![Journalist deconstructs the myth of the great Russia](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/mikhail-zygar.jpg?id=51246380&width=1200&height=1500)
Mikhail Zygar
Simon & Schuster
Mikhail Zygar
The war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s motivations. The way Americans perceive Russia, and Putin. The state of American democracy. These large topics and others were explored in a conversation with an expatriate Russian journalist Saturday, Jan. 13, at the Cornwall Library.
Mikhail Zygar is a journalist, writer, filmmaker and founding editor-in-chief of the Russia-banned TV Rain, an online broadcaster now based in exile in the Netherlands. Some have described his journalistic approach as a new form of literature. At age 42, Zygar, a Moscow native, has acquired a seeming lifetime of experience, having also served as a war correspondent in Iraq, Lebanon and Darfur. In 2014, Zygar won an International Press Freedom Award.
His latest book, “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” begins with a confession on Zygar’s part, and he adds in other contemporaries and forebears that include writers and historians who are “complicit” in promoting the notion of Russia as a “great empire,” he writes in his introduction.
“We overlooked the fact that for many centuries, ‘great Russian culture’ belittled other countries and peoples, suppressed and destroyed them,” he continues, adding that the words and thoughts perpetuating this notion of greatness in fact sowed the seeds of fascism and allowed it to flourish.
Before a full house at the library, Zygar talked with Joel Simon, an author, journalist and founder/director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Zygar began by discussing what he termed the “four phases” of his career in journalism. It began at age 21, when he was sent to cover the Iraq War for the Russian business daily Kommersant. He said he landed the assignment because “I spoke Arabic” and the assignment led to more war correspondent work. After Iraq, he covered the war in Lebanon and then genocide in Darfur.
“At age 29, after all these bloody massacres, I needed to quit. To stop,” he said.
Simon asked Zygar about his role in 2010 as one of the founders of the TV station Rain, which was the only independent news channel in Russia.
“We were not only for the young people,” Zygar said. “It was mostly for the middle class to be able to get unbiased information about what was happening.” And Zygar said, during the first years of operation, Rain was very popular, with 20 million households watching daily. Then, in 2014, a month before the occupation of Crimea, Rain was effectively shut down by an order for all Russian cable and satellite networks to switch it off.
Simon & Schuster
“One by one, we lost 95% of our audience in one week,” Zygar said, who said he then began to focus his thinking on Russian history.
“Somehow I realized that broadcasting news for an audience was not enough,” he said. “I realized that I need to talk about history.”
“You’re a journalist,” Simon interrupted. “Why history?”
“If I’m thinking about the future of Russia, I should focus on a younger audience, and talk about values with them.”
Zygar, understanding that the “20-minus” age-based audience is riveted to social media, he created something to meet them where they are. Together with historians, journalists and others he launched “Project 17,” a simulated social network that retraces the Russian Revolution on a daily basis. Go to www.openhistoryarchive.com.
The new book was started before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Bringing a journalistic framework to history, Zygar takes apart the narrative around the idea of Russian greatness, describing how the myth was constructed. How Putin justified the invasion. How Russian history justified all that Putin approached. “My mission is to start addressing … why we as Russian intellectuals missed that point. We have never started thinking about the propaganda approach to Russian history.”
Audience questions sought answers to where the war in Ukraine will be in one year, and if a longer war poses the threat to Putin, to which Zygar commented. “He’s gotten rid of the people who protested, and oil and gas revenues are enough.”
Asked another question about rising autocracy across the world, and whether the author thinks Putin might have intentions to expand beyond Ukraine, Zygar said, “It’s important to make Russia great again, not bigger.”
“He needs the war to be continued,” Zygar said in a nod to three and a half centuries of Russian myth-making. Zygar also is the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men” and is the recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2014 International Press Freedom Award.
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.