Janet Haven

Oh lucky me, experiencing Christmas as an American child. While I cried on Christmas mornings past when I got Kissing Barbie instead of Etch-a-Sketch, or a bright pink cable-knit sweater instead of the stripey Danskin legwarmers I craved, my Central European counterparts were spending the month of December dodging birch-switch beatings by the Krampus, St. Nick's evil sidekick in these parts. In my homeland, Christmas is a riskless experience for children, a mushy blend of holiday cheer and a strong sense of entitlement. Not so in Central Europe, where Mikulás showed up on December 6th* accompanied by (or according to some legends, preceeded by) a foul-breathed, forked-tongued creature who sought out the bad children and instilled terror and a sense of gratitude before, maybe, doling out the apples he lugged around on his back -- or maybe just taking the bad children away with him.

The Krampus (or Krámpusz, in Hungarian) appeared all across the Austro-Hungarian lands in one form or another. Often, he was rather unimaginitively depicted as a traditional Christian-style devil (horns, cloven hooves, forked tail or tongue, flaming red) on Krampus-themed Christmas postcards that circulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Leave it to the Weiner Wertstatte in Vienna to really get down to the essence of the Krampus in their version of the nasty fellow. This postcard, currently for sale on eBay for 1500 USD, shows us the Krampus as we'd like to remember him -- furry, stunted, behorned, and tongue-lollingly silly, giving a couple of fashionable Viennese kids a run for their money while fabulously Art Deco St. Nicholas looks on with approval. This particular Krampus card indicates a somewhat different relationship between St. Nick and his unpleasant friend than we might otherwise assume. Here, the monster seems positively beleagured by his duties of child-terrorizing, driven by his cruel, supervising taskmaster. Before I saw this card, I had always assumed that kindly St. Nick was a bulwark against the evils of the Krampus, not in collusion with the little beast. In fact, the Weiner Werkstatte seems to suggest from the patriarch's smug expression that the Krampus is really an employee of the Santa empire, clearing out the nastiest brats so that Szent Miklos could come in and drop off his gifts more efficiently across the Austro-Hungarian lands.

So, American children, be happy. In earlier days, the threat of coal in the stocking may have hung vaguely over naughty children, but let's face it --- Christmas in America is a time of national amnesia, when parents from coast to coast forget all offspring-related evils, from dishes left undone to neighborhood arson. The Krampus wouldn't let you off so easily, but he hasn't made it to your neck of the woods yet.

*In Hungary, holiday traditions of the Christian bent are confusing to begin with. Children in Hungary expect two days of present-giving in December. The first, Miklos Nap or Mikulás (Nicholas Day), falls on December 6th; Saint Nicholas, as might be expected, attends to this event. On the night of December 24th, the Baby Jesus shows up, dragging with him a tree and another round of gifts.

Posted by Janet at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Actually, it's not really a death match. Mel has Ukraine on the mat accordig to Google news, with 1800-and-counting stories covering all aspects of the alcoholic actor's anti-semitic rant and subsequent apologies versus the not-quite-500 stories on the resolution to the young democracy's mutli-month constitutional crisis. I had actually been quite pleased at the amount of coverage Ukraine's situation was getting until I compared it the ever-blossoming Gibson story.

Anyway, it's not just a matter of brute numbers. The endless Mel coverage means that every aspect of the crisis has been dissected for the public. Not so with the media coverage of the Ukranian resolution, which has been fantastically bad. With the exception of the International Herald Tribune's article I read on the issue, every major newspaper I've read has either misreported or under-reported the story. If I hadn't been in Kiev last week and had the situation explained to me by Ukranian colleagues, I would come away from the mainstream coverage of the situation understanding that Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution, had inexplicably turned his back on the party and appointed his arch nemesis, the Russian-backed Yanukovych, as prime minister. In fact, the parliamentary coalition of socialists, communists, and Yanukovych's Party of Regions (the Russian-leaning nationalists) nominated Yanukovych, meaning that as president of the country, Yushchenko was faced with a devil's bargain: either accept his rival as PM and try to work around him, or dissolve Parliament altogther and call new elections, which would almost certainly mean that he would not be re-elected as president -- by most accounts, he's done a pretty lousy job of being president and his ratings are in the single digits. Pretty rotten decision, but faced with that choice, it seems obvious why he would choose to do as he did. Now, that's a pretty straight-forward story. Why have I only read one article that explains it?

For useful information on understanding the situation Ukraine, follow Transitions Online's series of articles on the country, or the always thoughtful Neeka's Backlog.

Posted by Janet at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Back home here in Budapest, we have a semi-embarassing American ambassador: George Bush's cousin, George Walker. He's a nice enough guy, I've heard, even with a sense of humor. However, as the Prez's cousin, one wonders about his qualifications for the job**. Nevertheless, George (the Prez) seems to like him, or at least feel a familial draw, because he's decided to pay him a visit here in Budapest.

Dropping in on your cousin seems like a friendly thing to do, doesn't it? Let's review: currently I'm sitting in my office listening to helicopters circling the downtown. Instead of taking five minutes to walk to work this morning, I took nearly half an hour; I live in the sixth district and must cross one of the major arteries of the city, Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, to get to work. Turns out you can't cross Baj-Zsil right now: no pedestrians, no car traffic, no nothing. The fifth district, where POTUS is headed for very important slabs of Eszterhazy torta, is surrounded right now with a triple ring: cops, another line of cops, and a throng of hapless Pestieks trying desparately to get to work. (The fifth district is Budapest's Wall Street, so much of the banking and associated companies are within the ring of cops. As is my office.) I joined a group of sweaty, briefcase-clutching investment bankers moving from crosswalk to crosswalk, pleading with the cops to let us across to our offices. Finally, we found one who ushered a group of us from Erzsebet Ter to Oktober 6th, obviously an act of mercy. All this rumpus is of course following on the three day towing extravaganza that has cleared the inner city (including my street) of thousands of parked cars. The length of Bajcsy, Deak Ter, etc have been under police wraps since Monday night. And on top of that, all the guests in the Meridian Hotel on Deak Ter got uncerimoniously booted, no warning, on Monday night to make room for crowds of buzz-cut guys with ear pieces Subtle. Of course, maybe it is a decoy, and POTUS is actually staying elsewhere.

The real question, raised by the ever-astute Favorite Husband last night, is: where does it end? What's actually reasonable for a state visit? Is protecting the life of POTUS worth shutting down public transportation for hours, preventing people from working, closing Hungarian airspace, bringing in a rocket-proof motorcade and American helicopters, a thousand security dudes on top of all the Hungos who are going to be involved? What's a reasonable expense for the American and Hungarian people to bear? I live in a flat that overlooks Bajcsy where POTUS's rocketproof limo drove moments ago: my living room window is a perfect sniper's perch, as are thousands of others along the street. (Note to Secret Service: that's not a threat to POTUS, just an observation.) Would it be reasonable to make everyone who has a Bajcsy-facing window leave their apartments while POTUS drives by? Would it be reasonable to clear the downtown entirely and shut all businesses for the day? Do George and George really need to eat goose liver together in Budapest if it causes all this fuss, disarray, and inconvenience?

Two observations: based on the comments I heard on the street going to work, the anti-Bush rally planned at 4 pm this afternoon in front of the US embassy on Szabadsag Ter is probably going to be a lot bigger than it would have been if POTUS hadn't pissed off so many Pestieks by coming to town.

The second observation is that this POTUS has taken a lot of flak for not traveling enough, for staying home in America and receiving our allies in the White House. Following this experience, I have to say that I think this may have been one of his better decisions.

*POTUS= President of the United States, for those not into Secret Service lingo
**Continuing the theme, our next ambassador is slated to be George's (the Prez) ex-girlfriend.

Posted by Janet at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Favorite Husband and I spent the last week swanning around Andalusia, admiring the remains of Moorish Spain's clash of civilizations. It's a trip well worth taking, particularly if you're interested in the historical long view. As it happened, I was in Istanbul (not Constantinople) for work the week before the trip to Spain. The odd juxtaposition of visits to the Hagia Sophia and Seville's Alcazar or Grenada's Alhambra within a few days of each other is something that, I'm guessing, not many people have been lucky enough to do. Given the luxury, as I was, it's fascinating to consider these monuments side-by-side, in the context of both historical and modern Europe.

At one end of Europe is Justinian's tremendous Eastern Orthodox cathedral-cum-mosque, where tourists can still visit bits of the glorious mosaics of Chistendom. At the other end of the continent is Sophia's inverse: Spain's spectacular Islamic fortresses, where Christian kings vanquished Muslim tribes and then continued to reign, leaving the intricate Moorish design intact and adding the odd crucifix or Baroque ballroom just to remind everyone who was boss -- exactly as the Muslim conquerers did in the Hagia Sofia, on the other side of Europe. I've wondered on previous visits to Istanbul why this was: seems like it would be worth the trouble to take down the largest Christian church in the world, if you were the Muslim conquerer of a Christian city. But in fact, it seems that the Christian kings on the other side of the continent made the same calculation -- just make a few modifications, and move right in. Both sets of conquerers also celebrated their victory (eventually) by erecting tremendous monuments within site of the vanquished foes' structures: the Blue Mosque stands directly across from the Hagia Sophia, and Seville's massive cathedral next to the Alcazar, while you could throw a rock from the walls of the Alhambra and hit Grenada's central church.

The Hagia Sophia, the Alhambra, and the Alcazar are museums now, but I found it impossible to see any of them as the neutral space that museums usually are. A visitor cannot help but imagine the bitterness, rage, and thirst for vengence that each civilization must have experienced on being forced to abandon the physical spaces which embodied their beliefs, art, and culture. On visiting the Alhambra, we were told that the city's last Arabic defender, Baobil, wept as he fled the beloved palace while his mother offered him this advice: "Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man." Ouch. But indeed, the sense of victor and vanquished is still palpable at all three sites; perhaps more interesting, though, is the sense of history's ebb and flow. The battles that are being fought today, both ideologically and with terrible violence, are of course nothing new -- and we all know that. However, to be reminded so clearly, so physically, of Europe's endless expansions and contractions over the centuries is more than worth a trip to any of Europe's hazy borders.

Posted by Janet at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (50)

Hello, is this the EU? It would be super-great if the kids over in Brussels would act on the public outrage over the fraudulent election that has just occurred on your borders. Yes, you told the press that you were very, very, very angry indeed over how mean Lukashenka was to his populace, and that you might even do something really quite serious like banning visas to the EU for Belarussian officials. The only problem is, you guys already did that back in September 2004:

“In view of the apparent obstruction of justice and the absence of an investigation as requested, the European Union has decided today to restrict admission to its territory of those high officials who are considered primarily responsible for failing to initiate such an investigation and prosecution of the alleged crimes, as well as those who are considered by the Pourgourides report key actors in the disappearances and subsequent cover-up.”

“The EU calls once more on the Belarusian authorities, including on the President of the Republic of Belarus, to undertake the actions as requested by the EU.”

The EU reacted to the flawed elections and referendum by increasing visa restrictions (Council Common Position on Visa Ban - 6 December 2004):

“The scope of the restrictive measures imposed by Common Position 2004/661/CFSP should therefore be expanded to persons who are directly responsible for the fraudulent elections and referendum in Belarus on 17 October 2004 and those who are responsible for severe human rights violations in the repression of peaceful demonstrators in the aftermath of the elections and referendum in Belarus."

It didn't work so well, apparently. As it turns out, it's easier to fly to Moscow anyway if a Belarussian official has a hankering for a Gucci handbag, and besides, it gives him the opportunity to pay loving tribute to the overlord in person.

So maybe it's time to try something that hits a little closer to home, like banning bilateral trade with Belarus or figuring out serious ways to support the opposition through public inclusion in EU human rights/democracy activities.

Incidentally, the Vice-President of the European Parliament agrees with me, even more damningly referring to the EU's relationship til now with Belarus as "friendly". However, he sees Belarus as a security problem for the EU, which seems a little far-fetched. What Belarus is for the EU is a public relations problem; it's darn embarassing to have a Soviet strongman sitting on the other side of Poland. And that, I think, is one of the main reasons why Belarus has been invisible until the last week or so -- no one wants to talk about it. It also points to one of the major things that the EU can do in the coming months. Quite obviously, no one inside or outside of Belarus is going to care or remember if the Belarussian Deputy Minister of Agriculture can't make it to Paris for the weekend; people will remember if the EU and the European Parliament keep the issue of Belarus alive through public shaming and public reminders of the situation just to the East. Maintain the outrage, or Belarus will go invisible again.

Posted by Janet at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Speaking of the EU's troubled boarders, one of Hungary's (many) neighbors is Ukraine. One of Ukraine's more unfortunate distinctions is the rate at which HIV is being spread efficiently across its populace. Currently Ukraine has an exploding HIV-positive population, rivaled in Europe only by the Russian Federation. Human Rights Watch released a report at the beginning of this month called "Rhetoric and Risk: Human Rights Abuses Impeding Ukraine’s Fight Against HIV/AIDS". The report argues that while Ukraine has passed some of the most progressive (and controversial) HIV policies around (supporting anti-retroviral treatments, needle exchange programs, and drug replacement therapies), in practice, abuse of drug addicts and sex workers by police -- usually their first line of contact with the government -- essentially renders those protections null and void:

It is a tragic and deadly irony that for most Ukrainians, these protections exist only on paper and are systematically undermined by chronic human rights abuse within the criminal justice and health systems.

Now, I know very little about the HIV and Ukraine; it's an issue that I'm aware of, but don't really follow. I'm writing about it now not because I came across the Human Rights Watch report in the normal range of my online reading, but rather because I came across something far more arresting: the photography of Brent Stirton. Stirton is a South African photographer whose work shows up on the BBC, in international competitions, and so forth. His website is a collection of photojournalist projects he's undertaken around the world. A recent addition is called "Ukraine: Sex, Drugs, Poverty, & HIV" (to find this and other photo essays, go to Stirton's site, then choose "Projects". Note, however, that a number of the images are gruesome, and nearly all of them are disturbing). The Ukranian collection includes both photographs and a short narrative explaining who each person pictured is. Stirton favors people; most of his photos are essentially portraits meant to establish not just a set of circumstances but an impression of the person existing in those circumstances. And the stories that unfold are in his sets of pictures are terrifying, largely because they are told not just visually, but extremely personally. Perhaps most arresting to me is the subset of images that tell a story of an older Ukrainan woman living with her two grown sons, both of whom are HIV-positive, and are dealing heroin out of her apartment. She is dependent on them, being elderly, and so cannot either throw them out or curtail their activities. The juxtaposition of the familiar Eastern European babushka in the flowered dress with youthful, damaged sons is deeply troubling, and illustrates powerfully why the cycle of drug addiction and HIV effects a populace across generations and far beyond the addict themselves.

The reason, more generally, why I find this interesting is from an information perspective. Because OSI and other international organizations support moniitoring and investigative work of the sort that Human Rights Watch does regularly, there is a tremendous amount of information -- and high-quality information at that -- generated. The vast majority of it ends up in reports, like the one I've linked to above; those reports are picked up by and quoted by more socially concious news agencies (the BBC, Radio Free Europe, and so on tend to quote HRW reports frequently). They're printed up, filed in offices of intenational development workers, and that's generally it. The information that has been so carefully dug up for these reports is simply not very persistant -- it hits once, and sinks. Aligning the careful reporting that HRW and other monitoring organizations do with other media, easily distributed over the internet, seems like an excellent way to give that information a longer life and wider distribution. Images and visual representations of information are powerful, and cause people to "get" an issue in a way that they never will from skimming (or not, as the case may be) a lengthy report. HRW has done this in other reports -- tying some of their work on Darfur to images drawn by childen in refugee camps, or creating maps to accompany their report on civilian casualties in Iraq ("Off Target"). Clearly, these kinds of combinations make human rights reporting and research much more accessible to the layman, and subsequently more persistant as an issue of concern.

Posted by Janet at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (44)

Belarussians go to the polls tomorrow, although all the information coming out of the country seems to suggest that no one is actually taking the election seriously. Nor should they; both br23 and the NY Times report that totalitarian dictator Lukashenka has choked off all independent publications, closing the final window yesterday with the seizure of at least 200,000 copies of Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will") arriving from a publisher in Russia. Luka has also outlawed public demonstrations, threatening 25 years in jail or death. The opposition is planning exactly the kind of demonstration that the Belarussian government fears tomorrow night, after the polls close.

If the demonstration tomorrow goes forward, the government has essentially promised a bloodbath, blaming (in advance!) any government reaction, no matter how violent, on the opposition. The EU has counter-promised a "strong international reaction" if there is a crackdown on opposition rallies. I wonder if it will be as strong as the "international reaction" over the past ten years to the disappearances, murders, and crushing of political dissent under Lukashenka?

Posted by Janet at 06:43 PM | Permalink

Because I'm sitting in the Warsaw Airport waiting for a first-cancelled-now-scandalously-late Malev flight back home to Budapest, I'm missing the "Solidarity with Belarus" concert that everyone I know in Warsaw is at right now. After complaining last week about the invisibility of Europe's tragic child Belarus, it's been interesting to spend the last few days in Warsaw and discover how angry the Poles are about their neighbor to the east. My sample is, of course, biased; I've spent the last few days with Poles and varied expats in Poland who work for NGOs, and who care deeply about the spread of democracy in a region that hasn't seen enough of it over the past fifty years. That said, I've been interested to see that the front pages of local papers are carrying stories about the upcoming Belarussian election, and that central Warsaw was plastered this afternoon with the poster at the right, a call to Poles to attend at "Solidarity with Belarus" concert being held this evening.

Incidentally, according to a Polish friend, the "Solidarity" of the title is no accident: several of the Poles central to the campaign and the organizing of the concert are children of Polish Solidarity leaders. They grew up in the 1990's, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relaxation of martial law in Poland. As my friend noted, they "missed their revolution". What their parents brought to Poland, they want to help bring to Belarus. Not a bad legacy for Solidarity -- not only a democratic country, but also a population with a sense of the job still unfinished.

Furthrer reading: for a good review of Poland's recent history, check out Timothy Garton Ash's recent useful article in the New York Review of Books, The Twins' New Poland.

Posted by Janet at 06:37 PM | Permalink

The European Union spends a lot of time sweating over its borders, notably that Turkey's potential inclusion means neighboring unsavories like Iraq. However, Europeans seem to easily forget that their borders now rub up again Belarus, land of Aleksander Lukashenka's totalitarian dictatorship. This is a country that rarely makes it into the news, that has few bloggers to amplify its plight, and that is currently experiencing an election run-up should make Europe cringe in shame.

Briefly, a Belarussian primer: the country has been governed by the increasingly dictatorial Lukashenka since he was elected (in what are considered relatively fair elections) in 1994. Since then, the country has descended into an exaggerated version of the familiar horrors: disappeared (and presumably dead) opposition candidates and supporters, state harassment of all opposition political activity, three years imprisonment for organizing public meetings, a consitutional amendment to allow Lukashenka to hold office into eternity, a resurrection of the KGB with all best practices in place, and an army of un-uniformed government-supported thugs who attack and intimidate anyone working against Luka.

As the March elections close in, Luka is making sure that the opposition stands no chance. According last week's article in the IHT by Steven Lee Meyers, Luka has made it clear through televised addresses that the police have orders to open fire on opposition protests. "Any attempt to destabilize the situation will be met with drastic action," he is quoted as saying. "We will wring the necks of those who actually doing it, and those who are instigating these acts."

One of the few Belarussian bloggers writing in English, br23 reported the following on Friday::

In the morning, an opposition presidential candidate Alexander Kazulin (Kozulin) came to register as a participant in the so called All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a Soviet-style “party congress” staged by president Lukashenka (which he uses to show in front of the TV cameras “massive people’s support”, in a Soviet way). Lukashenka and all his gang was there.

Alexander Kazulin entered the building, requesting to be registered as a participant because his party (Hramada) has nominated him for this. Almost immediately, Lukashenka’s guards attacked him. They knocked him down to the ground and started kicking him with army boots.

Kazulin was apparently bundled off to the police station, and eventually released after being charged with damaging a picture of Lukashenka, and trying to hold a press conference. A journalist who left the scene to file a story (bearing pictures) was apparently shot at by police, and then later arrested (according to br23) for "resisting arrest".

To be clear, this is happening in a country that shares a border with Poland.

Belarus' invisibility to both Europe and western media is amazing, although in line with the invisibility of other post-Soviet states that continue to suffer under leftover totalitarian systems. Presumably, the picturesque color revolutions of Georgia and Ukraine sell more papers than the struggling opposition movements of Belarus, Turkemenistan and Uzbekistan. Further, these countries are legitimately hard to write about -- interviews with relevant people are nearly impossible to arrange (and can endanger opposition leaders), in winter it's difficult to travel in these countries, and, of course, their respective dictators tend to kick the news agencies out and deny visas to journalists, which means that much reporting has to be done with external experts. This is, of course, all the more reason to cover these countries, but it doesn't make the job any easier for journalists. Which is why the bloggers like br23 and others blogging from inside these countries are invaluable. Let's hope they manage to stay online through the election.

Posted by Janet at 10:33 AM | Permalink

My friend and colleague Jerzy Celichowski has the soul of an artist; his Budapest flat is filled with pictures and paintings that give the feel of an ecletic, homey gallery as well as a family's residence. Over the upright piano, Jerzy has hung a painting of wise-looking dog with a tiny erection surrounded by cherubs; the picture is unframed and both simple -- almost like a child's drawing -- and strange enough to pause in front of, repeatedly. I always spend several minutes admiring the dog when I visit Jerzy and his wife Orsi.

The artist, Emil Für, is Hungarian, and tends to paint angels, Central European Jewish men, mobile phones, circus escapees, and potent devils, often in surprising combinations. I confess I have no idea what the paintings are about, but his paintings are by far my favorite from a contemporary Hungarian artist (though barely surpassing the recent enthusiasm in our household for that other fabulous Hungarian artist, photographer Dezső Szabó.)

Für's paintings combine a flat, folk-art sensibility with characters who use modern appliances (mobile phones are clutched even by angels in his world) and take off their clothes at the drop of a hat. When they do wear clothes, they are at extremes: either goofy (see the devil from "Tempation" to the right, clad only in spotted blue underpants) or, as in the case of many of Für's Jews, religiously black, white, and providing neck-to-ankles coverage.

Angels are everywhere in Für's pictures, either as subject or standing guard in pairs above the action. Many of Für's subjects are Jewish, but it's entirely unclear whether the angels are as well. I usually think of angels in terms of Christian iconography, but angels of course litter the Old Testament, stepping out of burning bushes and wrestling with troublemakers. They also, I've just discovered, appear throughout Jewish teachings, although the interpretation of their role is varied. Angel in Hebrew (mal'ach) means "messenger", and indeed, it seems that angels continue to play that role both in the the Torah and in Jewish writings. However, Rabbi David Wolpe, in an article on angels and Judaism, explains that some medevial Jewish commentators explained angels as " necessary because they perform tasks that are beneath the dignity of God's 'personal involvement.'" That is, they act as a sort of PA/project manager for God. I like this explanation best, in light of Emil Für's paintings, because it seems to make sense: there's so much watching over in his art that God himself couldn't possibly get involved -- but the angels themselves, armed with mobile phones for quick reporting, are nearly always present.

More recent paintings and drawings can be found here.
Emil Für's site is here.

Posted by Janet at 09:11 AM | Permalink

Poor Ukraine. As the country that bore the brunt of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine is still paying for it, both in the health of its citizens and in the resulting cleanup. According to chernobyl.com, an information website set up by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and UNDP (United Nations Development Program) to track the effects of the disaster, the Ukrainan government still spends 5-7% of the national budget dealing with the consequences. And now they're struggling with their Russian gas bill in the middle of winter, while their bad-tempered neighbor to the south tries to decide how nasty to be.

There are, however, a couple of somewhat cheering bits of fallout in the Gazprom mess. One is simply the fact that Russia has gotten so cranky with Ukraine: Putin could not more clearly highlight Ukraine's moves towards an open, democratic political system, and away from Russian patronage and control. Quite simply, Ukraine isn't Russia's obedient poodle any longer -- Russia only props up subservient gangsters like Belarus' creep-in-chief, Alexander Lukashenko, who pays 48 dollars per 1000 cubic meters of Russian gas. Romania, Hungary, and other countries formerly under Soviet influence have long since moved on to paying market price (220-230 USD/1000 cubic meters) for their gas coming from Mother Russia.

Another cheering thought for Ukraine is their coming debutante ball as a real energy market. Whatever happens in this specific showdown, Ukraine will eventually have to pay market price for gas like other European democracies. What this means is that Ukraine, a country with severe winters and 50 million people, will become a true open market in time. Russia may now have Ukraine in a corner, but a few years down the road, that won't be the case -- other producers of natural gas, particularly in the Middle East, will be in a position to offer competitive rates to the country.

A final thought, which is more puzzling that cheering, is that of Russia's hubris. It's not crazy of Russia to ask that Ukraine, no longer under the Russian thumb, pay what other countries do. As noted above, it's a compliment of sorts. Given, Ukraine is a poorer country than Hungary or Romania, but one of the steps towards Europe is to get itself off of the Russian subsidy. However, it's quite strange that Russia, trying so actively to position itself as a stable world leader in energy, would do something so unsettling to their major customer (Europe, that is) that EU countries responded unilaterally by telling Russia to get its act together and stop throwing a tantrum. Russia, as of tonight, has been backed into the face-losing act of both turning the gas back on (for the EU) and of whining that Ukraine is stealing gas going through the pipeline to Europe (which is probably true, to some extent, but isn't really the point). The question is, what did Russia think was going to happen by threatening western Europe's energy supply? It seems, from the country's reaction, that they either didn't really consider the consequences, or that they believed that Ukraine would cave quickly to their pressure, making this a non-issue in Europe. And if they were wrong about that...

Posted by Janet at 07:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The banner image above is a picture taken from my living room window. The statue sits on the roof of a 1920's/30's heading-towards-modernist building on the corner of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Bajcsy Köz. I've never been able to find anyone who could tell me the name of the artist, date of completion, or most compellingly, where I could find pictures of the day they hauled him up there -- my photo doesn't provide much context, but he's a significant fellow. It must have been quite a job.

Posted by Janet at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Back in the fall, American historian David McCullough gave a guest lecture at the Central European University here in Budapest. Although I missed the lecture, regrettably, several of my friends attended and came away bearing a message from the Professor: read Don Quixote. Don Q. is the ultimate everyman, the first (and many believe, last) word in dreamy bumbling; he is interred in what is widely considered the original "modern" novel. Professor McCullough reminded his audience that John Adams carried a copy of the great DQ in his saddlebag as he travelled a not-yet-United States before the Revolutionary War.

On conferring among ourselves, Friends and I discovered that within our group of five over-educated individuals, only one had read DQ previously, and she had read it in Hungarian -- but was game to move on to English. We each obtained a copy of Edith Grossman's recent translation of Don, apparently regarded among Quixotists as the very, very best rendering of 16th century colloquial Spanish into snappy-but-not-too-modern-sounding English. Our DQ group, comprised of a refugee from the publishing biz, a movie theatre mogul, a professor of Jewish Studies, two professional antiquers, and me, meets every few weeks over dinner to discuss a chunk of reading. We're about a third of the way through the book at this point -- which, if you haven't hefted it lately, is a real doorstop, even in paperback.

For me, the modernity of Don Quixote has been surprising. The book is unswerving in its comic violence and vulgarity -- even though I read far and wide, I still have a bias that somehow older books are more, well, genteel -- too much Thomas Hardy, presumably. DQ's main characters fart, shit, and fondle their way across southern Spain; in the name of chivalry, they engage in pointless battles with hapless travellers that result in lopped ears, cracked ribs, showers of blood, and occasional comas. After each incident, Sancho Panza, the faithful valet, ties Don Q. back into the saddle on his long-suffering horse, and follows on to the next confrontation. Sound familiar? I'm guessing that the experience of reading the book for, i.e., John Adams, was not an uplifting stroll through contemporary literature; rather, it was the reality show of the era, something akin to a bored businessman's entertainment in a Holiday Inn: he tunes into "Jackass" on MTV before crashing for the night.

Which brings me to the question: why does Professor McCullough recommend to all his audiences that they run, not walk, to pick up a copy of DQ? My experience in reading the book is similiar to the first time I saw Egon Schiele's paintings. Schiele was part of the Viennese Expressionist movement of the early 20th century; he died young, at 28, during the flu epidemic following World War I. His incredible legacy of paintings, many of which are at the Ludwig Museum in Vienna, are shocking in their violence and modernity; to me, Schiele's work seems to predict both the zeitgeist and the major art movements of the 20th century. How did he know? Or more to the point, do modern museum-goers think of Schiele when they visit a contemporary installation at the Tate, and muse that it's all been done before?

Back to Don Quixote, and why Professor M. suggests it to his audiences. As a historian, he must regularly encounter the patterns of history, in political action, popular culture, religion, philosophy. In ploughing through DQ, I can't help but think that he recommends the book as a historical lesson in patterns of culture, in encouraging the discovery that we, in the 21st century, aren't so far off in taste or interests from a Spanish readership of 1605. Or maybe he wants readers to experience a sense of Cervantes' predictive powers in both defining and parodying a modern world, as I did standing in front of Schiele's paintings in Vienna.

Posted by Janet at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)