PHOTOS BY DMITRY LEVASHOV
Dzerzhinsk is 400 kilometres east of Moscow. The average life expectancy in the city is in the forties. Environmentalists aren’t sure whether this is more to do with huge, poorly regulated industrial plants dumping waste in the ground, water and air, or because the town was the former epicentre of the Soviet chemical weapons industry. This is the place where they made all the fun stuff like mustard gas, sarin, the blister agent lewisite, and the old favourite cyanide. We had a chat with Dmitry Levashov, who lives there and is pretty stoical about these things.
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Posted on November 4th, 2009 | 7 Comments
Tagged: chemical weapons, Dzerzinsk, enviromnent, lewisite, mustard gas, pollution, Russia, sarin
Next time you’re running down your mental list of Russian stereotypes, feel free to add “bear torturers” to the mix. Case in point: one of Russia’s many showbiz slave-bears finally snapped, killing a circus administrator and mauling a trainer before being shot to death. Why? Because it was fed up with having to fucking figure skate. Read more »
Posted on October 30th, 2009 | 8 Comments
Tagged: Bear, dancing, Russia
The history of vodka is deeply entangled in European geopolitics, Cold War-era spycraft, and a trademark dispute so old it predates the printing press. In the late 1970s, Poland made a claim before the International Trade Court that since vodka was first brewed within its borders, only Polish distilleries had the right to call their product “vodka.” Everyone else had to use the slightly-less-marketable term “bread wine.” Read more »
Posted on September 2nd, 2009 | 3 Comments
Tagged: Poland, Russia, vodka, wodka wars
I’d heard stories of life on Japan’s north island of Hokkaido, a place that stretches the length of Britain and makes up 25 per cent of Japan’s land mass despite holding only 5 per cent of its population. With a history of colonisation, ethnic repression, threats from Russia, and as the bearer of Japan’s own Meiji-era gulags, it seemed to me to be Japan’s final frontier. I booked a flight to Hakodate, the port at Hokkaido’s southern tip, rented a car and set off on the long road north. Along the way I’d encounter power-tool wielding convicts, erotic wood-carving ethnic Ainu potheads, strung-out bikers and an apocalyptic scattering of abandoned buildings. Oh, and I also nearly got kidnapped by Russian sailors. Read more »
Posted on August 11th, 2009 | 5 Comments
Tagged: dope, Hokkaido, japan, Nazis, Russia, ]dildos
After spending the 80s in the USA, German photographer Miron Zownir moved to Russia in 1995 and decided to spend a good while there. His original plan was to document the Russian nightlife, but that proved sort of expensive so he switched to hanging out in the train stations. There he was drawn into a whole strange universe of bums, lunatic baby whores, and crazy people who had been kicked out of mental asylums (or had never been admitted in the first place). Now he’s back in Berlin, though he’s never quite lost his taste for sex clubs, sketchy burly guys, or intoxicated actors. He made a controversial documentary about Bruno S. two years ago, and he’s got a book coming out next month. Here are a few photos from it.
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Posted on August 10th, 2009 | 1 Comment
Tagged: Bruno S, Miron Zownir, Russia
Russia is so infinitely big that there is infinite possibility within its endless tundra. Which means that, theoretically, anything you can imagine happening is happening there now. You want a baby that looks like a lorry combing its hair? It’ll be there. You want a shop that sells packets of chocolate wrinkles advertised by flaming midget harlequin pheasants? Just go east. You want a community which celebrates a policeman who tortures his daughters with darts, knives, broken glass and swords? Yup, they got it, and we actually found that one. Click beneath. Read more »
Posted on June 30th, 2009 | 3 Comments
Tagged: daughter, performance, police, Russia, torture
At some unknown point in the Nineties, a well-meaning but stupid entrepreneur decided to set up shop in Niigata. This northern Japanese port city is so listless and dull it’d have you confusing internment in North Korea with Young Jeezy’s coke and sodomy fortress. Acknowledging its sea trade routes with those along the Siberian shoreline, this industrious fellow decided the Japanese needed a Russian peasant-themed tourist spot. It was abandoned to the vandals soon after.
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Posted on June 11th, 2009 | 28 Comments
Tagged: japan, Niigata, Russia
