Vladimir Putin and the Philosopher Stone (my title)

Radio 'Echo of Moscow' ^ | Saturday, January 28th, 2006 | Yuliya Latynina

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These are some highlights from radio talk program 'Access Code' on radio station Echo of Moscow, regarding a recent spy scandal. Arkady Mamontov, a Russia version of Michael Moore (Mikhail Boloto?), recently made a documentary called 'Spies', which Echo of Moscow radio host Yuliya Latynina reviews and comments on, but first she mentions some of Mamontov's more notorious documentaties.

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I have a question that's even more global: why is this whole story, which should in theory be news, being given to us instead in the form of a movie? Or rather, in the form of a documentary, since you really cannot call it artistic. Why did Arkady Mamontov choose to present this? He has been making special reports for a long time, and I must add that it was not just his reporting from Chechnya that first caught my eye, but his story about the illegal adoption of Russian children overseas.

Mr. Mamontov hinted that children were adopted for their organs. He had no direct proof, but when he took a trip to Italy to look for a family, from which the Italian government had taken away the children because of brutal treatment, he said that no trace of the other children could be found. I confess that his reporting shocked me, because according to statistics, if I remember correctly, one out of every 10 children raised in orphanages commits suicide, while another seven become alcoholics.

Arkady Mamontov has done everything possible to ensure that those who remain in orphanages would increase, and those who can leave for the West with foster parents would decrease. This it what he calls his love for the Russian people, and I immediately I had this picture of Arkady Mamontov going to visit this 20-year-old fellow, Sychev, who is a moron because he grew up in an orphanage and was deprived of normal human contact, and there he was, excuse me, raped for seven years by a pedophile night watchman. Then he ended up in prison, addicted to narcotics and dying of tuberculosis, and Mr. Mamontov comes to visit this fellow there and he joyfully says: "This is all thanks to me, you didn't leave your native land, right now you could be studying at the University of Bologna, oh the horror."

This report, of course, influenced Russian legislation to tighten up adoptions. Remember, for example, that foreigners often adopt sick Russian children, because Russian couples almost never do this. At the time I expected his reporting to have a great influence the fates of hundreds and, possibly, thousands of orphans, and it did.

Remember the case of the killer-doctors? This was the famous criminal case of physicians from City Hospital #20. They were preparing to remove the organs from a bum when cops burst into the operating room and accused them of murder. They bum was not saved, since he was already a state of clinical death, and the doctors were later acquitted. Mamontov's report constructed an entire picture of a terrible trade in bootleg organs, based, in essence, on overheard conversations of the accused.

Well, understandably, it was not the journalist himself who heard these. There was a certain problem, however, when I watched this report, because even the cut they played did not prove that there was an organ trade. Therefore, instead of showing us proof, he showed an additional interview. I remember that the interview was of a woman whose husband went out for a walk and was found later with a broken skull. He was brought to the hospital, pronounced clinically dead, and cut up into pieces. The widow, of course, had no proof that the organs were taken from a man with a living brain, but only her feelings about that which she spoke.

The case of the transplant-doctors was one of the dirtiest attempts to smear the market for transplants, and domestic organ transplants were set back many years. In the opinion of doctors with whom I have spoken, it led to the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of patients who did not survive until it was their turn for a transplant.

When I watched this report, it seemed to be that are boundaries that even a journalist should not be able to cross. It is possible for journalism to serve as a toilet flush tank, to hammer Kasyanov and Khodorkovsky. After all, these people chose their own fates and I do not especially feel any pity that Mikhail Mikhaylovich Kasyanov lost his dachas. But, on the whole, for Mamontov to take upon himself the moral responsibility for the future suicide of orphans, or the death of a girl with kidney problems, well, it requires a rather different degree of self-consciousness than I have.

And in this sense, let us look at Mamontov's reporting on the 'Philosopher's Stone'. This, thank God, is a step backwards: no one will die. There are no mass deaths, and no huge number of ruined lives. This is good, and it is possible to simply be glad. But, concerning the reporting itself, in view of the previous subjects that I described, the matters that Mamontov does reports on are sufficiently clear. He only chooses those that have no proof. When proofs exist, when there are documents, Khinshteyn does them. When there are none - it is a job for Mamontov. If there is no foreigner accused of cutting a Russian child up for parts, then Mamontov will create one for a special report. The doctors from City Hospital #20 were acquitted. Khinshteyn, probably, would not have touched this, but when in the absence of facts it is better to replace facts with a certain artistic generalization, then Mamontov is matchless.

I was struck that this subject, which concerns the developing relations between Russia and the West and the developing relations between Russia and non-governmental organizations, was not reported through the news, not through the arrest of English spies, but reported by means of a film. The fact is, news and film are two different meta-languages, two different symbolic systems.

The news is the arrest of a foreign diplomat with this miracle stone in his hands. Instead, the film shows an unclear silhouette, which in the following scene is presented as a spy. The silhouette picks up the stone, departs, and after this the stone, which the obscure silhouette took has been located, and a representative of the security services is turning it over in his hands. The device is explained. In this case it happens to be a second stone, found as a result of some operational work. We do not know from where they pulled this second stone, but we know that the FSB, which rarely can find its own head with its own hands, searched all of Moscow for this miracle stone and found it. This gives the impression that they simply filmed an obscure silhouette, which was taking away this miracle stone, instead of catching the spy red-handed. Later, the obscure silhouette turns into an officer of the FSB, with the miracle stone, and this is produced as proof of espionage.

It is possible to talk for quite a while about the structural nonconformities of this reporting. For example, it is obvious that real news requires the name of the spy, because there cannot be an espionage scandal where an unknown person transfers unknown information to an obscure silhouette. So this spy should be named. In the film they said that there was one spy, now Nikolai Kovalev says that there are two spies, but I do not doubt the ability of the FSB to take any person and force him to acknowledge that he spied for British intelligence.

In this case, however, we have a film, in which more or less states: why to you to know who was arrested? They showed you someone transferring something to someone. The third advantage, and a very important one, of film over the news is that it in the case of the news it is necessary to say at least what was transferred, for example, information about rockets. In the film, however, they say nothing about what was transferred, but they indicate that, here, this spy also worked for non-governmental organizations.

This is a very crucial point, because here artistic method makes it possible to solve a large problem, since if this report was on the news, then it would be necessary to say precisely what they transferred. If they transferred technical information, then what does this have to do with non-governmental organizations? If they transferred information, for example, about losses in Chechnya, then why the stone? Non-governmental organizations are remarkable for the fact that even when they have, from the point of view of the local authorities, explosive information against an authoritarian state, revealing the torture and murder of its citizens, then they do not hold this information in secret. They do not toss it into a stone. They transmit it into the Internet. I cannot but note the touching appearance of main character, namely the miracle stone, because the wireless transmission of information probably would be a miracle technology for Papuans in the Melanesian islands in the 19th century, or for colleagues of the FSB in 21st.

It is well known, however, to every user of a cell phone that costs more than 30 dollars. Wireless transfer of technology, the function of 'Blue Tooth', is simply built into these cell phones. It permits two agents to simple meet in some snack bar and exchange information without any risk of being caught. I repeat: the stone is not necessary for the transmission of information with the aid of wireless technologies.

On the contrary, it is an additional risk, but here the stone is necessary for the film, because this is the main link in a chain of proofs. There was a well-known criminal case at the end of the 1970s, in which a man was charged with murder because he robbed someone of his coat and allowed him to freeze to death. As proof of intent they presented information from the hydro-meteorological center that on that day in Moscow it was minus 30.

Here the stone is also presented as proof. In making the film, you toss a stone into a square near an embassy, then when an English diplomat walks within a meter of it you have an obscure silhouette pull out this stone and demonstrate that this stone is the same as the second, found as a result of a thorough inspection of all of Moscow.

Agree with one of these two suppositions: either our special services demonstrated maximal non-professionalism in not detaining the English diplomat red-handed and taking the stone from his hands, or all of this is just a movie set, and in either case the FSB looks a little stupid. The surprising thing about this is how it contrasts to other reports done by Arkady Mamontov. These did not become such large objects of public consideration. Indeed, reviewers of his film did not just prove to be officers of the Russian FSB, but President Putin himself.

Even 'Terminator' did not receive this many page-one reviews. Meanwhile, I think that the film 'Terminator' should be used by some American senator in his demand to know how a cyborg from 'Cyberdyne Systems', clearly hostile to humanity, could occupy the post of governor of California?

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I'll get to the listener's comments as soon as I figure out what the Russian equivalent of 'mega-dittos' is ;-)

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Here's one:

LISTENER: Good evening, Yuliya. Georgiy. It seems to me on the one hand that all this is a follow up to the spy cases - Sutyagin, Danilov, Kaibyshev, but on the other hand it seems like a cheap remake. Remember the cartoon 'Spy Passions'? That was of better quality than this idiotic film and this whole idiotic situation, in which there isn't a word of truth.

[GSlob]

"...FSB, which rarely can find its own head with its own hands..."
Idiomatic translations are best done idiomatically. Verbatim equivalents or explanations, if needed, could be provided in [square parentheses]. First of all, it would not be a "head", and secondary, not "its own" but "both". For added emphasis one could add "in a broad daylight" or "with a mirror". And as for "mega-dittos" try "massive echo".

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;-) thanks! How about 'toporno'. Rough, crude? But in Russian it makes you think of a guy making a table with an axe. And how about 'Dyropupinsk', sort of 'Hole-in-the-wall, Nebraska'?

LISTENER: I'm Irina from St. Peterburg. First, I'd like to say what Alekseyeva said on the air, that there wasn't any 120 thousand dollar pay check.

YU. LATYNINA: Well, you know, if it was possible to take it, it could...

LISTENER: Can I add and second thing? I used to be an electrical engineer, I had a lot of business with foreign apparatuses. Listen, in the big picture the showed the internal stuffing.

YU. LATYNINA: What, it was made in a factory in Dyropupinsk (Belly-Button-ville)?

LISTENER: One minute. There were screws there that haven't been used for 30 years. There they only use Phillip's head screws, but here were slit-type for our usual single-blade screwdrivers.

YU. LATYNINA: So these screws there were foreign or ours?

LISTENER: Yes, it's clear that our own people made it, rough, as if with an axe.

YU. LATYNINA: No, wait a minute, the screws were ours, but aren't used anywhere else for already 30 years?

LISTENER: They haven't used these kind for 30 years in the West.

YU. LATYNINA: But we still use them.

LISTENER: Those were ours installed.

YU. LATYNINA: Thank you. What other details would you like to comment on as an engineer?

LISTENER: Well, but what details? They still say that Putin said that it's forbidden to work for the money of foreign intelligence. But it isn't written on Mark Dow's forehead that he's a spy, right? His official title is second secretary. And he signs all pay checks. That's something to note. Thanks.

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Some more info about the NGO-spy rock scandal.

[GSlob]

Suggested translations are perfect. "Toporno" is crude. [etymology = as if made with an ax only, without using any other tools to smoothen the surfaces]. As for Dyropupinsk - neologism. Older forms with the same meaning would be "u cherta na kulichkakh" or "kuda Makar telyat ne gonyal": in the middle of nowhere, and far away.

[JasonC]

So not interested...

Please remove me from this and all future ping lists. Unsolicited pings are spam. Thank you.

[GSlob]

as for mega-dittos - how about "popugai"[=parrots].
"...permit me to explain, Sir,- said father Kin lively. The essence of the matter is not in this. It is in the main foundations of the new state [order]. They are very simple, and there are only three of them: blind faith in the infallibility of the laws, unquestioning obedience to the same and ever-vigilant watching by every man over all!"
[Strugatsky brothers]

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I have some of the Strugatskys, they and Stanislav Lem have the most creative SF I've ever read.

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Popagai. I remember some kind of a joke, sort of Monty Python/Dumb and Dumber.

A guy holds out a parrot to his friend and says: Smotri, popagai!

His friend takes it, tears the head off and says: Chem bol'she popugat'?"

[b2stealth]

Moscow has 100 open Wi-Fi spots to send 1024 bit encrypted messages, why use a rock?

If they really used Blue Tooth why not link to embassy or embassy car, or other agent PocketPC?

Rock, only makes sense if it is fake, as KGB usually uses rocks or bricks themself for the last 100 years..

This story about "rock" spies is completely false..

[GSlob]

Well, it is their Mary Mapes moment, in a sense.

[propertius]

Could you add me to your ping list please?