The Birch

by Laura Mills, a senior at Columbia University

For much of my life, Donatella, my Nonna’s childhood friend, resided only in my imagination. Disinherited by a spendthrift Sicilian father, she remains a caricature of Italian generosity, using her pension to send us presents for every holiday, always contributing the most bizarre items to dad’s tie collection. Because Nonna was sick last year, Donatella would visit her flat in Rome every day to help out, whipping up an unbeatable café mocha and bringing groceries from the store. But one day, Nonna demanded a nap and told Donatella to stay home. Instead, the eternal bachelorette shuffled to the neighbors downstairs to get the spare key, while Nonna hid in her bathroom, fully convinced that whoever was entering the apartment had not be invited. “Ancora non m’ha perdonato”— She still hasn’t forgiven me, Donatella said dolefully down the phone to my mother.

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When I first heard the name Shantel, I thought he must be a sassy R&B artist from the 1990s. Turns out he’s a diminutive German DJ (born Stefan Hantel) of Romanian descent, who incorporates traditional gypsy music into his beats. Shantel has sparked controversy for what some see as his excessive reliance on Balkan music, and his otherization of that culture. Just a few of these Eastern European stereotypes are on display in this video:

• Fur hats
• Scantily clad women (preferably belly dancing)
• Large underwear (?)
• Crowded street cars
• The barter economy- Shantel runs around trading watermelons for watches, CDs for computer parts, and at one point even buys a woman (hilarious?).
• A flying carpet

But then again, while Shantel may be exploiting Balkan music he’s also exposing Western audiences to something they may have never considered listening to before- you decide!

For those of us condemned to love Russia, getting used to the food can be a true struggle- we find ourselves disdainfully picking the укроп (dill) from our plates, or protesting against the smetana that we know our host mothers will usher onto our plates in heapfuls, every single night. While these staples may never go away, Maksim Syrnikov, the proud Chef from Chelyabinsk, is leading a gastronomic revival and encouraging Russians to return to their agricultural culinary roots. Julia Ioffe wrote about this in The New Yorker a few weeks ago, but for those like myself who don’t have a subscription, feast your eyes on these treats from Maksim Syrnikov’s livejournal.

“Он главный хипстер в Москве,” said a disgruntled young man, who was sitting in the office of one of Moscow’s liberal parties. He is the top hipster of Moscow. Hipster. Khipster. Gipster. This phrase has long become dull and overused in English, but hearing it for the first time in Russian gave me a small thrill. Things like political satire are returning to Russia, and so, it seems, is irony. Below are a few of the choicest Russian memes from 2012.

In March, Dmitri Medvedev lost his cat, sparking a “Run, Dorofei, Run!” campaign on the internet.

Recently, Patriarch Kirill (he of pious values and high hats) was caught in a photo where his expensive watch was photoshopped out, but its reflection on the table was not.

How to Command a Room With Your Voice, by V. V. Putin.

Because voter fraud is absolutely hilarious, check out this video of what is not Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechnya, dancing at the polling station in Grozny. But we really wish it were…

Earlier this year Emily Tamkin wrote about what it’s like to hail a marshrutka in Russia. This is approximately what it’s like to actually ride in a marshrutka in Russia.

And finally, simply because we can, here are a bunch of hilarious Russian wedding photos.

• Join the Harriman Institute in a discussion on Viktor Bout, Sergie Magnitsky and Shell Companies: A Field Experiment in Corruption and Money Laundering, at 3:30pm on Monday.
• Because nothing says springtime like Czech modernism, c(z)heck out Janacek’s The Makropulos Case, which starts at the Metropolitan Opera this Friday. If you prefer a little Bohemian jazz, there’s this concert at the Bohemian National Hall instead.
• Tribeca Film Festival has one (1!) Eastern European film in it this year, which delves into fundamental questions like, uhm, “where fawns are the miscreants of nature, time travel only applies to ants, and velvet is evil.” See if you can figure out what that means with a trip to The Fourth Dimension. 
• Because we won’t be posting Slavic events for next week, be sure to check out the PEN World Voices festival in New York (from Monday April 30th onwards). There will be a host of Eastern European specials, from Wojceich Jagiski’s discussion of the war in Chechnya, to a talk by Herta Muller (okay, technically she’s German, but we’ll let her get away with it for her harrowing descriptions of Romanian life, and you know, because she won the Nobel Prize), to up-and-coming Russian great Ludmila Ulitskaya. The festival bodes awesomeness for those of Slavic and non-Slavic bent, so be sure to attend!
• Other than that, make like a Russian, don your speedo and head for Brighton Beach with some khatchapuri in hand. School’s almost out for summer, товарищи, and we couldn’t be more delighted!

by Matthew Schantz, a junior at Columbia University

On Mach 3rd the other 20 American students studying abroad in St. Petersburg at Smolny College and I received a breathless email from our program coordinator. Alexei Kudrin, former Minister of Finance for the Russian Federation turned Putin critic, and current Dean of Smolny college, would be interested in meeting us to chat about “the Liberal Arts, and any other topics that seem appropriate.”

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Уважаемые читатели и товарищи по блогосфере,

The Birch is currently taking applications for the 2012-2013 editorial board! Click here for a copy of the application with descriptions of all available positions. Interested Columbia and Barnard students should email thebirchjournal@gmail.com with a completed copy of the application by Friday, April 27th.

If you’re neither a Columbia nor a Barnard student, you’re encouraged to join us on the blog. We’re looking for undergraduates with any sort of interest writing about Eastern Europe and Russia. To apply, send an email to thebirchjournal@gmail.com with your name, school/year, preferred email address, a brief statement of interest, and a sample blog post by Friday, April 27th. As a journal dedicated to undergraduate scholarship across the country, we would love to work closely with students from other schools. Don’t be shy!

For anyone interested in illustration—Slavic or otherwise—50watts is a gold mine. Will Schofield has been posting wild, whimsical illustrations from around the world for over 5 years.

The images above come from a psychedelic Russian textbook on the miracle of life, a Czech book who’s title roughly translates to “Wacky Fairy Tales,” a collection of book cover illustrations by Polish artist Daniel Mróz, and a Russian book for young adults that the Schofield guesses is “about how you can use ultra violent tactics, plus book smarts in math and science, to hunt and kill spies and members of the Nazi party.” 

The Polish, Russian, and Czech collections are best, but there is also a smattering of images from the Ukraine and Georgia.

Masha Gessen, Russian journalist and editor of Snob.ru, published The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin last month to much acclaim. The Guardian calls it “clear [and] brave;” Bookforum praises Gessen for her deftly plotted damnation. Anne Applebaum at the NYRB also lauds The Man Without a Face and counters accusations that Gessen failed ”to fill in the blanks” of certain stories with the chilling point: “that is exactly the point about contemporary Russia: there is no proof of anything that happened.”

Phoebe Taplin wrote a great profile of contemporary Russian author Alexander Illichevsky for Russia Beyond the Headlines. The Literary Saloon is quick to call BS on  Taplin’s complaint that Illichevsky’s lack of fame in the west “reinforces a noticeable (and possibly widening) divide between commercialized, Anglophone fiction and the complex, cerebral books that currently win prizes in Russia.” The lucky Russian readers among you can read Illichevsky’s Matisee in it entirety at Новый Мир.

Publishers Weekly recently put out two articles examining the book market in Russia. The first profiles a few of prominent e-book stores in Russia and asks what they’re doing to fight piracy—

Growth of online bookselling (print or e-book formats) may be in the double digits, but its sales account for less than 10% of Russia’s overall book transactions. E-piracy is the main culprit, and many e-retailers are up in arms about it.

It’s interesting that e-book piracy is a visable problem in Russia, while it’s rarely talked about in the US. Perhaps because in Russia the internet is primarily used by the young and computer savy, while in the US there is a larger online population comfortable with shopping on Amazon and scared of internet piracy because of Napster’s legacy?

The second is a chat with Vladimir Grigoriev, “champion of the Russian publishing industry” and founder of The Big Book Award (a list of the 2011 winners in English here). Grigoriev weighs in on the issue of e-book piracy with the chiding quip, “After 75 years of being a closed society, Russians are being pretty rebellious.” However, Grigoriev remains optimistic that with a growing middle class and the right publishing infrastructure, the great Russian novel will live on.

The Birch is proud to announce the issue release party! We will be hosting Brooklyn-based Balkan brass band, Raya,and serving South Slavic foods. Most importantly, copies of the 2012 Edition of The Birch will be available. The release party will be held in the Roone Auditorium of Lerner Hall at Columbia University on Thursday, April 19th at 9:00 pm.

On Tuesday, April 17th from 8:30 am to 6:00 pm The Harriman Institute will host “The Energy Silk Road: Tapi, BTC, Turkmen - China Pipelines,” the sixth in their series of colloquia, “”Eurasian Pipelines—Road to Peace, Development and Interdependencies?”. Among the speakers will be former US Ambassador to Afiganistan, Karl Eikenberry, author of Oil and Glory, Steve LeVine, and Former Minister of Georgia, David Onoprishvili.

Russian poet Dmitry Kuzmin, winner of the 2003 Andrew Bely Prize and subject of an excellent piece in the latest issue of N+1, will read a selection of recent work at Russian Bookstore No. 21 this Wednesday at 7:30 pm.

The Maly Drama Theatre opens their production of Chekov’s Three Sisters on Wednesday, April 18th at BAM Harvey Theater. View more information about the performance and a full schedule of play times on BAM’s website.

The Tribeca Film Festival also opens this Wednesday bringing with it the debuts of several films about and directed by Slavs: The Russian Winter, the story of American musician John Forte’s three month tour of Moscow, opens on Friday, April 20th. Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska’s ELLES, a short, animated documentary about Chernobyl and Croatian director Slobodan Karajilovic’s short film Easter Eggs open on Sunday, April 22nd. A triptych of films directed by Alexey Fedorchenko (RU), Jan Kwiesinksi (PL), and acclaimed filmmaker Harmony Korine (US) collectively titled The Fourth Dimension opens this following Tuesday, April 24th. Tickets for the festival go on sale today.

In other festivals that open on Wednesday and feature Slavic artists news, the experimental electronic festival Unsound begins this Wednesday and goes until Sunday, April 22nd. The Polish Cultural Center of New York will be helping host the event and provides a great breakdown of different performing artists. If you’re only in it for the Slavs, check out Four Suns ”a genre-bending live score to a selection of Polish classic animated films” performed by Baaba.