Another Original LR Translation: Novodvorskaya on Sakhalin

On the Island of Sakhalin

by Valeria Novodvorskaya

Grani.ru

August 12, 2009

Translated from the Russian by François Guillaumat

While our greedy authorities, hungry for other country’s territories, passionately cling to some stolen Japanese islands, tiny pebbles in the ocean, the inhabitants of another island, a large and undoubtedly Russian one, are busy collecting signatures.

I received a call from a certain local democrat. His name, address and appearance, I will not reveal for anything, lest some terrorist in Guantanamo Bay remember that said democrat, many years ago, equipped for their last mission the Boeings which crashed into the twin towers.

Unbelievable, says you?

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: Novodvorskaya on the Crisis

Dave Essel

An Island of Instability

Grani.ru*

by Valeriya Novodvorskaya**

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

The experts have already expounded on the financial crisis. And although our crisis is linked at one of the chain to the crisis in the West, it has its very own, Soviet, source. That source is rather closer to 1991 (when minister of defence Yazov decided to give the people a treat, opened up the Motherland’s strategic reserves and found that they contained nothing but mice and the equivalent of one dried up MRE each to distribute), than to the Great Depression, which was a crisis of overproduction as a result of which it was e.g. necessary to pour petrol on mountains of oranges and burn them rather than allow them to be sold at dumping prices.

The current crisis in the West is a also a crisis of overproduction. Ours is one of scarcity, a crisis of shortages and arrears.