Уже целую неделю мы на каникулах: последний день занятий в этом году был 15 декабря. Эти семь дней я отсыпался, ходил в гости, гулял, встречался с друзьями, немного работал, много читал… Всё это (кроме сна) я успешно совмещал с едой, конечно же (но и во сне она снилась!).

А сегодня последний день моего пребывания в моей «квартирке», в которой я жил с середины августа. Завтра перевожу вещи в четырёхкомнатную квартиру, которую мы будем совместно снимать ещё с двумя моими одноклассниками. Полдня сегодня ушло на упаковывание вещей и отдраивание всех поверхностей. Оставлю квартирку сияющей чистотой — на радость новым жильцам и к удовлетворению инспекции. Но по-настоящему въедем в новое жильё мы только в начале января, после возвращения из Германии. Уже завтра начинается моё большое каникулярное путешествие: 24 декабря — празднование Рождества с одноклассниками и друзьями в Лунде, 25—26 декабря — прогулки по Копенгагену в компании давних и замечательных моих друзей-эсперантистов, 27 декабря—3 января — празднование Нового года в Германии на большой молодёжной международной эсперанто-тусовке (той самой, что в средневековом замке), 4 января — снова в Лунде, новоселье!

Регулярного доступа к Сети у меня не будет, так что блог закрывается на каникулы и откроется снова в январе, с возобновлением занятий в университете… Всем счастливого Нового года!

The second chunk of the mega-post which began here

(The English translation has been provided by my sister, Elena Izyumenko, to whom I’m very grateful!)

The last post ended with me full of doubts about the politics in general and the green politics in particular. But, of course, knowing some people like Tomas Nilsson and others that I’ve met at the Green Party here, and seeing the way how Miljöpartiet actually works — all that gave me a new hope and a cause for more optimistic view on green politics. And the last drop of antidote against the cynicism was that Saturday’s course and especially the Lotta Hedström's presentation. I finally sort of separated in my mind what had happened with the ‘Union of Russian Greens’ in Russia and what is going on here in Sweden in Miljöpartiet…

But let’s get back now to the Lotta’s presentation. She was talking about the present day’s ‘triple solidarity’ which lies at the foundation of all Swedish Green party’s work:

• Solidarity with all the people around the world,
• Solidarity with future generations,
• Solidarity with non-human nature (animals, plants, ecosystems, landscapes).

The main ‘global’ issues for the Green party in this context are: Peace, Food, Environment, Solidarity (especially in the context of human rights; by the way, Lotta is sure too, that the explosions of buildings in Russia was accomplished by the domestic security service, fulfilling the government’s order to create a cause for a new war in Chechnya), Power (here such concepts as geopolitics, terrorism, globalization all become involved and intermixed) and, of course, the Struggle Against Poverty. Well, I won’t choke up your mind with politics any longer (especially because I’ll be back with this topics a couple of paragraphs below), unless if you are really interested in this topic — in this case you may write to my private address or in the comments to this post — we’ll discuss it together! ;-)

After the meeting (I was like bursting with inspiration!) me and Tomas hurried to visit the local esperantist Kalle.

On Sunday on the way to Småland Nation (five hours of vegan cooking orgy and a non-stop eating, there will be a post in my blog about this some time in the future) Tomas was telling me about his own vision of the green ideology (he is an author and co-author of a number of books on this topic, the last of which will soon be published by the Miljöpartiet’s office in Gothenburg). Exciting!

On Monday evening there was a long-expected meeting of the Green Students (or Gröna Studenter in Swedish), very similar to the Saturday’s course, but three times shorter and exclusively for the youth. Twenty four persons attented! I also contributed to his high number: my classmates made up almost a half of the participants. Ulf spoke again in the first part with the similar story (but this time in English) about the history of the party and its youth wing Grön Ungdom and the Green Students (the latter being a more recent development). He skilfully added his personal history with Miljöpartiet to the general narration. Then I was given an opportunity to tell about the emergence (it happened only a couple of months ago, when I had come to the Green party here and had been one of the participants of this process) and activities of the Green Students in Lund.

The second part of our meeting was guided by Karolina Algotsson from Malmö. She introduced green ideology a bit differently than Tomas. It would be interesting to discuss it with both of them (Tomas left Lund one day before, on Sunday), but I quite liked her vision too. I especially liked ideological link between ecology, diversity, decentralization, collectivism/solidarity, individualism and queer. And, of course, an overarching importance of such concepts as life quality, wellbeing, happiness… ‘This is what it’s all about!’, the final lines from this short video came to my mind. Early and eco-anarchists (including my favorite thinkers of this intellectual movement Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin) were mentioned by Karolina among the main sources of green ideas!

To be continued…

Эта запись доступна также на русском

By chance I discovered that Google Earth/Maps now features satellite of my home region in a much higher resolution than it used to before. So I decided to blogpost a virtual tour to the places of my childhood and adolescence. Welcome aboard this magical mystery tour, everyone! ;-)

On this photo we see the area from very high (20 km) above. We may see Tsimlyansk in the north, it’s where I was born. It’s quite old (soon to become 350 years old) Cossacks’ settlement and quite small one for today’s standards: with population of 15 thousand people it’s the smallest town in Rostov region. In the south, 20 km from Tsimlyansk, we see Volgodonsk (pop. 171 thousand). It’s just 50 years old, a juvenile age for a city. There I spent my childhood and adolescence, studied at school and university. It’s situated in the middle between Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd (the capital cities of two neighboring regions, or provinces). A big river in the center of the picture is Don, one of the longest and most famous rivers in the south of European Russia. The ‘sea’ on the right is the Tsimlyansk Reservoir, it was created artificially which led to flooding of many hectares of productive land and to forced relocation of thousand of people from their historic territory. All that to build the Tsimlyansk Hydro Power Plant. Now people swim and fish there, but lately the reservoir brings more problems than benefits: eutrophication (easily seen on the photo), blue-green algae releasing stinky and greenhouse methane… All these are the consequences of the rapid industrialization of the Soviet era. Towns are surrounded by a pattern of fields, it’s an agricultural region, thanks to the mild climate and productive soil.

The next photo (it’s a bird view!) shows us one of the Tsimlyansk districts (on its southern edge) where the house stands, which once belonged to my grandparents from the mother’s side. To that house I was delivered after I was born. The red square without label on the photo is that house. There’s a bazaar nearby, and a church to the south. It wasn’t there where I was a kid, instead of it we had a grocery store. That’s why I don’t remember it.

This plane view features virtually entire Volgodonsk: its split into the ‘old town’ (historic part, where the construction of the new settlement began) and the ‘new city’, the later and more modern part. The gulf divides them, and the bridge over it connects them. On the top of the photo you can see two channels: one for navigation (the one which connects the rivers Volga and Don and gave the city its name) and one for irrigation. In the northern part of the city you can clearly see the harbor. The city is quite green when it comes to the number of trees, especially its ‘old’ part.

A bird view again. Here we see a disctrict in the ‘old town’ (the bridge over the gulf at the photo’s bottom is the same as the one at the middle-bottom of the previous photo). The district bears the name ‘South-Western’. You can see the both kindergartens that I attended as a child. I was going to the northern one just for a couple of days, and then I got ill. Another one, in the south-east, I attended for much longer time. There’s a school close to my house (of course, the entire house doesn’t belong to my family alone, it’s a big five-stories high block of flats). The school was originally named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (her story inspired Kim Stanley Robinson to name one of his Mars trilogy’s characters after her). Now it’s just Municipal gymnasium no. 5. Quite prestigious secondary school in town. Or it used to be, I don’t know how it is now. It has a swimming pool standing just by its side (and having a school of the same type at its other side, it used to serve as a poll station sometimes, and sometimes we would vote at our school too). I was going to the swimming pool with my father, sister and a friend. And then there’s a stadium between the school, my house, and the swimming pool. I used to run, cycle, climb, roll, play football, and fight there… I jogged there last time this last summer. Five tall sixteen-stories high ‘towers’ are quite new buildings. They were built after I went to school. We had a waste covered with high weeds there before, and we played there as kids.

A close-up of our courtyard, a bird view again. Our house is clearly visible, and the next house, where my grandparents now live (the same ones whose old house in Tsimlyansk we were observing on one of the previous photos). In the court there’re trees, football field, sandbox, parking lot…

Here they are, the places of my childhood. It’s funny to look at them from such a high altitude, just like an angel from the sky. :-)

This post is available in English as well

Случайно обнаружил, что на Google Earth/Maps выложили фотографии Волгодонского района в высоком разрешении. Решил опубликовать в блоге экскурсию по местам моих детства и юности.

На этом фото мы видим местность с низкой орбиты. На севере — Цимлянск, где я родился. Это довольно старая (скоро будет 350 лет) и, по сегодняшним меркам, маленькая (15 тыс. чел. населения — самый маленький город Ростовской области) казачья станица. На юге, в 20 километрах от Цимлянска — Волгодонск (нас. 171 тыс.), ему всего полвека, там я провёл детство и юность, учился в школе и университете. Он расположен примерно на полпути между Ростовом-на-Дону и Волгоградом (столицами двух областей). Большая река в центре фотографии — это Дон, одна из самых больших и известных рек на юге европейской части России. «Море» справа — это Цимлянское водохранилище, его создали искусственно, затопив историческую станицу Цимлянскую и массу плодороднейших сельскохозяйственных угодий, насильственно переселив тысячи людей с их исторической земли, чтобы построить Цимлянскую ГЭС. Сейчас в водохранилище ловят рыбу и купаются, но в последние годы от него всё больше и больше проблем: эвтрофия, бурное цветение сине-зелёных водорослей (на фото это хорошо видно), выделение вонючего и парникового газа метана… Всё это последствия бурной индустриализации советского государства. Вокруг населённых пунктов — лоскутки полей, это сельскохозяйственный регион, благодаря благодатному климату и плодородной почве.

На следующем фото (сделанном с высоты птичьего полёта) можно видеть район Цимлянска (его южной окраины), где стоит дом, принадлежавший моим дедушке и бабушке по материнской линии, в который меня привезли сразу после моего рождения. Красный квадрат без подписи — это именно он: дом, подсобные помещения (курятники, гараж), сад, огород. Совсем рядом находится базар, а на южном въезде в город — церковь. Когда я был маленьким, её не было, а вместо неё был магазин продуктов. Поэтому я её не помню.

На этом виде с высоты полёта современного самолёта можно видеть практически весь Волгодонск: его деление на «старый город» (историческая часть, с которой начиналось строительство города) и «новый город», более позднюю и современную часть. Их разделяет залив, а соединяет — автомобильный мост через него, проложенный по верху дамбы. На верху фото можно видеть два канала: судоходный (именно он соединяет Волгу и Дон, отчего город и получил своё имя) и оросительный. В северной части города отчётливо виден грузовой порт. В плане насаждений город довольно зелёный, особенно «старый».

Снова высота полёта крупных хищных птиц. Здесь мы видим район в «старом городе», непосредственно примыкающий к мосту (внизу посередине на предыдущей фотографии и внизу справа — на этой) через залив. Район называется «Юго-Западный». На фото можно видеть оба детских сада, куда я ходил (тот, что на севере, «Журавлик», я посещал всего несколько дней, а потом заболел, а в другой, на юго-востоке, «Аленький цветочек», ходил довольно долго). Совсем рядом с моим домом (не весь дом принадлежит нашей семье, конечно же, это многоквартирная пятиэтажка) — школа. Раньше она носила имя Зои Космодемьянской (её история вдохновила Кима Стенли Робинсона использовать имя Zoya для одного из персонажей его «Марсианской трилогии»), а сейчас называется просто Муниципальная гимназия №5. Довольно престижное среднее учебное заведение. Было, по крайней мере, а как сейчас, не знаю. Вплотную к ней стоит бассейн. С другой стороны от него — школа №10, точно такого же типа, обычно там устраивали избирательный участок на выборах, но иногда голосовали и в нашей школе. В бассейн мы иногда ходили с отцом, сестрой и другом, однажды меня безуспешно пытались записать туда в секцию плаванья (я боялся прыгать в воду с бортика). Между домом, школой и бассейном — стадион, там я бегал, катался на велеке, прыгал, кувыркался, лазил… Последний раз совершил пробежку по нему этим летом. Пять высоких шестнадцатиэтажных башен справа — это, можно сказать, «новостройки». Их построили уже после того, как я пошёл в школу, а раньше на их месте был заросший сорняками пустырь, на нём мы играли детьми.

Двор крупным планом, высота полёта птиц поменьше (но скорее перелётных, чем городских голубей и воробёв). Можно видеть наш дом, а в соседнем сейчас живут бабушка и дедушка, те самые, чей старый дом в Цимлянске мы рассматривали на одной из предыдущих фотографий. Двор окружён такими же пятиэтажными домами, и только на юге нежилое здание — библиотека. Во дворе можно рассмотреть деревья, футбольное поле, песочницу, парковку…

Вот такие мои родные места, очень забавно рассматривать их с такой высоты, аки ангел с небес (иже херувимы! ;-)).

Yep! It’s the third Sunday in a row and the cat is coming for the third time. The same ritual which already became sort of tradition: meowing behind the door, eating half of the vegan butter offered to him, rolling on my chair happily…

Unfortunately, this time he came later than usually, and I was about to go to meet with friends at Smålands Nation, so I could spend with him only 20 min or so… But we had a lot of fun together, I can tell you! ;-) Gonna miss him when I move out of here…

---

Ага! Третье воскресенье подряд кот приходит ко мне в гости! Тот же самый ритуал, уже ставший традицией: помяукать под дверью, слизать половину кусочка предложенного веганского масла, счастливо поваляться, мурлыкая, в кресле, в котором я обычно сижу за компьютером…

К сожалению, на этот раз он заявляется позже обычного, и я уже собираюсь уходить на встречу с друзьями в Нации Смоланда. Так что мы проводим вместе всего минут 20, но зато нам так весело! ;-) Буду скучать по нему, когда перееду отсюда…

---

Jen! La trian dimanĉon sinsekve la kato vizitas min! La sama ritualo, kiu jam iĝis tradicio: miaŭi malantaŭ la pordo, manĝi duonon de la ofertita vegan-butero, ruliĝadi en mia seĝo…

Bedaŭrinde, ĉi-foje li venas pli malfrue ol kutime, kaj mi jam estas ironta al Smoland-Nacio por renkonti miajn amikojn. Do ni pasigas kune nur ĉ. 20 minutojn, sed ni ja amuziĝas, ne dubu! ;-) Mi sopiros pri li, kiam mi forlasos tiun ĉi apartamenton…

Beware! The mega-post in several big chunks is coming! ;-)

(The English translation has been provided by my sister, Elena Izyumenko, to whom I’m very grateful!)

The previous few weeks were intense green in color. It started early in the Saturday morning (Dec. 2), when me and Tomas went to the Green Party’s office. We were going to attend the courses organized for new party members. There were about ten participants besides us. To my own surprise, I didn’t have to bother Tomas much about the translation – owing to the course guide Lise Nordin’s (of course, a good acquaintance of Tomas! :-)) clearly understandable speech. I understood almost everything (well, like 70%—80%, maybe) and even dared to make remarks in Swedish from time to time. After a short breakfast and introduction of all the participants (they came not only from Lund, but from nearby cities and towns as well) we dived into the green political stuff…

Lise started the course with presentation of the green ideology: history, thinkers, main landmarks of development, today’s situation, positioning of the Green parties (Sweden’s Miljöpartiet De Gröna in particular) in politics among the left, right, center, green and “gray” parties and movements. A great deal of what we had been learning during the last Environmental Governance course has suddenly came out again… Abstract theories reconnected with political reality; it became clear how it was working in real life, and what it was needed for… After that Ulf Holm (#1 on the Skåne electoral list from the Green Party in last September’s elections; he was re-elected as a member of the national parliament of Sweden, Riksdag) made his presentation for us. Ulf told us about the history of the Miljöpartiet: its emergence, formation, development and reforming, then he told about the situation after the recent elections.

Then we had a dinner – a treat from MP for its new members. There was a choice between European, Chinese and Indian restaurants, I equally liked the latter two. So me, Tomas, Zeynep, Robban, and Ruthger found ourselves in the Chinese place. Before I had been passing by it often and wondering, what it was like inside. It turned out to be very nice, tasty and even not really expensive (if I’ll have to pay from my own pocket in the future ;-)). Roasted rice with vegetables, roasted vegetables and cashew with spices, plain rice, orange juice, mmm… Thanks to our new friends Robban and Ruthger and my “old” (but young! ;-)) friends Zeynep and Tomas, the dinner was filled with interesting discussions (we even got back to the office a little late)!

It was even more interesting at the afternoon presentations. Ulf spoke again at first, he told us about the actual issues of the Swedish national politics and the Miljöpartiet’s stances in them. One of the most interesting things I’ve heard there was this: ‘The climate policy should determine the financial policy (including the national budget)’ and ‘The struggle against climate change is the most important task!’. Wow, impressive! It would be great if all parties and governments of other nations followed this!.. It was a little difficult for me to understand Swedish sometimes, so I was switching my attention between Ulf and Tomas; the latter was zealously translating into English for Zeynep.

And then there was a brilliant presentation of Lotta Hedström, the member of the Riksdag and the Miljöpartiet’s speaker/representative (or språkrör in Swedish) in the past. Here I want to digress and describe who are those språkrör. Actually I’m not sure how to translate properly this Swedish word which consists of two parts, each of which separately means ‘speech’ and ‘voice’. The case is that there is no leaders and chair/wo/men in this party, but there are something like ‘representatives’ (they always come in duo: a woman and a man), whose task is not to lead the party and not to ‘make politics’, but to bring expectations of ordinary members to the highest political level (that’s Riksdag) and to be the ‘face’ and the ‘voice’ of the party. Their standard term is four years, but their mandate should be confirmed by voting at party congresses every year (it means that if people, the ordinary party members, are not satisfied with the språkrör’s work, they may vote for her or him to quit before the term finishes). It is also forbidden to be a språkrör for more than a fixed number of terms in succession (it is 2 or 3 now, I’m not sure). The current speakers/representatives are Maria and Peter, and now they’ve just had their first four-year term coming to an end). Thanks to this rotation system a lot of party members manage to serve as språkrör during their life in the Miljöpartiet.

Oh yes, so despite having her hair white, Lotta is still a very active politician, and she is also very radical (that’s why she and Tomas are good friends). Her speech was about fundamental green ideology (how it is nowadays) and it inspired me a lot.

I remember, how I started to think about the Green party for the first time, when I started reading Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’ve studied an experience and activities of the Green parties all over the world (my favorite ones are Swedish, New Zealand and German; and from not long ago a Canadian one, witch started to give signs of hopes with the election of its new leader, Elizabeth May). I remember, how enthusiastically I accepted the decision of the Russian environmental movement to create its own independent Green party. I tried to participate in this process, I even was a delegate to the congress, wrote a part of their political party program… But personal ambitions, authoritarian and backstage methods of struggle for power (as if green politics was limited to the struggle for power!), Soviet-style of discussions with opponents – all of these poisoned my enthusiasm. I regarded politicians and politics in general with great suspicion before (my work at Greenpeace + anarchism + experience of the Russian politics = it was difficult to avoid cynicism, you see), but, oh boy, a short experience of working and communicating with our “green” politicians in Russia has almost killed my interest in Green parties in general and for good. Well, I want to hope that our very own Green Alternative (GROZA) made up of young Russian political greens could one day become the first real and independent Green party in the history of Russia…

To be continued…