Jun 15
AleksUncategorized
Walking through an underpass near a giant city market, I spotted a man who took me back to the years of wild capitalism of the early 1990s.
Dressed in a sports track suit, the man, probably in his late 40s, carried around a large black plastic bag stretching almost to the ground. His shaved head reflected the sun that shone upon it accentuating his rather never-smiling Russian face, making him look in every way intimidating.
Add a man-purse for his cell phone to the whole ensemble and you’ve got yourself a typical small businessman of the early 90s, who has a notoriously criminal and aggressive reputation.
Anthropologists, or simple folk like myself, call them in Russian gopniki, or urlas, in Latvian.
And today, they’re a dying breed.
The name urla itself has come from the Russian word orly. In the beginning of 90s, criminals used to call themselves orly or eagles, which lead to the creation of the word “urla”.
The term is mainly used by Latvian middle class teenagers, and the meaning is similar to the British slang word Ned.
Gopniki, the history tells us, first appeared in Petrograd, following the Bolshevik coup in 1917. They were peasants and other riff-raff who came to the Russian capital in search of employment, only to become pick-pocketers. They flooded into some city areas transforming them into gangsta’s paradise. Since then, the word evolved, the meaning changed.
Today, “gopnik” refers to any Russian with a clean shaved head, superfluous leather jacket, unfortunate leather shoes. It could also refer to the guy squatting in courtyard in his track suit and slippers, pounding a bottle of cheap beer and spitting seeds, occasionally snapping at his wife to keep her mouth shut.
In the early 1990s, during the era of the Wild Wild East, they were ethnic Russians in the Baltics and other former Soviet republics, who dealt with business like a good father-mafiosi.
Back then, urlas roamed city markets and center in search of their prey, be it extort money from their innocent victims, or simply to beat them up. They carried around large car mobile phones, marking them as better than you. Their outfit combination had as much sense as the Bonaparti.lv’s. Sports track pants and leather jacket, sneakers, or sometimes shoes. I’ve always found them to be really funny, but not a ha-ha funny, but more like, rolled down the window with your foot on the accelerator as you run the red light funny.
In Riga, there are still a few places where you can spot gopniks in their natural habitat: at a rundown, cheap coffee shop, where bad techno music blasts, somewhere on town’s outskirts.
A guide into this post-Soviet subculture suggests a few places a traditional tourist would be smart to avoid.
“Have you ever secretly wanted to visit a bar of the lowest class in a neighborhood in Riga,” asks the guide. “Where shaved young people with sports track suits hang out, with the Russian language heard around them, where beer is at least 20 percent cheaper, not to mention the vine or other alcoholic drinks…
Less than a dozen places in Riga can be called a gangsta’s paradise. The resurrection of gopniki at the demise of the Soviet Union proved to be the beginning of the end for this wonderful subculture.
The dumb, dangerous urlas gave way to a sophisticated Western businessman. The dangerous coffee shop hangouts gave way to British pubs, restaurants. Capitalism, as it turned out, evolves, grows, expands, matures. And urlas are thankfully being left behind.
Jun 14
AleksUncategorized
I’ve often wonder why Russia’s approach to history is so skewed. The people gather around to celebrate the victory over fascism every May 9, but they forget their own citizens who unjustly had been killed at the time of peace. They pronounce their victory in Europe back in 1945, but forget that one half of the continent remained under a strong Soviet control for the next 50 years.
Sixty-six years ago today, on June 14, 1941, the Soviet troops deported 11,598 Latvians, 1,789 Jews, 761 Russians, 42 Germans and 238 others. Many events throughout the country are being held to remember those people who found special Soviet forces standing on their doorway in the wee hours of the morning. They were given one hour to pack and then they packed to Siberia or killed.
We have several other days marking the atrocities of the Soviet troops in Latvia in the 1940s. My family didn’t suffer through the Soviet period. We were not large land-owners, bourgeoisie, or anti-Soviet elements. My family were farmers in Eastern Latvia, a closed sect of the Russian Old Believers who lived there for at least two or three centuries. So, personally, I cannot feel the pain. But I can certainly understand — and remember.
In Russia, however, there’s not a single day when the people and the state officially remember the crimes of Joseph Stalin. For some, perhaps, saying bad things about the Great Leader is a taboo. I recall reading an account of one dissident who marked March 5 — the day when Stalin died — with vodka to remember those whom Stalin killed.
A country that does not remember its people who died from the hands of its own government cannot mature in a democratic society. A country that does not respect its dead cannot move into the future.
Jun 01
AleksUncategorized
I had some problems with comments feature. Because this site has been bombarded with unwanted messages in recent days, I’ve now installed CAPTCHA. Unfortunately, there was a slight problem with the install, so some comments may not have been recorded.
Now everything’s working fine.
Jun 01
AleksUncategorized
RIGA — I flew to Riga last week for the May 9 Victory Day celebration, hoping to get an adrenaline fix from the promise of a riot. I’ve been to the Baltics many times, and for years now I’ve been expecting the Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia to burn shit down. By any historical-moral standard we Westerners have set, the Russians in those countries have every right to riot. It took a long time, but finally, it happened.
Here I should admit that I come to this story with my own prejudices: I think the Baltic people are fucking Neanderthals for the way they turned on their Russian minority, once it was clear that the Russians were defenseless and could be smacked around with impunity. Given the choice between walking upright like the Westerners they claim to be, or behaving like knuckle-dragging monkeys, the Estonians and Latvians chose old-style European village fascism. And for that, I believe they should be booted out of NATO and the keys to their borders handed back to Russia to do with as they please.
For the past decade or so, I’ve been waiting for the Baltics to get a little come-uppance. Partly out of affinity with the Russians, and partly because of the Baltic people’s vile record in WW II towards Jews and Slavs, a record shameful even by Europe-of-the-40s standards.
Still, when the Tallin riots finally happened, I didn’t trust them. I got sucked into the conspiratorial mindset that comes from being in Russia too long: Who was behind it? Who benefited? Was it manufactured by the Kremlin? The surface can never be trusted…
A riot was promised on May 9 at Riga’s Monument to the Soviet Liberators, the local equivalent to Tallin’s bronze statue memorial. Latvian nationalists were going to try to march on it simply to provoke the Russian minority. A group of Russian-speakers camped out at the memorial the night before vowing to “protect” it, a crowd whose numbers swelled from dozens to several hundreds by 10 a.m.
This is a must-read.
RSS
Recent Comments