Russian Elections

One of my new favourite websites is the always magnificent English Russia. The motto of the good people behind the website is "just because something cool happens daily on one sixth of the Earth surface".

The other day, no doubt inspired by election fever in Russia, they posted some posters from Russian elections held in the 1990s, but mainly from Presidential Elections. One picture appealed to me in particular:

I am told that the banner reads:

Youth choose Zyuganov

Now, for those of you wondering, the honey in the poster is Gennady Zyuganov, who has occupied the somewhat incongruous position as leader of the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation in post-communist Russia. You can see why the kids would all be rushing out to support Zyuganov; because he really is one cool looking cat!

FYI, in the first round of the 1996 Presidential election –an election that I best associate with 'Mad Vlad' Zhirinovsky – Zyuganov finished second with 32%, trailing only Yeltsin, with 35%. The runoff election two months later saw Yeltsin beat Zyuganov 54% to 40%, a far more interesting contest than last week.

Comments

Rima Staines said…

Hello Kris and thanks for visiting my blog :) Pleased to meet you ... what a great place you have here! I have family in Launceston actually :)
Best wishes to you from Scotland... Rima

6 March 2008 at 21:48

Kris McCracken said…

It is indeed a small world. Thanks for popping in. I like your blog very much, there is always something new for me to see there.

7 March 2008 at 09:00

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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