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Letter from Moscow: Conceiving a National Leader



In an ideal world elections and sex are matters of choice. Not so in Russia, where the recent presidential election resembled a coronation with a subsequent plebiscite rather than a democratic poll. As expected, Putin's anointed heir, Dmitry Medvedev, won a landslide victory – a story I am sure you've heard plenty of times in recent weeks.

While there is no evidence of a lack of sex across the country’s 11 time zones (the population decline is mostly attributed to a high mortality rate), a group of Moscow artists believed that it was precisely sex that was missing from the otherwise unrestricted support Medvedev enjoyed among Kremlin-loyal underlings during his campaign.

State media had turned him into an omnipresence. Factory directors, regional governors and civil servants bowed their heads low in submission when the name Medvedev was mentioned. And the trembling voices of state-employed zealots, snarling at bystanders to let President Medvedev through, 'quick!', could be heard from the off in news reels showing Russia's future leader criss-crossing the country weeks before the poll.

But there was no sex!

Members of the Voina collective of performers set out to change that and make copulation a gesture of support for the ‘bear cub’.
Medvedev’s surname resembles the Russian word for bear and while the public persona of the Putin protégé was still in the making, Voina member Oleg Vorotnikov and his artist friends decided to contribute their live-giving energy to the evolution of ‘little Medvedev into a grown-up bear’.

‘He needs our help while he is still little, without experience and uncharismatic,’ he said before the artists headed for a secret location where their gesture of collective support was to be shown to a group of selected journalists.

Initially the Zoological Museum was chosen as an appropriate location to display the homo politicus in his and her naked state. But police had unmasked Voina’s plan and posted three cars with plain clothes officers near the entrance, waiting to detain the activists before their ‘smoking guns’ could do any harm. The suspicion that someone had betrayed the group was confirmed when two activists, feigning regular visitors, overheard security guards inside the museum warning each other of ‘the arrival of naked avangardisty’.

In keeping with the instructive nature of their endeavour, the activists chose the Biological Museum as an alternative and rushed across the city to make it there before closing hours, while the male part of the group was trying to cope with the effect of Viagra, consumed a little earlier.

Passing displays explaining Mendel’s genetic laws, exhibits of the ‘flora of our native ravines’ and documents on the history of Winnie Pooh, six couples closed the curtains in the ‘Metabolism and Digestion Room’, undressed and set to work in front of a banner reading ‘Fuck for the Successor-Bear Cub’.



In a neighbouring room a school class explored the fantastic world of birdsong and museum staff sat in their corners making sure no one touched the exhibits; all unaware that their wildest dream or nightmare was unfolding next door.

The activists unanimously favoured the kitty style; whether because its Latin name coitus more ferarum (sex by the way of beasts) appeared befitting in the surrounding of stuffed animals, or because of the hardness of the floor, was unclear.

Echoing Putin’s calls on Russia’s people to support his chosen successor charged with the task to continue his project of re-building a strong Russia, Oleg asked: ‘How can a common citizen in the current situation support the future national leader?’

‘Fuck to get pregnant,’ he answered ‘and share your sexual energy with your partner for the benefit of a growing civil society of future mothers and fathers.’

If Putin would have liked the civil society bit, is questionable. Russia’s conservative society, however, was clear in condemning Voina’s civil initiative as a heinous act of immorality, akin to a desecration of the next president.

Like the lake within the heart of a virgin, the ‘mass copulation in the Biological Museum’, as it became known in the press, was perceived by commentators as the dark chamber of terror threatening the moral integrity of society at large. The thought of the devil’s groaning disciples, their sweaty bodies in viscous embrace, descending on a public institution with an educational calling, made not only older Russians shudder.

Within 24 hours the blog, where pictures and a video of the event were published, shot up to number one in the Russian internet.

Blending out the political overtones of the action, most users focused in their comments on the pornographic aspect of the pictures, calling the participants ‘freaks’, ‘shiteaters’ or ‘animals’. One user said everyone involved should be sent to a lunatic asylum – a cynical remark in Russia, where in Soviet times dissidents were often declared insane and put in psychiatric hospitals for torture. Another user suggested they should simply be shot.

A member of staff of the museum posted a comment that indulged in gory scenarios of how the young people loose their genitals. The attending journalists were to loose hands and toungs.

The pregnant woman in the picture “will have a preterm delivery, desirably with bleeding. […] A forced medical investigation will find they all got syphilis. […] I would be laughing,” the woman wrote.

Despite the clear implication, almost all users eschewed mentioning Dmity Medvedev. Direct criticism of the head of state is rare in a country where calls for a national leader who rules with a strong hand are widespread. Among the nearly two thousand comments, this user was a rare exception:
“As a political action, this event carries a well-defined meaning: the freedom of action in contrast to a defaced mask of servile conformism.”

The dean of the Moscow State University’s (MGU) philosophy department, where some of the event’s documenters study, also detected a element of dissent and announced that the academic assembly would look into whether they should be expelled. They had harmed the reputation of the faculty by showing “despicable behaviour not worthy of a student of the MGU,” he said.

No decision on the students’ fate has been taken so far, but one of the affected has promptly published a ‘Repentance before the People’ that is reminiscent of first generation Bolshevik’s confessions during Stalin’s show trials during the Great Purges in 1937:

“I am addressing everyone who has become a direct or indirect witness of the stupid performance that was conducted by a group of idiotic fanatics. To my regret and great sorrow, my name is among the participants. […] I am very ashamed that, in full possession of my mental powers, I became a blind weapon in the hands of disgraceful people with an ideology that is alien to me and that I allowed them to manipulate me. I must emphasise that the idea behind this performance is NOT an expression of what I stand for as a citizen. […] I offer my sincerest apology to everyone, whom I UNWITTINGLY offended though my action.
Alexey Zub, student of the philosophical department at MGU, UNINTENTIONAL participant in the performance by Voina in the Biological Museum on Feb. 29, 2008.” (Capitals by Alexey Zub)




Here is an article by the editor of the English language newspaper The Exile telling you how his latest issue got censored, because he ran a story about the orgy:

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