#stalin center

[lem0nademouth]

what on g-d’s green earth are tankies snorting i just saw someone on twt say that (and this is a direct quote): “if leftists are going to decide that ‘from the river to the sea’ is a call for genocide then i’m going to decide that ‘vote blue no matter who’ is also a call for genocide”

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

Hunger was far worse in the cities of Soviet Ukraine than in any city in the Western world. In 1933 in Soviet Ukraine, a few tens of thousands of city dwellers actually died of starvation. Yet the vast majority of the dead and dying in Soviet Ukraine were peasants, the very people whose labors had brought what bread there was to the cities. The Ukrainian cities lived, just, but the Ukrainian countryside was dying. City dwellers could not fail to notice the destitution of peasants who, contrary to all seeming logic, left the fields in search of food. The train station at Dnipropetrovsk was overrun by starving peasants, too weak even to beg. On a train, Gareth Jones met a peasant who had acquired some bread, only to have it confiscated by the police. “They took my bread away from me,” he repeated over and over again, knowing that he would disappoint his starving family. At the Stalino station, a starving peasant killed himself by jumping in front of a train. That city, the center of industry in southeastern Ukraine, had been founded in imperial times by John Hughes, a Welsh industrialist for whom Gareth Jones’s mother had worked. The city had once been named after Hughes; now it was named after Stalin. (Today it is known as Donetsk.)

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

[tanadrin]

RE "revolutionary leftists are revolutionary because they know they can't win electorally."

It astounds me a little that there are leftists who think that a communist revolution is more likely to work than, like, fifty years of community-building and electoral politics. Sewer socialism, union activism, and other boring activities have brought much more success in the U.S. than agitation for a revolution.

What I mean is, setting aside the moral concerns (violence is bad, even when it's necessary, and if there are practical alternatives then we should pursue them), I am not a revolutionary leftist because I think we would lose a revolution. For one thing, there is a considerable right-wing element in the country that is much better prepared for this kind of thing, and I think that the majority of the institutions in the U.S. would pick fascism over communism if they had to choose, but also, prolonged violent action is ripe for breeding authoritarianism.

Goatse is concerned that "the party" might "abandon or neglect its primary ends," but what is leftism if it is not, at bottom, an attempt to improve the living conditions of all people, et cetera et cetera? To the extent that social democratic parties successfully pursue this end to some degree, they're better than than an ostensible communist party that talks the talk but commits human rights abuses. And, more than the fact that U.S. leftism has some pretty fierce opposition that would probably fare better if The Revolution happened tomorrow, I think that, even in winning, we would lose, because what came out the other end would look a lot more like Stalinism.

I think one thing the hardcore revolutionaries in OECD countries don't realize is that the reason they can't marshal support for their revolutions is that the socialists won most of the issues that were salient in the early 20th century--workers got more rights, better pay, unions were legalized, etc., etc. But it didn't take restructuring the whole political economy to do it, which is immensely frustrating if you believe that any society without your ideal political economy is inherently immoral and impure, so in order to justify an explicitly communist platform you have to rhetorically isolate it from the filthy libs and feckless demsocs who it turns out have been pretty effective within the arena of electoral politics in which supposedly nothing can ever get done, and treat them as of a piece with the out-and-out fascists and royalist autocrats of the 1920s and 30s.

Which, you know. Is not persuasive to most people! Most people understand intuitively the vast gulf between the SPD and the Nazis; they see that, milquetoast and compromising though they may be, the center-left can deliver substantive policy improvements without the upheaval of a civil war or political purges, and this is attractive to people who are not of a millenarian or left-authoritarian personality.

Which isn't to say that communists don't often make important points! It sucks having to fight a constant rearguard action against the interests of capital rolling back the social improvements of the 20th century, and it sucks that liberal governments in Europe and North America have historically been quite happy to bankroll and logistically support fascists and tyrants in the third world against communist movements (which invariably only exist as communist movements because these same fascists and tyrants have crushed more compromising movements and only the most militant organizations have managed to survive).

But I agree with you: communists also talk a big game about how liberalism is the real fascism (what's that line from Disco Elysium I see quoted everywhere about how everybody is secretly a fascist except the other communists, who are liberals?), while also being awful at democracy. Suppressing dissent because your small clique of political elites is the only legitimate expression of the people's will (which you know, because you have declared it to be so) really is some rank bullshit. A system with competitive elections is still, well, a system with competitive elections, even if those elections are structurally biased in certain ways; all the bloviating that attempts to justify communist authoritarianism cannot really obscure the fact that authoritarian systems are cruel and brittle, regardless of the ideology being served.

[mariacallous]

At the end of January, clips from a film about the housing market in Russian-occupied Mariupol began circulating on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army held Mariupol under siege for 85 days, all the while relentlessly pummeling the city with missile and air strikes. Mariupol was effectively reduced to rubble, and no one knows how many lives were lost — though some estimates place the number as high as 100,000. As soon as the Russian authorities had captured the city, they set about rebuilding it and erasing any trace of war crimes.

The film, titled “Shocking Prices for Apartments in Mariupol — Millions for Ruins” was released in November on the YouTube channel “Mirnyie” (the plural form of “peaceful” in Russian and the first part of “peaceful inhabitants,” a Russian term used to distinguish non-combatants from military personnel in conflict zones). The Mirnyie project is led by “war correspondent” Regina Orekhova, a journalist from the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. In 2022, she received a special award from the Russian Union of Journalists for “courage in fulfilling journalistic duty.”

The Mirnyie project, as one might surmise from its name, explores the lives of ordinary people in the conflict zone. “These are the stories of people who found themselves caught in the crossfire — some left, while others stayed. [We share] their experiences, how they survive, and what they think about,” reads the description. Judging by the channel, Orekhova primarily works in Mariupol. Previous reports of hers cover topics such as Azovstal’s underground tunnels, the sea port, city maternity hospitals, and the drama theater, which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike while an estimated 1,000 civilians were sheltering there.

In the introduction to the half-hour film, Orekhova promises to answer the following questions: “How do you buy an apartment in Mariupol? Is it more profitable to invest in ‘ruins’ that you can resell once renovated? How do you rent commercial space for a business here and how much does it cost? What kinds of apartments are for sale and what determines the price?” Orekhova explains that in Mariupol, there are “damaged buildings” as well as “brand new and renovated ones.” “The real estate market is very unconventional. We’ve studied it in detail and we’ll tell you all about it,” she promises. 

Orekhova speaks with three local realtors who show her properties for sale in different parts of the city. As it turns out, these are mostly half-destroyed apartments, hastily abandoned by residents who left all their personal belongings behind as they fled. However, even such properties, according to the realtors, are in high demand. In some cases, actual ruins, where just parts of the walls survived the bombings, are for sale. However, Russian construction companies will restore these buildings later for free, which significantly increases prices. There’s also the rare property untouched by war, or newly renovated apartments in restored buildings. Prices for these range from four to six million rubles (about $50,000-$66,000). Apartments in historic Stalin-era buildings in the center of Mariupol with surviving inner courtyards (i.e., enclosed parking), renovated entrances, and sea views are considered premium housing.

The film doesn’t explain why or, more importantly, by whom all the housing in Mariupol was destroyed. Realtors talk evasively about “all those events” or “military actions.” Orekhova asks how many real estate agencies are currently operating in Mariupol. “Well, there aren’t many surviving citizens per square meter, you could say, but they exist, of course,” a realtor answers.

Showing a damaged three-room apartment in the center of Mariupol, real estate agent Natalia remarks that “one shouldn’t focus on the consequences of what happened to the apartment but on the apartment’s potential.” There’s no electricity, the ceiling is leaking, and personal belongings, including toys and a highchair, lie strewn about — but the windows have been replaced. Natalia points out the “magnificent view” from the balcony. “These buildings have survived more than one war and, as you can see, are still standing,” Natalia says encouragingly. According to her, it would be too painful for the previous owners to come back and see their home like this, which is why they’re looking to sell the apartment in its current condition.

The realtors say that apartments are mostly bought by newcomers “from big Russia” and bemoan that locals can’t afford newly constructed housing. According to them, Russian authorities introduced a special two percent mortgage rate for people from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” who have Russian citizenship. But locals can’t get approved because most aren’t officially employed — there are no jobs with decent salaries in Mariupol.

Luisa, the head of a real estate management company, explains that it’s virtually impossible for Mariupol residents to get an apartment without Russia’s help. She says they “can’t afford to buy back their old homes in Mariupol or to purchase new ones.” When new construction is put up where their destroyed homes used to be, the mortgage payments are out of reach. Luisa recalls how an apartment building in the center, leveled in the bombings, was cleared away to make room for new construction. Residents were offered housing somewhere on the outskirts as compensation, but they weren’t able to buy apartments in the new building being built on their property, even though they’re legally registered at the address.

Tatiana, another realtor, thinks everything in Mariupol is “getting back on track.” She says people are returning, “even those who didn’t plan to.” “The demand [for apartments] is very high, much higher than the supply,” Tatiana explains. “If an apartment is in poor condition but at a good price, it goes quickly. The interested buyers are mainly newcomers. People from Siberia are also eyeing our seaside breeze.”

Tatiana tells Orekhova that everything is “looking up” for the city:

Mariupol has never experienced such rapid growth. The city is developing before our eyes. It’s happening in such a way that even we don’t know where things will improve tomorrow, where slums will turn into upscale neighborhoods. Because our sky is blue. When I say this, everyone smiles, actually. But before, our sky used to be gray or brown, never blue. And now life is getting better; every cloud has a silver lining. You just don’t want to remember the military operations; you go numb. But when you see what’s happening in Mariupol — everything will be fine, everything will work out.

[sophiemariepl]

Being an Eastern European/Central-Eastern European/post-Soviet fan of the Hunger Games, I have to say that it really rubs me the wrong way when US-American/other Western fans throw a tantrum when u tell them that u see similarities between how Panem functions and how other empires than the US function, too. Like, even in criticism of imperialism, everything has to revolve solely around Americans.

I do not mean to say that Suzanne Collins did not write “The Hunger Games” trilogy and “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” without taking inspiration from her geopolitical, economic and cultural context, because she obviously did, and those elements are very obviously visible in the story.

But those are not the only ones.

Another very obvious inspiration for Panem was the Roman Empire, and surprise, surprise! There are more than one European/Western empire that took/takes inspiration from Ancient Rome. Britain, France, Spain, also Russia, just to name a few. That means that people from different regions can have different associations when reading different texts of culture and that is perfectly normal. It does not mean that they are manipulated by the goddamn CIA if they don’t have the same associations as Americans while reading it 😆

And for instance, for me as an Eastern European, the first association I had while reading THG trilogy for the first time, for instance, was the USSR and modern-day Russia, simply because I come from this geopolitical context and I know it better.

Ceasar Flickerman even reminded me of several modern Russian propagandists, including Vladimir Solovyov.

The political and economic structure of Panem reminded me of the way the modern-day Russian Federation functions, with monumental Moscow at its center, and oblasts and republics basically serving as feudal provinces for the production of goods and natural resources. Regions and republics in which people often lack access to basic goods and improvements.

Heck, even President Snow very often reminded me of people like Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin, with his pretending to represent the people only to hold a tight grip on the state as an authoritarian/dictatorial leader.

Does that deny the American (or America-inspired) elements in THG universe? Of course not. But it certainly does not mean that others should not also see the empires that abused them and their ancestors in Suzanne Collin’s novels.

Because some elements are just common, dare I even say, universal, in many empires.

[soviet-amateurs]

Vassily Stalin, a military pilot and the dictator's son (center). 1951

[ohsalome]

As a fact of history and problem of contemporary geopolitics, Russia’s nature as an imperial power is incontrovertible. After World War I, the Russian Empire avoided the permanent dismemberment that befell other multi-ethnic land empires, such as the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. The Soviet Union not only reconquered most of the non-Russian lands that had declared independence from Moscow in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution (including Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan)—but even expanded the empire in the course of World War II, annexing Moldova, the western part of Ukraine, and other lands. Nor did the Soviet Union participate in the decolonization era. Even as the French and British empires were being dissolved, the Soviet Union was expanding its colonial reach, tightening its grip deep into Eastern and Central Europe with bloody crackdowns and military actions.

[...]

During the Cold War, Western universities, research institutions, and policy think tanks opened numerous centers and programs for Soviet, Russian, and Eurasian studies in a bid to better understand the Soviet Union and its heritage. However, these efforts had a strategic flaw: Born in an era when Moscow’s control reached far beyond today’s Russian borders, these programs inevitably framed the region through a Moscow-centric lens. Today, even as they dropped “Soviet” from their name, most of these programs have inherited this old Moscow-centric framing, effectively conflating Russia with the Soviet Union and downplaying the rich histories, varied cultures, and unique national identities of Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, and Central Asia—not to mention the many conquered and colonized non-Russian peoples inhabiting wide swathes of the Russian Federation.

[...]

In many cases, Western academic programs require students to study the Russian language—often including courses in Moscow or Saint Petersburg—before they have the option of studying any of the region’s other languages, if they are so inclined and if those languages are even offered. A similar problem affects cultural studies, including literature and art, where the many ways Russian works—including the classics read by countless high school and university students—transport Moscow’s imperial ideology are rarely addressed. This only perpetuates the habit of looking at the former Soviet-controlled and Russian-occupied space through the prism of the world’s last unreconstructed imperial culture. Unwittingly, today’s Russia studies in the West still replicate the worldview of an oppressor state that has never examined its history and is nowhere near having a debate about its imperial nature at all—not even among the Russian intellectuals or so-called liberals with whom Western students, academics, and analysts generally interact and cooperate.

Finally, Western academia also presents Russia itself as a monolith, with little or no attention paid to the country’s Indigenous peoples. By now, many who study Russian history are at least vaguely familiar with the Stalin-era genocide of the Crimean Tatars and their replacement on the peninsula by Russian settlers. But why not shed more light on the Russian conquest and subjugation of Siberia, one of the most gruesome episodes of European colonialism? Or Russia’s 19th-century mass murder of the Circassians, Europe’s first modern-era genocide? What have we learned about the short-lived Idel-Ural state, a confederation of six autonomous Finno-Ugric and Turkic republics crushed by the Bolsheviks in 1918? Why not highlight Tatarstan, which proclaimed its independence from Russia in 1990? Nascent efforts to give Russia’s Indigenous peoples a voice have gotten underway, including the Free Peoples of Russia Forum that last convened in Sweden in December 2022—but they have hardly registered in Western academia. Not only are Western scholars’ interests and relationships Russia-centric; within Russia, those relationships and contacts are Moscow-centric. It’s as if Russia’s highly diverse regions didn’t exist.

[transgenderer]

okay so i was trying to figure out which two points you can drive between are farthest apart. my first guess was thurso UK to singapore (about 6k miles, so only half the hypothetical maximum), but when i put it into google maps it refused to calculate a route, through fiddling around i eventually figured out it refuses to calculate paths between india and pakistan of any sort. from what i can tell online, you COULD cross the border in a car, at wagah (and only at wagah!) but in 2019 they closed it fully and now you can only cross by foot!

anyway, if you allow for crossing at wagah thurso-singapore is about 216 hours of driving

anyway thats definitely not the real answer, you can go from capetown to omsukchan russia, which is 9700 miles. note that google refuses to calculate it directly, you have to do a chain of stops in the middle (presumably has an automatic timeout when theres too many roads to consider). i THINK omsuckchan is the easternmost point (before the date line) accessible by road but its hard to tell. once they finish the anadyr highway (well. finish and highway are both generous terms) itll be a full 10k miles! very near the maximum possible

anyway. the russian far east is a bummer. some excerpts:

Magadan, founded in 1930, was a major transit center for political prisoners during the Stalin era and the administrative center of the Dalstroy forced-labor gold-mining operation.

The Kolyma Highway is colloquially known as the Road of Bones (Russian: Дорога Костей, transliteration: Doróga Kostyéy), in reference to the hundreds of thousands of forced laborers who were interred in the pavement after dying during its construction.[1][2]

[workersolidarity]

🇷🇺 🚨 COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION OPENS NEW STALIN CENTER

The Stalin Center was opened in Barnaul by the Communists of Russia, with plans to create a non-profit organization of the same name.

“A piece of Stalin lives in each of us, especially in those who fight for justice, for a better life,” said deputy of the regional assembly Sergei Matasov.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Harkles on the horizon by u/Significant_Air3878

Harkles on the horizon ​Which will happen first?1. Either Todger or Table 12 will go to some kind of rehab, treatment center, or "spa"2. Divorce papes will be served (instead of irreconcilable differences, it's unconscious bias)3. Madame will have a memoir tell-all published. The cover is wrinkled.4. Archie will be photographed and used in some kind of money-making marketing campaign5. Someone at Archewell will go to jail6. Harry will buy a place in England, alone, and go there to eat fish and chips without supervision7. The nanny accidentally forgets about Lil'Bit and leaves her at the market. No one notices that she is missing for three weeks.8. Meghan hawks skin care products on QVC9. Meghan pairs with Hilaria Baldwin to open a chain of elite yoga studios10. King Charles leaves the throne; Catherine and William are coronate the same day Megs goes to buy milkshakes11. Omid Scobie is revealed to actually be a Jim Henson Muppet. He is a supporting character in the upcoming TV special, "Muppets Take Montecito," starring Candace Cameron Bure and James Woods12. Meghan's husband is photographed at a party without her, wearing a Joseph Stalin costume with a mojito in hand13. Orange Tang hires Markle as spokesperson but deal falls through as sales fall rapidly14. Our Lady joins Scientology and requests to have lunch with Tom Cruise. She has outlined an 8-step plan for the two if them to rock the entertainment industry. He does not show up15. Nigeria sues Meghan Markle for defamation16. Doria releases her own book, "Baking with Gramma Duchess" that features cannabis-recipes and relationship advice​https://ift.tt/6cz8K4u post link: https://ift.tt/7E5Bv3w author: Significant_Air3878 submitted: November 23, 2023 at 01:12AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[averagejoesolomon]

Gang, I could not be more delighted to share this chapter with you. I know I always tell you to buckle in, but for this one, you ought to buckle in. I'm so serious. You don't have any idea what you're in for. And if you're new here and want to get in on this madness, you can read Full Circle from the beginning on Ao3. Enjoy!

Chapter Five

The most prominent religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity, but the national church is the Bolshoi Theatre, where crowds worship week after week, night after night, among gods by the name of Ramanov, Stalin, and Gorbachev. Built less than a mile away from the heart of Moscow's governing epicenter, the Bolshoi weaves ballet into the political pulse of the country. It announces a national pride on stages across the world. It is an institution. It is a sacred arthouse. It is the venue of choice for Russian chairmen and it is the top item on the visitation itinerary for any and all foreign dignitaries.

It's also a spy's worst nightmare, crawling with the sort of people Matt's made a career out of avoiding.

He can think of at least two-dozen different ways to spend this evening that don't include revealing his face to the better part of the Soviet parliament. A single misstep—one unlucky run-in, introduction, or incident—could spell serious trouble for Matt someday down the line. When he brought this concern to Rachel, she had suggested he wear a disguise.

"I can't do my job wearing a disguise," he had told her, and when she inquired as to why, he had said, "Disguises, by design, draw the eye. If you want me to be your guy in the crowd, you can't paint a three-inch scar on my face or put me in some God-awful gaudy wig."

This must have been a convincing enough argument, because she didn't have a counterpoint to match it. Instead, she calmly pointed out that he could either show his face anonymously at the ballet, or he could wait until the Soviets found it next to his name, age, place of birth, and designated passport number. The choice, she had said, would be up to him.

So now he stands at the base of the Bolshoi foyer, an exposed American nerve in a hostile crowd. "All good, Ace?"

It had been Rachel's idea to travel separately, all four of them staggering their arrivals across the past six hours. Grace has been onsite for ages, posing as a photographer for a famous Russian newspaper that took a bribe from Langley five weeks back. Abe followed close behind, masterfully playing the role of low-ranking British royalty and receiving all of the VIP tours and introductions that come with his faux dukedom. He'll join Matt and Rachel for the performance later on, watching from the elite visiting dignitaries box while the two of them slum it in twelfth-row center.

Matt, for his part, has already slipped in through the maintenance corridors under the guise of a furnace inspection that's been scheduled for seven months. He's shed himself free of the branded navy coveralls to reveal the perfectly tailored Versace below. As he fusses with his ivory cufflinks, he wonders how Rachel managed to pin down his exact measurements, but knows a fella shouldn’t ask questions he doesn’t want answers to. "Patience, Nebraska," she says, voice crackling in his ear. “Good things come to those who wait."

Last, but certainly not least to arrive is Rachel, who carries enough natural poise to breeze through the Bolshoi's front doors without a second glance from anyone in sight. From his place at the bottom of the Bolshoi's elegant double staircase, Matt spots her through the crowds above, clocking the familiarity in her movements before anything else—the stubborn set of her shoulders, a graceful glide of her hand along the banister, confident steps as she begins her descent in his direction.

And by God, she is a sight to see.

Her dress is the classy sort of affair that suits her perfectly, a solid black number sewn from silk and cut into a simple silhouette. The neckline settles along her collarbone and swoops from shoulder to shoulder, paired with soft loops of fabric that drape listlessly along either arm. This weighty, sophisticated feel curves down to her hips, where the dress drops off into an inky sheath that pools at her feet, as though she's been poured straight over the steps. She lifts her hem with a gloved hand, the motion effortless and practiced, and she never looks more like herself than when there's a string of pearls around her neck. With each step, Matt notices her anew, taking in the sheen of the silk, the red of her lips, the soft, subtle bounce of a relaxed updo pinned in place by Swarovski crystals.

Just when he thinks the sight can't get any better, she looks up at him and smiles. "There you are, darling."

Her Russian is technically perfect, the same way her shots always land dead center, and her punches always strike in exactly the right spot. "Are you ready, my love?" he responds, his own contrasting Russian forged in the streets of Leningrad. "I was beginning to grow worried."

He meets her at the final stair and passes along a sleek glass of bubbling Champagne to match his own. Neither of them will drink tonight, but the glass had given Matt a reason to look busy while he waited for her arrival. Somehow, she makes it look like the perfect golden accessory to her ensemble and, after a demure sip that doesn’t make it past her lips, he holds out an arm to her. When her sleek glove slips through his elbow, he can’t hide the warm, tingling shiver that buzzes straight down his spine.

"You will never truly understand the woes of the women's restroom," she replies, and he senses some truth in this predetermined conversation point, despite it being scripted to subdue wandering ears. "Do you have the tickets?"

With his free hand, Matt reaches into his inner pocket and produces two strips of cardstock placed by Rachel before leaving the safe house. This sparks a subtle satisfaction in her, as she mentally checks another box in her fifty-point plan for the evening. Change into her dress, check. Meet on the lower level, check. Pretend to be married, and dating, and in love—check, check, check.

Etiquette dictates that he lead them inside, for the sake of chivalry. Handily, the mission brief also dictates that he lead them inside, for the sake of discretion. Guided by the two complimentary motives, Matt greets the usher with a perfectly neutral hello, and the usher tears their stubs with a hospitable smile. They both receive a program and make their way into the low hum of chatter inside the theatre doors.

Matt has only seen the inside of the Bolshoi once before, when the agency first sent him overseas to train and take in the culture. It's just as striking as he remembers, six balconies carved from intricate gold and dressed in heavy, burgundy velvet. In those early days, a more senior agent had suggested that this place was designed to highlight its visitors just as much as its on-stage talent, because if one could afford an extravagant evening at a Bolshoi performance, then they were certainly the type of person worth noticing. This is especially apparent with the presidents’ box, which takes up two full stories at the center of the balconies and is accented by all the usual curtains and trimmings one might expect to adorn the stage.

Matt and Rachel’s seats are less auspicious, which is entirely by design. The carpet sinks beneath their shoes as he guides her toward a stout velvet seat tucked beneath the first balcony. They offset one another, Rachel’s sharp vigilance balanced by Matt’s casual covertness. As they walk, Matt spots Abe three stories up, chatting to a gentleman with a round gut and a distinguished mustache. Grace is out of sight and, if all goes according to plan, she will be all night. The ambassador to Turkey is ten yards away, the Minister of Justice is sharing a drink with the Minister of Transport, and Matt’s fairly certain that the young lady seated two tiers above them is a descendant of the long dethroned royal family—at least, she’s surrounded by enough armed goons to make people think she is.

If they get out of here without incident, it’ll be a miracle. "After you," he says, gesturing toward their seats. He wraps a possessive hand around to the small of her back, intending to let his lady lead the way like his pops taught him, but something in his brain snaps when he feels her bare skin at his fingertips, a warm and golden flood now washing every thought downstream.

So caught up in surveilling the crowd, he’s neglected to notice one key element about his partner—she seems to be missing half her dress.

The modest neckline sweeps into a wholly immodest back, a deep black V dipping low along alabaster skin. The silk hugs the outer edges of her rib cage, narrowing until meets at a single point that cradles the base of her spine in a gentle, swooping ripple. She's surprisingly soft for someone so fit, carved from demure muscle perfectly suited to the deception of spycraft. The smooth slope of her traps. The rounded angles of her shoulder blades. Matt's eyes trail along her exposed vertebrae, connecting the dots down, down, down her back until he's thinking the sort of thoughts that would have his mama clutching at her pearls. It ain't hard to imagine—except, no, he ain’t going to imagine. It ain’t right. It ain’t gentlemanly, to picture his fingertips brushing down her backbone. To hope she’d melt beneath his touch. To crave the feel of his hand at her back, reeling her in close, holding her right up against his—

"Darling?"

And it just ain’t fair, the way she puts on that alluring tone. The way she glances over her shoulder with a pout that sends his pulse plummeting. The way her dark eyes flicker over her dark dress and the way he could tear that damn thing off her, here and now—

God almighty, he has got to get a grip.

"Uh-huh." He feels his cheeks flushing, not with the sight of her, but with the images running through his own head. He blinks them away, silently scolds himself, and clears his throat with the hope that this one action will clear everything else, too. "Coming."

When they sit, Rachel makes a show of reading the program, expertly delving into the sort of bored small talk that belongs to socialites who have spent their entire lives in gorgeous theaters. But beneath the surface, she’s taking stock of every last detail around them and Matt knows he ought to join her. He knows he ought to note the exits, count the security officers, spot every diplomat that might be spotting him. Except the part of Matt that’s trained to notice everything can’t stop noticing her, all of his good sense getting tangled up in the sight, the smell, the presence of Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

Three cameras cover his closest exit. Rachel’s lips form thrilling new shapes around her Russian. There’s a plainclothes guard sitting two rows ahead. Rachel has a birthmark below her chin. The director of ballet walks in the east entrance. Rachel’s breath hitches on the rise and fall of her chest.

The house lights dim, and Matt uses his Champagne to wash down all the want.

He takes on his own private mission of reigning in his rampant thoughts, but she doesn’t make it easy on him. She smells like wildflower fields and Nebraskan sunlight. She looks the way rock and roll feels on US-20, when all the windows are rolled down. She sounds like a good idea he can’t quite shake. And that dress, that dress. It turns his insides into a mid-April storm, and he’s not sure how he's supposed to sit beside her for the rest of the night, especially not when his brain insists on identifying and cataloging every latch he'd need to unhook in order to unwrap the rest of her.

The orchestra hums to life and the glow of the stage fades into the crowd. The low, blue light seems to catch Rachel in all the right places. The curve of her nose. The pout of her lip. The sharp edge of her jaw, the tender lines in her neck, the elegant curve of her collar bone. The Bolshoi is known internationally for its magnificent mastery of the ballet. It is, in the eyes of many, the most beautiful expression of the most beautiful art form in the world. And yet, as music fills the hall and dancers fill the stage, Matt just can't bring himself to look away from Rachel.

One day, he’s going to kiss her right there, and there, and there.

He will never kiss Rachel Cameron.

One day, he’s going to hold her close, and closer, and closest.

He will never hold Rachel Cameron.

Matt sits through five full movements of Tchaikovsky’s finest, wrestling with back-and-forth thoughts, before Rachel reaches through the darkness and effortlessly laces her fingers in between his. Her hand is cold. Her hands are always cold. It’s one of those things he already knows about her, and the familiarity is enough to send a pang of longing straight up his arm, filling all the empty spaces in his chest until he’s about ready to burst. She’s playing a dangerous game, dancing on the edge of something Matt’s barely managed to restrain. He remembers with a start that she’s wearing a wedding ring—a diamond-studded gold band made to look old and worn, courtesy of Langley’s top jeweler—and he reckons this might be it. This might be the final crack in a dam that’s already on its way out.

That is until Rachel leans in close, her words a whisper rolling over his shoulder, and he realizes that this, actually, is the thing that ends him.

Her breath raises goosebumps along his neck, his shoulders, his back. It’s all twisted up in the raspberries and walnuts they shared in the afternoon, a sweet and earthy scent in equal measure. There’s nothing between them now, except the single inch of her mouth from his ear as she leans in with all the casual belonging of his supposed wife, and he gets so caught up in the feel of her that it takes too long to realize she’s back to speaking English. “Fifth balcony,” she whispers. “Ten o’clock. What do you make of her?”

On instinct, his eyes flick up to her target. He spots it too, a young woman rapt with the dancers below, leaning along the railing just to get a better look. To the untrained eye, she looks like anyone else in the crowd, but as someone who spends plenty of time trying to blend in, Matt notices all of the ways she stands out. Her hair is tied in a low, unglamorous ponytail. Her dress isn’t couture, like so many others here. She wears modest jewelry made from mixed metals—a cardinal sin among polite society. And he’s seen that bag before, in a shop window somewhere in Manhattan.

His attention falls back to Rachel with every intention of crafting an intelligent response, but he gets caught on her eyes before he can get anything out. The way they wait for him. The way they dance between each of his. The way they drop to his lips. The way he can’t help but drop his own gaze to match.

He will never kiss Rachel Cameron.

“The bag,” he mutters instead, and he can’t tell if he’s still looking at her lips or not. He thinks he might be. He probably is. Is he speaking in Russian or in English? “I think its…”

He’s never noticed the low point of her cupid’s bow. The downward draw in each corner of her mouth. The way her cheeks divot ever so subtly, as though she was supposed to have dimples but never found the time for them. Red lips curve around the unsaid end of his sentence. “American made,” she confirms.

The flood is back, biblical and mighty, and his insides warm with the rushing current. Every nerve in his body seems to have found a way to his front, and the shift in weight sends him forward, forward, forward, heavy in her direction. She’s looking up at him—not the stage, not the ballet, but him—with eager eyes, chin raised high, just as it always is.

Except the orchestra trills to a stop. Applause surrounds them. The house lights come up.

Intermission.

The lights break through whatever feelings were fostered under cover of shadow, and the only thing remaining are Matt and Rachel, far too close to something neither one of them can explain. “I should—” he starts at the same time she says, “You need to—”

He waits for her. She waits for him. Finally, when the space between them grows too tight, she reaches through it, hands landing on his bow tie. She straightens each end, then brushes lint from his shoulder. “That’s your cue,” she tries again. “Don’t lose your head.”

It is entirely too late for that, but he swallows this thought down, and opts for a simple, “Yes ma’am.”

It takes more effort than it should to stand from his seat. Somehow, she now sits at the gravitational center of the room, and he has to strain against the pull, one step at a time. Eventually, he manages to join the dozens of other attendees who rush toward the bathrooms and the bars, and the further he walks, the weaker her pull.

When he finally makes it to the lobby, his head clears just enough to wonder what in the Hell just happened.

The events come to him like a mission outline, as though he’s about to debrief with a superior and desperately needs the notes for reference. It’s the only way he can wrap his head around the moment, working through it one step at a time. Except no matter how many times he runs through it, he comes back to the same two steps.

He leaned in.

Then she leaned in.

And he reckons he can understand the first part easily enough, but it’s the second part he keeps getting stuck on, because there’s not a room on this Earth they’ve shared without a fight. On the relational spectrum of people likely to kiss and people likely to brawl they’ve always leaned more toward the latter, and now seems like a Hell of a time to make a leap in the other direction. This is the same woman who tore him apart in Baltimore. The same woman who told him to get lost for two years straight. The same woman who, when they first met, took one glance at him and vowed to make his life harder than it had ever been before.

A lady like that doesn’t lean in. She fights, and yells, and holds grudges. She tells him where to be, when to be there, and what to wear. She gives orders. She makes plans. Rachel Cameron does not lean in—and she certainly doesn’t do so on a whim, in the middle of a mission.

And it occurs to him that this is just another check mark on Rachel’s list. Another scripted moment in her perfect strategy. Of course it is. A wife kisses her husband before he leaves. It’s a cover. It’s a legend. She’s always been one step ahead of him with this sort of thing.

At least, that’s what Matt tells himself as he meanders through the crowds, and it helps his racing heart slow to his resting rate. Mind clearing, he brings his mission objective into focus and works his way toward the fifth balcony using one of the paths Rachel mapped out for him weeks ago. He stops in bathrooms, refreshes his Champagne, and swipes a bite-sized chocolate desert from a passing cart, partly because it’s his best bet at cover, and partly because he’s a sucker for a chocolate mousse. One staircase at a time, he climbs that magnificent Bolshoi Theatre and works his way onto a balcony that isn’t his.

In Rachel’s grand Moscow plan, Matt has six pre-approved options for approaching a potential target. Since the first requires their target to be a man and the second requires there to be a gun pointed at his head, Matt settles for option number three—the confused tourist gambit or, as he prefers to call it, the National Lampoon. “Excuse me, miss?” he says, in the best lost American voice he can muster. “Do you know the way to the—?”

She turns, and any commitment Matt had to his cover immediately shrivels when he realizes he knows the young lady perched in the fifth balcony. He used to have dreams about her. Spent the better part of a year trying to remember every detail about her, from the red hair, to the ring on her finger, to the way she threw a baseball in the basement of Wrigley field. He last saw her skipping down a stoop in Georgetown and if she’s here now, he knows in his gut that something has gone horribly, staggeringly wrong.

“You?” he says, abandoning all pretense as he bolts toward her. “What are you doing here?”

The redhead moves quick, snatching her leather messenger bag and pulling it in close as she scans the balcony for an escape route. Every instinct Matt’s got tells him that she can’t leave with that bag, so he makes himself big and impassable, barely hooking the leather strap as she tries to slip past him. “Let go of me,” she hisses. “What are you doing? Let go.”

“Drop the bag.”

“We’re on the same side.”

“Drop. The. Bag.”

She’s slippery, in that same way Joe can be slippery when he wants to be, and Matt wonders if everyone in the Circle of Cavan learns to run before they fight. She wriggles against his grip, bright eyes wide with panic, but Matt pins her down easy. He’s got plenty of experience keeping runners in one place. “What are you doing here?” he asks again. “Who’s your buyer? What are you—?”

“On the ground!”

When a third voice interrupts, Matt mistakes the accent for Abe and says a quick prayer of thanks for the backup. This relief is quickly doused when he looks up to find a tall, slender stranger holding a gun to the girl’s head. “Whoa, hey,” he says, holding out his free hand. “Easy with that thing.”

“Get on the ground,” says the stranger, and Matt realizes that the gun is actually being pointed at him. “Now.”

Thirty seconds too late, Matt suddenly understands that he hasn’t intercepted a trade. He’s walked right into the middle of it. What’s more, he’s gone and done the exact thing Joe’s always warning him about—he’s backed himself into a corner, stuck between the buyer and the seller with no good way out. “I’ve got company,” Matt tells the team in his ear. “What’s my way out?”

Grace’s voice is absolute, ready with an instant reply. “Through,” she tells him. “There’s a stairwell to the right, but you’ll have to get off that balcony first.”

“I’m coming up,” says Rachel.

Matt shakes his head, even though she can’t see him. “No time.”

“I’m coming up,” says Abe.

“Better make it quick.”

“I won’t tell you again,” the stranger says, adjusting his grip on the gun. “Get on the ground.”

He holds his pistol like law enforcement, all rigid shouldered and stiff stanced. The sight makes Matt sick to his stomach. “You don’t want to do this,” Matt tells him. “You’re putting real lives at risk, doing this.”

The stranger huffs, like he knows everything and Matt knows nothing at all. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he says. “Give up the passports and no one gets hurt.”

“A lot of people get hurt,” Matt argues still pulling at the bag. “Let’s figure something out. Let’s—”

“We are well beyond figuring something out,” says the stranger. “That ship has sailed, and you’re going to jail for a long time.”

“I’m—” Matt’s already started rolling into his next argument before this sentence has time to land. When it does, it stops him in his tracks. “Hold on, I’m what? What are you—?”

In this profession, there are plenty of people Matt never wants to cross. He spend his days with spies, con men, assassins, and rogues, all of whom know how to make his life miserable in horrible and exhausting ways. Right then, Matt adds another name to the list as he watches Abe Baxter sneak up behind the stranger, grab hold of his weakest joints, and bend them in ways that bring the man straight to his knees.

And when Abe looks down at the man’s face, it’s clear that he isn’t truly a stranger after all. “Townsend,” he groans. “You absolute twit.”

Over comms, Grace says, “What the bloody hell is he doing here?”

“I fully intend to find out,” Abe answers. With a glance up at Matt, he gives a nod. “You got the passports? Good on you.”

Matt doesn’t have the passports, so much as he still wrestling for them, but when he goes to point this out, he realizes that his sparring partner is nowhere to be found. In the time it took for Matt to talk his assailant into Abe’s hold, the mysterious redhead has completely vanished. In her place, the strap of the messenger bag is looped around a small golden gargoyle, and Matt’s been wrestling with a ghost.

“Get up, Townsend,” Abe says, and even though the not-so-stranger Townsend has an extra foot of height on Abe, there’s no questions about who’s in charge. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

Matt unloops the strap and digs inside the messenger bag. Sure enough, he finds a pile of little leather covers. He looks over his shoulder, toward the audience below. Toward Rachel, who knows better than to meet his gaze, but does it anyway. He nods, and so does she.

For a single moment, Matt lets himself fall into his own relief. Mission accomplished. Lives are saved. He won’t have to worry about agents arriving at the ranch, or an assassin knocking on the door of the M street apartment. At least, not for now.

But there’s something scratching at his instincts, like he’s being watched, and not just by Rachel. There are eyes everywhere in Moscow, and there are eyes on him now. When Matt scans the crowd below, he spots a gentleman looking back at him. Wide face. Bushy eyebrows. Armed. Matt's short-lived relief fades in a flash as he remembers where he is, and remembers how deadly it can be to be spotted in a place like this.

The house lights flash once, twice, three times, and Matt steps back from the edge of the balcony. Intermission, he thinks, is over.

[not-groped-by-an-angel]

I still haven't fucking finished s2 of good omens but I have some Big Thoughts about something that happened in the first episode regarding Aziraphale and the Shostakovich symphony he picks up.

To start, I love Shostakovich. I think he is one of the most powerful, moving, artistic composers we have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. He is well known for political tensions and commentary, especially since he was operating under a repressive regime that took it upon themselves to determine what he could and could not produce.

Prior to writing Symphony No. 5 in D (our good friend Aziraphale's pick), Shostakovich had all stage performances of his work banned by Stalin for an opera that was sympathetic to someone who had committed crimes under the pressures of the bourgeois society.

Under the threat of arrest and exile to labor camps, Shostakovich was determined to write music that would fall within Stalin's expectations without his true thoughts being silenced. He laid the groundwork of the piece, saying, "The theme of my Fifth Symphony is the making of a man. I saw him, with all his experience, at the center of the work, which is lyrical from beginning to end. In the finale the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and joy of living." This was technically, what Stalin wanted. Technically, it fell in line. Technically, it could be used as propaganda.

But here's the thing. Shostakovich is a god damned genius. There are many interpretations and arguments over the exact meaning of his work but the general consensus seems to be that this work was making a mockery of Stalin, a hollow show of someone who was supposed to have found this freedom in his own happiness but is in reality only being forced to go along. There are entire theses dedicated to examining the artistry this symphony is brimming with that allows this to come across, but suffice it to say that Shostakovich had not given up his voice.

Here comes Aziraphale, spending most of his life under the thumb of a strict, heartless governing body that expected conformity and nothing less. Aziraphale, who has rebelled quietly for centuries, who faced his higher ups with forced smiles and polite nods that allowed him to slide under the radar and do what he knew was right.

So, end of season 1, he's caught. Called out by the oppressors, threatened, reminded to conform, conform, conform even as they abandon him. Aziraphale is digging this little niche for himself to find the joy that could come with perhaps, maybe, not being held under such stringent guidelines as long as he keeps his head down, and here comes bare-ass Gabriel, dragging with him right back into the mud.

It's important to note here there are two warring opinions about the performance of the very end of the symphony. One pushes and pushes, ending in something that could be, while frantic, truly joyous. However, some artists' interpretation pulls back, the same notes but menacing and monotonous. Did our hero truly find the light? Or did he fall, once again, under the boots of those who seek to control him?

It sets a tone for the rest of the season. These paths are just as readily available to Aziraphale as well, but both of them have consequences. Both have loss. What is the appropriate balance of loss and life?

TL;DR, yes, I have taken the 14 seconds Aziraphale goes "oh goodie shostakovich" and extrapolated a whole ass narrative about war and duality and subterfuge.

Go listen to Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 by none other than Dmitri Dmitryevich Shostakovich for a good and/or bad time.

[tomorrowusa]

Whether DeSantis would actually do more damage to American democracy in office than Trump could remains hard to say. Perhaps, perhaps not. But we should recognize that he is not putting himself forward as a critic of Trump’s authoritarianism. He is promising, on the contrary, to exceed it.

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine – Intelligencer. 

Those discussions over whether DeSantis or Trump would be worse remind me a little of the pointless debates that extremists have over whether Hitler or Stalin murdered more people.

Both Trump and DeSantis are enemies of democracy. Discourse about them should center on how we would beat either of them. Democratic unity in 2022 resulted is a much better than expected election. We’ll need more of the same to protect democracy in 2024.

[mariacallous]

There was no single moment when the democratic backsliding began in Hungary. There were no shots fired, no tanks in the streets. “Orbán doesn’t need to kill us, he doesn’t need to jail us,” Tibor Dessewffy, a sociology professor at Eötvös Loránd University, told me. “He just keeps narrowing the space of public life. It’s what’s happening in your country, too—the frog isn’t boiling yet, but the water is getting hotter.” He acknowledged that the U.S. has safeguards that Hungary does not: the two-party system, which might forestall a slide into perennial single-party rule; the American Constitution, which is far more difficult to amend. Still, it wasn’t hard for him to imagine Americans a decade hence being, in some respects, roughly where the Hungarians are today. “I’m sorry to tell you, I’m your worst nightmare,” Dessewffy said, with a wry smile. As worst nightmares went, I had to admit, it didn’t seem so bad at first glance. He was sitting in a placid garden, enjoying a lemonade, wearing cargo shorts. “This is maybe the strangest part,” he said. “Even my parents, who lived under Stalin, still drank lemonade, still went swimming in the lake on a hot day, still fell in love. In the nightmare scenario, you still have a life, even if you feel somewhat guilty about it.”

Lee Drutman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, tweeted last year, “Anybody serious about commenting on the state of US democracy should start reading more about Hungary.” In other words, not only can it happen here but, if you look at certain metrics, it’s already started happening. Republicans may not be able to rewrite the Constitution, but they can exploit existing loopholes, replace state election officials with Party loyalists, submit alternative slates of electors, and pack federal courts with sympathetic judges. Representation in Hungary has grown less proportional in recent years, thanks to gerrymandering and other tweaks to the electoral rules. In April, Fidesz got fifty-four per cent of the vote but won eighty-three per cent of the districts. “At that level of malapportionment, you’d be hard pressed to find a good-faith political scientist who would call that country a true democracy,” Drutman told me. “The trends in the U.S. are going very quickly in the same direction. It’s completely possible that the Republican Party could control the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2025, despite losing the popular vote in every case. Is that a democracy?”

In 2018, Steve Bannon, after he was fired from the Trump Administration, went on a kind of European tour, giving paid talks and meeting with nationalist allies across the Continent. In May, he stopped in Budapest. One of his hosts there was the XXI Century Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Orbán administration. “I can tell, Viktor Orbán triggers ’em like Trump,” Bannon said onstage, flashing a rare smile. “He was Trump before Trump.” After his speech, he joined his hosts for a dinner cruise on the Danube. (The cruise was captured in unreleased footage from the documentary “The Brink.” Bannon’s spokesperson stopped responding to requests for comment.) On board, Bannon met Miklós Szánthó, sipping a beer and watching the sun set, who mentioned that he ran a “conservative, center-right think tank” that opposed “N.G.O.s financed by the Open Society network.”

“Oh, my God, Soros!” Bannon said. “You guys beat him up badly here.” Szánthó accepted the praise with a stoic grin. Bannon went on, “We love to take lessons from you guys in the U.S.”

In 2018, “Trump before Trump” was the highest compliment that Bannon could think to pay Orbán. In 2022, many on the American right are trying to anticipate what a Trump after Trump might look like. Orbán provides one potential answer. Even Trump’s putative allies will admit, in private, that he was a lazy, feckless leader. They wanted an Augustus; they got a Caligula. In theory, Trump was amenable to dismantling the administrative state, to pushing norms and institutions beyond their breaking points, even to reaping the benefits of a full autocratic breakthrough. But, instead of laying out long-term strategies to wrest control of key levers of power, he tweeted, and watched TV, and whined on the phone about how his tin-pot insurrection schemes weren’t coming to fruition. What would happen if the Republican Party were led by an American Orbán, someone with the patience to envision a semi-authoritarian future and the diligence and the ruthlessness to achieve it?

In 2018, Patrick Deneen’s book “Why Liberalism Failed” was admired by David Brooks and Barack Obama. Last year, Deneen founded a hard-right Substack called the Postliberal Order, on which he argued that right-wing populists had not gone nearly far enough—that American conservatism should abandon its “defensive crouch.” One of his co-authors wrote a post from Budapest, offering an example of how this could work in practice: “It’s clear that Hungarian conservatism is not defensive.” J. D. Vance has voiced admiration for Orbán’s pro-natalist family policies, adding, “Why can’t we do that here?” Rod Dreher told me, “Seeing what Vance is saying, and what Ron DeSantis is actually doing in Florida, the concept of American Orbánism starts to make sense. I don’t want to overstate what they’ll be able to accomplish, given the constitutional impediments and all, but DeSantis is already using the power of the state to push back against woke capitalism, against the crazy gender stuff.” According to Dreher, what the Republican Party needs is “a leader with Orbán’s vision—someone who can build on what Trumpism accomplished, without the egomania and the inattention to policy, and who is not afraid to step on the liberals’ toes.”

In common parlance, the opposite of “liberal” is “conservative.” In political-science terms, illiberalism means something more radical: a challenge to the very rules of the game. There are many valid critiques of liberalism, from the left and the right, but Orbán’s admirers have trouble articulating how they could install a post-liberal American state without breaking a few eggs (civil rights, fair elections, possibly the democratic experiment itself). “The central insight of twentieth-century conservatism is that you work within the liberal order—limited government, free movement of capital, all of that—even when it’s frustrating,” Andrew Sullivan said. “If you just give away the game and try to seize as much power as possible, then what you’re doing is no longer conservative, and, in my view, you’re making a grave, historic mistake.” Lauren Stokes, the Northwestern historian, is a leftist with her own radical critiques of liberalism; nonetheless, she, too, thinks that the right-wing post-liberals are playing with fire. “By hitching themselves to someone who has put himself forward as a post-liberal intellectual, I think American conservatives are starting to give themselves permission to discard liberal norms,” Stokes told me. “When a Hungarian court does something Orbán doesn’t like—something too pro-queer, too pro-immigrant—he can just say, ‘This court is an enemy of the people, I don’t have to listen to it.’ I think Republicans are setting themselves up to adopt a similar logic: if the system gives me a result I don’t like, I don’t have to abide by it.”

Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?

[sixty-silver-wishes]

man can we talk about how much of an icon shostakovich was writing "lady macbeth of the mtsensk district" okay so for some context, the opera was written in 1932 and is based on the nikolai leskov novel of the same name. in the late 20s/early 30s soviet union, feminist ideology was the focus of a lot of cultural discussions, and this is very much reflected in "lady macbeth," a story originally about a femme fatale whom shostakovich largely humanizes and portrays as a victim of circumstance. (he was also planning on writing a cycle of operas centering around female protagonists, but after the 1936 denunciation, this obviously never happened.) so I want to highlight two interesting sources when it comes to feminism and "lady macbeth"- so this first bit comes from an interview with nadezhda welter in elizabeth wilson's bio, who premiered the role of sonyetka. in many productions of the opera, sonyetka is portrayed as a selfish "whore" to katerina's quasi-"madonna," using her sexuality to seduce katerina's (god-awful) lover and drive her to her demise. however, according to welter, shostakovich had a far more nuanced vision for this character, seeing her as a young and immature victim of systemic class and gender discrimination -

and then there's how shostakovich characterizes katerina herself. this is from a letter to his friend isaak glikman in 1962. after stalin's death, shostakovich wanted to get his opera restaged after it had been censored for years. however, it's interesting to me how he reacts with disgust to a theatre producer’s proposition that the character of katerina should be pregnant in a revival of the opera, in order to make her more sympathetic to audiences.

for context on the opera, katerina is a highly complex character. she's desperate for a way out of her social situation and her life with an abusive husband and father-in-law. she's later sexually assaulted by this guy named sergei, but she ends up entering a relationship with him, possibly because between sergei and her husband, she views him as the lesser of two evils. throughout the opera, we see sergei's repulsive views on women, and katerina seems more than anything like she's trying to convince herself she made the right decision, that as horrific as sergei is, she's better off with him than her husband. she and sergei murder her husband and father-in-law, but at the wedding, a drunk peasant discovers the bodies in a cellar. they are arrested and sent to a prison camp, and katerina remains devoted to sergei- if only because he's all she has left. meanwhile, sergei cheats on her with sonyetka, a young prostitute also in the prison camp.

in other words, katerina has been through absolute hell, and yet this producer suggests she's somehow not sympathetic enough, and that on top of all that, she has to be pregnant to evoke sympathy from the audience. thankfully, shostakovich did not go through with that suggestion, recognizing how unnecessary it was.

[usafphantom2]

Restoration of the Smithsonian’s Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik

March 27, 2024 Vintage Aviation News Warbird Restorations 0

Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik arrived at the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. November 18, 2021. (Smithsonian photo by Mark Avino)

United Fuel Cells

By Adam Estes

In the desperate and cataclysmic struggle that was the Eastern Front of World War II, which the countries of the former Soviet Union still call the Great Patriotic War, the Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik (Shturmovik being a general term for attack aircraft in the Soviet Air Forces) was deemed by Stalin to be just as vital to the Red Army as air and bread. Designed by a team led by Sergey Ilyushin in 1938, the prototype for what would become the Il-2, then called the TsKB-57, first flew a year later in 1939 and was just beginning to enter production and operational service when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. As the relatively few Shturmoviks built up to that point where rushed into service, most of the factories tasked with building the Il-2s were forced to hastily relocate east of the Ural Mountains, where unskilled workers struggled to keep up with the production quotas sent from the Kremlin, but as the tide of war turned in the Soviets favor, the Shturmovik, much like the T-34 medium tank, would meet the Germans with numbers and determination. They were flown by crews from across the Soviet Union, who served as pilots and rear gunners, while ground crews worked tirelessly to repair and rearm Shturmoviks returning from the front.

Over 36,000 Il-2s of both single-seater and two-seater varieties were manufactured, making it the single-most produced military aircraft in aviation history. With its armored cockpit and engine compartment and wide array of armaments, from 23mm cannons to unguided rockets and various types of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle bombs, the Il-2s provided close air support for Soviet infantry and armored units, and were a vital part of Soviet military aviation, from the defense of Moscow to the Battle of Berlin. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, many Il-2s were exported to the Soviet Union’s new satellite states, such as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Mongolia, and Yugoslavia (though this latter state would soon become a non-aligned nation during the Cold War). The Il-2, which would be codenamed the “Bark” by NATO, also led to the development of the Il-10 (NATO codename “Beast”), which served not only in the latter stages of World War II but in the Korean War as well. A number of Shturmoviks can be found in museums in Eastern Europe, though three examples have made their way to the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, including a single example currently under restoration at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

The Museum’s Shturmovik at its current location at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. Image by Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

The identity of the Shturmovik in the Smithsonian is still surrounded by mystery and ambiguity. It is a composite aircraft made from the remains of three or four Shturmoviks recovered from the bottom of lakes near Leningrad and Murmansk in the early 1990s. With the fall of the Iron Curtain t, it suddenly became easier for Western warbird collectors and restorers to recover wrecks of German and Soviet aircraft from the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. In addition, it opened once-classified former Soviet archives to Western historians. And while more wrecks would be recovered up to the present day, the current situation with the Russo-Ukrainian War and the subsequent sanctions from NATO countries in response to Russia’s aggression has made it increasingly difficult for old wrecks to leave Russia or for Western scholars to visit those same archives.

However, during the 1990s, a Russian team of restorers would reassemble a Shturmovik in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) out of several recovered wrecks. At the time, the Smithsonian was informed by Russian sources that the basis for their Shturmovik had been one that had been shot down on the Leningrad front on March 15, 1944 while being flown, and was being flown by Lt. Ivan Maksimovih Andreyev and Sgt. Goncharov. Later investigative work has revealed that there was little information to substantiate the story, and with no data plates recovered from the wrecks, the National Air and Space Museum has since retracted their earlier stance. Another complicating factor in terms of the restoration was the way in which the aircraft was assembled in Russia. In the article The Flying Tank, written by James R. Chiles in the June 2022 issue of Air and Space Quarterly, restorer Bill Hadden said, “It appears that they used paint stripper and sand blasting and whatever was needed to remove corrosion and old paint before rebuilding the airplane…. For instance, the serial number was painted on in several places when they were manufactured…. With essentially all the original paint removed, we may never know the identity of our airplane or its particular service history.” Nevertheless, the Russians installed an original, albiet non-operational, Mikulin AM-38 V-12 inline engine, reassembled the landing gear, and refurbished the cockpit. After decades of submersion in the frigid Russian waters, the wooden tail assembly had fallen apart, so a new assembly was built. Following all of this, the reassembled Shturmovik was coated in primer, but the final paint scheme was never completed because a deal had been made for the Smithsonian in a trade agreement.

A view inside the cockpit of the Museum’s Il-2 Shturmovik. Image by Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

In the spring of 1995, the still-unpainted Shturmovik arrived at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. At the time it had gone to the Garber Facility, aviation enthusiasts could go on pre-arranged, docent-led public tours of the facility’s numerous warehouses and its restoration shop. But in 2003, with the opening of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, the tours gradually came to an end, and those aircraft that had not gone to Dulles before the opening of the massive new museum would remain at Garber, away from public view.

The beginning of the ongoing renovations to the National Mall location would see some aircraft pulled out of Garber to be eventually displayed either at the National Mall or at the Udvar-Hazy Center, and with a new layout in store for the museum’s World War II in the Air gallery, the Smithsonian’s Shturmovik seemed the perfect fit to bring light to the Soviet perspective of World War II aviation. On November 18, 2021, the Il-2 arrived at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center’s Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar, where visitors can view the ongoing restoration projects from a second-story glass mezzanine.

Overhead view of Museum Specialist Jay Flanagan working on the new tail section of the fuselage he is building for the Ilyushin IL-2 Shturmovik in the background, while Museum Specialist Bill Hadden works on the horizontal stabilizer in the background in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Image by Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

After it arrived in the Engen Restoration Hangar, NASM restoration specialists began analyzing the Shturmovik and preparing it for restoration. In this evaluation, the wooden tail reproduced by the Russian team in St. Petersburg was considered to be a poor facsimile with numerous structural problems. Luckily for the Smithsonian, enthusiasts of the Shturmovik were willing to help, providing access to manuals and reference materials, which would provide valuable information once translated into English.

The restoration staff has received further assistance from the Pima Air and Space Museum of Tucson, Arizona, which is home to another Il-2 recovered from the Eastern Front. Pima provided the NASM restoration team with digital copies of their engineering drawings used in their own restoration. These have been especially helpful in the refabrication of the tail action, which differs only from those built in wartime Soviet factories with the use of modern epoxy resin as opposed to water-based wood glues.

Museum Specialist Tony Hare adjusts the landing gear flaps for the Ilyushin IL-2 Shturmovik in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Image by Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

The restoration has also revealed traces of the original paint on several components, with the standard black, brown/tan, and green scheme on the upper surfaces of the aircraft, and the light blue paint on the underside. The Smithsonian intends to replicate this scheme, which was common on most Shturmoviks of the mid to late-war period. Other discoveries made during the restoration have led NASM officials to conclude that the aircraft was assembled in late 1943 at Zavod No.18 (Factory No.18) at Samara (known during the days of the USSR as Kuybyshev).

When the Shturmovik is complete, it will be placed on public display for the first time at the National Mall location’s upcoming Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air Gallery alongside several other aircraft, including the Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6 flown by French defector René Darbois (previously covered here: Smithsonian’s Bf 109 Unveils a Hidden Story of Resistance ), the museum’s North American P-51D Mustang and General Motors FM-1 Wildcat.

With the IL-2, the Soviet perspective of WWII/Great Patriotic War, made all the more prescient by the current war between Russia and Ukraine being fought on some of the same battlefields in which Soviet aircrews flew their Shturmoviks against the Germans, can be told in ways that the original gallery, opened in 1976, was unable to do. Among the stories of Soviet aircrews that the museum intends to highlight is that of Anna Yegorova, who after flying reconnaissance missions in the Polikarpov U-2/Po-2 biplane, would fly 41 of her 277 combat missions in Shturmoviks until she was shot down in August 1944, and was held as a prisoner in the Küstrin sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, until it was liberatedin January 1945. Like many Soviet POWs, Yegorova was interrogated by the NKVD, and it would be twenty years before she was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union, the country’s highest military decoration.

Besides the example being restored at the National Air and Space Museum, there are two more Il-2s in the United States. Il-2m3 s/n 305401 has been restored to airworthiness at the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington, along with parts of three other Shturmovik wrecks and powered by a Jose Flores-built Allison V-1710 in lieu of the original Mikulin AM-38 V-12 engine. The other is the aforementioned example in the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, and is currently on static display in the museum’s Hangar 3.

For more information on the Shturmovik and other projects, visit Homepage | National Air and Space Museum (si.edu).

Special thanks to Dr. Alex Spencer for his contributions to the making of this article.

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