Ya Know, Sometimes the Russians Scare Me a Little

I spent yesterday evening schmoozing with some wonderful civil society organizers working on cultural tolerance trainings in St. Petersburg and Kazan, Russia. One of the organizers is this salt-o-the-earth veteran, who is also Jewish, and who is a grandfather who brings up his grandkids within minutes of starting any conversation about whatever. We bonded and had a great time. There was this other person there, though, who specifically had wanted to meet some LGBT community organizers, and to whom I was specifically introduced as such. He's a polkovnik (a colonel, a high position) in the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), and apparently not clear on the concept of lesbian. It never fails. I get asked if I'm married, I say no, and then clueless straight man who knows I'm lesbionic for some reason gets very happy. Now since my partner Kris went and got cancer and killed herself I get to use the beautiful Russian word vdova (widow), and change the subject to that of the prevalence of cancer in the US. But really, this guy is a leader in the cultural tolerance movement? Scary!

Meanwhile, I got a posting on my Slavic Pagans mailing list that led me to the Propoganda section of the site of The Union of Slavic Tribes: The Slavic Native Faith -- this makes me a little scared of the new Slavic Pagan movement. It looks like a Soviet Russian cultural imperialist war-god-driven "let's trample the natives" (or trample the Catholics, Jews and Muslims) kind of project.

Check out this item from the Propoganda section:

Caption: We Are Russians! What an Ecstasy! The glyph associated with the Slavic god of skies and thunder, Perun, is photoshopped onto the side of the plane.

Bosnian Muslims and Croat Catholics, run for the hills! The Pagan Russians are in ecstasy! And they've got fighter planes to give you the money shot!

Shudder. It just hasn't been long enough since the latest Yugoslav war for that kind of propoganda. It will never be long enough...