Ville Haapasalo is a popular actor in Russia. In Finland, he has recently become famous for his TV documentaries about the Silk Road and the states that became independent after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now Finnish television has started to show a new series about the Finno-Ugric minorities in the Russian Federation. Today, I am watching the first episode of "Suomensukuiset 30 päivässä" (The Finnic Relatives in 30 Days - more exactly, the series focuses on the Mari, the Erzya and Moksha, the Komi, the Udmurt, the Khanty and Mansi).
Haapasalo tries very hard to act like an ordinary ignorant guy, but the schedule of the series shows that somebody has been doing some proper research. As the starting point for his journey, he chooses Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, and devotes much time to the special cultural and religious mix of the thousand-year-old city. It is a necessary historical lesson for the Finnish audience who may not know about the role of Islam in Russian history, and the close contacts between the speakers of Finno-Ugric and Turko-Tatar languages. In fact, their fate has often been intertwined - their cultures have mixed with each other as much as with the Slavic-speakers; languages and religions have been switched back and forth. But this is a long story, and in this post, I will only show some
entertaining screencaps, which do not reflect the full scope of the
first episode.
Ville Haapasalo meets an imam in Kazan, who reminds us of the necessity to teach children not to discriminate people according to race, nationality or religion. This interesting conversation contrasts a conflict-torn Europe with a harmonious Tatarstan - I won't go into much more detail about the complicated reality behind those images, but there are certainly lessons to be learned from the Tatar balancing act.
Talking about the many nationalities living and working in Kazan: "Everyone can do something for their nation." Farid is Ville's guide in Kazan. He is an event organizer and a perfect diplomat, a Tatar in other words ;)
Boys cheering for the football club Rubin Kazan.
Ville also visits a stable with the "fastest horses of the world". Many of them seem to be gifts to the former premier of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiyev. The horses have their own solarium...
The akhal-teke Nurik is a gift from Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan. He refuses to do tricks on command...
Random doggy (for Tinet).
One problem with this programme is that we don't learn the names of a lot of important people whom Haapasalo interviews. Here are two hobby ethnographers who collect folklore among the Mari people and publish their results on their own website, for the interest of the general public, as Ville himself notes. So why not make it available for us?
One of the ethnographers looks a lot like Rudolf Nureyev in profile, only with dark hair. He also skipped the glass of vodka that came with the dinner. I wonder if he is Tatar? Of course, they both could be - many Tatars enjoy vodka, too...
This was only half of the programme, but if you live in Finland you can watch the whole thing here.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
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 ...
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!
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.
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...
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 is the Uighur word for 'handsome, pretty, beautiful, attractive'. This blog concerns itself with the handsomeness of Central Asian men, and not only. From the Black Sea to Kamchatka, from the Kara Sea to Himalaya, this is a gallery celebrating the rugged charm of the men from the steppes, mountains, deserts and taigas.
Questions? Suggestions? Want to submit your own photos? Feel free to contact blogmaster Tinet.
Many of the photographs and other materials featured on this blog are by us. Works that we don't own the rights to are used within the concept of Fair Use as "quotations".
But if you do not wish to see your work here, E-mail Tinet and she'll remove it.
About us
Tinet - after many years of studying among other things the Russian language and the cultural history of Russia, the Soviet Union and the Middle East, she has moved to one of the many cities of her dreams (Berlin, Germany) and works as a gun for hire for various publishing companies with typesetting, graphic design, translating and writing, besides drawing comics about funny Russians. She dreams of making big fat richly illustrated coffee table books about the images of Central Asian, Caucasian or Russian men from a cultural historic angle.
Ainur - Ph.D. of History at the University of Lund, Sweden, who in her research has focused on nationalism, identity and stereotypes, mainly in the context of Finnish views on Swedes. She also draws historically correct comics about the Jazz age in the 1920's, which also deal with nationalism, identity and stereotypes, in a quite entertaining way.
Tinet and Ainur are sisters, and their ethnic background is as follows: 62.5% Finnish, 25% Mishär Tatar, 12.5% Kale (Finnish Roma).
