Taking the old tanks out for a spin

Nukes roll through Red Square during a rehearsal for this year's Victory Day parade.

This past weekend was Victory Day, which commemorates Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Soviet Union and the end the Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front of WWII). Before heading out to the countryside like most Russians do on a holiday weekend, I had a kefir (the best morning pick-me-up for a hangover, they say) and caught the parade on Dvortsovaya Ploschad.

The Victory Day Parade best known to the world is the one held on Red Square in Moscow, which was restored to a modern analogy of its Soviet-era, warheads-on-wheels splendor. This year, however, a new law has dicated Victory Day Parades be held in 23 Russian cities.

My Russian friends shook their heads in bewilderment that I bothered (“We’ve lived here all our lives and we’ve never gone to the parade!”) and stayed home to watch the Moscow parade on TV. Good move — on the people-packed expense of Dvortsovaya, nothing much was visible, and the parade was so pitiful I only glimpsed a few troop carriers and several rows of marching cadets before it apparently ended, leaving spectators to guess at what was next before wandering away when they decided that it was likely over (apparently Moscow had a real wham-dinger, with 9,000 personnel, 103 vehicles and 69 aircraft, albeit much of it dated Soviet hardware).

Other Victory Day sights were equally gloomy. Friday afternoon I stumbled upon a celebratory concert in Park Pobedi (Park of Victory) where some dude in a tuxedo was crooning over some canned Soviet tunes. If a giant Order of Victory (see left) replica hadn’t have been hanging over the stage, he would have looked like a groomsman singing karaoke at a reception.

As he wailed patriotic fluff like “Fireworks Display of Victory” (“Salut Pobedi”), old-timers and veterans’ wives jammed out in their black-and-orange remembrance ribbons and blazers festooned with medals. Those not yet crippled by arthritis snapped their fingers, the rest just swayed arm-in-arm like dandelions in the breeze.

A small protest …

Russian elections: "No choice."

The notice above was recently posted outside my apartment building, inviting citizens to take part in the “review and additional clarification of voter lists” for the Municipal Council of Education elections on March 1.  Somebody scrawled “byez vybora” (literally, “without choice,” in other words, “no choice”) over the sheet as a pint-sized protest against Russia’s finely orchestrated elections.

As Russians are famously apathetic about elections, I doubt an 8.5 by 11 posted inconspicuously in the courtyard’s going to really get out the vote.  You need a better incentive, like an order from your boss to take a picture of your vote for the pre-approved party (i.e. Putin’s United Russia) on a cell-phone camera.

The latest news in Petersburg has been filled with crackdowns on the small opposition movement in the lead-up to the March 1 elections.  Opposition groups like Solidarity and Yabloko, having registered demonstrations with the government as required by law, have nevertheless been denied gathering places for inane reasons.  Two-thirds of the opposition candidates who gathered the required signatures have not been registered for the elections after government experts declared their petitions invalid.

Most recently, it’s come to light that Russian police, in the finest tradition of the NKVD and the Black Marias, have been visiting the homes of people who signed opposition candidates’ petitions to intimidate them into retracting their signatures, often late at night.

All the same, Putin enjoys immense popularity and most Russians are hardly perturbed to be pressured into supporting his “authoritarian democracy.”  So to whoever wrote “No choice,” way to fight the power.

Chizhik Pyzhik robbery

The Chizhik Pyzhik monument on the Fontanka canal.

The monument to Chizhik Pyzhik looks just like it sounds, diminutive and a little absurd, and at 11 cm, it’s perhaps the smallest tourist attraction in the world. It’s a statue of a bird positioned midway down the side of Fontanka canal near the Field of Mars. You wouldn’t notice it walking by if not for the gaggle of tourists and couples trying to throw coins onto its tiny ledge, like one of those old-school carnival game.

Well, Saturday night as I was walking home around 1 a.m. it was a bit of a different scene. Passing a lone figure looking down at Chizhik Pyzhik, I naturally stopped to see what he was watching. There down below stood another sketchy type in waders, apparently scooping up coins with a red shovel.

“What are you looking at? Interesting?” the lookout growled at me.

I muttered something to my interlocutor and walked further onto the nearby bridge to get a better vantage point. Yes, these two depraved individuals where stealing the very coins on which so many boyfriends, girlfriends and Japanese tourists had made a wish.

When I recounted this to my host brothers, they hardly batted an eye. “They must have really wanted to drink,” Maxim said.

Indeed, the statue itself has apparently been stolen several times, so let these gopniks (dude who hangs out drinking in the street) have the change.  When I passed by today, the stockpile was already replenished, glistening like sunken treasure amid a hundred years of sea dust.

Incidentally, the statue was built in honor of a rhyme that recounts the drunken exploits of students at the nearby Imperial School of Jurisprudence, who were called “Chizhik Pyzhiks” because of their yellow-and-green uniforms:

“Chizhik-Pyzhik, gdye ty byl?
Na fontankye vodku pil.
Vypil ryumku, vypil dvye -
Zashumyelo v golovye.”

“Chizhik Pyzhik, where have you been?
On the Fontanka drinking vodka.
Drank a shot, drank two -
It made a racket in my head.”

My host father is big into this rhyme; he has a tradition of making all foreign guests learn and recite it.  I’ve already had my first ordeal, and I think I made the grade …

Spotted: New Jersey plates in Petersburg

Saturday, 11:30 p.m.:  A black Land Rover with New Jersey plates waiting for the stoplight at the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Bolshaya Konyushennaya.  According to the Russian friend I was with, it’s not an uncommon sight on Nevsky, since its still pretty fashionable to drive a car with American plates.

Monday, 3:15 p.m.:  A dark blue car of Russian make drives by the same corner and smashes a bottle out the driver side window …

Heavy security and party mom

5 p.m., Thursday, Gorokhovaya ulitsa:  A security guard slinging an AK-47 gets out of a company car and strides into a local bank.  I hesitated and didn’t take out my camera in time to get off a shot … or maybe a subconscious survival instinct kicked in …

8 p.m., Wednesday, Gorokhovaya ulitsa:  A mom guzzling Black Russian in a can (literally, cognac, coke and flavoring in a can) browses the dairy section of the local convenience store Дикси (Dixie) with her schoolboy son.

Cat abduction?

6:30 p.m., Spasskiy pereulok, crowds of people passing by.  A man in military camo carries a cat down the street in a wicker basket.

2:58 a.m., iClub cafe, Bol’shaya Konyushyennaya ulitsa, Will Smith music videos on the TV monitors.  A skinny dude with a scraggly, blonde goat’s-ass goatee runs in and asks the bartender for ice.  He gets it in a plastic bag and runs out.