The Wandering Scot

Post-Election Minsk

December 22, 2010

I got into Minsk on December 21st 2010 (Tuesday), coming in from Smolensk. I’d seen news reports in Russia of large scale protests and large scale arrests in Minsk on Sunday, after opposition supporters decided to express their skepticism of Mr Lukashenko’s reported 80% share of the vote in the Belarus presidential elections. I hadn’t got any news of what had happened since Sunday, so I was feeling distinctly timid as I got off the train.

But the city was completely quiet and calm when I got in. One of my first sights was a policeman issuing a motorist a routine traffic ticket, which, oddly enough, felt very reassuring. I visited the Independence Square and the Oktybrskaya square, which are both traditional center for protests, but they were calm, with light pedestrian traffic and only a couple of militia (police) ambling around.

The giant KGB building on Nezalezhnastsi Avenue was tranquil. (Yes, in Belarus they are still the “KGB”. See their website.) Opposite, a large bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of the Cheka, later the NKVD, then the KGB) gazed serenely on the passers by.

At Oktybrskaya Square a few people were skating around a giant New Year’s tree. Yes, the benign authorities of Minsk had converted the middle of the (protest) square into an ice skating rink for the holidays. How thoughtful.

There were apparently some very small protests last night but in general things seem to be pretty much back to the Minsk version of normal.

Anyway, I look forward to traveling on to the provincial calm of Pinsk tomorrow…

Baikonur: Soyuz TMA-20 Launch

December 17, 2010

I was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to watch the Soyuz TMA-20 launch. It was spectacular. I strongly recommend it. (Tour Logistics.) (More Baikonur photos.)

I found myself in a tour group of six: our guide told us we were all the tourists visiting the launch. There were also some press, and various Roscosmos/ESA/NASA guests, but it looked like there were still well under 200 observers in total. So it was a much more intimate event than a shuttle launch at Kennedy.

Before the launch we got to see lots of cool toys from the Soviet space program, including a lot of the machinery for the Energia/Buran shuttle. This included sitting in the pilot seats of a full-scale Buran mock-up, clambering over a giant Buran transporter vehicle and then waking around a launch pad. The transporter and launch pad felt like relics from some alien civilization: enormous, exotic, and standing mysteriously abandoned.

Our hosts still suffered from a little Cold War competitive spirit: we were vigorously assured that the N1 rocket was the most powerful launcher ever, and that Buran was much larger/better than the shuttle. (This is not quite how Western sources see it!)

They let our little group into the Soyuz assembly building, so we got to see some Soyuz boosters and then a complete Soyuz launch vehicle up close. A lady guard wagged an indulgent finger when I dared to reach over and touch an engine.

The TMA-20 launch itself was striking. On the pad, the Soyuz sits slightly below ground level, with about half of the first stage boosters below ground. So we couldn’t directly see the initial ignition, just a sudden out-pour of smoke and spreading fire across to one side, which for a fraction of a second made me fear an accident, but no, the craft started to rise and then abruptly there was an intensely bright flame, presumably as we could now see the engines directly for the first time, a dazzling bright fireball, rising very quickly into the sky. Then a few second later a very loud rumbling sound arrived. After we first saw the engines, I never saw the craft itself – the engines were far, far too bright.

It was spectacular. Much more striking than the STS-129 shuttle launch I saw, probably both because we were so much closer (0.9 miles versus 6 miles) and because this was a night launch.

They let us visit close to the launch pad (which was the original Gagarin pad!) about an hour after the launch. So we could see the re-assembled launch gantries and the launch pad itself up close. But they wouldn’t let us into the flame pit, so we couldn’t actually feel the residual launch heat. Drat.

If you are a space buff, I highly recommend this tour. I’ve posted a page on Baikonur Logistics to provide more information on entry formalities, flights, tour companies, etc.

Lord Cochrane in Valparaiso

October 7, 2010

Lord Cochrane in Stained Class, Valparaiso

For all you Patrick O’Brian fans:

In Valparaiso, Chile, I discovered that Lord Cochrane is regarded as one of the great Chilean naval heroes and is suitably commemorated in Chile’s main port city, with a street named for him, a large monument, a stained glass window in the Naval Museum, and inside the Museum a large room honouring his career and exploits.

Cochrane (see his wikipedia page) was a mad Scotsman (yes, yet another) who was one of the main inspirations for Jack Aubrey. For example, Jack’s boarding of the Cacafuego closely follows Cochrane’s description of capturing the Spanish Xebec El Gamo. And like Jack, Cochrane was first dismissed and then reinstated in the Royal Navy after conviction in a stock swindle.

I’d forgotten that Cochrane was also the founder of the Chilean navy. So it was an unexpected pleasure to find him so prominently remembered in Valparaiso!

Lord Cochrane Monument, Valparaiso

Stalin in Virginia

August 21, 2010

The US National D-Day Memorial is in the small rural town of Bedford, VA. Overall it’s a fine, elegant and well designed monument, commemorating a key WWII event. But it has recently become noteworthy for a certain small addition…

The Memorial include busts of the principal allied commanders and of all the principal allied leaders. The Stalin bust is on the unfashionable, little visited Eastern edge of the Memorial. It is the only publicly displayed Stalin bust that I know of in the US. The biographical plaque takes prominent note of the elimination of the Kulaks, the Great Terror, and the relocation of nations.

Unfortunately all the leader busts are quite weak. Stalin is a bland representation of a stern faced foreigner with a moustache. It lacks the personality one sees in the better Stalin busts or photographs. There is no hint of the sly, insightful look in the eye, or that subtly malicious, knowing smile. Oh well: the Churchill is even worse and the Truman is almost unrecognizable.

Other parts of the Memorial are much better. There is a well conceived memorial pool with bronze soldiers wading to the beach from a landing craft. A series of hidden high pressure fountains erupt sporadically among the troops. Noisy and unpredictable, they simulate incoming rifle fire and add dynamism to the scene.

Well worth a visit if you are in central Virginia.

Moscow: Museum of Cosmonautics

June 2, 2010

I took the Metro out to the VDNKh stop. As you emerge, you see the stunning soaring tower of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. 100 meters of titanium clad concrete, thrusting a rocket ship into the cosmos. Build back in 1964, as a tribute to the bold new Soviet Cosmonauts and the Brave New Soviet Future, it seems like a strange relic of an almost forgotten past, but it is also truly striking: sometimes Soviet art could make the leap to inspirational.

The base of the Monument has a much more mundane example of Soviet art: a dull triumphal parade of heroic workers, with Lenin pointing the way.

Gagarin

Nearby are busts of the early Cosmonauts and a full statue (in almost Lenin-like splendor) of Sergei Korolev, the legendary Chief Designer of the Soviet rocket program.

Korolev

Underground, below the Monument, is the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. This has a large and impressive collection of spacecraft and cosmonaut paraphernalia. There are many models and replicas, but also some startling original pieces.

In the entry hall is a replica of Gagarin’s Vostok-1 capsule. (The original capsule is at the RSC Energia Museum outside of Moscow.) The capsule was more spacious than I expected – it seemed significantly bigger than John Glenn’s in the Smithsonian.

Nearby, the stuffed doggies are Belka and Strelka, the first Space Dogs to return safely from orbit, posing beside their little capsule.

Several of the Soyuz capsules were clearly authentic, with real re-entry burns. I particularly liked the dramatic layout of “Cosmonauts in the Snow” with the cosmonauts awaiting their recovery helicopter. The accompanying Soyuz craft boasts some extremely authentic looking re-entry scars.

And there is a wide assortment of later artifacts, including Michael Collins’ Apollo suit and a replica MIR space station.

Overall, definitely a Five Star museum. *****

Moscow: Armed Forces Museum

June 2, 2010

Moscow’s Central Museum of the Armed Forces doesn’t specify a country in its title, but the answer becomes clear when you step inside. This is the Armed Forces of the USSR, comrade!

Allowing for the Soviet focus, it is an excellent museum of its kind, well laid out, with many shiny artifacts. Outside are arrays of planes, tanks and missiles.

The center piece is a hall celebrating the Soviet WWII Victory. Two standard Soviet victory images are the raising of the Red Banner over the Reichstag and the throwing of Nazi banners into the dust in Red Square. Provincial museums must make do with photographs or paintings, but this is Moscow and the Holy Relics themselves are on display!

A perspex case houses the Banner of Victory from the Reichstag. While I was watching, several groups of school age children in military uniforms were herded in to pay their somewhat puzzled respects.

A special floor-level display case houses a sample of the captured Nazi banners from the 1945 Victory Parade, arranged in artful disarray, just as if they were freshly thrown into the dust.

The Museum has many other halls. In one, I found the remains of Gary Power’s U2, as recovered after being shot down over the USSR in 1960. Of course the room tells the history from the Soviet perspective, focusing on the Soviet pilots who brought down the plane.

Soviet Museums tend to ignore the Western front in WWII (just as Western museums tend to underplay the Eastern front) so I was pleased to find a display on the D-Day Landings. There is also a propaganda painting showing happy celebrations as US and Soviet troops link up in Germany. Even more unusually there is a small display commemorating the US material aid to the Soviets, with a photo celebrating the 5000th US plane (!) being delivered from Alaska to Siberia.

Practicalities: Open Wed-Sun 10 to 5. GPS 55.784956,37.616669. Take the metro to Dostoevskaya then go about 100m North on Ul Sovetskaya Armee and look for the ICBM.

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