Сергей Медведев - The Return of the Russian Leviathan

A phrase uttered by Putin during a press conference in September 1999, commenting on the Russian air force bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny.

https://pora-valit.livejournal.com/1258484.html. ‘Time to call a halt? Everything you need to know about emigration’ (in Russian), Voice of Russia radio station, 21 March 2013.

Lubyanka Square is where the KGB/FSB headquarters is; behind this large building is the infamous Lubyanka Prison, to which thousands of political prisoners and innocent people were taken in Stalin’s time and later. The memorial – a large stone brought from the Solovetsky Islands, the scene of a notorious prison camp – was deliberately placed on this spot and unveiled in a ceremony in the more liberal period of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership in 1990.

The later years of Leonid Brezhnev’s time as General Secretary of the Party, and thus ruler of the Soviet Union, were marked by a lack of economic and political progress. As a result, this period was dubbed ‘the era of stagnation’. Little changed after Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was replaced by Yury Andropov; nor when Andropov died and was replaced by Chernenko in February 1984. It took the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1985 for the era of stagnation to end.

http://1libertaire.free.fr/MFoucault219.html(in French).

In June 1996, after the first round of the Russian presidential election and before the decisive run-off vote between Yeltsin and the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, Yeltsin suffered a heart attack. This was kept from public knowledge. After Yeltsin won the second round, it was announced that he had had a heart attack and he subsequently underwent a quintuple heart by-pass operation. Political life in Russia remained in limbo for months.

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/no-putin-no-russia-says-kremlin-deputy-chief-of-staff-40702. ‘“No Putin, No Russia”, Says Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff’, The Moscow Times , 23 October 2014.

The branch of science that deals with death.

This title is a play on the name of the infamous Russian forgery, first published in 1903, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . The fake document is supposed to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. It was translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally. The publishers claimed that these were the minutes of a meeting where Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish hegemony by subverting the morals of Gentiles, and by controlling the press and the world’s economies. In 1921 it was exposed as a fraud by The Times .

The Synod of the Eastern Orthodox Church of 1666–7 introduced reforms that were then adopted by the Russian Church. Those who refused to accept the changes became known as the ‘Old Believers’ and were persecuted. Some fled abroad, others set up communities in Russia’s vast wastelands, some of which were discovered only in Soviet times.

Harvey Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, when he served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977–8.

Bertrand Delanoë was Mayor of Paris 2001–14; Klaus Wowereit was Mayor of Berlin 2011–14; Ole von Beust was Mayor of Hamburg 2001–10; Glen Murray was Mayor of Winnipeg 1998–2004.

In 1966, Andrei Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years in a labour camp for ‘anti-Soviet activity’, because of the opinions voiced by some of the characters in his novels, which had been published in the West. His trial, along with fellow writer Yuli Daniel, was seen as marking the end of the period of liberalization under Nikita Khrushchev (who had been ousted in 1964) and the start of the dissident movement.

The dock in Russian courts is usually inside a cage. This is ostensibly to protect those in the courtroom from violent defendants, but in practice is more usually simply a way of denigrating the accused. The principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is often not adhered to in Russian courts.

Dedovshchina is institutionalized violence against the new conscripts by the older ones – ‘the grandfathers’ or ‘ dedy ’ (hence the term). Every year, hundreds of young conscripts suffer permanent injury or even death as a result of this treatment.

Vladimir Sorokin, ‘Day of the Oprichnik ’ (Penguin Books, 2018; trans. Jamey Gambrell, p. 129).

A day’s unpaid work demanded of a vassal by his overlord.

‘Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?’ ‘Les Mots du Général’, Ernest Mignon, 1962.

The Magnitsky List includes officials shown to have profited from corruption or been guilty of human rights abuses, and prevents them from travelling to countries where this is enforced. It is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer for the Anglo-American businessman Bill Browder, who, after uncovering a multimillion-dollar fraud by senior Russian officials, was arrested on false charges and then murdered while in prison. Browder has made it his mission to try to have a Magnitsky Law adopted in as many countries as possible, thus preventing corrupt officials from travelling abroad to take advantage of their ill-gotten gains.

A popular Russian soft drink.

In 1954, Crimea was transferred from Russian jurisdiction to Ukrainian jurisdiction, as a gesture to mark three hundred years of unity between Russia and Ukraine. As both republics were part of the Soviet Union, at the time the gesture was largely symbolic. In 1989, following the withdrawal in February of that year of the last Soviet troops which had been conducting a military campaign in Afghanistan since late 1979, the Congress of People’s Deputies declared that the campaign had been a political mistake, ordered by a small group within the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.

http://www.vehi.net/chaadaev/filpisma.html(Letter 1, para. 8) (in Russian).

Ilya Oblomov and Andrei Stoltz are the two main characters in the nineteenth-century Russian novel Oblomov , by Ivan Goncharov, which is one of the classics of Russian literature of the period. Although the two characters in the novel are friends, they are completely different: the typical Russian landowner ( pomeshchik ), Oblomov, is lazy and a dreamy character, while Stoltz, of German origin, is energetic and wilful. In Russia, they are usually seen as epitomes of Russian (and Asian) laziness and Western practicality.

Khalyava is a peculiarly Russian concept. Basically, it means getting something free, especially if it comes from the state, misusing state funds, having a sinecure job, etc.

For a description of ‘The Red Calendar’ and the special days, see Part I, note 21. The type of calendar referred to is printed as a block on cheap paper, with each day being torn off as you go through the year.

English language version, Andrews UK Ltd, 2012, p. 266.