Author: Veronica Khokhlova

“8 things we’ll miss about winter when it’s gone” – at Polandian.

“Years ago, when the inflation in Poland was in triple figures, we were all multi-millionaires,” writes the POLSKI blog and links to a Flickr set of photos of the Polish banknotes from the 1980s and the early 1990s.

Robert Amsterdam's Blog and Foreign Policy Association's Russia Blog link to and comment on Keith Gessen's review of Richard Sakwa's The Quality of Freedom: Khodorkovsky, Putin and the Yukos Affair, which appeared in the London Review of Books. On his blog, Gessen explains how to pronounce Mikhail Khodorkovsky's last name.

Rosamund Bartlett, Anton Chekhov's English biographer and director of the Anton Chekhov Foundation, writes about the plight of Chekhov's house-museum in Yalta, Crimea, at OpenDemocracy.net.

AskYakutia.com posts a Q&A item on the Sakha Wikipedia and the use of the Sakha (Yakut) language on the Internet.

Scenes from the Sidewalk shares a story of another formerly homeless Ukrainian child who now has a home.

Telecoms in Latvia reports that in order to “expose government waste, unjust wage differentials and possible corruption by analyzing data filed by state agencies and public sector,” individuals calling themselves “the Fourth Awakening People's Army” have obtained some “7.4 million records from a database linked to the web-based service for filing income tax returns and other information with Latvia's State Revenue Service.”

Adventures in Wheelville posts pictures and video and writes about the carnival in Ptuj: “The carnival was a good time like a mini Mardi Gras and it gave me hope that at least some people in this country know and want to have a good time.”

Itching for Eestimaa writes that “the underwhelming victory of Viktor Yanukovich over Yulia Tymoshenko last week has caused all sorts of soul searching in Estonia and, in general, the West”: “Indeed, there are lessons to be learned.”

Maya Markova of Maya's Corner posts videos and translates parts of the documentary The Bulgarian Guanatanamo, by Bulgarian journalist Ivan Kulekov. (An earlier GV roundup item on this issue is here.)

Belarus Digest reports that while the Belarusian government explains the recently-introduced internet regulations by the need to fight copyright law violations, the state-run TV is now being accused of “ripping a whole sitcom”: “In the CBS original, shown on E4 in Britain, the main character are called Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Raj and Penny; in Belarus they are called Sheldon, Leo, Hovard, Raj and Natasha.”

Updates on the tensions between Belarus and Poland – at Belarus Digest: here, here, and here.

Belarus Digest writes about the “Belarusian roots” of Victor Yanukovych, the winner of Ukraine's presidential election, and about the Belarusian village of Yanuki, the birthplace of Yanukovych's father: “Currently there are only two families live in Yanuki. Both of them are Yanukovichs.”

Greater Surbiton mocks the the Greek prime minister's comment on the EU-Greek relationship in the time of financial crisis.

Balkan Travellers re-posts a Balkan Insight piece about the Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's comment that “his country would accept only pretty Albanian girls as immigrants.” Belgraded writes about the photoshopped photos of Berlusconi and Slobodan Milosevic: “Fours days after the [doctored] photo was published, Milosevic lost the elections by a close margin. Maybe it will be the same for Berlusconi, who is probably the politician with the biggest resemblance to Milosevic-style politics in European Union today.”

The Economist's Edward Lucas posts his article about Poland and follows up with “this exasperated response” to counter “the furious reaction to the earlier piece on the Polish blogosphere.”

A list of links to Russian human rights activists' blogs (RUS) – at Human Rights in Russia (hro.org).

LJ user burtin posts this comment (RUS) about Avatar: “Interesting that people cry [as they watch] Avatar – while reports from Chechnya and Ingushetia leave them totally indifferent. Even though archetypally the same is happening there – only the people are real, not [computer-generated]. […] If this were happening in the Soviet times, the film would've been banned because it resembles reality. And now this isn't necessary – reality is of no interest whatsoever. […]”

Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian tax lawyer, died in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, 2009, after spending nearly a year in pre-trial detention with no access to adequate medical treatment.

The circumstances of his death received extensive coverage both in Russia (RUS) and abroad (ENG). Letters and appeals he wrote from prison were published as well (an English translation of one letter – at RFE/RL; scanned Russian-language originals of typed and handwritten documents – at NewTimes.ru). The Public Oversight Commission for Human Rights Observance in Moscow Detention Centers issued a review of the conditions of Magnitsky's prison stay (in Russian and in English – at Law and Order in Russia blog).

Due to publicity, the Russian authorities reacted by firing a number of high-ranking officials – as well as by banning pre-trial detention of suspected tax offenders and drafting “a bill that would prevent executives from being arrested for the majority of economic crimes” (link to an article in the Moscow Times, ENG).

Public discussion of prison conditions, prompted by Magnitsky's death, continues – and it is now likely to move to a new level: Mikhail Ugarov (LJ user m_u), a playwright and artistic director of Teatr.doc (RUS), a Moscow theater specializing in documentary drama, is working on a play that would “reconstruct” the horror of the final hours of Magnitsky's life.

Here is what Ugarov wrote (RUS) on his blog on Jan. 22:

Working on a play at Teatr.doc about the death of Sergei Magnitsky.

[Russian actor] Aleksey Devotchenko will act in it.

Gathering of material is underway. Such material that it is making me physically ill.

Magnitsky died in a straitjacket. He was writhing in pain (pancreatitis or even pancreonecrosis), and they put a straitjacket on him instead. And he spent one hour and 18 minutes in it. And the doctor never showed up.

He died of “heart failure.” I think that his heart just stopped.

If the actor does a simple physical reconstruction of these events (the protocol of physical activity), the audience will get sick…

After all this, I don't want anything, don't want to think, don't want to feel.

And at serious theaters, let them go on re-enacting how Konstantin Gavrilovich shot himself [Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplyov, a character in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull].

And here is an update (RUS), posted by Ugarov on Feb. 2:

Yesterday again we had a meeting about the case of lawyer Magnitsky's death.

Things aren't exactly the way I described them – everything is more horrible, actually.

He told the prison doctor, “They want to kill me.” And on the basis of this, she diagnosed him as mentally deranged. And summoned the so-called “re-enforcement” – eight prison guards used to beating [prisoners]. And she called the psychiatrists.

And then she left, as if nothing happened. Her last name is known, this woman in a white gown, “Doctor Death.”

A ambulance crew arrived (the so-called psychiatrists), but for an hour and 18 minutes they could not gain access to the patient. And when they were allowed in at last, they saw a dead man. Then the doctor came down, too, to have a look… Paramedic Vasya (not his real name) stood in the hallway for this hour and 18 minutes and has no idea what this “re-enforcement” brigade was doing to a sick person…

Macedonia-based Metamorphosis: Foundation for Sustainable ICT Solutions has issued a statement “on the role of the state in the process of protecting children from the risks of using new technologies, by applying internet content filtering systems and systems for categorization of computer games.”