Chirayliq

Rest In Peace, Great Singer

2011-09-11T15:23:00.003+02:00

Just a few days ago, we blogged about Aldyn-ool Sevek, the Tuvan master khoomeizhi ("throat singer"). Today, the New Research of Tuva published sad news: Aldyn-ool Sevek passed away after a long struggle against illness.

He was able to spend his last days in his native home at the Mongun-Taiga, the "sacred wilderness" of Tuvinian nomads.

A dated, but still unique and fascinating documentary about this region was produced in 1989, just at the end of the Soviet era.

The Greatest Khoomeizhi

2011-09-08T07:59:00.003+02:00

As regular readers of The New Research of Tuva, we were delighted to discover this article about the master throat singer (khoomeizhi) Aldyn-ool Sevek by Valentina Suzukei, complete with this Chirayliq-friendly quote:

It was not only on a single occasion that women, both in Russia and in countries abroad told me that after listening to Aldyn-ool Sevek's recordings, they fell in love with all Tuvan men, unconditionally and sight unseen, because kargyraa is such a beautiful and vivid expression of male essence, that is very difficult to resist. "No matter how many times I heard this mighty, masculine sound, at the same time full of masculine nobility and dignity, every time it reaches into such depths of my soul, and every time it touches me to tears," - one of my colleagues-anthropologists told me, who dreams of marrying a Tuvan khoomeizhi, regardless of the fact that she is much taller than average, something that she even finds a bit embarrassing.

Kargyraa is a deep, growling double sound created with the vocal as well as the vestibular folds (more details). Here is an example of this technique:

Eduard Ondar

2011-08-22T18:32:00.001+02:00

Tuvan actor Eduard Ondar recently visited Kazan during the all-Turkic Nauruz festival. Ondar starred in Yakut director Andrei Borisov's epic movie By the Will of Chingis Khan (2009), and his next great project is a Kazakh production where he plays a Dzungarian warlord. In an interview for Tuvinskaya Pravda, Ondar tells about the unexpected troubles that the role of the greatest warlord in Asian history brought him:

"Before, in my time off, just like most of my colleagues, I used to moonlight as a cab driver with my ancient Honda, to make a few extra kopeks. Genghis Khaan deprived me of this possibility. One day some elderly passenger that I was driving somewhere even complained to my bosses – how is this possible, the Khan himself, and he has sunk to driving a riksha? That is unsuitable."

See also: Preview of the new Kazakh movie.

Kabul Rocks

2011-08-21T18:27:00.001+02:00

Afghan rock band The White Page
Al Jazeera: Kabul Rock City - Afghan youth take on corruption and war with heavy metal.

Charles Bronson TV ad

2011-07-29T00:13:00.005+02:00

Our perennial favourite Charles Bronson (who probably deserves his own tag soon, exhibit #1 and #2) on Japanese TV, advertising nothing less than MAN DOM. The original poster claims that this was made around 1970, and we are inclined to believe them.

Oh yeah... Happy birthday, Mum!

Nurmuhamed

2011-07-12T17:13:00.003+02:00

If you have nothing better to do, you surf around vkontakte.ru and look for Chirayliq material... Take a look at this inspiring album called "Isolation", so refreshing in the summer heat, isn't it? The lovely portfolio was created by Almaty photographer Ilyas Sadykov and also includes some nice backstage photos of the artist himself at work.

The model in "Isolation" is singer Nurmuhamed Nussipkozhanov.

Oh, and don't forget: Smoking papirosi is bad for your health...

Madness - Neg odor

2011-07-11T21:14:00.004+02:00

Madness is a Mongolian rock band. This video was custom-made for Chirayliq ;-)

National Day of Mongolia

2011-07-11T14:17:00.005+02:00

Today, Mongolia celebrates its 90th national day.

On July 11, 1921, Mongolia was declared independent after the victories of a Mongol revolutionary army led by Damdin Sükhbaatar and supported by the Soviet Red Army. They defeated a White army led by Baron Ungern-Sternberg (with his own motives in conflict with other White Russian leaders - a fantastic story worth it's own post one day!) and the Chinese occupants of Outer Mongolia.

Sükhbaatar and Choibalsan, revolutionary leaders. Sükhbaatar was a popular military leader. He died less than a year after the declaration of independence, an event surrounded by rumours. Choibalsan went on to lead Stalin-style purges, first among the Mongol monarchists and Buddhist leaders, later within the Communist party itself.

But that was not the first or only occasion in the 20th century that Mongolia's independence was declared. In December 29, 1911, the Khalkhas of Outer Mongolia declared their independence from the Qing Dynasty. They installed a lama of a high lineage as the Bögd Khaan, and thus the first independent Mongolian state of the 20th century became a theocracy. This state was later occupied by the newly established Republic of China. The second declaration of independence in 1921 led to the establishment of the Mongolian People's Republic under strong Soviet influence in 1924.

Squeezed in between two great powers, Mongolia has had a difficult task of balancing between outer pressure and inner power struggles. In 1990, a peaceful revolution led by young people and students eventually caused the single-party system to crumble. (Interestingly, even Wikipedia mentions the "thousand-year parliamentary tradition" of Mongolia!)

Protestors in Sükhbaatar square, among them Sanjaasürengiin Zorig, one of the student leaders, who became a notable progressive politician and was mysteriously murdered in 1998.

So much for the strange and violent 20th century! Now let's relax with Börte, a wonderful band that plays traditional instruments and invents new melodies on a grand scale, take us through some ancient elements of Mongolian history in this beautiful composition "Gobi".

День Победы

2011-05-09T21:39:00.004+02:00

Soviet sailor. From the album Soviet Photography, published for the 1939 World Fair in New York.

Rescue Dogs

2011-03-13T10:31:00.008+01:00

After the previous post on the disastrous 9.0 earthquake in Japan this weekend, I found lots of photos of search and rescue teams with dogs. Again, the core Central Asian states are seriously underrepresented - please point me in the right direction if you are in the know. Above, a Japanese dog team is looking for survivors among the destruction at the tsunami-stricken northeast coast. You can see how big ships have been thrown ashore by the mighty waves. Photo by Kazuki Wakasugi. Source: Yomiuri Shimbun

A South Korean rescue dog team arrives in Japan, as seen in the previous post. Source: Reuters

An inhabitant of the town Kesennuma, which suffered terribly under the tsunami, carries his little sheltie. Source: Der Spiegel

Indonesia is another island nation frequently experiencing earthquakes. This photo is from Sumatra 2009. A man is taking several dogs out for a walk in the partly-destroyed city.

Search and rescue dogs arrived in Sumatra from all over the world.

Taiwanese rescue workers with a search and rescue dog assisted with the recovery of survivors in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year.

The Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal is the first-ever of its kind in the country. The squad's tasks include rescue operations at high altitudes and in deep jungles, after avalanches, floods, and serious traffic accidents. Since the project is so new and the working conditions are very difficult, there's a fundraising page with more information. The people involved in the project also run a caste-free school.

Ilya Zaslavski and search and rescue dog Perets arrived in Haiti 2010 from Russia. The Haiti earthquake struck a densely populated region with weak infrastructure, and recovery has been very difficult. The earthquake could inflict lasting damage on an already disadvantaged society, so we shouldn't forget about Haiti. The Red Cross has more information.

Speaking of Russia, I found a cute thread about rescue dog training in Russia by volunteers. If your dog likes to search for things and needs an interesting hobby, this could be a nice idea. Many of the more independent-minded breeds that tend to do naughty things when bored (such as shibas and terriers in the thread) are well suited for this kind of complex task.

Dogs that were injured in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake are being treated at a private shelter in Chengdu.

Rescue dog training in China: The People's Liberation Army tends towards rather showy exercises...

Jumping through fiery hoops... and the handler's arms.

Earthquakes in Asia

2011-03-12T13:48:00.007+01:00

Japanese troops save an elderly man whose hometown has been destroyed by the Sendai earthquake and tsunami, magnitude 8.9, on 11. March 2011.

We have been following the news from Japan (live stream here: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/), and our thoughts go out to all the brave people, civilians and officials, who are doing their best to save lives in the greatest earthquake in recent Japanese history. Earthquakes happen all over the world, and we include here some photos of rescue operations during the last 5 years in Asia.

South Korean rescue workers and dogs arrive in Japan. Source: AFP

Source: Reuters. More images at Tagesschau.de (http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/bilder/erdbebenjapan122.html)

In 2008, a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan Province in China. Here, the famous pandas of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding are being rescued.

The toll on human life was much greater. At least 68,000 people were killed in the 8.0 Ms quake centered on Wenchuan County on 12 May 2008.

Rescue workers help an elderly man.

In contrast to the numerous photos from Japan and China, it is slightly more challenging to find material from the Central Asian countries that have also been suffering from earthquakes during the last decade. These countries have also received less news coverage, globally. Above, rescue workers from the Kyrgyzstan Red Crescent Society pose for a group photo in the Alai region of Osh City in 2008. The town Nura and the village Kura were completely destroyed in the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that was felt in in Tajikistan and Xinjang Uighur as well.

Unicef specialist Yang Zhenbo among schoolkids in Sichuan after the earthquake 2008. (Source: Unicef)

And life goes on. See Claudia Janke's impressive photo series after the earthquake in Pakistan 2005. People rebuild their homes and even have time for a quick smile in spite of their difficult circumstances. But healing takes time and comes with a heavy cost - that's why international mutual help and aid always will be necessary.

EDIT: In 2010, the Yushu earthquake hit the Tibetan plateau with a magnitude of 7.1 Ms. Don't miss these images of Tibetan monks as rescue workers.

(The comparison is pretty pathetic, but Ainur has only experienced one "real" earthquake in her life and can only marvel at the survival stories above. Please correct any mistakes you can spot in this post, as it was written in a great hurry and emotional turmoil.)

Ali's Dream

2011-02-14T20:30:00.003+01:00

This is a short documentary clip by the Swedish national television. Ali is a teenage boy from an unmentioned country - he could be anyone from anywhere, but circumstances made him a refugee in a small town in Sweden. He has to endure teasing from the very first day - other kids call him Chinese, Afghan, Turk, but always with curses. In the beginning, Ali says, he used to fight, but he realized that it's useless.
It's not easy for Ali to adapt to a situation where nobody speaks his language and nobody knows his past. But Ali finds a way that helps him release the accumulated stress and makes him dream of greater things - boxing. His host mother supports him.

In the end, Ali says that he has an even bigger dream. When he dies, he wants people to miss him. He wants do do something good. Like so many other kids who deserve that chance to explore their abilities, regardless of war and persecution... Good luck, Ali, and keep on fighting!

Kaifeng Jews

2010-10-22T16:36:00.003+02:00

The Kaifeng Jews are members of a small Jewish community that has existed in Kaifeng, in central China, for many hundreds of years - the earliest records of a Jewish community in Kaifeng are from the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). The ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews most likely came from Central Asia. Over the centuries, they intermarried with the local population but preserved their religion.

Here is a report on German TV about a group of cute young Kaifeng Jews who are immigrating to Israel. Unlike the contemporary rabbinical Judaism, where the transmission of Judaism is matrilinear (if you have a mother who is a Jew, you are a proper Jew), the Kaifeng Jews base their Jewishness on patrilinear descent. So, to receive Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, Kaifeng Jews must undergo conversion, a long and complicated process.
"But the true challenge", the narrator says, "is to assert themselves in Israeli society." Just like Ethiopian Jews, Kaifeng Jews might find themselves considered second rate citizens by many other Israelis, simply due to their skin colour.

Central Asia's Finest

2010-06-22T21:09:00.004+02:00

For chirayliq fans, the FIFA world cup offers a lot of dark and stocky men with powerful cheekbones or well-defined noses, but where are all the Central Asians? Look closer - at the moment, I'm watching the Greece-Argentina match because of this guy:

Ravshan Irmatov, Asia's referee of the year 2008 & 2009.

Graham Poll at the Daily Mail described him in these ominous terms before the England-Algeria match last week:

Uzbekistan’s Ravshan Irmatov is a young man at 32, but [...] there will be no playing around for Asia’s finest referee.
Irmatov is a correct referee — by saying that, I mean he is firm, strong and robotic in his reactions.
Reputations mean nothing to him; any technical offence will lead to a card.

The star referee is the first Uzbek to be selected to the world cup. Rafael Ilyasov (Uzbekistan) and Bahadyr Kochkarov (Kyrgyzstan) were selected as assistant referees. Irmatov's international career since 2003 is quite impressive. On the website of the Uzbekistan football league, he recalls some memorable events during his career. Irmatov has already officiated at two world cups before, which makes him stand out among the referees this year.

For some cute reason, the FIFA website does not only tell us his height (183 cm) and occupation (school football instructor), but also his mother tongue (Uzbek) and his hobbies (football, swimming, tennis). It is quite interesting to see what many of the referees do in their regular life. There are engineers, postmen, accountants, car mechanics, policemen...

What is happening in Kyrgyzstan?

2010-06-15T11:38:00.009+02:00

It is still unclear what the reasons for the ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan are. There are speculations that it was orchestrated by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the former Kyrgyz president who was ousted following protests in April. Some point at perceived class differences coinciding with ethnicity - that ethnic Uzbeks are by ethnic Kyrgyz people viewed as generally wealthier than ethnic Kyrgyz people. Kyrgyzstan is one of Central Asia's poorest countries, with hardly any natural resources, and many families that had been relying on migrant work have been hit hard by the world's financial crisis. Such a situation can, of course, easily be abused by those who wish to stir up violence for political reasons.

Here is an eyewitness account by a Peace Corps volunteer from Osh:

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A PCV's story from Osh City: READ THIS
Posted by: "theo davis" bridalboogie@yahoo.com
Mon Jun 14, 2010 5:11 am (PDT)

This is from a PCV stationed in Osh City. It's a shocking story and they need our help. I called the US Embassy in Bishkek and they said they are still just trying to rescue all the Americans down there. There needs to be an intervention down there by Russia, the US and/or the UN to stabilize things.

Peace Corps Volunteers first hand experience in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Yesterday at 9:34pm

Hi all,

Before I explain anything, let me just say that I am completely safe. I and the other peace corps volunteers (except for 3 village volunteers in Osh who will be moved tomorrow but are safe right now) have been moved to the American military base outside of the Kyrgyz capitol of Bishkek. I totally and completely safe right now, and I will definitely never be returning to Osh.

I don't know if you have been following the news. Mostly just NPR and Al Jazeera have reported, but they know very little as the conflict is so bad no one can get in.

I just had the most terrifying experience of my life. I'm going to let you know so you can get a small picture of what it is like where I live. And I am only letting you know because I am now out of the conflict.

It was Friday at 1am and I was awoken by a phone call from another friend in the Peace Corps who lives in my neighborhood in Osh. He was wondering if I heard any strange noises on the streets. I didn't at that point, but I got up and looked out my balcony (it must be noted that I am the only volunteer in Osh who lives on the main street with my windows facing it as well, so they wanted me to look for them. I am on the 2nd floor). What I saw was horrifying. I looked to my right and saw a fire burning in the street about a block away and men screaming loudly around it. I thought they were just screaming to put out the fire. I waited a bit and noticed the fire growning and growing. It cast a red glow across the whole street I lived on. I then turned to the left and saw a hundred or more local men walking down towards my building carrying axes and shotguns. They were yelling cheers and shooting into the air. They began to set fire to more buildings around me, while breaking the glass and doors of the stores on the first floor of my building and the buildings around me. I was scared and had no idea what to do so I called our safety officer at Peace Corps and she had no idea what was going on (I woke her up). More and more men gathered in the red glow of the burning buildings around me (at least 300 by now), and they began to throw rocks at buildings. I was walking towards the bathroom to seek cover (as this is the only room in my apartment that doesn't have a window facing the street), and a large rock smashed through my window and flew right by my head. I was lucky to have missed it as it was a fist sized stone. I spent the rest of the night hiding in my bathroom, staying on the phone with peace corps, and sneaking peeks to see if my building was on fire. Luckily just as my building was going to get caught by the flames, the fire department came, dispersed the crowd and put out the fire (which I am surprised they put out so much because we don't have fire hydrants here).

I can't even properly describe the terror I felt. I have never felt so trapped in my life. I didn't know what to do if my building caught on fire because if I ran outside I would have surely been killed. I am so grateful that the fire stopped when it did. It was also incredibly terrifying because this incident was about 2 hours long. I spent the rest of the night packing my emergency bag and trying to rest in the bathtub, but I was unsuccessful as I was so nervous about men climbing onto my balcony or my apartment being set ablaze. I can't get the image out of my head of all those mens and guns shadows destroying my neighborhood.

I spent the whole time praying for dawn because I thought it would get better with light. Well, it didn't. 5 o'clock hit and Kyrgyz men came with crowbars and started smashing up the stores right across the street from my building. This continued until a crowd of Uzbek men came and chased them away with rocks. Yes, if you didn't know, this whole conflict is about the ethnic tension between the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, possibly started by a third party for political reasons.

Hundreds of Uzbeks gathered again on my street, but soon scattered into the distant neighborhoods because of police. I was then called by Peace Corps and told to move about a block away to another Peace Corps volunteers house, where many of us would gather to be safe. I did so, and it was relatively safe. 6 of us spent the rest of that first day trying to rest, conserve our energy (I didnt get to eat for 2 days because the gas and electricity were shut off and no stores were open), and hope for the best. We just heard distant fighting and shots the rest of that day and then that night military tanks were roaming the city firing into crowds to disperse them.

The next day (Saturday), we all woke up and got the 4 other PC volunteers in the city to join us (thats 10 now). We were told by PC that we were leaving to the airport to catch a flight to the capital, but the roads were blocked and shooting was heavy on the way. We then had to wait for a new plan. In the mean time, some local Kyrgyz threw a bottle and rock into our window and smashed it. We had to create an emergency plan because we heard that molotov cocktails were being thrown into windows, so we needed to do fire prevention. We positioned the bed and cushions against all the windows, hoping that a molotov would bounce off back into the street. Luckily this was never tested. We spent the rest of the afternoon in complete silence (all phones were off except for mine to conserve our batteries. I kept mine on for communication with PC), and getting many different changing plans from PC.

Finally, at about 6pm we were picked up by 5 kyrgyz men (trusted and hired by PC) who had masks on and guns. They were to escort us to a bus that would take us to helicoptor. We left with them, but the bus got lost so we were exposed on the main street for 20 minutes. It was so eery as all the streets were empty, except for when random cars would drive by with dozens of men and guns in them. One of the cars was stopped on the way by a group of Kyrgyz who pointed their guns at the volunteers in it and screamed, "If any of you are Uzbeks we will kill you all." Luckily our drivers were Kyrgyz and we were somewhat "safer" because we were in Kyrgyz territory. They went away and we spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the bus to come to us while watching troops of Kyrgyz driving past us with guns. We were so scared of being shot at this point. Luckily, we got to the bus that was controlled by the Kyrgyzstan border control, who was to take us to a helicoptor in the city. We got in and after driving a certain way we were blocked by a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of Kyrgyz men who were demanding the guns from the military tank escorting us. The military refused and started firing guns into the air. We all ducked down, but I saw that more gunshots were being fired around us by the local kyrgyz and then rocks and sticks were being smashed against our car windows. We were in this position for about 5 minutes and we were all in control, but I truly felt for the first time in my life that I could have died at that moment. So many men screaming, so many shots in my direction, so much anger. I just could truly see myself not surviving that moment. Again, i can't describe how that danger feels. It is beyond numbing.

Luckily the tank eventually decided to plow through the crowd and we followed. We made it to the heli base and were lifted to the Osh airport where we got a charter flight to Bishkek. We are now safe at the base while our homes and friends burn in the fires of ethnic conflict.

While we feel grateful to be alive and gone, I personally feel guilty because I am so privileged to have the ability to be lifted out of the danger like that while my local friends and coworkers hide for their lives. It is a horrible feeling to have left them to die. Hundreds are dead already, thousands are injured. 150,000 Uzbeks have fled to the Uzbek border; women are handing their babies off to Uzbekistan soldiers at the border so that at least they survive.

Whats worse is that the Uzbeks are not only blamed for this whole thing (as the ethic and hated minority), but they are being targeted not only by Kyrgyz, but also the military. We hear from our Uzbek friends that police are openly killing defenseless Uzbeks on the street. Entire Uzbek neighborhoods are destroyed in Osh. I will never forget the last image I had, flying away in a heli over the city, seeing entire blocks of houses scorched to the ground, with smoke and fire covering the whole city. It will haunt me forever.

Whats worse is that the Kyrgyz government is only providing humanitarian assistance to the Kyrgyz, and leaving the Uzbek out. Please urge your congressperson to push the american government to urge the Kyrgyz government to provide equal aid to all ethnicities. PLEASE. These are my friends and neighbors that are being murdered. Just take a few minutes and call/email. It is an emergency situation, no time to lose. Please leave my name out of your message though.

If you want to see the most accurate news please check out Al Jazeeras Central Asia section.

Email me if you have questions. I have good internet at the base. The rest of the country is completely stable as Uzbeks are mainly just in the south, so don't worry about me being in the north now.

I love you all and I am think I will be home in America soon. Help the victims of Kyrgyzstans latest violence.

Theo Davis

Contact my cell from the US, dial: 011 971 50 4408776

Download skype.com and we can talk for FREE computer to computer. Our skype user name is megsmonty. It's easy.

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Photo from AP via Daylife. Ethnic Uzbeks try to extinguish a fire in their neighbourhood in Jalal-Abad, Sunday, June 13th.

Photo by Reuters via Daylife. A road block with the sign "Kyrgyz zone" in Osh, June 13th.

Photo from Getty Images via Daylife. People helping an elderly ethnic Uzbek man sitting in front of his burnt-out house in Osh, June 15th.

Photo by AP via Daylife. Ethnic Uzbeks guard a road to an Uzbek neighbourhood near Osh, armed with sticks and and hunting rifles, on Saturday, June 12th.

Photo by AP via Daylife. Members of the ethnic Uzbek community, armed with sticks and Molotov cocktails to protect their lives and property, look at smoke rising from the burning Uzbek villages set on fire by the Kyrgyz attackers near Osh, on Saturday, June 12th.

Photo by Getty Images via Daylife. An injured Ethnic Uzbek man rests in an Uzbek neighbourhood in Osh, June 14th.

Photo by AP via Daylife. Ethnic Uzbek refugees from Osh wait at the border for permission to cross into Uzbekistan, Monday, June 14th.

Photo by Andrei Stenin/RIA Novosti. An Uzbek special forces soldier helps a baby across the border. With the enormous number of refugees trying to get to Uzbekistan, the Uzbek authorities are prioritizing wounded, women and children.

Photo by Getty Images via Daylife. Pakistani citizens evacuated from Kyrgyzstan sit in the waiting lounge following their arrival at Chaklala military airbase in Rawalpindi on June 15th. About 1200 Pakistani citizens, mostly students, were in Kirgizstan when the clashes broke out. One Pakistani citizen has been killed. A group of fifteen was held for ransom, but Kyrgyz security forces were able to free them on June 14th.

Photo by AP via Daylife. A traditional Uzbek dish is cooked for refugees who fled from Kyrgyzstan in a refugee camp on the border near the Uzbek village of Jalal-Kuduk, Monday, June 14th.

Ben Bilirim

2010-06-05T19:41:00.006+02:00

Just have to share this çok güzel klip by Barış Manço: Ben Bilirim from 1975.

Psychedelic/folk rocker, singer and composer Barış Manço was a member of famous 1970's bands such as Moğollar and funder of Kurtalar Ekspres. He played with international artists and exchanged ideas with Turkish and foreign musicians, influencing numerous genres of modern pop and rock music in his homeland. His long hair and big mustache could be considered as a provocation to the conservative establishment, as well as a dedication to tradition...

In light of this morning's news ...

2010-05-31T10:07:00.005+02:00

... (Haaretz, BBC, Al-Jazeera) ...

Here is a link to a portrait by the photographer AnomalousNYC.
It's part of his Palestine Project.

Chirayliq Eurovision 2010

2010-05-30T10:19:00.010+02:00

No chirayliq victory this time - for a change! - but some quite chirayliq contestants nevertheless!

Turkey once again picked up the Turco-Finnish tradition of sending a band that plays real music to the contest:

maNga (nothing to do with Japanese comics, I think) take their musical influences from nu-metal, hip-hop, electronic music and Anatolian tunes. Their song for the ESC, We Could Be the Same, has a slightly poppier sound than usual, and the lyrics are in English, when usually they sing in Turkish. But in any case they are cute.

Russia was represented by Peter Nalitch and his musical collective, with the humorous song Lost And Forgotten. Peter's grandfather Zahid Nalić was a Bosnian opera singer from Tuzla, hence his Balkanic surname. He became famous in 2007 with his Youtube video "Gitar" ...

Harel Skaat represented Israel with Milim ("Words"). He is one of the two cute Harels of Israeli pop music - the other one is Harel Moyal. (Here they perform together.)

Here is a really cute interview with Harel Skaat from before the contest ...

Hmm, how is it that the best songs and the cutest guys usually coincide ...? :o)

Ran Danker, hotness from Israel

2010-05-28T01:35:00.014+02:00

*Sorry if this text is totally incoherent, but not only is it 4 AM, but my brain is also for the most part incapacitated by the dazzling handsomeness of Ran Danker, 26 years old.*

Eyes Wide Open is a film about the Ultra-Orthodox family father Aaron (Zohar Strauss), who hires the homeless Yeshiva student Ezri (Ran Danker) to work as an apprentice in his butcher's shop. Their friendship develops into an emotional and sexual relationship, but they are being closely watched by their community, and the religious authorities, their fellow believers and the "purity police" will absolutely not tolerate anything of the like.

Ezri, who "scribbles a bit" in his free time, offers to draw Aaron's portrait.

Ezri convinces him to go outside the city for once, to take a ritual bath together in an ice cold pool.

The situation is obviously extremely complicated for Aaron, who has a family and a business to take care of. But as an atheist it's easy to start asking myself why Ezri can't just leave the Ultra-Orthodox community in the Old City and go to secular, tolerant Tel Aviv or something. But for one thing, he is very young; he was only just kicked out of his Yeshiva. And most important of all, this is his community and his religion just as much as everyone else's. He believes in God just as much as everyone else.

About 90 percent of the film was shot in Jaffa, and 10 percent in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, where the story is set, in quick "hit-and-run" shots without official permission, due to the controversial nature of the film. The end result is still very realistic and recognizable as Mea Shearim.

This is a very subtle film that neither glorifies nor demonizes anybody, told in simple and beautiful images in limestone and pale green.

* * *

... And, of course, Ran Danker (actor, pop singer, model) is so hot that I was in exhilarated spasms every second he was on the screen.

Here are some bonus photos of him ...

He was hairier than this in Eyes Wide Open, so either he went through a second puberty in between, or he probably shaves or crops his chest hair. ;_;

Our mum would tell him to wear his pants properly.

The "Kandahar captives"

2010-05-11T10:50:00.023+02:00

Recently a big Russian film has been released, which dramatizes the until now rather forgotten story about a Russian cargo plane crew that was held hostage for more than a year by the Taliban in 1995, but managed to escape with their own plane, after convincing their captors that this expensive plane, a great asset for the Taliban, needed regular maintenance.

The film stars some of the most popular Russian actors today, and seems to avoid as much of the back story as possible, instead focusing on individual crew members and their heroic feat. Which is kind of frustrating, because it's very interesting.

Some of the back story can be read in the book Merchant of death by Douglas Farah and Stephen Brown.

The plane was an air freighter owned by the Kazan-based company Aerostan, that had been leased by the company Transavia, owned by a man by the name of Viktor Bout. The secretive Bout, presumably born 1967 near Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, and a former Soviet military translator, was making "a significant amount of money" through his many air transport companies. In the 1990's he became the top private supplier and transporter of arms, with the reputation of one who would deliver no matter the circumstances. His clients have included both UNITA rebels and government forces in Angola, several sides in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnian Muslim forces, both government forces/Northern Alliance and the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as US army and private contractors in Iraq, while also carrying relief supplies for the UN to alleviate the same conflicts. He has always been careful to stay on the technically legal side, albeit frequently violating UN arms embargoes. (However, Bout was arrested in Bangkok 2008 and has been in prison until this day.)

Bout's cargo planes would very often have to land and take off from airstrips so crude that they would have been impossible for modern freighters, and with no maintenance facilities whatsoever. But he used tough old Soviet planes - Antonovs, Ilyushins and Yakovlevs, some of them 40 year old models - for which such conditions were not a problem. The crews were just as tough, and able to do any necessary maintenance and repair by themselves. Mobutu Sese Seko, who in 1997 took off from Zaire into exile on an Antonov owned by Bout, as pursuing rebel forces fired a hail of bullets at the plane's fuselage, later commented: "We were lucky it was a Russian plane. If it had been a Boeing, it would have exploded."

The Ilyushin Il-76 that was forced to land in Kandahar in 1995 was piloted by Vladimir Sharpatov, a decorated former Soviet Air Force pilot, who had been working on and off for Bout for years. This particular flight was just one of many routine runs Sharpatov flew shipping weapons from Tirana, Albania, to the government forces (later Northern Alliance) in Kabul, Afghanistan. At the time, Kandahar was controlled by the Taliban, who patrolled the air space around the city with a single MiG-21. Usually Sharpatov had no problems with the Taliban MiG if he just kept his plane at a safe distance, but this time he was apparently not so lucky.

The plane was forced to land, and the crew of seven was held hostage by the Taliban for over a year. As they had been shipping weapons to the government forces, the Taliban assumed that Russia was providing military support to the Afghan government, and tried to pressure Moscow into releasing prisoners captured during the Soviet Union's war with Afghanistan. Since Bout operated independently, and the Russian government had no interest in getting mixed up in Afghanistan again, this was not true. Negotiations dragged on, and the crew was promised to be released many times, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, apparently Viktor Bout saw the situation as an opportunity, and established business relations with the Taliban while negotiating for the release of his plane and crew. There are suspicions that the Taliban "let" the crew escape after reaching a sweet deal with Bout.

When they returned to Russia, the crew was received as heroes, and certainly their ordeal and their daredevil escape should not be belittled, as they in any case probably did not know what deals were possibly being made about them, and planned and carried out their escape all by themselves.

However, this film is a bit disturbing not only in that it avoids telling most of the back story.

The crew of seven is reduced to five and given different names in the film - in which process the Tatar names of some of the crew members are changed into more Slavonic-sounding names: second pilot Gazinur Hairullin (played by the handsome Vladimir Mashkov) becomes "Seryoga", and flight engineer Askhat Abbyazov (played by bright-eyed Bogdan Benyuk) gets the Ukrainian name Vakulenko. The Aerostan plane, which originally had decals with the Tatarstan flag, gets "RusTransAviaExport" decals with Russian flags. And when religion comes up, the crew members are either practising Christians (Abbyazov/Vakulenko is one of them) or don't care - none of them shows any signs of a Muslim background.

The real story might have been much more about international arms dealing and the political situation in the mid-1990's. But in a St. Petersburg Times interview, director Andrei Kavun said: “My film is about the fact that it is possible to love your country, regardless of its attitude toward you.” Indeed, it focuses (tries to, at least) on the individual crew members and how they react to their imprisonment and the seeming indifference towards them from Russia. The tone is set in the beginning, when Seryoga escapes from the Turkish police (in the film the plane takes off from Istanbul, not Tirana) after engaging in shady dealings on the beach, and his partner shouts: "We Russians don't abandon our people!" Basically the message is about "individual patrotism", solidarity with your countrymen in spite of how much your nation might screw you over.

In an interview for the Los Angeles Times, Kavun explains further:

"My main moral thread was not about Afghanistan, but about contemporary Russia. In the Great Patriotic War, we were all Russians whether we were Jews, Chechens, Tatars, Georgians, Ukrainians, Russians or others. When Nazis captured a Soviet soldier who was a Chechen, they called him a Russian and they killed him as a Russian.
Now we have grown very particular about our ethnic, confessional and other differences to the point that we can no longer exist next to each other. My movie is about five different people who are caught up in a tragic situation which aggravates their differences. Each one thinks that he is right and each one has a right to his truth. But only when they put their differences aside do they manage to survive together and make a heroic escape. It is about coming to terms with each other, making allowances and compromises."

So why did he have to erase the Tatar elements in the story? Is Kavun talking about a "Russianness" where ethnic minorities can easily find their culture "assimilated to death", while the majorities might have problems realising that their culture is actually not the norm for everyone who calls themselves Russian?

Another explanation could be that this film was made in 2010. After all, while the Tatar elements have been removed, there is plenty of anti-Islamism. Most of the Afghans are portrayed as idiots, emotional, aggressive, fanatical, uncultured, and easily diverted with games and bribed with watches and jewelry.

Enough rambling, and on to the screencaps!

Click to enlarge:

Turkish policemen

The crew of the Il-76

Commotion as the plane lands in Kandahar. The film was shot in Morocco, and I seriously doubt they bothered to fly in Afghan people to play any of the Afghan roles. But in any case, there are lots of handsome men in the crowds of stereotypically "angry and violent Orientals" ...

The interpreter - "Misha", as he calls himself. Played by Imomberdy Mingbaev (his name sounds Tajik).

Adil, the Russian-speaking MiG-21 pilot, is played by the Tatar Ramil Sabitov: yet another role in his long career of "swarthy bandits" ... And particularly ironic in this film, where some of the "heroes" in real life were Tatars like him.

Sabitov has a large fanbase of people who appreciate his manliness.

More handsome extras.

Some of the guards.

Vityek tries to get on the guards' good side by gambling with them (!).

Then he speaks to Misha about converting to Islam and joining the Taliban, and the possible benefits he would get from it. When the other crew members find out they kick his ass.

The pilot is forced to teach the Taliban how to fly the Ilyushin.

The youngest of the guards.

Seryoga

Doing "maintenance" on the plane ...

Vityek convinces this cute guy to let him ride his bicycle, so he can maybe ride way out along the air strip and check out the anti-aircraft gun positioned there.

It's Friday, and most of the guys guarding them have gone off to do their prayers. Now is the chance ...

And for comparison, here are some authentic photos, taken by a Russian doctor who was with a team who was allowed to visit the hostages - again, click to enlarge:

The MiG-21 pilot in front of the Aerostan Ilyushin

Crew members eating

One of them is clearly sporting a "Tatarfro" ...

The doctors also treated some locals while they were in Kandahar.

Street scene

There are more authentic photos at EnglishRussia.

Victory Day in Berlin

2010-05-09T21:28:00.008+02:00

Berlin, May 2nd 1945:

The poet and war correspondent Yevgeny Dolmatovsky (in this context it could be relevant to note that he was of Jewish background), photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei in front of the burning Reichstag, carrying the severed head of a Hitler statue.

65 years later. Berlin, May 9th 2010:

Soviet Army WWII veterans gather at the War memorial in Tiergarten, near the Reichstag.

Then this chirayliq dude carrying a Soviet flag shows up:

And then I spotted this guy who looks a lot like Ainur. I wonder if he's Tatar, too?

See more of my photos from today.

(Colour photos by Tinet.)

Blue Buckets Demo in Russia

2010-05-04T12:07:00.003+02:00

People in St Petersburg demonstrate against the privileged few, who disturb the traffic with their reckless and often lethal driving by special permission of the authorities. Blue buckets have become a sarcastic symbol of the blue flashlights used by businessmen, bureaucrats and other members of the elite. Police have even started to arrest people carrying blue buckets in response to the protests.

Photo by Vadim Zhernov, ITAR-TASS.
Via Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat - It is nice to see so many Finnish commentators that are supportive of the protesters, using the popular epithet "veli venäläinen" - brother Russian - not sarcastic this time...

The Spring Stream

2010-04-09T23:00:00.002+02:00

Young men and women gather by a spring stream and act out a funny pantomime. Hyperactive Volga Tatar dance performed by the Gaskarov Folk Dance Company in Bashkortostan.

Alan Dzagoev

2010-04-07T14:20:00.005+02:00

Before anyone calls us people behind Chirayliq "obsessive" or "maniac", they should check out the fan videos that football fans create for their heroes... Here, a clip dedicated to Alan Elizbarovich Dzagoev, CSKA Moscow midfielder. Dzagoev was born in Beslan, of Ossetian heritage. According to the magazine Sovetsky Sport, Dzagoev is known to be "a modest and hard-working person who is very passionate about the game and is always seen encouraging other players from his team to work harder in order to win" - a real jigit, in other words. (Unfortunately, CSKA recently lost against Inter Milan in Moscow, but we won't let that spoil this sunny day, right?)

Dzagoev head mods for Fifa 10 (found here)

Some photos from his career in Russia and abroad

A Simple Guy

2010-04-04T20:35:00.002+02:00

Here's a cute little video by Kyrgyz pop singer Sultan Sadyraliev: "Jonokoi jigit" (Simple Guy).

"Jigit" has a special meaning in many Turkic languages. In Kyrgyz language today, it means young man or boyfriend. (I'm not quite sure about the nuance, so I translated the name of the song simply as "Simple Guy".)

In Tatar, jigit and batyr have had similar meanings - brave young man, valorous knight. The jigit is the young hero who sets out on a journey in life, ready to learn what it means to be a man.

The Tatar poet Gabderrahim Utyz Imyani (1754-1836) was born in Chistopol, the second-largest city in the province of Kazan before 1917. He travelled throughout Central Asia for many years before returning to his hometown and becoming a teacher. He wrote a poem about the deeper meaning of the word jigit. I found this translation in Historical anthology of Kazan Tatar verse: voices of eternity, by Ravilʹ Bukharaev and D. J. Matthews (Routledge 2000). It is a richly illustrated book with numerous translations of poetry and detailed historical commentary.

What it means to be a Jigit

O proud and valiant horseman, sitting high upon your steed!
Display your virtues to your land and let it pay them heed.
If neighbours are in penury, then help them in their plight.
Your duty is unselfishness and doing what is right.

Make a promise and fulfill it; Faith you must obey.
Offending others for the slightest thing is not your way.
Let evil words not cross your lips; for liars have no use.
A simple smile conveys a perfect answer to abuse.

And do not boast that you are better than your fellow-men.
For beauty will not linger; it soon passes. And what then?
The most that you can hope for is a day or two, not more.
And then you'll rot and feed the worms. And that's the final score!

For in this world are rich men and the poor whom they despise;
And fools as well dwell in our midst, and those whom we call wise;
If someone isn't master then he's but a servant's brat.
But common sense will tell us that it isn't quite like that.

One is crowned by fortune, and another's blessed by wit.
Whichever gift he's served by, he will be no worse for it.

The moral of these verses is not very different from the theme of Sultan's modern music video. The simple guy is rewarded in the end...

Loup (2009)

2010-04-02T01:47:00.008+02:00

Voilà, some photos from French adventurer Nicolas Vanier's latest drama-documentary, Loup. The story centers on Sergei, a young reindeer herder in Siberia, who is forced to re-evaluate his clan's traditionally hostile view of wolves as both animal and man struggle for survival in the wilderness. Watch the trailer!

I can't judge how realistic it is, but it's full of eye-candy, that's for sure...
(However, it should be mentioned - it is so obvious - that a large part of the leading cast are francophone Southeast Asians. There are plenty of Siberians in supporting roles, and at least in my eyes, Nicolas Brioudes in the role of Sergei does a good job. But one wishes that the Evenk language could get a chance to be heard, even though this is a movie for the general public...)

Action...

... and romance...

Man (and reindeer) vs. nature...

Frostbite...

... and an unexpected rescue.

Humans have always been fascinated by seemingly selfless altruism among animals.

But it is, after all, that different from the mystery of human emotions?

Well, what do you expect, this is a French film after all.

Aww, they are really cute together...

Awww....!!!! Cute overload.

Teh cuteness - it WON'T STOP

Monsieur Vanier has a cute nose, too. Visit his homepage or see more photos.

Wladimir Klitschko fights to save dolphins in Japan

2010-03-28T12:16:00.028+02:00

As we have reported before, heavywight boxer Vitali Klitschko has made efforts to help stray animals in Kiev. His younger brother Wladimir recently joined his girlfriend, American actress Hayden Panettiere, who is a committed marine activist, in an action to save dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Panettiere has been involved in actions in Taiji with the organisation Sea Shepherd for a few years now.

In an annual hunt that lasts from October to April, dolphins are caught for meat and to be sold to delphinariums. The official number of dolphins caught in 2007 was 1,623, but unofficial estimates say it could be as many as 23,000.
Besides humans and other great apes, whales, pigs, octopi, elephants and crows, dolphins are one of the most intelligent animal species in the world, and probably the most intelligent aquatic animals.

In a silent protest, Hayden and Wladimir laid out a giant silhouette of a dolphin on the beach outside Taiji. Then they attempted to meet the mayor, but were met by outraged locals outside. The Ukrainian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reports that "Klitschko did not use his fists to protect his girlfriend against the offenders. Apparently the tiny but courageous actress was fully capable of standing up for herself."

One could question why an American animal rights activist doesn't look at "her own backyard" and focus on, for example, factory farming or animal testing in the USA, where slavery, torture and mass murder is carried out in an even more gruesome scale. But other animals than humans arguably don't care about human-made national boundaries. And if you have a special affection for dolphins, it makes sense to fight for dolphins anywhere in the world.

Anyway, this story is a perfect excuse to post some nice photos of Wladimir Klitschko (found in the extensive collection of sunshinetrue):

The following vintage-style photos are from the cute book Unser Fitnessbuch ("Our Fitness Book") by Vitali and Wladimir, where they present simple exercises for everybody to keep in shape.

Above: young Wladimir. Below are some childhood photos:

Vitali, their grandma(?) and Wladimir

Vitali and Wladimir

Wladimir's school photo

We are the champions!

2010-03-13T22:25:00.005+01:00

The Russian TV channel «Россия 24» had a brilliant idea to show support to the Russian sportsmen at the olympics in Beijing and Vancouver: they made video clips with folklore groups from various Russian republics performing covers of Queen's We Are the Champions ...

Here are my favourites:

Tatarstan:

Sakha:

Bashkortostan:

Altai:

Umida Akhmedova

2010-02-24T16:21:00.007+01:00

At the end of last year, Uzbek documentary photographer and filmmaker Umida Akhmedova had criminal charges filed against her, and was accused of defamation and of "insult and slander of the Uzbek nation."

She was one of several people who were charged due to having participated in a project sponsored by the Swiss Embassy Gender Program. Akhmedova's contribution was the photo book Women and men: from dawn till dusk from 2007 - 110 photographs documenting aspects of life in rural Uzbekistan. In court, an expert panel of 'specialists in the fields of religious affairs, spirituality, and psychology' found that her images portrayed Uzbekistan in a negative light to Western audiences: "a foreigner who has never been to Uzbekistan, but who is familiar with this album, would reach the conclusion that [Uzbekistan] is a country where people live in the Middle Ages".

On February 10th Akhmedova was found guilty of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people, but could walk away free, as the judge granted her an amnesty in honor of the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence.

However, many fear that this case is "exemplary" - paving the way for many more cases like it against artists and journalists who are too critical or "unflattering".

Here are a few photos from Women and men: from dawn till dusk that are relevant to Chirayliq (click to enlarge!). See many more at fergana.info and datablog.info.

Comrades, 1950

2010-02-09T19:18:00.004+01:00

Probably taken soon after the treaty of friendship between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China on 14 February 1950, and just a few years before the Sino-Soviet split... An unusual image of youthful international friendship from the Borodulin collection of Soviet era photography. Other interesting images include a visit by workers from the Caucasus in Moscow 1925, muscular Komsomol youths, and this nice 20's photo of Eisenstein, Mayakovsky, Pasternak and other cultural personalities welcoming Japanese visitors.

Real Bears Don't Wear Somebody Else's Fur

2010-01-17T19:27:00.007+01:00

Mum gave us a tip on this one:

After activists and supporters of the Croatian animal rights organization Animal Friends gave their support to the ice hockey club Medvescak Zagreb (Zagreb Bears) during many games in the regional league EBEL against Slovenian, Hungarian and Austrian teams by unfolding a huge banner that said "ANIMAL FRIENDS ADORE THE BEARS", the Bears paid them back for their support and in turn gave their support to the "For Croatia without Fur" campaign – by undressing their handsome 26 year old defender Luka Novosel!

Luka said: "I joined this campain because I love animals, and if there is anything I can do for them, the least I can do is to get my picture taken and help animal protection. Fur should be where it belongs. On animals!"

January 1st 2007, the new Animal Protection Act that bans fur farming in Croatia came into force. But this regulation will not be effective until January 1st 2017. In this long period, hundreds and thousands of animals will continue being killed for fashion and human vanity. And in any case, an end to fur farming does not mean an end to selling fur in Croatia and importing it from other countries. Thus, Animal Friends launched a national campaign in January 2007 called "For Croatia without Fur" - the aim of which is to completely stop the cruel treatment of animals by the fashion industry as soon as possible.
Croatian fashion models and designers have already joined the campaign, and now they also have a real Bear defender on their side!

Read more on the official Animal Friends website!

Portrait of the Artist as Chirayliq (Part 1)

2010-01-12T15:17:00.007+01:00

Here are some artistic visions of famous (and rather handsome) painters in the 19th and 20th century.

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Armenian: Hovhannes Aivazian (1817 — 1900) Portrait by Alexei Tyranov, 1841.

Born in Feodosiya, Crimea. Studied in Simferopol and St. Petersburg, traveled around the Black Sea and through Europe, worked and exhibited in Rome, Paris, and Constantinople, as well as his hometown, where he also spent his final years. Some of his maritime works can be viewed at Zeno.org

Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets (1816 — 1846) Self portrait in Chechen costume, 1842.

Russian painter of Chechen origin. Orphaned during the Caucasian War 1819, he was raised by a Cossack family and later adopted by a Russian officer who recognized his artistic talents. In spite of ostracism because of his Chechen background, Zakharov-Chechenets remained proud of his heritage (as seen on his chosen name and his costume) became a successful artist, but died of tuberculosis at a young age.

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1848 — 1926) Self-portrait, 1868.

Son of a village priest, grandson of an icon painter. His brother Apollinary also became a painter. Vasnetsov became a friend of Ilya Repin while studying in St. Petersburg and even modeled for him. He is famous for his mythological and fairy-tale motifs, but he was more interested in everyday scenes of simple life in the beginning of his career. He designed uniforms for the Red Army in 1918 and is credited with the invention of the distinctive budenovka hat - directly inspired by the pointy helmets of the ancient bogatyrs (epic heroes) in Vasnetsov's paintings.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856 — 1910) Self-portrait, 1885.

Born in Omsk, studied in St. Petersburg. Symbolist painter inspired by medieval religious art and oriental aesthetics. Particularly famous for his paintings inspired by Mikhail Lermontov's Caucasian romance poem "The Demon".

Part 2 with 20th century artists coming up soon!

Buzkashi the movie!

2009-12-19T22:40:00.002+01:00

Buzkashi 1-minute trailer
Uploaded by Buzkashi. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

"Not everything about Buzkashi is action and danger." September 2010 an exciting docudrama about three Tajik Buzkashi (Ulak-Tartysh/Kökbörü) sportsmen is coming from Oxus Apertura Films. I can't wait to see it. Read more on the official site!

Vitali Klitschko will help Ukrainian stray animals survive the 2012 European Football Championship

2009-12-17T16:20:00.016+01:00

Mum is a great fan of Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, the famous handsome heavyweight boxer brothers, so it's really about time that we write something about them.

Vitali was born in Belovodsk, Kyrgyz SSR, and Wladimir in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR. Their father is an Air Force General. Later on, the Klitschko family moved to Germany, where the brothers began their boxing careers. On the side, they both studied in Kiev and got Ph.D's in Sports science. After presenting his dissertation in 1996, Vitali was apparently the first boxer to hold a Ph.D. Wladimir followed in 2001.

Wladimir currently holds the IBF, WBO, IBO and Ring Magazine world heavyweight titles. Vitali is the current WBC world heavyweight champion, and he is the fourth boxer to ever win a heavyweight belt three times, after Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis.

The brothers are active in several charitable causes helping children around the world. Now Vitali has also stepped up to help furry children in need in his home town Kiev.

In his free time, Vitali is involved in local politics in Kiev. He is right now a member of the city parliament, and sits in the organisational committee for the 2012 European football championship.

The Football championship is something that deeply worries friends of animals in Kiev. The authorities have already organized mass killings of stray animals to "clean up" the streets for their international visitors, and animal rights activists are working hard to stop them from further mass killings.

Mass killing is not a sustainable solution, since it doesn't do anything about the root causes for strays, not to mention that it of course causes immense suffering. Neutering stray animals to prevent them from reproducing uncontrollably, and, most importantly, enforcing an Animal Protection Bill that would prevent most animals from getting to the point of being abandoned in the streets in the first place, are a much more sustainable solution.

The local animal rights organization Society for the Protection of Animals (SOS) has been in contact with members of the city parliament, among them Vitali Klitschko, to convince them of a humane and long-term solution to the problem with stray animals. Klitschko is now convinced that a humane solution to the stray problem is the right thing to do.

Recently he visited SOS's animal shelter with TV cameras in tow, in order to raise awareness about the work the organization is doing for animals in need. He was full of admiration for the people at the shelter, who work hard to improve the lives of stray animals in Kiev.

Find out more about the Society for the Protection of Animals (SOS), and what you, too, can do to help them.

Photos from Streuner in Kiew.

We are all Majid Tavakoli

2009-12-16T11:04:00.033+01:00

Majid Tavakoli is a student leader in Iran, who has been arrested several times by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, most recently on 7 December 2009, during protests over the disputed presidential election of 2009.

After his December 7, 2009 arrest, semi-official news websites published photos of Tavakoli dressed in women's clothing, taken while he was in custody. These media claimed he was arrested dressed in "women's clothing" to avoid the security forces while escaping Amirkabir University in Tehran. Eyewitnesses present at the time of his arrest have denied these claims and stated that he was forced to put the hijab on while in custody by the security forces, to discredit and ridicule him.

In solidarity with Tavakoli, some Iranian men are taking pictures of themselves while wearing the Islamic hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. They are calling for an end to Iran’s mistreatment of prisoners like Tavakoli. Their protest is also in solidarity with women in their fights for equal rights. One message echoed by many Iranian men is "Until Iranian women are free, Iran will not be free. Iranian men: let's begin wearing the chador in solidarity with Majid AND the WOMEN of Iran". (More at Wikipedia)

Women are also expressing their solidarity with Tavakoli by drawing moustaches and beards on their faces and putting on the hijab.

Join the protest on Facebook!

Bulat Gilvanov

2009-12-04T01:31:00.006+01:00

Bulat Gilvanov is a painter from Tatarstan who works in a variety of styles. Many of his paintings are very stylized, almost surreal depictions of Tatar mythology and folkloristic subjects in gently glowing colours, often clashing faded pastel hues with a powerful indigo blue. You can view these works at the Natasha Akhmerova Gallery or the Aysel Gözübüyük Arthouse .

Gilvanov also paints in a more realistic style, employing the same pearly shades to a different subject: Volga-Bulgar warrior women... Just to make us fall in love completely.

Visit his homepage for more galleries of beautiful and powerful paintings!

Global warming on the Yamal peninsula

2009-11-30T14:52:00.001+01:00

Nose-vember: Cold noses

2009-11-27T00:46:00.004+01:00

The concept of using drift ice as a means of scientific exploration of the Arctic, on so-called drift ice stations, originated in the Soviet Union in 1937, when the first such station in the world, North Pole-1, started operations.

Flickr user Razbalex has posted a big archive of photos from the third drift ice station North Pole-3 (in operation April 1954 to April 1955).

See all of the photos in Razbalex's Flickr set.

Man of the new East

2009-11-26T23:48:00.003+01:00

Don't miss this article in the Uzbekistan art magazine San'at:
Lola Paizieva: Man of the new East. Portrait painting in Uzbekistan of the 1920s - 30s.

Unfortunately, the paintings above are not clearly identified in the article. They may be "Uzbek man. Samarkand" by famous Uzbek artist Ural Tansykbaev and "Collective farmer" by Alexander Volkov. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Nose-vember

2009-11-23T16:13:00.012+01:00

So on Cute Overload, "Nom-vember" won, but here on Chirayliq it's still "Nose-vember".

Here are some random noses I found on photosight.ru (click them for larger size):

"Now, let's come up with something ... :-)" by Макс5

"Bad, or good?" by M.Biakaev

"Gogi and Givi send their regards" by AV: pashis пашис

"Absolutely insane picture about how two Georgian aesthetes spent their leisure time in a cultivated manner" by Ираклий Шанидзе

"1946: Pashka, the artillery soldier" by Vojage-Vojage
"In the photo is Pavel Belyakov, who went through the war, survived, but became almost completely deaf (because of the guns), then served until around 1960-63. He had great success among the ladies. An interesting thing is that he never wore his medals, of which he had quite a number, when he was on duty. He was Kuban Cossack."

Uzbekistan in the 1930's

2009-11-01T15:03:00.005+01:00

The professional photographer Max Penson documented life and ideals in Soviet Turkistan (today's Uzbekistan) that was going through enormous social and economic upheavals in the early 20th century. Penson was born to a poor Jewish family in Belarus, 1893, and escaped pogroms and persecution to Central Asia during the First World War. He worked as an art teacher in Kokand, but his life changed when he managed to obtain a camera in the early 1920's. Between 1920 and 1940 he produced 30,000 photographs of innumerable subjects including education, industrialization, military training, farming, leisure and portraiture. At the Paris World Exhibition in 1937, Penson was awarded the Grand Prix for his portrait of "The Uzbek Madonna", a young woman nursing her child. Sergei Eisenstein praised him for his dedication to his chosen homeland: "There cannot be many masters left who choose a specific terrain for their work, dedicate themselves completely to and make it an intergrated part of their personal destiny." (quoted in Enter)

Penson worked for Central Asia's largest newspaper, Pravda Vostoka, in Tashkent, until Stalin's purges of Jews in the late 1940's pushed him out of his position and into a decade of depression. Penson died in 1959, but his work lives on as a priceless document of a dynamic but also tragic chapter in Central Asian history. All these photographs were selected from the official Max Penson website. I sincerely recommend a visit to the website for much more information and photographs. There is also an interesting topical selection at the Nailya Alexander Gallery.

Students in class.

The sculptor Khaidarov at work on a Lenin bust.

Although I have selected images chiefly of Chirayliq interest, I hope that something of the wide range of Penson's techniques is conveyed to the casual reader. He created images for propagandistic purposes, but he was conscious of the importance of the human element - you may call it imperfection or an element of chance.

A cotton farmer resting.

Russians and Uzbeks celebrating a holiday - with a dombura, or is it a dutar?

While the propagandistic elements may come off as blatant - a bust of Lenin, a militant pose, a brand-new tractor - the human element is much more subtle, yet crucial: a wrinkled eyebrow, a shy smile that does not quite reach the mouth, a bemused gaze, a gesture of tenderness. Penson told his photographer son's editor: “My son is using a flash in his photos very often. Tell him to use his heart instead...” (Quote: Enter)

Portrait of an Uzbek man.

A soldier with field radio equipment.

An Uzbek boy with puppies.

Max Penson himself.

Do NOT miss the gallery section at the official Max Penson site. This is just a tiny selection! It's a must for anyone who is interested in Soviet and Central Asian history, and the art of photography.

Мен Казакпын - I am Kazakh

2009-10-23T14:04:00.001+02:00

Yerbolat is a Kazakh hiphop/R'n'B artist whose songs have strong elements of Kazakh folk music. The lyrics of this song - Мен Казакпын - are a poem written by Dzhuban Moldagaliev in 1964.

Here is a literal translation of one of the verses (from Kazakh to Russian, then to English by me - thanks to Dzhon at bb.ct.kz for the Russian translation!):

I am Kazakh, I have died and come back to life a thousand times, in order to continue the story through my life.
If I cried, the sun darkened in the sky, and if I laughed - the darkness receded from my eyes.
I am Kazakh, in my own way I am also great.
I am like a new, seventh continent between old Europe and ancient Asia,
but I am used to being with all other peoples. I've wandered around in the night until I was exhausted.
A mighty explosion helped me find myself.
I have arisen from the dark, like an island from the bottom of the ocean,
And I walked to the threshold of the blinding sun.

This poem, and also the video, which is like a smplified crash course on Kazakh history, with some sports heroes thrown in at the end, could perhaps be seen as blatant nationalism.

But Kazakhstan is in the process of decolonization. The Kazakh Khanate was incorporated into the Russian Empire and colonized from the 18th century onward. After the Russian revolution, there was a brief period of autonomy, aligned with the White Army, until the Bolshevik authorities took control over the territory. During its time as a Soviet autonomous republic, people of many different ethnicities were deported to Kazakhstan, and many more voluntarily settled there as Kazakhstan came to be a vital part of the Soviet Union in terms of agriculture and industry. Supposedly, by the 1970's Kazakh SSR was the only Soviet republic in which the eponymous nationality was a minority in its own republic.

When Moldagaliev wrote the poem, there was, since the end of the war and especially with destalinization, a trend in Soviet culture of positive encouragement of the ethnic minorities in the USSR. Many literary magazines in minority languages were founded, and this is also when Chingiz Aitmatov wrote his popular books set in the Kirghiz SSR, drawing on local folklore.

Now Kazakhstan is an independent nation, but the Soviet period has left behind "a dominating class of Russian technocrats, who are necessary to economic progress but ethnically unassimilated" (says Wikipedia). Most people in Kazakhstan, regardless of ethnicity, speak Russian with each other.

There are efforts to build up positive "national self-esteem" among Kazakhs - teaching children the Kazakh language in school is one, and popular music fusing traditional music styles with Western styles is one - dombra, or even overtone singing ...
In the case of rap, hiphop and R'n'B, the counterculture of an oppressed group in another country (African Americans), struggling for a positive, independent self-image, is fused with local culture to form a counterculture of your own - true internationalism?

Anyway, let's see if I can name all the historical images used in this video ...
0:01 - Bronze age petroglyphs, perhaps at Tamgaly?
0:07 - Horseback warriors, symbolizing the ancient nomadic cultures on Kazakh territory.
0:40 - Mausoleum of Sufi Khoja Ahmad Yasavi, erected by Timur in the city Turkestan
0:50-0:53 - People playing the dombra?
1:04-1:08 - Some early 20th century footage
1:20 - Yuri Gagarin lifting off from Baikonur (in Kazakh SSR)
1:24 - Kazakh cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev
1:29 - WWII bombings?
1:33 - Nuclear bomb testing
1:40 - People demonstrating against nuclear weapons? (The sign the lady carries has a crossed out missile or rocket, but I can only discern the word "нет", "no".)
1:44 - This footage really puzzles me - maybe it's related to the demonstrations?
1:50 - In the late 80's, the ethnic Kazakh First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakh SSR was dismissed by Gorbachev, and an ethnic non-Kazakh with no previous experience in the Kazakh SSR was set to replace him. This sparked massive riots.
1:55 - A train - the railroads are very important pillar of Kazakhstan's infrastructure.
1:56 - Oil industry
2:05 - President Nursultan Nazarbayev flies the new Kazakh national flag shortly after independence.
2:08 - Nuri meets his people
2:16 - Wheat fields
2:18 - Oil industry again
2:20 - Views on Astana, with the Astana tower
2:24 - I actually don't know most of the sportsmen and -women here ... But I'll try. 2:46 is probably Assan Bazayev? 2:56 is judoka Askhat Zhitkeyev. 3:00 is Irina Nekrasova, and 3:07 is Ilya Ilin.
3:24 - An eagle hunter, tying the knot back to ancient and still prevailing Kazakh culture.

The Making of a Rebel: Salavat-Batyr

2009-10-12T00:08:00.009+02:00

Salavat Yulai was the name of a man who became the national hero of today's Bashkiria. He was born 16 June 1754 in Tekeevo (a now eradicated village in Bashkiria) and died 26 September 1800 in captivity in Rogervik (today Paldiski, Estonia). He participated in the rebellion of Cossack leader Yemelyan Pugachev against the rule of Catherine the Great. This ensured him a place in not only Bashkir national history and folklore, but also the official Soviet historiography. This article is illustrated with screencaps from the Soviet movie Salavat Yulayev from 1941, which reflect the fact that history is always written with the present in mind.

Already in his youth, it was told, Salavat was a very strong lad who went bear-hunting at age 14 armed only with a dagger. Another sign of early maturity was his poetry - his first writings reflect on the beauty of nature and freedom.

Salavat's father, Yulai Aznalin, had participated in the peasant rebellion of 1735–1740. Salavat was conscripted by the Imperial army to fight the rebellious Cossacks of Emelian Ivanovich Pugachev, but he joined Pugachev instead.

A beaming young leader (played by Arslan Mubaryakov) - but treachery looms behind the imperial eagle.

Pugachev appointed him a colonel (polkovnik), and Salavat recruited a Bashkir troop of 10.000 and fought bravely until the downfall and capture of Pugachev by the Imperial army.

Salavat captured and whipped. In the film, this is one of the turning points in his youth.

In 1774, Salavat was also captured in the village of Medyash and sent to Moscow. In September 1775 he was sentenced to hard labour for life, together with his father. They were sent to the fortress of Rogervik at the Baltic Sea, where all peasant rebels were incarcerated. Father and son spent their last years there.

In the film, Salavat breaks his chains and avenges himself on his tormentor - tragically, a fellow Bashkir.

In the 1940 film, his poetry is relegated to a supporting role. He displays his oratory skills only a few times, to excite his followers and charm his supporters, but true to Soviet realist principles he is more a man of action - even a "noble savage" at times, thumping his chest enthusiastically after defeating an evildoer, exclaiming: "Salavat batyr!"

Salavat and his Russian friend have beaten the feudal exploiters of the labourers.

Very little of his poetry has been preserved in the Bashkir language. One of his final lines of poetry was said to be: "No, Bashkirs, I am not dead!" And the film ends on this triumphant note, leaving out the long years in prison.

The depiction of Russo-Bashkir cooperation is particularly interesting in the film. In the beginning, Salavat is indiscriminately anti-Russian. This is made understandable in a very simple way - he has only met drunk Imperial officials who abuse the peasants and disrespect the elderly.

After being injured by soldiers, Salavat is rescued by an escaped Russian convict, who eventually makes him realize that not all Russians are evil.

Especially not Tanka.

She pushes him in the snow, throws snowballs at him and calls him a bear. Love at first sight!

Tanka, the daughter of a Cossack, bears Salavat a son - but the war cuts short their happiness.

Further adventures at the hands of treacherous Bashkirs opens his eyes to the flaws within his own nation. This obvious moral lesson is maintained throughout the film - in the end, Salavat's sister Amina learns to love her nephew, although he is half-Russian.

Amina and little Salavat - "my Salavat!"

The heavy-handed approach was necessary to make the story of a minority national hero suit Soviet politics. the official historiography stressed Salavat Yulayev's wish for freedom through friendship and mutual aid between all nations. In reality, the cooperation plan between Pugachev and his supporters of various creeds and ethnicites was more complicated. The desertions and deceptions that plague the rebels throughout the film reflect the reality - not everyone believed that Pugachev fought for free-for-all "freedom", probably not even Pugachev himself.

Salavat and Yemelyan share a bear hug.

There certainly was a place in Soviet historiography for the development of national consciousness among the minority peoples - it was seen as a necessary requirement before they could reach the next stage in history, socialism, and finally communism. But national independence was not an issue. History had a pre-determined path to follow, and nationalism was only a phase, according to this way of thinking.

An intertitle listing all the nationalities that joined the rebellion: Cossacks, Russian peasants, Tatars, Chuvash, Mordvins, Mari, Bashkirs...

Today, the flaws of Soviet historiography and its political uses are obvious. But can we deal with our own interpretations of history with an open mind? Doubtlessly rebels like Salavat Yulai still have a meaning and a purpose, even as names of cities, hockey teams and public parks. Catherine the Great, who wanted to eradicate his memory by publicly shaming him and later prohibiting the use of his name among Bashkirs, has failed. What will the Salavat-batyr of the future look like?

Sources:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salawat_Julajew
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Rebellion
http://ulaev-salavat.narod.ru/illystrazii.htm

The movie Salavat Yulayev can be watched in its entirety on YouTube. It was directed by Yakov Protazanov, also famous for his 1924 version of the Soviet sci-fi novel Aelita filled with constructivist design.

P.S. For those of you who have a thing for evil Imperial officers with pointy noses and periwigs... come on, know I can't be the only one...

Horseback Wrestling!

2009-10-06T20:16:00.001+02:00

Part of the traditional Vernal Equinox (Nauryz) celebrations in Kazakhstan. Comment from a random YouTube user: "these are the REAL Turks!!!!!!!!"

Rest in Peace, Marek Edelman

2009-10-04T13:08:00.006+02:00

Marek Edelman, hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, passed away on October 2, 2009. He continued to resist the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and stayed in Poland after the war. He continued to fight for freedom in the Solidarność movement into old age.

More handsome ghetto fighters here - bright-eyed, some serious, some smiling, so young and so brave. Most of them did not survive the war. They deserve to be remembered also here on Chirayliq, as an integral part of the history of Europe and Eurasia.

(Via: The Passing of a Noble Man)

Lumberjacks and Sailors

2009-10-02T21:15:00.004+02:00

Some essential icons of masculinity in Soviet propaganda, subjects of many a film, novel and play, but also real people who worked hard and sacrificed a lot for themselves and the nation. Enjoy some "music videos" from the Soviet Union, courtesy of YouTube user Pustinnik25, who has a wonderful collection of nostalgic video clips.

Legendary Soviet troubadour and dissident Vladimir Vysotsky sings a hymn to the sea and the mountains, while we are treated to closeups of handsome sailors. From the movie "Ветер надежды" (Wind of Hope, 1977). Film info in Russian.

And here we have Eduard Hil serenading the endless taiga in the movie "Таёжный десант" (Taiga Landing Force, 1965). Film info in Russian and English.

News from Slavs & Tatars

2009-09-16T08:52:00.003+02:00

Slavs & Tatars is a concept art collective who have been previously featured on Chirayliq on February 21st this year - goodness, how time flies. Now note this in your calendars if you are somewhere in the Brussels area in early October:

Hymns of No Resistance is a performance of cult and classic pop songs adapted to address issues of territorial dispute, language, and geopolitics within greater Eurasia. Chanteuse/actress Berivan Kaya, accompanied by a Kurdish quartet, will perform such songs as She’s Armenian (formerly Michael Shambello’s She’s a Maniac), Stuck in Ossetia with You (adapted from Stealers Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle With You), and Young Kurds (an updated Rod Stewart’s Young Turks), and more. Hymns of No Resistance will open at Brussels’ renowned Kaai Theatre on October 3rd before moving to Moscow and then New York in 2010.

I cannot resist to include another quote from the Kaai Theatre's press release, just because it fits so well with the Chirayliq mission:

Slavs and Tatars wants to cherish the romantic heritage shared by Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. According to them, this heritage is not merely social, political, linguistic or aesthetic. There is above all a strong emotional bond. They seek out this bond, and polemics too, with unceasing dedication.

We heartily agree.

Real Men!

2009-09-12T20:28:00.003+02:00

A Mongolian horseman, photographed by Oksana Kalyuzhnaya (source: photosight.ru) in the Khövsgöl province.

Another horseman, a herder photographed by "Gorynych - The Green Serpent" at photosight.ru.

"The Arctic is my home"

2009-09-11T20:07:00.020+02:00

Viktor Zagumennov, right, has been photographing the North for 30 years. He has received the World Press Photo award twice, and his work has been featured in exhibitions all over the world.

(All photos in this article can be clicked for larger view.)

Left: By the roadside - two men in a remote part of Russia, year unknown. "The face of Russia" ... "Simple, good faces!" ... "Workers! The ones who keep the world going!"... That's some of the comments the photo has received from other photosight.ru members.

In his photos, Zagumennov has first and foremost devoted himself to documenting the everyday lives of rugged northern men and women.

Zagumennov himself grew up by the North Sea, and he says this has given him a special relationship to the modest northern nature, the darkness of the long nights of winter and the never setting sun of summer.
His passion for photography was sparked in 1st grade, when his parents bought a cheap Smena camera. He eventually went on to study photojournalism at Moscow State University.

He was assigned his first professional photoreportage in June 1977, for the newspaper Trud. The theme was "The mighty Soviet North", documenting the achievements of industrialization on the route Surgut - Nadym - Salekhard - Yamal Peninsula.
When Zagumennov set out on the trip, he was full of expectations coloured by the romantic landscapes of his childhood - "white nights, northern lights, fishermen at lakes like mother of pearl", as he describes it in his bio. "And suddenly it all changed. I saw the disfigured nature perishing under the barbaric onslaught of civilization; stern, unsociable people meeting each plane from the Big World, watchful - what will they bring this time, the 'aliens'. I realized the great hypocrisy of what was going on - [in our reportage] we were about to glorify murder, sing the hymn of the Molokh of oil, which was exterminating entire civilizations of northern people without mercy."
He says he accomplished little of any worth during this trip, except one photo: Reindeer herders of the North.

The photo was made at holiday festivities on the Day of Youth. The men are inhabitants of the village Aksarka in the tundra of Baydaratskaya Bay. They are Komi, Nenets, Khanty and Selkup. This photo (which was given the World Press Award in 1980) inspired Zagumennov to devote himself almost exclusively to photographing the people of the North.

These two photos are from a series on walrus hunters, Sireniki Eskimos on the Chukchi Peninsula in the village Sireniki in the mid-1980's.

Right: During class, unknown location, somewhere in the North, featuring a teenage boy with incredible eyes.

Several collections of photos by Viktor Zagumennov can be viewed on Photopoligon.
Don't miss the photostory from August 1981 about Gavrila Nikiforov, a Koryak man living by himself with his dogs by a river in Kamchatka, 20 kilometers from the nearest village. He hunted nerpa seal, fished and collected berries and herbs. The only things he needed which nature could not give him were bread and sugar, and these were provided to him by hunters, fishermen and the fishing inspector whenever they passed by. Zagumennov mentions that a flock of wild geese were hanging out at Nikiforov's house. They lived there every summer and had learned not to be afraid of him, but would fly away if strangers approached.

Here are some other galleries with Zagumennov's photos:
Zagumennov's official site - nordart.ucoz.ru
More photos at photosight.ru
and photoforum.ru

Of dogs, men and Russian photographers

2009-09-11T18:28:00.008+02:00

These phots are from the photo community photosight.ru, a true treasure chest of Russian photography, both professional and amateur.
Click the images for larger view.

Love that sweeps you off your feet by Vadim Shapovalov, somewhere in Central Asia. A herder is the object of his dog's desire ... Shapovalov says that he half-heartedly fought off the dog's advances. It looks like he is smiling.
Otherwise Vadim Shapovalov mostly photographs beautiful young women. See more of his photos here.

Pictures in the sand, by Daysse. Daysse (Dasha Savina) also doesn't say which location this is, but since she is based in Vladivostok, it's quite likely that it's on a beach near that city in the Far East of Russia.
She makes mostly portraits, and there is another very nice photo of this gentleman (but without the doggie).

District police officer in the taiga, by nordart (Viktor Zagumennov), near the village Baikit, Evenkia, 1998.
Viktor Zagumennov is a world famous photojournalist, who has been active in the field for 30 years now. Learn more about him in the next post ... Here is a more extensive gallery of his work.

The Song of the Volga Boatmen

2009-08-23T22:17:00.007+02:00

The Song of the Volga Boatmen is a genuine barge-haulers' shanty. Mily Balakirev, pianist and composer, famous for having promoted nationalism in Russian music, went around and collected folk songs and published them in a book.
Balakirev published The Song of the Volga Boatmen with only one verse (the first). The other two verses were added at a later date.

I've had this very version of the song on a music cassette for ages, and only today did I see what the singers in the Red Army Choir who performed it actually looked like. I like the lead singer's eyebrow action.

Images of a Poet

2009-08-22T20:41:00.016+02:00

Strange to end up writing about Ğabdulla Tuqay after searching for Ildar Urmanche - both were influential Tatars in the world of art, but Tuqay is definitely more famous than the Soviet animation director Urmanche.

The national poet of Tatarstan, Ğabdulla Tuqay (often spelled Gabdulla Tuqai or Tukai), lived a short but intense life around the previous turn of the century (1886 - 1913). His works are considered as the backbone of Tatar literature, the measure which others are measured against, inescapable in cultural celebrations as well as in primary school. His poem Tuğan tel (O Native Tongue; see the end of this post for a music video) became the inofficial anthem of the Tatar language. The story of his life is worthy of a Dostoyevsky novel.

Posthumous portrait by E. Simbirin, 1976.

Ğabdulla Tuqay was the son of a village mullah. Tuqay's childhood was restless, his parents and his stepmother died, one after another, and Tuqay was sent around from family to family, always forced to find a new place to live because of death, illness or poverty. During his stay with one family, Ğabdulla was sent to the local madrasah (religious school of Islam). He showed promise as a student, but his wandering days were not over. Some relatives in Uralsk (today Oral in Kazakhstan) adopted him. He could attend another madrasah, and in 1896 also a Russian school. There he studied Russian literature and started to write poetry, especially inspired by Pushkin.

Tuqay was uninterested in business, although his stepfather was a merchant and tried to involve him in the trade. When his stepfather died, Tuqay moved into the madrasah and lived a studious but austere life. The year 1902 became a turning point - Ğabdulla suddenly lost interest in religious rote learning. He tasted alcohol, took up smoking, let his hair grow longer and turned to poetry. Earlier he had shown interest in folklore and asked traveling scholars to bring him local songs and tales. His madrasah studies had familiarized him with Old Tatar literature, which was heavily influenced by Arabic, Persian and Turkic. An ambition took root in him to create a new and living Tatar literature closer to the way the common people spoke.

Tuqay was not heroically handsome; he was physically fragile and boyish even in maturity and illness. The pictures in this post show how artists idealized him by focusing on his soulful eyes and intensifying the power of his gaze instead. Here, actor G. Shamukov does his best to emphasize the masculine determination in Tuqay, even on his sickbed. (More photos of Tuqay and actors portraying him)

Tuqay started to work at a secular publishing house in Uralsk. The printed media boomed after the October Manifesto of 1905, which introduced more liberal censorship laws. Previously, it was forbidden to publish newspapers in the Tatar language. By day Tuqay worked as a typesetter and proofreader, by night he wrote verses, articles and short stories and translated Russian texts. He became interested in liberal and social-democratic ideas, which intertwined with a vision of national emancipation. Tuqay wrote, Bezneñ millät, ülgänme, ällä yoqlağan ğınamı? (Is our nation dead, or only sleeping?). He criticised the conservative clergy in clever satires. When ultra-nationalist Russians told Tatars to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire, Tuqay replied with a passionate declaration: Kitmibez! (We don't leave!). For Tuqay, the Tatars were the Russians' brother-nation.

Political and economic pressure increased on the press. While Tuqay's fame allowed him move out of the madrasah and he didn't lack offers of work, the political unrest also led him towards poetry and the development of modern Tatar as a literary language. His first poem was Şüräle, based on a Tatar fairytale. Soon, he was invited to work in Kazan. Ominously, he was exempted of the notoriously brutal military draft due to his poor health. It was a foreboding of the end of his short life, but it freed him to his work. In Kazan, Tuqay was barely 20 and already famous. Fame usually brings romantic attention, too. However, Tuqay apparently avoided women and wrote tender verses to one person alone, his 15-year-old admirer Zäytünä Mäwlüdova.

With his sister Gaziza in Uralsk, by Kh. Yakupov, 1971. (More images of artworks with Tuqay)

In 1909-1910 the prime minister of Russia, Pyotr Stolypin, cracked down on the press and limited the freedoms of 1905. Tuqay was deeply distressed. All the struggle seemed to have been futile. Some of his old friends began to work for conservative papers and responded to Tuqay's criticism by calling him a Russophile. Ironically, the Tsarist secret police suspected that his poetry was Russophobic! While meant as an insult, "Russophile" was closer to the truth. Tuqay mourned Leo Tolstoy's death in 1910. He was inspired by Tolstoy's humanism and concern for the weakest.

Illustration for Tuqay's tales for children, by T. Khaziakhmetov, 1981.

Tuqay and Kumis Therapy

Kumis is fermented mare's milk, a staple drink in the Central Asian countries. In the late 19th century, kumis therapy was a popular health fad in the Russian Empire. Patients travelled to resorts in the southeastern parts of the Empire and enjoyed "suitable light and varied amusement" - and drank large amounts of kumis, which made Anton Chekhov gain 12 pounds in two weeks but did not cure his tuberculosis. Leo Tolstoy described kumis therapy as a treatment for burnout in A Confession: "I fell ill, mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkirs in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink kumys, and live a merely animal life."

Like Chekhov, Tuqay suffered from tuberculosis. He realized that he needed all his powers to continue the struggle for national rights and democracy - and he dreamed of writing "the Tatar Eugen Onegin" - but he needed to regain his health. Tuqay travelled from Kazan by the great Volga southwards to Astrakhan, where he experienced kumis therapy. Another trip took him to Ufa and St. Petersburg, where a doctor withheld from him that his illness had reached the final stage. In 1912, he lived among Kazakh nomads, drinking kumiss regularly.

Tuqay in St. Petersburg, by M. Rakhimov, 1975.

Although kumis couldn't cure him, it gave him back his optimism. In the poems of his final year he wrote that the struggle had not been in vain, and focused on social concerns. Many of his verses were banned, and some of them were published only after the October Revolution. One poem unfortunately remembered was his ode to the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. In the 1920s, Tuqay was dismissed as a "Tsarist" because of this poem, which nevertheless ends with a call for internationalism within Russia and praises the eternal friendship between Tatars and Russians.

Bust by Baki Urmanche, who had a son named Ildar - could he be the art director whom I mentioned in the beginning?

On April 15, 1913, Ğabdulla Tuqay died at the age of 27. April 26, his birthday, is celebrated nowadays as the Day of Tatar Language. The Peremech Lounge has a photo of his grave and pictures of an interesting Tuqay pocket reader from the Soviet era. Oh yeah, almost forgot: Here's Tatar boy band Kazan Egetläre giving their version of Tugan tel...

The president's first love

2009-08-05T15:08:00.006+02:00

The Russian newspaper Argumenty i fakty reports in the article "To turn down a president: First love is never forgotten" about the first love of Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In 1994, Nazarbayev paid a visit to the city Dneprodzerzhinsk in Ukraine. He came by the vocational training school Nr. 8, where he in the late 1950's, in the dawn of his youth, had studied to become a furnace-worker, and met with teachers and old class mates. Surprisingly, he declared: "In your city, I helped two friends get married. But I myself failed. Here, I felt my first love."

Lyudmila Ivanovna Kalnysh, a former classmate of the president, heard this confession on the radio. She had not dared go watch the Kazakh president's visit, because she was afraid that she might faint if she saw Nursultan.

Back in their school days, Nuri had noticed Lyudmila in the gym hall, where he wrestled in one end of the hall and she did rhythmic gymnastics in the other end of the hall.

At some point Lyuda felt the gaze of burning black eyes in her back. She already knew that Nursultan was a straight-A student and the komsorg (komsomol organizer) of the class.
"I remember how the girls and I were sitting in the assembly hall at some boring meeting", Lyudmila Ivanovna tells AiF. "We didn't listen to the speeches. And suddenly Nursultan climbs on the platform. It astonished me how wonderfully he spoke. His words poured out beautifully, freely, without any 'er' or 'well'. And soon, after a gym class, he was waiting for me at the exit. I got nervous and dashed off through another exit on the other side of the building, and ran into the doorway of some unknown house. And there was Nuri: 'But that's not your house!' - 'How do you know?' - 'I know. Come on, let me take you home. It's dark outside - someone might insult you.'"

But then she fell ill, and had to stay at the hospital to have her pneumonia treated. When she was finally able to get up from her bed, she glanced at the street through the window. And there was Nursultan, looking up at the hospital windows. Lyuda hid behind the curtain. An older lady in the bed next to hers smiled at her: "Don't be shy! I can see all the way from here that he's a good young man."

Once Lyuda got out of the hospital, they danced tango for the first time:

"Nuri was so careful with me. He didn't try to press himself against me like other guys. With him I felt calm and like I could trust him."

Afterwards they traded photos with each other. And at some point it was time for him to meet Lyudmila's mother.

"He was terribly nervous, it took him forever to take his shoes off in the hallway. Nursultan plucked at the tablecloth, it seemed he wanted to say something important. But what? After a few days it became clear, when a good friend of mine came to me and whispered in my ear: 'Nursultan sends me. He asks if you'd like to marry him, if you'd like to come with him to Kazakhstan. He is waiting for your answer.'"

But what about my studies?, Lyuda thought.

"I enrolled at the school later than Nursultan, I still had one year left. Besides, with my 19 years I didn't think seriously about boys. I wasn't ready for close relationships. Mum and I lived like two nuns. My father had left us when I was four years old. Mum never married again."

So Lyuda said no. Still, Nuri didn't lose hope, and kept writing to her from Kazakhstan. And Lyuda went through the heavy school of life:

"I graduated from the school as a seamstress. I was assigned to the best dressmaking establishment of the city, but the director hated me for some reason. She kept insulting me in front of the whole brigade. I was constantly running to the toilet in tears. This woman had an effect on me like a boa constrictor on a rabbit."

One day, a young liutenant proposed to her on the street with the words "Marry me, I'll take you away from here!" Those words worked on Lyuda like magic, and there she was with him at the registry office, thinking that they actually hadn't even kissed yet. "That was terrible stupidity", Lyuda says today, looking back.

The young couple moved to the Astrakhan region, where he served. The fresh husband turned out to be a brawler and a scandalist who didn't mind raising his fists against his wife. Lyuda endured for five years, and then she took her little daughter and son and moved back home. She was now 25 years old, her self-esteem completely shattered.

"Somehow, one day as I was cleaning up at home, I found an old suitcase. Inside it I discovered Nuri's letters. I sat down and read them all, tears running down my face. I understood that this was my love. But instead of the pain of loss, happiness came to me. The little seed that Nursultan had sowed in my soul grew into a flower."

Lyuda's self esteem gradually returned, she went to the hairdresser and got new, nice clothes, and walked with her back straight again.

"But I didn't write to Nursultan. I thought I wasn't worthy of him. I prayed to god that he would find a woman who was better than I. I was happy enough with his letters having brought me back to life."

Lyuda found the strength to pursue something she had long been dreaming of - to get a second education as a medical nurse.

For almost twenty years she knew nothing of Nursultan's fate. And then, suddenly, she met his portrait in the newspaper, where it said that Nazarbayev had become first secretary of the central committee of the Communist party of Kazakhstan. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nursultan Abishevich was elected president of the republic, and in 1994 he paid a visit to Dneprodzerzhinsk.

When Lyudmila Ivanovna heard his love confession on the radio, she finally decided to write him. She didn't know the address, so she just wrote

To:
Kazakhstan
The President

About a month later, early in the morning, the phone rang. She immediately recognised his voice. The president asked: "So, with whom do you live?" - "With my daughter and my grandson!" - "Just the three of you?" - "Just the three of us."
Actually, Lyudmila was married. But it was a marriage of mutual respect, not love. "My husband was not in my heart." And on that day, she left her second husband. "I couldn't betray Nursultan, could I?" ...

Soon, Nursultan paid another visit to Dneprodzerzhinsk. Trusted men came to pick up Lyudmila Ivanovna and bring her to a celebratory dinner party. "We had five minutes to speak alone. And I said the most important thing - that his love had not been unanswered. The feeling that Nursultan is somewhere in the world has helped me cope with life to this very day."

Only once she turned to him for help. Her grandson stood before a complicated and expensive kidney operation, and Lyudmila did not have enough money to pay for it. She sent a telegram to Nazarbayev. And the hospital bills were quickly settled.

Chirayliq report from Kežmarok, Slovakia

2009-07-28T00:40:00.007+02:00

I spent the extended weekend at a video art festival in the small town Kežmarok in the High Tatras in eastern Slovakia.

Slovakia has a large Roma minority, mostly in the eastern parts of the country. As in most other post-communist countries, there are ethnic tensions and a lot of racism directed towards Roma people. Even the question of how many Roma people there are in Slovakia reflects racist problematics:

"... According to estimates of the urban and communal offices of the state administration from 1989, however, as many as 253,943 Roma live in Slovakia, thus constituting 4.8% of the population. Since these statistics did not include Roma who have a standard of living comparable to that of the majority population, Roma political and cultural activists estimate that the number of Roma in Slovakia is even higher, citing a figure of 350,000 to 400,000 in Slovakia." (Klara Orgovanova at Slovakia.org; my emphasis)

Anyway, I secretly made some photos of a handsome young man walking his puppy ...

(click the images for larger view)

(Photos by Tinet.)

Guardians of the Tsam Dance

2009-07-16T13:27:00.006+02:00

Tsam performers dressed as warriors pose for a photo. They serve as guardians of the sacrifial offerings at the Erlik Tsam from Urga. Erlik Nomun Khan is a deity with shamanic origins who is identified with Yamaraja, the Lord of Death, in Buddhism.

The Tsam dance is an important tradition of Buddhist worship in Mongolia. The first recorded Tsam dances were performed in Tibet over 1000 years ago. Buddhism was introduced to Mongolia through Tibet, and both belong to the Vajrayana branch of Buddhism, with heavy emphasis of monastic lineage and esoteric knowledge. The Tsam dance is not only an artistic performance; it is primarily a religious ritual and its purpose is to defeat the enemies of Dharma - that is, combat suffering, aggression and ignorance. Besides the secret tantric meaning, which is only revealed to the initiated (and thus outside our reach :-)), it serves an educational cause. In the Tsam dance, performers mask themselves as benevolent and wrathful deities. (As a Shingon - also a tantric school of Buddhism - priest once told me: "Unfortunately people do not only learn by kind words...") This way, the lay audience learns to know its protectors and teachers in the next life. In Buddhist imagery, a fearsome appearance - a skull face, animal fangs, blood-dripping claws - does not necessarily mean that the creature is evil. Even the most chilling masks represent important teachers and guardians of the doctrine.

The Shanak sorcerers are described as sorcerers of "black magic", but their purpose is to defeat the enemies of religion.

An intriguing aspect of the philosophy behind Tsam is that "Besides pleasing the external environment, the tsam performance also purifies internal environment or mental afflictions of all sentient beings including humans and to lead them to the Buddha's path." (Geshe Luvsangenden.Z)

Found at Face Music, Switzerland

Amadeus, King of Tango

2009-07-11T22:31:00.006+02:00

Once in a blue moon, reading Finnish tabloids can make you shout for joy, and today was such a memorable occasion. Ilta-Sanomat reported that Amadeus Lundberg, 20, had been elected tango king of the 2009 Tango Festival in Seinäjoki by a narrow jury vote and an overwhelming call-in vote from the general audience in the semi-finals. Lundberg's repertoire included the titles Romanesca, Rakkaus ei oo pysyvää (Love Isn't Permanent) and Onnemme kyyneleet (Our Tears Of Bliss). (More about the cultural significance of the tango in Finland.) Lundberg has promised to be kind and humble during his reign.

(Photo: yle.fi)

The tango festival in Seinäjoki is a very Finnish institution, albeit a rather recent one (the idea was conceived in a sauna in 1984). This year, a change was introduced: instead of a king and a queen, only one single person could win the crown. This ensures that the best, and only the best, will win, regardless of gender. Perhaps the judges were wary of Lundberg due to his young age. He shows a lot of promise and who knows how far he can go if success does not quench the flame. One of the tango king's privileges is a guaranteed place among the 12 national Eurovision finalists. I almost hope that Lundberg will decline this "honour", although he could beat Alexander Rybak in a cuteness competition ...

(Photo: Helsingin Sanomat)

Amadeus Lundberg comes from a musical family. From a young age, he was taught to play the violin and to sing professionally. His father, Taisto Lundberg, is a founding member of Hortto Kaalo, the first commercially successful Romani band in Finland. We nostalgically remember their hits from the folk wave of the 1970's, such as the international Gypsy classic Tsaiori, the socially conscious Miksi ovet ei aukene meille (Why Won't The Doors Open To Us) and the comical Ei raha tekis pahaa (Some Money Wouldn't Hurt). Amadeus has toured the last 3 years as Hortto Kaalo's lead singer.

Taisto and Amadeus Lundberg (Photo: Turun Sanomat).

More Finnish Romani tango singers

According to blogger "Life after Helsinki 2007", Lundberg won the televote in the semi-finals "to visible dislike of the jurors". Yet, he went on to win their hearts and minds in the finals. To quote Unelma-tango (The Dream Tango, 1932) by Arvo Koskimaa and Erkki Ranta:

… tummien silmien taa
viittoopi kultainen maa.

… beyond dark eyes
a golden land beckons.

Yury Vizbor - "On the Razvumchorr plateau"

2009-07-03T16:03:00.011+02:00

In this summer heat it's particularly interesting to mentally visit the harsh winters of the far north.

The Razvumchorr plateau is part of the Khibiny massif in the Kola peninsula. All the mountains have Saami names, which sound fascinating to my ears: Nyorkpakhk, Takhtarvumchorr, Vud'yavrchorr ...
These mountains are famous for their untouched nature and are popular among hikers (and their doggies), but on the southern edge of the massif, around the towns Apatity and Kirovsk, there are apatite mines (apatite is used in fertilizer, since it is rich in phosphorous). The Razvumchorr plateau is one of these mines. (Here is a Russian map, if you'd like to study the massif closer, and here is a photogallery at hibiny.net.)

The mines were built in 1929 by prisoners, according to this photostory at BBC.ru. In the 75 years of its operation, the Razvumchorr mine has been dug 350 meters deep. Temperatures get to below -50 degrees centigrade in the winters, and winds are often hurricane strength.

After Stalin's death the mines were no longer part of the GULAG system, but were converted into regular mines where workers were paid good wages with some benefits to compensate for the harsh conditions. This is the time period where Yury Vizbor's song is set.

Vizbor created the genre "reportage song", and "On the Razvumchorr plateau" (1964) was his first work in the genre.
It tells of the work conditions in the Razvumchorr mine. Due to bad visibility in the snowstorms, workers often have to walk in front of the machines and show them the way, as can also be seen in the video.

Here is my crappy translation of a couple of the verses:

"We sit at the table, smoking strong tobacco,
In one hour we have to climb up on the roof of the Khibiny
And charge through the howling, crawl through the dark,
Leaning our heads and cursing the blizzards.

He sits and sulks for some unknown reason,
My dearest mechanic, the boss of the roads,
In one hour he has to fight his way down from the plateau Razvumchorr,
Walking on the road in front of the tractors.

Because the road is full of dangers
And the bulldozer needs a human shoulder to lean on,
Because spring never comes here,
To the neck of the Khibiny, the plateau Razvumchorr."

There are some additional verses that are not used in this performance, but you can read them here (in Russian).

As you could see in the BBC.ru photostory, the apatite mines in the Khibiny were privatized by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners in a rather shady way, and that deal is part of the case for which Khodorkovsky is now serving eight years in prison. You can read more about that in John D. Grace's Russian Oil Supply (page 124), or this article by Peter Baker from the Washington Post. Blogger Wu Wei gives a small personal insight on the repercussions of the deal.

Arkady Ostrovsky's article for the Financial Times is kind of symptomatic for many articles about the Russian privatizations: it jumps from Stalin and the GULAG directly to the privatizations in the 1990's - failing to mention anything about the many decades during which the mines were run in a relatively honest fashion - and thus creates a comparison where the oligarchs come out looking maybe not half as bad.
But that's where this song and video come in.

Paparazzi photos

2009-06-30T00:00:00.006+02:00

After Ainur's Ph.D. promotion (mentioned below), I flew back home to Berlin from Copenhagen. There were two Tibetan monks at the airport, and I got really excited and tried to take photos of them in secret. But it was too dark in the airport and I didn't dare come close enough to make any decent pictures. ;_;
I'm really useless as a photographer, because I never want to bother people and ask them if I can take their picture. In this case it shouldn't have had to be so hard, especially since they both turned and smiled right at me when I first walked by ...

But today I had better luck. On Alexanderplatz I spotted this cute guy with rather Central Asian features:

I wonder where he is from. Of course I didn't dare ask him. Though it shouldn't have been too hard: "Hello, my name is Tinet. I write this blog about handsome Central Asian men. Do you happen to be from Central Asia? May I take your picture ...?"

(Photos by Tinet)

Anti-Ahmadinejad protesters

2009-06-29T23:24:00.013+02:00

So the Iranian opposition and its mostly young urban intellectual supporters are convinced that the vote that supposedly re-elected Ahmadinejad was rigged. The violence used against demonstrators hasn't really made the current government look good.

In any case, among the men and women who have been protesting about this all over the world, there are some cute guys ...

In Tehran:

Pro-Mousavi protest on a street in Tehran, June 20th. By Farhad Rajabali via Daylife.

A protester with a bruise on his cheek in Tehran on June 20th. By Farhad Rajabali via Daylife.

Flashing a victory sign on Sunday, June 28th, during a gathering near the Ghoba Mosque in Tehran. By AP via Daylife.

In Athens:

Iranians living in Greece protest outside the Greek Parliament on June 23rd. By Getty images via Daylife.

Outside the Greek Parliament in Athens on June 23rd. By Getty images via Daylife.

In Washington:

Demonstrators protest against the Iranian election in front of the White House in Washington June 21st. By Reuters via Daylife.

Demonstrators in Washington June 21st. By Reuters via Daylife.

In Washington June 21. By Reuters via Daylife.

Huang Xiaoming, the panda man

2009-06-19T22:12:00.002+02:00

I posted a picture and some links about Huang Xiaoming on one of my comics blogs (because he looks a bit like one of my characters), and Ainur said "the panda man has got to go on Chirayliq." So here we go to the eastern fringes of Chirayliq land!

Huang Xiao Ming was born November 13th 1977 in Qingdao, China, and is an actor, singer and model. (It's very common, if not the norm, in Chinese/Hong Kong showbiz to have this kind of combined careers.) His image is perhaps a bit that of a "pretty boy", but he is certainly very professional - in 2003, for example, Huang was seriously injured in a car accident: his car flipped over while he was driving through a mountainous area to catch a filming. But he immediately reappeared on the set with a neck brace, impressing the media crew as well as his fans.

Huang Xiaoming has recently sponsored the twin panda cubs Ping Ping and An An at the giant panda breeding center in Ya'an in Sichuan Province. Ping Ping and An An were the first giant panda cubs who were born after the deadly earthquake hit the province on May 12th 2008. (I recommend reading Coco Wang's excellent comic to find out about how the panda center coped with the earthquake.)
Huang donated one million yuan (about 150,000 US dollars) to adopt the two cubs and was named an ambassador to China's Panda Protection Research Center.
Here is an article with several pictures at Chinadaily.com: "Panda Daddy" Huang Xiaoming revisits reserve (warning: cute overload!)
He also did a photoshoot for a 2009 calendar with the Sichuan panda babies.

See all the calendar photos here!

I recently watched a film with Huang Xiaoming called Sniper. He plays the former police sniper talent Lincoln, who has recently been released from jail after serving a sentence for involuntary manslaughter. He made a mistake during a hostage situation, and is convinced that his former partner purposely gave a testimony to his detriment. So now that he is out of jail, he is looking for revenge ... and redemption.
It's a pretty cliché storyline, and a lot of the film boils down to muscular guys looking hot with their big rifles. But what makes the film rewatchable many times over (besides the hunky guys) are the action scenes, which really make the most of the unusual theme of sniper rifles ...

Lincoln (Huang Xiaoming) and his former police sniper buddies.

Screencaps galore:

Lincoln is reunited with his wife ...

The rookie sniper OJ, who gets involved with the case of Lincoln and is tempted by the dark side, is played by Edison Chen. He is cute, too.

But among the three main characters I think Huang Xiaoming is the cutest.

Although this (unnamed) guy isn't bad either.

Ermek knows what we want

2009-06-16T23:24:00.001+02:00

But Azat is too cute

2009-06-16T23:20:00.000+02:00

A Bashkir Romance

2009-06-07T15:52:00.002+02:00

The Bashkirs are eastern neighbors of the Tatars. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the singer.

The Blue Wolf of the Altai

2009-06-07T14:57:00.003+02:00

This is a music video by the Yugur group Yaoaoer. The Yugurs are one of 56 officially recognised nationalities in the People's Republic of China. They are sometimes confusingly known as "Yellow Uyghurs", although they are distinct from the Uighur people. According to different estimates, there are 15,000-13,000 Yugurs, primarily living in Sunan Yugur Autonomous County in Gānsù Province.
The Yugurs pose an interesting problem for those who wish to classify Central Asian peoples. According to Wikipedia, about 4,600 of them speak a Turkic language (Yohur or Yoğïr) and about 2,800 a Mongolic language (Engger), the remainder have switched to Chinese. Tibetan has also been in use, and their culture, especially their brand of Buddhism, show clear Tibetan influences.
There is an Uyghur connection, as well. The Turkic branch of the people is traditionally said to be descendants of the ancient Uyghur Empire. The Engger-speakers are said to be descendants of Mongol invaders in the thirteenth century. Both groups call themselves Yugur; the Turkic-speakers, either "Yoğïr" or "Sarïg Yoğïr" ((Yellow) Yugur), and the Engger-speakers "Yogor" or "Šera Yogor" (ditto). The Chinese distinguish between them geographically, calling the Turkic branch "Western Yugurs" and the Mongolic branch "Eastern Yugurs".
(To me, the consensus in ethnonyms suggests that the ethnic difference has been very small. After all, having two different languages is no proof of different ancestry, as studies of Finns and Finland-Swedes have shown... Unfortunately, there are a lot of unnecessary "internet arguments" between Turcophiles and Mongol fans about the Yugurs for this very reason.)
Sources: German and English Wikipedia
Yugurology (feat. C.G.E. Mannerheim!!)
Western Yugur Folktales

Freshly baked doctors at Lund University

2009-05-30T23:04:00.013+02:00

Frau Doktor Elmgren
Originally uploaded by Turukhtan

Ainur has now been promoted to Ph.D. in History. So we can expect much more serious posts from her in the future. ;o)

Ainur, who at 30 was one of the youngest among the 233 new doctors, was actually not the youngest. Ather Gattami, Ph.D. at 28, is a maths genius who at the age of 22 was the fastest and youngest examined Engineering student ever in Sweden.

Ather and his family moved to Sweden from Iraq when he was 12, after his father had received a serious threat from the secret service. Soon, his talent for maths was noticed, and in high school he was already taking classes in Mathematics and Physics at university level.
Ather is now a Ph.D. in Engineering at the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University. His research has focused on Optimal Decision Theory, including static and dynamic cooperative and non-cooperative games. The title of his thesis is Optimal Decisions with Limited Information - click here to read it!

As Ather explains in this interview for Sydsvenskan, Automatic Control sounds very technical but is actually a quite interdisciplinary subject, which has a lot to do with economics: "You can say that it's about games between different teams, where one team, for example, is trying to minimize costs and the other one is trying to maximize costs. It can also be about logistics and information flow."

View large size.

Ather's family are secular Mandaeians (a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview, about 100,000 followers, mostly in Iraq and Iran - Sweden has the third largest Mandaeian community in the world).
Their family trade is goldsmith, and in his high school years Ather actually worked as a salesman at a couple of gold stores in the summers. Besides having learned the trade of a goldsmith, Ather's father had also studied to be an engineer, and back in Baghdad he was one of Iraq's highest factory directors at a military-industrial company. Today he is a senior high school teacher.

According to the Sydsvenskan interview, Ather seems to be pretty relaxed about people who are impressed with his career. And he also knows that without it, the same people might very well think completely differently about him. "It's no secret that my origin is somewhere else, I don't look Swedish. Sometimes I get the feeling that people's attitudes towards me change by 180 degrees when they hear what I do. That they might have had a whole other kind of attitude otherwise."

Further reading: Ather Gattami's page at Lund Institute of Technology.

(Both photos by Tinet.)

"Aren't these your children?"

2009-05-30T22:48:00.004+02:00

Aren't these your children?, originally uploaded by punalippu.

Ne vashi li deti, asks a Central Asian-looking militsiya officer in this Soviet poster by V. Evenko from 1961, depicted on a contemporary postcard found in the russian bookstore Ruslania in Helsinki. The message is clear. Parents should take responsibility for the misdeeds of their children. The blue text is the same in Uzbek, I think - correct me if I'm wrong.

Ilyaz Safiullin: "Yullar"

2009-05-28T22:19:00.001+02:00

Tatar singer Ilyaz Safiullin sings "Yullar" (Roads) - a melancholy yet serene vision of the ages of a man.

Eurovision: Chirayliq victory again!

2009-05-17T13:44:00.009+02:00

So the cutest guy in the Eurovision really won. Not that we didn't see that coming ... ;o)
Let's celebrate with some nice pictures:

Apparently Alexander is making his debut as an actor in the biggest Norwegian childrens' movie production of all times, Yohan - Barnevandreren, as a Gypsy who, of course, plays the fiddle. (The film also includes a Japanese sailor who goes around challenging local strong men - partly based on actual historical research, oh my!) More photos with Alexander in this film over here.

Also check out the gallery at eurovision.tv, with lots of photos from when our fellow Tatar host Alsou and her colleague Ivan Urgant announced Rybak the winner and Dima Bilan, winner of the previous Eurovision, came along to give him the award (why are there no good photos of Dima and Alexander together?!) ...

As a matter of fact, Alexander Rybak won another award just before that. The Marcel Bezençon Awards, named after the Swiss guy who founded the Eurovision, are special awards from the press, the participating composers, and previous winners of the contest.
Alexander Rybak won the Press Award, and check out who won the Composers' Award!

Backstage at Eurovision'09

2009-05-14T20:28:00.003+02:00

A Muscovite security officer and one of Ukraine's dancers pose backstage at the Eurovision song contest in Moscow. (Source: SVT.se)

Mongolian hip hop group Tatar

2009-05-13T15:25:00.006+02:00

Tatar is one of, if not the most popular hip hop group in Mongolia. I've had this video with a sad gangster love story among my YouTube favourites for months, but didn't get around to posting it until now ...

Hip hop is pretty young in Mongolia - it started in the 1990's. Since then it has quickly grown into the mainstream. The local flavour of Mongolian hip hop may include folk music influences and tributes to mothers (even more so than in American hip hop). Mongolian hip hop groups address problems in their society, such as unemployment and alcoholism, but they also make songs about love. The latter might dismay hardcore hip hop purists, but it certainly gives the music a wider appeal.
There is a nice article about the Mongolian hip hop scene over at Hip Hop Linguistics.

Marat & Behrang

2009-05-13T02:03:00.008+02:00

Marat Nailevich Izmailov is a Russian Tatar football player, currently playing for Sporting Clube de Portugal.

Marat is praised for his speed and technique, especially in "duels" for the ball. He is (judging by the amount of fan blogs I found while googling for pictures) very popular among Portuguese fans.
Another odd factoid found while googling: if you type "marat izmailov" in the Google search window, one of the suggestions that pop up is "marat izmailov muslim". The idea of a blond and blue-eyed Russian Muslim footballer is probably very exotic to some fans, prompting the searches. The top result while picture googling was this hilarious thread at the hockey forum HFBoards, debating whether Tatars are Mongols, whether Abkhaz are Muslims, and whether there can possibly exist such a thing as an European Muslim at all. One moderator then goes on to present one of the best summaries of the Tatar phenomenon I've ever seen (on a hockey forum, at any rate), complete with illustrations. Nice work!

Marat began his pro career at Lokomotiv Moskva in 2001. In this older photo we see him sport the classic Russian hairstyle for men :0)

Marat battling Behrang Safari (FC Basel) for the ball. Behrang is an Iranian-Swedish player, also highly regarded, not only in his homeland Skåne.

This shot of Behrang was shamelessly copied from the Sydsvenska Dagbladet, the main newspaper for southern Sweden. The accompanying article is noteworthy for non-soccer fans, too. Behrang was detained by US authorities last year while changing international flights at Houston airport in Texas. Although he was travelling with the Swedish national team, he was isolated and interrogated until he missed the connecting flight to Costa Rica. Eventually he was released and could catch another flight - 24 hours later. The reason cited: Behrang was born in Tehran.
Meanwhile, three of his teammates missed the connection for a completely different reason - they attempted to board a flight to San José, California, instead of San José, Costa Rica. Swedes abroad...

Here is Behrang in his hometown, the sleepy academic village Lund, which makes me, a grudging Lundensare, feel unusually blessed. (Photo from Expressen.se)

Chirayliq Eurovision: Regina

2009-05-09T17:24:00.005+02:00

Bosnia-Herzegovina's entry to the Eurovision is the band Regina with their song "Bistra Voda" (clear water). ... Someone commented: "I think that Alexander Rybak's party is going to be spoiled by the manly Regina and their beautiful anthemic ballad."

From what I've been able to find out, the song is about mother's love, and touches the subject of the Bosnian war that took more than 200.000 lives.

Here is what the band said at their press conference in Moscow:

At the press conference, they stated that the message of the song was that of a love revolution. They thereby link the song to Russia, but the red is used as the color of love. When asked if their theme was inspired by communism, the band said that there are nostalgic aesthetics in the song, but that these are not related to communism but to love. In the end of the press conference, they performed their song Bistra Voda in Russian.

mundu-sammut from Australia has provided a translation of the second stanza in the comments:

I asked some people
In the neighborhood, where my soul resides
A secret from me, they say, you are hiding, dear

I asked that they return to me
That time, the old hours, the spring
That love is in the air, they say

Give birth to me at dawn in May
Bathe me in the clear water
I guard one flower, when all others leave
I guard you as long as I'm alive

Steal a bit of Sun for us
There's no tomorrow, there's no today
It's easy when the song finds your heart

Regina formed as a garage band in 1990, and after some initial problems finding the right vocalist, they met with great success all over Yugoslavia. The civil war broke up the band when the Serb members had to flee from Sarajevo to Belgrade. For a few years Regina continued in Belgrade with new replacements members, while some original members pursued solo careers. But in 2006 all the original members were happily reunited.

Chirayliq Eurovision: Alexander Rybak

2009-05-08T19:35:00.006+02:00

Mum reminded us that it's Eurovision Song Contest season again ... So, let's start with Norway!

Yes, the Norwegian performer this year is a cute guy called Alexander Rybak. He was born 1986 in Minsk, Belarussian SSR, and when he was four years old, his family moved to Norway. Rybak has been playing various instruments since he was five years old, and both his parents are violinists. The song "Fairytale" was composed and written by Rybak himself.

Altyn Orda

2009-05-04T14:14:00.007+02:00

Some of my favourite screenshots from Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. Ahistorically, but politically correctly in Stalin's days, Nevsky refuses an alliance with the Golden Horde in the movie. In reality, Alexander Nevsky ensured peaceful relations with the Mongols by enforcing tribute from the principalities to the Golden Horde and uniting the Russian principalities against Western invasions. He became the Grand Prince of Vladimir thanks to his friendship with Sartaq Khan. This connection inspired the controversial school of Russian historical philosophy known as "Eurasianism".

Charles Bronson vs. Toshiro Mifune!

2009-04-22T22:30:00.004+02:00

We have a soft spot for Charles Bronson, descendant of Lipka Tatars, and likewise for Toshiro Mifune, epic movie hero of the Land of the Rising Sun. In Red Sun (directed by Terence Young, France/Spain/Italy 1971) east meets west in the original sense of Rudyard Kipling's lines:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

Edit (29.7.2011): Added link to better-quality video.

Not Cool Enough For Hollywood?

2009-04-14T21:06:00.007+02:00

KevJumba's message is sadly relevant (visit his homepage - cute overload warning). It's not just an American issue. We are being denied Chirayliq potential on a global level. (Found here)
The fact remains that Hollywood productions get distributed around the world, while Asian productions - especially Central Asian, but also the more "marketable" Chinese, Korean and Japanese - frequently are limited to art house cinemas and private initiatives. For example, I wonder if we will ever get to see Goemon anywhere in Europe. (It's a fantasy spectacle based on the legend of Ishikawa Goemon, a thief who stole from the rich and gave to the poor and dared to defy the powerful warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.) Needless to say, Goemon is full of cool, handsome, cute, sexy and all-round awesome Asian guys and girls.
EDIT: The Trailer was too wide to embed, so you'll just have to go to YouTube by yourself.

You have to keep in mind that Japanese movie budgets are usually only a fraction of the cost of a major Hollywood production. Expect Final Fantasy, not Star Wars. The director of Goemon, Kazuaki Kiriya, is famous for Casshern, a science-fiction epic which doesn't let the special effects get in the way of a good plot and compelling characters. Here's the trailer:

Garmunci!

2009-04-07T17:37:00.006+02:00

Accordionist and singer at a gala concert in Kazan.
Source: intertat.ru

200 Portraits of Genghis Khan

2009-03-28T17:10:00.004+01:00

A comprehensive and searchable collection of images, more or less heroic, chiefly from Mongolia, but also from China and Iran. Collected by a researcher at Juniper, a francophone database on Mongolian and Siberian studies. (Via)
The featured portrait is painted by Mongolian artist Cerendoržyn Ölzbaatar, and obviously inspired by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' portrait of Napoleon.

Gennadii Korolkov

2009-03-19T23:06:00.002+01:00

According to the YouTube poster, this was in the movie "Вчера, сегодня и всегда" in 1969, but according to web searches that movie was made in 1971 and did not feature Korolkov?...

The colour photographs of Sergei Mikhailovitch Prokudin-Gorskii

2009-03-17T10:36:00.028+01:00

This topic was suggested to us by a reader. I had seen some of Prokudin-Gorskii's fascinating photographs before, but I hadn't realised to what extent he had made portraits of handsome Central Asian men ...

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was an innovator in colour photography. In the early 1900's, he formulated an ambitious plan to document the Russian Empire in full colour. He wanted to educate the empire's young citizens of its vast and diverse history, culture and modernization.
Tsar Nicholas II supported this project, and in 1909-1912, and again in 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation.

According to Wikipedia, "his process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence, each through a different colored filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly-colored light, it was possible to reconstruct the original color scene. Any stray movement within the camera's field of view showed up in the prints as multiple "ghosted" images, since the red, green and blue images were taken of the subject at slightly different times.
He also successfully experimented with making color prints of the photographs, but the process was complicated and slow. It was only with the advent of digital image processing that multiple images could be satisfactorily combined into one."

The resulting images give a unique insight to an era we are used to seeing in monochrome only.

The Library of Congress has made a large amount of his photographs of landscapes, architectural monuments, industry, transportation and people available on their site. Here is a small, unsorted selection of his portraits from the vast Russian Empire ... Click to see them larger.

A fabric merchant in Samarkand. Note the framed Koran page above the stall.

Georgian tomato merchant near Sochi.

On the Registan, Samarkand.

A tea room in Samarkand.

A shashlyk restaurant in Samarkand.

A shepherd outside Samarkand.

At the Salyuktin mines on the outskirts of Samarkand.

A carpenter in Samarkand.

Fat tail sheep on the Golodnaya steppe.

Nazar Magomet, Golodnaya steppe. Note the doggie!

A Turkmen man posing with a camel loaded with sacks, probably of grain or cotton. Camel caravans remained the most common means of transporting goods in Central Asia well into the railroad era.

A young Bashkir.

A Bashkir switchman near the town of Ust' Katav on the Yuryuzan River between Ufa and Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountain region of European Russia.

Packaging department, Borzhom (today's Borjomi, Georgia).

A man in a courtyard, place unknown.

A shashlyk restaurant, Samarkand.

Doctors in Samarkand.

Mullahs by a mosque, Azizia, Batumi.

A Sunni Muslim man of undetermined nationality in Dagestan.

Finally, here is a black and white photograph, which nonetheless has very interesting subjects ...

Barbers in the Registan, Samarkand.

The Tatar Kiss

2009-03-13T07:14:00.003+01:00

Krupenichka, originally uploaded by punalippu.

Interesting tidbit of trivia about Russian ethnic jokes:

Totally invented accusations in these folkloric items show the same folk tendency to ascribe negative behavior to 'the other,' as is the case, for example, in British and American cultures. For instance, what is called a 'French kiss' in contemporary British and American cultures was named 'Tartar kiss' in medieval Russia [...]

Now, in what way is French (or Tatar!) kissing a "negative behavior", we may ask...

From Emil Draitser, Taking Penguins To The Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia, Wayne State University Press 1998 (GoogleBooks)

For further study, Draitser is quoting Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700, Cornell University Press 1989.

And the illustration? It's from the Russian fairytale "Krupenichka", as told by Nikolai Teleshov. The fair maiden Krupenichka is stolen by Tatars, who want to marry her off to their Khan. A wizard rescues her by changing her into a buckwheat seed - known as "tatar" in many languages (e.g. "tattari" in Finnish). (Found in the book Tulilind ("Firebird"), an Estonian collection of fairytales published in Tallinn 1951)

How to celebrate International Women's Day

2009-03-08T13:12:00.008+01:00

Today, March 8th, is International Women's Day. It was originally - and still is in many parts of the world - a political holiday to commemorate the struggle for women's rights, instituted by Socialists and Communists in Europe. In 1911, upon suggestion of German Socialist Clara Zetkin, International Women's Day was celebrated in some countries on March 19th (with the day before being the day of commemoration of those fallen in the 1848 March revolution in Germany).
When wives of workers and soldiers from the Petrograd neighbourhood Выборгская сторона went on strike on March 8th 1917 (February 23rd according to the Julian calendar), it was the spark that set the February revolution aflame. In honour of these women, the Second International Conference of Communist Women in Moscow 1921 set the date of the International Women's Day to be March 8th.
The Communist origins of the holiday have been bothering people in the USA, and an alternative history has been constructed, about which you can read more on Wikipedia.

In the Soviet Union and many other east bloc countries in the period after WWII, International Women's Day evolved into a non-political celebration of love for women. (Perhaps it was assumed that since men and women were already equal in the Soviet system, there was no need for the political dimension anymore?) Women are given flowers and chocolates, and there are special parties for women only. Like Mother's Day, Women's Day might typically be the only day of the year when a mother doesn't have to do all the housework.

There is a similar holiday for men, День защитника отечества (Defender of the Fatherland Day) on February 23rd. It was originally a day for celebrating the men and women who have served in the Soviet army, but has evolved into the men's counterpart of Women's Day, where men are given flowers and chocolates and TV broadcasts romantic war movies in the early evening.

We missed Defender of the Fatherland Day this year on Chirayliq, but mum sent me a link to a fun news story about International Women's Day in Russia ...

Apparently, Alexander Ostaschenko and Evgeny Ryndin from Barnaul in the Altai region "had pledged they would run around town naked if 3000 people went on their social networking internet page before International Women's Day on March 8. Two days before deadline already 4000 people had registered. A large crowd of people cheered as they arrived in the city centre, waving flags, posters and flowers." Temperatures were below zero.

I have so far failed to find any independent source for this, or the actual site or profiles of these guys, so we'll have to believe photographer Andrei Kasprishin from Reuters ...

Langston Hughes in Central Asia

2009-03-07T17:21:00.014+01:00

Thanks to the blog Moscow Through Brown Eyes, I was inspired to dig up some nice photos of American poet Langston Hughes' travels in early 1930's Soviet Central Asia. The Yale University Library has an online exhibition of Hughes' life (1902-1967) for starters.

In 1932, Hughes boarded the S/S Europa with a group of African-American actors and writers on their way to the Soviet Union. Their purpose was to make a film about the plight of black people in the United States, but after long and fruitless meetings with the Soviet producers, the whole project was scrapped.

Hughes took the chance to travel around Soviet-controlled Central Asia, areas that usually were not accessible to Westerners but that interested him for personal and political reasons. Hughes wanted to find a positive example of a "coloured South" to contrast with the Jim Crow south of the US. He met African-American engineers involved in the modernization of the Soviet cotton industry. He also met the Hungarian intellectual Arthur Koestler, who at the time was a member of the Communist party, but had already begun to develop his critical eye for the system. Hughes was a Communist sympathizer, although no party member - for him the dream of racial equality was so important that he preferred to look away from the harsh realities of famine and oppression. His self-critical period would come later, after WW2.

That said... maybe he was just dazzled by all the chirayliq guys he met on his travels?

From Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Langston Hughes collection. Described as "Group photograph of unidentified men and women in Russia, possibly Uzbekistan". See the larger original here.

Young writers of Central Asia, Hughes in the middle. On the backside of the photo there are descriptions in Cyrillic, which the library hasn't bothered to decipher.

Hughes' surprise traveling companion, Arthur Koestler. View the whole image here, plus chicken. Apparently Koestler heard someone play jazz records (this article claims it was Sophie Tucker singing "My Yiddishe Mamme") at a guesthouse in Ashqabat and knocked at the door; imagine his astonishment to find the poet whose works he had admired already in Europe.

Karim Ahmadii is perhaps the name of this man who dedicated his portrait to Hughes in 1933.

This is what Hughes wished to see - a coloured man and a white man shaking hands. His superficial view of Soviet race relations is problematic but understandable from today's perspective. The photo is titled "Yusuf Nichanov".

Back in the United States, Hughes wrote an article on traditional Uzbek dance for Travel Magazine.

He especially admired the "teacup dance", which he simply called "raks" (from raqs, dance), and was intrigued by the batcha - danging boys dressed and made up like women. (More on traditional Uzbek dance here.)

And in case you thought Hughes only had an eye for the guy, here's Tamara Khanum, dancing teacher, first woman to perform without the veil in Uzbekistan. The fate of her colleague Nurkhon shows what a brave act this was.

Langston Hughes wrote about his travels in A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, a short book reprinted as recently as 2006 in Bishkek. There is an interesting discussion about Hughes and the re-publication at the Registan blog.

Blog Tip!

2009-03-07T15:32:00.003+01:00

Moscow Through Brown Eyes is a blog by "Buster", a graduate student and former Moscow resident, who combines experiences as an African-American in Russia with a broad interest in culture, society, literature, history and much more, which naturally results in a Chirayliq-heavy mix (as evident in the collection of attractive faces - Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois among others* - in the blog's title image).

Like Tinet, Buster has written a lot about migrant workers in Russia and other issues of social concern, but my favourite feature on MTBE is the recurring Russian Rap Friday. The last two videos have been especially sweet:

Rapper Huligan, Russian from Kazakhstan, gets to the roots with «Я провинциален» ("I'm Country").

Rapper-throatsinger Ondar sings for Tuva in Vladivostok, and Buster finds lots of yummy clips of Yul Brynner (Siberian-born Russian-Swiss-Mongolian-Roma, whom we probably should write about more) as side dishes to the main course.

*) Both Hughes and Du Bois, as well as many other African-American intellectuals, visited the USSR in the 1920's and 1930's. Hughes even travelled extensively in Central Asia in 1932, and visited China and Japan. Here's an article about how Langston Hughes' poetry survives in the school curriculum in Turkmenistan. It's also a very interesting re-telling of the chance meeting and ensuing companionship between Hughes and Arthur Koestler in the heart of Central Asia. There's also an incredible twist at the end of the story...