The Wandering Scot

Brest Fortress, Belarus

December 26, 2010

The Brest Fortress complex commemorates the heroic defence of the Soviet garrison against the German invasion of June 1941.

I entered the Hero Fortress at its new ceremonial entrance: a giant concrete slab with a Soviet star cut into it. Stirring martial music plays as you enter. The gateway was rather grayer and drabber than I expected, but still very impressive. It looks better seen from inside the fortress than from outside.

I arrived just in time to see a set of local teenagers do a “changing of the guard” ritual at the eternal flame, complete with high-stepping precision marching. In a small concession to the intense cold, they had their ear flaps folded down.

The fortress complex includes various large Soviet-era memorials. There is a fine concrete sculpture “thirst” of a soldier reaching his helmet out to gather water.

The main monuments are a giant obelisk (100 m) in the form of a Soviet bayonet and an enormous concrete head of a scowling Soviet soldier. Unfortunately while the head is large, it is poorly formed and unsympathetic.

I also ambled through the Fortress Museum, which has some displays of the 19th c. fortress, and even a very short display on the 1939 Polish defence, but which is naturally focused on the 1941 defence, with many photos of the defenders.

Commentary: In 1941 the Soviet Union desperately needed some heroic myths, and the “Defence of the Brest Fortress” fit the bill. A small group of heroic defenders, stemming the flow of the German invasion. It’s a good story and I don’t doubt the defenders were truly heroic. However the German advance seems to have been focused on deep penetration and encirclement, which implies bypassing fortresses and fixed defence points and leaving those to be mopped up later by secondary forces. So the leisurely siege is unlikely to have impacted the main invasion.

The following day: At the Brest station, I met three unhappy travelers, two Americans and a Dane. They had been taking the train from St Petersburg to Warsaw and hadn’t realized that their train took a non-obvious detour through Belarus. There are no immigration checks at the Russian-Belarus border, so they had been able to enter Belarus, but then when they were exiting at Brest they were caught by Belarus immigration. Traveling in Belarus without a visa: not a good situation! They were removed from the train and delayed for two days in Brest. They were finally allowed to exit after signing “a big stack of forms” and paying moderate fines (about $200 for the American couple) for having entered Belarus illegally.

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. *****

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