--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
Once you are in the
> military,
> desertion and other acts of refusal carry penalties.
> Did refusing to
> participate in a pogrom?
>
I assumed originally that this question was rhetorical, but maybe I was wrong -- the answer is "no," except on the peer pressure level, I guess. The pogromshchiki were loosely self-organized lynch mobs. (When I get home I'm going to look up how many of them were legally held accountable for their actions and what sentences they actually received.)
As the interview with Stalin's former cartoonist is really cool and would probably be forever lost to the Anglosphere without my efforts, a have translated a very small part of it below. From the December 2005 issue of Rolling Stone Russia.
DEDoshkina (CD: this is an untranslatable pun. "Ded" means "granddad")
100 years ago a Black Hundred shot at him, and 89 years ago, in 1916, his first work was published -- a caricature of Representative off the State Duma Rodzyanko. A living legend, the artist-caricaturist Boris Efimovich Efimov told Boris Akimom how they danced the foxtror in revolutionary Kiev and showed him a scandalous caricature from the time of the Civil War: a group of Makhnoites on a cart with the words "You'll catch up with my dick!" (CD -- much worse in Russian than in English, basic sense is "fuck you" I think -- I'm not good at "mat".)
Boris Efimovich has just gotten dressed. He wakes up rather late, around noon. He says that he has allowed himself to sleep a little longer since his 100th birthday. Because of me he has cancelled his trip to the Mayakovskii Museum. People have gathered there yet again to ask him about his friendsip with the poet. "The love it when I tell the same story over and over about how I was present at the first public reading of the poem 'About That'. And it's better to tell you!" On the cabinet between the computer and television stands a bust of Mayakovskii, on the table an old gray dial telephone, and on the wall an ezpression of thanks from Putin and a photo os some people with daggers. I ask if he has seen anything interesting on TV lately. "My memory is going, and I can't brag about my health. I hear and see badly, poorly (CD-- don't know the next word). So, talk to me in this ear. Do you know that I just turned 106? I watch TV, but anything interesting... I don't remember... Where is your notepad?" I show him my dictatphone. "Ooh! Technology! Excellent! I remember when automobiles and airplanes appeared, but stopped following it later."
"I already know your first question. How have I lived so long? The answer is -- who the Hell knows?! Now I will listen to your second question."
Boris Efimovich, are you afraid of death?
"I was before. But not very much now. It's hard to be afraid of things when you're 106."
When the Revolution took place you were 17. Did you welcome the abdication of the tsar?
"During the tsar it was hard to be a Jew. It was dangerous and alarming. I experienced one pogrom. At that time we were living in Belostok. My father, wanting to see what was going on in the city, looked out the window and held me up. Some Black Hundred or other saw us and fired. My father barely managed to jump back, and a bullet hit the place where my head had been. And this is my memory of the first revolution. But I welcomed the 1917 revolution with joy, like everybody did. I liked Kerensky very much..."
(And then it goes on for about 5 pages.)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com