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By Olga Bobrova

"I'm a poet, and this is what makes me interesting." This is how Vladimir Mayakovski began his autobiographical notes. 105 years have passed since he was born (on July 19), but his assertion still rings true. Mayakovski's poetry entered our lives, our speech. He is one of the few poets whom people quote, sometimes even without noticing it.
What did we know about Mayakovski some 15 or 20 years ago? What did we think of him, coming across his verses in newspapers, in reports by communist leaders, in advertisement leaflets or in festive posters almost daily? It's sad to admit it, but we saw him as a textbook personage, as the best poet of the Soviet era, a poet for the masses, a great master of the political slogan presented in a clear-cut rhythm. He was a man of enormous height, whose voice sounded like a trumpet drowning the din of the crowd gathered to listen to his recital. This is how he stands in bronze in Moscow's Triumphal Square. This is how he sounds in the musical compositions based on his verses.
Even in the recent past we viewed Mayakovski as the poet in whose works we could find a clear formula for any occurrence in our happy, as the Soviet ideologists described it, life. It was he who exclaimed back in the 1920s: "The life is good, and to live is good!" It was he who impressed on us that when producing our passports we should feel our superiority: "Read it and envy. I'm a citizen of the Soviet Union". It was Mayakovski who explained to the Soviet children "what is good and what is bad". It was he who glorified - always and everywhere - "our Motherland of today and thrice as much of the future". And all of a sudden, on the threshold of his 37th birthday, he shot himself. Those who studied his heritage ignored this circumstance for decades. They described Mayakovski's life as a continuous heroic deed, the heroic deed of a poet who accepted the bolshevik revolution without hesitation, who presented it with his talent. But was it a heroic deed?
Mayakovski was born in the village of Bagdadi in Georgia standing amidst mountains and forests. He inherited his father's name, Vladimir. Like his father, he died before he turned 37. It was hard for his widowed mother to raise her three children. The world was in no haste to recognize the talent of young Mayakovski. The boy was ambitious, quick to take offence and inclined to exaggeration, like many Russians. This is what he said in one of his early poems written in Moscow."I am lonely, as the only eye of a man going to the blind!" As for his offi- cial biographers, they described his life mostly in the aura of revolutionary romanticism. They described him as a rebel, shy and arrogant at the same time, stubborn and plagued by doubts.
To all intents and purposes Mayakovski broke into literature like an impostor and overthrower. Here's what he said later about himself as a 15-year-old boy: "It was an extremely important time for me - I plunged into fiction. I had read the so-called great novelists, and I found it so easy to write better than they did. I have the right attitude to life. The only thing I need is experience".
Mayakovski sought to acquire such experience in the company of Russian futurists - beginners in literature, who felt the forthcoming changes acutely. The young blood of the new, 20th century, seethed in them. They hastened to shed the fetters of the old life and trample on old traditions. They proclaimed themselves as people of the future. Their slogan shared by Mayakovski was: "Time, move forward!"
Here's what Mayakovski wrote in his autobiography: "I never had any suits. I had two foul blouses. Having no tie, I borrowed a piece of yellow ribbon from my sister. It caused a sensation. This means that what is the most beautiful and striking on a man is a tie." Mayakovski wearing a blouse and a yellow bow for a tie, and his friends - poets Burlyuk and Kamensky in incredible clothes, with painted faces, toured Russian cities. They organized poetic soirees, challenged the public, accusing it of being dumb and overfed. Their manifesto entitled "A slap in the face for public tastes" was reflected in their lives. In the meantime people with insight, such as Maxim Gorky, who was already an authoritative writer at the beginning of this century, saw in their destructive energy something capable of turning into creative energy that would build a new art, an open world innocent of aestheticism, devoted to the masses. That world took shape after the 1917 revolution. New people emerged in Mayakovski's entourage - Lentulov, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Malevich - avant-garde artists who paved the way for many new phenomena in the 20th-century art. Here's what he wrote about them: "The streets are our brushes, the squares are our palletes."
It seems incredible, but Mayakovski was in fact a lyricist. Few people noticed that Mayakovski's poem oddly entitled "The Cloud in Trousers" was verses about unrequited love, which leaves "only a bleeding piece of heart" after itself. And no one paid particular attention to the eternal questions Mayakovski asked as a true poet: "Since stars are lighted, it means that someone needs it?"
The old world was equally indifferent and hostile to his eccentricities and to his torments. "And when the 1917 revolution broke out, to accept or not to accept posed no question for Mayakovski. "This is my revolution," he said.
Revolution and the Soviet regime, however, needed not poetry, not his masterly handling of word and rhythm. The poet was needed as a spokesman for the authorities who could express their ideas in a neat way. In no time was Mayakovski writing propagandist leaflets, topical verse and newspaper couplets. Working at the turn of the 1920s at the Russian Telegraph Agency, he made drawings for posters and wrote captions to them about the situation on the Civil War fronts and in the country at large. He told stories in pictures, thus creating a genre, quite new for Russia. In fact, he produced what were typical comics, as we would call them today. In all three thousand posters and six thousand captions, as the poet counted himself. In the early 20s, with the Civil War over, Mayakovski began to write rhymed lines on everyday-life topics.
Mayakovski persisted in doing this despite the taunts of his artistic opponents, and there were a great many of them. He went on writing, as he put it, "placing his foot on the throat of his own song". That was not poetry but an act. The authorities seemed to wish no more. But the self-willed poet began to commit other acts too. He took up satire ma- king fun of red-tape, philistinism, demagogy and boot-lic- king. Hating them with his whole being, Mayakovski knew how to vent his bitter feelings and sarcasm. These gave birth to the plays "The Bug" and "The Baths" produced by the outstan- ding stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold. "The Bedbug" was enthusiastically received by the public and got only a few negative comments from critics, while "The Baths" was a complete failure severly censured by reviewers for its "an- ti-Soviet spirit". This took place in March 1930, with only one month left before the poet's death.
Mayakovski could feel the increasing dislike of the authorities. He could see censorship becoming tougher as the totalitarian system gathered momentum. The Communist circles and proletarian writers had never recognized him as one of their stock and dubbed him slightingly "a fellow traveler". Who did his poetry serve? Why did he produce the exalted poem "Lenin"? Why should he have dissipated his talent? There was no answer to any of these questions in the note he wrote before the suicide. He wrote something else: "... the love boat has crashed against everyday routine. I am quits with life: "The thought about suicide was a chronic disease of Mayakovski. The thought was terrorizing." Indeed, back in 1915, shortly after he first met Lilia Brik, he wrote in a poem: "I think of this more and more often: why not place a fullstop of a bullet at the end of my life?" He did place this fullstop on April 14, 1930 .
Narrated by Milena Faustova
"Streltsy in the 16th and 18th centuries. Service and Politics" exhibition has gone on display at Moscow's Novodevichy Convent, we will take a closer look at this very special type of servicemen.
Up until the 16th century Russia made do without a regular army depending on a number of irregular territorial regiments the local feudals put together any time the country was going to war. In was only 1550 that Czar Ivan the terrible ordered the formation of the so-called streltsy corps who became Russia's first ever semi-regular armed force. The streltsy units consistd of infantrymen armed with the the then new arquebuses and long, crescent-shaped, axes. Recruited from free citizens, the streltsy stood guard and manned city garrisons in peacetime and joined the regular army during the war. Professional soldiers, all aremd with similar weapons and wearing uniforms, the streltsy eventually became the backbone of the Russian armed forces in the 16th and 17th century campaigns.
At least 20 streltsky regiments were permanently deployed in Moscow each consising of some fifteen hund- red men used, among other duties, to protect the Tsarÿ5'ÿ0s family. The streltsy accompanied the Tsar and Tsarina wherever they went, keeping the gawking crowds at bay. They also helped put out the many fires where they arri- ved equipped with axes, pails and boat-hooks.
"The streltsy were commoners, like any other citizens", historian Alexander Lavrentyev says. "but to keep them in combat-ready form, the government paid them salaries in money and in kind and exempted them from the many taxes paid by other citizens."
The streltsy were mostly educated people and some of them eventually enriched themselves enjoying the privileges of their lifelong and hereditary service. Strange as it may seem, these people are still rememberd not for their battlefield valiance but for their part in the fierce power struggle that overshadowed the early years of the reign of Peter the Great. The strelstsy were part and parcel of the old, patriarchal Mother Russia and, as such, were at loggerheads with the young Tsar Peter who had already launched his large-scale modernization of the country starting off with a deep-cutting military reform. To become economically and culturally equal with Europe, Russia needed a modern and powerful regular army which meant that the days of the outdated streltsy were numbered. Unwilling to go, the streltsy stage two major riots. The first revolt, Alexander Lavrentyev says, was the first time in Russian history that the government was forced to cave in to the demands leveled by rioting commoners.
The second uprising in 1698 ended tragically for the streltsy. Tsar Peter brutally suppressed the revolt which wrote a virtual end to the old Russian army.
150 of the total 200 guns, sabers, uniforms and personal belongings - all that has survived from the nearly two centuries of the streltsy - army are now on display at the exhibition .

OLD RUSSIAN CROCKERY, ALWAYS ORIGINAL

By Oleg Nekhai
In the olden days glass was rare in Russia but there was plenty of wood in the forests. Wood was used to make everything from houses to household utensils. Any peasant's hut had a special place to hold crockery. Wooden jugs, ladles, cups, bowls and spoons were simple, but masters tried to adorn them with carving and painting. One of the most ancient crockery items is the ladle, which dates back to the 10th century. A talented carver gave his ladle the form of a swimming duckling.
The ladle has survived in the centuries. Peasants in northern villages use ladles to drink kvas, spring water and various fruit drinks.
There are also ceremonial ladles, such as kept in the exposition of the famous Armory of the Moscow Kremlin. "The ladles we have are all from the czars' reserves," says Yelena Zemlyakova, chief researcher at the Moscow Kremlin Museum, "These were used only by czars or their guests at the feasts. Made of gold and silver, the ladles are decorated with pearl ornaments and precious stones."
At feasts ladles were used to drink traditional Russian beverages, based on honey with hop-plants, herbs and berries. There were various kinds of honey drinks. Gold ladles were used for red drinks, silver for white. Besides, there were cherry, currant, raspberry, apple and juniper honey beverages.
The ladles were large, heavy and spacious. The oldest metal surviver dates from the 15th century. It's an oval, boat-like, silver vessel with a high curving handle. The ladle, low and oval with a wide flat bottom, as it was elaborated by Moscow masters by the mid-16th century, has become classical. The Kremlin boasts the gilded ladle of Ivan the Terrible, the only surviving ladle belonging to the czar, who ruled in the 16th century.
Ladles featured prominently at feasts. They were used not only for drinks. The czar would give a ladle with some drink in it as an award and accompanied it with words of gratitude. Until the 18th century Russia has no system of orders and people were decorated with precious ladles, cups or clothes belonging to the czars .

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