PLANK OCTOBER 3, 2012
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Just when you want to get off the Putin-is-ridiculous beat, you get a story like this and you realize: You can never get off the Putin-is-ridiculous beat.
Russian president Vladimir Putin turns 60 on Sunday, and, according to a report in the Russian business daily Vedomosti, there are some downright ludicrous celebrations being planned by his loyal fans. In the northeastern city of Rostov, activists of the United Russia party’s youth league will hang a banner congratulating Putin from the bridge connecting Europe and Asia. (Which is fitting, because it was just last year that Putin announced his intentions to build a Eurasian Union.) Other youth activists will stage poetry readings and pull-up competitions.
In Moscow, there will be an art exhibit dedicated to Putin’s feats: flying with the cranes, being friends with Berlusconi. And, in a particularly touching, North Korean (and perhaps ironic) touch, the exhibit will be called “The President: Most Kind-Hearted Man.”
The city of St. Petersburg, Putin’s birthplace, is holding a concert called “A Musical Compliment” to which tickets will not be sold. Rather they are all reserved for Putin and for various “VIP guests” (a national obsession).
A committee of Putin’s most hardcore fans (“National Committee-60”) has proposed the following hardcore proposals: making 2012 the year of the Putin, renaming the street he was born on in his honor, giving him the title of “Marshall,” and floating “aerodynamic dirigibles” at a height of sixty meters (get it?) above the landmarks of Putin’s St. Peterburg’s life: his home, his school, the local KGB, the Square of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. (The St. Petersburg mayor’s office is still mulling these proposals.)
According to his spokesman, Putin will be sitting this one out. I wish I could say that for the rest of us.
6 comments
Wow, reminds me of the Soviet era. "Celebration of Our Dear Leader will be heartfelt, or else!"
- AllanL5
October 3, 2012 at 12:12pm
Wait, Rostov is a "northeastern city"? Last time I was there it was on the Don near the Black Sea. Can't wait for the Olympics--we could have giant posters of Putin's profile hung from balloons, followed by another brief and exciting foray in Georgia. Hoorah!
- Robert Powell
October 3, 2012 at 1:13pm
That's right, Robert. Years ago I had an East German girlfriend who had studied in Rostov-on-the-Don in the early 1970s. It was apparently a disconcerting experience because all her Russian fellow students snickered at the notion that the GDR was a "socialist state" -- from their perspective it looked as if she came from the West (or so close as to make no difference).
- ironyroad
October 3, 2012 at 1:21pm
"According to his spokesman, Putin will be sitting this one out. I wish I could say that for the rest of us." Oh, please. Nothing, except Ioffe's obsessive loathing for Putin, is preventing her from "sitting this one out." Isn't there anything of interest or significance going on in Russia that is not connected to Putin and his scary evilness? Julia Ioffe has focused on little else in her articles for TNR from Moscow. Perhaps that's why, as noted above by RP, she can't place Rostov in the right part of Russia despite having spent the last several years in the country. But it's the dishonesty, not the loathing, that is actually offensive. Ioffe says: "In Moscow, there will be an art exhibit dedicated to Putin’s feats: flying with the cranes, being friends with Berlusconi. And, in a particularly touching, North Korean (and perhaps ironic) touch, the exhibit will be called 'The President: Most Kind-Hearted Man.'” First of all, the art exhibit can be EITHER North Korean OR ironic. It can't be both, Julia. So, which is it? Well, let's go do the research that the author is unwilling to undertake. The Moscow Times reports that, "The Flacon art center will host a tongue-in-cheek exhibition by artist Alexei Sergiyenko called "The President: A Most Kindhearted Man," featuring 15 images of Putin in everyday situations: at a birthday party, on a protest march or with a bouquet of flowers." So we have our answer: Ironic, not North Korean. Gee, that was easy. At the other extreme from Ioffe is a Reuters article, picked up by much of the US media from MSNBC to the Chicago Tribune, whose first line reads, "As Vladimir Putin's 60th birthday approaches, a wave of biting satire is starting to hurt his macho image." So, after considering Ioffe's depiction of Putin as the object of a neo-Stalinist personality cult and Reuters' diametrically opposing insinuation that he's all washed up and the subject of general mockery, what are we to make of the recent Levada poll that put his approval rating among Russians at 67% even as some Russians evidently feel free to lob jibes in his direction? The answer, of course, is that the political situation in Russia and Russian sentiment towards Putin are considerably more complex than these absurd and embarrassing US media caricatures.
- ccarrick@vzavenue.net-old
October 3, 2012 at 2:29pm
Thank you, Xenophon, I stand corrected.
- AllanL5
October 3, 2012 at 2:55pm
"Wait, Rostov is a "northeastern city"? Last time I was there it was on the Don near the Black Sea." You're right, Robert Powell. Rostov-on-Don is where the Europe-Asia connecting bridge is, and its in the Southern Federal District of Russia.
- magboy47.
October 3, 2012 at 3:14pm