be resolved, then two-sided discussions are more productive than historic grievances!

Theory in practice

First I nearly get killed by a giant airborne black backpack, which fell within two feet of me from the fifth floor of a building I walked past, due to someone's exotic eviction techniques. (*This reminded me of dear Winnipeg and its lengthy True Frostbitten Collosal Prairie Icicles Falling Off Roofs season and my vast expertise in this somewhat related field. If Zeus were Canadian, he'd certainly prefer those over lightning bolts.)

Then I end up working into wee hours of morning oooooooooooooovertime on a project that'll surely result in dreams of Swan Lake. Only instead of youthful ballerinas gracefully mastering the stage, I shall picture a colorful array of logos for various yellow pages companies. It is time to test the theory....

September 26th, 2005

I illustrated today at work. Drew by hand with further additions in Illustrator and Photoshop. For nearly seven hours. Cartoons. CARTOONS!!

Our office had a single pencil in its possession. And no pencil sharpner. I used an exacto knife, risking serious injury. And a red ink pen instead of a black one. I barely remembered the necessity of nourishment, while everyone else spent at least an hour on choosing a takeout location, deciding on and consuming the edible time-killers and work-avoiders. Whether this invitation-in-progress ends up being used is irrelevant.

Cue a daunting reminder of how much happier I'd be if I were to do this all the time.

Of course, I don't think that the world is ready for a Nina frolicking with bunnies in the fields of daisies and would much rather deal with the expected, if not mandatory "piss off, motherfucker" demeanor. So perhaps a limit of half a dozen colors, a single font, and software that leads much to be desired, shouldn't be too unwelcome after all.

Black, gold, white

In between projects at work I accidentally and shockingly came across a Russian Orthodox patriotic right-wing website: http://www.pravaya.ru/. Shockingly in a "pleasantly surprised" type of way. Already found a ton of things of interest - from a nice book review of a Russian translation of a Barthes publication to links to other patriotic sites of similar nature. For example: http://www.fap.ru/ - discussions of famous Russian battle anniversaries, like the upcoming Kulikovo, and histories of specific icons, Russian patriotic resources: http://www.rossija.info/index.html or the Russian Imperial Movement: http://www.rus-imperia.com/ (These are the true Russian colors!)

Conservative, patriotic, AND Orthodox? Sign me up!

Considering that I've spent the past few weeks closely following various up-and-coming unfortunately left-wing young politicians out of sheer curiosity, I'm extremely pleased that I've located so much current likemindedness on the same day.