Category Archives: Rus’

Amelia, Baikal, Moscow, Outside the Box, Rus', St Petersburg

welcome to my “blog”

Quote June 9, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

sweatshirt says “non-blogger” in Russian (неблоггер)

I am trying to inspire a sense of childlike wonder in my reader with my poems and sketches. I try to do this in three ways: by depicting supernatural events, by invoking a very personal and confessional tone, and by illustrating the natural world as a place of secrets and magic. When I was younger, I ardently believed in faeries and magic, likely as a coping mechanism to escape my abusive home life. I would go looking for hidden worlds in nature to escape into, and fantasize crossing over into some mythical realm and leaving my own reality behind.

The assignment for the Russian OCS program was to write seven blog posts. I decided to do my own take on the assignment because I knew accurately and cohesively documenting the real events and experiences of this trip would be extremely hard for me. My classmates have done an amazing job creating a log of important events and moments on this trip. I know if I tried to do the same I would slip into lying, leaving important details out, or getting completely lost in my writing.

So I chose to do a “blog” of poems and sketches. For me, poetry has always been a comfortable medium to document important events in my life while being able to embellish the narrative, stretch the truth, and pull the setting away from the “real” world and closer to a fantastical one. My sketches are also not very representative. On my blog you’ll find a girl with blue skin, pink water and a purple midday sky. I wanted to include them because I felt strongly about having a visual medium on my blog that attempted the same goals as my poetry. Most people look at art much more than they read poetry, and as someone with dyslexia I know it can be hard to read anything at all, let alone artistic writing. Therefore I wanted to include sketches on my blog along with the poetry to try to present the same message from my poems in a different way that might be more understandable, comfortable, or accessible for readers.

Where did my poems and sketches come from? The sources are as varied as stepping into wet sand and ruining my shoes at Lake Baikal, the history of prostitutes in St. Petersburg, or my classmate Nick’s passion for bird-watching. The majority of my poems and sketches were created in the moment while I was viewing each subject.

In Buryatia, the phrase “absolutely no one bothers you” repeated over and over in my head as we were driving through a vast dry landscape. I contradicted that statement later in the poem with the sand “bothering” me in my attempt to paint a complex portrait of my trip to Buryatia. In St. Petersburg I wrote down “canal girls” when I saw the area of the city where Sonia, a virtuous prostitute character from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, lived. I wanted to compare St. Petersburg prostitutes to the mist from public fountains that purify the city’s air. Because of my afore-mentioned dyslexia, I don’t read much poetry but I am almost constantly listening to music, especially folk music, spoken-word inspired rap, and alternative. I try to pay close attention to the consonant sounds, rhythm, rhyme of my poems. Listening to music strongly influenced me in Siberia when wrote “My girl, the bird”; I imagined that it could be something little kids could chant while jumping rope. I also imagined that someone might secretly act out the instructions in the poem to see if it worked.

In terms of my sketches, “a little boat” and “women of moscow” series (i; ii; iii) were both created “en plein aire”, meaning in the moment I was viewing the subjects. I wanted my image of the boat to be barely representational, sunstruck and filled with light to express the image as seen through the eyes of many weary but wonder-filled travelers in foreign lands. I was especially drawn to the Russian flag (visible in the upper-right corner of the composition) that grounded the boat geopolitically in what would otherwise have been an ephemeral space. With the “women of moscow” I was not concerned with creating perfectly accurate female portraits; instead, I wanted to express the qualities of my subjects that stood out to me through color association– red for strength, blue for innocence, and purple for mystery and secrecy.

Overall I hoped I could bring readers “through the looking glass” into a world that is partly Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Siberia, and partly a magical dreamland. I captured my experiences on the OCS program in the ways I know best, and I want to thank everyone who read this blog.

Alexis, Rus', Suzdal

Small Town Traditions

April 29, 2019 shucka Leave a comment

Living in Russia’s capital, I am exposed to only a glimpse of Russian life and what this vast country has to offer. I am surrounded by a variety of museums, parks, restaurants, cafes, etc. Living in this giant metropolis allows me to explore the history and culture through the vast number of establishments available to me. However, it also limits my own idea of Russia and Russian culture because it is only based on what I see and experience in Moscow. Fortunately for me, I recently embarked on a weekend getaway to two smaller towns, Vladimir and Suzdal. These towns allowed me to enhance my knowledge of Russian life by providing me a different perspective on what life in Russia can look like for people who aren’t living in its capital. It was in these small towns that I appreciated the traditions of Russian culture and the importance of its history.

To begin our journey, we departed on a three-hour train ride from Moscow to Vladimir. Already on the train, I began to notice our descent away from the skyscrapers, cafés, metro, and overall bustling city life. The buildings quickly disappear and are replaced by trees, parks by fields, and apartment buildings by small houses.

It is around evening when we arrive in Vladimir. When I step off the train, I am engulfed by a drastically different atmosphere. The number of people in the station has diminished. Additionally the shops encircling the station are limited. Our hostel is a quick walk from the station. We walk down a dirt path where few cars drive past. Already, I can sense the slower pace of life this town has in comparison to Moscow. When we arrive at our hostel and settle in, I take off my shoes in order to put on my slippers, a Russian custom, and head upstairs to rest.

The next day, we embarked on our adventure to an even smaller town, Suzdal. Our one day there highlighted the importance of small towns and their history through its preservation and traditions. I would describe our time there as a nearly perfect one. To get there, we had to take a thirty minute bus ride from Vladimir. The ride there included amazing views of open fields. It is a very walkable town, with a beautiful river running through it. It is also filled with an assortment of historical buildings and museums. For this reason, Suzdal is a prime example of historical preservation. The town feels as if time has stopped here. From each direction, you can see a religious building, whether that be a church, cathedral, or monastery. This is illustrative of Suzdal’s rich history as the religious center of medieval Rus. For instance, by the 14^th century, it had over 50 churches. Preservation of this town’s history is revealed through its citizens. For example, you can take a horse carriage around the center, shoot a bow and arrow as the Russians once did, and purchase one of the hundreds of antiques available in the city square.

The traditions of this town truly makes it unique. For example, multiple vendors here sell медовуха, а Russian alcoholic drink made with honey. Another unique aspect of this town are its twin churches. Located throughout the town, twin churches are built side by side, a larger one for summer standing alongside a smaller one for winter. In addition, this town offers a domestic museum, which represents what typical huts looked like in Suzdal. In this house are traditional 17^th century furniture and decorations. Here you can see a traditional stove, the most important piece of the house in these huts because of the warmth it brought. It was also where the eldest member of the family slept. Likewise, the museum has icons on display in the corner where they are traditionally kept. Lastly, the bell tower and the ringing of the bells in the city represent the city’s religious traditions and are an important feature of Russian history and culture through the beautiful music they make.

Our day ended here with a walk back to the train station with the sun slowly setting. It was on this walk that I could truly appreciate the small traditions Suzdal preserves in order to illustrate its vast history. Suzdal allowed me to see a different side of Russian life outside its bustling capital. Likewise, it made me appreciate the laid-back notion all small towns seem to have. Suzdal, to me, captured the importance of historical preservation and natural beauty.

Ian, Rus', Vladimir

Old Rus, New Russia

April 28, 2019 belli Leave a comment

Click to View Panorama

A thin tongue of multilane highway runs into town, gleaming with cars, as a cloud of smoke rises in the distance from agricultural spraying. Directly below is a nest of new apartment buildings. And, just peeking out in the right corner, about 100 feet from where you stand, is the Dormition Cathedral–built in the 12th century.

This is the view at the edge of Vladimir: Old Rus and its storied history nestled in a major hub of contemporary Russia. This contrast–in the former capital of the Old Rus, no less–is certainly strange, even jarring. Not shown in the panorama is what I considered the most surprising contrast; directly facing the front of the cathedral is a McDonald’s.

Coffee cup with Russian text — A refreshing mocha from the Vladimir McDonald’s. (PC: Claire Williams)

A golden-domed church with belltower to the left — Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir (PC: Hd Ellen)

Within are distinctive frescos by Andrei Rublev, painted in the 15th century. Of special note is his Last Judgement, painted just above the exit to remind believers of the consequences of sin as they leave the church. Rublev’s work is much tamer than most (compared with Michelangelo’s work, being weighed up by God looks like a breeze), but his muted blues and grays are equally arresting. As I began to leave the church, I saw it and froze, and I found it difficult to push myself back out into modern Vladimir.

Fresco with christ surrounded by saints on a blue background — The Last Judgement at The Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir (PC: Andrew Gould)

The Dormition, sitting smack dab in the middle of a modern city, was our last stop on our excursion. We started just outside town at the Svyato-Bogolubovskoye Women’s monastery, where the appearance of modernity is less pronounced. The newest buildings are from 19th century, including the blue-domed church, but within are the remains of the palace of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the prince responsible for raising the city to the capital of the northern Rus.

A blue-domed church and matching belltower — Svyato-Bogolubovskoye Women’s Monastery

The palace itself is now a reminder of a much less triumphal history: in a still-extant staircase, Bogolyubsky had his arm cut off by restive nobility before being dragged into the street to die. Though grisly, such an end might not have been wholly unanticipated; Bogolyubsky himself had not lived a peaceful life. What brought Vladimir to prominence was his 1169 sack of Kiev, which had been the heart of Old Rus. Despite overthrowing Kiev, the city where the Rus were baptized in 988, Bogolyubsky eventually became a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a vision of the Mother of God that inspired him to found the monastery, and the icon within became the central miracle working icon of the Russian state. Here, as I watched the nuns file by, I felt less the contrast between ancient and modern–with the exception of the Soviet era, Bogolyubovo has been in continuous operation–and more the contrasting but inseparable forces of violence and Christianity in the world of the Old Rus.

Click to View Panorama

Between our visits to the monastery and the Dormition cathedral, we saw the last of our three churches: the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, about a 20-minute walk from Svyato-Bogolubovskoye through an idyllic field. Thick-walled to keep it warm or cool as needed–cool enough to see your breath on the hot day we visited–the church both within and without appears distinctly solid, its squat simplicity a reminder that not all Orthodox churches aspire to the theatrical onion domes of Saint Basil’s on Red Square. The interior is simple, just white walls with a couple of mosaic icons in the Byzantine style.

Seeing the history of the Rus today is not a straight look at the world recorded in the Chronicles but a collision between Old Rus and new Russia. One day in Vladimir wasn’t enough to take it all in, but seeing these three churches taught me to be a bit less confident I already know what there is to know about the rich heritage of Rus’ religion and culture. I’ll end with an image I took just two days ago in Moscow on Tverskoi Boulevard. It’s a monument to Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow–and none other than the father of Andrei Bogolyubsky. Even here, amidst the hustle and bustle of downtown Moscow, Old Rus and new Russia collide, and the history of Vladimir is never far away.

Monument of man on horse, right arm extended — Monument to Yuri Dolgoruky

Amelia, Murom, Rus', Suzdal, Vladimir

Poem about Rus’–the messenger

Quote April 28, 2019 blairsmitha 1 Comment

I’ve been his messenger for some time now.

And brown letter in my hand, walking across the wet morning field,

I feel like I’m hanging from a golden chain.

Of course I read them,

just like I steal a moment to spread my body across the exotic carpet,

like I hide fruit under my clothes.

Someone told me to tell him, if every bone in his body is split in two

and tears well in both his eyes,

I wouldn’t even know to deliver letters to a damp and quivering slope that was once a man.

Of course I read them, just like when I am almost alone at night,

I stare into the fire and cry tears of gold.

Someone told me to tell him that he alone split the cosmos down the middle

and caused a deadly rain of stars

and does he even know? And does he feel sorry?

Can you chase smoke away? Have you ever tried?

Someone told me to tell him that he’s a mold-covered boulder

that should be hewed again and again and again,

that there’s a nation of men ready to kill him one hundred thousand times over.

I return at night. The moon hangs from a starry chain.

I feel like I’m a prairie fire

the moment before it explodes in a flood of light.

Amelia, Rus', Vladimir

the way there

Image April 28, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

I saw birch trees and Siberian pine on the train ride to Vladimir. I tried to capture the fast movement of the train with black trees and a bright full moon.

Amelia, Rus'

Palm Sunday

Image April 28, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

Claire, Rus', Suzdal, Vladimir

Living in a Place of Beauty

April 28, 2019 williamsc Leave a comment

I grew up in a place that I consider to be incredibly beautiful. America’s Pacific Northwest is a temperate rainforest between the Pacific and the Cascades filled with mountains, waterfalls, beaches, and old-growth trees, where the landscape remains green and growing all year long. When I travel (which has mostly been in the US), I am accustomed to measuring the beauty of a place by the grandeur of its natural features, comparing a new place to my home. For example, during my first year in Northfield, Minnesota, I was constantly aware of the aspects of the landscape of Minnesota that were different from what I was used to. To the annoyance of all my friends, I moaned and groaned constantly about the extreme weather, starkly delineated seasons, overall flatness, and absence of conifers.

The view from my front porch in Portland… look at all those lovely conifers!

View of Mount Hood and the Columbia river from the plane to Carleton this year

Last weekend our group traveled to Vladimir and Suzdal, our first exploration outside of Moscow. On the train and bus rides, I watched the landscape pass by, and made my usual quick judgement of the aesthetic beauty of this new place. It was very flat and (at this time of year) colorless. If you took away the ancient cities, this area would not look too different from the area around Northfield, which I complained about above. But looking back, my overwhelming impression of Vladimir and Suzdal is that they were incredibly beautiful. Here, I encountered a new type of beauty, one that I have not seen since the last time I was in Europe. Unlike in Oregon or Minnesota, the modern residents of these ancient cities live surrounded by the beauty of old, glorious, manmade architectural creations, a very different daily experience of beauty than mine, which is composed of monumental natural features.

Landscape near Vladimir… fewer mountains and conifers.

In Portland, the skyline is nice, I guess, but it can hardly compete with the snow capped peaks of Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens that rise above it. Any Oregonian would probably agree with me that buildings such as our beloved “Big Pink” in downtown can hardly compete with one of our natural wonders, such as Multnomah Falls or Neakhahnie Mountain. These buildings are mostly big rectangles of metal, glass, and concrete, built without reference to the natural world. The natural landscape surrounding Vladimir and Suzdal, however, is both integral to these cities and outshone by the ancient constructed wonders within them. For example, Suzdal’s original fortress was purposefully built in a bend in the river to take advantage of the natural moat, and Vladimir is situated atop a cliff overlooking a river, another natural defense. Suzdal’s bend in the river is just another bend in the river, until you take into account the fact that people maintained a fortress here for a thousand years.

Portland skyline: lots of big rectangles! Big Pink is on the right.

Compare Portland’s rectangles to this “Suzdal pair” of churches in Suzdal…

… or this beautiful view of the Svyato Bogolyubsky Monastery near Vladimir

Residents of Vladimir can take a bus and attend service at a the Svyato Bogolyubsky Monastery just a few yards away from the same staircase where Andrey Bogolyubsky was murdered in the 12th century. Compare this to the American West, where I am used to considering structures that manage to be 200 or more years old to be ancient ruins to be revered and preserved as historical museums. Now in Russia, I am getting used to everything being so old that I wasn’t surprised when our tour guide in Suzdal pointed to parts of a church that were built in the 18th or 19th centuries and declared them to be “modern.” Although many have been destroyed, Vladimir and Suzdal are still full of these colorful and intricate monasteries, cathedrals, and bell towers: throughout the centuries, buildings have been added in new styles and reconstructed when they were destroyed. Nevertheless, many are still being used for their original purpose. We visited, for example, the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubskovo, a UNESCO World Heritage sight. Here, original walls held beautiful modern icons, and alongside the tourists, worshippers were still practicing.

Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubskovo

The Cathedral of Saint Demetrius in Vladimir

I am glad to have spent time outside of Moscow in these cities of old Russia. I felt a great sense of awe at the beauty, age, and significance of their monuments, and I am happy to report that here on the other side of the planet, like at home, people get to experience truly unique and beautiful sights every day.

Nick, Rus', Vladimir

Vladimir, a city of new and old

April 25, 2019 rosenn Leave a comment

Vladimir is a city with an ancient history, founded well before Moscow (three quarters of a century or longer, the precise year is debated), that was the most prominent city in Medieval Rus after the decline of Kiev and before the Mongol invasion. Raised by the Grand Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky to great prominence as the capital during the 12th century and containing churches and cathedrals that have survived since then, Vladimir now fulfills the role of a grand tourist attraction. I imagined surely something else must happen there, but nobody talks about it; all anyone cares about is how Alexander Nevsky’s remains were buried here until 1704 and that Bogolyubsky was murdered on a stairway in this cathedral. Which, I mean is understandable. Why would visitor care about the fact that the area is the seat of its principality, contains a university, and is known for producing electrical machinery? Masha Nordbye mentions this in passing in our reading (1) , but when I first perused it, I cared more about the Cathedral of St. Demetrius, built in 1193, than this.

The issue is that by reading all of this history and more or less ignoring the present situation, somehow in my mind I created the expectation that I was traveling to a 12th century city, in contrast to the modernization of Moscow. Suffice to say, I was not surprised when I left the hostel the first morning and the first thing I found was this:

What is it? That’s not entirely clear from the picture, but it clearly is ancient. In fact, it is made out of concrete. It leads to some sort of old industrial area under one of the most popular 12th century modes of transportation: the train. All right, I’m being silly now, but you get the idea: my first impression of Vladimir was not of some historic city of princes, but rather of a very modern, and frankly, rather run-down place. This is, in fact, a road, and I saw several cars pass it, but it has numerous cracks and was covered with water. Several nearby roads were dirt and not even the nicest dirt roads I’ve ever seen; a bit rocky.

This was a complete departure from Moscow where the roads are constantly being washed and the benches always being repainted, and the roads are in excellent condition. I imagined we must be staying in the outskirts of town; however, another 5 minutes of walking took me to the main street. At 8 in the morning on a Saturday, it was totally deserted. Here, the conditions were better (i.e., there roads were not covered with water-filled indentations), but the architecture still did not amaze; it looked like pretty standard rows of flats and shop fronts. The whole effect was not helped by the fact all of the trees had been, well, recently trimmed (see photo), and for some reason had the bases of their trunks painted white. Disillusioned, I returned to the hostel an hour earlier than expected, not entirely sure what to think.

The rest of this day was spent in the even more ancient town of Suzdal, which feels much more like an ancient town, probably because there are 40 churches and a population of only about 10,000. Of course, some Eleventh-century peasant would be totally alarmed seing a car rolling past one of his churches, but the architecture was much more as expected. After a long day of walking around Suzdal, we returned to Vladimir and appropriately ate pizza for dinner.

Suzdal

The next day, we toured the sites of Vladimir and I finally got to see the promised historic churches and cathedrals, from the legendary Uspensky Cathedral where princes were crowned to the white marble of the Cathedral of Saint Demetrius. Looking through these places, I began to get a feeling of the centuries of history imbued into their walls, but with the acute realization that this time had long passed. And while in the end I got some grasp of the history, I felt that the current Vladimir, which melds medieval history with contemporary industry, I barely understood at all. I could see, though, that Vladimir is a completely different city than Moscow. Where Moscow is always rushed, bursting everywhere with color and noise, Vladimir is more spread out, with fewer tall buildings and a more rural feeling. But one thing is the same: among the historical sites, contemporary Russia also abounds. From the industrial concrete in Vladimir to American fast food joints along the Arbat in Moscow, the present is just around the corner. Actually, though, there’s plenty of concrete and run down neighborhoods in Moscow, and Vladimir has a McDonald’s. There are some modern things in every city, it seems.

1 Nordbye, Masha. “Vladimir.” In Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Golden Ring. Hong Kong: Odyssey Books. 2015.