Russian Religion

I originally had the idea for this post a week ago but then my family came to visit a day earlier than I thought they were, thus throwing my life into a wonderfully hilarious and delicious disarray for five days.

I was inspired to write something about religion after our last Cultural Wednesday activity which was, in quite a different tack to previous arty endeavours, a visit to the only large tourist attraction here that is still a functioning church: Kazan Cathedral. I was immediately struck with the soberness of the place as I haphazardly covered my hair with a scarf before going in, something I have never before had to do. This feeling was reinforced by the impressively long queue, made up of young and old people alike, leading up to an icon on the altar.

For those of you who are unaware, the largest religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity, a religion to which 75% of the population belong and one that was illegal, along with all others, for the majority of the 20th century. In 1932 Kazan Cathedral was transformed into the pro-Marxist "Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism".

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an atheist and occasionally an extremely vocal one at that. Usually my problem with religion stems from the fact that I see it as something exclusive and divisive, a tool used by many to excuse discrimination. I often think that religion should be separated as much as possible from mainstream society and kept as something extremely private. However, the sombreness of my visit to this cathedral made me truly think about the weight of my words in a way I unfortunately don't a lot of the time.

Having grown up in multicultural London, if you told me your were Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim or Jewish I would think "Wow how interesting, I would love to find out more about that", but if you told me your were Christian my reaction would be "they must be a bit of a weirdo". Yet if I heard someone speak the way I often have about Christianity I would instinctively want to accuse them of racism.

I claim to be opposed to religion because it breeds narrow-mindedness but all that attitude does is in turn make me closed-minded to vast groups of people and prevents me from truly seeking to understand them.

Ultimately I want to live in a world where people are free to believe what they choose and a world without religion is not somewhere where this would be possible.

 Here endeth my rant.

That Law and How It Affects Modern Art

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get a free guided tour of the tenth European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Manifesta, from an English girl who is a former student of my school here in St Petersburg.

Being somewhat embarrassingly ignorant of the modern art world, having a friendly guide to follow around made all the difference and I was able to appreciate various pieces a lot more than I ever would have without her insightful commentary. However, what left the most lasting impression on me was not the art itself but the 16+ age rating for certain rooms.

Early on in the tour we saw the work of the transvestite artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe who was most famous for his impersonations of his namesake, Marilyn Monroe. In one room a video was playing of Monroe dancing around in lingerie and frolicking in a bathtub.

Despite the highly sexual content of his work and the fact that this artist is a social media icon for gay rights in Russia, the entrance to the rooms of his work was surprisingly free from the ominous 16+ warning.

Because of the controversial LGBT propaganda law passed last year in Russian parliament, any art considered to be a "Denial of Traditional Family Values" can be subject to the 16+ rating. And there we were, looking at walls covered in pictures of this fascinating man dressed up as Marilyn Monroe in various scenarios including a sequence of photos with a male lover character. To us this seemed a blatant denial of the said traditional values the new law was put in place to uphold yet there was no age warning to be seen.

Later we passed through two 16+ rooms of pieces that that were far less outrageous than Monroe's and weren't sexual in the slightest. The first dealt with the question of gender as a social construct and the second contained portraits of a nude man. Our guide suggested that the latter might carry the rating because they are the work of a female artist in which a male subject is made to seem very vulnerable, thus challenging the traditional value of the macho man. 

I was initially baffled as to why this collage of seemingly innocuous photos was 16+ and those of the male, Russian Monroe was not but then I got to thinking that it was probably not as arbitrary as it seemed. It is easy for homophobes to make a mockery of a larger than life transvestite because they can label him as a freak of nature that exists outside the realm of "Family Values" whereas a thought-provoking piece of art that hints at the theory that gender is a social construct is far less easy to ridicule and explain away.

Once again I am left thinking about how life in this country is infinitely more complicated than it seems in Western media and as always, I look forward to finding out more.

We Need To Talk About Cheese

I have officially lived in Russia for one whole month now! Who'd a thunk it. What's more, I am absolutely loving life here. My living situation is perfect, my friends are great, this city is incredible and my Russian is slowly but surely improving.

But there is just this one tiny thing: the cheese. All of my close friends in St Andrews know that some of my favourite evenings there have been spent eating cheese. They will thus know how difficult I will be finding life here without said lactose nectar of the gods. Obviously there is some cheese but only the plastic kind that I'm sure would have to be advertised as "cheese product" in certain places for legal reasons.

Luckily my classmates also share my pain and thus we have spent many lessons discussing the issue. This may lead you to think that my teachers are terrible at directing our attention but this is not the case. The cheese shortage is in fact a very topical issue as it is linked to the word on everyone's lips: sanctions.

Rumour has it Russian people are crossing the border into Finland to go buy quality cheese and fish. According to another teacher supermarkets are looking far more dismal than they did a few months ago and the quality of the fruit and veg has significantly decreased.

Winter is coming my friends...

No shortage of great pickles though, even in modern art galleries