So I was all set to return to the blog with a silly little post about the 2011 World Championships of “Hockey with a Ball,” aka Bandy, a sport I’d never heard of but whose administrative higher-ups apparently decided to hold their elite international competition in Kazan this year literally across the street from my apartment building. My new apartment building, that is, where I have as of January reclaimed my sovereignty as an “adult,” meaning that I can cook food, play music, do my own laundry and host guests in two single beds that pull out of arm chairs to create constrained but cozy coffin-like sleeping spaces, all at my will, which seems a revolutionary concept after 6 long months of living under khozyaika house rule. Anyway, I had all my ideas in order and was just about to sit down and write when a bomb went off at Domodedovo airport in Moscow killing 35 people and wounding another 180. Then not only was I glued to the internet reading twitter blasts, blog entries and reporting from my friends in Moscow, but I felt like a real jackass having my contribution to the “news” or at least “noise” out of Russia that day be about the 2011 World Bandy Championships.
However, upon further reflection (and a hopefully respectful enough bit of time) I’m prepared to argue that in Russia, Bandy Championships and airport bombings are far more interconnected than you’d first think and will clumsily try to tackle both in this my return to your not-so-regularly scheduled blog-a-stan program. I hope it seems in the right spirit. I guess, just be warned that the juxtaposition of the glib and the grim is meant to show how the two potentially spring forth from some of the same sources in Russia and is not at all meant to be disrespectful, particularly to those people who were in any way close to the bombing.
On Sunday afternoon, I layered as much clothing as I could fit underneath my dublyenka, a somewhat 19th century-derivative sheepskin coat with hugely poofy cuffs and lapels generously donated to me for the winter by Miriam, and went off to meet my young friend Igor by the World War II Memorial at the entrance to Kazan’s Gorky Park (because every Russian city has one). And rather than wearing out the adjective “young” by putting it in front of every friend I mention from here on out, just be reminded that my social cohort in Kazan consists of 18 – 25 year olds. And yes, that’s why I’ve taken the year down from my birthday on Facebook. I had no choice when I realized that the girls in high school who got pregnant by accident now have kids older than some of the people I’m hanging out with. Anyway, Igor is lanky and lovely and just spent the equivalent of his junior year abroad on an Erasmus-like exchange in Milan so he is longing for more cosmopolitan friends in Kazan, ahem, just like me. He’s half-Chuvash, grew up in the city and he explained as we walked toward the stadium that it was brand new, like much of the sports-related infrastructure in Kazan.
This is actually something I’d noticed since arriving here. Whether it’s a sly plan for putting Tatarstan on the map as its own sovereign entity, or just a pet project of the former-President (now “Presidential Advisor” who hasn’t actually managed to leave the presidential residence or office space since he reluctantly stepped down in March 2010), Tatarstan has invested crazy amounts of money into sports over the last decade. They’ve built stadiums and training facilities, hired internationally renowned players and coaches and as a result have become a powerhouse in hockey, soccer and apparently Bandy across Russia and the world. You can’t fly into Kazan and not be immediately informed by a taxi driver that the city is poised to hold not only a set of World Cup semi-finals when Russia hosts in 2013, a glory which they have to share with other cities, but in an honor all its own will also be hosting the 2013 Universiade, which has been explained to me as a world famous Olympics for university students that it’s very strange I’d never heard of before. The government has built massive facilities for the event including a whole Olympic village of apartments where Kazan State University is currently hosting its international students to test them out/break them in. Friends living in these dorms out on the edge of town report that they are a miraculous blend of both the modern and the Soviet with shoddy new “Euro-style” construction and fake Ikea furniture but also loudspeaker squawkboxes through which the administration blares random announcements as if you’re in North Korea, a highly regulated system for coming and going that involves writing and submitting an exception form a day in advance if you would like to stay out past 11pm, and a hierarchy of officials with skeleton keys who let themselves into your room for inspections without notice upon their discretion. Makes khozyaika-living sound like a big party.
So here’s where, in my mind at least, Bandy meets the airport bombing. With enough resources and the ability to suspend disbelief you can live in Russia like it’s a “normal” country. As a middle class Russian citizen, you can play your part in this weird theatre of legitimacy and enjoy the public goods the government has given you, rather than those you may have otherwise preferred or those the people less fortunate than you may have otherwise urgently needed. You can cheer for your national team in its brand new stadium and feel triumphant when they claim the title, or walk down the newly paved Putin Street in Grozny and marvel at the high end stores where only the fewest people have the money to shop. Many citizens at this point accept this bargain, what with no other choice, and so they pay off the under-salaried doctors when they get sick, they pool money with other parents to pay for their kids' textbooks, they even come together to put out their own forest fires. But I have to imagine then, that even in those moments when they do suspend disbelief and partake of the fruits of Russia's internationally publicized modernization campaign, in the back of their heads they must be aware that that was the government’s priority: some weird glittery Potemkin façade masking a deeply scarred, flawed and crumbling reality.
However, upon further reflection (and a hopefully respectful enough bit of time) I’m prepared to argue that in Russia, Bandy Championships and airport bombings are far more interconnected than you’d first think and will clumsily try to tackle both in this my return to your not-so-regularly scheduled blog-a-stan program. I hope it seems in the right spirit. I guess, just be warned that the juxtaposition of the glib and the grim is meant to show how the two potentially spring forth from some of the same sources in Russia and is not at all meant to be disrespectful, particularly to those people who were in any way close to the bombing.
On Sunday afternoon, I layered as much clothing as I could fit underneath my dublyenka, a somewhat 19th century-derivative sheepskin coat with hugely poofy cuffs and lapels generously donated to me for the winter by Miriam, and went off to meet my young friend Igor by the World War II Memorial at the entrance to Kazan’s Gorky Park (because every Russian city has one). And rather than wearing out the adjective “young” by putting it in front of every friend I mention from here on out, just be reminded that my social cohort in Kazan consists of 18 – 25 year olds. And yes, that’s why I’ve taken the year down from my birthday on Facebook. I had no choice when I realized that the girls in high school who got pregnant by accident now have kids older than some of the people I’m hanging out with. Anyway, Igor is lanky and lovely and just spent the equivalent of his junior year abroad on an Erasmus-like exchange in Milan so he is longing for more cosmopolitan friends in Kazan, ahem, just like me. He’s half-Chuvash, grew up in the city and he explained as we walked toward the stadium that it was brand new, like much of the sports-related infrastructure in Kazan.
my new building as seen from Gorky Park across the street
World War II memorial in Gorky Park across the street
This is actually something I’d noticed since arriving here. Whether it’s a sly plan for putting Tatarstan on the map as its own sovereign entity, or just a pet project of the former-President (now “Presidential Advisor” who hasn’t actually managed to leave the presidential residence or office space since he reluctantly stepped down in March 2010), Tatarstan has invested crazy amounts of money into sports over the last decade. They’ve built stadiums and training facilities, hired internationally renowned players and coaches and as a result have become a powerhouse in hockey, soccer and apparently Bandy across Russia and the world. You can’t fly into Kazan and not be immediately informed by a taxi driver that the city is poised to hold not only a set of World Cup semi-finals when Russia hosts in 2013, a glory which they have to share with other cities, but in an honor all its own will also be hosting the 2013 Universiade, which has been explained to me as a world famous Olympics for university students that it’s very strange I’d never heard of before. The government has built massive facilities for the event including a whole Olympic village of apartments where Kazan State University is currently hosting its international students to test them out/break them in. Friends living in these dorms out on the edge of town report that they are a miraculous blend of both the modern and the Soviet with shoddy new “Euro-style” construction and fake Ikea furniture but also loudspeaker squawkboxes through which the administration blares random announcements as if you’re in North Korea, a highly regulated system for coming and going that involves writing and submitting an exception form a day in advance if you would like to stay out past 11pm, and a hierarchy of officials with skeleton keys who let themselves into your room for inspections without notice upon their discretion. Makes khozyaika-living sound like a big party.
And on the surface this all seems so great. Build stadiums, boost moral, give the people sports! But I remember as I had just bought a $35 ticket to go see Rubin Kazan play Barcelona in the Champions League at the posh new stadium from which you get a fantastic view of the dramatically lit Kazan Kremlin by night, I made the mistake of asking one of my much beloved Russian teachers if he were going too. His face got stern, veins bulged and he tried to be restrained as he told me that he didn’t attend sporting events in this town because he couldn’t understand how and why the government had all of this money to throw into leisure activities when it didn’t have funds for new textbooks at the university or to pay its instructors a living wage. I later found out that as a result of this restricted income, said Russian teacher is regrettably living in that same North Korean-esque faux-Olympic dormitory on the outskirts of town with the students, which means he not only has to submit a form when he wants to stay out past 11 and can’t have overnight guests, but will also be displaced for a stretch of time the year after next when the Universiade athletes come to reclaim their village. Not exactly ideal for a professional in his 30s with an advanced degree.
So here’s where, in my mind at least, Bandy meets the airport bombing. With enough resources and the ability to suspend disbelief you can live in Russia like it’s a “normal” country. As a middle class Russian citizen, you can play your part in this weird theatre of legitimacy and enjoy the public goods the government has given you, rather than those you may have otherwise preferred or those the people less fortunate than you may have otherwise urgently needed. You can cheer for your national team in its brand new stadium and feel triumphant when they claim the title, or walk down the newly paved Putin Street in Grozny and marvel at the high end stores where only the fewest people have the money to shop. Many citizens at this point accept this bargain, what with no other choice, and so they pay off the under-salaried doctors when they get sick, they pool money with other parents to pay for their kids' textbooks, they even come together to put out their own forest fires. But I have to imagine then, that even in those moments when they do suspend disbelief and partake of the fruits of Russia's internationally publicized modernization campaign, in the back of their heads they must be aware that that was the government’s priority: some weird glittery Potemkin façade masking a deeply scarred, flawed and crumbling reality.
And yes, half of the things I’ve mentioned are private rather than public investments. The exorbitant salaries for the international Rubin Kazan players, the bizarre high end boutiques that never actually sell anything at the mall next door to the stadium in Kazan are all technically operated by “private” investors. But from what I’ve heard and read, those private businessmen, having made their huge piles of money off of the state to begin with are now in many ways beholden to the government if they want to hold onto their assets. So while the government isn’t directly investing its money in the Rubin Kazan players or the re-creation of the historic town of Bulgar, (another of Shamiev’s pet projects), they are telling said investors where a portion of their money needs to go… or else. The international terminal at Domodedovo itself with its Free WiFi and five business lounges is another one of these anomalously glittering facades tacked onto an old Soviet reality. And yes, Moscow is a world capital so of course it should have a decent airport. And no, I in no way mean to condone a heinous, horrible, completely unjustified and unjustifiable attack. But it’s still worth attempting to remember how angry my otherwise laidback, even-tempered Russian teacher is made by the effect the government’s decision to divert resources from the necessary to the frivolous has on his life, and then juxtapose his comparatively charmed existence with that of the average male his age in the North Caucasus, most likely desperate for physical and economic security for himself and all those suffering around him, and it’s easy to see that the sources of domestic terror in Russia run far deeper than the rhetoric of a black and white, good versus evil, religiously motivated “jihad” might lead you to believe.
But back to the fantasyland of the Bandy Championships! That’s my reality here. I just skim the surface, enjoy the ride, have a passport that allows me to leave anytime. So as legend would have it, Bandy is a sport first created in England but abandoned during a string of warm winters when the lakes didn’t freeze across the UK that stuck in Sweden and Russia (where the lakes did freeze) and apparently has some participants if not a full-on fan-base in Canada, Norway, Finland, Belarus, Kazakhstan and enough towns in Minnesota to scrape together a US team. It’s like hockey in that it consists of guys with sticks on an ice rink but the sticks are longer, the nets much bigger and they use an orange ball rather than a puck, which allegedly makes it faster. The rules are identical to soccer and much unlike its snarling cousin “Hockey with a Puck,” there’s no physical contact or fighting allowed in Bandy. In short, it’s pretty boring. And cold, as it’s traditionally played on lakes and in this case in an outdoor rather than enclosed stadium during what we would consider a blizzard in the States but is just another unexceptional day of blustery snow in Russia.
Igor and I bought our fifty ruble tickets to the kick-off US versus Russia game, which I’d read in advance included a serving of “soldier’s kasha” and hot tea. Little did I expect though that the hefty dollop of kasha with its strangely delicious stringy meat and generous coating of butter would literally be served to us from large military cauldrons by Russian soldiers who had been bused in for the game in armored vehicles. This was almost as absurd as the man outfitted as an 8-foot-tall packet of mayonnaise walking around the stadium as an advertising gimmick. Or the fact that by Bandy rules when there’s a penalty shot, literally all of the players of the defending team, and I do mean literally, they all get inside the net together like circus people scrambling into a clown car to block the puck.
I'm sure there was no better use of Russian military forces than doling out our kasha
the day before the bombing
I missed a picture of Mr. Mayonnaise but did capture some random fans
please note the Finnish team in blue all assembled *inside* the net
While eating our kasha, Igor and I located Chamil, a mutual friend who had guests in town from Belgium and Finland. We all climbed our way through the stadium, which was standing-room-only both because there was huge Russian turnout and because the bleachers were so snow-covered there was no way to sit down, and all froze together as we watched the Americans get destroyed by the Russian team. Twenty minutes in, we had gotten the gist of the game and went back to my apartment to warm our toes and noses with a bit of vodka and some actually hot tea. We then ventured back out for the more competitive Finland versus Sweden game at 7:00 and learned Finnish songs with which to loudly taunt the Swedes. By this time we were five of only twenty or so fans left in the stands so we were able to make a considerable bit of noise, which may or may not have helped the underdog Finns to a 9-8 win in overtime penalty shots (these more decorous, however, with only the goalie in the net).
glossy new stadium, Russia vs. US, final score 17 to 0, ouch
standing-room-only
cold but newly converted bandy fans cheering for Finland
The next evening the bomb went off at the airport. I sat at my kitchen table, estranged from the news-making process I’ve grown accustomed to watching over Miriam’s shoulder as fires and smog, rigged Belarusian elections and ethnic riots have all coincided with my trips to and through Moscow, to and through Domodedovo. Missing the feeling of community and connection but nevertheless glued to the computer I sat watching terribly sad stories unfold in real time over the course of the night. Getting almost inappropriate access to people’s lives and pictures of body parts, pools of blood, a haze of smoke and caved in bits of ceiling, I sat soaking up unconfirmed theories, “jokes” about election season starting, video footage, tales of missing friends, near misses, confirmed deaths, fear and loss on a scale that almost rivals, isn’t justified by, but is likely to help perpetuate the suffering in the North Caucasus.
That said, the following Sunday Russia did beat Sweden to win the 2011 World Bandy Championships for the second year in a row.
