Posts Tagged ‘USSR’

Putin’s Pariah

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

Edward Limonov, photo: Donald WeberCorrection Appended

It began inauspiciously. On a frozen afternoon in late November, as Moscow was draped with blocklong plastic billboards, banners and flags, each proclaiming a variation on a single theme — “POBEDA PUTINA — POBEDA ROSSII!” (“A Victory for Putin Is a Victory for Russia”) — a few thousand Russians converged on the city center for a rare act of political theater. It seemed, at first, like a tableau from the last days of the U.S.S.R., those heady months when glasnost swelled the streets with protesters. A handful of dissidents stood on a flatbed truck; a jumble of loudspeakers were stacked below; the crew of foreign reporters vastly outnumbered the local press; and across the way, the secret policemen with their unseen amplifiers were drowning the protest in canned laughter and Soviet waltzes. (more…)

Holiday Of Immortality

Wednesday, October 8th, 2003

I wrote this article in Lefortovo prison. It turned out to be a creative mission instead of a serious time in jail. But Lefortovo is such a prison that even less than 3 weeks here is enough to become imbued with proud cosciousness of a Russian State prisoner. One does not simply write in there but prophecy. As it is now customary, I`d like to thank my fellow inmates Denis and Arsen who kept “creative” silence and also the prison guards who gave me a pen and a paper as soon as I requested.

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