Category: Politics

Svetlana Medvedeva: Introducing Russia’s New First Lady

Svetlana Medvedeva is the new Karla Bruni. Or the new Jacquie Kennedy. At least that’s what the visitors of my blog think: many of them accessed it while searching for “Svetlana Medvedev nice body,” “Svetlana Medvedeva nationality” etc. Interestingly enough, nobody searched for Dmitriy Medvedev himself.

So here are some comments.

Russia’s new First Lady’s name is Svetlana Medvedeva, not “Medvedev.” Her husband’s last name is Medvedev, a typical Russian name ending in “ov/ev.” For female last names, one adds an “a” to that ending, making it “ova/eva.” For instance, my dad’s name is Ershov, my mom’s and mine are Ershova. My parents used to receive letters from my Hong Kong high school in which they were addressed as Mr. and Mrs. Ershova, which sounds really weird to any Russian.

As far as her “nationality” is concerned, I believe she is Russian Russian, just like President Medvedev. By the way, he is officially a President now, the inauguration ceremony was held on May 7.

For those interested in her “nice body,” I am not an expert, but she definitely has a distinctive sense of style. She already appears to be involved with more different charity causes than Lyudmila Putina was. The Independent has an informative article about the high school sweethearts’ love story and their careers.

In a couple of hours ex-President Putin is supposed to be appointed prime minister. Russia has an exciting first lady, a new President, and an ex-President, who is going to be a new (powerful?) prime minister. Let’s see what’s going to happen.

Russians “Pick” Orthodox Christianity

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Russia’s bothersome attempting to introduce an Orthodox Christian version of Valentine’s Day. Today’s issue of the New York Times has me even more worried: “At Expense of Others, Putin Picks a Church:”

This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working “in symphony.”

Mr. Putin makes frequent appearances with the church’s leader, Patriarch Aleksei II, on the Kremlin-controlled national television networks. Last week, Mr. Putin was shown prominently accepting an invitation from Aleksei II to attend services for Russian Orthodox Easter, which is this Sunday.

Even though Moscow has always been a beacon of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, Russia’s Muslim population is around 15-20% of its total population (10-15% of the total population are practicing believers, according to the World Factbook); a significant percentage of the population is Buddhist. Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans etc are also fairly well-represented in Russia.

Apparently, according to Kremlin’s bizarre logic, since the incumbent President belongs to Orthodox Christianity, no one should care about other religions. Did anyone just mention the word ‘democracy’?

Valentine’s Day: Not Good Enough for Russia

It is with great sadness that I observe growing nationalistic trends in Russia. Russian leadership goes to great lengths to get rid of the “negative Western influence.” Did you really think the Cold War was over?

Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of Russian President-elect, recently announced her wish to introduce a Russian analogue of St. Valentine’s Day — and a religious one, too!

Russia has been embracing Christianity a lot more recently (Remember these pictures of bare-chested Putin wearing a crucifix?). Putin is quite a regular at the Christmas, Easter etc services. Now photos of Mrs. Medvedeva wearing a headscarf (all women are supposed to wear them inside an orthodox Christian church) and lighting a candle or talking to a priest are all over the Russian newspapers.

The holiday is supposed to celebrate two Russian Saints, Peter and Fevronia. Peter was a Russian prince. An evil serpent in a human form was paying supposedly unwanted nightly visits to his wife’s sister.

Peter, a noble Russian guy, killed that serpent, but the latter’s blood left his body covered in painful ulcers. Then he met a very wise peasant girl named Fevronia who asked him to marry her in exchange for curing him. He said he would marry her, but, in a typical Russian fairytale fashion, ignored his promise as soon as she helped him. But then his
ulcers came back, so he had to marry her. The prince and princess ruled over their share of Russia, became popular with the peasants, and lived happily ever after. When they died, they were buried apart at first, but then it was discovered their bodied ended up in the same coffin.

This story is warm and fuzzy, but I have a couple of questions to ask. Given that Fevronia blackmailed Paul into marrying her, can this holiday be viewed as a celebration of a female empowerment? Or as an indication to Russian women about how to treat their men?

As an atheist who is particularly allergic to the orthodox Christian tradition, I find this holiday disturbing. Valentine’s used to be a religious holiday, but it was consumerized a long time ago. So what is going to happen to Valentine’s in Russia?

If this “authentically Russian” holiday is indeed introduced to Russia, the number of holidays when single people feel miserable will be doubled. Or, if Presidents Medvedev and Putin like the plan, selling and buying traditional Valentine’s cards and gifts will be, you know, discouraged. After all, Saudi Arabia introduced a ban on selling red roses on Feb 14, 2008. Iran and Kuwait made repeated attempt to ban the holiday altogether. Russia is already following these countries’ example in terms of reducing democracy; isn’t it about time it banned Valentine’s, too?

Why I Am Not Going to Vote

I always thought voting was cool.

I remember accompanying my parents to the voting stations and being oh-so-jealous as they got to put a thick check mark next to the person they trusted to run a country for the next four years . Back then I wished I was 18, had a passport (an ultimate form of an identification for any Russian) and could also vote.

I couldn’t participate in the last presidential elections in 2004 because I was only 17. Hearing my family’s joyful stories about hanging out at the voting booths made me pretty jealous (I was at school in the US back then and everyone back home clearly thought I was missing out). Now that I am finally over 18 and there is a presidential election this coming Sunday, I can go vote. I won’t.

I don’t have an absentee ballot (apparently, to get one I had to be in Russia exactly one month before the elections, which makes fulfilling my citizen duties a bit too troublesome and expensive), but my consulate claims I can just show up with my travelling passport. Still, I won’t even bother going to NYC for that. I am not a big fan of a guy who will be our next president (I can bet four years worth of my college tuition that it’s going to be him). The ballot will provide me with a choice of another three: A political clown who is only good at giving drunken interviews , a Communist (I won’t even bother explaining why I am not going to vote for him or his party – ever) and a young-ish candidate who doesn’t have a good understanding of how he would run a country. Since there is no “against all” or “abstaining” option (it was removed a couple of years ago), I guess I will just stay at home doing school work.

Midterms are wreaking havoc over here : (