Putin Speaks English and German (and French)

I'm waaaay behind on all the things, but here's a belated Wednesday post highlighting Putin's linguistic capabilities.

Putin speaks Russian, French (obviously), German, and English.  Is there some other one I don't know about?  Not surprised about the French because I swear every Russian book I've read uses French phrases (even after translation) and Russia's power was during the height of French's fashionability.  It's not uncommon for anyone in Europe or Russia to know French in some capacity.

 

It only makes sense that he speaks German since Putin was stationed as a KGB officer in Dresden for 5 years.  I cannot help but think of Lara in Good Bye, Lenin! because the accent is the exact same. 

Then there's English.  This is the video that came out with him speaking English.  He obviously has used English before (doubt that Obama speaks any of the other three languages), but everyone is making note of this video.  I certainly did because I've never seen video of him using English, let alone for such a span of time.  Does anyone else notice that he makes weird facial contortions with certain English sounds?  It looks like it pains him to utter them out loud.  I worked with an Italian woman in Budapest who would always repeat the hideous "er" sound whenever she uttered it, just to make fun of how ugly it sounded.  We often would just start saying "er! er! ERRRRR!" to be funny because, let's face it, it really is a hideous sound.

No videos of French, and why would I even care!  France isn't part of this blog!

5/31 Review: Checking Facts, Basketball, and ICTY, WHY?

News

BIGGEST NEWS OF THE WEEK:

"#ICTY judgements are consistent, logical and contribute to reconciliation in the Balkans," said no one, ever. bit.ly/11dXlny
— Nastasja Vojvodić (@nastasja__v) May 30, 2013

All I'm going to say about that ^^ is holy balls of hellfire, I am slowly starting to hate ICTY.  Make up your mind about what is ancillary and what is not.

5/24 Review - Dramatics and Righting Historical Wrongs

Friday means reflecting on our past week.  Tune in to get a gist of the big news, my opinions on the news, videos, art, and music.  My discoveries are yours to enjoy!

Chechnya: A Little Background Series, Part 2

Due to the events in Boston, Chechnya is the hot topic.  There is a lot of solid, fair information out there, but there's also really prejudiced, xenophobic information as well.  This post should hopefully condense the history of the neighboring north Caucus neighbors as well as Chechnya and give context since the name and history of this region will be tossed about for the next couple of weeks, at least.  Let me clearly state this now: it is unclear whether the conflict in Chechnya has any relevance to the Boston bombing and I am not endorsing a direct link between the two.  This is merely to give more information about a misunderstood, seldom-taught corner of the world and it's best to have more straight information out when it's being talked about.  Let us proceed.

Chechnya is right on the border of Georgia.  This borderland of the former Soviet Union/USSR has been embroiled in conflict for the past while.  Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Chechnya all occupy the Caucus between the Caspian and Black Seas.  The proximity of all these regions, their wars, and continued disputes is important when considering the state of Chechnya.  Since there is a lot going on, I've broken it down by the conflicted region.  There is a lot going on here, so I've broken it down into 3 post, culminating in Chechnya. This post is discussing South Ossetia.  Abkhazia's post is here.

 

Monday FILM Review: Serbian Hero

Today's Monday review is going to be a film, not a book!  It's time to get a little multimedia in my reviews.  For those following me on Twitter, you saw that I went to see "Slaughter Nick for President" on Friday at CIMM Fest.  I seldom get to watch movies about eastern Europe because my husband does not have the same taste, and my selections tend to be downers (which he wishes to avoid).  I have to be careful about my selections because he would not tolerate a film like "Sátántangó", which is 7 hours long.  I don't even know if I can get him to commit to "Dekalog" (which I cherish in my heart) despite that it's essentially like a TV series.  The point is, we both had to win.  I got Serbia in there and he got some feel-good.

Chechnya: A Little Background Series

Due to the events in Boston, Chechnya is the hot topic.  There is a lot of solid, fair information out there, but there's also really prejudiced, xenophobic information as well.  This post should hopefully condense the history of the neighboring north Caucus neighbors as well as Chechnya and give context since the name and history of this region will be tossed about for the next couple of weeks, at least.  Let me clearly state this now: it is unclear whether the conflict in Chechnya has any relevance to the Boston bombing and I am not endorsing a direct link between the two.  This is merely to give more information about a misunderstood, seldom-taught corner of the world and it's best to have more straight information out when it's being talked about.  Let us proceed.

Moving Forward: 4/19 Review

This past week hasn't been the flashiest in terms of news, but there has been some movement on the political scene.

Central Europe

Hungary got quite a bit of negative attention this week, and for more than solely-political reasons.  To add to the constitutional changes that Fidesz has put into action, they've decided to annoy Brussels with an ad hoc tax to pay EU fines.  Delightful.  It had one thing going in its favor: the ruling on the violent interrogation was upheld.

Romania made two big decisions this week: 1) they are abandoning their original EU target year and postponing until 2020 and 2) they are proposing a property restitution bill to settle disputes from collectivization during the Soviet era.  A Romanian daily paper is concerned that this will fuel the Romanian real estate bubble.

Germany has a new party emerging: Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has an outline of its political stances here (in German - sorry!).  Surprise, surprise, they are not pro-EU/United States of Europe and challenging the CDU/CSU coalition that's been in power since Merkel stepped up the podium.

Katyń (Forest) Massacre

Today's focus is on a historical event that has great significance to Poles.  Poland and Russia have a long and tangled history of clashes and Katyń was among many bloody events.  The Katyń forest is just outside Smolensk, a fact that will prove interesting later in the story. The massacre occurred in April and May of 1940 and is the result of an infamous non-aggression pact.

Baring It All: 4/12 Recap

Welcome to the recap of the week.  There's so much to read and know that I've taken the liberty of condensing it for you.  If you want to see these things as they happen, follow me on Twitter!  You just have to click that button over to the right.  It's not far...  You can also see who I follow; I discovered that Twitter is the best place to find anything on CEE and there are fantastic, smart people to interact with.

Let's get to it.

Country Spotlight: Montenegro

It's been a long, long time since I have spotlighted a country and it's time to revive it.  Today will be focused on Montenegro!  I have completely neglected the country, but here I am to shed some light on the country, which has been popping up in the news due to some presidential problems.  Though besotted with corruption, the EU approved accession talks.  Let's dive in to Crno Gora!

via

 

Name

The name Montenegro actually comes from the Venetian word for Crna Gora (sometimes transliterated as Tsrna Gora): Monte Negro.  It means "black mountain".

The Art of the Impossible

I have unrestrained admiration for Václav Havel.  When I married my husband, I began a campaign to name one of our future sons Havel in his honor (he's tentatively committed - yes!).  That is not a joke.  Why do I admire him so much?  Is it because he was a famous Czech dissident? a playwright? a playwright who then became the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic)? Or was it because his words have inspired me and given me a new way of thinking? Ding ding ding ding.  

What in the World?: Reflections on 3/29

Another delightful recap of what impressed and intrigued me over the past week.

News

My CEE corner of the internet BLEW UP when Berezovsky died.  I read multiple articles on him because  I had no idea who he was.  He's an important figure since he created the monster that is Putin.  Too many articles to link here.

I am following what I need to about Cyprus, but all I have to say is: whoa.

Friday Round Up - 3/8

I have been all atwitter on twitter this week!  Lots of stuff going on in Europe these days, particularly the southeasterly neighbors in the Balkans.  Europeans be trippin', as they say.  There were so many happenings that this post is all news and very little play.  Scroll through my twitter for some of the fun diversions I found!

Monday Book Review

I'm trying to finish a book for a review, but it's going slowly.  I already mentioned the reason for the delay on twitter (my utter nerdiness), but suffice it to say that the other book is dense and academic.  I have been distracted by a far more entertaining and fantastic book with a storyline.  It's not that it's boring, but it doesn't exactly speak to me the way non-fiction does--you know, heartstrings and all.  Today's book is a non-fiction that does reach me that way.  Probably because Poland's culture is rife with poetic sensibility and a heroism that just won't quit.  Michael T. Kaufman's Mad Dreams, Saving Graces is a great read on the opposition movement, as well as individual acts of rebellion, in Poland.  The secondary title is Poland: A Nation In Conspiracy, which almost makes it sound like a spy novel, which really isn't that far off since it recollects subversive acts by many brave Poles.

In Case You Missed It...

Capturing the last week in a nutshell.  Easy to read and easy to stay up to date on the cool, the crazy, and the communist.

There has been some political developments and almost as exciting as last week's!  Slovenia, not to be outdone by Bulgaria, democratically hoisted and defenestrated their PM Janša.  No dignified resignations, but a simple oust through the operations of government.  They get extra gold stars for a functioning government (am I bitter because of the American sequester? MAYBE). Others are trying to do the same. 

Roundup of the Week

Today's post is rounding up both the big news from Europe and some discoveries I've made. 

 

News

Bulgaria: This is the most recent and biggest news in Europe.  If you haven't followed up on it, simply scroll through my twitter feed to the right of this post to find numerous sources on it.  Borisov has made a somewhat unusually gallant gesture by stepping down, but it's also just that: a gesture.  His choice of words were, at the very least, an excellent homage to the fundamental ideals of democracy: "The people gave us power and today we are returning it."  Politics is part performance and that's part of its power, but the other part comes from action and there hasn't been much movement on that front.  It has been remarked that Borisov is the tip of the corruption iceberg, hence why people are still protesting.  Presseurop did publish an article showing the cyclical patterns in Bulgarian politics and pointed out that this isn't exactly new fare for the impoverished nation.  It shouldn't be surprising that Bulgaria has struggled so much to shake the weights of the past since it was the most loyal USSR satellite and had the most centralized and sovietized economy in the bloc.  Like everyone else, I'm waiting to see the results of these protests and if they will materialize into either a real political movement, simply a reactionary movement with no clear agenda, or a knee-jerk reaction to austerity that will mirror Greece. 

Topical Tuesday: NPD aka Neo-nazis

I had found this data visualization from Der Spiegel on one of my favorite blogs, Global Sociology.  There isn't much explanation on the article about the rise of NPD's popularity, particularly in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.  There is actually a pretty simple explanation of the phenomenon and it goes like this: NPD is the successor of the overly-familiar Nazi party of yore and has the same legacy of xenophobia and extremist nationalism.  Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the most economically depressed region of Germany and I have often heard Germans remark on the rural character and insularity of that region; some have said that it was like it's own land that they can't understand.  When people are economically depressed, they turn to more extreme politics (like in 1920s Germany? 2010s Greece? Anyone?).  It's surprisingly a pretty straightforward connection and though it sounds overly simplistic, it's the truth. People are angry they don't have economic security and they turn to the "other" to scapegoat and place blame on economic forces that do not have a face.  It's not satisfying to blame an immaterial thing, like fate or the global market at large.

Statues of the Past

This is a topic that interests me and it was provoked by an article I retweeted from The View East (which I highly recommend you click and browse!) about Lenin statues in Tajikistan.  As a BA-level trained anthropologist, I have studied the use of symbols and the political and cultural connections of them, which as proved to be a useful analysis tool for eastern Europe.  My infinitely wiser friend, James, sent me an article by Matti Bunzl (my admiration started here) entitled, "On the Politics and Semantics of Austria's Memory: Vienna's Monument against War and Fascism" (Indiana University Press); I have a personal connection to this since I lived only 2 blocks away from that monument and saw it every day.  There's a great deal of research on the topic, including Santino's astounding work on Northern Ireland, and I cannot reference everything I've read on it nor could I do the field of inquiry any justice with my citations.

Belarusian Insight

The Independent published a rare interview with Lukashenko.  It's an intriguing read about a man that controls the last Soviet dictatorship.  A great Tuesday read.

Update! Czech Elections

All I have to say about current developments: I know that feeling.  My country's election feels just as polarized.  Not quite as interesting in a two party system, but polarizing nonetheless.