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Staff at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg were involved in the theft of over 220 pieces of art, valued at over $5 million. UPDATE: Now it’s being reported that the stolen art is valued at over 130 million!

Apparently there was a fire at the US Embassy in Moscow this evening.

From Kyle Spector at the Foreign Policy blog:

Instilling national pride is important for any country. It can be done through patriotic songs, the erection of monuments, or even fostering a great environment for foreign investment to boost the economy. But don’t tell Russia that. It has chosen a different path - fining officials for using the word “dollar” in any instance when they could have used “ruble” instead.

Earlier this month, the Duma approved (almost unanimously) a bill requiring Russian ministers to use the word rubles instead of foreign currency terms. Last Friday, Russia’s defense minister called the dollar “that thing you are not allowed to say” while discussing sales of military equipment to Venezuela. Today, the economy minister almost used the word dollar, corrected himself by announcing a statistic as “700 million rubles,” and then added “30 million not rubles” instead of 30 million dollars. The law also outlaws the use of “euro.” Some finance bureaucrats are certainly going to have their work cut out for them, given that customs duties in Russia are listed in euros, and the country’s foreign debt is counted in foreign currency.

Lenta.ru and Novye Izvestiya report that Ulyanovsk, the birthcity of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is planning several projects in order to attract tourists to their historical city.

Sergei Morozov, governor of the Ulyanovsk region, originally proposed gathering old Lenin statues from all over Russia and creating an open-air museum not far from a Lenin-themed ski resort. However, some American mystery investors consider another idea more profitable and have decided to pour their capitalist money into a Lenin theme park.

A whole theme park devoted to Vladimir Iliyich? What will we do there, you ask?

??????? “??????????” ?????? ?????? ??????? ???????, ?? ??????? ?????? ???? ????? ????????? ???????????? ????????????. ??????????, ?????? ???????????? ????????, ??????, ????????, ?????????? ? ?????????????????? ??????? ??? ????????? ????????? ?????? ??????, ?????????????? ? ???????????????? ???????. ????? ?? ??????? ?? ????? ?????????? ????????? ?????, ???????? ???? ????????? ???????.

The centerpiece of Leninland will be a replica of Red Square on which there will be daily May Day Marches. Visitors to the park, in search of experiencing the exotic, can try their hand working at a Kolkhoz (ED: communist collective farm) or hear a talking statue of Lenin speak of the ideals of communism. Also, from time to time, park employees will play the role of secret agents and track down visitors the park.

Of course, the idea of a commercial amusement park with Lenin as its Mickey Mouse has plenty of people up in arms. Valery Perfilov, director of the Lenin Memorial Museum in Ulyanovsk, had this to say:

«???? ???? ?? ??????????? ???????????? ???????? ????????? ?????. ? ?????? ?????? ???????? ?????, ???? ?? ?????, ???????? ? ???????? ??????? ??????, ?????????, ??? ??… ???-?? ????? ???????????? ?????? ? ????? ???????????? ?????. ???? ????????? ???????? ????????????? ??? ??????».

What we’re talking about is an undisguised exploitation of the symbols of the soviet era. By all appearances, Vladimir Ilyich will be portrayed as some sort of scarecrow or bugaboo… These people have decided to use Lenin for purely commercial reasons; Leninland is being made exclusively for amusement.

As exciting (read with sarcasm) as this sounds, I highly doubt that an animatronic Lenin and communist farm will draw tourists 900 kilometres outside of Moscow. Especially when they can see the real Red Square and the real fantastic plastic Lenin in Moscow.

My guess is that this theme park will never happen.

This past Saturday, May 13, 2006, one of this century’s greatest Christian intellectuals passed away. Jaroslav Pelikan, who served for many years as Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, wrote more than 30 books, including the 5-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.

A few Pelikan quotes, in remembrance:

Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.

To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist’s instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished–until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from “How shiny and beautiful they all are!” to “Get that damned thing out of my mouth!”

Dr. Pelikan’s life and accomplishments inspire us not to live a mindless Christianity. Rest in peace.

Peter Savodnik asks if Westerners can understand the Russian people’s love of strong leaders in his article at Slate:

For 15 years, at least, a cultural-cognitive gap has been growing between the people and the state. That space is a manifestation of the public’s alienation from its government. Attempts to paper over that alienation, to foist a new solidarity on an old people, are absurd. The people, especially the young people who are impervious to the old dogma, know this.

So, too, does the president, who’s not a Soviet premier so much as a tsar, dispensing with ideology and reappropriating the powers of 19th-century imperialism. Whether it’s single-handedly rerouting massive oil pipelines or reorganizing the federal bureaucracy, Putin has not so much resurrected a dead superstate as responded to Russians’ long-festering desire for a “strong hand.”

And I myself have been surprised how many Russian desire a strong autocratic leader. Perhaps Russia will always need a tsar.

BBC News: 100 things we didn’t know this time last year.

Is this for real?

Several news sources are reporting that there’s suddenly a craze for tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

Josef Radimov, from the city of Omsk, said he had decided to get a tattoo of Putin’s face on his shoulder because it made him feel safe.

He said: “Having a tattoo of President Putin is very fashionable at the moment and all my friends have them.

“Being able to look down at my shoulder and seeing our President there all the time makes me feel more confident and safe.”

You know, Americans get tattoos of their president too, but only for different purposes (photo)