Ukraine, Georgia fuming over planned Russian sex film

MOSCOW -- Alexei Mitrofanov, deputy leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, says he cannot understand the ruckus over his dirty movie.

What's so wrong, he asks, about writing a film script that imagines a steamy rendezvous between a buxom woman named Yulia and a darkly handsome gentleman named Mikhail?

What does it matter if the porn star selected for the role of Yulia wears the same braided hairstyle as Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko? Or that she climbs into a Russian attack helicopter, zooms over the mountains along Georgia's northern border and makes love to someone who resembles Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili?

"How can they react like this when they haven't even seen the film?" said Mr. Mitrofanov, a senior member of the State Duma, or lower parliament, better-known for his extreme nationalist politics than his prowess as an author of sex films.

Ukraine and Georgia have voiced displeasure with Mr. Mitrofanov's side project, which is scheduled to start filming next week.

Rumours are circulating about possible retaliation by Ukrainian filmmakers, who are reportedly trying to cast a male porn star who resembles Russian President Vladimir Putin for a gay film.

It's the latest, and most bizarre, sign of tensions between Russia and the two former Soviet republics, which have drifted away from Moscow's influence after recent revolutions in both countries. Ukraine squabbled with Russia over energy prices, while Georgia demanded the closing of Russian military bases on its soil.

Despite the recent history, Mr. Mitrofanov seems hopeful that his 26-minute sex film, titled Yulia, will take foreign relations to new heights -- literally and figuratively.

"Political erotics are a new genre that I have discovered," he said. "The film is about politics. It makes a political statement, they don't just [have sex]."

The politician was vague about the film's message, but he dismissed any suggestion that he was trying to demean Mr. Saakashvili, 37, who will be played by an unnamed Armenian actor, or Ms. Tymoshenko, 44, whose role has been taken by a well-known porn actress, Elena Berkova.

Russian audiences are already intimately familiar with Ms. Berkova, who gained celebrity on the popular Dom-2 reality television show. She initially described herself as the 20-year-old director of a marriage agency, but was kicked off the show after revelations about her career as an adult-film star.

Ms. Berkova has reinvented herself as a musician, with a recording scheduled for release in the fall. Her producer, Alexander Valov, acknowledges that she signed on to Mr. Mitrofanov's project to generate publicity for the album.

It's still unclear whether Ms. Berkova intends to reprise her hard-core performances in the film; the politician has pushed for more graphic scenes, while Ms. Berkova's producer hopes for fewer. The film isn't intended for theatres in any case, with distribution directly to DVD, video, the Internet and possibly television.

A Black Shark helicopter will be rented for the filming, Mr. Valov said. The modern Russian attack helicopter is armoured against 12.7-millimetre bullets, which could be useful if Mr. Valov follows through on his intention to film the climactic love scene in the air above the Pankisi Gorge, an area still racked by battles between Chechen fighters and Russian security forces.

"You could be shot down by a rocket any time you cross that border, and this increases the thrill during the moment of sex," Mr. Valov said.

Temuri Grigalashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian President, wasn't particularly thrilled by the idea. "This is a cheap public-relations trick," he said.

"One should not do such things," said Nikolai Novosad, the first secretary of the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow. "A state politician cannot talk about another one in such a way."

"Is the film The Interpreter propaganda or big cinema?" he said. "Is the film JFK propaganda or big cinema? Why is it that in America these films are considered big cinema but films like this in Russia are considered propaganda? This is big cinema and I am a great master."

Lukaz, you discredit the opposition in the Ukraine as being from the Kremlin, and so according to you there is no opposition.

As I have stated many times on Free Republic those who have never been to Russia have a far different view than those who have been there. I am going to post a link to an article, which hopefully will open your eyes.

An American Liberal in Moscow: Impressions from the ground in contemporary Russia
By Joshua Keating
Intern, Center for Defense Information-Moscow

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/9210-18.cfm

For Americans and Europeans with an interest in Russia, it can often seem a confusing and daunting place, even those with a bit of knowledge of the culture and language.It's a country where rapid economic development exists side by side with widespread poverty and a liberated cosmopolitan even hedonistic culture coexists with a renewed interest in orthodox religion, traditional lifestyles and ethnic nationalism.

But perhaps the greatest mystery of all is the Russian political system and its enigmatic leader Vladimir Putin. Some western commentators have argued convincingly that Russia is now ruled by a "power-hungry mafia" of former KGB and military officers, who have grabbed "the nation by the throat." and others just as convincingly that it is just on the slow but steady path to becoming "a normal middle-income capitalist economy."

American President George Bush said that he had looked into Putin's eyes and “got a sense of his soul” when they met, but for those of us without Mr. Bush's level of access (or telepathic abilities) the best way to find out about what's going on in Russia today is to go there, though they may find their visit raises more questions than it answers.

Prior to my arrival in Moscow, like most foreign visitors I expect, most of my knowledge of Russia was based on history and literature, a land of czars, cossacks and commissars. Of the contemporary society I would be visiting, the impressions formed by western media accounts in the wake of Beslan and Yukos were no less exotic or disturbing.

The problem is that contemporary western press coverage of Russia is so centered around the actions and statements of President Putin that one can easily forget that for the vast majority of Russians, the daily machinations in the Kremlin and the carnage in Chechnya are simply images on the television screen rather than facts of daily life.

Foreigners who come to Moscow expecting to encounter an Orwellian police state or an anarchic mafia-dominated wilderness are going to be disappointed. Insofar as any city of 10 million people can be described as normal, Moscow is a fairly normal large city.

By day, muscovites pack the city’s excellent public transit system, taking them to and from work, by night the young people of the city turn the public parks into open-air lounges, relaxing with friends over beer and cigarettes while the city’s older residents do basically the same thing in front of their apartment complexes. Indeed the complete lack of free-standing private homes in Moscow, gives the place more of a communitarian feel than many other large cities.

Judging from the preponderance of news stands, booksellers, cinemas and pirate CD kiosks one can find here, Russians seem to be voracious media consumers as well. Moscow’s dozens of concert halls, theaters and rock clubs also regularly sell out. Above all, Moscow is commercial. In central Moscow you’d be hard pressed to find a street corner, public square or underpass where something is not being bought or sold.

This is not to say that Moscow is idyllic. It is a big noisy, polluted sprawling hulk of a city whose utilitarian architecture is a constant reminder of the eras of Stalin, Krushchev and Brezhnev. Despite the government's efforts, alcoholism remains a serious social problem in Russia today and one that is very much in evidence on the city's streets at night. Contemporary Russia has also somehow found a way to combine the most craven of capitalist excess with the most overbearing of government bureaucracies. (Foreign visitors to Moscow get to experience the latter firsthand through Russia’s confusing and expensive visa registration process.)

True, life in Moscow has it’s own unique frustrations and obstacles, but from my limited vantage point these don’t seem that much greater than those in any major city. Reading the paper however, presents a very different picture.

During my visit the government has launched a major criminal investigation of former Prime Minister and Putin critic Mikhael Kasyanov shortly after he announced his intention to return to politics. It has ordered the National Bolshevik Party to disband and jailed 39 of its members for seizing a government office in protest. Chess champion turned liberal activist Gary Kasparov was thwarted by local officials at every opportunity during a campaign tour of the Northern Caucasus. Russia has stepped up it’s military assistance to Iran and United Russia, the party which supports the president in the state Duma has announced it’s intention to aid the Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich, who was forced to concede his country’s disputed election after last December’s Orange Revolution.

As for Russia's liberal opposition, they seem in many ways to have given up on major political change altogether. The fate of men like Mikhael Khodorkovsky and Kasyanov sets a disturbing precedent for members of the Russian political elite who would challenge the Kremlin's power. In any case, both are too tainted by the corruption of the Yeltsin era to be of much use as opposition leaders.
,br> Russia's small liberal parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces have for all intensive purposes given up on unseating Putin and focus instead on trying to woo or coerce him into their camp. Yabloko leader Grigoriy Yavlinsky said in an interview with the newpaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, that because of the Kremlin's vice-grip on power "it is impossible to create a real "classical" opposition in Russia today."

Another view holds that it is not Putin that is the problem, the Russian people are simply distrustful of liberal democracy and drawn towards strong authoritarian government. As Khodorkovsky himself put it in his open later titled “The Crisis of Russia’s Liberalism”, "Putin is probably neither a liberal nor a democrat, but he is still more liberal and democratic than 70 per cent of our country's population."

It may be a bit more complex than that. I think it's an unfair stereotype that Russians simply crave strongmen in their government, it's far more likely that government is simply something they'd rather not have to think about. In other words, it's not democracy that Russians distrust, but politics itself.

I came to Russia to intern for the Center for Defense Information, a liberal-leaning policy research organization based in the U.S. Before coming here I wondered how Russians I met would react to when I told them what I was doing here. I wondered if I would be viewed with suspicion as a foreigner coming to Russia to do policy research or with positive interest as a western liberal in a post-socialist society.

What I found was that when I explained where I was working, most Russians I met simply shrugged and asked me what I thought of the city or the food or the music or the women or anything but the politics. It may be that after a decades of political upheaval, Russians are simply tired of politics and unwilling to let it define them. It is also possible that the idea of governmental accoutability is simply not something Russians have come to expect from government. In any case, privacy and personal freedom seem to trump transparency and accountability when it come to Russian society’s demands on its government.

If Russia’s liberal opposition is to build a strong opposition movement, like those which have emerged in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, it will have to demonstrate to the Russian people that it is worth their time and energy to support that opposition. Kasparov, a genuine political outsider without the baggage of an oligarch or ex-bureaucrat, seems like an ideal candidate on paper. However, what he is asking the Russian people to do is undo what is essentially an unwritten pact between Russian society and it’s government. By the rules of the pact Russia's leaders are allowed to govern as they see fit without interference from civil society, so long as the government does not impose excessive restrictions on that society.

Breaking such a pact would likely lead to civil unrest at best and at worst, the undoing of many of the personal freedoms that Russians have come to take for granted over the last fifteen years. Given this, it is not surprising that the former Grand Master returned from the caucasus humbled and covered in egg-yolk.

As a visitor in a foreign country, one has the ability in some ways to see a place both from the inside and the outside. This is particularly useful for Russia which from the outside appears to be an aggressive dictatorship and from the inside appears to be a remarkably free and easy-going place perfectly content to continue to develop and grow at it’s own pace. So long as Putin and his successors do not create laws which actively interfere with the movements and expressions of ordinary Russians they will probably be allowed to continued to consolidate power as much as they like. It seems that Russia has achieved the difficult balancing act of having a liberal society with an authoritarian government.

If the west is to interact with this new Russia, we must abandon the old Soviet and Yeltsin-era templates and accept it for the living contradiction that it is. How long this balancing act can maintain itself under new leadership in the Kemlin is another question entirely.

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