Tag: Murmansk
Last Address: Yevgeny Barthold
Yevgeny Barthold, A Guide to Karelia and the Kola Peninsula (Moscow: OGIZ, 1935)
Jenya Kulakova
Yevgeny Barthold was an artist and traveler. Author of A Guide to Karelia and the Kola Peninsula, Barthold hiked these places up and down on his own feet and drew them with his own hands.
A work by Barthold, currently in the collection of the Murmansk Museum
If you dip into the guide, it is obvious how in love he was with northern landscapes, how he wanted to share their beauty with readers and prepare them for their pitfalls and dangers.
When you read the Guide, published in 1935, and look at the pastels he made in the north in 1936-37, you wonder whether Barthold could have imagined that in 1938 he would travel to his beloved north not as a traveler but as a prisoner of the Oneglag camp, where he would work logging trees and building a narrow-gauge railway, and that in 1942 he would die of "cardiac paralysis."
The Mekhrenga River in Arkhangelsk Region. In 1939, Barthold was transferred to a camp station here.
Barthold's last address was 75 8th Line, Vasilyevsky Island, Leningrad.
You can read more about Barthold's life and death (in Russian) on the Last Address website.
Barthold's Guide to Karelia and the Kola Peninsula has been digitized and posted online.
Photographs and images courtesy of Jenya Kulakova. Translated by Thomas Campbell
hecksinductionhour art, history, literature, petrograd, regions, soviet Leave a comment July 20, 2019 1 Minute
Sisters Have to Do It for Themselves
Irina Kovalenko and Ksenia Mikhaylichenko, outside of Murmansk Regional Court. Photo courtesy of Ms. Mikhaylichenko's Facebook page
Ksenia Mikhaylichenko
It's great to talk about cases in which you walloped the opposing counsel, the judges gave you a standing applause, and you galloped off on your steed to deliver more justice and do more good. Today, though, I would like to tell a different sory, a story in which you and your client are obviously in the right, but the system tells you, "Hang on, guys. We have our own way of doing things here. Goodbye."
Irina graduated from the mechanics and mathematics department at the Peoples' Friendship University (RUDN) and worked for a major company in Moscow. Then, for family reasons, she moved to Murmansk, where she faced a problem. No one wanted to hire her, explaining she was too well educated, had done internships abroad, and had experience working at a major company, which was way too cool for the folks in Murmansk.
Ultimately, Irina got a job at the Murmansk Regional Information Technology Center, a government-funded agency. Everything would have been great if the head of the place had not hit on Irina big time. When she rejected his advances, she faced harassment in the literal sense of the word: humiliation, insults, daily rants, and charges of incompetence. At the same time, this guy held drinking bouts at work. (Here is the proof.) I would remind you all this took place in a government-funded agency, paid for by our taxes.
Finally, the boss fired Irina. She filed complaints with the State Labor Inspectorate, the prosecutor's office, and the Murmansk Regional Committee for Information Technology and Communications, which had founded the agency. They promised they would get to the bottom of the matter and get her her job back. Seven months went by, seven months during which Irina received medical treatment in Moscow for terrible headaches and panic attacks. She was prescribed heavy antidepressants.
Seven months later, her ex-boss was fired after five millions rubles went missing from the agency's books. No one faced criminal charges, of course. On the contrary, the agency's wonderful head was given severance pay.
Irina had been forgotten, however. She was told to take her case to court and seek justice there. Irina did go to court. At the preliminary hearing, the judge refused to hear the case, citing the statute of limitations.
I came on board during the appeal, but the case file from the hearing in the lower court immediately amazed me. Irina had filed for an adjournment, since the clinic in Moscow where she had been treated was slow in putting together the papers she needed, and so she had to fly to Moscow to retrieve the originals, meaning she needed at least a couple of days. But the judge would not have any of it.
At the appeals hearing, we tried to get all these papers admitted into evidence while thoroughly explaining all the circumstances of the case and Irina's terrible state of health over the past seven months. Irina was still suffering from pneumonia and pyelonephritis, which we had also documented medically. The stone-faced judges rejected our motion, however.
The prosecutor at the appeals hearing made the biggest impression on me. Foaming at the mouth and raising her voice, she argued Irina had made everything up about the harassment and her health.
"She wasn't a disabled person, so she could have gone to court."
This is a direct quotation.
We lost our appeal. It has made me feel terrible. Our system could not care less what happens to women who suffer harassment at work. It is simply impossible to prove either that harassment took place or that it had something to do with a woman being fired.
There are only prosecutors screaming, "You're pretending to be the victim in this case" so loudly everyone in the courtroom can hear it.
I feel terrible when female friends tell me how their bosses molest them at work more or less arrogantly. Complete strangers write to me with enviable regularity, asking me to advise them what to do if their boss asks them to go to his office after everyone leaves, or they will have to tender their resignations. I don't know how to reply to them, because it would be a blatant lie to tell them that there are effective legal defenses and the Russian state will defend them.
Thanks to Alena Popova, who introduced me to Irina and had also been helping her all she can. Together we will definitely think of a way to win the case.
Everything is definitely going to be fine for Irina. It cannot be otherwise for fighters for justice like her[.]
Thanks to Elena Konte for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader
hecksinductionhour feminism, labor, regions, rights, solidarity Leave a comment July 13, 2018 July 13, 2018 3 Minutes
We Have a Saying in Russia
In the queue outside the centre, there is little sympathy for Greenpeace among relatives of other detainees, as they wait to deliver packages. "We have a saying in Russia: you shouldn't go into someone else's house and try to live by your own rules," said one middle-aged woman who had bought a parcel of food for her 33-year-old daughter, who had been inside for five months on charges she did not want to reveal. She had been waiting in freezing temperatures since 4am to ensure she was among the lucky few who got to deliver her package.
Another man, waiting to deliver a package to his brother, suggested the Greenpeace activists were paid by western oil corporations to undermine Russia and should be "shot, or at least sent to a camp". The opinions reflect surveys which show that the majority of Russians support the piracy charges.
— Shaun Walker, "Greenpeace activists await trial among harsh winds, tears and no sympathy," The Guardian, 18 October 2013
For some reason, as the country sinks deeper into the Putinist fascist night, this "saying" becomes more and more popular. I've personally heard and read it something like six hundred thousand times over the past few years, but it's hard to remember anyone ever saying such a thing in the nineties. It's just remarkable how people participate so willingly in their own enslavement and extinction, and with the help of such "sayings." Yes, "folk wisdom" really does consist in repeating over and over again what some fat cats with soccer teams in England, kids in Swiss schools, and mansions on the Riviera want you to think.
On the other hand, reporters like Shaun Walker wouldn't have to look that hard for Russians who don't think this way, even in Murmansk. And it's pointless, as he does here, and as avid Russian watchers both inside and outside the country love to do, to cite a "public opinion" poll that, allegedly, shows the majority of Russians don't support the arrested Greenpeace activists. Aside from any other number of methodological and philosophical issues with such polls more generally, not only in Russia, "public opinion" is a nearly meaningless concept in a country lacking all the things that make it a somewhat more meaningful concept in other countries, things like free elections, broadly based political parties, non-astroturfed grassroots groups, much stronger and more militant independent trade unions and, most important, freedom from constant terrorization and brainwashing, in the not-so-distant past and now again, over the past fourteen years, by officialdom, whether in the form of bureaucrats, police or state media.
Why does "the majority" not support the arrested Greenpeace activists? Because they (or, rather, a good number of the people who answered this dubious poll) thought that this was the response expected from them. Why did they think that? Because state and loyalist media have portrayed Greenpeace as the second coming of Al Qaeda, willing dupes of the CIA, and any other baleful thing you can think of. You don't even have to believe this stuff. You just know that if some "polling organization" calls you up out of the blue, there are strong cues out there in the big media world to which you have access telling you how to respond to such questions. So what's the point of thinking something different out loud? But then Shaun Walker, hundreds of other reporters, "political analysts," "sociologists" and so on cite this "public opinion" as if it weren't obtained under duress. It's a vicious circle.
hecksinductionhour regime, society 2 Comments October 19, 2013 December 3, 2014 2 Minutes