Mother Russia: Classical Music Series at Tricycle, London

The Tricycle Theatre, London
Classical Music Series 2012
Artistic Director: Tamsin Waley-Cohen
with the Honeymead Ensemble


‘Warm, focused, joyous… a marvellous chamber series’ The Sunday Times
Sunday 20 May, 7pm
Mother Russia


Leading the Classical Music Series into the summer months The Honeymead Ensemble perform two of the great Russian string quartets. Arensky’s ‘Cello’ Quartet No. 2 in A minor  was written in memory of Tchaikovsky and is deeply rooted in Russian folk, this gem of Russian Romanticism has a uniquely rich and dark sound. Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 3 in E-Flat minor was written in memory of his great friend, the violinist Ferdinand Laub. Symphonic in scope, and filled with moments of intense grief and longing, this work is considered the great Russian Romantic quartet.

http://www.tricycle.co.uk/current-programme-pages/theatre/theatre-programme-main/classical-music-series-2012/

CONF: Gartenkultur in Russland (Hannover, 9-11 May 12)

CONF: Gartenkultur in Russland (Hannover, 9 - 11 May 12)
Hannover, 09. - 11.05.2012
Internationales Symposium "Gartenkultur in Russland"


Veranstalter: Dr. Anna Ananieva (Universität Tübingen / JGU Mainz),
Prof. Dr. rer. hort. habil. Gert Gröning (CGL Leibniz Universität
Hannover / Universität der Künste Berlin) und Dr. Alexandra Veselova
(Institut für Russische Literatur der Russischen Akademie für
Wissenschaften St. Petersburg) für das Zentrum für Gartenkunst und
Landschaftsarchitektur (CGL), Leibniz Universität Hannover.


Das Symposium widmet sich der Gartenkultur in Russland und bietet
erstmals ein fächerübergreifendes Forum für deutsch-russischen
wissenschaftlichen Austausch zu dieser Thematik. Die Veranstaltung will
aktuelle Forschungen einzelner Disziplinen wie Architektur- und
Kunstgeschichte, Garten-, Literatur-, Theater-, Musikwissenschaften
sowie Ethnografie bündeln und die bisherige sowie zukünftige Reichweite
des interdisziplinären Zugriffs auf die Gartenkultur in Russland
ausloten.
Inhaltlich fokussiert die Veranstaltung auf die Themen „Der Garten und
seine Lebenswelten“, „Der Garten und andere Künste“ und „Der Garten und
seine Personen“. Im ersten Schwerpunkt geht es um repräsentative
höfische Gartenkultur, Gärten der russischen Landgüter und die Datscha
als Phänomen im russischen Alltag sowie um urbane Freizeitanlagen aus
der sowjetischen Zeit. Der zweite Schwerpunkt setzt sich mit den
Landgütern als Orten der Sehnsucht und der Flucht auseinander. Dabei
wird nicht nur nach der Konstituierung eines Mythos in der Literatur
gefragt, sondern auch die Ikonografie der Gärten in der Buchkunst, der
bildenden Kunst und der Architektur der Moderne reflektiert. Hinzu
kommt die Untersuchung der Rolle des Theaters auf den adligen
Landgütern. Schließlich werden hier auch die Bedeutung der Musik in den
Parkanlagen und Gärten der Landsitze sowie die künstlerische Wiedergabe
der Gärten auf Porzellan angesprochen. Im dritten Schwerpunkt stehen
die Gutsbesitzer, Schriftsteller, Maler, Musiker, Gartenarchitekten und
Politiker als Akteure der Gartenkultur im Mittelpunkt. Die spezifischen
Themen in diesem Kontext haben Gärten und russische Folklore, die neue
Gartenästhetik in der russischen Provinz, die Popularisierung der
Gartenkultur durch Poetisieren und Bauen sowie die Gärten der Literaten
zum Gegenstand.


Das Symposium findet im Rahmen der Russland-Wochen an deutschen
Hochschulen 2012 anlässlich des Deutsch-Russischen Jahres der Bildung,
Wissenschaft und Innovation 2011/2012 statt und wird von dem
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) und von der Stiftung
Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK) gefördert.
Arbeitssprachen des Symposiums sind Deutsch und Russisch mit
Synchronübersetzung.


Programm


Mittwoch, 09.05.2012
Ort: Leibnizhaus, Holzmarkt 4-6, 30159 Hannover, Leibnizsaal


9.00-9.15
Begrüßung der Tagungsteilnehmer: Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn
(Vorstandsvorsitzender des CGL)
Grußwort des Präsidenten der Leibniz Universität Hannover, Erich Barke


9.15-9.45
Einführung in die Tagung
Gert Gröning (CGL / Universität der Künste Berlin)
Alexandra Veselova (Institut für russische Literatur der Russischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, St. Petersburg)
Anna Ananieva (Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte, Tübingen /
Institut für Kunstgeschichte, JGU Mainz)


1. Garten und seine Lebenswelten
Moderation: Anna Ananieva


10.30-11.15
Valeria Kolosova (St. Peterburg, Institut für Linguistik der Russischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Darstellungen der Gärten und Symbolik der Gartenblumen in russischen
Volksliedern vor dem Hintergrund der slavischen Folklore


11.15-11.45
Marcus Köhler (Hochschule Neubrandenburg)
Der Garten als ‚Geburtsort’ des russischen Nationalstils


Moderation: Joachim Schnitter
11.45-12.30
Ekaterina Dmitrieva (Moskau, Institut für Weltliteratur der Russischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Das russische Landgut als Mythentopos und Ursprung für Mythen


12.30-13.15
Sigrid Thielking (CGL / Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Gartenkultur, Muße und Hospitalität: Vom russischen Landhaussommer als
literarischer Lebensform


Moderation: Alexandra Veselova
15.00-15.45
Andrej Rejman (St. Peterburg, Staatliche Denkmalschutzbehörde)
Die Gärten des Anichkov Palais im 18. bis 19. Jahrhundert: Vom Garten
des kaiserlichen Landhauses von Elizaveta Petrovna bis hin zum Palast
der Jungen Künste


15.45-16.30
Katharina Kucher (Universität Tübingen)
Der Prototyp des sozialistischen Gartens: Der Moskauer Gorki-Park
1928-1941


Moderation: Anna Ananieva
17.00-17.45
Boris Sokolov (Moskau, Russische Staatliche Geisteswissenschaftliche
Universität)
Gärten des „Silbernen Zeitalters“: Artifizielles Leben und
künstlerisches Umfeld


19:30 – 20:30
Musikalisches Rahmenprogramm
„Von Wien nach St. Petersburg. Violinsonaten von Haydn, Mozart und Titz“
Ulla Bundies – Violine
Assen Boyadjiev – Hammerklavier
Moderation: Klaus Harer (Deutsches Kulturforum Östliches Europa Potsdam)
Ort: Kreuzkirche (Kreuzkirchhof 1, 30159 Hannover)
Eintritt: 10 Euro, erm. 5 Euro


Donnerstag, 10.05.2012
Ort: Senatssitzungssaal, Hauptgebäude der Leibniz Universität Hannover,
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Raum F 335


2. Garten und andere Künste
Moderation: Marcus Köhler


09.30-10.15
Alexandra Ippolitova (Moskau, Staatliches Zentrum der russischen
Folklore)
Landschaftsdarstellungen in Kräuterbüchern (Herbarien) am Ende des 18.
Jahrhunderts


10.15-11.00
Gert Gröning (CGL / UdK Berlin)
Kireevskij im Himmel. Schablykino, eine bemerkenswerte Parkanlage aus
dem frühen 19. Jahrhundert im Gouvernement Orel


Moderation: Sigrid Thielking
11.30-12.15
Klara Šarafadina (St. Petersburg, Staatliche Universität für
Technologie und Design)
Gartenbauprojekte und imaginäre Gärten der Romanfiguren in der
russischen klassischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts


12.15-13.00
Joachim Schnitter (CGL / Hamburg)
„letters from terra“ Gärten als Kristallisationspunkte von Zeit und
Verlust bei Anton Tschechov und Vladimir Nabokov


Moderation: Susanne Fontaine
15.00-15.45
Christoph Flamm (UdK Berlin)
Musik in den Gärten der Petersburger Sommerresidenzen im 18. Jahrhundert


15.45-16.30
Olga Kupcova (Moskau, Staatliche Lomonosov Universität / Russische
Staatliche Gerasimov Universität)
Theater-Spiele in Garten- und Parklandschaften der russischen Landsitze
um 1800 - Eine Typologie


17.00-17.45
Irina Pašinskaja (GMZ Peterhof)
Festliche Illuminationen im Unteren Garten von Peterhof in der ersten
Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts


Freitag, 11.05.2012
Ort: Senatssitzungssaal, Hauptgebäude der Leibniz Universität Hannover,
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Raum F 335


3. Der Garten und seine Personen: Wahrnehmung, Beschreibung, Deutung
Moderation: Anna Ananieva


09.30-10.15
Alexandra Veselova (St. Petersburg, Institut für russische Literatur
der Russischen Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Zur Herausbildung von gartenkünstlerischer Begrifflichkeit in Russland
um 1800


10.15-11.00
Margrethe Floryan (Kopenhagen, Thorvaldsens Museum)
Hortikulturelle Lehrstücke: Zur Hirschfeld-Rezeption in Russland


Moderation: Gert Gröning


11.30-12.15
Maria Našokina (Moskau, Forschungsinstitut für Theorie und Praxis der
Architektur und des Städtebaus)
Gartenprojekte von Georg Kuphaldt im Kontext der russischen
Landsitzarchitektur des „Silbernen Zeitalters“


12.15-13.00
Stanislav Savickij (Institut der freien Künste, Staatliche Universität
St. Petersburg)
Der Garten der Reflexion: Lidija Ginzburg und der Park Petrodvorec


13.00-14.30
Andreas Schönle (London, Queen Mary University)
Die Modernität der Gärten: Das politische Ringen und die Identität der
Elite


Die Teilnahme an dem Symposium ist kostenfrei. Wegen der
eingeschränkten Raumverhältnisse wird es um eine Anmeldung bei der
Geschäftsstelle des CGL gebeten:
Dr. Sabine Albersmeier
Zentrum für Gartenkunst und Landschaftsarchitektur (CGL)
Leibniz Universität Hannover
Herrenhäuser Straße 8
30 419 Hannover
Fon +49 (0) 511/762-5789
Fax +49 (0) 511/762-5693
Mail cgl@uni-hannover.de


Weitere Informationen zum Symposium, das zweisprachige,
deutsch-russische Programm sowie das Konzertprogramm befinden sich hier:
http://www.cgl.uni-hannover.de/de/tagungen/gartenkultur/index.php

EXH: Mysteries of Chukotka at MacDougalls

The Mysteries of Chukotka
An exhibition of photographs by Ida Ruchina
In benefit of the Red Cross Chukotka Health Centre

Viewing Days: 8-13 May, Tuesday-Friday 10:00-17:00
Weekend by appointment only
Evening Reception: Thursday 10 May, 19:00-21:00

This virtually untouched corner of the earth would still be recognised by the first Russian settlers, who came to Chukotka half a milennium ago. In summer, the vast space of the unforgiving tundra is filled with a dazzling variety of mosses, lichens and arctic plants. In winter, it has hundreds of shades of snow.


Ida Ruchina's spectacular photographs allow a rare glimpse at this little-explored region of outstanding natural beauty, its hardy inhabitants and their unique culture and traditions. Love and a true interest in people nurture her art. The photographs will be on sale in benefit of the Red Cross Chukotka Health Centre.

Auction Dates
Important Russian Art: Sun 27 May, 17:00 
Russian Art, Icons and Works of Art: Wed 30 May, 10:30 & 14:00
Dimitri Bouchene Collection: Wed 30 May, 16:00
Viewing 25-29 May



MacDougall Arts Ltd 
30A Charles II St, London, SW1Y 4AE
Tel +44-20-7389-8160 
http://www.macdougallauction.com/soonmay12.asp

Lecture, video screening & debate: Art and Political Activism in Russia Today

Thu 10 May 2012 – 6.00pm
Discussion, St Martins College of Art and Design, London
Art and Political Activism in Russia Today: Art in The Absence of Civil Institutions 
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES
VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES

Lecture, video screening and debate.
In the chair: Dmitry Vilensky, artist, writer, and founding member of Chto Delat? (What is to be done?), a collective publication of artists, critics, philosophers and writers which gathers political theory, art and activism (St. Petersburg)


Over the last decade, a number of artists have succeeded in both realising and finding the theoretical grounding for a variety of works, which allows us to speak of a new situation in art. These projects have found points of connection between art, new technologies, and the global movement against neo-liberal capitalism. The lineages of this interest in political art can be traced back to Documenta 10 (1997) and coincides with the emergence of the “movement of movements”, which erupted onto the political horizon in Seattle in 1999 – an event which, it can be argued, has crystallised a new political subject (named the Multitude by Hardt and Negri’s Empire published in 2000) and have its new embodiment in recent occupation movement that spread in many countries.


This situation has subsequently been manifested through a variety of cultural projects whose critical stance towards the process of capitalist globalisation and emphasis on the principles of self-organisation, self-publishing and collectivity has evoked the idea of a return to “the political” in art. The lecture will focus on the analyzis of how this international process were represented in Russian art and activism during last decade where they have to operate under the hostile conditions, direct repression and exclusion.


Screening of videoworks will be included.
THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS COLLEGE ART AND DESIGN, UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS OF LONDON, GRANARY BUILDING, 1 GRANARY SQUARE, LONDON N1C 4AA


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/art-and-political-activism-in-russia-today-art-in-the-absence-of-civil-institutions

GLAS: Young Women’s Writing from Russia

Arpril 20 April 2012 – 7.00pm
Presentation
Language: In Russian
Young Women’s Writing from Russia: A presentation by top Russian publisher GLAS


Russian women increasingly occupy leading roles in society. They take a sober view of the present-day world. With typical female emotion and attention to detail they speak openly about previously forbidden subjects – including specifically female problems – and leave no taboos unturned.


Female vision is always sharp, unexpected and paradoxical. Particularly fascinating is women’s frank self portraits and their merciless portrayals of the opposite gender. They often impersonate men and obviously don’t think much of them.


Interestingly, half of the authors in Russia today are women and their books are invariably in great demand.


Speakers:
Olga Slavnikova (see above) is an internationally renowned author of definitive novels, winner of the Russian Booker Prize and director of the Debut Prize
Tickets: Admission Free
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/young-womens-writing-from-russia-glas

CFP: Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–1922

Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–1922:
The Centennial Reappraisal


If you are a professional historian or graduate student doing high-quality research on any aspect of Russia’s history between 1914 and the early 1920s, please contact us now.


We are an international collective of over 40 Russian, American, British and other scholars, and we aim to maximise the use of archival resources to produce a comprehensive scholarly reappraisal of Russia’s world-changing experience of war and revolution between 1914 and the early 1920s, 100 years after the events themselves.


Taking the period 1914-22 as a continuum of conflict, we have identified five core organizational themes for analysis: military affairs; international affairs; the home front; the empire; and culture. Particular concerns are to extend our knowledge of Russia’s Great War, which has been overshadowed in the historiography by the 1917 revolutions and their aftermath, and to explore how the Great War experience helped to shape Russia’s development between 1917 and the early 1920s.


The resultant series of about a dozen books will be fully peer-reviewed and available in both printed and electronic forms. The audiences are professional historians, graduate students and senior-level undergraduate students. Publication is scheduled for 2014–2017.


Additionally, we are developing a permanent public website for non-scholarly audiences, especially high schools, that will have accessible digests of our chapters together with illustrations, maps and selected source documents.
Our books and website will be published in English and, subject to funding, in Russian.


The series editors are:
Professor David McDonald, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Dr John Steinberg, Georgia Southern University, USA
Dr Anthony Heywood, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
For further information please click on the link.


If you are interested in contributing a chapter, contact us now by email. Please put the acronym RGWR in the subject line and send this information to the series editors:
* your full name, title and institutional affiliation
* your email address
* a short description of your proposed chapter (150 words)
* the title of your proposed chapter
http://www.basees.org.uk/CFP5.shtml

TONIGHT: Inside Russia: A Correspondent's Personal Notes at Pushkin House, London

Thu 12 April 2012 – 7.00pm
Talk
Inside Russia: A Correspondent’s Personal Notes 
by Bridget Kendall 
GB RUSSIA SOCIETY PROGRAMME


The BBC’s Bridget Kendall is probably best known for her reporting from Moscow at the end of the perestroika era, when as BBC Moscow correspondent as she charted the Soviet Union’s collapse, the failed coup of 1991 and the emergence of a new Russia under Boris Yeltsin.


In fact her acquaintance with the country goes back to the mid 1970s when she studied for a year in a provincial university in what was still the height of the Brezhnev era. Thirty years on, her
experience of ordinary life in a stagnating and strictly controlled Soviet Union is a useful reminder of just what living in Soviet Union meant on a day to day basis.


At that time, many experts still considered the Soviet system might remain entrenched for decades to come. But in fact, when she returned for a second year of study in the early 80s, she was witness to a rather different mood: the Soviet Communist empire was beginning to crumble, under the strain of a failing economic system that could no longer compete with its cold-war rival, compounded by an unpopular war in Afghanistan and the incompetence of an aging and ailing leadership.


In this talk Bridget will share her personal reminiscences from the Soviet era, chart her experiences of reporting on Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms and the extraordinary collapse which twenty
years ago led to the end of the USSR, and offer some thoughts on the turbulent path Russia has travelled since then.


TO BOOK FOR THIS TALK PLEASE EMAIL membership@gbrussia.org
Tickets: £5
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/inside-russia-a-correspondents-personal-notes

The Art Newspaper Russia launched in Moscow

The Russian-language sister paper to The Art Newspaper launched on Monday 26 March with an event hosted at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Guests included collectors, critics and museum directors, including the Pushkin’s director Irina Antonova, who celebrated her 90th birthday. The launch was also celebrated at the Italian embassy in Moscow.

The publisher of The Art Newspaper Russia, Inna Bazhenova, is a mathematician, engineer and art collector, and with her husband has founded and runs an engineering firm. She also has five children. The editor-in-chief is Milena Orlova, who has been a journalist with one of Russia’s leading dailies, Kommersant, and was then editor-in-chief of the magazine Artchronika. 


The paper, which will also have an online presence, is being produced in Moscow under licence from Umberto Allemandi Publishing Ltd, the publishers of The Art Newspaper. It joins the network of newspapers founded by Umberto Allemandi in Turin in 1983: Il Giornale dell’Arte (Turin, founded 1983), Il Giornale dell’Architettura (Turin, founded 2002), The Art Newspaper (London and New York, founded 1990), Ta Nea Tes Technes (Athens, founded 1992), and Le Journal des Arts (Paris, founded 1994). The Art Newspaper Russia will take 50% of its news from the existing network and will generate the other half with its own journalists. This news will, in turn, become available to the network. 


The Art Newspaper Russia is for Russia, Ukraine, the central Asian republics and the Russian communities abroad. 


“For me, it is important that Russia has a publication that reports on art objectively, so that readers feel involved in its global context,” says Inna Bazhenova. “Many of our collectors are turning towards Western art and both our museum professionals and art enthusiasts feel the need for a wider range of information. I hope that The Art Newspaper Russia will also help the Western reader understand what is happening in Russia.”


“I am very pleased that we are about to have our first truly international publication covering the art market, museums, the conservation of our cultural heritage and contemporary art,” says Milena Orlova. “We have lacked a publication with analysis and news for professionals in these various fields. I am convinced that, besides being of interest to a broad readership, The Art Newspaper Russia will help integrate Russian art into the international art scene.”



Original article published online 22 March 2012 by The Art Newspaper. 
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/The-Art-Newspaper-Russia-launches-in-Moscow/26095

STUDY ABROAD: NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition & Culture

Study Abroad: NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture (NYI)
Deadline: April 1/April 15, 2012


July 9-27, 2012
St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.nyi.spb.ru/news


NYI is a phenomenal way for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students to have an eye-opening overseas experience, while continuing their focus on Linguistics/Cognitive Science or Cultural/Media Studies. The school is a 3-week Institute, held in beautiful St. Petersburg, Russia, at which students choose 4 seminars in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences. Faculty are from a wide range of fields and institutions. This year's program features Tom Bever (Arizona), Rajesh Bhatt (UMass), James Hurford (Edinburgh), Roumyana Pancheva (USC), Irina Sekerina (CUNY), Sergei Tatevosov (Moscow State), John F. Bailyn, Robert Crease, Robyn Deluca, Heidi Hutner, Gary Marker (Stony Brook), and others.


All classes are in English. NYI is a superb way to spend 3-4 weeks of summer 2011!
There are two ways students can participate:


(i) For credit through Stony Brook's 4-wk Study Abroad program to St. Petersburg, for which they get 6-9 transferrable credits and pay SUNY (low) tuition and a program Fee. For this option, which includes study of beginning Russian and group excursions, a cultural program and so on, the deadline is April 1 (short extensions possible), and interested students should go to the Stony Brook Study Abroad website for application details. http://www.stonybrook.edu/studyabroad/shorts_russia.html


(ii) Students can attend NYI directly, without receiving any US-side credit (just our Certificate of Completion) and without paying US tuition for the program, just a reduced Program Fee. For this option he deadline is April 15, 2012. Interested students should contact jbailyn@notes.cc.sunysb.edu

CONF: Europe meets Russia, April 24-27, Berlin

Conference: Europe meets Russia April 24th-27th, Berlin

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy is pleased to host the following speakers for the upcoming EMR Conference:

The Hon. Kristiina Ojuland (MEP), Former Foreign Minister of Estonia

The Hon. Mikhail Kasyanov, Former Prime Minister of Russia (2000 – 2004)

"Europe Meets Russia" has been designed with the intention of bringing together young individuals (mid-to-later stage students and young professionals with 1-2 years experience). The program has been developed in recognition of the importance of the relationship between Russia, Europe, and the global political system. Participants will gain insight into cultural diplomacy, exchange ideas and experiences, and learn from influential figures in the given field. Participants will be able to network and develop contacts on social and professional levels through the participation of lectures, challenging workshops, and discussions. The weeklong seminar will include lectures, seminars, and workshops led by experts from the fields of politics, academia, and civil society, as well as cultural and social activities. In addition to raising awareness amongst the participants on the field of cultural diplomacy and salient issues concerning European-Russian relations, the week provides an opportunity to network and experience Berlin.

Further information about "Europe Meets Russia" can be found at:

www.icd-emr.org

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy is now accepting applications for participants with an active interest in the issue.

http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/CREES/archives/conferences/index.html#064390#more 

BBC: Putin, Russia and the West

Vladimir Putin, after eight years as president of Russia and four more as prime minister, is stubbornly holding onto power. He has announced his intention to return as president and declared his party the winner in parliamentary elections that are widely seen as fraudulent. In Moscow 100,000 protesters have taken to the streets in the largest demonstrations since Putin took office.


Putin began his career as a KGB spy but when he became president, he made himself a valued ally of the West. How did he do it? And what made Washington and London turn against him?


This four-part series is made by Norma Percy and the team at Brook Lapping with a track record for getting behind closed doors with multi-award-winning series like The Death of Yugoslavia, The Second Russian Revolution, and Iran and the West. For the first time Putin's top colleagues - and the Western statesmen who eventually clashed with him - tell the inside story of one of the world's most powerful men.


In this episode, George W Bush meets Putin in June 2001 and declares he looked him in the eye and 'got a sense of his soul'. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice recall their discomfort. But Rice, the only Bush adviser in the private talks, reveals that, three months before 9/11, Putin gave Bush a prophetic warning about Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban. After 9/11, Putin describes how he convinced his shocked colleagues that Russia should align with the West. Sergei Ivanov, Russian's defence minister, tells how the Taliban secretly offered to join forces with Russia against America.


Broadcast on BBC Two, 9:00PM Thu, 19 Jan 2012
Available on BBC iplayer until
9:59PM Thu, 16 Feb 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b3hkm/Putin_Russia_and_the_West_Taking_Control/

2012 Small Grants for Russian Fulbright Alumni

The Fulbright Program in Russia is pleased to announce a small-grants competition that is open to all Russian alumni of the program. Funding for these grants comes from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. State Department, with support from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Small grants will be awarded to support short-term projects that enhance and promote the Fulbright Program in Russia. Alumni are encouraged to use their imagination and creativity in developing proposals that meet the following general guidelines:
1. The project must be outwardly focused and prominently incorporate the Fulbright name.
2. One or more alumni must be in charge of the project.
3. The grant cannot be used to fund international travel.
4. Individual projects will generally be supported up to a maximum of $1000 each including tax. The grants are approved on a rolling basis and will be paid in rubles.
5. Priority will be given to those alumni who have not received Small Grants in the last few years.


Possible projects include but are not limited to:
organizing local or regional meetings such as small conferences and round tables for Fulbright alumni and others interested in participating in the Fulbright program;
establishing local Fulbright alumni groups (Fulbright clubs);
developing interactive real or virtual on-line communities;
setting up local or regional exhibitions based on the work of Fulbright grantees;
creating methodological materials;
planning regional activities aimed at recruiting applicants for Fulbright grants;
organizing activities that promote the Fulbright vision to increase mutual understanding among the peoples of Russia and the USA.
Whenever possible, applicants are encouraged to link their projects with other Russian institutions (universities, institutes, American Centers and Corners, libraries, museums) that will allow for broader audiences.


Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis but must be submitted by March 01, 2012. While funding decisions will be made on a rolling basis, all grant funds must be distributed by June 01, 2012. Applicants who have not been awarded a grant and received funding by this date will need to re-apply for the next small grant competition, which will be announced during the 2012-2013 academic year. All projects selected for funding must be completed by June 01, 2013.


Applications must be submitted via e-mail and include the following (all documents are in the attachment):


1. Small Grant Application, which consists of a Cover Page (in English) and a one-page Description of the Proposed Project (in Russian).
2. One-page Proposed Budget for the Project with a detailed list of expenditures (in Russian). Make sure to include any and all sources of cost sharing.


In some cases, the Fulbright office may request additional information before making a final decision regarding funding.


Those receiving grants will be required to submit a brief final report and account for expenditure of grant funds upon completion of the project.


Questions and requests for additional information should be addressed to the Fulbright Program office in Moscow (mbezrukova@fulbright.ru).

http://www.fulbright.ru/en/smallgrants2012http://www.fulbright.ru/en/smallgrants2012

LECTURE: Leninburg: Remembering a City's Past by Catriona Kelly at UCL, Dec 5th

Seminar Series 2011-2012
Mondays 5.15pm - Room 433 SSEES (16 Taviton Street), London, WC1H 0BW
5 December 2011
Prof. Catriona Kelly (New College, Oxford)
Leninburg: Remembering a City's Past [CRS]

The Centre for Russian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL) exists to promote research and teaching on Russia, the former USSR and the Russian Empire. The primary aim of the Centre is to create a more distinct focus within the School for cultural, historical, linguistic, literary and social sciences research into Russia, past and present, and thereby to improve the environment for joint and individual research on Russia, including interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. The Centre aims also to promote knowledge and discussion of Russia in the broader academic community and with the public at large. Its activities enhance the quality of both postgraduate and undergraduate teaching and at the same time provide a 'home' for the many SSEES research and MA students with an interest in Russia.


Activities:
SSEES is the major centre for Russian studies in the UK. More than twenty full-time members of faculty -- language, literature and culture specialists, historians, social scientists -- devote all or most of their research and teaching to Russia. At the MA level, more than 50 students are taking Russian-based courses and/or writing their dissertations on a Russia-related topic and some 25 students are doing their postgraduate research on Russian and the former USSR, ranging from 17th-century icons to 20th-century poets, from Soviet cinema to post-Soviet politics. About 125 undergraduates are registered for degrees in Russian studies and combined degrees including Russian, with many more taking one or more courses with a Russian component, in particular politics, history and language. The Library's collection on Russia and the Former Soviet Union currently contains some 100,000 books and over 200 current periodicals and newspapers, making it one of the major resources for Russian studies in the United Kingdom.


The Centre's regular activities include the Post-Soviet Press Group which meets weekly during term-time. It also organises postgraduate Research Workshops as well as running seminar programmes: in 1999-2000 on 'The Re-writing of History in Russian Literature', 2000-2001: 'Death and Immortality in Russian Cultural History'; 2001-2002 : 'Russia in Time. Time in Russia'; 2002-3: series linked to the dates 1703 (the founding of St Petersburg) and 1903 (the founding of the Bolshevik party).


SSEES's Russian Cinema Research Group which organises seminars, talks and conferences on Russian and Soviet cinema, is also affiliated to the Centre for Russian Studies.

http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/russstud.htm

The Man who died for Cézanne. Nikolay Punin (1888-1953) by Natalia Murray

Nikolay Punin is not a name widely known in the West, primarily because his file languished in the KGB archives since he died in 1953, partly because his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number, and partly because his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, the poetess Anna Akhmatova; evidence of this is that the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the House on the Fontanka in St. Petersburg, is in fact in Punin’s old apartment.  

Photograph of Nikolay Punin (1920s),  Punin family archive, St. Petersburg

Yet, during his life, this remarkable individual was one of the most influential figures in the turbulent but exciting arena of post-revolutionary Russian art and its social and political context. Throughout his life Punin was also one of the most persistent and uncompromising propagators of Paul Cézanne and his legacy.

Nikolay Punin was a critic of the new era, promoting new art, proclaiming that: ‘Our art is the art of form, of shape, because we are proletarian artists, artists of a Communist culture. He welcomed the October revolution as an opportunity to establish new art, which would be based on the achievements of such artists as Cézanne.

Punin’s ‘Cycle of lectures’, which were given in Petrograd in 1919 and published in 1920, aimed to give an overview of Western-European art and to identify the Russian avant-garde with it. In these lectures Punin tried to distinguish which elements make an artist great, rather than ordinary. He felt that artists such as Cézanne and Picasso had the power to break free from the accepted rules and laws. In his sixth lecture the art critic announced: ‘Cézanne broke painting from the shackles of subject matter.’

Admiring this unique French artist, Punin felt that ‘nature for him was only the reason, only the dictionary for perfectly constructed work of art.’ He believed that what matters for the artist is what he feels rather than what he understands and that ‘the major aim of artistic activity is to transform the world through new forms of beauty’.

In his review of the new trends in the art of St. Petersburg, which was written by Punin for the magazine ‘Russian art’ in 1923, the art-critic described Cézanne’s painting ‘Grand Pin Près d’Aix-en-Provence’, which was purchased by Ivan Morozov in 1908. Comprised of separate blocks of paint, this painting represented the new era of post-impressionist art. Punin used this painting for his explanation of Cézanne’s work. He compared it to the academic landscape by the representative of ‘Peredvizhniki’, Ivan Shishkin. He said that if you pull a branch of Shishkin’s tree, it will come out together with roots and earth; in Cézanne’s painting, together with the branch, part of the sky will be torn. Punin’s comparison reflected the wholeness of Cézanne’s landscapes.

By 1921, many artists and writers had left Russia in anticipation of arrests and deportations. They lived in Russia through the most difficult post-revolutionary years of starvation and poverty, driven by their faith in building the new art of the new nation. Their disillusionment and their emigration signalled the beginning of the end of the Russian avant-garde.

Punin had written four books and more than forty articles in three years after the Revolution and played a leading role in all the major developments in artistic life in 1920s Russia.  But now, Nikolay Punin, like many, began to feel frustrated by the limitations of the new communist system, and increasingly by his limited success in trying to ‘defend the freedom of artistic arts’.

Punin was arrested for the first time on 3rd August 1921 – just a few months before the Department of Visual Arts of Narkompross was closed. Later he would say about these events: ‘It was the end of my love-affair with the revolution.’

 From 1923, he concentrated mainly on lecturing, writing and museum work. After being excited about all the new possibilities which came with the change from a rather hard hearted imperial regime and being the right hand of Lunacharsky in the first years after the October revolution, already in February 1920 Punin had written in his diary:  ‘One quality of the revolution – life gets to be a risk.’

But despite his first encounter with rejection and with persecution by the state, Punin continued his attempts to educate new Soviet people in modern art. ‘Nothing can happen to me which can crush me. And that’s my destiny,’ – wrote Punin to his wife in July 1923.

On 3 April 1921 the Museum of Artistic Culture was officially opened in the Myatlev House, which used to house IZO Narkompros. Researching the experimental nature of avant-garde art, the museum was the only institution of its kind in the world. It represented the new art, striving to explain it to the masses.  In 1922, at Filonov’s suggestion and through the determined efforts of Malevich and Nikolay Punin, the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) was established with the Museum of Artistic Culture as its base. It was a truly unique establishment, where artists explored the laws of visual perception and the formation of art. For Punin this newly-established institution represented the fulfilment of all his dreams about educating workers in modern art with Cézanne’s legacy as its focal point.

Malevich suggested that the ideal museum exhibition of new art should have several parts, such as ‘Painting as such’ with Cézanne in the centre of it. But in 1926 the museum together with Inkhuk were closed over-night, and even though its priceless collection was moved to the department of the newest movements, which was headed by Punin at the Russian museum, the doors, opened for the avant-garde artists by the October revolution, were gradually closing down.

In January 1933 Punin also lost his job as the head of already non-existent department of Newest Movements and was ordered to change the exposition of the 20th century Russian art at the Russian museum in two weeks. From now on he was only allowed to remain a member of the artistic committee of the museum. However, when the flames of the revolution have died down, Punin still kept his position as a fighter for Russian avant-garde and promotion of Western-European modern art – it was his brave choice, the price of which was first his career and then his life.

Back in 1919 in one of his articles in the newspaper ‘Iskusstvo kommuni’, Punin wrote: “We were persecuted and will be persecuted, not because we are anti-bourgeois, or the other way around, but because we possess the gift of creative art. This is the reason we cannot be tolerated by mediocrity, even by Communist mediocrity.”

During the late 1930’s, Punin was working on the last serious work of his life - a text-book on the history of Western-European Art. It was 494 pages long, and it was written in three months in the spring of 1939. After putting lots of pressure on Punin and the four other authors to finish this book quickly, the publishers then sat on it for a year, reducing chapters dedicated to the art of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century to 35 pages (less than 10% of the whole text-book).  The text-book was then reviewed by the famous Moscow-based art-historians, Lazarev and Alpatov.

  Originally, the chapter on the ‘Art of Imperialism’, which then meant ‘Impressionism’ and ‘Post-Impressionism’, was written by another art-historian, Valentin Brodsky. But in 1940 he had already been mobilized to the front, and Punin decided to re-write this controversial chapter. In the beginning of this chapter Punin explained that the ‘art of imperialism’ did not deny traditional art – instead modern artists studied and criticised it, and finally created new art in accordance with the tastes and ideas of their time. He dedicated the large part of this brief overview of Western-European art to one of his most admired artist – Paul Cézanne, about whom he wrote:

“Cézanne – is one of the most intense artists ever known in the history of Western-European art. Absorbing in his art the whole richness of the painting tradition of his predecessors, denying any romantic or idealistic associations, he saw the expression of painting in everything around him…”

Punin felt that Cézanne brought back the classic traditions of French art, which were denied by the Impressionists, and that his followers, rather than Cézanne himself, made his inventions look formal. Punin always adored Cézanne.  In 1915, he had written to his wife, Anna Arens: ‘Will I, like my contemporaries, leave the content [of the painting] behind, and for another year will be hating Gauguin and loving Cézanne?’

Punin never betrayed his love for Cézanne. In 1940 Lazarev was writing to him how all the professors of the history of art at the Moscow State University were against his chapter on the ‘Art of Imperialism’. At the time Lazarev was still on Punin’s side, saying that the ones who criticized him the most would never be able to write like him. He wrote that he really liked this chapter, but advised Punin to make some characteristics smoother and milder in order to minimize criticism. Punin ignored this suggestion, but, much to everyone’s surprise, the text-book was still published. In the bizarre circumstances of the day, this was because Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and Stalin’s right hand man, apparently liked it.

However, in nine years’ time, Punin’s text-book was heavily criticised in an article by one Gyakov called ‘Formalists and aesthetes in the role of critics’. He declared that Nikolay Punin ‘openly advertised decadent, corrupt western art and such representatives of it as Cézanne and Van Gogh’. He complained that Punin dared to call these ‘formalist artists’ geniuses.

Soon after this article was published, in 1946 Punin was fired from the State Leningrad University and Academy of Arts, where he taught for 20 years, for ‘not succeeding in providing ideological and political education of his students’.  In August 1949 he was sent to GULAG for ‘preaching Cézannism’.  All copies of his text-book were removed from all universities and libraries. Most of them were burned, and only a few survived to modern days.

In February 1946, Punin once again wrote in his diary: ‘Recently I was not able to write at all’. One of his students, Mikhail Flegel, had returned from Vienna, where he was posted as a soldier, and brought back with him some beautiful reproductions of French Impressionists. Punin and his student Ciciliya Nissel’shtraus went to Flegel’s house to see these photos, which Nikolay Nikolaevich would later use in his lectures. He admired all the freedom of expression and sincerity of these paintings, which were classified as a bad influence on the young builders of Communism in the Soviet Union.

In March of the same year Punin wrote again about his beloved patriarch of Modernism, Cézanne:

“Cézanne’s feat is not just in the fact that he was a true painter, as everyone thinks of him, but in the way in which he stood in front of the world with such an opened heart, cleared from all the additives not related to art - such an opened heart, that no other artist ever had before, including Rafael, Titian and Velasquez. Cezanne is the main representative of visual art, its fullest impersonation. That is the main goal and idea of Cézanne’s art. For everyone who can relate to it, his paintings are like the house, in which the soul has a beautiful life, <…> because his art – is the house, built in painting materials.”

Punin also came to the conclusion that there should always be a strong connection between ‘people in paintings’ and ‘people in real life’. He wrote in his diary that in the Hermitage people moved in ‘a more natural way’ in the rooms with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, and looked rather ‘awkward’ in the room with Renaissance art – ‘walking like spirits surrounded by the immortal’.

In April 1946 Punin was writing to his old friend, artist Lev Bruni, that ‘art did not prove worthwhile’ and that ‘Cézanne and Van Gogh are its fruitless victims’. Bruni replied that Punin should not despair, and that no one can be greater than Cézanne, who was ‘the first artist, apart from Delacroix, to show people the way to Painting.’

However, after Punin’s lecture on Impressionism, which he gave at the Union of Artists in April 1945, criticism of his views on Cézanne and Van Gogh was getting stronger. In February 1946 he wrote in his diary: ‘Life is difficult, and I am tired.’

In his lecture Punin bravely announced: ‘Whether or not our government likes it, our art will have to take modern Western European art into account.’ After Punin’s arrest in 1949, Vladimir Serov, who at the time was the president of the Union of Artists in Leningrad and the prime cause of art-critic’s arrest,  told the prosecutor about this bold phrase from Nikolay Nichoilaevich’ speech, and added that when the stenographer gave Punin his speech for corrections, he did not want to change it. Even when he was told that it was inappropriate to leave such a phrase in the stenographic copy, he crossed out the word ‘government’ and wrote ‘governing board’. Now it looked as if he was holding the board of the Union of Artists rather than the whole Soviet government accountable for bad Soviet art.

Not surprisingly, in 1949 Punin was arrested and sentenced for 10 years in GULAG. At his questioning in connection with Punin’s case, Vladimir Serov also quoted Punin’s other phrase from his earlier speech ‘Impressionism and Paintings’:

            “Soviet art is a backward art, while contemporary Western European art, such as art of Picasso, and also the art of Western Europe of the beginning of the 20th century, such as art of Cézanne and Van Gogh, are the highest achievements of contemporary culture.” Expressing such views in the Soviet Union equalled inevitable arrest and a prison sentence.

In August 1953 64-years old Punin died in Abez settlement. He had managed to fit several lives into this relatively short time, a colourful life in Imperial Russia, Revolution, three arrests, two World wars, the siege of Leningrad and the Gulag. Back in 1940 he had written:

“It is such a happiness to be still alive; I did not expect this; I never thought that I would live for so long.  Levushka Bruni told me a long time ago: ‘What an amazing Guardian Angel you have.’ Art does not want to part with me. It still needs me for preaching it in front of the mad people, who have lost it.”

In 1953 – the year when both Stalin and Punin died – 36 Picassos were released by the Soviet museums for exhibition in Italy, and then in Paris. In December 1954 an exhibition of 19th century Dutch and Belgian Art was opened at the Hermitage. For the first time the timeless paintings by Van Gogh, so beloved by Punin, were exhibited.

But the real breakthrough happened three years later when first at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and then at the Hermitage museum in Leningrad, the first and the largest exhibition of 19th and 20th century French masters was opened.

At the Hermitage this historic exhibition occupied 54 rooms of the Winter Palace, and included more than two thousand works of art, from David to Cézanne. By the cruel irony of his life, Punin did not live to see this ground-breaking exhibition. But one of his students, Anna Izergina (who became a curator of 19-20^th century French paintings at the Hermitage museum), curated this ground-breaking exhibition.

Jealous and greedy Soviet officials may have managed to get rid of Punin, but his followers, his students, continued his mission of educating people in true art.

 This article was first delivered as a paper at the postgraduate conference 'Cultural Exchange: Russia and the West', University of Bristol in April 2011. Natalia Murray is a Russian art-historian. She comes from St. Petersburg, where she graduated from the Academy of Arts and the PhD course at the Hermitage Museum. She is currently working at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her biography of N. Punin 'The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde. The life and times of Nikolay Punin (1888-1953)' will be published by Brill Academic Publishers in March 2012.

5th Russian Film Festival, 4–13 November

On Friday 4th November, the 5th Russian Film Festival opened with the UK premiere of Generation P, the adaptation of Victor Pelevin's cult novel. The film was presented by director Victor Ginzburg and leading actors. The film portrays the complex and often  absurd story of how today's Russia came into being – and was shown on Russian National Unity Day. 


GENERATION P
While the Soviet Union was falling apart at the seams, living out its final days, Western brands began rapidly flooding the post-Soviet market. With his nose to the ground, main character Babilen Tatarsky sets up his own advertising agency with a mission to popularise new products, helped by fun, catchy slogans adapted for the “Soviet mentality”. And so begins a new era. An era of destroying outdated ideals. The youth brought up on these advertising captions will later become known as “generation Pepsi”.

The main programme of the 5th Russian Film Festival will include the 10 best Russian feature films of the year, made by a new generation of Russian film directors. All films have received recognition at prestigious international and national festivals and have been specially selected for the Russian Film Festival by the programme director, Andrei Plakhov, President of FIPRESCI. Further, the Russian Film Festival in London is the only event where all these acclaimed films will be shown in one single place and presented by their world famous directors and actors, who will join us for Q&As and discussions.


Vitaly Mansky, Russia's master of documentary film, has put together a striking selection of contemporary Russian documentaries by women and about women. In addition we will be holding a special screening of short films including under the radar works by some of Russia's best RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL. There will also be the ever popular comprehensive and diverse programme of animation, ready to enchant adults and children alike with its charm and imagination.


The Russian Film Festival is an important annual event for Russians living in London and a unique window onto today's Russia for a British audience.


First Russian-British Co-Production and Distribution Forum
As part of the Russian Film Festival, Academia Rossica, in partnership with the BFI and the Russian Cinema Fund, is organising the first Russian-British Co-Production and Distribution Forum on 11 November at the British Film Institute. The forum aims to introduce leading film professionals of both counties to each other and explore opportunities of collaboration and partnership. Participants include top Russian producers Sergei Selyanov, Artem Vasiliev, Natalia Ivanova, Raisa Fomina and Igor Tolstunov.


The Russian Film Festival is organised by ACADEMIA ROSSICA who have been showcasing Russian culture for over 10 years.

http://russianfilmfestival.co.uk/