Springtime for Skinheads: Murdering People for the Colour of their Shoelaces

October 22, 2008 – 2:12 am

I didn’t find out about this murder in Irkutsk, Russia, on the news. I discovered this first through the blog of a friend of a friend. An independent media source has highlighted this incident, the mainstream news is rather quiet.

Olga Rukosyla was sixteen years old. She enjoyed dressing like a punk, and wore red shoelaces which, to some, signify the famous “Antifa” (anti-facism) movement.

Indymedia reports that on the 8th of October, Olga was surrounded by three young men dressed, as witnesses say, in typical skinhead fashion. One of them grabbed her hand. She said something angrily to him. This was when the men surrounding her threw her on the ground and literally kicked her to death.

Three men, murdering a teenage girl in broad daylight.

Skinheads operate like packs of wild dogs. They prefer to outnumber their victims, and seem to forge bonds through frantic eruptions of group violence.

My neighbourhood in Kyiv, Ukraine has been spray-painted with their slogans, and I’m afraid for the African and Asian kids living in the dorms around my building, for my Jewish neighbours, for my Arab boyfriend, who stays with me there sometimes. I’m afraid that my kid brother might wear the wrong t-shirt and piss them off.

How can we be safe when the only visible opposition seems to arise in the form of Antifa groups spraying their own slogans over Nazi ones? (Hey, kid who drew the gallows around the swastika that was spray-painted on my family’s garage - thank you.)

The terror skinheads have spread has inspired some to take their side, to excuse their actions, to even boldly proclaim that they are “ridding society of unsavoury elements” (i.e., they are ridding society of anyone who’s in any way different, be that due to skin colour or the colour of one’s shoelaces). Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Society, crime, essays, racism | Comments (4)

The Heroes of the New Cold War (And What Idiots They Are)

September 9, 2008 – 4:06 pm

A lot of people want a New Cold War. After all, the War on Terror is just too confusing and troublesome and, let’s face it, terrifying. Poker-faced Soviet villains had hot side-kicks. Hollywood loved them. And for all of their bluster, they didn’t operate via sleeper cells or strap bombs onto women with mental disabilities just so they could blow up people and puppies. Medvedev’s no Osama, we can take him!

Oh, and backing Kosovo independence with no UN approval is totally not the same thing as backing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. At all. Hey, look over there, it’s a bear with a semi-automatic!

Of course, the Russian Federation’s own, rather special, government, was itching for this confrontation as well. How else to distract the rest of the country from the fact that, for all of Russia’s economic growth, an oil-based economy is not the greatest of ideas? Or the fact that journalists are getting shot in the head and the country’s free press has reached of the mythical Yeti, occasionally glimpsed, but mostly regarded as a figment of our collective imagination? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, europe, politics | Comments (1)

Cold War Revisited: “Red Dawn”

September 1, 2008 – 8:35 am

As certain factions speculate that the world is headed toward a new Cold War, Mark Farnsworth examines the artistic legacy of this phenomenon.

Director, screenwriter, and producer John Milius has always fancied himself as a latter day Hemingway, a warrior-poet on the board of directors of the NRA, fiercely opposed to gun control, and a consultant for the deceptively named military think tank - the Center for Creative Technology. A member of the 70s movie brats alongside Lucas, Spielberg, and Scorcese, Milius is the man responsible for the finer moments in “Jaws,” “Magnum Force,” and “Apocalypse Now.” His heroes are Patton, MacArthur, and Roosevelt; not your average right-wing American icons, but mavericks, tyrants, and visionary leaders.

The film critic David Thompson wrote of Milius as having, “earned and even provoked the press reputation of a strident, magnum-brandishing reactionary. But he is more than that. He is an anarchist, he is articulate, and he has an unshakable faith in human grandeur.” This would seem true from his directorial efforts, “Dillinger,” “Conan The Barbarian,” and “The Wind and the Lion.” Yet “Red Dawn” is a rather strange nut to crack.

“Red Dawn” is the ultimate ‘what if?’ movie. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Entertainment, europe, movies, north america, politics | Comments (0)

The War: Diary From Georgia

August 18, 2008 – 7:10 am

August 6th

For a little more than a week I’ve been out of town with the family. Myself, my lady, and the kid are not very far from Tbilisi, in Narekvavi village. It’s an hour of driving, less if there are no patrols in view and one gives oneself the liberty of exceeding the speed limit.

It’s summer, the seashore is calling. Tbilisi looks half-empty. It is a pleasure driving even in town, where one is usually stuck up in traffic jams half of the time. Yours truly has been to town to do some shopping, such as can’t be done locally. Next sortie is planned for Tuesday.

It is much cooler up there on the mountain slope in the summer cottage than down in Tbilisi. The garden is green, starlings and snails cover every flat and cool surface. Tortoises live in the vegetable patch (not looked after for a year and yet still proudly sporting a single, large cabbage), the night before a hedgehog has all but wondered into the house, and a hen from some of the neighboring houses pays daily visits to dig for wheat. There is a TV set, but the antenna is broken, so life is calm and quiet.

We take strolls to the village every evening. Like regular townsfolk we must seem, especially because the kid keeps gaping and exclaiming whenever we meet a pig or a cow.

The first news reach us in the local store where I venture to get myself some beer for the evening. ‘There is war in Samachablo (Georgian name for the region known as South Ossetia)’ they tell me. I wave off the hint of alarm in my thoughts with ‘oh, can’t be more than some borderline skirmish, not in August, not with the calm mood I’m in.’

August 7th

Life goes on normally but for news gathered at the local store. It is serious fighting, they say. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, europe, politics | Comments (8)

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)

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)

Slave to Fate and desperate men

November 19, 2007 – 5:00 pm

On July 1, 2002 a Bashkirian Airlines passenger plane and a DHL cargo jet collided over the German countryside. Eyewitnesses reported seeing fire in the sky, a noise like thunder stirred the sleeping in their beds, and any desperate hopes for survivors were quickly abandoned. Seventy-one people lost their lives, most of them Russian children on a UNESCO-sponsored trip to Barcelona. Architect Vitaly Kaloev, a Russian citizen then living in Spain, lost his entire family: wife Svetlana, and two children, Diana, four, and Konstantin, ten (do NOT Google pictures of that family if you value your composure, the children are so… so… Well, you know how it goes).

In 2004, Kaloyev traveled to Switzerland, demanding a personal apology from Skyguide, the air traffic control company that admitted responsibility for the crash. Unsuccessful in his attempt to meet with then-Skyguide bigwig Alain Rossier (how dare some guy who lost his entire family ask for an audience with His Holiness the CEO? - That’s the way the world works, it seems), Kaloyev traveled to the home of Peter Nielsen, the only man on air traffic control duty at the time of the crash (Nielsen’s partner had gone on break). An altercation ensued, and Nielsen was stabbed to death in front of his family.

Although convicted of murder, Vitaly Kaloyev was recently released by Switzerland’s highest court. His sentence was shortened, and he was then cited as having completed two-thirds of it already. Last week, Kaloyev got a raucous welcome in Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. People who had never met him held up signs reading “You’re a real human being!” Kaloyev’s first order of business was to visit the family graves.

The Russian press has called what happened in 2002 “murder.” I don’t quite agree. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs | Comments (3)