Another Original LR Translation: Medvedev is the new Goebbels

Enough to Make Goebbels Green With Envy

Alexandr Podrabinek

Yezhednevny Zhurnal

26 June 2009

Translated by Dave Essel

On 24 June, President Medvedev issued an Executive Order entitled On Russia-Wide Compulsory Total-Access Television and Radio Channels. The aim of this Order is to ensure that certain TV and radio channels are available in every household. That great lover of the ‘power vertical’ Adolf Hitler had the idea down pat ages ago: “In the future Germany, we will have wired radios, that’s evident. No sensible government can allow its people’s minds to be poisoned”. [AP – quoted in Oleg Plenkov, The Third Reich]. Hitler may have failed to carry this out but we won’t!

Another Original LR Translation: PACE vs. Russia

Translator’s Note

Grani.ru reports (translation below, original carries 42 comments in Russian) on moves to sanction Russia in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. If that happens, the Russians are threatening to withdraw from it altogether.

This presents an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, the Russians deserve to be thrown out of most anything; one the other, some of these international gatherings are of some – usually pathetically little – use in reining in Russia’s worst abuses.

Essel on “The Soviet Story”

The Soviet Story

by Dave Essel

I recently bought and watched the documentary The Soviet Story on DVD, which has just recently become available by mail order. I would now like to heartily recommend to LR readers. In the same way that I was astonished by the BBC having found genuine colour footage for its documentary on WWII (to me, a post war child, that was an event!), Edvins Snore, the Latvian director of this film about the evils of Soviet communism, has unearthed stunning, heartbreaking, and extraordinary footage in illustration of his cogent and withering attack on the very foundations of the Soviet philosophy.

Another Original LR Translation: Poland and World War II

Translator’s Introduction

Knowing one’s history helps avoid repeating errors made in the past and thus makes one better able to control the present and better take one’s country in a chosen direction.

The Russians, inventors of the Potemkin village, under Stalin wrote a Potemkin past for themselves themselves and therefore lost track of the present, leading to the creation and eventual collapse of one of the most evil societies the world has seen.

Lilliputin and his Teddy Bear are, of course, apples off the same tree. So what better way to get Russia off its knees and back right at the bottom of the ditch where it has been for most of its history than by re-writing recent history instead of getting down to some real thinking!

Another Original LR Translation: Golts on the Russian “Army”

A note from the translator:  One of the problems with Russia is that no contract, social or commercial, is considered binding. Thus deep lawlessness prevails. The consequences may be dire and, given what Russia presents today, I hope they will be. One good step down this path is seeing what happens if you piss off your Armed Forces. Russia’s vlasti (powers-that-be) look like they are setting about it. The voices of freedom should be making major propaganda about this but will probably remain polite little appeasement artists.

Tearing Up the Contract

Aleksandr Golts,

5 May 2009

Yezhedevny  Zhurnal

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Practically any medication can, if one uses it another way, become a poison. It all depends on the dose and how it is used. Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov recently issued orders for the extraordinary attestation (i.e. sudden re-testing) of all servicemen. Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov has reported that re-testing of 85% of the officer corps and 79% of the NCOs has now been completed. The only results so far made public are for the senior officer contingent. Of 250 generals and colonels serving in generals’ posts, 50 have been found to be substandard and will proposed for discharge from the armed forces. One can safely assume that no less than 20% of the remainder will also fail their attestations.

Another Original LR Translation: “There’s no Information in Truth”

The “Truth” Today

by Dave Essel

The contents of a newspaper provide a snapshot of the world view it contains, both mirroring and creating the society in which it circulates. Here then are all the headlines from the Russian newspaper Pravda’s website on 5 May 2009 (a random choice – it’s just the day I’m looking). “Pravda” means “truth” in Russian and its rival Izvestia’s name means “Information.”  Both papers date back to Soviet times and retained their Soviet names when the USSR collapsed.  An old Soviet joke was:  “There’s no information in Truth and no truth in Information.”  

No surprise at what one finds: the mixture of nastiness, tendentiousness, stupidity and ignorance is just plain frightening!

WORLD

Lead story:
TERNOPOL TAKES PRIDE IN ITS UKRAINIAN SS DIVISION
“Ukraine is preparing in its own special way for the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. A plaque in honour of the Galicia SS division is to be erected in Ternopol…

Other stories:
THE WINDING PATHS OF THE INTERNET LEAD TO …JAIL
About how bloggers can be jailed for their writings. Article claims to quote Committee to Protect Journalists on how bloggers can be jailed for their writings, naming a number of countries but NOT Russia.

LOVE OF ‘PIGALLE’ GIRLS LEADS TO BERLUSCONI DIVORCE
No need for comment.

Another Original LR Translation: Turning over the Russian Rock

A note from the Translator:  The dirty little rag we all love to hate, which is also the highest circulation newspaper in Russia – Order of Lenin, Order of the October Revolution, Order of the Great Patriotic War, Order of the Red Banner of Labour (and bar) Komsomolskaya Pravda, organ of the Central Committee of the All-Union Lenin Communist Union of Youth, to give it its full and absurd title – has published an amusing piece of rubbish which I think LR readers will enjoy. I fear I have recently been paying too much attention to the lone voices of good sense and intelligence that still survive in Russia, ignoring the great mass of rubbish (not my first choice of word, but we are respectable here) that is shovelled into the brains of the greater Russian public.

Another Original LR Translation: Putin’s Dagestan Disaster

A Note from the Translator: After my verbal tussle of last week with a semi-literate, moronic Putlerite troll who suggested that a) I kill myself by bashing my head against a wall, b) that KGB rules so I’d better watch out, and c) that some ammonium up the nose might help me think, I was struck by the clarity of the evidence of the sheer barbarity and lack of humanity (and human intelligence) of so many in Russia. The reason why I translate things for LR is that I assume its readership is mainly Western and I worry that the West, and in particular its dreadful multiculturalist and politically correct politicians and public, appeasement artists and moral relativists to the bone, do not have the faintest idea about the reality of the monsters dwelling east of the Pripet Marshes. I see LR as a great corrective for these people, highlighting the truth that so many in the West would prefer not to have to acknowledge. Here then, for those who would cozy up to the bear, is an everyday story of…

Living and Dying in Dagestan

Alexandr Podrabinek, 31 March 2009

Yezhednevnaya Gazeta

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Magomedshakir Magomedov lived an open book of a life, like many villagers in Dagestan. Thirty-five years old, he quarried a bit of stone and grazed sheep. He did what he could to earn a living. He believed in God and did not hide his beliefs. He was an open book, a family man with a wife and children.

Another Original LR Translation: Novodvorskaya on Vladimir Putler

A Note from the Translator:  I recently translated for LR Novaya Gazeta’s jokey response to Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu’s idiotic call for denial of the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War to be made an criminal offence, in a logically absurd attempt to make this appear a corollary of Holocaust denial. (Maybe excess bile addles the brain and the Ukraine’s morally and logically correct assessment of the Holodomor as a act of genocide has made him bilious?). Anyway, here from Grani.ru is a supremely intelligent piece with much food for thought.  [LR:  Click the “Essel” category in our sidebar to read Dave’s prior translation]

Without Hitler or Stalin

Valeria Novodvorskaya

Grani.ru

20.03.09

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Valeria Novodvorskaya

I should start by saying sorry to Sergei Kuzhegetovich Shoigu as I consider the part he plays in breeding prize labradors in Russia is particularly impressive. I like labradors – and that includes Koni [TN: Putin’s dog, a gift to him from Shoigu). A good dog should not be blamed for having a bad master. I won’t get started on the Ministry of Emergency Situations – we are a catastrophic country and a country of catastrophes, so I imagine that Mr. Shoigu keeps himself pretty busy and I’ve heard no great complaints in this area.

Another Original LR Translation: The Whirlpool of Russian Madness

A Note from the Translator:  Some people in Russia – sadly few in number – see and understand the ever enlarging whirlpool of madness into which the country is being engulfed. Here are three ‘fun’ items from last week’s Novaya Gazeta, a special issue subtitled “Encyclopedia of Bureaucratic Idiocy: Can there be any hope for a country where such stupidity reigns?”

The Whirlpool of Russian Madness

Novaya Gazeta

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Sergei Kuzhegetovich Shoigu [TN:  Russia’s Minister of Emergency Situations] has proposed that that it be made a criminal offence to deny that the USSR was victorious in the Great Patriotic War.

We have chosen Mr. Shoigu as our “Man of the Issue,” in particular because Yuri Chaika, our Prosecutor General, seconds the choice. Shoiga has done well to take this matter so much to heart: it’s a very serious thing to entertain doubts about Russia’s victories nowadays! Shouldn’t we be doing more than he proposes, however? We suggest that there should be a 2-year sentence for denying that Russia is rising up from its knees, one year for each lying rug-burnt knee! It should also be a criminal offence to deny that Zenit won the European Cup and Bilan the Eurovision contest. A suspended sentence would probably do in the latter case – on condition that the accused expresses regret.

Another Original LR Translation: Jobless in Russia

Thousands of AvtoVAZ (Lada) workers may lose their jobs

Grani. ru

4 March 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Twelve and a half thousand AvtoVAZ workers have been temporarily laid off and there are plans to make 3200 of them redundant, announced Minister of Public Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova at a session of the Federation Council. AvtoVAZ ‘s press office advised that the assembly line is currently at a complete standstill because of a shortage of components and that no date had been set for re-starting it.

Golikova went on to say that the government has allocated 12 billion roubles for government departments to purchase Russian-made automobiles. Her ministry said that most of these purchase would be made from AvtoVAZ. However, she herself went on to say that in her view this step would be “clearly unequal” to the task of ensuring employment at the plant.

AvtoVAZ employed 104,000 people as of Qtr4 2008. 6.1 million people are considered unemployed in Russia today – that’s the number of people that government statistics agency Rosstat counts as actively seeking work. At the same meeting, Golikova also mentioned that 1.97 million people are registered as unemployed at labour exchanges.

Another Original LR Translation: The Sochi Farce

Translator’s Note: On Wednesday LR carried a fairly negative report from Der Spiegel about the forthcoming Olympic fiasco. However, it was bouncy upbeat European in comparison to what I had just been reading in Novaya Gazeta. See below.

Oligarchs Aren’t “Go”

Yevgeni Titov

Novaya Gazeta

25 February 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Is the state going to have to rescue Potanin and Deripaska’s businesses in order for the Sochi Olympics to happen?

Construction costs for the Sochi sports venues have gone down by 15%, declared deputy-premier for the Olympics Dmitri Kozak at a meeting with prime minister Vladimir Putin. According to the deputy minister, an expert review of the project documentation was able to find ways to make the saving. However, given that food, transport, and utility prices are rising, making the Olympics cheaper seems a rather doubtful proposition. Especially if one takes into account that construction of the venues has not started and building workers are not getting paid. One gets the impression that Olympic optimism is directly but inversely proportional to the depth of the economic crisis. Especially at the venues that Russia’s former Forbes-list billionaires and business giants are responsible for. Novaya Gazeta’s correspondent visited Sochi to see for himself how preparations for the Olympics were going. No venues were to be seen and he was left only with questions.

Another Original LR Translation: The Nemtsov White Paper, Volume III

Putin and the Crisis

Grani.ru

by Boris Nemtsov and Vladmir Milov

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Click here for PDF version.

A note from the Translator:  The authors have provided this third installment in their White Paper series to Novaya Gazeta and Grani.ru for publication. “Putin and the Crisis” will also be published in brochure form. The authors are Boris Nemtsov (First Vice Premier of the Government of the RF 1997-98) and Vladimir Milov (RF Deputy Minister of Energy in 2002). Both are members of the Bureau of Solidarity, the united democratic movement. This is the authors’ third White Paper. The first two –-  “Putin: The Bottom Line” and “Putin and Gazprom” are well-known both in Russia and abroad and were translated into English by this blog.  They have been censored by the Kremlin.

Official propaganda would have it that this crisis is a “made in the USA” event and that the mistaken economic policies of the American government are the root cause of all our misfortunes in Russia. It is true that the origins of the crisis lie in America; however the crisis that has developed in Russia is far more serious and painful than in the West. We are facing a deep devaluation of the rouble – over 50%, the collapse of our stock markets where the indices have dropped 75% (40% in the USA), a budget deficit of 20% in December 2008 (not equalled even during the collapse of the USSR), a 36% drop in rail transport volumes in early 2009, a fall in ferrous & non-ferrous metals output, a rise of over 1 million unemployed, a sharp reduction in real salaries, rising poverty and the destruction of the middle classes.

Why did the crisis virus hit Russia’s economy so hard?

Another Original LR Translation: Spying on Kozlovsky

Translator’s Note: What I find most interesting about this story of dirty little infiltrations and attempts at dirty little tricks against the opposition is how pathetically inept, empty and ignorant the Kremlin’s little hirelings are. Being somewhat older myself, I have not had much contact with young Russians who grew up entirely after the collapse of Communism and the USSR. Looking at the vacuousness and sloppiness of the thinking (if there is any thinking done at all) here and the total deficit of any morals whatsoever, it is clear that the education system collapsed as well. Aren’t these vacuous little hirelings neat miniatures of the supreme Lilliput (in Michael Saakashvili’s wonderful allusion)?

Petersburg Branch of Oborona Uncovers Nashi Spies

Oborona St. Petersburg

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

The Petersburg Branch of Oborona has uncovered a number of paid infiltrators working to the order of a secret project called Runners of the President. This project was set up by the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement and has been operating for the last 18 months. Its particular purpose was to collect information on opposition groups and to set them up for provocations during demos. The infiltrators engaged in the latter activity have unfortunately not yet been uncovered. We know that spies of this kind have been infiltrated into other organisations in Petersburg and other towns around Russia.

The paid informers infiltrated into the Petersburg Branch of Oborona, who received about 20000 roubles a month (~$550), were Vladimir Bynkin, who joined Oborona in July 2008 and became a member of the St. Petersburg Branch coordination committee, and Taras Filatov, an activist recruited by Bynkin in December. We also discovered that prior to these people joining, Darya Odintsova, who earlier left the Runners of the President project and ceased being active in Oborona, had also been a paid infiltrator. The three have now been officially expelled from Oborona at a General Meeting of the organisation.

Dossier Details:

Another Original LR Translation: YeZhe on the Gas War

A note from the translator:  It’s a refreshing change to see Russians excoriating Europeans deservedly! Here is Yezhednevny Zhurnal columnist Matvei Ganapolski’s take on the recent ‘gas war’. The journalists of Yezhednevny Zhurnal, Grani.ru, Novaya Gazeta have most certainly earned the right to speak to the West on the subject of principledness, courage, and honour. Europe is a disgrace to its name and history. The only country that still seems to hold the banner up is the USA. My inauguration wish is that it should continue so to do.

What an unbelievable farce!

by Matvei Ganapolski

Yezhednevny Zhurnal

21 January 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Whoever was worried about the Russo-Ukrainian gas jamboree that has been shaking Europe can now heave a sigh of relief – it has come to an end with a deafening plop. However, this plop is not just the long-awaited sound of the gas valve to Europe opening but also of the failure to find the true reason why the gas was turned off in the first place.

One wonders if Europe will ever realise that it not only watched but actually took part in one of the grandest settling of accounts ever – wonderfully choreographed by Russia and the Ukraine.

So who directed the event and what was the libretto?

Another Original LR Translation: Milov on the Gas War

Vladimir Milov

A note from the translator: Russians can get clear information from a few remaining sources in their country. For example, here is an article by one of my favourite politicians, Vladimir Milov, published recently in one such brave source – Novaya Gazeta. In fact, I like this paper so much that I have bought subscriptions to it for a number of friends and acquaintances around Russia. This leads me to two hopes: 1) that my money (not much, really!) isn’t wasted and that they get the paper to the end of the year since I imagine it could be closed down at any moment by the neo-nazis in the Kremlin and b) that being the recipient of such a paper doesn’t get them arrested by those same N-N in the K under the vicious new legislation constantly being brought in to control the Russia’s unfortunate populace.

Pipe Cleaners

Vladimir Milov

Novaya Gazeta

11 January 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

This now yearly gas skirmish suits both the Russian and the Ukrainian élites because it moves the gas into no man’s land and increases profits at both ends of the pipe while allowing both parties to blame the political problems on each other.

Can a Gas War be Avoided?

I have come to the conclusion that Gazprom intended all along to cut off the flow of gas into the Ukraine.

Illarionov on the Russian Economic Apocalypse

It’s a Catastrophe

by Andrei Illarionov

A post from the author’s blog

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Russia’s Federal Office of State Statistics and the Russian Government Economy Observation Centre have disclosed data on November’s industrial production trends. If one is only allowed one word to comment these, then that word is “catastrophe”.

Since the Russia’s Federal Office of State Statistic’s site is currently not accessible, I think this is a good time to publish the base statistics with my preliminary analysis.

Another Original LR Translation: The Perils of Putinomics

A note from the translator:  The whole world has been laughing at Pooty’s potty potted pearls of market wisdom. Old Poot just can’t learn not to toot! Every time the KGB goon turned ‘prime minister’ shoots his mouth off about the economy, it costs the Russian taxpayer another billion or two, plus kickbacks! Why do they put up with it? Anyway, LR did in an article on this yesterday. Of course, the matter did not pass unnoticed in sensible Russia either. Here is Dmitri Oreshkin of Yezhednevny Zhurnal on the matter. If only more Russian could see the good sense that some of their compatriots are writing.

The Market as Mirror

by Dmitri Oreshkin

Ezhedevny Zhurnal

3 December 2008 

Translated from the Russian by David Essel

Prime Minister V.V. Putin said the way in which the stock market set the value of the Russian economy was “deformed and unfair”. This is a statement to remember since it reflects the PM’s conceptions of economic deformity and and economic justice.

These conceptions are deeply rooted in a Soviet ignorance that genuinely does not comprehend why “greenbacks” with nothing material backing them up are highly valued while the Soviet rouble, backed by mountains of natural resources, is priced so cheaply.

It’s not fair!

But let’s be serious. The trouble is that money and shares are not at all what they seem to be in the eyes of our economic gurus brought up in the materialistic traditions [of the USSR].

Another Original LR Translation: Beslan and the KGB

A note from the translator: The following article which I have translated from Novaya Gazeta raises a number of very pertinent questions about what exactly was going on at the Beslan tragedy. If true, and I can see no reason to doubt that it is, the Beslan tragedy may be more a crime of state terrorism than Islamic terrorism. The information, collected by Ella Kesayeva, co-chairman of the All-Russian Voice of Beslan Public Organisation, certainly raises some very nasty doubts and suspicions that this is yet another criminally botched Russian secret police operation along the lines of the Moscow flat bombings, the Nord-Ost theatre debacle, the Litvinenko murder, and so on. In my translation below, I have mostly rendered the interminable and semi-mystical acronyms for the various police, state security, and other legal institutions by their Latin letters. Russian bureaucracy, in law-enforcement too, is labyrinthine. I think that for the most part it is sufficient to remember that any acronym with VD in it means “cops” of one sort or another from the Ministry of the Interior and any acronym with FSB somewhere in it means “KGB goon of one sort or another” from the Federal Security Service. The precise body can be ascertained by those who wish to do so by reconverting the Latin letters into Cyrillic.

Terrorists or Agents?

Strange facts about the Beslan Tragedy

by Ella Kesayeva

 Novaya Gazeta

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

The investigation into the Beslan tragedy is now into its fifth year but no clear answer has yet been provided to one of the main questions: precisely how many terrorists were there at Beslan and who were they? According to the investigators’ version, the terrorist group was composed of 33 people. The identities of most of them were established from their fingerprints. This means that all these terrorists must, at one time or another, have been registered by the North Caucasus regional UBOP and UFSB [anti-organised crime police and KGB, in our parlance], been on the wanted list, been detained or arrested, or in some cases condemned.

Another Original LR Translation: Latynina on Golodomor via Essel

The “So-Called” Golodomor

Yuliya Latynina

Yezhednevny Zhurnal

24 November 2008

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev did not attend the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Golodomor. Instead, he sent a letter in which he waxed wrathful about the wedge being driven between two brotherly peoples by ill-wishers who speak of a “so-called” Golodomor.

“The tragic events of the early 1930s are being used to further transient and fleeting political aims,” the President wrote.  He added:  “Without waiting for the results of a wide-ranging study of the problems by competent experts, we are having a simplistic depiction of the past imposed on us. The people who are promoting the thesis of a “genocidal man-made famine” do not care in the least about scientific accuracy. Their aim is to drive a wedge between our fraternal peoples.”

Last Friday, I was on Savik Shuster’s “Shuster Live” program which was dedicated to the Golodomor. The guests on the programme divided into two parties. One group consisted of Russophile politicians. The view they expounded was that firstly, there wasn’t any Golodomor, secondly, the Americans were to blame, and thirdly, that everyone suffered from it.

Essel on Imperium

Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński

A book review by Dave Essel

I find Western Europe’s foreign and domestic political outlook more and more weak-kneed, morally relativistic, and appeasement oriented. In a word – deplorable. But them I’m a Brit and therefore an involuntary member of the European Union. Clear-sightedness is to be sought elsewhere, in certain quarters across the Atlantic but also, and importantly for the Russian theatre, in Eastern Europe, where the stance is clear and the knowledge direct. Nowhere more so, it seems to me, than in Poland, whose citizens have had centuries of experience in dealing with the Bear.

I was therefore delighted to come across this by no means new book – Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński – the other day. Herewith a couple of excerpts which I think demonstrate the peculiar genius of the Polish way of thinking (and of the author, of course).

Dima Medvedev in 25 Words or Less

Особенность Дмитрия Медведева заключается в том, что он ― абсолютно независимая фигура. В том смысле, что от него совсем ничего не зависит.

What uniquely distinguishes Dmitri Medvedev is that he is a completely independent figure. In the sense that nothing whatsoever depends on him.

From Alexander Golts’ Ezhednevny Zhurnal report on Mevdedev’s recent European visit , translated from the Russian by Dave Essel.

Another Original LR Translation: Essel on the Russia Motorcar

A note from the translator:  I’m not the sort to deny myself or feel guilty about Schadenfreude, particularly when it comes to Russia and the Russian “élite” (whom I wouldn’t let come nearer me or mine than a – preferably spiked – barge pole would permit). So I couldn’t resist translating this for LR readers. (It was either this or more on the freon submarine).

That however, would have been more of the same – underfunded shipyard, loss of specialists, unpaid subcontractors, what one can expect for mothballing a complex piece of engineering for 22 years, poor planning of systems upgrades, and so on and so forth. The usual for Russia.

This, therefore, was the better laugh. Not feeling easy in a Bentley . . . The Rich are Selling Their Premium Class Vehicles; Working Folk are Buying Them.

Pavel Kalygin, “Our anti-crisis correspondent”

Novaya Gazeta

15 November 2008

Translated by Dave Essel

The world crisis is steadily worming its way into stranger and stranger places, confounding our dreams of stability and undermining our way of life and habits. The middle class is already profoundly affected and has lost everything: creditworthiness, quarterly bonuses, free lunches… But the premium class is striving to stand firm against the crisis. It is not proving easy for them as I discovered when I took a trip to the Rublevka and saw the scale of the damage, the actual costs of their battle. I was shaken: a Porsche Cayenne S, fresh from the factory in March this year, going for a mere 1,5 million roubles (~$55K)…

“That’s mind-boggling!” I said to Maxim Denisov, the manager of this second-hand car dealership on the Rublevka. “It’s worth twice that.”

Stock Market Fun, with Dave Essel

Stock Market Fun

by Dave Essel

Prompted by LR’s post “Freefall on the Russian Stock Market”, I decided to visit the RTSI (www.rts.ru) website. It was good fun. The site is quick and responsive and the charts are something! Click and see a daily, yearly, weekly, monthly, yearly, or 3-year graph.

The way the markets reflect politics is simply wonderful. You don’t need to look further for proof that people put their money where their mouth is, or, in other words: where the mouth (i.e. the information) is, thither goes the money.

In this case, it is OUT of Russia. As well it should be if you value your assets…

Another Original LR Translation: Of mice and men and submarines

A note from the translator:  One of the things I find most striking about Russia’s recent misadventure with its submarine is how little sense is being written about it. This is one of the best I could find. Yet, it, too, disappoints – in a very Russian way. Here we have a professional, writing a popular explanation in what is left of Russia’s free press. Well and good. But he too suffers from a peculair Russian syndrome. The question that immediately occurred to me – and I am sure it would to any Western reader – was: how is fire prevention and firefighting done on the submarines of other countries? The author of the article below writes as if submarines are only made in Russia. [Any submariners out there among LR’s readers willing to enlighten me/us?] Why do Russians always have to re-invent the wheel? This clearly sensible writer appears to live on an island called Russia, just like the people he disapproves of.

Of Pikes and Freon

by Alexander Pokrovsky, Submariner and Author

Novaya Gazeta

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

“On 8 Novermber at 20:30 local time, the multipurpose submarine Nerpa (project 971 Shchuka-B [shchuka = pike] sailed from its ZATO (Closed Territorial-Administrative Settlement ) Bolshoi Kamen base to undergo sea trials. During these trials, the freon-release fire extinguishing system went off unexpectedly. Six servicemen and 14 civilians died. A further 22 people required hospital treatment. All told, there were 208 people on board the submarine, of whom 81 were servicemen.” Thus the official press release.

The press office of the navy later issued a correction: the dead consisted of 3 servicemen and 17 civilians.

One of the things that makes the Project 971 Shchuka-B special is that it involves more automated systems that previous designs. Command and control is from a single central command centre. The boat is run by a crew of 73.