Russia and Georgia: Darkness Falls

August 10, 2008 – 2:35 am

This is a special edition of this column.

Here are two things you ought to know about the conflict flaring up between Russia and Georgia:

First of all, Russia does not want Nato on its doorstep, and Georgia was getting ready to join Nato. Second of all, Georgia does not want to deal with the conflict that inevitably arises when certain parties, such as the South Ossetians, decide to break away.

I can understand where both sides are coming from. As much as I deplore Russia’s meddling in its neighbours’ affairs, I have to say that said meddling makes sense to the Kremlin. And as much as deplore Saakashvili’s government (have we already forgotten Georgia’s political crises?), I have to say that I understand not wanting to deal with the inevitable lawlessness that rebel regions such as South Ossetia create within and around themselves.

What horrifies is me is not just the violence, as if it isn’t bad enough, but the fact that being ethnically half-Russian and half-Ukrainian, I grew knowing that the Georgians are our friends. I grew up in a household in love with Georgian culture. To my Russian mother, Georgia was “the most beautiful place in the world,” and she wasn’t alone in this by far.

The people baying for blood on both sides, have they honestly forgotten our common ties? If the forgetting is this easy, perhaps we really ought to be worried about the future of Russia and Ukraine. The unthinkable is already happening before us, and history has entered a gloomy and bewildering chapter. This is the sort of thing that happens when empires fail; it’s bloody and vile. It reeks of gunpowder and rot and the dried-up glue that used to hold together our old, red memorial wreaths.

Now, for all the understandable grief surrounding the loss of life, I have found something to be bitterly amused about: Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Current Affairs, europe, politics | Comments (8)

The Deaths That Bind Us: Solzhenitsyn, Pugovkin, Mordyukova

August 4, 2008 – 11:36 am

It feels instinctive to say that the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn marks an end of an era. Which era, though?

Solzhenitsyn’s life spanned many eras: WWII, the gulag, the Khrushchev years, stagnation, the last gasps of the Cold War, and, most recently, the strange and wondrous and bewildering reality of post-Soviet Russia. Solzhenitsyn’s legacy is crystal clear if one is looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. His legacy among his people and the people who love and study Russian literature and culture, however, is a much more complicated phenomenon.

In the West, Solzhenitsyn is most readily regarded as a symbol of All That Stalin Did Wrong. In today’s Russia and other post-Soviet countries he is a public figure whose function was and is debated, whose artistic achievements are criticized with gruffness rarely found elsewhere, and whose insistence on criticizing liberal democracy has earned him respect for the searing honesty with which he presented his views.

Living in the U.S., I have repeatedly run up against the sentiment that today Solzhenitsyn is intellectual Russia’s beloved grandmaster, a kindly, fatherly figure. The truth is, most people I know responded more emotionally when the likes of Nonna Mordyukova and Mikhail Pugovkin passed on earlier this summer - old school Soviet actors whose movies also serve as reminders of a time and a place gone forever.

The deaths of Mordyukova and Pugovkin did not, for the most part, make international headlines. But these figures were no less important in a cultural and historical context. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Arts & Literature, europe, obituary, politics | Comments (3)

Gods and Nymphs: The Myths and Realities of Modern Life and Love

July 21, 2008 – 6:53 am

A few months ago, I read that Russian women have lost the war against sexism, and that one of the symptoms of said defeat is the dominance of the Nymph - “a professional beauty,” the ideal partner for the modern man.

The author of the essay I’m quoting is Evgenia Pischikova, a funny, clever woman. While I found her perceptions of American feminism to be somewhat idealized, and some of her statements regarding modern Russian woman downright exaggerated, I nevertheless believe in the Nymph. I’ve seen far too many beautiful women, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian, affect a soulless gaze in the presence of eligible bachelors to deny the Nymph’s existence.

Yet I do not think the story of the Nymph to be simple. Neither do I think that her tale is complete without a thorough discussion of her male counterpart - the God.

Now, the modern God, for the sake of Pischikova’s analogy, is pretty much any man who is, for some reason, desirable to the Nymph, usually marked by a paternalistic (or, as some people are fond of saying, “protective” attitude). We’re accustomed to believe that the God is wealthy, or well-off, and he generally is.

Modern Gods demand sacrifices as readily as the ancient ones. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, europe, feminism, love, sex, women | Comments (5)

Euro 2008: Boys With Balls

June 30, 2008 – 4:36 am

Thank God for the existence of Iker Casillas. The Spanish keeper, team captain, and Legolas-like wonderboy made the final bearable for me. Casillas made me think back to 2002, when this unusually young goalkeeper was having a brilliant World Cup showing and Germany were doing what they did again this year: making me tear my hair out in helpless rage. Football has a tendency to repeat itself.

One can’t hate Spain, though, I’ve decided. Sure, it’s theoretically possible, but why would one want to?

Even after Spain demolished my boys, the Russians, and proceeded to wipe the floor with my other boys, the Germans (and let’s not forget Spain’s 2006 World Cup defeat of my original home team, Ukraine, which could only have been more embarrassing if the Spanish players pantsed Andriy Shevchenko and proceeded to slap keeper Oleksandr Shovkovsky with his own gloves), I can’t help but be happy for them.

When does Spain, an essentially good team, ever win anything anyway? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, beauty, europe, football, sports | Comments (2)

Cristiano Ronaldo and the Coming of the Antichrist

May 22, 2008 – 6:15 am

Author’s note to her faithful American readers: yes, I mean football as in “soccer.” “Soccer” is an ugly word and the rest of the world barely uses it.

I wake up today to a sad world. Sure, things may presently be peaceful in my corner of the universe, with birdies singing and cockroaches scuttling happily about their business of scaring me to death. Yet there is a melancholy note in the birdsong and the scuttling of the unholy abominations known as blatta orientalis has an automaton, going-through-the-motions feel about it.

Precious is lost. And by “precious,” I mean the Champions’ League title. Well, for Chelsea, anyway.

There’s a reason why I don’t write much about football. My two favourite teams, Chelsea and Dynamo Kiev, are like the dorky, gifted kids at school, forever getting stuffed into lockers and denied the glory that’s their due. While Hollywood and modern technology have been busy fulfilling the “and the geek shall inherit the earth” prophecy, things are a little different on the pitch.

Last night, as I watched the Champion’s League final (held inside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, the hallowed ground where my father went with his father to see many a Dynamo Kiev away game), I expressed my hatred of Manchester United many times over. The expressions I used were creative, and not entirely suitable for this publication. In my defense, I’d like to point out that if it wasn’t for Cristiano Ronaldo’s face, I might have been more civil.

This might seem superficial, but I just can’t stand dudes who smile like evil ferrets advancing on a nest of baby chicks. One of these days, the fall of civilization will be traced to this smug, self-satisfied countenance. You’re laughing now, but you’ll be sorry later, as ashes fall from the sky, the locusts advance, and, somewhere, Cristiano Ronaldo continues to grin maniacally.

Let’s put it this way, if Cristiano Ronaldo lived in the States, he would have already made at least one sex-tape with Paris Hilton and/or Tom Sizemore, then gone on some third-rate reality TV show to brag about it.

You might argue that football is, ultimately, for the smug and the self-satisfied. After all, confidence is what helps plant terror in your opponents’ hearts, no?

Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, football, humor, sports | Comments (10)

Mark Seal on Kenya in Vanity Fair: Bad Implications and Dead Ends

April 28, 2008 – 5:23 am

If you thought that a recent cover of Vogue magazine had a whiff of King Kong about it, consider the possibility that this month, Vanity Fair may have given Vogue a run for its money. Just remember that while words are subtler than pictures, they are no less suggestive.

I am a fan of Vanity Fair, and this column is therefore more difficult to write than usual. My column does not usually feature the issues I am about to discuss, but I felt that a digression, at present, was necessary.

Now, I didn’t get a hold of their April issue until recently, but once I did, I noticed that it features a story entitled “Prisoner of Kenya,” by veteran journalist Mark Seal. A potentially intriguing piece, correct?

It is intriguing indeed, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

The story centers on a wealthy white grand-grandson of “Kenya’s most prominent colonizer,” the third Baron Delamere who, the article says:

“virtually established Kenya for white settlement… After…the British government built railways, erected Nairobi, and forced the Masai tribesmen from their ancestral grazing lands to make way for white colonists, foremost of whom was Delamere.”

Meanwhile, the great-grandson in question, Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley, was cleared after being accused the killing of one person before landing in jail again for the killing of another. Both victims were black Kenyans, from different tribes. From behind bars, Cholmondeley protests his innocence and insists both killings were accidental.

The prisoner is a polarizing figure in Kenya, and the fact that he walked free the first time around sparked outrage and protest. Now there is pressure on the Kenyan government to make sure Cholmondeley does not get away so easily.

Here’s a quote, taken from the body of the piece and splashed across a solemn picture of Cholmondeley to draw the reader in:

“If found guilty by the black judge who will decide his fate, Cholmondeley could face execution by handing.”

This immediately struck me as interesting. Why stress the point that the judge is black if not to freak out white people? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, africa | Comments (15)

Yearning For Answers: Fundamentalism, Polygamy, and the Role of Women

April 21, 2008 – 9:22 am

When I heard about the raid on a fundamentalist Texas compound called Yearning for Zion, I got to thinking about polygamy (well, my initial thought was more along the lines of “wow, I really want to hurl my coffee cup at the wall,” but that should probably go without saying).

Although the raid was part of an ongoing child abuse probe (hence my desire to destroy a perfectly innocent coffee cup), the issue of polygamy once again took center stage as Americans and everyone else who watched the news coming out of Texas began a new round of debating the subject.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: If you advocate for the legalization of polygamy in the States, I will only take you seriously if you advocate polyandry as well. Now for the caveat: Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, Religion, christianity, family, north america, sex, women | Comments (40)

God, Diabetes, and Death in Wisconsin

March 30, 2008 – 7:16 am

A few days ago, in Wisconsin, 11-year-old Madeline Neumann died from undiagnosed diabetes. Her parents prayed over her as she deteriorated, instead of taking her to the hospital.

According to most reports, the Neumanns are a normal American family. They are not members of some weird death-cult. They didn’t show up at military funerals with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” This is, in a way, all the more troubling.

My initial response to this story cannot be published here on account of the vast number of obscenities it involved. I was shocked, and outraged, and demanded immediate removal of the Neumanns’ other children from their home. While breaking up a family in the wake of a tragedy is grim business to say the least, one does hope that law enforcement will keep an eye on the Neumanns. Imposing probation and ordering counseling is the least that can be done.

The fact that the Neumanns’ other children have indeed, for now, been removed from their home may ultimately serve to educate the parents on the fact that their actions, or, rather, their inaction, was indeed wrong.

I am not Christopher Hitchens, and do not wish to use this death to score a point. Let’s put it this way, most parents, religious or not, would take their child to a hospital at the first sign of serious trouble. When it comes to religion, the Neumanns are the exception, not the rule.

As a person of (some) faith, I find that the Neumanns are the perfect illustration to the saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Clearly, the Neumanns “knew” certain passages from the Bible concerning God’s omnipotence and power to heal, etc. And yet did they also not realize that if God allowed His or Her children to create life-saving penicillin, He or She might just want us to use it? Considering that life is a gift and all? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, Religion, christianity, family, north america | Comments (4)

Acting Like a Rectal Polyp Does not a Feminist Statement Make

February 25, 2008 – 4:06 am

Any good idea can get hijacked for the sake of advancing asininity, and feminism is no exception.

Back in college, flyers tacked up on the walls of computer labs read that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” I agree. I’ve always felt human (except for that one year when the immortal genius of Arnold Schwarzenegger had me wishing that I was a cyborg), and believe that female friends and relatives are human as well - with the right to make reproductive choices, go to college, join the army, make a decent wage, be safe from rape and other forms of assault, wear overalls and sneakers instead of high-heels and frou-frou (thought I do like me some frou-frou), and so on.

However, I have recently been told that feminism is actually the radical notion that cheating and verbal abuse are OK, as long as it’s a woman who’s engaging in both. Apparently, because men abuse women, it’s morally defensible for a woman to abuse a man. It’s called “subverting the dominant paradigm” and any woman in a heterosexual relationship is entitled to it.

So, let’s wrap our minds around this illustrious bit of logic: abuse is a bad thing, and we will “subvert” it by actively engaging in it? Color me unimpressed. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, humor, women | Comments (22)

“Lost”: Sublime Transcendence and… Hey Sawyer, Take That Shirt Off!

February 10, 2008 – 5:58 am

A lot of my intellectual friends (the sort of people who, with a dignified cough, announce that they do not “indulge in mass media entertainment,” and other, less extreme types) repeatedly ask me why on earth is it that I watch “Lost.”

They talk to me like one would talk to an otherwise normal girl who, for some unfathomable reason, decided to date the biggest loser in one’s zipcode - complete with police record, regular stint in mom’s basement, and the miasma of unwashed socks.

“Why, Natalia? Why do you put yourself through that?” *deep sigh* “If you need help you know where to find me.”

I’m not one of those people who’ll threaten to chain you to the couch, tape your eyes open, and force you to watch every single episode while humming “Shambala” and cackling maniacally. If you don’t like “Lost,” you’re free to tell me that you think it sucks (or, as one esteemed blogger put it, that it’s better to “take a large amount of peyote and watch Gilligan’s Island” instead).

I’m all for television democracy, because, let’s face it, I never liked “Seinfeld,” I don’t watch “The Wire,” and “The Sopranos” just succeeded in making me feel that the world is a horrible place (perhaps rightfully so).

However, I do feel compelled to explain why is it that I love “Lost.” Now that the fourth season is upon us, the doubters have come out like zombies after dark:

“Three more seasons of that crap?” “It doesn’t even make sense!”

Well, you’re right, it doesn’t. But that’s not the point. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, TV, humor | Comments (2)