#volga3

[aleonov]

Coats of arms of Volga cities

I. One of the most simple and the clearest method to look how our memory of the city is desighned is to study coats of arms. We selected 44 the most important cities and analysed their emblems - if they have or not something connected to Volga. Most of them yes:  

       : 

II.

But what is very immportant for us is that some of the biggect cities do not have connected their emblems with Volga but they tried to promoute river cruises. Here some examples:

Nizhny Novgorod - the biggest city of Volga region, former leader of river tourism. 

 Kazan, the second largest city on Volga with big potencial of increasing river tourism.

 Samara, the third largest city with more than one million polulation

 Ulyanovsk, 600 000 population, and birthplace of V. Lenin

 Yaroslavl', one of the oldest and very cultural city with big tourism potention. Part of the "Golder Ring"

Tver, a city with big history but bad infrastructure. Not a part of "Golden Ring".

Uglich, a small city, a part of Yaroslavl' tour programms

Syzran, not so big industrial city near with Samara. 

Myshkin is a very small city (6000) which constructed it's own history based by mascot (mouse). It is a great example how to create something almost from nothing.

III. Which conclusions could we made?

1) Change of coat of arm could be an evidence of demand to change an atmosphere or future direction.

This is Zhigulevsk example

             Thisi is Dubna

That's why i thing and offer to redesigh some emblemt to add a river meaning, of course, we local aspects and identities. 

2) The best opportunities to make a synergetics have a Yarosravl as a city which connects to two famous touristic tours - Golden Ring and Volga River that's why improving the emblem of Yaroslavl' seems the most important thing for increasing Volga potential by these methods.

[volgavolgavolga]

ULYANOVSK/VOLGA SHORE

One of the main problems of developing the river bank are the landslides. Because of that there isn't much happening on the shore. 

Although in the soviet times there was a program to deal with that problem:

Land was given to people to plant gardens with trees, but people started planting tomatoes and potatoes and that didn't really help to reinforce the slope.There are still some dachas left...

[istomin-strelka]

PrimBul' 37. The main disco of Togliatti

1990s in Russia is now remembered as the years of rampant crime and economic turmoil. A discos of 90s are the most severe in the history of Russia. It was really dangerous to be there.

The most famous disco in Togliatti was “Primbul 37”. It is named by address of the building where it was situated. Primorsky Boulevard 37, Palace of Sports.

Primorskiy Boulevard st., 37

This disco is famous as a place where Sergey Zhukov and Aleksey Potekhin were DJs. Later they founded a popular band “Ruki Vverh”. This band is one of the the most important symbols of the ’90s culture.

Ruki vverh band. Alexey Potehin, Sergey Zhukov

Togliatti criminal wars are well known in Russia. Presence of criminal was also noticeable in disco. Some participants of this disco are still alive and remember their experience. Let’s look at couple of posts in vk group dedicated to Primbul (http://vk.com/club8793417):

Group administrator: AFAIK, Primbul was famous by fighting without rules. It was impossible to get away from there without handicap nor not being beaten …… Every night after the disco you could look at fighting girls or boys ….. Did you participate in such fightings ??? And did you get pizdyuli on Plimbul ???

Anton Ogul: Yes, I was there too and I was loving to fight. Primbul is great ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Mikha Podvigin: I was at a sobering up station only once )))))) They have took me there from Primbul. I was braking cop’s jacket and beating him. Then I was arrested )))))))) It was a great time !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fightings in Primbul could be looking like this (photo from the Internet)

[masha-sa]

The assertions of two scholars in the area of collective memory may advance the way we are approaching community-designed memory and, more specifically, make sense of how we have spent the last two hours in Astrakhan (12 - 2am) - bombing around in Misha's car, visiting crumbling or derelict structures, the sites of the game Nochnoi Dozor. 

Firstly, in his article 'Les Lieux de Memoire', Pierre Nora makes a distinction between memory and history which is useful. Memory (which he sees as barely present in our society at all any more) is the past lived in the present. It is 'the remnants of experience still lived in the warmth of tradition, in the silence of custom, in repetition' and 'displaced under a fundamentally historical sensibility'. So memory is seen as intimate, known, lived and unquestioned. Meanwhile history is the opposite. At a distance. Academic, a critical discipline and subject to review, everything in it relative. True memory is on the way out, replaced by history, defined as our desire to archive everything, to save all facts for some later review without emphasis on personal absorption of them. As we become a historical society, we are losing memory and we are craving it. We need and create Lieux de memoire (monuments, shrines, places of significance) more than ever nowadays because we don't 'live within memory'. 

Secondly, Elena Petrovska writes that our memories are formed when we are jolted by the unknown, never more so than in the urban environment. True memory is formed when we meet with others and with ourselves. And that happens when we have experiences of non-recognition, when we are shaken out of automatic mode of apprehending our environment. The things that we consider most our own, come to us when we are swallowed by the unknown world. Then we can meet ourselves, form memories through which we can grow. In  this jolting, I would personally include the experience of seeing the same place in a suddenly new way.

What is Nochnoi Dozor ('Night Watchman')? It is a game played and organised by groups of friends, and we have met one of the organisers and big players in Astrakhan, Misha, who works in our hostel. The game happens most weekends. To play the game, you first go onto the Internet. Then everyone playing goes to a certain place, where they are given instructions for the game. They are told the area where the game is happening, a derelict building or construction that was never finished, or an old factory; codes are written in hiding places inside and the basic goal is to find them as quickly as possible (which involves driving there extremely fast, probably climbing and scrambling, and definitely being at great heights ). Sometimes you have to break off a piece of the building and take it with you, for example, codes might be written on loose pains of glass. It is an extreme, weekly game of adrenaline, quick-wit and strength. 

Misha took us to two places. The first was the eleventh floor of a concrete skeleton of an unfinished block of flats. It is one of the tallest buildings in Astrakhan. There are minimal side-walls. From the uppermost floor, which we reached from the floor below by a wooden ladder leading up through hatch, the view was amazing. The Kremlin and the rest. 'They only lit the Kremlin up a couple of years ago' said Misha. Gaps yawned in the floor dropping eleven stories, so you had to be careful where you stepped. A concrete platform protruded into the sky for those good with heights. Rusting metal sticks grew out of the floor like hairs.

There was graffiti here, a certain society had imbued the place with meaning.  Misha told me a story: 'a very romantic thing happened here. I proposed to this girl. It broke off of course, but there was this romantic moment. I brought her up here to the tenth floor [with a ceiling]. I brought thousands of rose-petals and put them up here before we came. It was really amazing, the wind was catching them, taking them out of the building and swirling the back in. I proposed at the edge. When she said yes, I signalled to my friends with a green laser - they were in a car down below - and they set all their car alarms off. It was a romantic thing.'

We clambered back into the car and listened to the 'Nochnoi Dozor' anthems on full-blast. One of the song's lyrics...'этот город тебе предлагает простор' (this town can offer you space). 

The second spot was a little out of Astrakhan in the shadow of a vast, operating power station. It was a three-story building which in the past was the administration for a livestock firm. It had the feel of light-industrial units though -high-ceilings square rooms.  Ceilings were falling through, the place was collapsing. There was fresh cow shit and we were told to watch out for cattle. The codes were hidden in fun places making use of the old functional parts of the buildings. Like the window frames, or long-obsolete fuse-boxes with wires sticking out. Although the ghostly light of the power station flooded through the windows, you need at least phone torches to play the game.

People playing the game are proud of what they do and document the places they go. They take pictures of themselves. They graffiti their team-names onto the buildings. 

How does this relate to the two points? Firstly, this isn't just adrenaline.  Here is a ritual uniting a community, (from the rules of the game, to the usual songs, to other personal and common memories of the place like the marriage proposal). Here is a type of memory construction to fill the memory void mentioned by Pierre Nora, and which I felt yesterday when I spoke to the Russian nationalists. Secondly, the people of Astrakhan may be long-familiar with derelict buildings. But they are still looking for the jolt out of the automatic which creates meaningful memory as understood by Petrovska (see above). It is achieved through fear - of heights, of speed, of the danger of these buildings. Derelict and empty buildings also play a role here. They provide a blank canvas to meet yourself in. 'People graffiti here' said Misha, 'because it stays. It gets removed from fences and so on, but no one has come up here for five years.'  Memory creation is also achieved by the making strange of a familiar post-industrial landscape. It's creative. It's not making the fuse-box and the light from the power station arty...it's actually playing a game around them with new rules.

The police can be reasoned with on this. The only thing that is strictly illegal, says Misha, is the hi-speed. But only if you are caught. And they have a little tip off about where patrols are going to be. 

Legal or not0, for better or for worse, this is successful memory design. I won't forget this trip. I might forget the tour around the Astrakhan Kremlin, which year the eight tower was destroyed, or why the Georgians want the remains of their saints returned. In other words, I'm not so good on the facts, I'm not so good on my history.

[volgavolgavolga]

ULYANOVSK/SIMBIRKA vs. VOLGA

The Volga shore in Ulyanovsk is a gap between the two parts of the city. And at the same time it isn’t used. On one shore it is a deserted bank with some dachas and wild dogs. It is not used because the slope is very steep and is not reinforced. So the landslides are a big issue. The opposite shore is cut off from the city by a wall. To be exact a long territory surrounded by walls. With nothing but small 2x2m buildings.

The Simbirka river though is interacting more with the city. It now mostly works as a park and has 2 activation points (the university and the shopping mall on opposite shores) Also the city has great plans to develop that area

[volgavolgavolga]

KAZAN/ KAZANKA vs. VOLGA

The most developed embankment in the city is the bank of Kazanka river. It has a historical part which attracts tourists. Further on it turns into a construction site with a lot of modern buildings facing the river. The Millenium bridge, which is very hard to reach, takes us to a new developed shore with shopping malls and housing blocks facing the sand shores of the embankment which are soon to be developed.

It is interesting that the people don’t associate their city with the Volga.

The Volga shore is very hard to see. There is only one part of it which is visible, and it  is located in the port which is behind walls. The rest of the Volga shore consists of many other walls. Which mostly hide the industrial zones that took nearly all of  shore.

[volgavolgavolga]

SARATOV FAVELAS

The first acquaintance with Saratov started from excursion with Igor, he is local informal ethnographer. Starting point was near the museum of local lore, next stop was street with a lot old half ruined wooden houses, we  were still in the city centre.  Passing by the streets picture haven’t changed, all street has only one-story buildings wood, brick, stone houses, all they look abandoned, ruined, you can't imagine that somebody can live here, some streets even hasn’t got a proper road, there is only mud there.

We had made a turn after some garages , it’s looked like empty space on some periphery, were only one thing you can find is  garages and abandoned cars, felt like it's not unsafely to be there, going down without a road, everything was dirty, everywere mud, after all found ourselves in the concrete road surrounding marsh. On the other side you can find houses,  quite populated. Igor told that actually this is a river Taybalik  and it's was putted inside the collector, and we are standing on it, later we found the hole and saw the river inside.

Moved on, its appeared that this concrete collector is a path, kind of road for locals. Its surrounds by the same type of houses that we saw in the central area streets, they all looks the same ruined with some supplemented small architectural forms, but actually  they are not abandoned at all, all this houses are full of life, they all inhabited.

Walking on the streets of Saratov, peek a sneak into alleyways and courtyards, everywhere in the city center you can find this favelas. Many of them have as a background picture of modern just built sixteen-story buildings. So  you can see this incredible contrast of new buildings and one-story pre-revolutionary houses. All these courtyards and houses equipped well, vast majority has some kinds of improvements, patches, add-ons, extensions, some have flowerbeds, some historic houses has increased volume of balcony, others has attached extra rooms, that are just built from all rubbish things that they could find in surrounding area .

Generally we can specify all the main Saratov favelas characteristics:

1_Most of the time all Saratov favelas you can find near newly built modern 15-20 story buildings, apartments.

2_Its always goes with the courtyard, from the main street you have a nice but quite ruined building of the end of 19 or beginning of 20 century, you go inside and see a courtyard. All rest buildings and shelters are faced to this courtyard. In the centre it can be placed a flower bed, or  some small shared public space for children.

3_ All buildings have some adjusted, completed, modified structures, the intervention, expansion of the new territory. It can be a adjusted room, it can be enlarged entrance, porch and attached loggia or a balcony.

4_ From the first view you all these buildings looks abandoned, but in a closer look you will be able to notice the details, signs of life and comfort such as flowers in window, nice curtains, in some courtyards you will find the clothes hanging on the rope outside.

Generally speaking Saratov has these two controversial vectors, in the one hand it’s seems to be perceived as die out, shrinking city, cause still there are a lot abandoned, burned, ruined houses in it, but in other certainly a lot of houses and districts that seems to be at first sight abandoned and inhabitant are full of life and their own aesthetics.

[volgavolgavolga]

MIKHAIL SYARDIN, FORMER CHIEF ARCHITECT OF TOGLIATTI AND DIRECTOR OF GIPROGOR INSTITUTE, TALKS ABOUT FUTURE OF KUYBYSHEV WATER RESERVOIR

By his opinion the Volga will come back the the original watercourse and the level of the Kuybyshev reservoir (the biggest in the region) will lower. 

“The GES can be done from the geographical flat rivers, but they won’t serve for long time - 50-100 years as minimum. The level of Kuybyshev water reservoir will lower. So after this the centre of Togliatti will appear in former Stavropol which was flooded. This will unite the city creating a natural Togliatti city centre”.  

[volgavolgavolga]

The troubled relationship between Togliatti and the Volga

The town of Togliatti was founded in 1737 by Vasily Tatishev as a fortress to defend the Russian lands from nomads’ raids. Within 100 years starting in the 19th till the early 20th centuries the population of the town didn’t change much. Something that would change with the city’s seriously industrialization.

In the 1950s, with the construction of the Zhigulyovskaya hydroelectric station and the Kyubyshev dam, almost the whole town was flooded and so transferred and rebuilt, in a new place, almost absolutely like the old city. In this moment the old city of Togliatti and it’s existing relationship with the Volga river, died. The city continued to grow in other areas especially with the construction, in 1966, of the largest automobile assembly plant in the USSR. From this point on, the city grew continuously around it’s new industrial center and lost completely its connection with the Volga river.

Nowadays when we “walk” down Togliatti we find a huge empty and natural barrier that prevent us to even reach it. Not only prevents as it even hides it so well and so immaculately that eventually once you reach it, we only have around 10 days to fully enjoy it. After this, quite small season, we will find out that the water level has risen to a level that we won’t be able to lay our towel on the sand or swim without being afraid of being taken away by the flow generated by the open locks at the Zhigulyovskaya hydroelectric station.

But that is not all. Even in the residential areas along the Volga river the promise of a splendid and unique landscape full of life and leisure activities can be found in several outdoors. In this areas the price per square meter is so high that makes it an exclusive condominium.

That, unfortunately, in the end is nothing more than empty and decayed space that suffers from the same problems as any other part of the city: lack of people, good infrastructure and constant water level rising.

[volgavolgavolga]

New Architecture of the Volga

Astrakhan has many 'unifamily' houses, standing alone. While many of these are made of wood and in advanced stages of decay, this is the first city in Russia I've visited where new houses—as opposed to apartment buildings—are being constructed. In most cases, these are brick or some kind of masonry unit, with light roofs above.

The bottom picture in this set shows one of my favorite Astrakhan houses so far. It is built using the materials commonly available in Russia: prefabricated concrete blocks (in the foundation) and panels (for the walls above) and various kinds of brick to fill in the gaps and distinguish the parts of the house. While it looks rough now, it's habitable, and the details are still being finished (note the cement parging covering the seams of the panels, and not yet covering the seam on the second floor where the brick shows.

This house offers a glimpse of a new Russian architecture. In the 20th century, powerful nations mastered the industrialization of building materials and construction. In Russia, the scale of this industrialization was large, from the size of a wall panel up to the size of a microrayon, as opposed to the United States, which focused more often on industrializing materials of a slightly smaller scale (hence 2x4s, nail-guns, drop-ceiling panels). Here, we can see the large scale pieces that Russia produces used to create a unique product at a relatively small scale.     

[volgavolgavolga]

The assertions of two scholars in the area of collective memory may advance the way we are approaching community-designed memory and, more specifically, make sense of how we have spent the last two hours in Astrakhan (12 - 2am) - bombing around in Misha's car, visiting crumbling or derelict structures, the sites of the game Nochnoi Dozor. 

Firstly, in his article 'Les Lieux de Memoire', Pierre Nora makes a distinction between memory and history which is useful. Memory (which he sees as barely present in our society at all any more) is the past lived in the present. It is 'the remnants of experience still lived in the warmth of tradition, in the silence of custom, in repetition' and 'displaced under a fundamentally historical sensibility'. So memory is seen as intimate, known, lived and unquestioned. Meanwhile history is the opposite. At a distance. Academic, a critical discipline and subject to review, everything in it relative. True memory is on the way out, replaced by history, defined as our desire to archive everything, to save all facts for some later review without emphasis on personal absorption of them. As we become a historical society, we are losing memory and we are craving it. We need and create Lieux de memoire (monuments, shrines, places of significance) more than ever nowadays because we don't 'live within memory'. 

Secondly, Elena Petrovska writes that our memories are formed when we are jolted by the unknown, never more so than in the urban environment. True memory is formed when we meet with others and with ourselves. And that happens when we have experiences of non-recognition, when we are shaken out of automatic mode of apprehending our environment. The things that we consider most our own, come to us when we are swallowed by the unknown world. Then we can meet ourselves, form memories through which we can grow. This type of jolting can be seen to include the experience of seeing the same place in a suddenly new way.

What is Nochnoi Dozor ('Night Watchman')? It is a game played and organised by groups of friends, and we have met one of the organisers and big players in Astrakhan, Misha, who works in our hostel. The game happens most weekends. To play the game, you first go onto the Internet. Then everyone playing goes to a certain place, where they are given instructions for the game. They are told the area where the game is happening, a derelict building or construction that was never finished, or an old factory; codes are written in hidden-places inside, and the basic goal is to find them as quickly as possible (which involves driving there extremely fast, probably climbing and scrambling, and definitely being at great heights ). Sometimes you have to break off a piece of the building and take it with you, for example, codes might be written on loose pains of glass. It is an extreme, weekly game of adrenaline, quick-wit and strength. 

Misha took us to two places. The first was the eleventh floor of a concrete skeleton of an unfinished block of flats. It is one of the tallest buildings in Astrakhan. There are minimal side-walls. From the uppermost floor, which we reached from the floor below by a wooden ladder leading up through hatch, the view was amazing. The Kremlin and the rest. 'They only lit the Kremlin up a couple of years ago' said Misha. Gaps yawned in the floor dropping eleven stories, so you had to be careful where you stepped. A concrete platform protruded into the sky for those good with heights. Rusting metal sticks grew out of the floor like hairs.

There was graffiti here, a certain society had imbued the place with meaning.  Misha told me a story: 'a very romantic thing happened here. I proposed to this girl. It broke off of course, but there was this romantic moment. I brought her up here to the tenth floor [with a ceiling]. I brought thousands of rose-petals and put them up here before we came. It was really amazing, the wind was catching them, taking them out of the building and swirling the back in. I proposed at the edge. When she said yes, I signalled to my friends with a green laser - they were in a car down below - and they set all their car alarms off. It was a romantic thing.'

We clambered back into the car and listened to the 'Nochnoi Dozor' anthems on full-blast. One of the song's lyrics...'этот город тебе предлагает простор' (this town can offer you space). 

The second spot was a little out of Astrakhan in the shadow of a vast, operating power station. It was a three-story building which in the past was the administration for a livestock firm. It had the feel of light-industrial units though -high-ceilings square rooms.  Ceilings were falling through, the place was collapsing. There was fresh cow shit and we were told to watch out for cattle. The codes were hidden in fun places making use of the old functional parts of the buildings. Like the window frames, or long-obsolete fuse-boxes with wires sticking out. Although the ghostly light of the power station flooded through the windows, you need at least phone torches to play the game.

People playing the game are proud of what they do and document the places they go. They take pictures of themselves. They graffiti their team-names onto the buildings. 

How does this relate to the two points? Firstly, this isn't just adrenaline.  Here is a ritual uniting a community, (from the rules of the game, to the usual songs, to other personal and common memories of the place like the marriage proposal). Here is a type of memory construction to fill the memory void mentioned by Pierre Nora, and which I felt yesterday when I spoke to the Russian nationalists. Secondly, the people of Astrakhan may be long-familiar with derelict buildings. But they are still looking for the jolt out of the automatic which creates meaningful memory as understood by Petrovska (see above). It is achieved through fear - of heights, of speed, of the danger of these buildings. Derelict and empty buildings also play a role here. They provide a blank canvas to meet yourself in. 'People graffiti here' said Misha, 'because it stays. It gets removed from fences and so on, but no one has come up here for five years.'  Memory creation is also achieved by the making strange of a familiar post-industrial landscape. It's creative. It's not making the fuse-box and the light from the power station arty...it's actually playing a game around them with new rules.

The police can be reasoned with on this. The only thing that is strictly illegal, says Misha, is the hi-speed. But only if you are caught. And they have a little tip off about where patrols are going to be. 

Legal or not, for better or for worse, this is successful memory design. I won't forget this trip. I might forget the tour around the Astrakhan Kremlin, which year the eight tower was destroyed, or why the Georgians want the remains of their saints returned. In other words, I'm not so good on the facts, I'm not so good on my history.

[volgavolgavolga]

Lines and limits of the City Island

From above, of course, the edge of the island is striking. On the ground, it reveals subtleties of shores that are less "developed" by human intervention. Looking back at the new architecture and the footings of the New Bridge, I saw the distinction of the built embankments, and the  fluid boundaries of the river, the sand, the grasses and trees. I was told that there have been many projects for this island, but that they never come to fruition. Every spring, much of the island is flooded, and there have been no projects yet that can be reconciled with this phenomenon. Even the hill of the highway, built for the New Bridge to rest on the island, is already being overtaken by weeds and the work of water.

Walking on the banks of the river, there are clear lines of vegetation, distinguished by only a few meters in plan or section. This is the thick edge of the river, which has been erased to a hard line where the city is built up. 

First the river, then sand, then reeds and grasses, another line of sand, a slight grade upwards, the first trees, small flowering plants, a berm of sand running along the length of the island. Behind this rise, there are trees. Maybe they've drowned in a recent flood? Anyway their forest is a different landscape, low, like the banks of the river, but protected by the berm from all but the most severe floods. In the thickets, I can see the dark line of growth and stain from where the river has risen in the past. At the very top of the island, the northern-most point, I look back to see the city, my bike, the broad border of the end of the Volga on this stretch of land.   

[volgavolgavolga]

Сортиры In Astrakhan

In Russian, the French word "sortir," to "go out" has become a crass word for outhouse. In Astrakhan and the surrounding territory, there are many examples of toilets with minimal interface between humanity and the dirt below. At most, water tanks above offer some kind of sanitary option. This architecture is especially interesting to observe in contrast with other kinds of infrastructure (like electricity, gas heat, buried sewers) but it's rarely pleasant when you need it most. 

[volgavolgavolga]

1.       There is, of course, some construction of Astrakhan as a sea-faring land. See the ship in this playground, built in 2008. A huge photo of Putin’s visit to Astrakhan province smiles down on this nautical play area. 

Meanwhile, the fairy tale of the Golden Fish traces back to the Caspian Sea (the Dark Blue Sea in the legend). There is a colourful Astrakhan history behind the tale (the most famous version of which is by Pushkin): 18th C fisherman believed the myth and if they caught a golden fish they would put a silver earring in the gills and return it to the sea. The Astrakhan origins of the myth are not well known; now the history is being fed into the regional identity. These benches showing the fish in 19th C style gratings were also made as part of the 2008 reconstruction.  

Astrakhan has a state naval institute. The five year course includes history, but it is an all-Russian history and does not focus on the local region. A naval student tells us that he sailors graduating are unlikely to stay in the area.

[volgavolgavolga]

1.       We met two amateur cultural organizations in Astrakhan. The first, Lotus, is a volunteer organization for young people who are grouped and sent to different places within the Astrakhan region and also to some other cities and towns, to look at important military historical sites. They go to see armouries, but also visit unknown graves to see if they can determine who is buried there. Lotus recruit at different universities, and the new recruits must go through ‘уроки мужества’ – lessons of bravery.

Our second brush with a voluntary organization was at the meeting of Russkii Marsh for the Day of Unified Russia. On our way into the meeting, the several policemen at the checkpoint searched us ineffectively, but once we talked to them in a friendly way, they told us that the people at the meeting are ‘сбpод’ – which translates into English as chavs (UK) or you might say ‘a bunch of louts/thugs’. When we reached the meeting at 4pm, we got a small sense of this. It was in a covered park building and there was a very sorry-looking disco fizzling out. But essentially, the meeting which had started at 3pm, was over. We got speaking to one of the organizers who treated us to tea and Ukha soup. He was an eloquent young guy (see portrait), late 20s, and clearly used to talking about these issues. He pointed out that while his group sympathises with the slogan ‘Russia for Russians’, has a broad view of what ‘Russian’ means – ‘it’s a complex of many different things. It is about a mind-set, it’s not an ethnic definition’. He explained that all the different long-standing diasporas of Astrakhan get on well, but that there is a growing issue with immigrants from central Asia and the Caucasus. ‘We have a million immigrants through Astrakhan from Central Asia every year now, it’s a stop-off point for them on their way elsewhere. […] Not all of them…but many don’t respect people, don’t respect women. […] We need to control the number that come to protect our society for future generations.’ He explained that the aim of his organization is to instate a body that would be responsible for immigration legislation and implementation, and would bring immigration issues into the realm of public discussion. The hundred visitors to the meeting had all signed a petition to this effect. In response to our point that perhaps the movement attracted a less-nuanced form of patriotism, the young man gave a glint of acknowledgement, but he said they turned people away who were there for base and thuggish reasons. He is involved in a cultural initiative to print t-shirts professing pride in Russian culture, to supplant the ‘I am Russian’ kind of football t-shirt with a more intelligent and rich understanding of Russian identity. He stressed again that ‘Russian’ is not an ethnic category – Pushkin wasn’t ethnically Russian…but he was one of the most important Russians. We are looking forward to seeing some of these T-Shirt designs.  

[volgavolgavolga]

1.       Design of memory is always a look to the future. Rituals which have traction among the general population – enshrining collective and individual memory - also look to the future. The Russian-wide tradition of putting padlocks on bridges is both about commemorating an event publically, but also looking forward to a future with another person. 

 The big concrete pyramid contains a stack of bricks where visitors leave their wishes. A shared record of a moment, a hope for a particular future.

 At Saray Batu, the now non-existent capital of the Golden Horde, we saw a reconstruction of a sacrifice site, where the local people tied ribbons. This tradition is also seen in the centre of Astrakhan.

 Meanwhile, these small love carvings were made inside the much-financed Kremlin, ignoring the official designed memory and the officially intended rituals.