The Accidental Russophile

Lives Are Much Better and More Dangerous

A recent editorial from Vedemosti reprinted in the Moscow Times, discussing violent crime and murder in Russia, lays much of the blame at the feet of incompetent or corrupt police:

Dmitry Fotyanov, a candidate for mayor in the Far East city of Dalnegorsk, was murdered Thursday. The chain of high-profile killings continues. The murder of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov was followed by more in the banking sector and one in the political sphere — the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Have we returned to the criminal levels of the 1990s?

The answer is no — it’s even worse. High-profile murders are only drawing more attention to the problem. According to the State Statistics Service and the Interior Ministry, the number of murders registered annually in the country from 2000 to 2005 was, on average, 10.6 percent higher than for the period from 1992 to 1999. The killers haven’t gone away. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, there were 19 cases of violent death per 100,000 people, while under President Vladimir Putin the figure has been about 22. By comparison, during the 1980s, when crime levels peaked in the United States, the number of violent deaths per 100,000 people was 10.2. That number fell to five in 2000.

According to Supreme Court statistics, 1.2 million criminal cases were heard by Russian courts in 2005 (9.8 percent more than in 2004), of which about 27,000 were for premeditated murder (against 26,500 in 2004). The overall number of registered crimes rose from 2.7 million in 1995 to 3.5 million in 2005. And according to the State Statistics Service, the number of suspects apprehended for crimes fell — from 1.59 million in 1995 to 1.29 million in 2005.

The country has grown richer, but this hasn’t meant greater peace and order. The problem would appear to be in law enforcement. According to a number of different studies, the end of the 1990s saw a shift in the ‘protection’ business, with payments to the police and state security agent becoming more popular with businesses.

Even if you dismiss these studies as mere slander against the police, it’s hard to ignore law enforcement’s complete ineffectiveness. There are about 800,000 police officers in Russia, or more than 550 per 100,000 people. The figures for Europe per 100,000 people are less than two murders and slightly more than 300 police (according to statistics for 2000). That crime fighters here are either not fighting crime or not doing anything at all is supported by public opinion: According to polls by the Levada Center, the public confidence indicator for the police was minus 24 in September, minus 31 in March and minus 28 in September 2005 (calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who said they had no confidence from those who said they had full confidence).

Of course, the police don’t invent the crime to begin with; however, the number of murders and violent crimes that remain unsolved and untouched speaks to a system that encourages such violence.

Sean’s Russki Blog also tackles this topic and its possible implications to the Russian Federation in depth.

Call Center Preparing Putin’s Interview Receives 450,000 Messages

MOSCOW, October 22 (Itar-Tass) — The unified call center, which is preparing a live interview with President Vladimir Putin, has received 447,972 messages from citizens of Russia and other countries.

Some 432,567 questions were asked by phone, and another 15,405 were asked on the Internet as of 6:00 p.m. Moscow time on Sunday, the website www.president-line.ru said.

The president will answer the most important and interesting questions on Wednesday, October 25. The fifth live interview with Putin will start at noon and be broadcast by Channel 1, Rossiya, Vesti, Mayak and Radio Russia.

The unified call center will be receiving messages until the end of the live interview.

Stationary and mobile phone calls from Russia will be received for free at 8-800-200-4040. A special line (7-495-645-1010) has been opened to receive questions from abroad. A toll will be levied on calls from abroad.

SMS-messages will be received at 0-40-40 starting from 6:00 a.m. Moscow time on October 25. The messages from any place of Russia will be free regardless the mobile phone operator. They must be in Russian and do not exceed 70 characters.

Internet messages will be received at www.president-line.ru. The website has posted verbatim records of the previous live interviews with Putin.

So now is your chance to write your question to Vladimir Vladimirovich. I’m fairly well impressed with the Kremlin’s attempts at technical saavy, if not exactly impressed with their execution. Questions from past have included asking VVP … what he was going to do about high gasoline prices in Russia, housing and infrastructure problems, complaints and questions about small pensions, and how he was going to bring meaningful jobs to the Russian economy. Predominantly populist or bread-and-butter politics, with a great deal of formal politeness.

Actually, in this sense it points out that when it comes to politics in Russia, thinking with your wallet is as common as in the USA.

Sharapova beats Hantuchova to Win Zurich Open

Red-hot 19-year old Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova (Мария Юрьевна Шарапова) earned her fourth title of the year at Zurich today, beating Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova 6-1, 4-6, 6-3. This win was Sharapova’s 14th career title. According to ESPN:

Sharapova, who won her fourth title this season, still has a chance to finish the year as the top-ranked player. She’d need to win next week in Linz, Austria, and at the season-ending Women’s Tennis Association Championships in Madrid.

Amelie Mauresmo, who withdrew from the Zurich Open with a shoulder injury, and second-ranked Justine Henin-Hardenne, who hasn’t played since mid-September because of a knee problem, still lead the U.S. Open champion in the rankings.

Mauresmo leads Sharapova by 630 points, but many of the Frenchwomen’s points will expire before this season ends. Henin-Hardenne would have to fail to reach the WTA final for Sharapova to finish on top.

Neither Henin-Hardenne nor Mauresmo are expected to play before Madrid.

“Becoming No. 1 is a huge achievement, but I don’t personally think ending the season as No. 1 is a huge deal,” said Sharapova, who was top-ranked in August 2005. “I honestly can’t remember who finished last year No. 1. You remember who won the Grand Slams and who has been No. 1, not who finished the year No. 1.”

Sharapova, who withdrew from the recent Kremlin Cup with a foot injury, said she was playing through pain in Zurich. She picked up her 14th career title, her other wins this season coming at the U.S. Open, in San Diego and Indian Wells, Calif.

Hantuchova had to save three break points on her first serve before Sharapova swept the next six games.

The lovely and talented Sharapova has won three of the WTA Tour’s top 10 events, including winning the 2004 Wimbledon Championship, beating Serena Williams of the USA. She was the third-youngest Wimbledon women’s champion in that tournaments history.

She also has the distinction of being Maxim Magazine’s Hottest Female Athlete of the Year for the past four years.

IFAW’s Animal Rescue Blog: Video Feature: Russian Winters are Cold Towards Brown Bears

IFAW has a video detailing the 5,000+ bears hunted every year in Russia. Many are killed by American and European trophy hunters, who pay as much as $1,500 to shoot brown bears for trophys. The video details the release of orphan bear cubs into the wild, once they have been raised to sufficient age by the Russian Bear Orphanage. Efforts like this continue to restore the population, despite heavy hunting of brown bears as trophies and for their pelts. The Russian Duma is considering new laws that would ban shooting of brown bears in the winter. But with brown bear pelts fetching almost $2,000, it is unlikely the laws would completely stop the hunting. According to IFAW, in some areas of Russia, and in Western and Eastern Europe, brown bears are already extinct. The bears being hunted in Russia are from the last healthy population in the world.

---

10/20 – Another Bear Hunting Headline

Vodka Bear Hunt Investigated

October 20, 2006 12:00am – Russian hunt organisers keen to make the visiting King of Spain’s chances of killing a bear easier reportedly provided a tame one drunk on vodka.

A spokesman for Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the northwestern Vologda region said: “The governor has ordered a working group set up…to check the facts published in local press about the killing of the bear.”

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda’s deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accused hunt organisers of plying a captive bear named “Mitrofan” with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain’s King Juan Carlos I.

“His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot,” Mr Starostin wrote in his letter.

Russian hunt organisers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years.

Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.

Royal Row Over Russian Bear Fate

A Russian official has claimed that a tame bear was plied with honey and vodka before being shot dead by King Juan Carlos of Spain. The official alleged that the king had killed the bear during a private visit to Russia earlier this year. “It’s not hunting – it’s murder,” Sergei Starostin, deputy head of Vologda region’s hunting resources department told AFP news agency.

A Spanish monarchy spokesman said the claims were “ridiculous”. “We have no comment to make because this story is totally ridiculous and the source is sensationalist,” a palace spokesman told AP news agency.

The palace said it would not confirm or deny that the king had been on a hunting trip during his visit to Russia.

About 100 NGOs Suspended in Russia

Of course, those of us interested in such things have been waiting to see how the NGO laws in Russia would play out. Even C.J. Chivers of the NY Times took time away from his busy schedule of discussing trout and salmon in Russia, to write about the NGO suspensions. While much had been made of the new laws and how absolutely terrible they would be (insert hand-wringing here), it was widely acknowledged by those with knowledge about laws governing NGOs, that the Russian laws were not more restrictive than long-standing NGO laws in other countries. From a February 15, 2006 NGO Watch article:

Despite sizzling criticism from leading human rights groups, the new law on nongovernmental organizations is not as restrictive as similar legislation adopted by France, Finland and other developed democracies.

What makes it potentially dangerous, however, is a lack of clarity over how it will be enforced at a time when the Kremlin is methodically tightening its grip on every area of public life and courts are not generally viewed as independent.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed to laws governing NGOs in France, Finland and Israel when he defended Russia’s legislation in an open letter last month. He said worries raised by Russian human rights organizations were “inspired by an incomplete understanding of the situation in the given field of the legislation of leading Western democratic countries.”

A review of legislation in France, Israel and Finland shows that they indeed are more restrictive. In France, an NGO must report all donations and bequests and can collect the money only with authorization from the head of the local administration, who first must examine the group’s activities. Russian NGOs, in contrast, will have to report only donations from abroad.

Also, a French NGO is required to submit on request its accounting records to both the local administration and the Interior Ministry. In Russia, authorities will be permitted to carry out a financial check on an NGO only once a year.

Russia’s law empowers authorities to examine whether an NGO is spending money on its declared program, while the French law only allows authorities to review whether an NGO’s economic activities are unfairly competing with the commercial sector.

Russian NGOs have complained that the law uses vague language to describe the reasons a Russian branch of a foreign NGO can be denied registration. The list reads “threats to sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity, national unity and originality, cultural heritage and the national interests of the Russian Federation.” Most of those terms are left unexplained, opening the door for arbitrary interpretation on the part of bureaucrats.

But the French, Finnish and Israeli laws are nearly identical in their language. In France, an NGO can be denied registration or shut down if it is found to operate “contrary to the law, morals or integrity of the territory or the republic.” Finland’s law says almost the same thing.

In Israel, an NGO’s purpose must not contradict the law, morality or public order. Public associations there are also prohibited from undermining Israeli democracy or serving as a screen for illegal activities.

Well, now we come to a deadline in the registration of NGOs in Russia, and it seems almost 100 were suspended. Is it a Russian crackdown … or a self-fulfilling prophecy by NGOs who didn’t get their act together in time? From the AP article:

Western governments have expressed strong concern about the law, which imposed strict limits on all NGOs but especially Russian ones, as likely to curtail civil freedoms. The State Department on Wednesday urged Russia to speed up the re-registration process and to allow all NGOs to continue operating.

But Justice Ministry official Anatoly Panchenko said authorities were unable to process the registrations of 96 NGOs by the midnight Wednesday deadline, although he promised they would do so as soon as possible.

“We will do our best to process them as quickly as possible so they can resume their work,” he told the AP.

He was later quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that the number of pending applications had fallen to 93. The Danish Refugee Council, an aid group active in Chechnya that has had uneasy relations with the Russian government, said it was told that its permit would be issued Friday.

However, medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said it had to halt some of its humanitarian work in Chechnya and a program in Moscow involving homeless children because two of its three offices – those based in Belgium and France – had not obtained registration.

The law obliged foreign-based groups to complete the procedure by the deadline or suspend their activities.

“We attach paramount importance to the principle of freedom of association and we hope the NGO law will have a positive rather than negative impact,” European Commission spokesman Pietro Petrucci said.

An official from the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights body, urged the Russian government to issue the necessary permits. “We deeply hope that the authorities will very quickly give registration to organizations such as Amnesty,” Annelise Oeschger said.

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute, both U.S.-based organizations that promote democracy, were also affected by the suspension order – which lets NGOs keep paying staff and remain in their offices.

Officials have accused NGOs of filing their applications too late, saying many only began the process in July, although the law came into force in April.

But the NGOs complained of shifting guidelines and onerous red tape; one requirement stipulated that organizations had to submit personal details on their founders, even if they were dead. Some devoted lengthy time to searching for death certificates or affidavits from widows.

A Western NGO activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing the registration process, accused authorities of deliberately seeking ways to obstruct the applications.

Panchenko said 107 groups completed the procedure in time. The Justice Ministry had earlier estimated the number of foreign groups in Russia at between 200-500, but Panchenko said only about 250 were probably working in the country.

Russian NGOs face even more onerous controls under the law, which allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs or projects if they are judged to threaten the country’s national security or “morals.”

So it would appear that more than half of the NGOs were able to complete their required registration on time, and those suspended appear to be so only temporarily while they are allowed to complete their registration. However, as these groups are supposed to be professionals and they have known this date was coming for quite some time – I have very little sympathy for their suspension.

Russian Civil War, 1918-1920

This is a topic that likely most students of history remember, but most Americans never learned – The Russian Civil War of 1918-1920 and the Allied intervention on behalf of the White Army forces. Even fewer Americans are likely to remember that we committed almost 13,000 troops to the invasion forces and that 275 Americans lost their lives on Russia soil.

The Regiments website is a military historians dream page, with extensive detailed descriptions and dates of various wars in which the British Empire was engaged. There is information on uniforms, regiments, and formations as well.

But for our purposes today, we are interested in the Russian Civil war. The Allied Forces at the end of World War I. As Regiments discusses the causes of the civil war (which might be debatable from the Russian point of view):

Russian military reverses, heavy casualties, and economic hardship contributed to the Russian revolution which withdrew the country from the First World War, releasing German forces for an offensive against the other Allies on the Western Front. Chaos led long repressed nationalist aspirations around the perimeter of the Russian empire to declare independence. Bolshevik excesses soon began to coalesce various factions, and civil war broke out. Japan was the first to exploit Russian weakness with an apparent view to annexing the maritime provinces in the East.

The British, French, and Americans hesitantly and fitfully intervened with a four-fold goal:

1) prevent Japan from creating an empire in the East,
2) prevent massive Allied stores originally sent to the tsarist armies from falling into German and subsequently Bolshevik hands,
3) assist the White Armies in overthrowing the Bolshevik regime and bring Russia back into the war against Germany,
4) rescue the Czechoslovak Legion trapped in central Asia so that they could rejoin the war against Germany.

Allied intervention joined White armies on four fronts:

1) White Sea ports in the north,
2) Black Sea ports in the south,
3) Caspian and Caucasus region, and
4) the Far East.

The plans of some Allied politicians called for advancing with the Whites on all these fronts to link up in the centre and crush the Bolshevik regime.

To paraphrase Vizzini: They fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous … never get involved in a land war in Asia …

But I digress. Regiments provides a detailed chronology of the Allied forces invasion and eventual withdrawal from Russia two years later. 160 Americans were killed in action and another 168 died by other means (disease, cold, famine, STDs). All wars are chaotic – the Russian Civil War perhaps more chaotic than most, as Regiments explains:

Although the civil war fronts fluctuated wildly, the Bolsheviks gradually developed discipline, and had the advantage of defending the central Russian homeland. Opposition White forces never developed military or political cohesion, and were hampered by appearing to be the tools of foreign imperialist interests. The civil war did much to harden the Bolsheviks from a relatively democratic party into a ruthless and draconian regime, which eventually reunified much of the splintered Russian empire by force.

Allied intervention was insufficient to provide meaningful support to the Whites, and the November 1918 armistice on the Western Front removed much of the raison d’etre for intervention, namely to bring Russia back into the war against Germany and protect stores from falling into German hands. Motivated in part by fear of world communism, Allied occupation of Russian territory did much to sow the seeds of distrust which grew into a fifty-year Cold War between the Soviets and the West.

5th slaying stirs fears in Cape Verdeans – The Boston Globe

Just a quick link to a story in the Boston Globe today, about a 5th member of Boston’s Cape Verdean Creole community who has been killed this year. Two were murdered last year and five have been murdered thus far this year.

Upon reading this story in the paper, I was struck by the decided lack of racism accusations in the article. Instead the article makes it sound death by murder is a lifestyle choice. Funny.

One can easily imagine how this story would have been written if the city were Moscow or St. Petersburg or Ekaterinburg, etc. We’ve seen this before, with African students who were killed in St. Petersburg. It would have been picked up by more than just one newspaper as well.

This isn’t to excuse murder or violent behavior against minorities, which is obviously amoral. But it does demonstrate how biased reporting of problems can create an image that isn’t accurate when compared to the facts. I would love to see a real statistical analysis of violence and crime against ethnic peoples – compared to violent crimes against all other people – in Russia. I have a feeling that it isn’t significantly more dangerous for ethnic peoples in Russia than it is in the US.

Of course, given the high rate of violent crimes committed by and against ethnic minorities in the US, that isn’t necessarily a high achievement.

---

As a footnote – I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not making excuses for racial or ethnic violence anywhere – it is obviously wrong. What I am pointing out is the difference in press and media coverage of events that occur here in the US … versus events in Russia. The killing of an ethnic minority in Russia is immediately seen as an act driven by racial hatred. Similar acts that occur here in the US are not given a similar presumption.

Come one, come all … The Moscow Cats Theatre is on yet another US tour.

What? You think I’m joking? In fact no – this famous Russian children’s theater, with clowns Yuri Kuklachev, his wife Elena Kuklacheva, son Dmitriy Kuklachev, and 26 cats will initially be performing in the following US cities:

• Atlanta – October 28-29
• San Diego – November 4-5
• Los Angeles – November 11-12
• Phoenix – November 18-19
• Los Angeles – November 25-26
• Los Angeles – Deccember 2-3
• Detroit – December 9
• Chicago – December 10
• Columbus – December 16-17
• Detroit – December 22-23
• Chicago – December 26-30

More dates are yet to be scheduled, but as this is the 2006 – 2007 tour, it is likely there will be other cities after the New Year holiday. From the New York Times article describing the 2005-2006 tour:

The theater has a total of nine different routines, including “Cats From Outer Space” and “Nutcracker.” No one show is ever exactly like another. “Cats are like actors,” Mr. Kuklachev said. “They do what they want. Sometimes a cat doesn’t want one trick, so he does another.”

The next day, in rehearsal, Mr. Kuklachev gave a preview. A cat called Tamara was brought out onstage and began rocking on a glittering pink rocking horse, nearly tipping over at one point.

There would also be a “tightrope” act. Two people held a pole horizontally while Belok, who is white, walked across it, with an intent manner. A black cat named Charlie did the same thing, but upside down, grasping the pole from underneath with his four legs. Motia, who is off-white, outdid them both. She made her way across the pole from underneath using only two legs. As the cats worked, Mr. Kuklachev clucked and cooed encouragingly, rewarding them with gentle strokes of his curved palm.

The story of “Queen of the Cats” is a kind of allegory, Mr. Kuklachev explained. He plays a painter who goes to sleep and dreams that aliens arrive from outer space in a U.F.O. and try to steal his cats.

At one point, one of the cats stands on a mirrored ball that looks as if it has been borrowed from “Saturday Night Fever.” She is emitting “rays of goodness,” he said, spreading kindness throughout the world.

The idea of performing cats came to Mr. Kuklachev in 1971, he said, when he found a stray begging for food by performing on its hind legs and doing somersaults for onlookers. Mr. Kuklachev, the son of a truck driver and a factory worker, had attended clown school. He realized he and the cat might be able to do something together. He named her Strelka, and soon she was performing with him at the Moscow State Circus.

Mr. Kuklachev did an act which would become well known as “The Cat in the Pot.” A cat would sit in a pot. He would take her out, and she would keep jumping back in again. In 1988 Mr. Kuklachev left the Moscow circus, and in 1990 he founded the Cats Theater. It is very popular in Moscow, Mr. Kuklachev said, and over the years he has traveled to 80 countries and won many awards.

There are 120 cats altogether in the company. The other 94 are back in Moscow at the theater on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, where 10 caretakers and four veterinarians look after them. There, they live in the theater in glass-fronted spaces – not cages, Mr. Kuklachev insists – where they each have a bed and a chair to play on. They are allowed to roam but must enter and exit their rooms on his command, he said.

“We have no mice,” Mr. Kuklachev noted.

… And a more critical BroadwayWorld review by Michael Dale:

But despite its name, the show is mostly a silent clown act, with Kuklachev center stage and in the spotlight for most of the hour-long intermission-less performance. (I’ve seen web postings from audience members saying the show had an intermission and was 80 minutes long. That wasn’t the case when I attended.) He performs standard routines like continually stepping on a broom that always winds up hitting him in the back, pretending to be a great artist and painting portraits of audience volunteers or miming umbrella mishaps on a windy day. It’s all very cute and suitable for the youngsters, but no more interesting than the average professional clown you might hire for a kid’s birthday party.

As the show moves along, we start to see what is meant by “death defying acts” and some of the stunts become a little disturbing. One cat is placed on a platform attached to two bonded hula hoops and Kuklachev twirls it in the air at high speeds. Another cat is placed at the end of a pole and carried into the audience, allowing anyone to touch and pet it. Another has parallel bars placed under its kitty arms and it shimmies from one end to the other. The difference is that for most of the show the cats perform stunts by following commands, but in these cases, and others, they are placed in situations where they have no choice in the matter. My guest was a life-long cat lover who was very excited to come see cats jump through hoops and do balancing tricks, but she left the theatre repulsed by some of the stunts. I wasn’t all that thrilled myself.

I don’t want to suggest that there is any mistreatment of the animals. They are frequently petted and shown affection by the clowns throughout the show. But even if they were perfectly comfortable because they’ve done these tricks a hundred times, they still looked frightened during the more dangerous moments, and it’s hard to be entertained by animals whose body language seems to say they don’t want to be there.

Who would have thought that training cats to do tricks might be controversial? It is probably a good thing this guy didn’t catch our “cat tricks” when I was a teenager in Bad Nauheim, Germany.

In the interest of fairness and a complete review, I also have a third, less critical review by CurtainsUp:

The Lamb’s Theater in the heart of the theater district is small enough for Dmitri Kuklachev’s Moscow Cats Theater to still come off as a uniquely entertaining mom and pop style circus for the whole family. So, yes, it’s still the cat’s meeow and the human ensemble contributes more than its share of talent and laughs.

I was a little concerned about whether training cats — not an easy task, as any cat owner will confirm — would cause more sympathy than admiration for the cats. But the 20 cats racing across the stage, climbing poles, riding go-carts and tricycles seem none the worse for having weathered the rigors of becoming show cats. My feeling that the animal rights activists don’t have much cause for complaint was confirmed by the frequently heard ” ooh”s and “ah”s and “how cute” from the many cat lovers in the audience.

Katja says Kuklachev is quite famous in Russia and his cat Theater is considered pretty amazing. I guess Russians are pretty surprised to see cats perform these tricks.

I’m waiting for them to cough up a hairball on command …

A Russian Course

As part of the Tower of Babel project by the late Sergei Starostin, The Accidental Russophile presents to you – A Russian Course – as published by Slavica Publishers of Columbus, Ohio (1977). The entire 612+ page text book isn’t bad, but it is quite dated and this results in some unintentional humor, as follows:

Nice explanation of boorish behavior at the end of this page. Hmmm … Мы знаем каких-нибудь некультурных людей?

The unintentional humor continues:

Maybe you don’t pay much attention to Women’s tennis. I mean, it isn’t as though it is a highly rated sport in this country, particularly these days. So, if you haven’t been keeping up with such things, it might come as a bit of a surprise to you to learn … that Russian women are hot.

According to the WTA Women’s tennis rankings – 5 of the top 10 women are Russian (Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Nadia Petrova, Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina). The US doesn’t have a single player ranked in the top 10, and only 1 in the top 20. Among the top 50 ranked Women’s Tennis players:

In fact, 16 of the top 50 women originate from Slavic nations. Even 10 years ago, there may have been only 1 or 2 top ranked Russian women tennis players. 20 years ago, there were none. So where did all these beautiful and talented Russian women tennis players come from?

From Serge Schmemann of the International Herald Tribune (9/28/06):

Where in frozen Siberia did these Russians learn how to swing a racket? Svetlana Kuznetsova took the China Open. … The glamorous Russian teenager Maria Sharapova swept past Belgium’s best, Justine Henin-Hardenne, to win the U.S. Open.

And so it goes, the extraordinary invasion of … women’s tennis, by players from a country that shouldn’t be playing tennis at all. Sure, Russians excel at ice hockey, or chess, and we wouldn’t think twice if they dominated, say, gymnastics, or synchronized swimming. These are endeavors that sit well with our Western notion of what Russians should do well: sports that require year-round refrigeration, endless indoor drills and lots of brooding. But tennis? The quintessential bourgeois pastime?

Two decades ago, there were no Russian names among the top 100 players, much less among the glitterati of the sport. Today, Maria Sharapova is a trademark, and behind her is a cascade of top-ranked Russians with jaw-challenging names: Anastasia Myskina, Elena Dementieva, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Vera Zvonareva, Nadia Petrova, Mikhail Youzhny, Nikolai Davydenko, Dmitry Tursunov, Marat Safin. (Please, it’s Sha-RA-pova, not Shara- POH-va; it’s Kuzne-TSO-va, not Kuz- NET-sova…Oh, never mind.)

And there’s nothing of the shy newcomer about them. They seem to have emerged as prepackaged, beautifully turned out stars, complete with obsessed parent. Tursunov, like Sharapova, was exported by a relentless father to the United States at a precocious age, and it’s hard to tell whether either is more Russian or American.

So what spawned these stars?

There’s a time-honored tradition in the West to approach Russia as a riddle, devising elaborate explanations for Russia’s admittedly befuddling ways. I know: I was a foreign correspondent in Moscow for 10 years, and filled quite a few bytes expounding on the effects of endless winter, endless expanse, the collision of East and West, long subjugation by Mongol hordes, the absence of a Renaissance, vodka, and other such formative influences. I’ve always had a soft spot for the swaddling theory, wherein the practice of binding babies like mummies between feedings formed a nation given to lurching between total passivity and total anarchy (Full disclosure: I may have been swaddled).

So there is certain temptation to seek a Dostoevskian explanation for the rise of Russian tennis. Are these young stars a post-Soviet reaction to the collective ethic of the Soviet era? Are they another version of the trillionaire oligarch, people who frantically grasp for all the riches and glory denied them for 70 years? Tursunov has admitted in an interview that Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame was a model: “After tennis, I want to have a big house and wear a velvety robe.” The Cincinnati Enquirer suggested that tennis was the Russian equivalent of basketball in the American inner city – a way out: “Think of a tennis court in Siberia as analogous to a basketball court in the Bronx.”

The fact is that there was always tennis in the Soviet Union, even if it was often on lumpy courts behind high walls. But the Communist party always preferred to send teams abroad, because when stars went alone they had a nasty habit of defecting. All that changed in 1988, when tennis returned to the Olympics and the Soviet Union began to loosen up. Courts quickly began to sprout across the land. The game got a further boost from Boris Yeltsin, who was often photographed wrestling with a racket.

That was the era when most of the current stars got their first racket. Then Anna Kournikova showed how a Russian player can become a big bucks marketing star. Combine that with the fact that Russia is still a country where children are expected to master skills, whether chess, ballet or tennis, through relentless practice, and the head of Russian tennis, Shamil Tarpishev, says the invasion has only just begun.

Why women’s tennis in particular? For that, the playwright Edvard Radzinsky has a compelling explanation. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he noted that professional sport was one of the few fields where women had a measure of equality in the old USSR. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, women were also freed to plunge into business. And so the two merged, most noticeably in tennis. “The role of the Tennis Lolita, of the Beauteous Champion, is but Russian womanhood’s most public face,” Radzinsky wrote.

It should also be noted that with the wane of American influence in tennis, golden sponsorship and marketing opportunities have opened up for the Russian women.

---