Many Many Happenings: Some Good, Some Bad.

Happy May Day to all who love spring or international socialism! It was a public holiday here so we had the day off. Unfortunately it was more like March Day than May Day. There has been a prevailing northerly wind for the last few days which brought snow on Monday, cold on Tuesday, and rain today. I hate Russia.

I went to the State Museum of the Political History of Russia again on Saturday (read back a few entries...). So remember that series of photographs I was telling you about? The ones about use of police force and violence to repress the masses? Yeah well those photos are gone now. I was shocked and disappointed, as I thought they comprised one of the better exhibits in the museum. The first question that popped in my mind was: "Why would they remove an exhibit that decried the use of police brutality from a state museum?" I immediately began drawing conclusions. Conclusions that had to do with major international criticism of the use of police brutality in the Dissenters' Marches in Moscow and St. Petersburg...and the Russian government's total unwillingness to acknowledge that unecessary amounts of force were used and it's orders to other nations and international organizations to, more or less, mind their own business. I didn't ask any museum staff what happened to the exhibit. I would have had a hard time believing their answers anyway.

I'm sure a handful of you are aware of the rift erupting right now between Estonia and Russia. For those of you who don't know, the Estonian government is relocating a monument called The Bronze Soldier. It is a monument to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Estonia during the Second World War and includes a mass grave of said soldiers. The Estonian government says the Bronze Soldier now stands as a monument to Soviet Imperialism (Estonia was made an independant state in the Treaty of Versailles after WWI). They are relocating the monument and the bodies to an area outside the Tallinn City Centre. Needless to say, the local ethnic Russian population and the Russian government are up in arms over this. Friday night there was chaos in the streets of Tallinn. The Russian news showed clips of "police brutality". The police were using truncheons, arresting dozens, throwing tear gas, etc. Of course the only problem is that these video clips also showed people destroying bus shelters, breaking windows and street lights, and not a few of them were carrying bottles. So now I'm having a hard time figuring out of these people were genuinely upset about the monument and decided to take it out stores and sign posts...or if there were just a lot of people who used the evening as an excuse to get drunk and cause trouble. I mean...this isn't St. Petersburg. Nobody was doing anything in St. Petersburg. So anyway, as predicted, Russian business are now refusing to sell Estonian products and I imagine there will be a deportation of Estonian nationals soon. The only problem is that, now that Estonia is an EU member, I don't know that they need the Russian market as much. The tactic may have worked with Georgia, but I doubt it will work with Estonia. Does anyone remember Russia doing something similar with Latvia back in the early 90s? Didn't they say that the Latvian president was "worse than Pol Pot?"

Well, I have 18 days left in this country. I'm looking forward to leaving, actually. As Kat put it, "If I recieved a phone call saying my plane was leaving in a few hours, I would not be sad." I think we all feel that way. We are ready to get on with our lives and I think we've gotten pretty much all we can out of our Russian experience...that and I think a few of us are sick of eating pilmeni w/ sour cream three times a week.

Anyway, I had better go. The Canada v. Slovakia hockey match is on tonight and I should get my homework done. Cheers for now.