Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel about a magical underground railroad that took slaves from the South not to safety, but not to slavery either. Harlem Shuffle has no such tropes. Ray Carney is trying to get by selling furniture on 125th Street.
1959, America is on the up and up. Not that you’d know if you were a black man. He needs to walk the line of being crooked enough to be straight. Everyone is on the take from the cop on the beat to the protection racket run by hoodlums—hoodlums like Carney’s dad, who left him his old truck, with a surprise package in the spare wheel that set his world spinning. Elizabeth, his wife, is expecting his second child. And his father-in-law is on his case about getting his daughter somewhere better to live. He lives in the pretty part of black Harlem, Striver’s Row. They have their own club—like the Mason’s—in which they meet to help each other get a bigger share of the pie. They’re different kinds of crooks, because the law might not work for them, but it don’t work against them so much. Only fools pay tax. They could be almost pass as white, where the real crooks live on a pedestal. It’s disappointment that Elizabeth married Ray not only because he’s not in their class, but also because he’s blacker than they’d like. Black enough to be crooked. Cheap enough to get caught.
As his friend Pierre remarks. ‘Sneaky gets you paid around here… One thing I learned in my job is life is cheap, and when things start getting expensive it gets cheaper still’.
1961. Then there are the friends Carney keeps. He grew up with Freddie on the top bunk after his mum died and his dad dumped him at her sister’s. Freddie has got his own way of seeing things and doing things, and hard work doesn’t figure prominently. Freddie drops little things off he picked up. He’s the brother he never had and not as straight as Carney.
‘At the Maharajah they showed these juvenile-delinquent and hot rodder movies featuring angry young white kids. They didn’t make movies about their brown-skinned Harlem versions, but they existed, with their gut hatred of how things worked. If they were good people they marched and protested and tried to fix what they hated about the system. If they were bad people they went to work for people like Dixon…pushers and half-assed muscle.’
Carney tried to keep above the fray, but Freddie kept dragging him down. Freddie got a job as a getaway driver (or so he thought) for a crew that set out to rob the Hotel Theresa, the ‘Waldorf of Harlem’, where world champion boxers and prominent entertainers hung out. Freddie puts him on the sticking place when he puts his name forward as the man that can fence the goods. Now Carney is a face, one of the best known nobody, in Harlem as a cop of the take puts it.
1964, same old shit, cops shooting black kids, rioting on the streets and America bombing Vietnam. But the skyline of New York is changing. And Freddie hits up with a white college kid that likes to score dope and live the beatnik life. Whether he’s straight of gay doesn’t matter to Freddie. His family fried his brain a few times to cure him of wayward tendencies, but they came to a truce until he decides to rob them. White people with money that own half of New York is the wrong kind of heat. Freddie’s brought it down on Carey, like an act of an angry white God. Everyone wants a piece of him. The crooked or the straight life, it doesn’t really matter. He’s bought a safe ‘big enough to hold his secrets’, but the lock’s been sprung. What matters is survival.
Tops-off in the sunshine of Parkhead, but perhaps too early for sun-lotion, and counting chickens. Celtic stroll to three points. The Hoops scored three goals before 30 minutes. Three from our Greek strike Giorgos Giakoumakis who just keeps scoring. The third from the penalty spot in a mostly forgettable second-half.
But Giakoumakis could have had a hat-trick before half-time. His first after fourteen minutes was classic striker’s play. He got up above the defender from a Jota cross whipped into the box from the left. He almost had another a minute later when Daizen Maeda squared the ball to him inside the box.
Two minutes later Celtic were denied a stone-wall penalty (luckily it didn’t make much difference). Jota, inside the box, tried to dink a ball in. Joseph Hungbo stopped him. Ball to man or man to ball. He blocked it with his hand.
Five minutes later and it was game over. Daizen Maeda on the back post headed the ball back towards Giakoumakis. His header was blocked on the line, but knocked back out and he finished like the poacher he is.
Ross Callachan could and should have been booked for a dreadful tackle on Rogic.
Giorgos Giakoumakis’s header from a cross finds Daizen Maeda knocking the ball into the net with his head. Celtic 3-0 up within 25 minutes.
28th minute, Kayne Ramsay over the top tackle on Rogic and it’s game over with a red card produced. Rogic limped on for a few minutes to be replaced by his bigger Danish twin, O’Riley.
Malky McKay made five changes. We brought on Bitton for McGregor for that last twenty minutes and it was good to see David Turnbull return. He came on for Hatate for a stroll in the sun for the last twenty minutes. Abada had come on for Jota earlier, with Ralston replacing Juranovic.
Joe Hart had the day off, but had to hang about for two corners to deal with in added on time at the end of the ninety. We stopped whipping balls into the box in the second half. All corners came short and went nowhere. Ironically, because we don’t usually score from corners, we looked more dangerous when we did put balls into the box.
Giorgos Giakoumakis has hit two hat-tricks on the bounce on the hour mark. He helped make up for his penalty miss against Livingston earlier in the season scoring from the spot here. But I’m not so sure he should be taking them at Ibrox. Quite simply, whoever scores is good. And our Greek strike is first pick and long may it continue.
Roddy Doyle makes you smile. You just need to think of that line from The Commitments, ‘We are the black men of…’ whatever it was. I’m never very good at remembering. He wrote about the housing crisis in Dublin. Rosie (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09lk76z/rosie). How letting the market sort things out is darkest doublethink, whilst helping take a hammer to poor people’s lives. What I’m building up to saying is aye, Roddy Doyle, but nah Roddie Doyle, because like the rest of us, there’s more than one of him. And he’s prolific enough to stumble.
Life Without Children, ten short stories, set during Covid and Lockdown they’re readable, but unremarkable. I’ve already forgotten them and I read the last story this morning, something about memes and a man searching the streets of Dublin for his son. It’s easy to stick it to a Booker Prize winner. He (or she) isn’t going to come back and bite you on the arse. Being a nobody means you don’t have to arse-lick. Nobody cares what you think. I ask myself a simple question when I read books like this, if these stories were posted to various agencies and competitions how would they fare? You tell me—not about Roddy Doyle’s achievements—about Life Without Children? I’d love a little of that magic dust. And yes, that’s being small-minded. Read on.
Oscar Wilde: ‘Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has ever read history, is a man’s original value.’
A writer’s job is to remember. The better the writer, the better we remember. I’d a day out at The Golden Friendship Club on Saturday. Jim McLaren performed two miracles—and perhaps there’ll be a play about that one day—buying the old Masonic Club and finding the money to renovate it. If he wants to hang a picture of his mum, Agnes, and Auntie Molly Kelly in one of two the main halls, well, that’s really up to him. In the old days, you had to stand up for old Queen Lizzie. He’s standing up for his mum, and she’s more to my liking. He needs a third miracle to find the funding to keep the place going. The Golden Friendship is a Community Hall in a real sense of being paid for and belonging to the community. Workshops during the day and Neil Gore’s play, Yes! Yes! UCS! were held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the UCS work-in on the Clyde in 1971 (for those not very good at arithmetic a Covid year wasn’t carried over, so to be pedantic, 51 years).
Bernardine Evaristio: Girl, Woman, Other, ‘she wants people to bring curiosity to her plays, doesn’t give a damn what they wear’.
When I came into the hall Jim was there to meet guests. There was no sneaking past in casual wear. They set the seats out with a free copy of The Morning Star (cost £1.50) which made me smile. I didn’t think they still printed it. I’d a quick chat with that old dinosaur, John Foster. He didn’t remember me, but I remembered him in a tutorial asking us if we knew what hegemonic meant. We were more interested in when The Wee Howff opened. He taught us always to cite your sources. Hating Tories was a given.
Rhyming couplets and verse Yes! Yes! UCS!
I’m up for a writer’s challenge. So a quick sketch of Peter Barra McGahey with his handlebar moustache:
Fae John Brown’s on the Clyde—James Scott Dry Dock—tae Govan and Yarrows
Land, river and sea, nane belanged to Barra McGahey
The sootie tenemenet walls, Dalnator, where we lay out past
Glasgow Airport moles that didnae depart
An a the rats and birds that flies
pay a feu rent fae their tinker’s tents
the dog that shits, cats that hiss
the foreman’s toot isnae his
Fae James Scott Dry Dock, Yarrows and John Brown’s on the Clyde
Land, river and sea, nane belanged to Barra McGahey
The Morning Star we see.
Yard owners haunds oot free.
Their coats of arms with all its charms
Our cranes feeds your wains memes
With patriot calls to our common country
Futile dreams and poet themes of equality
the match that lights the dout
lame-duck yards goin slow
Tartan paint and a long wait—work to rule
Fair democracy, where do we place we?
We that toil should own the soil and Broomilaw
A welded chain for those that pass laws again
Fae John Brown’s on the Clyde—James Scott Dry Dock—tae Govan and Yarrows
Land, river and sea, nane belanged to Barra McGahey
No part of our common we.
A zip in his trousers at the back
for emergency purposes only
Christmas lights on his welder’s hat
the unfair and grand
none as light-headed as he
In Barra’s place, we place our grace.
None forgotten, or will be.
His gravelly laugh still finds a path
To our common humanity.
We had lunch in the hall, and Jim put on a fine spread. We could make a donation to a food bank or to The Golden Friendship. I grew up in the seventies. I could never have imagined the idea of food banks. Worker’s memories of taking over the yards and forcing Ted Heath’s government to backtrack. Go from spending a possible £6 million government package to nearer £36 million is at the core of our day out. Yes! Yes! UCS! as an antidote to the highest grossing film of 1960, I’m Alright Jack, with the stereotypical bungling and walkouts of the shop steward movement in Union Jack Foundries portrayed by Peter Sellers meant to typify a Britain that was going in the wrong direction.
I asked John Foster if there was still a Communist Party, still a Socialist Movement. In particular, if it had younger members. I don’t think anybody in the hall was under forty, apart from the two actors that played Aggie and Eddi.
I’d guess very few adults under-thirty could tell you what the plaque on Clydebank College labelling a building John Brown’s means. The Clyde has become a feature, a waterfront for selling property.
John Foster did say there was a growing Socialist movement. I’d guess Greta Thunberg, aged 15, sitting in silent protest outside Parliament (Skolstrejk för klimatet) is more important and certainly better known.
Ted Heath’s government was defeated. We had the oil-price hike and stagflation. But the token woman in Heath’s cabinet was Margaret Thatcher. Her destruction of the miner’s union with the help of a media vying with each other to create fictional stories about Arthur Scargill and present them as facts stand out. M15 and a pumped-up police force and the loss of around 80 000 jobs is well documented in what was described as a war against terrorists. Less well documented is how we lost the propaganda war in which food banks, for example, is sold to us a positive trend.
When I hear about a critically acclaimed singer and songwriter, I usually do a bit of planning of my own, and nip away before I get caught. I don’t listen to music in the way that other people don’t read books. I could add or go to the theatre. But when I saw a friend and nipped outside during the break of Yes!Yes! UCS! I admitted Findlay Napier had been the best part of the day. I still don’t listen to music, but he caught me on the good side.
I asked Jim why Neil Gore’s production wasn’t on the stage. He told me it wasn’t deep enough for the set. It was impressive. A mock-up of tenement buildings, with doors that open and decades to slide into. We get to see Heath in cartoonish blue and hear his voice. ‘There’ll be nae bevvying’ cries Jimmy Reid. The roar of the crowd. On two girls’ shoulders the production hangs. I feel for them. Art makes us and unmakes us. This might be their first and last job. The yards were a men’s playground, to channel the dispute through women takes balls.
Anne Ryan was out having a fag at the canal. I’d joked with her that in 1970, everybody would have been out of the hall and smoking. She was the solitary pariah of the path, until another guy ambled over. She asked if I’d smoked, ‘Nah, I was a good boy’.
‘Whit dae yeh think of the show?’
She made a face. ‘He seems to like it.’
Radical politics doesn’t sell is hardly a headline, even in The Morning Star. George Orwell in his unpublished introduction to Animal Farm described how ‘unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban’. Ironically, Communist China is probably best at this. Rupert Murdoch, second best. We’ve come a long way since the nineteen-seventies, backward step by backward step. Only the past can live in the present. I brought my curiosity to play. Perhaps Townsend Production doesn’t quite capture the zeitgeist. The fault might be mine. I don’t do musicals and I don’t do theatre. The wrong man in the right place. Go see for yourself. Make your own head space.
Celtic started 2/7 favourites and that’s the way it looked. No Jota. Giorgos Giakoumakis after his hat-trick against Dundee leads the line. He hit a double and he’s scored nine so far. He’s not great outside the box. But he’s a poacher. I like that. Who doesn’t?
Daizen Maeda pushes wide. His work rate is always impressive; his touch less so. James Forrest retains his place. Win, lose or draw, usually, we expect him to come off and Abada to come on, but he too is missing from the bench. That leaves a space for Karamoko. O’Riley is in for Rogic, but the switch we expected never came. Hatate replaced at half-time. Caution when needed. That’s something no often associate with Postecoglou.
Juranovic in for Ralston. Hatate for Bitton. The Japanese midfielder started with a bang, but is no longer an automatic first-choice pick in the way Callum McGregor is. Both featured heavily here. Hatate picked up a booking, but looked back to his elegant best. McGregor, from a short corner, and via a deflection got us the lead in twelve minutes. Later in the half, he had a run from the middle of the park and a shot on goal that just whizzed past the post. The spine of the Celtic defence remains largely the same. And despite the wobbles, when we lead, we usually win.
United despite an opening flurry offered nothing in attack. A long-range effort, a shout for a penalty, Starfelt on McNulty, and a dodgy back pass from, ahem, our keeper, Hart wide to Startfelt. We’ve cause ourselves more problems than United. It’s got to the stage where sometimes I feel sorry for Starfelt. He sees more of the ball than any of his teammates
Maeda sometimes looks ungainly. His speed is his main asset. Balls over the top finds him outpacing most defenders. Early in the opening minutes he found himself in behind, but his cross turned into a shot and looped just over Siegrist and the bar. The second goal was down to him getting in behind the defence. His cross into the box was lame, but Siegrist allowed the ball to bobble away from him. Giakoumakis nipped in to knock the ball into the net. After a spirited second-half start from United, its game over.
Maeda also had the ball in the net in the first half, only for it to be chopped off for handball from Giakoumakis. His swipe and shot on goal had hit his hand, but the commentator suggested it wasn’t a foul and should have been a goal. I didn’t know that. Celtic controlled the first half. That second goal put us on easy street.
The third goal a few minutes from the end of normal time summed up the kind of night United were having. Forrest, who looked at times as if he was carrying an injury, was replaced by Dembele, who got the last fifteen minutes. The nineteen-year-old, who, for a variety of reasons, has promised much but so far has provided little, had a hand in the third goal. His shot at goal took a deflection. Giakoumakis didn’t hit it cleanly either, but the ball ended up in the net.
Mikey Johnson also came on for a cameo. Another that has promised much. Doak, the next-big-thing is seemingly on his way to Liverpool. I never quite get that how untested young players on the verge of the first team take the money and go. Fuck off, I say. And, no, I don’t wish him well. I wish ex-Celtic players like Kieran Tierney well for obvious reasons. This was an easy win. United didn’t have a shot on goal. Giakoumakis, quite simply, for being the right man in the right place, wins man of the match for me.
Memory is always being subverted. Tango with Putin begins with the Muscovite fairy-tale princess and her pink car looking for a prince. Natasha and Sasha…and they lived happily ever after in their castle.
James Cameron (reporting on the North Vietnamese):
‘They whispered that I was their dupe, but what they really meant was I was not their dupe.’
The princess wants a toy to play with. And Sasha buys her a television station.
Starvation as a weapon of war. Stalinist policies kill between four and ten million in the Ukraine. War is called peace and stabilisation.
Ashkhabad, a crossroad that became a town when a Russian fort was built in 1881 to help break the Turkmen’s resistance to annexation, disappears in fifteen seconds in 1948. The Turks constitute the largest language group in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. An earthquake wipes out the city. Only the statue of Lenin remained.
Advisors from The Chicago School came to advise the Communist government how to initiate change in post-Gorbachev Russia. Shares. Every Russian citizen should have shares in the former dead-hand of the Russian economy and state enterprises. ‘You pretend to pay us and we’ll pretend to work’ is the Russian way of life. Job done in the free-market Russian economy. With their new-found shared wealth, former Soviets invested in new businesses. They all lived happily ever after.
Maps of the world. American National Geographic Society cut the USSR in half place it in the fold where no child could find it. Moscow’s Institute of Geography prints a different map. Putin’s map shows Russia in a central spot. Former Soviet States in the middle. The United States is an appendage, cut in half and down to size.
Russia has a shrinking and ageing population. From 150 million 1914 to around 140 million. Natural wastage. Around 20 million, a generation lost in The Great Patriotic War. Around 24 million ethnic Russian’s live outside the former Soviet System, but not all is lost. It maintains the criterion of blood purity. Russia for Russians. Muscovites queued for hours to enter Lenin’s mausoleum. Another queue formed to get hamburgers, ketchup, fries and Coke. They came together. Closing McDonalds in Moscow helps maintain imperial isolation. Paradoxically, the second element is land. But the more land the former Soviet States claim, the greater the dilatation of Russian ethic purity. Ukraine provides an ideal fix. Population 44 million. The former breadbasket of Russia (and Germany) is ethnically pure. Many of the battles fought in the Great Patriotic War were fought in and around Ukraine. Many Russian troops that died and continued to die in wars such as Afghanistan were also Ukrainian. You will see old Ukrainian comrades in news reports disparaging Putin’s claims that the Ukrainian people are Neo-Nazis or terrorists.
Stalin’s road to heaven. An ounce of gold is worth an ounce of bread. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Hiroshima, (Kolyma) Magadan. 11th November 1931, the Central Committee of the Communist Party create a trust to mine for gold, silver and other metals in Siberia. 160 gulags. Three million slaves don’t make it home. Permafrost maintains the expression on their faces when they died.
Russian’s console themselves, ‘Don’t despair, it was worse in Kolyma’.
There are no heroes in the camps, only survivors. Slave labour creates the long corridors underneath the Kremlin, Moscow Underground and Ukrainian Underground. Deep enough to shelter from bomb blasts, but not intrigues. The Georgian Stalin tried to destroy the old Moscow, but succeeded in only creating the new Moscow on the bones of the old.
Perestroika stretches only as far as the Kremlin walls: six comrades protest in Red Square about the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. No one asks a victim of the gulags were they have been for five, ten, twenty or twenty-five years. To ask questions is to leave yourself open to answers. Spies and informers are part of the state apparatus. Only those in power ask questions. The guilty are punished. The innocent fare worse for they have committed no crime. Truth is relative. Hunger ever-present. Minsk to Pinsk. Identification of comrade citizens is no longer easy. Mass deportations, famine, colonisation. Some regard themselves as Georgian, but not Russian. Chechen, but not Russian. Ingush, but not Russian. Uzbek, but not Russian. East German, but German. Ukrainian but not Russian.
The bounty system. The NKVD would inform locals when a prisoner had escaped from the camps. Bring a prisoner’s hand to match their fingerprints. Their reward was a sack of flour. Political prisoners were gullible. He would be taken along with a group of escaping prisoners and eaten. One less political. They lived happily ever after.
T.D. Allman: ‘Genuinely objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it gets the meanings of events right. It is compelling not only today, but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by ‘reliable sources’ but the unfolding of history.’
Notes.
Jim Morrison: ‘Whoever controls the media controls the mind.’
By the end of Vladimir Putin’s second term in 2008, all Russian television was under state control.
Before this story begun, I spent 15 years working on independent television. News and political talkshows were my main passions. After all independent television had been destroyed in my country, I found myself at this house, where I spent many months in discussion of a new enterprise.
Putin 2009. [Cheering] The elections for the President of Russia are over. And our candidate, Dmitry Medvedev, is clearly in the lead.
Back in 2008, Russia still looked like a land of business opportunity. For Natasha Sindeeva, the owner of that white mansion and this pink car, every road was another adventure. And every adventure was her excuse for another party.
The top executive of a Moscow music radio station, Natasha was the dancing queen of the city.
In Putin’s Russia, former music radio producer Natasha Sindeeva dreams of becoming famous and decides to build her own TV station to focus on pop culture.
‘Without any false modesty, I’m going to sing and dance. So be prepared to be sick of me on stage, today. Because today is all about me Natasha Sindeeva.’
Natasha knew how to make things up. She even dreamed up a husband, to be precise—a prince. I remember this moment. I was falling asleep, thinking: ‘I’ve been so good. I deserve a prince. To love me and cherish me. To bring flowers and gifts. A handsome, tall, smart guy with character. I literally painted Sasha’s portrait in my mind.
Their wedding was a literal palace. The Russian Versailles. Natasha spun around the fountains with the world-famous Russian ballet behind her.
And there was a new president too: Dmitry Medvedev. Just like Natasha he saw the world through rose or rather pink coloured glasses, but his partner was more czar than prince.
Alexander Sasha Vinokurov (Natasha’s husband and investor)
Do you remember when he was asked about the most important thing in life?
Suddenly, the Russian President said ‘Love’. If we had a president that talked about love being the most important thing Russia would be a perfect country. But he enjoyed it. Here’s my iPhone, here’s my iPad. Here I am meeting with American entrepreneurs. He enjoyed being the good guy.
Dmitry Medvedev:’ The principle of freedom is better than non-freedom. These words are a distillation of human experience.’
It seems naïve now, but when I watched that clip I wanted to cry. Like: ‘Look Americans, this is what our President is like’.
There was no room for politics in my life. We didn’t vote. We just didn’t.
The economy was booming, as if on steroids. It seemed that anything was possible. It was going to keep growing.
Sasha made money banking, during Russia’s boom years and could finance a crazy idea. So Natasha had one. To build her very own tv empire. And that’s where I came in.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
We started at the most expensive real estate uptown (Moscow). Natasha loved the view.
I remember having talks with Natasha. ‘Why isn’t there tv for normal people, why don’t we make it?’ That’s how it started. It was as simple as that.
What’s the date today? Ah, the 30th. It’s July 30th. The 31st. 2008 and our television station is on its way to being built.
Here it was. The American Dream. The definition of a start-up. ‘Where’s your business plan?’ We’ll finish our business plan later. That’s the reality we lived at the time.
Natasha was a big dreamer. She already had a name and colour palette for her tv station.
DOZHD: Optimistic Channel.
Big, obnoxious.
That was the first time fate intervened.
Radio broadcast: What’s happening on Wall Street… traders say…
Sasha’s bank had not survived the recession of 2008. And from uptown we came down to earth and downtown.
Downtown Moscow. The cheapest building… in ‘Red October’. An old chocolate factory named after the revolution of 1917. Our floor smelled of caramel and rats.
I love that. Those incredible pillars and windows. So the sofas could go here. We thought so too… We’re going to have a TV station. We’re going to do this.
‘All the elements are based on truth, this real life.’
So everything and everybody must be themselves as much as possible. Life must be as authentic as possible.
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter. Executive Director.
We came to the office to meet Natasha. And then at one point, this girl walks in and gives Natasha this bundle. Natasha takes this new baby and opens her shirt. And without missing a beat, Natasha starts breastfeeding her. I understood immediately these were great people. I really liked them.
Anna Anya Mongayt. (Journalist)
That was the first time I saw Natasha in person. She made a great impression on me because she was only wearing purple. Purple knee-high boots. Purple leggings. And a purple sweater. And she was wearing this ring with a huge stone.
Right away she made a big impression on me.
They switched on all the lights at once above our main news desk. From afar it looked like an operation table that was incredibly bright. There are people all around the table. The cameras are rolling. The screens are on. Vera is yelling out orders from the control room. So it looks like we’re going to have a tv station after all.
In English, ‘Dozhd’ translates as rain, TV rain.
Only God knows why Natasha picked that name. In truth, the most accurate name for this enterprise… would have been The Adventure Channel.
April 2010 [opens] Dozhd TV goes on air.
The first broadcast looked hideous. Totally DIY.
I was afraid of running into my old colleagues from the real tv stations.
We were the industry’s biggest joke. But Natasha loved it. The parties I hated were great from the start.
Alexander Sasha Vinokurov (Natasha’s husband and investor)
When the project started, Natasha knew nothing about tv news. How it works. What it’s for. And so on… her initial concept was very different. She wanted to have lots of nice conversations. Things like that.
Statement: Regardless of sexual orientation. Regardless of age. Regardless of health conditions. Of hair and eye colour. Of faith and political views. We are always yours.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
When I came to Dozhd, I instantly felt not to lie to myself. To be honest with myself. Because at that point I was still accepting myself as gay.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
I had ten years’ experience reporting from war zones. I wanted…I don’t know, I wanted an adventure.
Apparent suicide bombing in the hall of the Domodedovo Airport. On TV, people are outraged the CNN and Twitter already has images. Apparently 70 dead. While Russian channels, federal channels have nothing.
Suddenly we found ourself in a different reality to other tv stations. Sometimes I felt that we lived in two disparate countries. The news we talked about were ignored by all State controlled media as if it didn’t happen.
In the last year of President Medvedev’s term we launched a weekly sketch show in which, with the help of the classics of Russian poetry, we staged scenes between the President and his Prime Minister Putin.
And True Glory came. Our audience doubled every week. In April, 2011, we lauched a new episode of our viral show in which our father of the nation, Putin, decides not to give his heir Medvedev a second term.
…But the episode never went live.
Natasha:
Because I think there are boundaries of constructive criticism. And occasionally drift towards personal criticism. That crossed the line. So I found it impossible to broadcast.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
Everybody on social media shamed us for selling out. Federal media popped champagne. Opposition activists turned of Dozhd. I saw it as self-censorship. Then, in two weeks, I learned that President Medvedev wanted to visit out humble station. At that point, I felt we had run out of independence. Natasha was busy preparing for the visit. But, for me, it was the end of our fairytale. Then I quit.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
When the broadcast finished [after Medvedev’s visit] we all had the feeling of having done well. And I remember for the rest of that week, I would come to work and see people crying at their desks. Our audience thought this was all part of some big pact. Natasha kills our satire show in order to host Medvedev as a guest. Vera quit in protest. And now we’re all playing Judas…For Natasha, it wasn’t a pact.
Q to Natasha. What did you say to Medvedev?
A You’re a really cool dude. You should run for re-election.
CONGRESS
Medvedev : ‘I think it’s right that Congress should support the candidacy of our party leader, Vladimir Putin for the post of president of our country.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
Now, I’m going to scare you a bit. The thaw is over Medvedev represented political moderation. Now the screws will be tightened.
We’re living inside an experiment. An experiment in stopping time. Is it possible to survive 12 more years without change?
Alexander Sasha Vinokurov (Natasha’s husband and investor)
So I just hoped. Little by little, things would improve. That hope turned out to be completely naïve. It’s a shame, my hopes. All my hopes were wasted on this.
4 December 2011.
Legislative Elections
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
The parliamentary elections are coming up. There are no battles. And the only way out I could think of was to get credentials [Parliamentary] for all our editorial staff. I got them all accredited as members of the electoral commissions at various polling stations.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
‘Hi Misha, I’ve only got a minute, we’ve opened the first electoral ballot box. There are stacks of 9-10 votes for United Russia that are for sure cast together. We’ve just found 3 huge stacks, 20 ballots wrapped in other’s ballots. Wonderful. There’s no way to drop those in together by accident.
Alexander Sasha Vinokurov (Natasha’s husband and investor)
When I went to that protest [against Putin] I expected to see some weird people, to feel a little awkward or even scared. But many of the people I found there were my friends. They’d say, ‘Hi, so, you’re here as well. Look—so and so is here too’.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
Ironically, Sasha and I ended up in the same crowd. I was shooting my first documentary at the protest. Sasha was led there by voter fraud.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
The last thing we heard was one of our Dozhd reporter, Ilya Vasyunin was arrested. We’re still trying to reach him now. We can see him in the police van. We should reach him soon.
Anna Anya Mongayt. (Journalist)
You said it was normal to be running from a police van.
Natasha
At first, I thought it would be a cultural, intellectual, lifestyle channel. But when I began to learn more, when I found myself on this wave of information, I realised just how much injustice was around us, which I hadn’t seen before. I honestly didn’t see it. Didn’t know it existed. I couldn’t keep not having an opinion about it.
When the protests started, Mr Gromov, an official from Putin’s administration called me for the first time. He was screaming at me, ‘What do you think you are doing? How dare you! You’re spreading US State Department lies.
I remember I told him, ‘You know, I don’t work for you. I’m not part of the state media. We work in the way we think is right.’
Then he said, ‘We’ll ruin you.’ Something like that. It was a very nasty conversation.
6th May 2012.
Boris Nemtsov, opposition politician.
Today, Putin proved that he was elected illegally. The sheer number of special forces and military. This hasn’t happened in the centre of Moscow since 1993.
[crowd chanting: New elections]
Timur Olvesky, war correspondent.
My first live broadcast was at the elections on May 6th with everything that happened there.
‘It looks like a stampede. Nobody is planning to leave. They are breaking through police cordons. Unfortunately, I can’t see what’s happening.
[Pulled down from his platform by riot police]
Polina Koslovskya Digital Director.
It looks like Boris Nemtsov is getting arrested too. The stream is unavailable. No one expected us to be attacked like that. At the time, it was the job from hell. Because I was negotiating with different platforms. So that people could watch our broadcasts. On other websites if they got hit. So during life broadcasts most of the work we had to do was sending people to the right website on time. The cyber-attacks always came. We were sure they would come and we couldn’t avoid them.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
I clearly remember May 6th, Putins third inauguration. That was the day I switched on Dozsd again.
Our online broadcast has partially stopped. I’ll remind you that today we have been cyber-attacked. The station I’d left just didn’t tell you what’s really happening around you, it also makes you feel less alone.
Q Natasha what are you afraid of?
A I’m afraid that after all the effort and emotions invested into this, something out of control it gets closed down, dies, or gets taken away. I don’t know. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I just don’t want it to happen. Because I’ve put a lot of personal feelings into this. There’s a lot of my heart in this.
3rd Inauguration: Stately event.
Cf
Protest and chants, ‘Russia will be free.’
11th June 2013.
The law criminalising ‘gay propaganda’ passes with just one abstention.
The lives of many Russians will change. The problem with these homosexual propaganda laws is that for the first time in Russian history they are legally introducing the idea of the second-class citizen.
This law touched Dozhd more than other organisations. The newly inscribed second-class citizens made up more than half the team. When the bill was passed, it hurt us all.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
When the Afisha issue came with my interview came out, I was very afraid. Back then, I think, I was the first person with some level of recognition. To publicly come out as gay. And among journalists I was probably the first. Really, I should have approved the interview with Natasha Sideeva or Misha Zygar. I was, after all, a face on the station. The station had stuck my face onto buses as part of a promo campaign. Natasha took me into her office. Sasha, her husband, was there. They hugged me, poured me a glass of wine. Sasha brought out a copy of the magazine he had found and asked for my autograph. I signed it. Then they told me I did the right thing. And I burst into tears.
Natasha.
If nothing bad happens with advertising budget, maybe this year we’ll break even.
Sasha, her husband
By the summer of 2013, we had essentially reached out goal. The station was popular. Many advertisers were eager to work with us.
Anna Anya Mongayt. (Journalist)
We were the voice of a new era. People admired us. We felt like the media of the future.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
In interviews with prospective employees would say, ‘what we are offering is not a job. We’re offering you a dream. ‘
Behind me is the ‘Sosny’ Holiday Homes Cooperative. The gates of which just closed on our camera crew. Holiday homes owned by Vyacheslav Volodin, Putin’s First Deputy. Chief of Staff, Sergey Prihodka, Head of the Government Apparatus. And prominent United Russian Party members.
Aleksei Navalny (Opposition Leader)
We’re demanding that all of these people explain where they got their money for such luxurious lifestyles. Where did they get that money?
The level of luxuries they have is not at all compatible with their actual incomes.
KYIV [loud explosion]
Meanwhile, at the independence square, protests continue. They are targeting the Ukrainian government, which refused to sign the deal with the European Union.
[Ukrainian protester] Please tell Russians that we are not against them. We are not against you. Not against Russians. We love them. We just don’t love Putin. That’s all.
Timur Olvesky, war correspondent.
I realised we were witnessing an event that was not only historical but one that was also determining our future. And I begged Misha to send me there.
From Kviv.
We have a breaking story. Both sides are firing live rounds. Some have been detained. It’s an absolute shitstorm over here. It’s a real war.
19th June 2014 was the first fight on Kyiv’s streets. At that point, everything split into Russian reporters on federal TV who’d talk about fascists burning down the SWAT teams, and Dozhd which covered it from a different angle.
6 Days later (25th June)
Natasha:
Good afternoon, It’s 8.37pm, you’re watching amateurs broadcasting live.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
On the day, the show’s theme was the anniversary of the Leningrad siege ending. They mentioned this quote by a great Russian general, Victor Astafyev
‘Maybe Leningrad should have been given to the Nazis, so that thousands of lives could have been saved.’
[cf Moscow given to Napoleon]
Natasha:
Should Leningrad been given to the Nazis to avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths? Should it?
[commentator, people can answer this?]
Yes, I understand there’s already a debate on twitter.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
An avalanche falls.
[announcement on air]
About an hour ago, Dozhd tv was dropped from the NTZ and cable package. Dozhd was replaced onscreen by darkness.
Alexander Sasha Vinokurov (Natasha’s husband and investor)
Nobody thought they would use it as a pretext to shut us down.
[screenshot of other stations] this question was morally and ethically beyond the pale for other people. The station crossed the line of what is acceptable.
Renat Davletgildeev Deputy Editor-in-Chief
The next day, on Tuesday, I think the State Parliament releases a statement chastising Dozhd tv. And on Wednesday, the expulsions begun.
‘Hello, my name is Anna Mongayt. Today I’m hosting the show ‘Online’. Our plan was to devote this hour to the life to Sochi in the lead up to the Olympics. But the situation has changed. Today, for the first time, the show will be devoted only to ourselves.’
It was interactive tv, you’d talk only to people that called in.
‘Can you hear me?’
When I started the show, all the providers were carrying us. But by the time I finished the show, everybody had dropped us.
[cable audience around 8 million drops exponentially to around 60 000 listeners]
A short break while we tell you who else has switched off Dozhd.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
That night for the first time since I left, I called Natasha. Sasha picked up the phone. They were hosting a late-night meeting with the newsroom at home. Natasha was smoking in silence. In one day they had lost most of their 80% of their audience and most of their advertisers. Right away, we began again. We started to brainstorm new plans. It was like we had never split up.
Renat Davletgildeev interview on Dozhd with Natasha.
What is going on? What is happening now?
They were looking for some excuse, and now, it seem, we have given them one. In confidential conversations, meaning off the record, for all these providers told us today that they were ordered to find any excuse—technical, ideological, commercial, legal—to terminate these contracts with us. And everyone who switched us off, confirmed it, just not as a public statement.
[cut to Putin announcement]
‘Dozhd is an interesting station. With a good young team. But, as you said yourself, one that’s made some mistakes. To put it bluntly, not simple mistakes, but an offence to many of our citizens. But you need to own up to it, which you’ve done, and figure out how to proceed.’
Renat Davletgildeev
‘Today we’re holding a press conference for Dozhd TV’s CEO Natalia Sindeeva. And Dozh TV’s investor Aleksandr Sasha Vinokurov.’
Anna Mongayt
I could tell how difficult it was for Natasha. She was a mess. She looked as pale as a ghost. You could see it was hard for her because it was all about to collapse. All of Sasha’s fortune had gone into it. You could see how hard it was on their relationship. She was completely lost. She’d come to work grief-stricken. Looking like a widow.
Q ‘Arkady Orstrovsky, The Economist Magazine: ‘Will you appeal to Vladimir Putin without whose approval this expulsion likely wouldn’t have happened?
A Natasha: I think in that situation I would appeal to Putin, because I will fight to the end for this station, for this business, for this baby, for the right to work in an independent media.
I remember being at their house. Sasha always grilled steaks. Natasha always danced around the pool. We drank champagne with strawberries and imagined our TV future. I recited chapters of the Russian Constitution on citizens’ freedoms and quoted Harvey Milk on the need to fight for your rights. Natasha kept saying: ‘We won’t lose anything.’ We were so fucking stupid.
Sasha.
An opportunity came to sell the house. Without a second thought we invested the money into the station. We sold several properties.
Natasha.
What happened, yes, consequentially led to all doors closing for Sasha. He’s become toxic because he is owner of Dozhd tv.
Sasha
There came a point when we had almost no money left for ourselves. When we trimmed our expenses down, life became more fun.
Natasha.
For Sasha, the bad consequences of the station are elsewhere. For Sasha…he lost me.
[report]
Mr Putin, Anton Zhelnov, Dozhd TV, the key tv players cable and satellite providers are saying there is no command, the situation’s getting worse.
Putin: Maybe they’re fooling you. You think I give commands to cable people and all your advertisers?
Q Well, they’re saying abstractly. There’s no command, so may I ask, who this command has come from?
Putin: I don’t know. I don’t give such commands. I didn’t tell the cable providers to stop working with you and I don’t think I have the right to tell them to start working with you.
Q You work with them you yourself?
[cut to Natasha]
As of now, we have a month left to live. These are not just words. We have to shut down in a month. There’s a little bit of hope in today’s staff meeting, where I will ask the whole team if I can cut their pay and our expenses by quite a lot. If the team agrees we might be able to last another two or three months. So much as I’d like it to be, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
PAYWALL.
Anya Mongayt
It’s a pressing topic for us here, because we have decided to take some unusual measures. So, why is Dozhd going to sell its content?
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
The audience paying for our content gives us freedom. It provides independence. What we’re putting behind the paywall is the live broadcast: $26 for annual subscription.
That’s something you’re probably going to miss, but it will be reasonably priced.
Anya Mongayt
It’s truly a way for us to be independent. It’s a new way for us to survive. If you are in the same boat, you’ll understand why we are doing this.
[cut to]
What? When are we going on air? Anya get ready.
July 2014.
News feature on the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane. Ad lib. Responsibilty give an advanced surface to air missile to terrorist fighting against Ukraine in Ukraine who did not understand the system.
[cut to]
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
Natasha has gone on vacation. Summer.
And suddenly, real combat operations begin in Donbass. And the first information comes in about Russian soldiers participating in real combat operations. I tasked all Dozhd staff with calling all Army recruitment offices to find out whether any Russian soldiers had been killed in Donbass. And to find out their last names.
[in office]
Renat Davletgildeev
We are making a list of people to call urgently. Some of them possibly on air.
[cut to Putin]
So the question is, ‘Is our army present in Ukraine or not?’ I’ll answer you directly. The Russian Army is not present in Ukraine.
[cut to] Timur Olvesky, war correspondent.
Also today, reports of strange disappearances of Russian soldiers. Reports are coming from other cities. On this list: Saratov, Kostroma, Pskov. Our reporters are trying to find out how many soldiers were buried in the town’s cemeteries.
Today, my colleagues and I, and other journalists were repeatedly attacked after trying to talk to the families of the people most likely being buried in Pskov’s cemetaries.
[cut to Army reservist jumps in front of their car]
What do we do?
Wait. What do they want?
[voice outside the car] they will break your camera.
You slashed our tyres.
Guys! We’re leaving.
They’ve slashed our tyres. We’re being attacked. We can’t drive away. I was asked to come here. Wait. Wait. Wait. We’re being attacked by two young unknown men who have threatened us. The said there are many bogs around Pskov and that if we continue asking questions we’ll simply disappear.
[cut to]
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
Natasha has come back from holiday and asks me: ‘Am I imagining things, I was walking here from home and this black car seemed to be following me as if I’m being tailed.
I say, you know, I don’t think you are making it up. Look, this is what we’re up to.
[cut to news]
Today, a Ukrainian press centre posted videos of four Russian soldiers captured by Zarleny village, near Donetsk.
[cut to press conference featuring a roomful of captured Russian soldiers]
[address them] ‘Hello, I’m Timor Olevsky, a reporter from Russia’s Dozhd TV.
Q When did you understand who had detained you?
A When we were captured, we were told we were on Ukraine’s territory and were being held captive.
[fellow captive]
A We didn’t know what was going on here. So we believed what the news showed.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
We saw a jump in subscribers form around 15 000 to 50 000 in four days.
A month later, we got evicted.
Natasha.
Option 1, we get our stuff together and move somewhere, where? Option 1 is to move to some factory.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
The idea of eviction at first seemed incomprehensible. It seemed terrifying for it to come true. If we got evicted we’d completely perish.
[cut to]
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
I never again became part of the team, but I always stayed close. At that point, I realised how much I wanted to help Dozhd survive. In between my filmmaking projects, I try to make up for lost time. Back then, our goal was to keep the news on air, no matter what. But how? We had absolutely nowhere to go.
[cut to newroom]
My name is Mikhail Fishman. It’s 8pm on the 31st October and I’m hosting the last ever broadcast from this great Dozhd studio.
I was thinking about what these years at Dozhd means to me. I can tell you one thing, that it’s clear to me after all these years that Dozhd is a big deal and will be around a long time. Why am I alone? Come along. Join me guys.
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
We would drive around looking at places for days on end. Five or six places a day. Someone from our side would start the initial discussions. Everything would be a good fit, then—the size, the price, the condition. Then we’d tell them we were an actual TV station. That was the moment they’d understand who we really were.
Two days later, we’d get a ‘no’.
This was right before Natasha was planning to go to the United States.
[cut to]
I really miss everyone. Life is really hard over here.
[rejoinder]
I’ve heard life overseas is hard. Don’t know why you even bother going. Should have stayed with us.
It’s awful, the way they treat black people. Terrible.
Natasha, let’s talk business because there’s a ton of people here and we need to get moving on schedules.
[cut to]
Natasha
This was the first time I’d given up hope. I said, ‘That’s it. I can’t beat the machine.’
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
So, one night, I called Natasha, I had this idea. I said, I know a place that’s perfect from a legal point of view. We can move in and nobody can stop us.
The view. That’s the Patriarch’s Pond there. Cool. Right?
Yeah.
This was Natasha’s flat in Central Moscow, which was not just unsuitable for a studio, but even for family life, because it was very much a bachelor pad. So, I go to this apartment with our engineers.
[cut to]
The mattress. Let’s lean it a bit.
That’s it.
We go into the bedroom and I say, ‘This will be the control room.’
Dec 2014
Natasha’s Appartment.
Secret Office.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
In the same building, the floor below Dozhd, housed an illegal brothel. Just like that. Two of the world’s oldest professions accidentally collided in the heart of Moscow. In a building owned by the Ministry of Defence.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
Stop, Stop my friends, us posing a legal issue. We’re gonna invite guest here. Roughly, every third guest will rat us out to everyone. But the KGB will find out about this on Tuesday…They already know. That’s all.
Hello, we were stopped the Anti-Corruption Office where we are sitting on a windowsill next to Aleksei Navalny
I wanted to say, I’m very happy to be in your studio again.
But I’m very happy you dropped in and today our studio is a windowsill.
Natasha
I could feel a provocation coming on. People were afraid to leave the office at night. And my intuition came true. I called Forsch in the evening and said, Anna, pack up the studio, ASAP, I feel some shit’s going to happen.
Natasha to workforce.
The locks were covered in some sort of resin. They were shoved full of bolts. Basically, it took professionals, four hours to open the doors. No one has left us yet. Just as they are watching us, they still are. When it comes to work, we don’t have issues. But everything to do with your personal or political stuff…Just keep in mind it might become public.
[cut to]
Toast. A new life.
February 2015.
Flacon
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
Miracles happened to us all the time. Our new office found us by itself. I got a call. ‘Hello, We’ve got a 1000 square meters and we know you’re Dozhd.’
I said. ‘OK, when can I come for a viewing?’
‘How about right now?’
‘Of course.’
We had to move everything ourselves. We didn’t have a moving company. It was just us. Misha was here, carrying boxes.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
We would always say we became very much like a cult. That we all felt this familiar cultish atmosphere. It wasn’t a cult in the name of Natasha. It was in the name of… I don’t know. The name of freedom.
Anya Mongayt
People got lost here. Their whole life is here. Few people here have functional families.
Evgeniya ‘Zhenya’ Voskoboynikovia (Journalist)
At some point you stop distinguishing your work from your life. And you don’t notice the moment of this transition.
Natasha.
Hello, this is Dozhd TV, from our new home and location.
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
It wasn’t just for Natasha to keep her dream project. It wasn’t about her dream. It was mainly about saving [Dozhd] as a source of information. It was for the cause. We had to save our cause.
Evgeniya ‘Zhenya’ Voskoboynikovia (Journalist)
I want my country to look like the faces of these people. I think this is important.
[cut to]
Natasha.
Well, to a happy new life for us in Flacon.
Timor Olevsky
After that we were a family. Just a family.
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Zygar Editor in Chief.
We are the chosen ones. Everyone wanted to be us.
Alexei ‘Alien’ Navalny.
Nadya ‘Alien’ Pussyriot.
Natasha ‘Alien’ Sindeeva.
Attention! Foreign Agents.
Putin:
We’re ready to talk to the opposition. We’ll continue to have a partnership with civic society, in the most expansive meaning. We always listen to everyone who constructively criticises any action or inaction of the government. That is on, any level. This kind of dialogue, this partnership, is always healthy. They are absolutely necessary for any country, including our own.
[cut to]
Dozhd is back with an emergency broadcast. My name is Vladimir Romensky. We’re currently on Moscow City centre on Zamoskyvorosky bridge, where Boris Nemtsov has been murdered. He was shot, it’s not yet known by whom, right on this spot
[cut to newsroom]
I’m Pavel Lobkov here with the main news. Boris Nemtsov’s murder.
Natasha
There was a point when I got scared and I thought: This place is wide open and I don’t have security guards. I do everything myself. For a while I lived with this fear. And the fear ate me alive. I kept looking back in case I was being followed, or somebody was waiting for me. I don’t dwell on it because I don’t know how to change my life so that it doesn’t happen. Probably, shut down the station and leave the country. So I don’t think about it. If anything, I’m afraid to think about it, because if I do, it will definitely happen.
Anna ‘Forsh’ Forshtreter
When the battle is over When you’ve carried all the wounded to the rear and fixed them up. It’s over. And now you don’t know what to do next.
All the boys and girls. All the young hipsters have all gone grey. All the ‘light’ news pisses them off. Civilian life pisses them off.
Natasha.
We all started to have conflicts. We all started to hate each other. That was it, when we met at briefings, it was impossible.
[cut to broadcast] Pavel Lobkov
Q to Natasha.
There’s a sense of despair, I’m not going to be positive. I’m not going to say everything is great here. I want to say that we’re sick. We’re sick with narcissism. And all of this dancing. You can’t fake that smile for five years. We had good times, but like we had this pigskin-pink colour. Enough. There’s a dissonance now.
Natasha.
We’re not trying to replace serious journalism, and what we do with dancing. Nothing has changed. You know this.
[cut to outside broadcast, face against a police van window]
‘Russia without Putin! Russia without Putin!’
Excuse me I’m on Dozhd TV, could you please tell me if you’re being released today? [faces camera] Unfortunately, the police aren’t talking to us yet, but we’re still here. Just to remind everybody, there’s eight of us here. It’s unclear what will happen next.
Natasha
In a county of 140 million, only 60 000 are willing to pay for independent news. The paywall keeps Dozhd alive. But you cannot change the world with such a small audience. Over these five years we won small battles, but the war was lost. Our grand adventure failed to change the world for the better. As long as you are invisible behind a paywall and never break even, you are not a threat to the state.
Evgeniya ‘Zhenya’ Voskoboynikovia (Journalist)
We are all really believed in this bright future. It hasn’t come. It’s time to admit it.
Anya Mongayt
I recently watched a film about the great Russian writer Sorokin. It has this very depressing but spot-on phrases. He says: ‘Russia shouldn’t hope for things to get better in the future. Russia’s present is Russia’s future.’
[cut to Putin and dog, barking in front of two Japanese dignitaries. Putin gives the dog a treat. ]
Anya Mongayt
She gathered us all in a room and said, ‘You have to make me happy’. She said, ‘If you don’t make me happy in a year. I’ll shut the whole damn thing down.’
Mikhail ‘Misha’ Kozreyv, Music Programming Producer: TV-Host.
I took it in the most pessimistic light. Maybe the last deadline had already past. And the decision to sell us off was fast approaching.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
It felt like the end. ‘If this is it,’ I said to Natasha, ‘I’m going to film it.’ But, as always with Dozhd, nothing went according to plan.
July 2019.
Moscow Summer Protests.
[cut to] We are unarmed. We are unarmed. ‘Hello to all Dozhd veiwers from this police van to which I was admitted during the process against the barring of opposition candidates from participating in Moscow City Council elections.
[cut to] PROTEST FOR ALLOWING INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES TO RUN FOR OFFICE.
We are unarmed. We are unarmed [chant]
[cut to newsroom and back to protest]
Masha we are going to leave you a second to go to Romensky. Right-now, they are trying to destroy the sit-in. People are being grabbed.
[cut to Natasha in studio]
We decided to hold this emergency broadcast late last night.
[cut to protest]
‘I’m a reporter. I’m a reporter.’
Natasha
We saw this was all completely lawless and unjust. And realised we had to do something. So, we’re taking down the paywall for our broadcasts.
Today you’ll be allowed to watch Fishman’s show for free. Please share and talk about it.
[cut to crowd, Fishman’s show]
‘They were pushing forward very roughly. Still, I’d never seen anything like this.’
Fishman:
We must be very open. We must be accessible. We must report things as we see them. This is our social mission as journalists, if you will.
After opening of paywall figures jumped. 18 000 viewers to 25 million (roughly).
Anya.
Sorry to interrupt [coverage] but Dozhd TV is being raided. You can see it live. Police have entered our offices. Right next to Natasha Sindeeva there are policemen, who are talking to her as we speak.
There’s a cyber-attack happening against all of Dozhd’s internet channels. We have no internet connection. We can’t stream pictures from Trubanya Street or anything else that requires the internet.
Natasha.
[cut to] Hello Dad, sorry, did I wake you?
No worries.
I just thought I’d call. You must have read the news. I wanted to call, so that you didn’t worry. You were called in for questioning? You got a subpoena? I’m on my way to the Investigative Committee. Don’t worry, it’s about the protests.
OK. Thanks for calling. Good luck and good bye.
To say I was nervous was an understatement. This was my first time. This was my baptism of fire. This was my first subpoena, even with all of Dozhd’s difficult years and situations.
In the morning at the Investigative Committee my hands were sweating. This had never happened before.
[cut to Natash outside and her report]
I can tell you first they asked about how we covered the protests on July 27th. How we worked and who funded Dozhd TV. That’s it. There weren’t any other questions.
Q You came as a witness on the case? A witness?
[cut to Anya in studio]
The Moscow case isn’t over for our television station. Today, Natasha Sindeeva was called in for another interrogation
Sasha.
I was worried. Of course. And the kids were even more worried. Because they didn’t understand what was going on. The night before, we had a long conversation about it. What to watch out for. What her strengths and weaknesses are. What to be wary of, what not to worry about, what to expect.
Natasha.
I was nervous. I didn’t sleep all night. I’d never been that scared before.
Sasha
It’s very difficult to decide what’s important to do in life—go to war and die heroically? Or live a long live and die from some common sickness? Both scenarios are possible for a person, or a TV station.
December 2019.
Natasha.
Right now people are unsubscribing for two reasons. First, they’re dissatisfied with the content etc, but that’s only a small part of it.
Second, people don’t have time of Dozhd. They don’t watch it, because they can’t find time.
?
Honestly, for the last few years I’ve had this feeling not only of stagnation, but of death This slow, horrible death, of this station, we all love.
?
If the most optimal way to reach our goal is to kill Dozhd, we need to kill it.
[cut to Natasha at home]
I’m awake at 4am yet again. I can’t sleep. It’s either old age or nerves. Dozhd is the thing that never lets you rest. You’re constantly thinking of where to find the money for all this.
At the beginning of 2019, I set myself a goal. By April 2020. Dozhd’d 10th birthday, I have to answer for myself. Only for myself. This question: What do I want to do with all this? I don’t know how I will answer this question in April.
Sasha believes closing the company is one of the best options. So that it just doesn’t die quietly, you know. But things can’t continue the way they are now.
Sasha
Selling the station to a media group is out of the question. We haven’t lived through our last ten years to end with a shitty thing like that.
Natasha
Sasha asked me, ‘Imagine you don’t have a TV station. It’s all good. Everything is calm. What do you do now?’
And I said, ‘I want to do the tango’.
[cut to Natasha doing the tango in a studio with a young male dancer]
Sasha.
Of course, I want to be the top priority for my wife and kids. But that’s extremely egotistical. It’s stupid and impossible. This is about our relationship. Not Dozhd. Even if not Dozhd, ‘Dancing with Stars’, or something else would have taken her, if not Dozhd. I just wish she could be next to me more often.
Natasha.
It’s unexpectedly hard to clap for yourself and to record. What I’m to say, I feel I must record it. Against the background of discussions and next moves etc. While all this was going on, last night I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sometimes I think everything happens for a reason. Maybe it’s time for me to stop and think about what’s really important. Are you prepared to sacrifice yourself for some mission or goal?
Where do your priorities lie?
Or, at the very least, this is a chance for me to stop and think.
Anya.
Dozhd means so much—socially, emotionally, historically—that if Natasha decides to shut it down, people won’t forgive her. If, at a certain point, she decided to pull the plug, she will be always be remembered as the person that killed Dozhd. And not even Putin wants that honour.
February 2020.
Freiburg, Germany.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
Natasha had never been away from Russia this long. She decided to take a break from the news.
Natasha.
I don’t miss it at all. You know I was guided by illusions. For quite a long time, I hoped things would change. But my optimism has run out. I’m not saying that I’m depressed all the time, but…yeah, I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that Putin is here to stay. He’ll be in power as long as he lives. I can’t say I know what to do with the rest of my life. But it’s definitely something I’m thinking about a lot.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
On our way to radiotherapy we found out that Vladimir Putin announced new constitutional amendments that let him stay in power until 2036, when Natasha will be 65.
[cut to Putin]
Our duty is to protect the Constitution. To respect it, as we respect our country, our history and our accomplishments.
2003.
[cut to Putin speech]
I oppose anyone—however good their intentions—violating the Constitution of our country.
I repeat myself, we should protect the Constituion. I oppose any changes to it.
2007
[cut to Putin speech]
Amending the Constitution to serve a specific person is, I think, wrong.
2018
[cut to Putin speech]
I have never altered the Constitution. I wouldn’t do it for myself, and I don’t plan to, even today.
2020
[cut to Putin speech]
I repeat once again, these amendments have been necessary for a long time, and I’m sure they’ll be useful to this country and its citizens.
Natasha [radiotherapy for her breast cancer]
You understand that nothing’s happening, things are getting worse. You just have to figure out how to live and exist in this. I think we live in a world that is so inverted, unfortunately, where our people get bullied, locked up, arrested, punished, killed, and persecuted and so on. There are very few of them. These people, us who fall prey to this machine. There are few of them. And, in that case, yes, you have to stick with each other. It’s very important. And not to betray your people. Is this journalistic? Probably not. Human. Yes.
I have remained human for ten years, and have never betrayed myself and my values. That’s more important to me. I don’t care whether I remain in history as an unprofessional media manager. But I remained a human with compassion, conscience and responsibility.
Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
When we shot the interview, she took breaks every twenty minutes to wash off the sweat. Still, the first thing she did when she got to Germany was finding a local tango teacher.
[cut to Natasha dancing a tango with her teacher]
The worse she felt the more she thought about dancing. Her goal was to ‘master the tango with tricks’ before she returned to Moscow.
April 2020.
Moscow.
What is really going on in the hospitals and in the regions?
Natasha.
Right now, journalists are like doctors. They’ve ended up in the frontlines. Just like doctors have, although neither of them wanted to be. For journalists, this moment calls for an act of bravery.
I completely stopped thinking about what I’ve been thinking about for the past year. About where I should go, leave, stay, or shut this down. I’ve gained a better understanding of why we need Dozhd and why we need to work. Our task to explain that to people, to be a guide in this complex situation. You know, when they cut out this sickness, it felt like they cut out something unnecessary. Something bad has left and I feel lighter inside. And I think, or need even think, I know that Dozhd needs to exist.
[cut to Moscow office]
Natasha.
[champagne] have you looked inside the fridge.
What’s in there?
It’s very beautiful in there. Though there’s less already.
[with friends]
Natasha.
I’ve lost weight. Got in shape. I feel great, I’m ready to fight. I really want to work and think we’re entering another good phase. So, I invite everyone to have a drink. Please make sure everyone has a drink.
[toast]
So to us. We haven’t been together in a while.
Natasha.
Today is 17th June, 2020. And there’s less than 2 weeks until the referendum. I just got a call from the editor-in-chief, who said the police were at Dozhd. To question one of our reporters, who’s been investigating online voter fraud.
Sasha
They can shut the station down at any time. They can put all sorts of pressure on us, literally. Even something directed at the owners of the station. I don’t think anyone doubts that for a second.
Moscow. Eve of the Constitution Referendum, June 2020.
Why won’t they tell people honestly that you want to rule over Russia for 36 years—7 years longer than Stalin? And two years longer than Catherine the Great? [broadcaster]
Natasha.
We want to release this at 3pm, alongside Putin’s address.
Today?
Yes, today.
We’ve grown up. Who are we to know who to love? No. [broadcaster]
Natasha
Hello. Hello, take this [camera phone] I’m here to vote on the constitutional amendments. Let me take this selfie[shot]? That’s it. Ballot paper and vote (camera shot) Not sure if it’s visible?
[cut to outside polling station]
Of course, this is all for show. The amendments have already been approved. I don’t really know why I bothered, but since this is the first time in a long time I’ve got the opportunity to say, ‘NO’ to tick that box. I decided to go.
Sasha.
I decided not to vote. The main reason is that I don’t think the state can be changed by some kind of flashmob. I don’t think it will be changed by elections. It will be changed in some other way.
Results are as follows: YES 77.92%. NO 21.27%.
Natasha.
Dozhd. So for the first time in ten years we’re celebrating in this zoom format.
The station changed us in many ways. The station and the changing times. Being in the middle of all these events and movements really changed us and the way we viewed life. What is or isn’t important.
So, here’s the station, right. I think it had quite an effect on, among others, how we evolved as a family, as individuals, as Sasha, and I.
I think Sasha doesn’t regret it either. And believes all of it was done right.
Q) Vera Krichevskaya (tv producer)
Is Dozhd the right kind of investment or the right kind of loss?
A The right kind of loss.
Sasha
She regards this as her life’s work. Not a responsibility, not a burden, but her life’s work. And if it’s your life’s work, you have to do it well. You need to somehow see it through to the end.
Natasha.
This is my life, Vera. I now understand this is my life, you know. I’m now at a place where I can say, this is my life. And this is how I’m living it.
After the summer of 2020, Dozhd intensified its news coverage and started publishing on YouTube for free. There, broadcasts quickly reached tens of millions and quickly allowed Dozhd to pay off its debts.
In May 2021, Dozhd was banned from the Kremlin’s press corps, ‘for covering the protests in support of Alexey Navalny’.
In August 2021, a month before the Parliamentary elections, the Russian Ministry of Justice labelled Dozhd as ‘a foreign agent’.
In February 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
In March 2022, after six days of live coverage of the war in Ukraine, the Russian government shut Dozhd down again. Its new is available in Russia again as long as YouTube is available in Russia.
Natasha and Sasha have separated.
Tango with Putin charts Natasha’s journey, from building the station, Dozhd, to recruiting an open-minded team of outcasts who find themselves reporting on some of the biggest and most controversial stories of the day while trying to protect independent journalism in their country.
The simplest path is that of force. The crooked path is that of rhetoric and ideology. I ask myself a question here: Could I have done this. Could I have massacred men, women and children? My sympathy is not with the Nazis, but the victims of Neo-Nazism. My answer is Yes. Like 99% of other Germans I’d have looked the other way. I’d have lied and minimised my role. I’m aware of Miligram’s experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) that sought to teach us something about how we responded to authority. The Jesuit ideology of give me the child and I’ll give you the man.
But if you read and attempt to write you know the world is full of words and sand. Our thinking habits protect us from ourselves and others by not thinking. Gulliver bound by 10 000 threads asks to be released. Antoine Augustin Cournot’s idea that we do not resolve difficulties we only displace them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, dissenter and critic of the Soviet Union asked ‘how did we get into this quagmire’ (of Communism)? The principle of the cult became state religion. We see that with the moron’s moron in America. Not naivety or pragmatism: xenophobia, sectionalism and crude belligerence. Reagan’s Making America Great Again clarion calls, sound very much like Making Nazi Germany Great or Saving Mother Russia. For the Nazi state it was a built-in given. Ubermensch and the tendency to view the world of others as inferior. The moron’s moron’s celebration of ignorance as a force for good. Blind optimism makes you blind. Collateral damage is what happens to those not in the cult. A term much used by George W Bush (junior) and his Yes man, Tony Blair. The idea if you say something enough people will no longer recognise what it means—deaths: 55 000 in Iraq, 500 000 children under-five due to United Nations sanctions, in particular, chlorine used in treating water plants. Samizdat art and writing was a recognised way of getting around what couldn’t be said in the Eastern bloc. When it is hot in the desert, one does not take clothes off, but put more on. We are back to those cloaked references and signs from Mother Russia. Since we cannot save our world, we save the memory of that world and burn as we go.
Notes:
Primo Levi, Auschwitz survivor.
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, ready to believe and act without question.
Arnold Wieber former Nazi.
Buchenwald. To each what he deserves (cf Auschwitz, work makes you free).
In 2008, filmmaker Luke Holland embarked on a journey to find and interview witnesses to the crimes (atrocities) of the Third Reich.
Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.
[trained at Dachau, ‘did quite well,’ promoted to Sergeant).
Daughter: What is a Blood Order?
Father: It was a political decoration for participating in the 1923 Munich Uprising.
Did you take part?
No
You must have been only about nine.
Sworn in?
1935.
Otto Duscheleit, Waffen-SS, Insterburg Germany
The [church] bells rang over all Germany when Hitler seized power. My mother voted for Hitler in 1932. My father also voted for Hitler in 1932.
Unemployment and inflation.
My older brother was already a convicted Nazi in 1932. In 1932, he was 11 years old. I remember he showed me his brass knuckles with spikes.
He said, ‘Today we are going to smash the Communist HQ.’
Germans don’t buy from Jews
He photographed Insterburg citizens that frequented Jewish shops.
And then these pictures were exhibited (shown) at the Insterburg Town Hall.
We had the task of standing guard in front of a Jewish department store. And we little boys—I was just 9—had to line up in front of the Jewish shop. And had to link arms and not let anybody through.
My friend said, ‘Let’s go in there.’ there must be something in there. we can recognise the jew by. The Jew smells. You can smell the Jew.
I was in a communication unit where we trained as wireless operators at the age of only 15 or 16. And my leader was drafted into the military. And then suddenly, I was a Hitler Youth Leader. They found me a bit girlish. I wasn’t the right kind of leader for Hitler Youth. Boxing in the afternoon. We weren’t allowed to stop until blood flowed. At the end of the week, the leader spoke to me. You don’t have what it takes to be a Hitler Youth Leader. You’re too soft. From 10 to 14 you joined Jungvolk. At 14 you joined the Hitler Youth.
Is that the Jewish grandmother?
‘yes.’
That’s the Jewish generation. That’s her. And that’s her mother?
Yes.
My older brother was a convinced Nazi. And later he realised that our Father was also Jewish, according to Jewish tradition.
His mother was Jewish.
[Therefore he was Jewish]
But he didn’t make that public. He kept that a secret. And when my brother realised he was a Jew, He wanted to be racially pure. When he realised that according to both Jewish and Nazi rules, our father was actually Jewish, a process of rethinking began.
For girls it was the Jungmaedel… and the BDM. The Association of German Girls.
Hans Werk, Berlin, Waffen-SS.
At aged 6, in 1933 I attended the local primary school. The teacher was a local party operative. He raised us according to the Nazi doctrine.
In the morning we had to stand up: Heil Hitler.
He practically raised me to be a Nazi. Against my parents’ wishes I trusted him more than them. Our teacher asserted strong control over us. This is my Hitler Youth membership card. I joined the Jungvolk at aged 10 and received this. 1st May 1937.
Even before I was 10 years old. I couldn’t wait.
We learned to read with the normal alphabet book. But we also had a Jew themed alphabet book. It was published by Streicher, who also published the Nuremberg Race Laws. And had a caricature of a Jew for each letter. I remember one in particular, a butcher’s shop that was really greasy and filthy. A disgusting Jew with long hair and a hat behind the counter. Next to him, was a blond German girl, with a white apron. He had his hand where it shouldn’t be. The Jews were to blame for everything. We were a village of 175 people. No electricity. The Mobile Nazi Film Unit come to show films. ‘Suess the Jews’. They showed Nazi films in the smallest villages. You can’t imagine today, what kind of presence they had.
There were no Jews in my village.
My parents had contact with a Jew who came from Freideberg-Ostbanhof. He bought the skins that was sold him on slaughtering days. I always went with Woldenberg with him, to get my hair cut. His name was Piefke. One day he didn’t turn up.
I asked, where is Piefke?
They told me he emigrated.
Marianne Chantelau, Wilhemshaven, Germany. Bund Deutscher Madel.
When you’re 10 or 12, you want to in a group. You want to get out of the house. We were allowed to play sports. We could play tennis on the main sports field. We were allowed to use the pool. We were allowed to play on the lawn in the park. Everything was forbidden before.
Klaus Kleinau, Bernburg, Germany, Waffen-SS.
My mother was active in the Frauenschaft. That was a women’s organisation. We went for walks on a Sunday, when I was little. My father always put on his uniform. And then we went for a walk. My mother didn’t like that at all. Women didn’t have a uniform, but he made sure that she wore a Frauenscaft badge on her coat. So that everybody could see they supported the Nazi ideology.
Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit.
I would like to have got involved, but father said no. And in the summer of 1933, they finally said yes. And I got a brown shirt and black blazer for my birthday. And that was in Stendal, when we visited my grandparents. And they bought the uniform from a Jewish store.
We did things that we enjoyed. But that faded. Then we moved to the Hitler Youth aged 14. Participation was mandatory.
Hugo Gotz, Slawentzizt, Germany, Wehrmacht.
Between Slawentzizt and Ujest, there was a Jewish cemetery. There was at least 100 graves or more. So there must have been a Jewish community. At some point. We were in the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth. And that’s when the Jew-baiting started. As we repeatedly went to the Jewish cemetery. We went at midnight for the witching hour. It was a test of courage.
Blue skirt, white blouse and the knot made out of leather. It was a triangular necklace held together with the knot. There were these social events were we would meet
There were evenings when we spoke about Nazism and the Fuhrer.
Sometimes Hitler’s Mein Kampf, bits of that.
We didn’t support the party, but we liked the uniform. We went along with it, because we enjoyed it. Putting on the uniform and going on marches. Or singing and so on.
Oh, that was lovely. There were hiking songs that you could sing today. It was lovely.
[Sings: Raise the flag…
Comrades shot by the red front and reactionaries.
Henrich Schulze, Celle, Germany, Wehrmacht.
The Jews weren’t popular, where they? And this had consequences.
[reporter question: Why weren’t the Jew’s popular?
Apparently, they were into deal-making. They had hooked noses.
Heinz Hennig, Bernburg, Germany. Wehrmacht.
Originally, it was a perfectly normal hospital for psychiatric patients. And it remained one. But the Fascists turned part of it into their Extermination Centre. It was all kept very secret. But word got round. That buses were arriving in Bernburg with blackened windows. In the direction of the Sanatorium as Bernburgers called it. Every few days, black smoke rose, and it smelled sweet. For this, many people concluded that people were being burned there. People arrived and were murdered. The furnaces are still there today. It was talked about a little. Very quietly. It was dangerous to talk about it. It was only whispered about in private.
Bernburg was one of six euthanasia centres in Germany and Austria. Approximately, 14 000 people regarded by the Nazis as ‘Not worthy of life’, were murdered here.
Herbert Fuchs Waffen SS, Obersturmfuhrer Bergenz, Austria, 1919.
It was the 9th November 1938. The SS was sworn in on that date every year. The SS from all over Germany concentrated on the Feldherrenhalle. It was night. And we marched there in ranks. And then came Hitler, Himmler and some others. To the left, under the Residenz, next to the Feldherrenhalle, there was a glow of fire. It didn’t mean anything. Just a fire somewhere. We returned to the barracks. The next day we found out: Kristlnacht. I had no idea. The fire was the synagogue.
Marianne Chantelau, Wilhemshaven, Germany. Bund Deutscher Madel?
The Party ordered the schools to take the children there. The children should see it.
Q What was their motive.
A They did not belong to our ethnic group. Apparently, I don’t know the motives.
Q Can you remember your reactions?
A Firstly, I was too young then.
Q 14?
A But look, it wasn’t in our neighbourhood. And, honestly, we didn’t really leave our neighbourhood.
Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit.
From 1829 [plaque on wall] until its destruction on 10th November 1938, this was the centre of the Jewish community in Weener. Synagogue from 1829 to 1938. A school from 1853. Rabbi and Teacher’s house from 1887. I can’t read the Jewish.
Q So there was a Jewish community here?
A Yes, in Weneer?
Q Who burned it all down?
A People from the SA.
? I didn’t really care if the synagogue was burned down. I wasn’t sorry about that. I didn’t feel any pity for the Jews.
Q So for you, it wasn’t a crime?
A No, not for me. Well, hold on. Crime…One would always have to say, Yes. However, I don’t consider it one. It was all the same to me. But if you look at it from a legal perspective, one would have to consider it a crime, because it is the destruction of other people’s property. And the one who destroyed it was the criminal. But I didn’t feel that way.
Karl-Heinz Rinne, Wehermacht, Berlin 1922.
We were on Fasenenstrasse and saw the synagogues ablaze. And the fire brigade stood in front of it. And they did nothing. They did nothing at all. We were astonished that they didn’t intervene. They just let it burn down. I only understood it all later. They only made sure the neighbouring houses wouldn’t catch fire. But that was only the beginning of the hounding of the Jews.
Kristallnacht 9-10 December 1938.
Some 1400 synagogues and places of worship were destroyed.
Over 7000 properties and cemeteries were damaged.
Many Jews were murdered. 30 000 were imprisoned.
The event caused a major Jewish exodus.
Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.?
We didn’t have any civilian clothes. We were always in uniform from morning until evening. And when you are in uniform the whole year round that leaves a mark. You have no time to orientate yourself as a civilian.
NAPOLA Nazi Political Academy.
In the Nazi Political Academy is was important that graduates should enter into all the professions. There should be people everywhere who played an elite role in Nazism.
Everyone hoped to be drafted as soon as possible. To become a soldier and go to war. Many of us volunteered for the Waffen SS.
So just as there was an elite. We wanted to be part of the elite (elite).
SS Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Lubbener Hollander. Believer [passport/book]
With the swastika. See?
Q This shows you are Aryan?
A Yes, of good stock.
Q You couldn’t become an officer in the SS otherwise?
A No. That was a prerequisite.
Q What was your rank?
A SS Obersturmfuhrer, First Lieutenant, at the end.
Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit?
I went to the SS because I heard they trained you hard. I was an athlete. Athletics, boxing, skiing, football, hiking. I liked sports. It got you tough.
Hans Werk, Berlin, Waffen-SS.
Fleurs Werk.
On 15th March I signed up for the SS. The SS was the elite corps. They had the best tanks. And we got excited. Well, I did anyway. My father wasn’t so excited about it. I did it without his knowledge.
I had written farewell letters to my parents.
‘When I fall, you should be proud. You should not wear black.’
Nonsense like that. You wonder how that could happen.
Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer?
My parents took me to a career counsellor. The man said: First he must complete his Labour and Military Service. That’s two and a half years. Or you could send him to Oranienburg. To the Death’s Head Unit. They’ll take him at 16. And then he won’t have to do any Labour Service.
Arbeit Macht Frie (Work sets you free)
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburgh, established by the SS, 1936.
Once I saw a man there. He once brought stamps from me for charity. And I wanted to go over. He hadn’t done anything! My comrade held me back and said, ‘You idiot! Haven’t you noticed what’s going on?’
That was a Mr Warschauer.
Q But why did they send him to Sachsenhausen?
A I can’t tell you that. Being a Jew was probably enough. Yes. Locking this man up was a disgrace. We did not agree with that. You can imagine. But when you’re caught up in it. [shake of the head] You keep your mouth shut. At 16! I’m sorry. But that’s the truth.
And then I heard screams outside. I put the table under the window. And then stood on top. So I could look through the window. And then I saw it. How people were beaten. With bull whips. And others hanging. Their arms behind their backs. The stool was pulled from under their feet. And they screamed until they were unconscious.
Q If an officer asked you to do it?
A If an officer had asked me to pull the stool away? The stool would have gone flying. No doubt about that.
200 000 prisoners were held in Sachsenhausen. Tens of thousands were murdered by shooting, gassing and medical experiments.
Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.?
[trained at Dachau, ‘did quite well,’ promoted to Sergeant).
On 10th January 1940, I was ordered to attend the Officer Training school in Dachau. I passed the exams with fairly good results.
The school was next to the concentration camp.
Q My question would be why Jews were interred in Dachau?
A No. We didn’t know that.
Q You didn’t know that?
A No, for us they were political prisoners.
Kurt Sametreiter Gastein Valley, Austria, 1922, Waffen SS, Oberscharfuhrer
If somebody says they don’t know about the concentration camps, this is just not true. The concentration camp inmates went to work in their prison uniforms. With 2 or 3 guards depending on how many prisoners. Everybody saw this.
I was stationed at Dachau, 1st April 1938. There was also Jews there. I know this, because our local police commander was there. He was also a Jew. And he was taken there. I even saw him.
Q in the camp, in Dachau?
A Well, yes, on his way to work.
Dachau Concentration Camp 1933-1945.
The first of a network of concentration camps under SS control, where millions, mostly Jews were murdered.
Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer?
What Adolf Hitler came to power all those who opposed him were arrested overnight. Put into concentration camps, killed…The intellectual leadership of the resistance was gone. And anyone who still protested was promptly killed. Killed. So people were scared. I can’t explain it any other way. These heroes you expect to find—and there aren’t many of them.
Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria. Established by the SS, 1938.
I was 14 years old. I was nanny for an SS family for six years. I looked after their children. Because their mother worked in the concentration camp. We took the children sometimes when they wanted to see their mother. She never came home. She normally slept over there. She worked nights in the canteen. I also went to the cinema in the camp. The prisoners filled my teeth. They sorted out my teeth.
Q, So, you had dentists there?
A Yes, prisoners were the dentists.
A Yes, he filled my teeth. They were very nice prisoners. The Kapos and so on. They were nice. Only the poor Jews were killed straight away. When they arrived, they were immediately taken to the gas chambers. They burned them immediately. They killed so many people.
Franz Splek, Muhlverteregion, Austria, 1925. Apprentice Stonemason.
In Mauthausen they had the ‘Death Stairs’. In order to avoid a detour… because the camp was at the top of a hill, and the quarry was at the bottom. To make it quicker, they built the ‘Death Stairs’. The steps were different heights. And when it rained there was those who slipped and fell. Or dropped the stone. And injured someone else’s foot. Many lost their life. There were many accidents.
Q Did you see that too, back then?
A yes.
Franz Splek, Muhlverteregion, Austria, 1925. Apprentice Stonemason.
And then there was another steep wall. And some were pushed down, either by Kapos, or by the SS, over the steep slope. Twenty metres in free-fall onto stones. Nobody survived that.
Mauthausen was at the centre of camps providing labour to German and Austrian industry. Of the nearly 190 000 prisoners, nearly half were murdered.
U-Boat Bunker, Valerin, Bremen, Germany.
Bookkeeper.
These are tomatoes. I don’t have anything green. But I don’t think that matters. Smell this.
Q is it local.
A Homemade, yesterday.
This [photo] was taken for my ID card for the bunker site. I was a wage’s clerk. I did the payroll for the German workers. For the foreign workers, I only submitted their hours. Because the concentration camp prisoners did not get paid. There were groups of labourers in Kap Horn. And here at Valentin Bunker, where they built submarines.
Kap Horn was surrounded by water on three sides. On one side were pontoon, boats that the concentration camp inmates were herded into. And then taken to the steel works. We Germans were not supposed to go there. But I went once. And I saw how people stood. Packed in tightly like matches on a boat.
I am ashamed to this day that humans could do that to other humans.
The Kapo came from a sub-camp, Nuengang concentration camp. And he had a group of 15-20 men . And these group of 15-20 men had to be brought back to the concentration camp- dead or alive. They dragged them along. Just so he could hand over the same number of men.
Q You mean at the end of the shift?
A Yes, when they could barely walk.
Q How did you know that?
A I saw it. Our hut was just 20 metres from the bunker. But as a bookkeeper I had nothing to do with it.
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, established by the SS in 1943, Germany.
They were unloaded from the trains. And then had to walk five or six kilometres to the camp. When they walked past in their wooden clogs it sounded like a threshing machine. Here they come again, we’d say to each other.
Most people benefited from it. They could work here and earn money. And those who earned money were okay with it.
Q They made a profit out of it, you mean?
A You could find advantages in it, yeh.
Q They benefited?
A Yes. Yes.
In some way the concentration camp had an effect on all of us. Local shops benefited too, of course. The butchers shops. The bakeries. And all the grocers.
Q Your grandfather was a delivery man?
A yes. He was a delivery driver. With a cart and horses. He collected goods from the train station in Bergen and took them to the camp.
Q The prisoners were hiding here somewhere (farm buildings?)
A Yes, they hid in the hayloft, or the pigsty. Or on top of the pigsty. I mean, they are big buildings. Either we discovered them in the morning or they came to us. Well, they were hungry.
Q And then what happened to them?
A Well, they were picked up. Here in the barracks, there was a bit, what do I know…Or to the concentration camp. They took them to the camp.
Q And who picked them up?
A Yes, Guards, you know.
Q But how did guards know that people were hiding here?
A Well, we discovered them and reported. At least that’s what I remember.
Q Did you make a telephone call or …?
A yes, yes, yes.
Q Did you know what happened to those prisoners?
A No. Nobody knows that.
Slawentzitz,44 kilometres from Auschwitz.
My father was a railway man. My father was also head of the cargo department. That was why our flat was right in the train station. It was interesting, because when the trains came we could see clearly what was happening.
Q What were his duties?
A Well, to register these trains. Let’s say, a freight train loaded with people. And headed for Auschwitz. It had to be registered on the paperwork at the freight yard. Where all the trains went.
Slawentzitz was one of many sites, that included concentration camps and factories, that formed part of the Auschwitz industrial complex.
The Nazi policy of Extermination Through Labour claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
They cut down all the trees for about ten kilometres. And they put up factories in no time. Massive camps of prisoners and Jews and so on. They were unloaded at the freight yard. And were marched to their respective camps. Every day, I saw guards escorting Jews from work back to camp. Sometimes they had to carry one of their fellows. Because they could not walk any more. They put them on some kind of stretcher. I saw that often.
My father knew where people were going. No-one came back. Sometimes my father came home and said: ‘They dispatched Jews again today’. To Auschwitz. People said quietly: ‘They are driven up the chimney there.’
I still have the smell of the crematorium in my nose. When you saw the smoke going up, like when you burn car tyres, then we said, ‘They’ve put some more in’. At least three people were put on there at a time on a metal grille. As the skin burned it produced a lot of smoke. You could smell it two kilometres away.
Grunewald station includes a memorial to 50 000 Jews deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
Their departure was witnessed by Berlin’s residents.
Ebensee, Austria, the site of a concentration camp, established in 1943, where 30 000 individuals were imprisoned. Almost 9000 were worked to death.
Q [residents in Home] are you all from Ebensee?
A yes, we were all born in Ebensee.
Q All of you? What did you know of the concentration camp during the war? How much did you know?
A [resident] we know nothing. At least I didn’t. I can’t speak for the others. I knew nothing. Everything about the camps was covered up. You understand? It was all hushed up. Suppressed. People would talk quietly. But not out loud!
B [resident] well, it was awful. It was awful. My old neighbour- he moved to Poland. He told me so much. Because he was in the concentration camp and survived. He survived. They were hungry. So many of them starved to death.
Q The camp inmates worked in the tunnels?
A –[c resident] Those who still could. Others had to carry them back in the stretchers when they couldn’t take any more. No food. They were finished.
[b resident] yes, but so many.
Q What happened to those that could no longer work?
A [c resident] they were burned. Yes, exactly, every time. The ovens were fired up. You could see the smoke from the ovens. You knew what was going on.
[b resident] these were horrific times.
[a resident] and they beat them to the end. In the labour camps, they beat them to the end.
Then it was over.
Q So you think the people here knew what was going on?
[b resident] Quietly, no one would admit it, for fear of going there themselves. People said, ‘Don’t say anything or you’ll end up in the camp too.’
They noticed.
Everyone knew, but nobody said anything. The day before the Americans came, there was lots of smoke and it smelled awful. They burned them all. The ones who were worn out. They burned them all. I remember that.
[c resident] I always sat by the window, so I saw a lot. The Jeep drove up, the Americans opened the gate. Imagine the rejoicing when they came. How they screamed! How they screamed! But for joy. They were cries of joy! They were so glad.
The townspeople got scared they’d break into the houses or something. But this didn’t happen.
[resident a] And suddenly, all the SS guards were gone. None to be seen, from one moment to the next.
[c resident] they would ring your doorbell, late at night. And your whole flat was searched.
But someone was there?
My friend. Yes, my boyfriend. Well, he was with the SS. They would have caught him.
But he was not from Ebensee. No, he was not from Ebensee.
I see.
Your husband. Was he a Nazi?
No.
Your husband was an SS camp guard?
C resident: If I hadn’t hid him for nine months, they would have arrested him. But they didn’t get him.
Herman Knoth, Hamburg, German, 1927, Waffen-SS.
For the German people, the Waffen-SS were at the peak of the nation. Not just physically, spiritually too. Yes, an elite.
Yes, it’s still here (tattoo mark on his arm)
Whenever I have surgery I tell them about it. I’ve had quite a few operations. It’s somewhere. Here, look.
[another member] Hans Werk
Now you should be able to see it. [showing tattoo]
Q what was your blood group.
A ‘O’. It was interesting you’d expect it to be done for all soldiers. To help everyone. But there was an awareness of an elite. Only the Waffen-SS.
[another SS member]
They come and said, ‘Show your arm.’ It was supposed to be your blood group. In case you were wounded. But many said they also did it to mark us forever.
[another SS]
The Waffen-SS had nothing to do with the terrible and brutal treatment of Jews and dissidents. And the concentration camps. The Waffen-SS had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Nothing in the slightest. We were always frontline soldiers. We were never involved in actions behind the front. Always at the front, eye to eye with the enemy. Nothing else. I have no regrets. And I’ll never regret being with that unit. Truly not. A camaraderie like that…You could rely on every man, one hundred percent. There was nothing that could go wrong. That was the beauty of it.
Friedrich Elder, Salzburg, Austria 1925, Wehrmacht.
There were SS units that fought on the front line and they were merciless. They shot whole villages. Nothing remained standing. The people lay around like dead flies. That too, was SS units. The Russians were already driven out, but with civilians…they did what they liked. There were more dead than alive. The living received us begging ‘Please, Please…’ Generally, the Russians were taken prisoner. With some exceptions. I don’t know the percentage, but generally where the ordinary soldiers, not the elite troops, they drove away in their tanks, were shot. And buried in a mass grave. They had to dig their own graves which we put them in. Well, I wasn’t there. When they were forced to dig, they knew they’d be shot.
Q Did they talk to one another?
A No, there was a deathly silence
We were in the Pripvat swamps. A doctor and three medical orderlies. And we were attached to the Hungarian SS unit. And allegedly, they found ammunition in a village. We witnessed as they started to set the houses on fire. The people flooded out of their homes. There was thick black smoke everywhere. It was like a film. It was a dark night. And these troops on their rather small horses and they’re riding back and forth shooting like savages. It was like a cowboy film. In the middle, was a house that was bigger than the rest. It may have belonged to a mayor. And when they people ran into this house, it too was set on fire. When the people inside could no longer stand the heat and smoke. They ran out of the house. Machine guns had been set up outside. And as they ran out they were just picked off. The whole village was wiped out. Women and children and men who were just… they would have burned alive if they didn’t come out. And if they came out they were shot.
Q What was the role of the medical personnel?
A We had no role. We never had a chance. If a grenade had been thrown, and had injured a few Hungarian SS then perhaps…
Q If the SS men had been hurt?
A Yes.
Q Why did your officer not write a report?
A I don’t know. I can’t say. Perhaps they didn’t want one.
Q What do you mean?
A What is not in the archives does not exist.
And then we withdrew further with the tank. And drove through a village, which was engulfed in flames. And I didn’t know this… I didn’t know about this ‘scorched earth’ order. Hitler instigated a ‘scorched earth’ policy. At the Fuhrer’s command no house should fall into the hands of the Russians. He hoped the Russian advance could be slowed down that way. Yes, it was cruel. But I did not care who burned.
On the 20th January 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi officials met to discuss the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ the mass murder of all European Jews.
On the 9th May 2011, former SS man Hans Werk met a group of young students at the site of the Wannsee Conference.
Q You said you are ashamed to be German, is that correct?
A No, I didn’t say that. I am ashamed today that I joined that organisation. That I was proud to serve in the Liebenstart. And I was proud to bear this tattoo. And our leader, this hero, hid in a bunker, like a coward. And shot himself and escaped responsibility. And Adolf and his cliché brought to disgrace. They cause us to lose our homeland. And I lost my honour.
Q And what?
A My honour!
Q But you were full of honour and pride, back then?
A What was I? If you’d kept your honour? You’re ashamed now that you had the honour of standing for your fatherland? No I don’t understand?
He’s ashamed of that?
A I’m ashamed of the crimes committed. To stand up for the fatherland is something completely different.
Q Everybody goes soft on camera.
A Think about it…The majority cheered when they bombed London and Coventy to ash. Knowing that woman and children were killed. These are the consequences of letting ourselves be seduced? No, that’s the result. The concentration camps in Germany. The destruction of Warsaw. Wherever you go today you have to be ashamed.
Q Anybody in this room with a weakness of character? Will think, ‘Shit, now I’m a German. What am I going to do now?’ That’s what you’re doing now. You’re judging people. Even though you said, it’s not our fault. Somebody with a weakness of character will think, ‘On, No, I’m a German, I must be ashamed my whole life.’
A why don’t you show your face? Why are you such cowards [screen faces blanked out.] Look at the camera and say what you think.
Q-A Then I’ll get a criminal conviction and get persecuted by the state.
Hans: I say, you’re one of them. Why are you hiding?
Q-A because I’ll be made out to be a criminal.
Hans: Why won’t you be?
Q-A of course I will.
Hans. That’s rubbish.
Q-A in your eyes, I’m a criminal, like your old comrades?
Hans: Then I would have to be afraid the Nazis would set my house on fire.
Q-A what nonsense.
Hans, shouldn’t I?
Q-A I don’t believe it, really.
Hans, when I speak so openly.
Q-A you shouldn’t be afraid that some Albanian stabs you on public transport? You should be afraid of that. Not your own kind.
Hans I’m getting agitated, but one should stay really calm.
Q-A But you’re doing it
Hans. Enough now. I belonged to a murderous organisation. What else was it? But innocent women… One can think one’s actions are wrong. Even very wrong. But innocent women, or because they were Jewish or Gypsies, or because they were weak, physically, or were sickly. They were killed by injections. Euthanasia…I remember a man called Frank Lemke. We used to tease him as a kid. One day he was gone. It turned out they had injected him in Landsberg. Gone. We were told that those ‘unworthy of life’ had to be destroyed. ‘Unworthy of life’. We carried it out to perfection. Planned at the Wannsee Conference, in this house. Around a table like this one. In comfort, with coffee. They decided how the Jews, women and children were to be killed. By this horrid method. I cannot be proud of that. I am ashamed of that. It can’t be taken for granted that a Jew would wish to talk to a SS man like me, who was convinced that what Adolf did was right. Think about what that means. I met 23-year-old German Jews. Their fathers were in the war. An old Jewish lady of over 80 years told me: ‘My father was in the First World War, he received medals. He did not want to believe that the Nazis would kill him. He refused to flee Germany. ’ You can imagine what happened. For me, this is too much. But I believe it is important to talk to young people like you. I ask only this of you. Do not let yourself be blinded!
[another former SS soldier]
Q are you still proud today? That you were a member of the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler?
A Of course. Not just anyone could join.
Q you mean it was…?
A An elite. You could say that.
Q Are you willing to accept that the Liebstandarte was involved in the murder of Jews among others? How can you say this is an elite in the modern sense?
A They weren’t involved in those murders.
Q But the SS?
A Maybe, I don’t know. I never witnessed it.
Q Will you admit the SS was a criminal organisation?
A No
Q You won’t accept that?
A I won’t accept that. I would dirty myself if I admitted to that. And I won’t do that. The whole SS organisation was recognised as a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg Trials. But not by a German court. So, I won’t accept that.
[new/old former SS soldier]
Q So, you are saying that the reports that came out later about the murder of Jews in the extermination camps, it’s said to be 6 million.
A That’s a joke.
Q One million, maybe a little more in Auschwitz.
A yes [shrugs, means no]. I don’t believe it. I will not believe it. It can’t be. Today they say… Excuse me, but it’s the Jew who puts it that way. The scale that is claimed today. I deny that too. It didn’t happen. I can’t imagine that back home. So many horrible things happened. I don’t know.
[new/old former SS]
The majority of those under Nazism said after the war again and again, firstly, ‘I didn’t know,’ secondly, ‘I didn’t take part’, and thirdly, ‘If I’d have known I’d have acted differently’. Everyone tried to distance themselves from the massacres committed under Nazism, especially those of the final years. And that’s why so many said: ‘I wasn’t a Nazi’.
[new/old SS]
An SS officer was lying next to me And an American officer came to his bed and said: ‘Are you a Nazi?’ to this SS officer. And he said, ‘Yes, I am.’ The American officer shook hands with him and said, ‘The first German to admit he was a Nazi. A pleasure to meet you.’ Later, I asked myself what I would have said to this American officer if he’d said to me. ‘Are you a Nazi?’ Probably the same as everybody else. I was forced to. I joined the Hitler youth. And so on…I wouldn’t have said I was a Nazi.
[new/old SS]
We are, at least, complicit in other people’s crimes. We can’t be accused of being active perpetrators. We didn’t do that. We didn’t beat, or imprison anyone, or do anything like that. But we went along with it.
Q How can you say that you didn’t imprison anyone when you were a camp guard? A member of the Death’s Head SS.
A A valid question. A very valid question. That’s when complicity begins to turn to guilt. That’s why I got out.
Q At what point does complicity make you a perpetrator?
A Complicity begins by going there in the first place. Not to have turned around straight away. We didn’t dare. Nobody walked away.
[old/new Nazi}
Let’s say there was an order to exterminate the Jews. If, as a policeman, or a soldier, I am forced to help round up Jews and take them to a concentration camp. What does that make me? If I go voluntarily. Then I’m definitely a perpetrator. If I’m ordered to do it… Has perpetration begun if I say, ‘Move along Jews…’ I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. What else could I have done? If I refused I could have been put against the wall and shot.
Q Did you ever yourself hear of this happening?
A No, never.
Q there is no record of it happening, in the literature, either?
A I never heard of it.
Q If you received such an order what would you have done?
A Yes, that is a good question. If ninety-nine men had said yes before me, I might have participated as well.
[woman, former Nazi]
Q The main responsibility of the murder of the Jews in the second world war
A in the second world war the responsibility is German. It is the stigma they will bear for the rest of their lives. But I don’t feel part of the collective guilt of the Germans.
Q So who is to blame for these atrocities?
A God will be judge of that.
Q Put the good Lord aside.
A No.
Q I would like to have your opinion.
A Yes, but… the good Lord doesn’t sit opposite me. But I feel… I’m ashamed as a German. Because something so cruel happened in the German name. With this meticulousness. With this bookkeeping accuracy.
Hans:
What it comes to judging between those who did it and…Actually, they were all perpetrators. They were all perpetrators.
Q The concentration camp guard… do you consider him a perpetrator?
A Well, yes…I was one of them. I feel like a perpetrator.
[Nazi woman]
I’ve always said we didn’t know. But in the end, we are perpetrators too. We let it happen. We should have got to the bottom of it. So, in the end, we’re perpetrators too.
[Former SS]
Do I consider myself a perpetrator? [laughs] That’s such a broad question. I wouldn’t have been a perpetrator if I’d the courage to say ‘no’ at any point. So, if you say that I didn’t say that, then I’m a perpetrator. That’s an easy answer of course. But I can’t be convicted as a perpetrator. Because really I was an ideological perpetrator. And not a…But let’s finish now, shall we? [laughs]
[unrepentant SS former officer]
Q So you are not willing to blame Hitler?
A No.
Q For you? Hitler is not responsible?
A I will not blame him.
Q You will not blame him?
Q Do you still honour him?
A I certainly do. The idea was correct.
Q And the murder of the Jews, was that also correct? That’s what Hitler…
A No, I don’t share that opinion.
Q Sorry?
A I don’t share that opinion that they should be murdered. They should have been driven out to another country, where they could rule themselves. That would have saved a great deal of grief.
Angela Merkel [former] Chancellor of Germany.
The mass murder of six million Jews, carried out in the name of Germany has caused indiscriminate suffering to the Jewish people, Europe and the entire world.
The Shoah fills us Germans with shame. I bow before the victims. I bow before the survivors and those that helped them survive.
Luke Holland. In memory of my murdered grandparents and millions of others.
My mate Martin Powell said ‘Big game on Sunday.’ I wondered what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen him for about two years. Usually, a big game meant Rangers. But he meant Livingston. We’ve a terrible record against them stretching back to the Brendan Rodger’s era. The only Scottish team we haven’t beaten this season. Must win. And we did win, quite comfortably. Livingston spook us by playing to their strength and our weakness. Long-shys. Long balls into the box. Playing in and around the area for free kicks and corners. Obileye, for example, hit the bar from a free-kick on the cusp of half-time with us ahead and quite comfortable. That doesn’t mean much. We’d over eighty-percent possession and missed an injury-time penalty to draw with Livingston at Parkhead. Comfortable and possession stats doesn’t mean points. We had to dig it out here.
Maybe that meant the Ralston and Bitton started. Big players in terms of stature. But in the first-half it was pretty much Jota against Livingston. Callum McGregor missed his second penalty of the season. Our record of penalty taking is a bit like scoring goals from corners, hit or miss and usually miss.
But Jota’s corner into the box two minutes after McGregor’s penalty miss, Starfelt knocked the ball on, and Daizen Maeda headed into an empty net from underneath the bar. When we score first in Scotland, we tend to win.
And when we’re gifted a goal eighty seconds into the second-half then it’s pretty much game over. A Ralston cross coming off Obileye and Nicky Devlin knocking the ball into the net.
James Forrest seemed to have put the game further out of reach when he scored after 55 minutes. He’d been strangely hesitant to shoot, but a good take on his left foot into the corner of the net.
Two minutes later Livingston narrowed the gap. A flick on from a corner and Andrew Shinnie was first to react stabbing it home. Postecoglou brought on our usual raft of substitutes. O’Riley for Rogic. Abada for Forrest. Giakoumakis for Maeda. And later Hatate for McGregor. But it was, thankfully, game over. Over twenty-five shots and three goals. The most important statistic—3 points clear at the top. Eight game and counting. More days like this and we won’t need flares or smoke for lift-off.
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, author and critic of Vladimir Putin was murdered in her apartment in central Moscow 7th October 2006.
Ryszard Kapuscinski. Imperium: ‘All dictators, regardless of epoch or country have one common trail: they know everything, are experts on everything.’
Chechnya: A Dirty War 4th November 1999.
‘You probably think I’m writing this to stir your pity. My fellow citizens have indeed proved a heard-hearted lot. You are enjoying your breakfast, listening to stirring reports in the North Caucasus in which the most terrible and disturbing facts are sanitised so that voters don’t choke on their food.
But my notes have a quite different purpose, they are written for the future.’
Vladimir Putin, the new Russian prime-minister had been head of the FSB, formerly the KGB. The breakup of the former Soviet Union had been relatively peaceful, unlike the genocidal wars in the former Yugoslavia. But when two Chechen warlords staged an armed rebellion against the former Soviet Union, Russian troops attacked two villages in Daghestan. Apartments in Moscow and other cities suffered bomb explosions. Around 300 Russian citizens were killed. Russian propaganda linked the attacks to Chechnya separatists and the international terrorism of Osama Bin Laden.
Alexander Litvinenko, a British naturalised Russian defector and former agent of the FSB, was poisoned with polonium in London and died 23rd November 2006. He helped coin the term Mafia State. He accused Putin and FSB agents of planting the bombs in Russian cities. Chechnya separatists denied any involvement. Putin’s goal was to become President of Russia. His war against Chechnya and uncompromising stance was widely supported by the Russian public.
Claud Cockburn the maverick Irish journalist put it quite simply, ‘Never believe anything until it is officially denied’.
‘The [Chechnya] refugees are unanimous. They talk today of a slaughter of the civilian population and the death of children, of pregnant women and old men.’
March 2000
‘In December 1999 I went with Galina Matafonova to Pavletsky Station in Moscow to meet her son Lyonya. All that remained of this young man over six-feet tall was some ashes in a little box no bigger than the palm of my hand.
My name is Galina Nikolayevna Matafonova, I’m the mother of three children. My eldest son Alexi was taken into the army on 15 May 1998. He went out of a sense of duty and served for a year and a half. Every night he wrote home. Suddenly there was silence for two months and I began to fret. I was afraid he was in Daghestan. But I was reassured by the words of [Prime Minster] Putin: our boys would not be sent to fight without their voluntary agreement.
The letter arrived in September…The boys in Alexi’s regiment told us how they were forced to sign a formal declaration of their agreement to fight. They were brought to the banks of the Terek River and told: ‘If you don’t agree, hand back your weapons. You’re free to go. You can make your own way back. Your Russian soldiers wearing uniform and you won’t make your own way back alive…It’s that or sign up.’
‘My Homeland’ 27th December 1999.
We are in Ingushetia on the outskirts of the village of Yandara, not far from the Chechen border at a refugee camp called Goskhooz. Tents, sheds and dugouts. Nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, no clothes to wear and nowhere to wash, not even once a month…Yet the [tent] school is working. Many children cannot attend regularly, they have nothing to wear. As a rule one child attends the school today, and tomorrow a different child.
Abdlezim Makhauri: Composition for eight and nine-years-old.
I have only one homeland, Grozny. It was the most beautiful city in all the world. But my beautiful city was destroyed by Russia, and together with it all of Chechnya and the people living there. The people that Russia had not yet managed to destroy went to Ingushetia, as I did. But I miss my home. I so terribly want to go home although I know my house has already been bombed to pieces. All the same I want to go…LEAVE US ALONE, RUSSIA. WE’RE ALREADY FED UP WITH YOU…GO HOME.
Richard Powers, The Overstory.
‘There’s a Chinese saying. When is the best time to plant a tree?
Twenty years ago.’
Putin’s ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign destroyed Grozny. The Russian Prime Minister refused Western mediation. He pointed to NATOs bombing of Serbia. The Council of Europe had temporarily suspended the voting rights of the Russian deletion. But Tony Blair invited Putin to London. The British Prime Minister offered his support and that of Washington for the ‘terrorist insurrection’ in Chechnya.
Giorgos Giakoumakis misses out again, which is disappointing after the lack-lustre goal display at Easter Road. A carousel in which Matt O’Riley returns and replaces Tom Rogic, or vice-versa. Both are class player. Celtic had a free-kick in the first minute, 30 yards out, which was wasted by O’Riley, with not even a shot on goal. St Mirren offering no threat other than a Scott Tanser cross which Joe Hart had to fall on, early in the first half. No surprise they camped in and played for a no-score draw. That’s a given for most teams in Scotland.
Charles Dunne, who was lucky not to escape an early booking, came closest to scoring an own-goal after 15 minutes, and was booked just before half-time. A Jota cross and Dunne’s mis-hit clearance hitting the bar. He almost sliced another ball into his goal.
Daizen Maeda had a few headers, none of which looked like scoring. But Liel Abada had the best chance of the first-half, Maeda missing a Jota cutback and the ball falling for the Israeli. He’d ghosted in and outside the six-yard box hit the ball first time, but hit the keeper.
Jack Alnwick saved from Jota and a Josip Juranovic shot powered over his bar. It’s been all defence for the Buddies, but our attack finding it hard to create chances.
Our centre-half, Cameron Carter-Vicker won man on of the match for a performance where our central pairing got more of the ball than their teammates. Ten minutes into the second half he got the goal we needed. Abada taken out by Tanser, who limped off after getting booked. As a general rule, we don’t score from free kicks or corners, until we do. Ball whipped in, Carl Starfelt jostled with the defender and the ball broke to Carter-Vickers, his measured control and left-foot volley from six-yards broke St Mirren’s resistance.
Maeda almost made it two with an acrobatic volley from an O’Riley cross a few minutes later. Celtic brought on three substitutes. Forrest, Rogic and Nir Bitton. All added urgency to the Celtic team. Forrest flung in a ball for Maeda which was just too high at the back post. He also came close to getting us a penalty, getting to the bye-line and getting tackled but he didn’t go down. With Hattate and O’Riley off, Callum McGregor pushed higher up the pitch after picking up a booking.
Our captain put us on easy street with nine minutes remaining in the ninety. He drove a clearance through a ruck of defenders into the bottom corner. With a few minutes remaining he came off to a standing ovation to be replaced by Ideguchi. Job done. Dembele came on for a cameo after his horrendous pre-season injury. Jota went off. Nine game to go. Let’s hope and pray, nine-in-a-row.
odonnellgrunting 