Also online here.

(Kyrgyzstan-Germany, 2005, 85 min, Director/Script: Ernest Abdyshaparov. With Kumondor Abylov, Askat, Sulaimanov, Tabyldy Aktakov.)

We are in the fourteenth year after the Soviet Union disintegrated and released its socialist republics into a sudden and unexpected independence. The five Central Asian republics were probably the least prepared: The economic malaise that followed the withdrawal of Moscow’s subsidies, and more deeply, the ideological vacuum that arose, left the five -Stans in the Soviet backwaters stranded on a potholed road to an uncertain future.

Hardly anywhere else has this been more tangible than in “Saratan”, a Kyrgyz-German co-production screened at the 49th London Film Festival. In a vivid and most comical manner, this film is a happy-sad snapshot of life in a country whose average citizen is struggling with a sheer insurmountable number of difficulties.

It’s early in the morning and an alarm clock breaks the silence in an average Kyrgyz village afoot the mighty Tien Shan. The Mullah has overslept (again) and hastens to the mosque for the Morning Prayer. No one seems to show any interest for such early-morning devotion, though. The lonely warden on the main square delegates the non-existent rush-hour traffic. His boss, the local police officer, once again wakes up in the bed of a married woman whose husband works away from the village.

Fourteen years into independence, there are several things that just don’t seem to work in this small Kyrgyz village: Agriculture is defunct; people are poor and lack a perspective for a better future. A few rich have benefited to the disadvantage of the average villager. Employment is virtually non-existant and the little money earned is all to often spent on vodka.

However, the film is anything else than sad. Director Ernest Abdyshaparov says that “without doubt, only humour and self-mockery are capable of conceiving and understanding the whole power of the sad daily life images; a humour that is at work beyond the mere laughter, as it derives directly from the absurdity of the situation.”

Abdyshaparov brilliantly illustrates that religion does not really emerge as a new form identity after the demise of the Communist system. Islam, although formally the religion of the Kyrgyz, has never had a profound grip on this nomadic people, even before the Soviets banned religion into the private domain.

The cattle thief and his family speak an Islamic prayer fused with nomadic gestures when slaughtering a stolen lamb; the Mullah has a hard time garnering people’s attention, whereas the female shaman has her doors run in by the sick whom she heals with pagan rituals; the vagabond Jehovah’s Witness missionary finds a receptive listener in the Communist die-hard when both share a prison cell. Welcome to Kyrgyzstan.

More than 40 characters form a dazzling puzzle of relationships; like in a grand theatre play, there are drunkards, thieves, philanderers, hypocrites, adulterers. The hero, however, is the Kyrgyz people – that despite a steep and uphill track finds ways to cope with the hopelessness.

Abdyshaparov and the fabulous cast make this movie a fun and satiric starter to understanding post-Soviet reality on the ground in one of the more blurry corners of the former empire.

As the mayor says: “Before Russia separated from us and declared independence, our world was at least in some kind of order.”

Now, the only thing that’s certain in Kyrgyzstan is that nothing is for certain anymore.

Spiegel Online has a very interesting story, unfortunately it is in German only.

Vitali Kaloyev, an Ossetian who lost all his family in a plane crash back in 2002, killed the air traffic controller who was on duty that tragic night.

The plane crash was a tragic chain of unfortunate events, killing all 70-something people onboard the Bashkirian Airlines flight.

The air control in Zurich underwent maintenance, the second officer that night left the tower for a nap. Vitali’s own tragedy was that his family only joined the Bashkirian travel group by incidence.

He waited for them in Spain, where the family wanted to spend a hard-earned summer vacation. Vitali hadn’t seen them for a year, as he was working on a Spanish construction site.

The Tu-154 crashed into a FedEx machine 37,000 ft above the German Bodensee. No one survived. Seeing the deformed corpses of his family turned Vitali into a broken man.

The story sheds light at different perceptions of justice: Whereas Vitali wanted to hear an excuse by the people he thought were responsible – the air control company never said anything in this regard being afraid of further litigation.

In preparation for the Tuesday screening, I scanned the web for the state of Central Asia’s cinema. There is a great overview on KinoKultura – featuring a vast number of films that were made after the collapse of the SU. The site also features interviews with the most important directors and scriptwriters.

My favourite so far certainly is Moon Papa (Luna Papa). I saw it around five years ago – when I had not yet been too interested in Central Asia. It’s a German-Russian-French-Tajik- Austrian-Swiss-Japanese co-production. Everyone should see this. It’s simply sensational.

If anyone knows more about the film, where exactly did the shooting take place? The reviews I read are not too exact when it comes to post-Soviet geography; some say it was filmed in Uzbekistan, others speak of Tajikistan. It is quite a fictitious script – but the family in the movie lives somewhat close to Samarkand.

It was quite a surprise-hit in Germany back in 2000. There is a good review (in German) here, another one (featuring photos) here.

You can buy the poster on Amazon.com, although I can only find the actual movie on the German site.

Here some pictures from this summer. Still too lazy to put them in a full-fledged photo show.

Almaty:



The splendid Zhenkov Cathedral is made entirely of wood, interlocked with such skill that no nails have been used in the construction.

Earthquake-proof Hotel Kazakhstan. And some much-needed summer refreshment.

Tashkent

Ashgabad

The four next shots were made by Sven.

Baku

The statue commemorating women’s emancipation during the Soviet Union (a woman throwing off her veil) is conspicuously situated in front of the Bank of Iran.

The vista from the Villa Petrolea is weird. As far as the eye can see, there are decaying oil drilling platforms, dating back from the Soviet Union.

Old Baku is fabulous.

Sheki

Gori

The front of the Stalin museum. Scary building – and scary contents.

Tblisi


Controversy: Construction of the Sameba Cathedral is almost finished after seven years. It is financed by an anonymous benefactor – plus the site is an ancient Armenian cemetary. And: It’s the biggest religious building in the Caucasus.

I will be watching this one on Tuesday and write a small review for oD.

It sounds like a very good film.

Laurence has a great post covering Dr. Aleksandr Gelyevitch Dugin’s appearance in Washington recently. Dr. Dugin founded the International Eurasian Movement and came to speak at SAIS / Johns Hopkins last Wednesday.

Reading Laurence’s summary of last Wednesday’s seminar, I extract the following key information:

• Russian indentity is neither European nor Asian, it is Eurasian, a fusion of the former two
• Russia must – as a ‘land power’ – counter-balance the West (Dugin refined ‘West’ as being American, contrary to previous Eurasianists)
• Russia has a great mission, including the spread of communal and spiritual values, contrary to Western free-market and democracy values
• A third way of economic development is possibly, i.e. a fusion of free-market and Marxist schools of thought.

When I was in Tblisi in September, a friend of mine from Moscow, Misha, first explained to me what Eurasianism actually means, and that Dr. Dugin is by no means the only authority on the subject.

Misha, who did his PhD in history at Moscow State University, said that everyone in Russia only having a remote interest in history knows about this theoretical concept. It is very popular right now, however, the main proponents are often dubious characters that are sometimes difficult to separate from far-right ideologues and national bolsheviks.

He basically reiterated similar points stated in this, quite outdated, Eurasianet article: ‘RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY AND EURASIANISM’ by Dmitry Shlapentokh. Misha, however, thought that Eurasianism is not as a strong force in Russian foreign policy as many others claim.

What I take to be the most important points in Shlapentokh’s article:

• Eurasianism today remains ill-defined, it is not a straightforward school of thought in the sense of the word. Shlapentokh uses the word ‘hodge-podge’
• The widely agreed on ingredients of Eurasianism are: Benevolent imperialism, orthodox messianic qualities and a ‘Third Way’ of economic development
• According to Eurasianists, Russia should control the Eurasian landmass, including Central Asia and the Caucasus

The ‘clash of civilisations’ theme is hence not inherent in the very core body of the theory. It is only added by modern-day Eurasianists like Dr. Dugin.

It becomes thus interesting to see in how far the Russian government, most importantly, President Putin embraces the concept or not. Here, we can track a changing attitude over the past couple of years.

In 2000, Putin just got to power, the President contributed an article to Euraziistvo: Teoriia, Praktika (Eurasianism: Theory and Practice), where he proclaimed that Russia should turn its policy focus to the Asia-Pacific region.

Obviously, 9/11 changed all this again, with Putin closely-allying himself with the US-led War on Terror. Dubbed as appeasement by some (including endlessly-ridiculous John Laughland), Russian foreign policy indeed turned westwards.

However, as we know, the year 2005 marks a decisive shift, and events in Uzbekistan and a dramatically-changing rhetorics in Moscow leave people puzzled whether Eurasianism is again in an upswing or not.

Some people take Putin’s speech in Kazan as a hint, where he praised Lev Gumilev, the founder of modern Eurasianism.

To me it seems quite clear that modern Russia borrows some elements of Eurasianism to formulate her foreign policy. This does not mean, however, that people like Dr. Dugin become top-rank policy advisors.

There are sentences like these that in my opinion dismantle Dugin as being a man totally detached from reality – someone who flees into a black-and-white world that looks strikingly similar to a board of chess:

It is also known that at the very beginning, Dugin had considered Turkey as a foe, and only in the last period he changed his mind and thought that actually Turkey would be charged with a key role in the alliance, which will be set up against the United States.

The article from which I took the quote is interesting inasmuch it sheds light at a possible alliance between Turkey and Russia, the two gateways between East and West, by definition formidably set up to work together against the US, at least that’s what Dr. Dugin thinks. While there are signs that both countries are working more closely together, it is quite devious to speak of the two nations as strategic partners, also given their century-long rivalry and military confrontation.

This chessboard thought made me look up this quote:

Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia – to many these names breathe only a sense of utter remoteness or a memory of strange vicissitudes and of moribund romance. To me, I confess, they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world.

To me, Dugin sounds a little like the man from I took this quote, dating back to 1892 and from Lord Curzon’s book Persia and the Persian Question.

In terms of the theory’s contemporary value, some of Dmitry Shlapentokh’s words are worth quoting at length:

It would seem that Eurasianism’s flaws, rooted in its selective analysis of Russia’s past, would preclude its serving as a viable blueprint for Russia’s future development. It might be able to address some of contemporary issues, but ultimately seems destined to run into trouble, due to the seriousness and complexity of the region’s ethnic, religious and geopolitical problems.

Whether Russia is alienating herself from the EU and the US in favour of her historical sphere of influence is also highly doubtful. Despite recent misunderstandings, the trends are fairly clear: At least the European Union is – also beyond oil – increasingly integrating with Russia in the economic hemisphere, and the Russian political class is absolutely aware of this, despite problems in defining the European entitity.

Alexander Rahr, leading German Russia expert (who himself has made fairly controversial comments), has given an interview to the German ‘Eurasisches Magazin’. Despite his recent gaffe in relation to Kyrgyzstan’s regime change in March, he makes a good comment on the influence Eurasianism has and will have in Russia’s foreign policy.

Rahr holds that Russia will not be able to become a single and separate geo-political force as the Chinese influence will grow much more considerably over the coming years, putting pressure on Russia from the East. Hence, the only tangible option for Moscow is to intensify ties with Europe.

When Putin described the demise of the Soviet Union as the “biggest catastrophe of the 20th century”, he reflects the Russian historical understanding – which holds that the Soviet Union unified the core parts of a thousand-year-old Russian empire. The origin of this is located in today’s Ukraine, the Rus in Kiev. Belorus inseparably belonged to this entity as well, as – in the opinion of many Russians – did the Caucasus, Siberia and Tatarstan (the latter two still being part of Russia).

And, according to Mr. Rahr, there is still the hope that Russia will be able to regain these lost parts again, maybe in a hundred years. While this idea is still present in the thoughts of many Russian politicians (and is having a slight rennaissance judging from the popularity of Dr. Dugin), this does not mean it will translate into armed conflict. Russia is not capable of doing this, and the quite derailed ideas of Dr. Dugin (e.g. the alliance with Turkey) won’t be the way forward, as most people in the Kremlin understand quite well.

It would be too simplistic trying to understand Russian foreign policy in the terms of Eurasianism.

While still sorting out the best blog layout and a whole lot of other technical details, there are two more neweurasia blogs that have started to post:

Joel does a great double-job of posting on http://georgia.neweurasia.net (and will soon be joined by Austin and others) and http://kazakhstan.neweurasia.net (where Aidar, me and others will help out as well).

Meanwhile, Marianna has her latest Azerbaijan election update on http://azerbaijan.neweurasia.net.

Don’t miss out on Rico’s coverage of Turkmenistan, either.

Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will commence posting within some days, as well.