Edward VIII, A Soap Opera of a Reign 17/11/2009

Portrait of King Edward VIII, 1936

Edward VIII was on the throne for less than a year. It was all he needed to undermine the prestige of the Victorian monarchy. He abdicated right before World War II in favour of a sadomasochist relationship. His father, George V, had already predicted it: ‘After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months’^[1]. He happened to be wrong, for Edward managed to do so in only eleven months. Nevertheless, nobody could imagine, back on the 28^th of January 1936, that George V ‘s burial would be the last splendorous occasion of the British Empire.

Back then, England was indisputably the world’s first nation, her immense empire spawning half of the planet. Its monarchy was universally respected and admired. But as the cortège in the procession to George’s Lying in State in Westminster Hall turned into New Palace Yard, the diamond cross on the Imperial State Crown fell from on top of the coffin, landing in the gutter.

Although the English are not particularly superstitious, it was impossible not to see it as a bad omen. If we think about it, World War II was just a few years away, which saw England losing both its spot as a top nation and its Empire. As far as the prestige of the British monarchy, it wouldn’t last as long. As George V had foreseen, Edward would destroy it in less than a year.

His funeral proceedings were surrounded by the majesty that the Royal family projected. The widow, Queen Mary, dignity flowing from her rigorous black figure; the monarch’s four dashing sons escorting the casket, impeccable in their military uniforms… They were, despite everything, like sinister characters of a Shakespearean drama: their presence can only end up in tragedy. Queen Mary, first of all, so imposing… too imposing. They say that she had never kissed her children, perhaps resenting the fact that her marriage had been a ‘hand-me-down’ affair. She had been engaged to George’s eldest brother, but when her fiancée died from syphilis, he was substituted by George.

The affection deficit in which the Royal children grew up goes far to explain their sickly character. The first born suffered from a clear sexual sadomasochist deviation, which turned him into a slave of the first woman who abused him. Bertie, who would succeed Edward as George VI, was pathologically shy, so much so that he couldn’t help stuttering every time he faced an audience. He chain-smoked and would die from lung cancer aged 56. With regards to the youngest one, Prince George, Duke of Kent, he was simply fascinated by brown shirts and swastikas; he would perish in 1942 during a mysterious flight. Rumour has it that he was headed for Sweden in order to break a deal with Hitler.

There is a last macabre detail surrounding the funeral of the virtuous, dutiful King. His death after a long-lasting illness, on the 20^th of January, had been caused by a lethal injection, an overdose of cocaine and morphine administered -supposedly, on Queen Mary’s authorisation- by the Royal doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn. It was not a case of euthanasia in order to ease a dying man’s suffering so much as the need of controlling the time of his demise: in order to be able to be announced by The Times, the respectable newspaper, it had to take place before midnight. Otherwise it would only make it on the evening newspapers, of a more yellow journalism. Reasons of state went above everything, right up to the end.

We can nowadays interpret all those circumstances as bad omens, but 30 years ago public opinion received the new reign with optimism. Edward was the image of the ‘modern’ monarch, somebody who would bring in fresh air. Aside from the small circle of people who knew him well –back then the royals’ private lives were not under the press’ scrutiny–, it made sense the British public thought that way. Edward, who was really known as David, had been a perfect Prince of Wales. Handsome, kind, lacking the stiffness of the Victorian Royalty but always dressed extremely elegantly, showing off like nobody else his military uniform or the suits which were designed for him –the Prince of Wales check– he had benefited from the development of the press: he was one of those people the camera falls in love with.

He was the most photographed person in the world, and he always came out well in pictures. Despite the fact that television did not exist yet, he appeared constantly in cinematographic news clips attending official events, competing in several sports, enjoying  himself in happy parties… He always conveyed friendliness, charisma and savoir faire. Chroniclers referred to as the man every man wanted to be and whom every woman wanted to marry, the pre-war David Beckham. One of his charms was his boyish face: he looked younger than he was. Perhaps that was the reason why the nation was unaware of the new King’s serious flaw.

He was already 42 and hadn’t married yet. The first dynastic obligation of a monarch is to ensure legitimate descendants. At the time of accessing the throne Edward should have already been married for 20 years and fathered several children. But the Prince of Wales had expressed himself as opposed to the marriage institution as in favour of enjoying the company of married women. At 23 he had taken his first official lover, Freda Birkin^[2], wife of the Right Honorable William Dudley Ward and later of the Spanish Pedro José Isidro Manuel Ricardo Mones, Marqués de Casa Maury. It was a long-lasting relationship, which started as lovers and evolved to confidantes.

In the letters the Prince used to write to Freda, which have been published, one can already detect disturbing character traits. Many of them are written in a grotesque style imitating the half-language of small children, but what their content is tremendous. The Prince of Wales wishes to die young, is afraid of going crazy and suffers from anorexia. His next adulterous relationship tied him to Lady Thelma Furness, an American socialite, amongst whose lovers was the Aga Khan. Through her he met the woman which would destroy his career, Wallis Simpson, an adventurer whose first husband had sexually educated her in a Chinese brothel. Wallis realised at first sight that the Prince was an eager masochist; she abused him and turned him into her puppet. The public was completely unaware of this. When a palace servant found Edward on his knees varnishing Wallis’ toes as if he was her lady-in-waiting, he didn’t sell the exclusive story to the tabloids, as he would nowadays. Instead he requested a leave of absence, because he couldn’t stand seeing his sovereign posing as a sexual slave. The King George V, though, was totally aware of what was going on, since he had ordered the secret service to keep an eye on Wallis.

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

‘I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children’^[1], George V even went to say, foreseeing what was to come. He turned out to be right, as Edward’s project was to marry Wallis Simpson as soon as she could divorce her second husband. The political cataclysm caused by the intentions of the new King was enormous. What Edward VIII pretended was utterly inconceivable in the British reality of the time. According to dynastic law, the simple fact of not having royal blood invalidated Wallis to marry the King. On top of that she was divorced, which automatically meant Anglican Church veto, of which Edward himself was the head. To make matters worse, she had a terrible social record.

The country’s forces, headed by Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, opposed to the royal whim. It was fine if the King wanted to keep her as a lover -after all almost all were so inclined. But in order to allow the wedding to take place the King would have to give up his crown. All of this took place under secret cover, since the British press at the time had a sense of national responsibility which did not allow to publish anything like that, such was the discredit for the Crown.

On the other hand, U.S. newspapers had zoned in on what an American journalist called ‘the best story since Jesus Christ’s resurrection’. But the world was not globalised yet: the U.S. belonged to suburbia, while the British nation was blissfully oblivious. Finally, on the 3^rd of December 1936, when the abdication was clearly inevitable, the British press published the constitutional scandal. On the 11^th of December, in a castle called Fort York King Edward VIII met with his three brothers in order to resign. They signed all the necessary documents for his abdication and transfer of the Crown to poor Bertie, from then onwards George VI. After that, His Royal Highness –he was no longer His Royal Majesty– read a message to the nation through the microphones of the BBC, explaining his reasons for such an embarrassing retirement. The discourse had been written for him by Churchill, who, just for the sake of going against the grain, had supported Edward VIII. It had been 10 months and 21 days of the time period forecasted by George VI for his son to ruin his life.

'London Herald': Edward VIII Abdicates

*******************************

[1] Ziegler, Philip (1990), King Edward VIII: The Official Biography, London: Collins, p. 199, ISBN 0-002-15741-1 (Translator’s note).

[2] Born Winifred May, she was universally known by her first married name as Freda Dudley Ward. (T.’s note).

Translated from “Eduardo VIII, un reinado de culebrón”, by Luis Reyes. Published by ‘Tiempo’ on 30.01.2006. Available in http://www.historiarte.net/articulos/art021.html (last accessed 10.11.2009).

Chernobyl Voices, 20 Years Later 25/05/2009

Liudmila Ignatenko’s testimony, wife of the dead fireman Vasili Ignatenko:

I don’t know what to talk about. Death or love? Or is it the same? About what?’

We had married recently. We still walked down the street holding hands, even when we were shopping. Always together. Used to tell him ‘I love you’. But I didn’t know yet how much I loved him. I could not imagine it. We lived in the building blocks of the firefighters’ unit, where he used to work. In the flat at the top. There were three other young families; we had a kitchen to share. And downstairs there were the cars. Red firefighting lorries. That was his job. I was always aware of everything: where he was, what was going on.

I heard a noise in the middle of the night. Shouting. I looked out the window. He saw me: ‘Close the windows and go to bed. There is a fire in the plant. I’ll be back soon.’

I didn’t see the explosion. Only the flames. Everything looked lit up. The whole sky. Tall flames. And soot. A horrible heat. And he was not back yet. The soot was caused by burning tar; the plant’s ceiling was covered in tar. Over which people used to walk, he remembered later, as if it was resin. The flames were suffocating, and all along, he was crawling. He went up the reactor. They were throwing out the burning graphite with their feet. They went there without wearing their canvas suits; they left with what they were wearing, in their shirts. Nobody warned them, they called them as if it were a normal fire.

Four. Five. Six. At six we were to go and see his parents. To plant potatoes. There are 40 Km from Pripiat city to Sperizhie, where his parents used to live. We had to go to sow and plough. It was his favourite job. His mother often remembered how neither herself nor her husband wanted to let him go to the city; they even built him a new house.  But the Army took him. He served in Moscow, in the firefighting troops, and when he came back he only wanted to be a firefighter. He didn’t wish for anything else. [She goes silent].

Sometimes I think I can hear his voice. Alive. Not even photos have the same effect on me like his voice. But he never calls me. And in dreams, it is me calling him.

Seven. At seven they told me he was in hospital. I ran there, but the hospital was already cordoned off by the militia; they didn’t let anybody through. Only ambulances were allowed through. Militians were screaming: the cars are contaminated, do not get close. I was not alone, all the women, whose husbands were that night in the plant, came over.

Do not trespass.

I ran looking for somebody I knew who worked as a doctor in that hospital. I grabbed her by the uniform as she was getting out of a car. ‘Let me get in!’ ‘I can’t! He’s bad. They’re all bad.’ I was still grabbing her. ‘Only to see him.’ ‘Fine’, she says. ‘Quick, fifteen, twenty minutes.’

I saw him. He was swollen all over. He almost didn’t have any eyes. ‘Milk! Lots of milk!’ said my friend. ‘Let him drink at least three litres.’ ‘He does not drink milk.’ ‘Then now he’ll have to.’

Many doctors, nurses and especially assistants in that hospital would be ill after a while. They would die. But back then nobody knew it.

At ten in the morning the technician Shishenok died. He was the first one. On the first day. Then we found out that underneath the rubble another one had been trapped, Valera Jodemchuk. They didn’t manage to get him out. They were trapped between concrete. Back then we still didn’t know that all of them would be the first ones.

I ask him, ‘Vasia, what will I do?’ ‘Leave! Leave! You’re expecting a child.’ I am pregnant, it is true. But how am I going to leave him? He asks me ‘Go! Save the child!’ ‘First I’ll bring the milk and then we’ll see.’

My friend Tania Kibenok arrives. Her husband is in the same room. She has come with his father, who has a car. We all get into the car and we go to the village to get milk. About 3 kilometres from the city. We buy many 3-litres containers of milk. Six of them, so that there was plenty for everybody. But the milk was provoking them to vomit horribly. They kept on losing consciousness constantly; they put them on a drip. Doctors assured us, I don’t know why, that they had been poisoned by the gases; nobody was talking about the radiation.

In the meantime the city was filled up by military cars, all the roads were closed. You could see soldiers everywhere. Short-distance trains stopped running. They washed the cars with a white powder. I felt alarmed. How was I going to get to town at the following day to get fresh milk? Nobody was talking about the radiation. Only military men were wearing masks. City people carried the shops’ bread, muffin bags open. On the shelves there were cakes. Life went on as usual. They washed the streets with powder.

At night they didn’t let me into the hospital. A sea of people around it. I was standing in front of his window; he got close to it and shouted something at me. He looked so desperate! Among the crowd somebody made out what he was saying: they were taking them to Moscow that night. The wives got together in a circle. We made up our minds: we are going with them. Let us be with our husbands! You have no right! We tried to get through by pushing and scraping. The soldiers, soldiers had already formed a cordon of two rows, and they prevented us from getting through by pushing. Then the doctor came out and confirmed that they were being taken to Moscow that night on a plane, that we had to bring them clothes; what they were wearing in the plant had already been burnt. Buses were not running already, and we went on foot, running, home. When we came back with our bags, the plane had already left. They had lied to us. So that we didn’t shout, nor cry.

Night fell. On one side of the street, buses, hundreds of buses (they were already preparing the city’s evacuation), and on the other, hundreds of firefighting cars. They brought them from everywhere. The entire street was covered in white foam. We were treading on that foam. Shouting and swearing.

Evacuating the city

They said on the radio the city would be evacuated for three, maybe five days. Take winter and sports clothes with you, for you are going to live in the woods. In tents. People were even happy: they are sending us to the countryside! We will celebrate the First of May. Something unusual. People were preparing roasted meat for the trip, they bought wine. They took guitars, tape-recorders. The wonderful May celebrations! Only those women whose husbands had suffered the misfortune were crying.

I can’t remember the trip. When I saw his mother it felt like I was waking up. ‘Mother, Vasia is in Moscow! He was taken there in a special flight.’ We had just sowed the orchard. Potatoes, cabbages (and in a week’s time they’d evacuate the village!) Who was to know it? That night I threw up violently. I was six months pregnant. I felt so ill.

At night I dream he is calling me. While he was alive he used to call me in his dreams: ‘Liusia, Liusia!’. But after he died he didn’t call me a single time. Not a single one. [She cries]. I wake up in the morning and  tell myself: I am going to Moscow on my own. I that… ‘Where are you going to go, in your condition?’ his mother asks me, crying. My dad also came with me: ‘It is better if I go with you.’ He took all the money they had in their account, all of it…

I can’t remember the journey. The entire trip has been erased from my memory. Once In Moscow we asked the first militian we saw to which hospital the Chernobyl firefighters had been taken to, and he told us; I was even surprised, for they had scared us we wouldn’t be told, it was a state secret, ultra secret.

To the Clinic number 6. To the Schúkinskaya.

The hospital was specialized in radiology, and they did not let you in without a pass. I gave money to the guard and he told me ‘Go ahead.’ He told me the floor I had to go to. I don’t know who else I implored and begged to. The truth is that I had already arrived to the radiology section manager’s office: Anguelina Vasílievna Guskova. I still didn’t know her name, I could not remember anything. The only thing I knew was that I had to see him. Find him.

She quickly asked me: ‘But, on God’s name! Child! Have you got any children?’

How was I to tell her the truth? It was clear I had to hide my pregnancy. She wouldn’t let me see him! Thankfully I am thin and it was not showing at all.

Yes, I answered. ‘How many?’ I think to myself ‘I have to say I have two children. If I only have one, she won’t let me through.’

‘A boy and a girl.’

‘Well, if you have two, I don’t think you’ll have any more. Now listen: his central nervous system is completely damaged; his spine is totally destroyed.’

‘Well’, I thought to myself, ‘this will make him more nervous.’

‘And listen to me well: if you start crying, I’ll send you home straight away. It is forbidden to embrace and kiss each other. Don’t get too close to him. I’ll grant you half an hour.’

But I already knew I wouldn’t leave. If I did, it would be with him. I had sworn to myself!

I get in…I see them sitting on their beds, playing cards, laughing.

‘Vasia!’, they call him.

He turns around. ‘Good Lord! She has even found me here! I am lost!’

It was funny to see him with his size 48 pajamas for his is a 52. Too short in the sleeves and legs. But the swelling in his face was gone. They were injecting them with some kind of solution.

‘You, lost?’ I ask him.

And he wants to hold me.

‘Sit down’ the doctor doesn’t let him get any close to me. ‘No embracing here.’

I don’t know how, but we made a joke out of that. And a minute after everybody got closer to us, even people from other rooms. All of them were our men. From Prípiat. For they brought 28 of them in that plane. What’s the story? What’ s going on in the city? I tell them that they have started to evacuate people, that they are taking all the city to the country for three to five days. The men grow silent; but there were two women there, one of them was on duty at the entrance the day of the accident, and she starts to cry: ‘My God! My children are there. What will become of them?’

I wanted to be alone with him; well, even if it was only for a minute. The guys noticed and each of them came up with an excuse in order to get out to the corridor. Then I held him and kissed him. The he pulled away.

‘Don’t sit close to me. Take a chair.’

‘That’s nonsense’, I told him, giving it less importance. ‘Did you see where the explosion came from? What was that about? Because you were the first ones to arrive.’

‘The most likely explanation is that of sabotage. Somebody has done it on purpose. All the guys agree on this.’

Back then that’s what they said. That’s what they believed.

When I arrived at the following day they had separated them, each in a different room. They had categorically forbidden them to go out to the corridor. To talk to each other. They communicated among themselves by knocking on the walls. Stop-hyphen, stop-hyphen. Stop. Doctors explained that each organism reacts differently to the radiation doses, so that what one can stand might kill the another. Where they were, even the walls reacted to the Geiger. To their left, their right and the bottom floor was emptied of people. They took everybody else out, they did not leave a single patient inside. Not even on top, nobody else was left. (…).

His death

One night I’m sitting on a chair beside him. At eight in the morning I tell him ‘Vasia, I’m going out for a while. I’m going to rest a bit.’ He opens and closes his eyes, he lets me go. Once I get to the hotel and to my room, I lie on the floor –I couldn’t lie down in bed, I was so sore all over- I am called by a nurse: ‘Go! Run to see him! He’s calling you nonstop!.’ But that morning Tania Kibenok had asked me so many times, she had begged me: ‘We’re going to the cemetery together. I can’t do it without you.’ That morning they were burying Vitia Kibenok and Volodia Právik.

He was very close to Vitia. Two friendly families. A day before the explosion we had taken a picture together in the residence. How handsome our husbands look there! Happy. The last day of our past life. The time before Chernobyl. How happy we were!

I come back from the graveyard and I hurriedly call the nurse: ‘How is he?’ ‘He died about fifteen minutes ago.’  What? I’ve spent all night beside him, I’ve only been away for three hours! I was beside the window, screaming ‘Why? Why?’ I was staring at the sky and screaming. Everybody in the hotel could hear me. They were scared to get close to me. But I got over it and told myself that I would see him for the last time, that I would go to see him. I flew down the stairs. He was still in the chamber, they had not taken him away yet.

His last words were ‘Liusia! Liusia!’ The nurse tried to calm him down telling him that I had just left, but that I would be back soon. He sighed and went quiet.

I did not leave his side again. I went with him to the grave. Although what I remember is not the coffin, but the polyethylene bag. That bag. In the morgue they asked me whether I wanted to be shown how they were going to dress him, and I said I did. They dressed him with his uniform, and they put his hat on his chest. They did not put his shoes on. They could not find adequate shoes, because his feet had swollen. It looked like he had bombs instead of feet. They also had to cut up his uniform, they could not put it on him.

A shattered body

His body was shattered. He was a big bloody wound. During his last two days in hospital I would take his hand and the bone moved inside, it was separated from the flesh. Bits of lung and liver would come out of his mouth. He was drowning in his own entrails. I would cover my hand with a surgical gauze and I would put it inside his mouth in order to take all that from inside of him. This can’t be told! This can’t be written! It can’t be borne! All my beloved…all so mine. No shoe size would fit him. They put him in the coffin barefoot.

In front of my very eyes. Dressed formally, they put him into a plastic bag and they tied it up. And once in that bag, they put him inside the coffin. They also put the coffin inside another bag. A transparent film, but thick as a tablecloth. And all of this was put inside a zinc coffin. They could barely fit it in. Only the hat was left on top.

Everybody came. His parents, mine. We bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. An extraordinary commission received us. All of us were told the same: we cannot give you back your husbands’ bodies, your children’s bodies, they are extremely radioactive and they will be buried in a Moscow graveyard in a special way. Inside soldered zinc coffins, beneath reinforced concrete. You have to sign these documents. We need your consent. And if somebody, outraged, wanted to take the coffin home, they convinced him that they were heroes, they said, and that they did not belong to their families. They were official people. And they belonged to the State now.

We got into the bus. Relatives and a few military men. A colonel with a radio. I could hear coming from the radio: ‘Wait for orders! Wait!’ We drove around Moscow for two or three hours, through the belt road. Then we went back to Moscow. And from the radio: ‘We cannot enter the graveyard. Foreign correspondents have surrounded it. Wait a bit longer.’ The relatives were silent. Mother was wearing the black handkerchief. I feel myself losing consciousness.

I have a hysterical attack: ‘Why do we have to hide my husband? Who is he? Is he an assassin? A criminal? A common prisoner? Who are we burying?’ My mother tells me ‘Hush, hush, my daughter.’ And she caresses my head, she holds my hand. The colonel informs through the radio: ‘Requesting permission to enter the graveyard. The wife has had a hysterical attack.’

Translated from “Voces de Chernóbil, 20 años después”, by Svetlana Alexievich, published in “El País Semanal” on 9^th April 2009 (available in

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/reportajes/Voces/Chernobil/anos/despues/elpdomrpj/20060409elpdmgrep_8/Tes)

Belarus after the catastrophe

‘Belarus. To the rest of the world we are a terra incógnita, unknown land, still to be discovered. The White Russia, that’s more or less how our country’s name sounds in English. Everybody knows about Chernobyl, but only as related to the Ukraine and Russia. Belorussians still have to tell their story…’

(Naródnaya Gazzette, 27^th of April 1996).

On the 26^th of April, 1986, at 1:23’58” a series of explosions destroyed the reactor and building of the 4^th energetic block of Chernobyl’s Nuclear Central Plant (ACP), located near the Belorussian frontier. Chernobyl’s catastrophe became the most serious technological disaster of the 20^th century.

For the small Belarus (with a population of 10 million inhabitants) it meant a national cataclysm, despite Belarusians not having any nuclear plant within their territories. Belarus was still an agricultural country, with a population mainly rural. During the Big Patriotic War, German Nazis destroyed 619 Belarusian villages and their inhabitants. After Chernobyl the country lost 485 villages and towns: 70 of them are buried forever. During the war one out of 4 Belarusians died; nowadays, one out of five lives in a contaminated territory. We are talking about 2.1 million people, 700,000 of them being children. Among the causes of the demographic fall, radiation is at the top. In the regions of Gomel and Mogilyov (the most affected by Chernobyl’s accident), the death rate is a 20% higher than the birth rate.

Children of Ethnic Cleansing 15/05/2009

The raped mothers of the Balkan Wars break their silence and start demanding justice.

They were raped over and over again, night and day, until their captors got tired of it. Their husbands, children and brothers were killed in front of their very eyes. It took place during the declared war in Bosnia (1992-1995) by the recently deceased Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, when the old Yugoslavian Republic opted for independence. Today, 10 years after political leaders signed the peace treaty in the Dayton Agreement, these women are still the living image of the conflict itself. While the fallen men in the war are shaheed, heroes, nobody wants to hear about them; the word rape is too ugly to be present. These women are the forgotten victims, who have needed a movie, Grbavica, winner of the latest Berlin Festival for their country and the world to remember their existence. Over 20,000 Muslim Bosnians were raped systematically by the Serbian forces in the ethnic cleansing campaign organized by Milosevic. Some of them say that it takes too much to live, and that if they don’t kill themselves it is for their children’s sake, many of them the result of the rapes which destroyed their lives.

For them, war and the savagery in concentration camps has not ended yet. They live trapped in the horror images that appear daily in their heads, without a warning and needlessly.  The moment in which the smelly soldier says “You are going to have a Serb son” and they are gang-raped, when the uniformed man takes the knife and cuts their son’s throat, or the minute they start cutting their breasts. But they can’t even afford thinking in all of that, for they still have to bring up whatever is left from their families. Their children are already teenagers and want to know the truth.

It is unknown how many children are the offspring of those rapists, but organizations talk about thousands of them. Many were given for adoption in Europe, others live in Bosnian orphanages and many others have grown up with their mothers, believing that their father was a shaheed, a Muslim who died in the war defending his land. Jasmila Zbanic, director of Grbavica, who carried out an intensive field research in order to prepare the movie, says that women, when they came out of the camps, were in a state of shock and didn’t want to know anything about their children. Many ended up in Northern Europe. Nobody has tracked them and it is not known how many there are. Nowadays, those mothers who gave up their children live in torment. In the International Council for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims of Sarajevo they say that Serb soldiers did not hand the captive women back to the enemy until they were seven months pregnant, when there was no way out and knew for sure that they were not going to have an abortion. They wanted them to have Serbian children, in order to stigmatise the entire family, says Dubraka Salvia, the association’s director.

Without state sponsorship, these women have to scrape a living in the slums of Bosnian cities. In spite of the huge psychological problems they have, they lack social insurance and their incomes are limited to a widow pension, whenever they are lucky. Dayton and the Bosnian Government insist on the fact that they should go back to the areas they were expelled from, but they are terrified of the idea of going back, for they fear coming across face to face with their rapists, the majority of them still on the loose. And the Bosnian authorities defend themselves in the lack of agreement between the two entities which are part of the country –the Serb Republic and the Croatian-Muslim Federation- so as to avoid having to hunt the criminals down. Many women have been silent all these years and they start talking only now, little by little. They know their testimonies could imprison their aggressors, although they barely have faith in justice. Experts insist on the fact that exposing their pain is the first step towards cure, but many are incapable of verbalizing so many atrocities. Not even their husbands –the ones who are still alive- know about it, very few of their children do, for they fear being abandoned.

A Subject that Is Never Brought Up

Hasija Brankovic lives in one of the five hills surrounding Sarajevo, the city that was sieged for about 43 months during the war. At 35, she rarely ever talks about what the soldiers did to her during the month she spent in a concentration camp in Rogatica, in Bosnia’s Serb Republic. Both her older sister and her mother, who has almost gone insane totally, also went through the camps, but the subject is never brought up, despite the three of them living in the same shabby house and sleeping in the only bedroom, together with two other younger brothers.

They arrived to that house by chance after they had been evicted from nine previous houses for not paying the rent. Hazira talks about the tribulations she goes through to rear up her family, being unemployed and without any other help apart from her father’s pension, killed in the war. A mere €170, to which rent -€100- has to be subtracted. Hasija jumps from one subject to the other, later on explaining that the pills for the nerves don’t let her focus on one subject. Sitting on the floor of a living-room-come-kitchen and storing room, she starts talking about her imprisonment in the concentration camp. Her mother, wearing a headscarf and with very few teeth left, quickly tells her to shut up. The woman still fears retaliation.

We agree to meet another day, away from her mother’s presence. She says that the soldiers took them to Rogatica’s school. They arrived there every day and night, with a stocking covering their heads and they asked them whether they wanted to be raped or whether they preferred to watch. Sometimes it was only one man, some other times a whole group. It went on for a month. Hasija cries, inhales and thinks. They killed her father, and her three year-old sister could not make it out of the camp. If it wasn’t because she has to pull her family through, she would do something to herself, states this woman, who keeps to herself more horrors than what she lets out. Hasija doesn’t know yet whether she will testify in front of the judges one day; so far she does not feel up for it.

In the tribunal organized in Bosnia a year ago to prosecute war criminals, and which will replace the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a team of psychologists attends to the women who have decided to testify against their rapists. Jasmina Pusina, one of the therapists, explains that many women do not speak up because they hope to forget. They try to forget without knowing that they will never be able to do so. They live with their secrets until they one day they break down. It happens sooner or later, it is only a question of time, she states, who also explains that the therapy tries to put together the pieces of such a horrifying jigsaw. The smells, the sounds, the images of the torture days; they try to make the women aware of their own trauma so that they can learn to live with it. These therapies are directed by NGOs, which work intermittently, depending on the international aid.

Marijana –fictitious name- decided to talk some time ago, and to re-construct her hair-rising story. She has spoken about it in The Hague. Nevertheless, having testified has not inoculated her against the unavoidable breakdowns every time she re-lives her stay in a Visegrad’s concentration camp, east of the country. They raped her several times. So many that she couldn’t count them. Her 16 year-old son saw everything. They reeked, of onions, of alcohol. They were very dirty. They showed her several knives and asked her which one she thought was the sharpest. She bursts in tears. She saw how they put the knives to her son’s throat, and she asked them to kill her instead. She can’t understand what they have done in order to be so hated. The starts crying again, she sobs, but she wants to keep on. The men had everything thorught through, had everything planned to humiliate them and destroy their community. She realizes that them, the women, are useless now, and the Government turns a deaf ear to the whole issue. But she also knows that if they stay quiet they will never get anywhere, states this woman who lives in Sarajevo, who says she can tell the Bosnian winter’s arrival from the pain in her body’s scars. While in the concentration camp, Marijana recognised Milan Lukic, handed in by Argentina to the ICTY last February, after having spent seven years on the loose. Lukic was under orders of the fugitives Radovan Karazdic and his military boss, Ratko Mladic, accused of genocide for Srebrenica’s massacre, in which they exterminated 8,000 Muslim Bosnians back in 1995.

Maida Cupina also testified in Holland. It was against Milosevic. She doesn’t have a job either and lives in a flat lent to her by the tribunal. At 50 she is tall and properly dressed. Her hair looks well dyed, she wears blusher and lip-liner. She says that she has to be courageous and keep on going for her children’s sake. She was locked up in her father’s house, where she was available for soldiers 24/7. Serbians shouted at her that she was a useless Muslim, staging orgies that lasted for entire days, she tells us, chain-smoking in her apartment, where she lives with her daughter, who is an anorexic and does not have access to medical treatment. Cupina, 1,72 tall, saw her weight drop to 42 kilos. It was only then when the fanatic nationalists decided she was no longer useful for their needs and they exchanged her for Serbian female prisoners. She says that nowadays she lives condemned to a life sentence with those images, with the alcohol and sweat smell of those men, tattooed in her brain.

While Cupina speaks, the television shows the images of Milosevic’s burial in Pozarevac, birth place of the ultra-nationalist Serbian dictator. The soldiers who went to Nevesinje were Serbian, not Bosnian. It was not a civil war but a genocide orchestrated by Milosevic. He has diesd after taking up most of The Hague’s Tribunal’s time and money. What now, this woman who does not trust justice any longer, asks herself.

Suspects Still At Large

Together with Milosevic and the rest of the big names of the ICTY, official sources estimates talk about around 10,000 suspects still on the lose (the majority of them coming from the ranks of Serb fanatics, but some of them Bosnian too). Most of them live in the Serb Republic of Bosnia, one of the country’s two entities, and which, after the expulsion of thousands of Muslims during the war, has become an ethnically clean zone, with barely no Muslim presence. In spite of Dayton having recognized the right to the return of the displaced and the authorities meekly encouraging their return, the victims insist on the fact that going back is not an option until the aggressors are apprehended.

Nusreta Sivac is one of the few women who decided to return and now she has to face the possibility of bumping into her torturers in the three concentration camps she was put into in 1992: Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm, widely known through the images which went around the world, where starving men behind barb wire could be seen. She was there for almost two months. Talking about what took place there is extremely hard, says Sivac, who says that the torture and the rapes were generalized. Before the war she was a judge in Prijedor, a multi-ethnic city back then, 20 kilometres away from the border with Croatia, and where nowadays Muslims make up a tiny community settled in Kozarac. The houses are new there and have been built on the ashes to which Bosnian’s homes were reduced to, burnt by Serb soldiers and militians.

Sivac says that she was always sure of the fact that she wanted to go back. It is her city. The first day she arrived to her house there was a sign saying that that was Omarska’s door. Now she comes across men who tortured her on the street, and some who have been released after serving two thirds of their sentence. Her reaction is to look at them in the eye, it is the only thing that she can do, for with such people one cannot talk. This woman, who has testified in the ICTY against several concentration camps rulers, believes that for women like her, the best way to fight is through the truth.

Sivac, who belongs to a victims of war association, states that many of them do not want to testify because they are scared. The aggressors still have important positions within the Serb Republic of Bosnia. Some of them are military heroes, she says, while we sit in a Turkish air cafeteria in Kozarac. Proof of that is what is left of the Trnopolje’s concentration camp, nowadays re-converted into a school and neighbours’ association. In its entrance there is a large eagle sculpted in stone, paying homage to the soldiers who have lost their lives to help make the foundations of the Srpska Republic. Bouquets of fresh flowers lay on the snow, at the feet of the monument. In that camp, soldiers chose a few girls every day, and took them away to rape them. Some of them returned scarred by the tortures. Some others didn’t even return.

Sivac does not have a current occupation, and it is difficult that she find one in a community in which Muslims are not welcome. At 55, she will not be eligible for a pension either. In the Serb Republic of Bosnia women who were in concentration camps are not even considered victims of the conflict. Everywhere else in Bosnia, women who were systematically raped during the war are officially considered victims since last year, and in theory they are entitled to a pension, similar to the one any man who lost a leg by a grenade. The problem, the Tribunal therapists point out, is being able to prove psychological damage. For that reason, some associations ask the Government to pass a specific law that deals with these women, much in the same way to the one passed for the people who disappeared during the war.

No Specific Rights

The Bosnian Minister for Human Rights and Refugees, Misrad Kebo, admits that there is not a clear definition of who are the women war victims. They have no specific rights. He defends that raped women should not have any special right, and blames the Serb authorities for rapists still being on the streets and that in the Srpska Republic the recognition of women as being war victims does not even exist. He sustains that it is a regional issue, not only an internal one. It is about Mladic and Karadzic, about people who are safe in neighbouring countries. They ask Serb authorities to cooperate, states Kebo in the Government headquarters in Sarajevo.

Kebo also shifts the blame. He blames women for not wanting to speak. According to him, the State cannot do anything as long as they do not go public about what happened to them. He also assures that his Government does not have the necessary resources to help these women. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see Sarajevo a completely rebuilt city nowadays, where there is barely a trace left in any building of the mortars and grenades, but where th0se economic means have not been extended to re-construct the lives of the ones who were damaged for life by the barbarities.

In view of the lack of State initiatives, Grbavica, the recently awarded Bosnian movie in Berlin, could be the catalyst of the long-awaited collective catharsis which encourages women to speak and to remind the Bosnian Government its pending obligation with the forgotten victims.

Like the Spanish The Secret Life of Words, by Isabel Coixet, Grbavica tells the story of a woman raped during the war. The film talks about the economic difficulties with which women like Esma, the main character, have to survive. It also talks about the children who were begotten in rapes, who are now teenagers and who start asking about their fathers’ identities.

War lies

Many of the mothers who decided to keep their children have raised them in refugee camps, sheltered by the lies of the war. But these boys and girls are nowadays 14 and want to find out about their paternal grandparents and aunties…and there is no answer to those questions. Their mothers were raped so many times that, even if they dared telling their children that their fathers were not heroes, they would be unable to find them. They are extremely insecure and dependent children. They live with the fear that their mothers, traumatized and barely able to pull the family through, abandon them. A generational transmission of the trauma has taken place, Salvia believes.

Grbavica, which has been banned in the Serb Republic, and which during its première in Belgrade counted with the presence of Mladic’s and Karadzic’s followers who tried to abort its projection, is currently breaking record ticket sales in Croatian and Muslim Bosnia. The movie has been able to take the systematic rapes form the private to the public sphere, something never seen before in Bosnia. Not to let it be forgotten is an obsession for its young director. In her words, they were acts designed to humiliate. They destroyed so much: religious beliefs, self-esteem, lives. She is still incapable of understanding how men can use rape as a weapon, how they can have an erection as a result of hatred, says Zbanic in Tuzla, in Bosnia’s North-West, where the movie was recently shown.

That night in Tuzla spectators –mainly women- come out of the showing room shaken. Some of them, still with tears in their eyes, are speechless. A little later, Eilla Vickovic, wearing a hiyab, is able to speak again. She says that this movie can offer Bosnians a better future, especially to the ones who are scared that society will not understand them if they talk about being raped. But everybody knows the facts for some time now. She asks herself how it is possible that there needs to be a movie to understand it.

Translated from “Hijos de la limpieza étnica”, by Ana Carbajosa, published in “El País Semanal” on 9^th April 2009 (available in

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/Hijos/limpieza/etnica/elpdompor/20060409elpdmgpor_1/Tes)

Mao’s Ugliest Face 10/05/2009

The effigy of Mao, the People’s Republic’s founder, still presides Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but its myth staggers everyone both inside and outside China. A biography carried out by the linguist Jung Chang and her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, shows the hidden side of the Great Helmsman 30 years after his death.

“Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader.” Not even Hitler or Stalin reached such savagery. That’s how the book Mao: The Unknown Story starts, written by the Chinese linguist Jung Chang, Yibin, 1952), in collaboration with her husband, the British historian and Soviet Union expert, Jon Halliday.

Cover of Book by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday

It is the result of 10 years of research based on over 300 interviews, almost half of them of people in Mao’s circle; among them his daughter and his eldest son’s widow, as well as Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr, Edward Heath, Santiago Carrillo, the Dalai Lama and Henry Kissinger –who incidentally did not like the final result for being too harsh with the Great Helmsman; and also of material extracted from Soviet, Alban and Bulgarian archives. They could not interview Richard Nixon, the US President who in 1973 established diplomatic relations with China, for he died shortly before they could arrange a meeting. From her address in London’s elegant Notting Hill neighbourhood, Jung states that when they started their study in the early 90s they were in a good position. The country had gone through a decade of economic development and people were ready to talk to them and help them and, at the same time, many of Mao’s contemporaries were still alive. Thus they had unprecedented access to his circle and some documents. They believe they have been able to deconstruct many myths.

The book came out in England last spring. For a month it was the number one in the bestselling lists. It has already been translated in Germany, Japan, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Portugal; it is expected to be translated in 20 more countries and it comes out this month in Spain. In the US, where it came out at the beginning of the year, it has had among its admirers the President George W. Bush. It has been banned in China. Nevertheless, Jung Chang has just given the finishing touches to a Mandarin version, which will be released in Taiwan in mid April and which will also be distributed in Hong Kong.

Jung misses her country. Her mother still lives there, and daughter travels periodically to visit her. She does not have, in theory, any problem. In 1978 she was awarded a scholarship to study in England, where she completed a PhD in Linguistics by the University of York after suffering the rigours of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). She was a young Red Guard for a while and she worked as barefoot doctor[1], metallurgic and electrician while she studied English language. She hit fame with her autobiography Wild Swans (10 million copies translated into 30 languages; in Spain it was published by Circe Editorial in 1993), a saga about the ups and downs of her grandmother, her mother and herself, the daughter of an ex-high-ranking Communist Party official who suffered retaliations. Her father’s purge and her mother’s professional marginalization took place when she was 14; it left a deep impression in her, to the point of making her write a small piece of perplexity on Maoism. “I started to have doubts in 1966, but I could not translate them into words, I only knew that I did not like all that, but I was not questioning Mao. And that went on for eight years, until somebody told me who Mao was. Back then in China we did not have any information and we lived terrified, and the combination of both things meant that it was extremely difficult to defy Mao explicitly.”

Mao: The Unknown Story de-constructs completely any hagiography about his humanistic and idealistic figure, that of somebody concerned about the peasantry as portrayed by the American Edgar Snow in 1938. “He did not care for peasants, he despised them”, tells Jung. So far it is the biographic work ever published on the Chinese leader, and without a doubt, the most controversial too. Jung explains that when they started their investigation, she started from the basis that, Mao coming from a family of farmers, he did care about farmers. But once she started reading his writings, she realized that he did not show any compassion at all for them. The book describes a tyrannical and cruel character –he viciously delayed President Liu Shaoqi’s execution so he would suffer longer; the Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was no exception, having his cancer operation delayed, and he abandoned his second wife and children before the Long March (1934-1935). He was selfish, lacked scruples, distrustful to the extreme of always having a secret door wherever he was for fear of being murdered, he had no other ideology than keeping the power, without allies, even refusing to designate his successor (he died utterly ignorant of what was going on around him, manipulated by his fourth wife, Jiang Qing, whom he could not stand, and by The Gang of Four[2]); against the barest minimum of personal hygiene standards and obsessed with sex with young girls, as commented by his personal physician Zhisui Lui ( in The Private Life of Mao, Chatto & Windus, 1994). The authors take importance away from the Long March (they basically deny the main battle ever having taken place), sustaining that its success was mainly due to Chiang Kaichek’s condescendence, the then nationalist dictator, so that he could obtain his own son’s freedom, kidnapped by Stalin; they state that Mao did nothing to address the Japanese occupation of his country and worsened the famine by exporting food to the Soviet Union in exchange of nuclear material and industrial equipment. As Jung puts it, it was absolutely immoral. He started to say unacceptable things when he was 24, things that could have been expressed by a selfish maniac. In 1927, when he was 34, he started to carry out true atrocities and he liked them.

Picture of Mao as a Young Man

 

 

The founder of the People’s Republic behaved like a despot. During the Long March he used carriers; he loved servants to rub his back with hot towels while he read poetry books. The Great Helmsman was a Chinese literature lover. During his sexual orgies he joked and talked to his lovers about Chinese opera, which was forbidden and of which he was a fanatic. Jung states that Mao never drew inspiration from any Chinese emperor, but from Stalin. Mao himself confessed that he was his mentor. In fact, he had more things in common with the totalitarian leaders of the 20^th century than with the Chinese emperors. The latter were terrible, but also benevolent. It was not Mao’s case, who would have been the worst emperor, for according to Confucius[3], whom Mao despised, the people have to obey the emperor, but in turn the latter has to be concerned about his subjects too.

Mao did not feel like a Communist, and he identified even less with Marxism. Jung adds that he declared his lack of belief in the October Revolution, the Soviet Revolution. He converted to Communism in 1920, when he was almost 27 and was given the appropriate job, which was as a sales man in a Communist literature bookshop. He was poor, wanted the job and liked reading.

To the question of whether she believes Mao was not an idealist, Jung Chang answers she does not. Already in 1930 he denied the concept of equality. Nevertheless while in the Communist Party he worked with Stalinism, since 1927. During the time when Stalin sent people to China in order to lead the Chinese Communist Party, Mao realized that Stalinism was his thing, he liked it. The Russians ordered Communist Chinese to burn and burn; to burn cities, to burn houses, to burn peasants and their farms, and also to kill, kill and kill. Those were the orders.

Efigies of Communist Leaders

 

Was that the reason Mao liked Stalin?

Chang specifies that Mao liked Stalinism only because it was a good thing for him and it befitted his character.

The question is then whether Mao and Stalin were alike, and at this point Chang lets Jon, her husband, answer, for he knows more about Stalin and his character. In his words, Mao and Stalin had a lot in common in terms of character. Although it would be a mistake to think they were the same type of person. Stalin was not an idealist, but in a way believed in Communism; Mao did not. And of course there is also the national factor, which is quite a relevant trait. Mao had read quite a lot of Chinese literature and history, but in a global sense he had not read much. Nevertheless, both believed that the secret of the Communist system was based on their own talent and both of them were extremely good at manipulating secretly small groups of people. None of them had the talent of a public democratic politician; they were not that good at giving speeches and winning people over that way. But they were good with the mechanisms which are key to Communism; Mao was probably better with propaganda than Stalin. And of course both could be charming whenever they wanted to be so, both of them were good at dealing with foreign leaders, which is strange if we take into account that they worked in extremely secretive systems.

It is surprising that it has taken 30 years to be able to demystify Mao’s figure in the West; it did not take as long to do so with Hitler and Stalin.

According to Halliday there has always been a kind of reverential attitude towards Mao, from the very moment he died. Many State leaders, especially those who got to know him, showed a deep respect whenever they spoke about him, and some of them still do. He thinks it took some time and a new approach in order to realize that it is important not to be so respectful with certain people. The generation of politicians like Nixon, Mitterrand and others who had to deal with him, who travelled to China, who saw him. They did it in order to validate their foreign policies, and most of them were of the opinion he was a good person to make agreements.

But what about the left’s conduct, of the romanticism that Mao generated among the European youth of the 60s and 70s? Were they completely unaware of what was going on? At this point Halliday concedes that without a doubt such lack of knowledge was part of it. People of her generation used to see Communism and some of them really thought that Mao was going to free Communism somehow. Of all the people he know, none of them knew what was going on in China, but they did not make any effort to find out either, nor did they ask themselves how many people had been murdered or sent to the Gulags[4]. Some of those things were not easy to find out about, but nobody made any effort to do so despite the fact that there were a few good sources, there were books written by Chinese people, there were people who studied the oppression in China during the 60s and 70s. But people did not know much and they did not pay much attention either, and some thought that Mao represented something in reality he did not.

On her part, Chang believes that Mao was extremely good at presenting a good image. He had been a journalist in his earlier times, and he knew how to manipulate the press, especially the international press. He spent at least two hours a day reading international affairs and was well informed and knew how to create a good image. Moreover, two of the Gang of Four members were basically writers, and their main work resided in presenting Mao’s actions with an ideological vision. And Mao noticed them and promoted them because they had that fantastic cover of ideology, which tricked many people. People thought that Mao was doing really good things and sometimes did not understand the reasons behind some things of Communist propaganda actions, but they assumed that there would always be a part of big ideas which could not be understood. People let themselves be cheated by Mao.

Chang agrees that, logically, in China it was worse. People were less informed. The ones who saw things differently were those who had access to external information, like herself. She was born in 1952 and grew up in Maoist China. Mao was their God, he was adored; such was the brainwash they had suffered. After that the Cultural Revolution took place, and a lot of terrible things started happening, which was when she first started to question the regime. She used to wonder that if that was paradise, what hell could be. But despite that, she could still not question Mao. Towards the last part of the Cultural Revolution she even blamed his wife (Jiang Qing) and the people who were around him. And she could have never questioned Mao until 1974, eight years after the Cultural Revolution had started and eight years after her faith in him had begun to fade. She found a copy of Newsweek in English, where there were small pictures of Mao and his wife. The photo caption said that Mrs. Mao was his eyes, ears and mouth. That opened her mind, and she started to realize that, obviously, he was responsible of all the terrible things that took place during the Cultural Revolution; that his wife was not guilty in the least, for she was purely his instrument.

Later on during our conversation, the author states that Mao was so terrified of being overthrown and assassinated that he offered a deal to the opposition led by Deng Xiaoping and told them that he knew to what extent they hated Jiang Qing, for he was aware that she was full of venom. She carried out terrible things on his behalf during the Cultural Revolution, so everybody hated her. Thus Mao simply told the generals that they could do anything they wanted with her as long as they let him die in his bed. That alone shows how scared he was for his life. Jung Chang holds a good concept of Deng Xiaoping, despite him being directly responsible for the harsh repression of the student demonstrations in Tiananmen in 1989. She states, nevertheless, that the reformist leader did not dare in the end to proceed to the country’s de-Maoisation. In her words, when Mao died and the Cultural Revolution came to an end, towards the late 70s and early 80s, there was a golden opportunity to put an end to Maoism. There was an entire country which wanted to free itself from his legacy and the Communist mandate and to lead the country in a totally different way.

The regime still refuses to make a critical revision of the events which took place in Tiananmen, though, and in Chang’s words, without a doubt the government needs to get to that. Nevertheless, in her opinion it is more important to revision Mao, for what happened in Tiananmen was a residue of Mao’s mandate. The day when Mao’s portrait is taken down from Tiananmen Square will be the day when China will start truly changing.

What is then left of Maoism in today’s China? For how long can the dictatorship last?

Halliday states that it can last 20 or 25 more years, he is not sure. In his opinion, Maoism’s main legacy is the monopoly of political power, which is a strong theme between Communism and Maoism: the fact that there cannot be an ethic, moral code independent to the one that the Party establishes. The Communist Party does not allow the existence of any other parties nor organizations which could compete for power and question the political approaches the Government follows and which are thought about secretly. He has a hope that such thing cannot last. He believes that what they are trying to do now is to build something like the PRI in Mexico, and in his view, they are achieving it[5].

The book’s epilogue ends thus: “’Mao’s portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital. The communist regime declares itself to be Mao’s heir and perpetuates the myth of Mao”. Wild Swan’s author states that she wants to be optimistic, for sooner or later the Government will have to open up. Many other dictatorships, among them Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, have gone that way; therefore she believes that the same will take place in the future in her country.

Translated from “La peor cara de Mao”, by Bosco Esteruelas, published in “El País Semanal”, 29^th March 2006 (available in http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/peor/cara/Mao/elpeputec/20060329elpepspor_4/Tes)

 

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[1] A part-time peasant doctor (in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung_Chang ) [Translator's Note.]

 

[2] Most powerful members of a radical political elite convicted for implementing the harsh policies of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. The four were Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Mao’s third wife, Jiang Qing. Manipulating the youthful Red Guards, the Gang of Four controlled four areas: intellectual education, basic theories in science and technology, teacher-student relations and school discipline, and party policies regarding intellectuals. The turmoil of the Cultural Revolution subsided after 1969, but the Gang of Four maintained their power until Mao’s death in 1976, when they were imprisoned; they stood trial in 1980–81 ( in http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9365226?query=the%20gang%20of%20four&ct= ) [T’s n.]

[3] China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have influenced the civilization of East Asia. (in http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9361385?query=Confucius&ct= ) [T’s n.]

[4] System of Soviet labour camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed millions of political prisoners and criminals (in http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9366310?query=gulag&ct= ) [T’s n.]

[5] Institutional Revolutionary Party. Mexican political party that dominated the country’s political institutions from its founding in 1929 until the end of the 20th century. At the national level, the president, as leader of the party, typically selected the party’s next presidential candidate—thus effectively choosing his own successor (in http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9368022?query=PRI&ct= ) [T’s n.]

The Pakistani Powder Keg 10/05/2009

They say it’s the most dangerous country in the world. A territory where poverty, terrorism and nuclear weapons converge. A trip to the most isolated provinces in Pakistan, where the tribe is still the law; to the regions devastated by an earthquake a year ago and the ‘madrasahs’ where the ‘jihadis’ are brought up.

Pakistan

The earthquake lasted 47 seconds. It was like the howl of a dying animal, as a witness who escaped alive remembers. In Jabbar Gali, a remote village four hours away from Islamabad in an all-terrain vehicle, the mosque was one of the first buildings to tumble down. Today, a year after the tragedy, the echo of the call to prayer still thunders in the Siran Valley. The males in the town, dressed the same way they did centuries ago, wear heavy robes of ochre cloth and thick beards died with henna and perform their ritual ablutions in a stream which runs from the peaks. After that they climb the high rocks over the exuberant landscape and they kneel down towards Mecca. The only thing breaking the silence is the roar of the river. It is a deeply spiritual moment. Deserts create prophets and mountains create saints, the anonymous Pakistani teacher accompanying us comments. There isn’t a single woman in sight. They are invisible in this country.

Once prayers are finished, men tell us that the mosque is the first building they want to reconstruct. It is their identity. What gives sense to their lives. We are in the North-West Province. The Pakistani Wild West. A region which spreads between Afghanistan and Kashmir. The two hottest borders on the planet. Poverty, terrorism and nuclear weapons. This isolated and tribal area was devastated by an earthquake on the 8th of October 2005. The final figures were 80,000 dead, 70,000 injured and three million people homeless. When it rains, it pours. In this area, 90% of the population is rural and more than half are illiterate; poverty levels are at almost 60%. In Jabbar Gali 20 out of every 100 women die in childbirth. A higher percentage of girls than boys die before turning five. According to a professional working for Plan, a NGO established in the area back in 1997, who is with us in this trip, states that this is not a biological fact; it’s not that girls are weaker, but rather that they work harder and they are less looked after than boys. Here having a son a blessing from God, but having a daughter is a curse: the dowry has to be paid for her when she marries.

- How does Plan combat such traditions?

- Our goal is to open up women’s eyes: make them be conscious that they have a right to education, health, paid work, justice. A right to live in a healthy environment; to participate in the decision-making. And we are being successful, little by little.

- Is it a religious problem?

- In Pakistan culture and tribalism are added to religion and permeate politics. In Pakistan culture is stronger than religion, because religion is a part of culture.

The work of NGOs is not easy in this country. To start with, they have to overcome the Government’s distrust, not quite inclined to new outside ideas coming in and, once there, it is tricky to manage respecting the complex balance system between tribal, religious and political hierarchies. Tribal law is even above criminal law.

That goes without forgetting that this region is run by the MMA (United Action Front), a coalition of fundamentalist parties which during the 80s took part in the jihad (holy war) against the USSR in Afghanistan; during the 90s they backed terrorism and nowadays, with less noise, they have put their efforts in working for Pakistan to live according to Islamic law. Some experts are already talking about Talibanisation. In certain municipalities, mullahs have forbidden cinema, music, satellite television and foreign press. It is unthinkable for a woman to be out without covering her face. It is impossible to have a drop of alcohol anywhere in the country.

The MMA is not experienced in public management and its electoral program does not devote a single line to unemployment, health, corruption nor the situation of women. Nevertheless, it has successfully yielded profits the deep anti-American feelings generated in Pakistan by the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and its failure in implementing a peace process and reconstructing both countries, in order to erect itself in the country’s third political power and be able to run the two bordering regions with Afghanistan: Balochistān and the North-West Frontier Province. The political weight of the MMA is not determinant in Pakistan yet; on the other hand, it dominates the streets and tele-directs the extensive web of madrasahs (Qur’anic schools) which spreads across the country. These are its big powers.

In such foul environment the earthquake has meant, paradoxically, an opening of the region to the exterior. And a flow of income after ten years of isolation.
When the Taliban reached power in Afghanistan in 1996 the majority of Western abandoned a radicalized Pakistan. The country stopped receiving international cooperation funds. To that loss they would have to add, from 1998 onwards, the international community’s economic sanctions due to the development of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. The situation became unbearable.

General/President Pervez Musharraf’s (forced) political change of direction towards the United States after the September 11 attacks in 2001 has meant a respite for the country’s precarious economic situation. Bush paid Mush (as the opposition calls Musharraf) for rendered services: around €600 million a year and the renegotiation of part of its external debt. The first NGOs returned to Pakistan in 2002. The earth would still have to shake with the destructive power of a million tons of TNT for large organizations, equipped with 5,000 million euro, to return for the reconstruction. Right now Pakistan’s economy is enjoying one of its best moments in history, with an annual growth rate of 7%. An expansive cycle in which the international community’s support of Musharraf has a lot to do with.

For the inhabitants of the most isolated areas in the region the arrival of tens of international organizations has meant, moreover, their first contact with the feared Westerners; even with women managing teams formed by men. The majority admits that it has been a positive experience. The earthquake has shown them that they can be friends, says a tribal leader. For another local representative, Westerners look like sincere people and, above all, have respected their traditions. They consulted their leaders. And women wore a veil. A third one goes even further and says that they have met Japanese and Germans, who in another time wanted to enslave the world, and instead of coming now to enslave, they have come due to humanitarian reasons.

- Have you met Americans? Are they good people?

- I doubt it. The only country to use the atomic bomb cannot be a good one. Anybody who wants to dominate the world, whatever religion he might belong to, is a terrorist. And we are the last obstacle they have to dominate the world.

Not a single smile. Tanned faces, thick beards, haughty looks. We are in the refugee camp of Daryal, outside Manshera, the district’s capital. Eight local leaders, sitting down in sack-cloth chairs, are answering our questions. They belong to the three clans in the area. They are farmers and small merchants; religious and very conservative people; proud.

Nevertheless, in today’s answers the lukewarm common places abound: calls for fraternity among human beings, the definition of Islam as a peaceful religion. It is difficult to get them out of this calculated ambiguity. They do not involve themselves when alluding to Islamic terrorism: they tell us that the Taliban, Osama and al-Qaeda is politics and tell us to ask the Government.

Communicating with their women is even more difficult. To start with, they do not allow having their picture taken. It is against Islam. The conversation is disappointing. There isn’t a single vindication. Out of the 20 women participating in the meeting, 18 cannot read or write. They are completely covered. They are prematurely aged, burdened with children. They do not look in the eye. Even some of them speak giving us their backs. They are incapable of criticizing men’s dominant role in their society. Only when asked whether it is difficult being a woman in Pakistan the oldest (she could be 50) blurts out: what is very easy is being a man in Pakistan. The last reasoning that one of them gives us is a clone of what a tribal leader has expressed earlier on: they have suffered a catastrophe in our lives; they have been left without a home and their relatives have died. Nevertheless, they keep their values firm.

Faced with this image of submission, it is invigorating to talk to doctor Reda, a 26 year-old female doctor who manages a health centre in the Siran Valley. Reda comes from Peshsawar, the city on the border with Afghanistan where al-Qaeda was born 20 years ago. Where you can still acquire a Kalashnikov for about €20 and where the burqa is law. Doctor Reda represents the other side of the burqa. She wears a thin hijab (veil) and she looks at you in the eye. She presents herself like the new model of Pakistani woman, who owns her own fate: her father trusted her and sent her far away from her house to study. And this is being done by many women in the country.

– It might be the case in large cities, because in Pakistan two thirds of the population still lives in a rural environment…

– Women in rural areas still live secluded in the house; they are second-rate citizens. But people need to be educated. My mission as a doctor also consists in education fathers so that they look after their daughters. And educate women so that they give birth in hospital. I see around 60 patients a day, men and women. I respect them and they respect me.

– What about if a religious man refuses to be seen by a woman?

– I would try to convince a fundamentalist, because I have a very solid foundation.

Doctor Reda is right. It is true, they have advanced a lot. Musharraf has promoted a policy of shares which keeps for women a third of the Administration posts and a 10% of the seats in Parliament. Six months ago a Ministry of the Woman was created. There are women judges and female combat pilots too. Nevertheless, women in Pakistan still face an insurmountable barrier in order to achieve equal rights fully: Hudud, which judges and dictates sentence from a traditional Islamic point of view questions like rape, prostitution, divorce or adultery. And even further, blasphemy or alcoholism.

According to the sinister Hudud, in order to be believed by the authorities a raped woman needs the testimony of four witnesses (men). Otherwise, she can end up in prison for adultery. Theoretically she could even be lapidated. For a man, it is enough to just state three times in his home his wish of getting divorced in order to have it granted. On the contrary, achieving divorce for a woman is a trail of tears which can make her lose custody of her children. Musharraf promised to dismantle Hudud. Another reform of his frozen by the pressure of fundamentalists in the streets.

How is the epicenter of an earthquake like? How does the ground zero of desolation look like? Like a nightmare. It is enough to have a look at Balakot, the picturesque mountain village in which the earthquake started, at 8.50 a.m. on the 5th of October 2005.

The bucolic valley crossed by the Kunhar River is nowadays a ghostly movie set; grey, dirty, sown with ruins and tents through which dark figures wander around. Before the tragedy 70,ooo people lived here; 16,000 died. During that first horrible day the town was cut off from the outside world. Night fell. Torrential rains started pouring down. A neighbour, sitting on an old tire, recounts how the water dragged bodies down the streets. They knew them, they were their friends; pieces of the mountain and trees were falling. They thought that Armageddon had arrived: the end of the world. At the following morning first aid started arriving in military helicopters. Together with them, the bearded ones arrived too: fundamentalists.

It was never a secret in the region. For yeas, this inaccessible part of Pakistan was strewn with Islamist training camps. In the 90s they were talks of up to 60 in the area. They disappeared after S-11. As a university teacher states, Musharraf made them disperse or emigrate to more hidden areas. According to him, there was a time in which, if you were willing to fight, they gave you a weapon and training. Everybody knew about it. He states that there are five secret services operating in the region.

– Which ones?

– The Pakistani ISI, the CIA, el British MI6 and both India’s and China’s secret services. And I don’t rule out the Russians and Israelis.

The police investigation of the Islamic attacks in the London metro in July 2005 showed that at least one of the attackers involved had received military training in that area that same year. Another suspect, arrested by the Americans, confessed to having received training in a camp near Mansehra, which could hold 80 people.

Along the same lines, some survivors confirm that after the earthquake the first ones to arrive to offer aid to the population were Islamic militants. Spending a few hours in the area of Balakot still allows the visitor the transit of old pick-up trucks full of youngsters, some of them wearing camouflage clothing. Nobody knows where they come from or where they are headed to. On the other hand, there is not a single soldier or a policeman to be seen in the area.

In the days following the earthquake, after the initial chaos, the province witnessed a sudden disembarkation of international cooperation organizations. And, without missing a beat, charity organizations united to Pakistani fundamentalist parties followed them: al-Rasheed Trust (accused by the United States of financing terrorist activities), al-Khair Trust and the al-Khidmat Foundation, together with Muslim countries NGOs, like Islamic Relief, alarmed by the perspective of losing their clientele to Western NGOs. These charity organizations have already declared that they are aiming at building 1,500 mosques and 300 ‘madrasahs’ in the area. They are also going to look after the thousands of orphans, another proof of their intentions of talibanising the region.

But this doesn’t mean that all those religious organizations promote terrorism. There is a thin red line dividing Islamic fundamentalism from Islamic terrorism; the groups who fight spiritually, even politically, in order to impose a State governed by the Sharia, from the groups who brandish weapons in order to achieve it.

This division seems to be clear for Pervez Musharraf, who reached power in Pakistan after a military coup in 1999. Musharraf seems to take for granted which fundamentalist groups he can manipulate and, on the other hand, which ones are really dangerous for his permanence in power. He has proven to be a master in the art of double-dealing. He is, on the one hand, a firm ally of the United States in the ‘war on terror’ and, at the same time, supports and uses the religious fundamentalist coalition MMA as an outlet for the population’s dissatisfaction. For an international Pakistani analyst, Musharraf has presented himself to the eyes of the West as indispensable; he has created an image which implies that, should he leave, Pakistan would fall in the hands of terrorists. A diplomat destined in Islamabad picks on this, saying that that would not happen; in reality it is Musharraf himself the one who cannot afford to lose the trust of the international community, which is what keeps him in power. Next elections are due in a year. And we will see then…

Mohamed Yussuf is a step away from crossing that thin red line which separates arguing from shooting. We met him in Balakot’s ruins. He invited us to visit what is left of his house, hanging on the mountain’s slope. There, in what was once his terrace, he ordered his three sons to spread carpets and cushions, to bring cookies and a litre and a half bottle of the local refreshment drink. Muslim’s hospitality in all its expression. Mohamed is a primary school teacher, is 42 and embodies the Taliban stereotype: beard a fist long (as tradition dictates), black clothing and a stern face. He is a compassionate man. His forehead is darkened by big scars, the result of having spent many hours praying, head on the floor. There is no radio in his house, nor television, nor any book other than the Koran. His gestures are slow and self-restrained; his expression is sullen, his discourse has a lilt, all of them looking for the figure of the Prophet Muhammad. He explains that, he, as a Muslim, is not allowed to hate anybody. Peace for him is a duty. We come from far away and he opens his house to us. Islam has never attacked anybody. It has never started any war. But when they are bombarded and their children are killed, they have to answer back. The jihad becomes then an obligation for every good Muslim. And that is not terrorism, it is just defense. Like when they took offense with the cartoons of the Prophet, which made their hearts bleed. Muslims are willing to fight against evil. He finishes repeating that jihad is their obligation.

Jihad, the ambiguous Islamic expression which is immediately related in the Western world with international terrorism, was, nevertheless, a concept practically unknown by Muslims for centuries. Up until the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, that is. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor made an unusual war declaration: they were going to mess up the Soviets’ backyard. In a CIA lab somebody resuscitated the concept of jihad as a Muslim community’s holy war against communists. And in that environment were born in history Osama bin Laden and his ‘international brigade’. During the 8os the US press called them ‘Freedom Fighters’. For Fred Halliday, Professor of International Relations in the London School of Economics, the Afghan war was to the 21st century world what the Spanish Civil War was to World War II, the devil’s kitchen in which all the broths which will later poison the world would be prepared.

In the designs of the US’ intelligence services, the Pakistani military dictatorship would be in charge in its own region of brainwashing, training and give logistic support to thousands of jihadists. To that purpose, thousands of madrasahs were opened along the border with Afghanistan: cheap labour for the jihad. And then an accelerated process of Islamisation was carried out in Pakistan, which had been born like a “state of Muslims”, but not like “a Muslim state”. The invention worked. In February 1989 the Soviet army left Afghanistan, and thousands of combat soldiers programmed to kill heathens were left unemployed. In the mean time, the United States washed its hands and left Pakistan to its devices.

Unfortunately, the story of the jihad does not end there. A Pakistani professor explains it to us with the following metaphor: one day the Americans opened the magic bottle, out came the genie and they made a wish, ‘we want to defeat the Soviets!’ The genie granted it. The USSR stumbled and fell. But when he finished its task, the genie didn’t want to go back to the bottle. And he started working for himself. In his words, for the Pakistanis their country was screwed forever.

The mullah Abdul Rashid Ghazi is a symbol of fundamentalism in Pakistan. He boasts that they defeated the Russians in Afghanistan and they are going to defeat the Americans. They are not in a hurry, he says; it took ten years before. Then he asks us whether we know the reason why the United States cannot beat the Muslims, even with all its technology and money. For him, this is because in order to win one has to have courage and principles. The US have 140,000 in Iraq and there isn’t a single one capable of strapping a bomb to his own body and sacrifice himself for his home land. Not even one of them!, he exclaims. On the other hand, Pakistan has thousands of youngsters willing to die, which according to him makes them more powerful. He believes that God is on their side. The mullah crossed the red line decades ago. He runs Islamabad’s Red Mosque and two of the largest madrasahs in the country: Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Faridia, with 10,000 male and female students. His organization, which is thought of being related with al-Qaeda, was an important hook for the jihad during the 80s. He himself fought for three years against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He still carries his Afghan turban with pride. His father, Mohamed Abdullah, was a friend and solid ally of Osama Bin Laden until he was murdered by a rival sect in 1998. In the past two years there have been shootings, assaults and police arrests in this mosque. It has been linked to the President Musharraf’s assassination attempt and the London attacks in 2005. Ghazi has been interrogated several times, but he is still free. And he has his network of 10,000 students between 6 and 20. As he puts it, they do not train students there, they educate them.

So far General Musharraf has failed (once more) in his attempts to bring to light the complex labyrinth of Qur’anic schools abounding in country; the factories of Islamic fundamentalism. His initial intention was to create a government registry, regulate their circle, control their funding and expel foreign students without a visa from Pakistan. Useless. The reform has been postponed indefinitely due to the MMA’s pressing. Nowadays the number of madrasahs in Pakistan is still unknown. The most sensible number could be around 12,000. The number of seminarians is also unknown. Several sources talk about 1.5 million students. With regards to the percentage which predicates violence, the most sensible say around 10% are. Pessimists elevate that number to a third of the total.

As the jihad, madrasahs were initially a reality alien to Pakistanis until the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, the moment when the Islamist industry was set up. In 1947, the year of the country’s independence, there were less than 150 schools in the country, while their political influence was zero. In the middle of the campaign against the USSR, during the 80s, they were talking about 2,500. Nowadays some increase the number to 20,000.

The mullah Ghazi refuses to show us his school. He doesn’t want us to disturb the students’ work. As far as the women’s school is concerned, he says not even he enters it: they are given lectures through a microphone, as Islam forbids interaction between men and women. Nature is weak, he says. Nevertheless, he agrees to show us his home. Previously, a seminarian takes out from the room two Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and guns. He asks us to understand that he has to defend himself from the Government’s terrorist attacks, who seek to please Americans. We are brought cookies and tea. Then he starts his discourse in perfect English. According to him, Islam has spread all over the world very quickly, and the answer from the Western propaganda, which goes against Islam precepts, is to lie, stating that Islam creates intolerance and terrorism. He claims that they respect women, as in they don’t use it as a carnal object. According to the West, Islam ill-treats them, but women have a good life within Islam. He goes on to say that women’s status needs not be changed; it is their culture. They don’t create terrorists either, but in his words, what they do is to educate ulemahs, and they are not taught to attack, but rather defend themselves. Ghazi continues saying that if a Muslim is attacked, his obligation is to extend it across the world. Revenge, to him, is every Muslim’s duty. He says that it is necessary to retaliate with measure: an eye for an eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth…– Even against civilians, like 9/11?– There is no evidence that it was caused by Afghans, and nevertheless, Bush bombed Afghanistan in retaliation. The US is taking part in this as policeman, judge and executioner. If they have evidence, they need to bring it to the International Criminal Court. But they shouldn’t be invading an innocent country.

- A country which was ruled by people backing up terrorism…

- The Taliban was the ideal government for Afghanistan, but they didn’t have time to implement their program. They weren’t experts in country ruling, they were religious people and the Americans didn’t give them a chance. Islamic law is the ideal f0rm of government. Don’t waste your time going over it, everything is in The Book.

When we finally manage to get into another madrasah, the real picture disappoints us. Muhammadia Ghousia, on the outskirts of Islamabad, is not a sophisticated training camp, but a squalid building in some waste grounds where 300 children and youngsters, many of them orphans and most of them from the most humble backgrounds, between 6 and 18, live in appalling conditions. Here life is very hard. Seminarians get up at dawn. They sleep on mats in the same bare classrooms. While on them, they repeat passages form the Qur’an for hours while they rocks back and forth, pushed but God’s breath, as the rector, Mukhtar Ahmad Zia puts it, whose hand is kissed by the boys passing by. Upon leaving the school they can become religion teachers, go to Islamic University or enter the army. Facing our questions, a 12 year-old seminarian is on the brink of tears. The rector starts to feel uncomfortable with our visit. Wide sweat circles are showing in his tunic. The Qur’an’s lull resonates around the madrasah. Everything looks too poor. But one gets the feeling that this precariousness goes being the mere absence of economic means, but rather that it is part of a complete political indoctrination model.

Pakistan is a powder keg with 160 million inhabitants, half of them under 19. A 97% are Muslims. Half of them are poor. It is ruled by a General who reached power by means of a military coup and who avoids a clean democratic play. The army is a State within the State, secular political parties are discredited by the cases of corruption and fundamentalist parties rule the streets. The country has nuclear weapons. Thousands of Qur’anic schools are unregistered. In the north, the country maintains an almost armed struggle with India (which also owns a nuclear arsenal) for the control of Kashmir. In the west, Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan which is 1,500 km. long, in many of whose districts there is only a tribal authority. The country is deeply anti-American, is proud of its traditions, admires the Taliban’s practices and thinks that 9/11 was a set-up. But despite all that, the immense McDonald’s between Islamabad and Rawalpindi is jam-packed every night.

And this September Friday, three days before the 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in New York, nobody’s bothered by our presence at prayer time in the monumental Shah Faisal Mosque, which can hold up to 1,000,000 people. They ignore us. There are no insults, no threats, we don’t feel uncomfortable nor in danger. When they finish, the worshippers put on their shoes and leave. We see them go in extremely old buses.

Translated from “El polvorín paquistaní”, by Jesús Rodríguez, published in El País Semanal, 5th November 2006 (available inhttp://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/polvorin/paquistani/elpepusoceps/20061105elpepspor_5/Tes)

[1] Country (long form) Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Islam-i Jamhuriya-e Pakistan)

Capital Islamabad

Total Area 310,402.97 sq mi; 803,940.00 sq km (slightly less than twice the size of California)

Population 144,616,639 (July 2001 est.)

Estimated Population in 2050 267,813,495

Languages Punjabi 48%, Sindhi 12%, Siraiki (a Punjabi variant) 10%, Pashtu 8%, Urdu (official) 8%, Balochi 3%, Hindko 2%, Brahui 1%, English (official and lingua franca of Pakistani elite and most government ministries), Burushaski, and other 8%

Literacy 42.7% total, 55.3% male, 29% female (1998)

Religions Muslim 97% (Sunni 77%, Shi’a 20%), Christian, Hindu, and other 3%

Life Expectancy 60.61 male, 62.32 female (2001 est.)

Government Type federal republic

Currency 1 Pakistani rupee (PRe) = 100 paisa

GDP (per capita) $2,000 (2000 est.)

Industry textiles, food processing, beverages, construction materials, clothing, paper products, shrimp

Agriculture cotton, wheat, rice, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables; milk, beef, mutton, eggs

Arable Land 27%

Natural Resources land, extensive natural gas reserves, limited petroleum, poor quality coal, iron ore, copper, salt, limestone

[Source: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/pakistan.htm. (Translator’s note.)]

Edith Minturn Sedgwick: The Hell of A Muse 04/05/2009

Andy Warhol elevated her to the altars of his Factory. She became the flag of the ‘underground’ movement, cover of ‘Life’, actress, model and artists’ muse. Edie Sedgwick lived fast and died young, devoured by drugs. Hollywood, which never opened its doors to her, dedicates her now a movie, ‘Factory Girl’.

Edith Minturn Sedgwick

Edith Minturn Sedgwick came from a rich family in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.The Sedgwicks had been triumphing socially for generations: they were not only rich, but also refined and influential. A great-aunt of Edie’s had her portrait painted by John Singer Sargent, the American aristocracy’s painter, and for years the family mansions were the setting of gatherings where the foremost members of the country’s society. Edie celebrated her coming of age in a full regalia party and was inscribed as a debutant in the Social Register. Pretty, elegant, educated in exclusive schools, a good marriage and a resounding success were expected of her. The problem was that Edie Sedgwick wished for something completely different.

In 1964, right after turning 21, Edie moved out of the family home in Palm Springs and went to New York. Her parents must have told themselves that New York wasn’t a bad place to find a husband, so they gave her a portion of her inheritance and left her in her grandmother’s house, who lived in a fourteen-roomed apartment in Park Avenue.

Edie didn’t have the slightest intention of wasting her time in the hunt of a good husband. She wanted to shine in Manhattan, but not as the twee debutante, typical of Waldorf Astoria’s galas: she wanted to immerse herself in modernity’s terrain, to reign in the temples of the New Wave. And so every night, after kissing her grandmother goodnight, she dived into New York’s night, where she became a reference. She was pretty, funny, classy and went around in a chauffeured Mercedes. In just a few weeks trendy Manhattan clubs –the Online, the Arthur or the Shepheard’s- fought for her presence. Everybody thought of her as the party girl of the time.

Andy Warhol met Edie Sedgwick at a party in Lester Persky’s penthouse, an advertising producer whose privileged apartment in 59th St. was the meeting point for New York’s social and intellectual elite of the 60s. Edie, who was an exceptional dancer, was on top of a platform, moving to the rhythm of music. A friend of Andy’s, Isabelle Collin Dufresne, Ultra Violette, said the minute she spotted her that she inhaled and exhaled glamour, that the word “glamour” had been coined for her. According to Victor Bockris, Warhol’s biographer, another friend of the artist’s was less complacent when stating that Edie was like a loony Holly Golightly [Breakfast with Diamonds’ main character]. In any case, Andy Warhol was fascinated by the young slim girl, tall and extremely thin, long-legged and whose dark eyes somebody compared to being the colour of a Hershkey chocolate bar put in the freezer. Had he not been gay, Warhol would’ve asked her to marry him that very same night. Before leaving, he made Sedgwick the closest thing to declaring his love: he said he wanted to do a movie with her.

Edie wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that sentence had the magic words in it that gave free entrance to The Factory’s universe. In 1965, the space created by Warhol at 231 in 47th St. had become the promised land of the New Wave. Completely covered in silver, like a gigantic mirror, The Factory was a film set, a place for orgies and photographic sessions and, especially, the reference point for anybody who wanted to become somebody: you could meet there Rudolph Nureyev, Tennessee Williams, Jackson Pollock, Jane Fonda, William Burroughs, Judy Garland, Roy Liechtenstein or Jim Morrison. Naturally, also policemen were regular visitors to the place when, alerted by the neighbours, they became guests artists and witnessed Andy’s and his friends’ mayhem. In The Factory one could listen to Puccini’s music while inhaling laughing gas, inject drugs, have a piece of marihuana cake for an afternoon snack or participate in an S&M number, everything in the same afternoon. Anything was posible.

Edie entered Warhol’s world through the main door. Of all the girls who made up his legion of fans –pushing each other whenever Warhol decided so-, Edie was the most dotted on, and also the most loved. Truman Capote used to justify the painter’s sudden affection for young Edie stating that Andy had always wanted being somebody like Miss Sedgwick, an adorable Bostonian girl whose parents put her in a long dress. That was, precisely, the Warhol’s biggest fascination: the privileged background, the exclusive origins. He, who came from an Slovak immigrant family badly located in Pittsburg’s outskirts, who had spent his childhood being fed –coincidence?- watered Campbell’s soup, who had had a life dominated by financial difficulties, used to fall head over heels for private school girls, who traveled Europe, spoke French and wore haute couture.

The majority of the genius’ muses were young girls who belonged to swanky families. Isabelle, Ultra Violette, was a French girl with aristocratic pedigree who used to go on vacation with the Rostchilds and the Dukes of Windsor. Brigid Berlin, nicknamed Polk, was the Hearst Corporation’s president’s daughter. Andy used to idolize those young exquisite-mannered damsels, victims of noteworthy class boredom and who were avid for new experiences, and he also got an additional kick in perverting them, tearing them away from their Uptown universe and dragging them to a damp basement covered in tin foil. The heart of The Factory.

Edie was the perfect incarnation of Warholian fantasies: so delicate, so distinguished, so full of charm, so sweet and at the same time so eager to experience new situations. Her wardrobes were packed with designer clothes and fur coats, but she always preferred wearing black leggings and men’s shirts. Despite her apparent scruffiness, she always looked splendid. She used to combine her men’s shirts with sophisticated long earrings and stiletto heels. She used to enhance her helplessness look using thick kohl liner on her big dark eyes. Her broad smile illuminated that girlish face showing dark circles under her eyes. Her wispy waist, her non-existent hips, her flat chest could make one think of her as a boy, but Edie Sedgwick was full of femininity, pure eroticism.

There was something mysterious about that girl; perhaps because underneath her sophistication and good taste there was a terrible past which revealed itself little by little. She had a long family history of mental illness. One of her eight brothers had committed suicide, another one had died tragically. Her father had been diagnosed as a manic-depressive. Even she had been in several resting homes before she was twenty, and she was an anorexic and a bulimic. Later on Edie would say that her father and two of her brothers had tried to abuse her sexually, and that her parents had checked her into a clinic for saying that she had seen her father having sex with a maid. Perhaps her parents hadn’t sent her to New York in order to make her find a husband so much so as to get her out of their hair. By the time she arrived in The Factory she had practically no contact with her family, and that made her find a substitute family in that strange tribe.

Albeit in an asexual way, Warhol became mad about Edie, and she became mad about Andy. A special relationship was forged between the two of them, something similar to a symbiosis which looked sick to some but which ended up being utterly destructive. With the aim of looking like Andy, Edie died her hair silver, and he started wearing, like she did, large shirts over his leggings. Sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. Andy was delighted to have found his alter ego: it was like having within his reach the image that was waiting for him on the other side of the mirror. The decided to mould Edie until turning her into the woman he would’ve wanted to be had he not been born a man.

The artistic collaboration between Edie and Warhol began with a short appearance of the young girl in the film “Vinyl”, to which a protagonist role “Poor Little Rich Girl” followed. After that other movies would come: “Beauty #2”, “Kitchen”, “Bitch”… Warhol’s movies didn’t have a script: he would simply focus the camera on his star and invited her to speak, move and express herself. It wasn’t about telling a story but rather about creating a new form of art. And Edie, with her photogenic face, her elegance and high-pitched voice, was perfect for Andy’s plans, who just used to scream; you’re ideal, marvelous, just speak. Those films, which weren’t shown in commercial theatres, were Edie’s spring board, who became the queen of New York’s avant-garde. Beside her, to share the throne, was Andy Warhol.

In The Factory Edie found something more than a stage where she could unleash her artistic aspirations. The space conceived by Warhol became her testing grounds where she could experiment with drugs. Although a while later Edie would blame Andy for her addiction to half a dozen of substances, the truth is that when she met the artist she was already a drug user. The Factory only contributed to keep her habit, for all types of concoctions were around. The most popular drug was crystal meth , which could be taken dissolved, sniffed or injected, but there was also acid, speed, hash, amphetamines…Edie took anything. With or without The Factory, she was a drug addict who was completely dependent on pills. Meanwhile, she kept on living her popularity dream beside Andy Warhol.

Women’s magazines also fell at The Factory’s princess’ feet. Edie Sedgwick represented the fashion canons of the 60s: she looked brittle and fragile, had thin bones and girlish traits, like Hane Shrimpton or Twiggy, who topped the covers at the time. In came illustrated reports for Life or Vogue. The result of the shooting sessions is there: Edie owned the camera, she could pose, had a face full of meanings and nuances and an elastic body, perfect to show clothes off. Anybody would’ve predicted she would have a dazzling fashion career. But Edie was unforeseeable, had a changing mood and a quick temper. And, in case that wasn’t bad enough, she was always surrounded by a strange entourage where there was always a second rate drug dealer looking for payment of her latest dose. And that was something which sent chills down the spine of anybody who was within Diana Vreeland or Carmel Snow’s distinguished orbit, the grand Dames of fashion magazines. Thus, after a couple of articles Edie was generously paid and she became one more number in the black list of conflictive cover girls with which it was better not to work. Again.

Edie had been in New York only a few months when she realized that she had squandered almost her entire inheritance: renting luxurious cars, inviting generously people she didn’t even know, her clothes and her drugs had eaten up her savings. It was around that time when she met Bob Dylan and his collaborators, Bobby Neuwirth and Albert Grossman. A silent war had been going on for a few months between them and Andy’s people; the Factory’s people against the Hotel Chelsea’s tribe. Starting a friendship with Edie was for Dylan a way of annoying Warhol. On her part, Edie found the musician and his friends very funny, and moreover, she was growing tired of being the vase of a gay man. Dylan and his friends were heterosexual, and Edie found in sex another excuse to unbalance the scales. The group welcomed her with open arms, and they took the opportunity to attack Warhol, asking Edie whether it was really true that he didn’t pay her for the movies, whether she was really working for free. They started telling her that he was taking her for a fool, and that she deserved better, for she could be a true movie star, or she could even make a record, which would make her earn millions.

Poisoned by the comments, tired of her red figures in her bank account, Edie spoke to Warhol and told him she wanted to be paid for her work. Andy tried to justify himself; his movies were works of art, not Hollywood mega productions. He went on to say that they were good as promotional items, but they didn’t bring him any revenue. In fact, they were quite expensive. Andy thought that everything had been cleared, but Edie castled herself: she wanted to be paid, she wanted to get something for everything she did in his stupid films, and if Andy wasn’t prepared to treat her like a professional actress, others would. Their relationship started to go cold.

Despite everything, for appearances’ sake the Andy-Edie tandem was still working. They were the best example of a pop couple, and their public appearances dragged hundreds of fans, who gave them ovations whenever they came out of a limousine together, and they let themselves be photographed wearing their impossible attires, their identical hairstyles and their uninterested look. One of such star-like entrees almost ended in tragically. It took place in Philadelphia, in autumn 1965, when the Institute of Contemporary Art organized a retrospective show of Warhol and the premises, which could hold 500 people, were packed with over 2,000. When Edie and Warhol showed up, the crowd pounced on them in a collective fascination fit. It was necessary for the security services of the building to intervene, and took both the artist and his muse out of the room. Both of them were delighted with the commotion they had caused, conscious that they had reached the peak of their popularity.

By that time, Edie’s problems with drugs increased. She used to start the day with a handful of pills, and she chained one dose with another until bed time. She started to go into a spin. She walked like an automat, she could stay days without bathing and had hysteric crises every so often. During this period Andy started to say that Edie would end up committing suicide, and that he hoped that when it actually happened she would call him so that he could film it. Their arguments were more and more frequent: she kept on insisting on Andy to pay her work, and gradually he stopped taking any measures in order to placate the infuriated Edie. She had gone from being his best friend to become an unbearable drug addict who had lost her self control.
In his next production, “My Hustler”, Andy decided not to count on his muse and recorded the film behind Edie’s back, who felt abandoned by him. A short time later she would sign a contract with Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager, and would make known her intention of not returning to The Factory. The evenings in Warhol’s lair were substituted by day and night parties at the Chelsea Hotel. Dylan was inspired by her and composed two songs of his “Blonde on Blond” record, and they all told her that her artistic career would definitely take off. In spring 1966 fifteen months after they first met, she lost all contact with Andy Warhol, and she devoted all her energies to her new group, in her new family, which was going to guide her towards the road of success.

It is difficult to know how aware was Edie Sedgwick of the fact that she had let herself be seduced by something that was only the siren’s song of people who only wanted her to be on their side. Hollywood wasn’t waiting for her. Commercial cinema didn’t await her, nor did record labels or producers. And one day, the Factory girl, the Warholian muse, the girl who was in Bob Dylan’s songs, took a look at herself and was horrified at what she saw. She wasn’t the charming debutante who had arrived in New York to live her dolce vita and spend indiscriminately her family’s fortune anymore, but her own remains, consumed by drugs and alcohol: a walking corpse who needed stimulants to wake up and sleeping pills before going to bed; a poor twenty-something who had wasted her life, who had no future nor present either.
Edie run away from Dylan, Warhol and New York. She spent some time with her family in a desperate attempt to find herself, but there wasn’t any room for her there either. She went back to New York and starred in a movie where her work went almost unnoticed. She was completely drug dependant. She started several de-tox programs and was at the brink of overdosing a few times. She was checked in half a dozen hospitals, turned a living skeleton. She admitted to her doctors that she spent days on end without eating at all, surviving through coffee and pills. Isabelle Collin Dufresne, who became Edie’s close friend, tells in her memoirs that the young girl was sentenced for drug trafficking and spent some time in jail. Prison, psychiatric centres and rehab clinics were the setting of Edie Sedgwick’s final years. Precisely in one of those institutions she would meet Michael Brett Post, whom she married a few months before her death.

The people who saw her during her final days state that Edie had become a monstrous caricature of the woman she had once been. Drugs had deformed her face, her body was all bloated and her mind was destroyed by confusion and delirium. Whenever she thought about The Factory it was only to blame Warhol and his friends of the hell her life had become.
Edie’s end was very similar to Marilyn’s: she was found in her house, dead by the effects of some drug. It was never clear whether she had overdone it with some trip or whether she had decided that it living wasn’t worth it anymore. She was 28. Andy Warhol found out about her death through a friend’s call. The news didn’t affect him too much. He only asked who was going to inherit all of Edie’s money. The person at the other end of the line answered that Edie Sedgwick was completely penniless. Warhol just went “ah, well” and proceeded to ask her what she had been doing. For Warhol, Eddie had stopped existing the very moment she left The Factory, with her black leggings and masculine shirt, to be in Bob Dylan’s songs and the cheap rooms of the Chelsea Hotel.

Translated from “El infierno de la musa”, by Marta Rivera de la Cruz, published in El País  Semanal on the 19th November 2006 (available in  http://www.elpais.es/solotexto/articulo.html?xref=20061119elpepspor_2&type=Tes&k=infierno_musa)

The Depraved Mystic 28/04/2009

At 12.30 am on the 16th of December 1916, Grigori Yefimomich Rasputin opened the door of his apartment on Gorojavaya St in Saint Petersburg on the way to his own death. The staircase of the building was dark, so he offered to guide his companion, Prince Felix Yusupov and Count Elston-Sumarokov, through the darkness. They went down the stairs holding each other by the arm. Rasputin knew the way by heart, but Yusupov thought to himself that the eyes of the peasant were capable of seeing. Everybody who had ever met him used to agree on the strange nature of his gaze, on its hypnotic power, on the disturbing depth of his sockets. In the pictures that have reached us he still looks at posterity with an outlandish look of diabolic madness. Nevertheless, misfortune’s gallows humour did not allow the clairvoyant, to whom many had attributed superhuman powers, to realise that he was beside his own murderer.

It was not too cold at that time (two or three degrees), and the snow was falling calmy, indifferently and quietly over the city. When they stepped out on the street the Prince’s car was already waiting for them, driven by Dr Lazavert disguised as a chauffeur –another person in the plot to put an end to the most influent Court advisor in the country, the man whom the Tsars considered holy and whom they received for hours both in the Winter Palace and their Tsarkoe Selo residence, the man they usually called Our Friend in the secret and affectionate way which the marriage of the Emperors of All the Russias was so fond of.

The domestic routine of Rasputin’s last night, together with a multitude of details related to his life in court and his activities, is known to us through the testimonies of his maid, his circle of followers and some politicians, who had to report to the authorities as a result of the later February Revolution. The reports were kept in the file of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry for the Investigation of Illegal Acts by Ministers and Other Responsible Persons of the Tsarist Regime, Instruction Section ^[1]. Such commission was abolished by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, and the file was not found until 1995 when the cello player Milan Rostropovich acquired it in a Sotheby’s auction, donating it afterwards to his writer friend Edvard Radzinsky, whose The Rasputin File constitutes one of the most important studies carried out on our character to date.

During that last night of his, Rasputin –also known as Grigori, Girshka, The Elder (in the traditional Russian sense of calling Elder to saints and wise men) and The Obscure One (as recorded in the police files from August 1914 onwards) received the visit of one of his frequent admirers. She was a chubby blonde of around 25, as per his niece’s, living at the time in the apartment, and the building caretaker’s report. She stayed with Rasputin in the famous sofa room, where damsels in distress, professional devout ladies and also curious women of doubtful reputation used to stop by every time they went to flutter around the enlightened man.

Alexander Protopopov, Home Secretary back then, an almost almighty position in 1916 Russia, showed up at the apartment at midnight. He stayed for ten minutes, but Grigori did not tell him he had planned to go out. Protopopov was one of the decisive pawns which fate used to direct Rasputin on the way to his own death. In the past the Secretary had ordered all daily surveillance over Rasputin ^[2] to be stopped from 10 pm onwards so that there would be no record of his frequent visits to the house in any official report. Rasputin was unaware of this, so when that night he went out to the street holding Felix Yusupov’s arm he was convinced that his guards would follow them closely. But the truth was that he was walking self-confidently and alone beside the person who had long ago organized a conspiracy to kill him.

The Yusupovs were the most important people in Russia after the Royal family, and as rich if not richer than the Emperors themselves. From the times of Ivan The Terrible they owned immense areas of land. They later went on to become great industrials. For 300 years the Yusupovs had become some sort of Royal shadow. Felix Yusupov was married to Tsar Alexander’s niece, the Great Duchess Irina. Although he carried the blood of the cruel and warlike Tatar people, Felix himself was more of a sissy. Curiously enough, he was denied to join the military service because he did not want to participate in any war that involved spilling blood. During his youth, long before his conspiring intrigues, he led a life of a well-off and dissolute pleasure taker. Together with his older brother Nicholas (killed on a duel by his lover’s husband later on) he enjoyed the voluptuous nightlife of Saint Petersburg and Paris, many times dressed like a woman, while he played with bi-sexuality, a hobby he kept for the rest of his life.

The night of the 16th of December the car driven by Dr Lazavert came to a halt at a lateral courtyard of the Yusupov Palace, on the Moïka canal. Felix and Irina inhabited one of the building’s wings, and they were refurbishing it to their taste. That rehabilitation included the basement where the murder of Rasputin was staged. It featured thick walls and small windows at ground level. (As Radzinsky indicates in his study, history mirrored that event with the location of the Ipatiev House where the Royal family was killed soon after, in the middle of the Yekaterinburg night, which was chillingly similar.) The basement had been re-decorated in the classic style of a Russian dining/living-room. We know the exact details of the scene, described in Felix’s memoirs many years later and published in Paris. The ceiling was vault-shaped and an arch divided the two sections of the basement: one of them had been turned into a small dining-room, and the other one into a small living-room. There were niches in the walls with housed Chinese porcelain vases. They had brought down from the attic  some old chairs of carved wood and leather upholstery, ivory chalices, a larder from the times of Catherine The Great with ebony inlays and a labyrinth of bronze and glass columns which hid small drawers. A Persian rug covered the floor, and in front of the larder an enormous Polar bear’s skin was spread. The guest dining-room table was in the centre of the room. A spiral staircase communicated the basement with Felix’s rooms. Half-way through the staircase there was a door that gave access to the courtyard, through which Felix and Rasputin entered the basement as soon as the car stopped.

The bait used to take Rasputin to that lair has never been precisely known. The most probable thing is that it was a mixture of several excuses. On the one hand, it was a flattering invitation, as it came from one of the most powerful persons in the country. On the other hand, as indicated by the close and astute witness the Great Duke Nikolai Mijailovich in his diary, Felix had used his erotic charms in that self-seeking friendship, and Rasputin was not alien to male love because it was easy for him to reconcile the basics of masculinity and femininity. And last, but not least, Rasputin longed to meet the beautiful Irina, used as bait by Felix, and for whom The Elder lusted for. The ruse required that Irina be treated from an illness of a supposedly spiritual origin. As we shall see, Rasputin often expelled the demons of lust through the use of lust itself, he internalized alien sin by committing the sin himself. That way the later repentance would free both healer and patient.  Everything seems to indicate that during the last days of the conspiracy Felix was being treated from the same condition. In theory, Irina had to be cured that night -saved from perdition by Grigory Yefimovich, the peasant who came from Siberia and who, back then and during the drunken stupor of 1916, had boasted of having Russia “in the palm of his hand”.

Nevertheless, that night Irina was not in the Yusupov palace. Eventhough she had initially agreed to take part on the conspiracy, she soon repented and on her letters to her husband she pleaded him to abandon the assassination plan. She stayed in her Crimea residence, suffering of a hyperaesthesia crisis which prostrated her in bed with a fever, surrounded by strange ill-fated premonitions which predicted war, blood and suffering for the country –as it eventually happened.

But when Rasputin walked down the stairs and entered the basement he was convinced that the niece of the Tsar Alexander II was at home, in the upstairs quarter, from where voices and gramophone music with the melody of the American song “Yankee Doodle” could be heard.  The music brought about a slight inappropriate frivolity to the events surrounding a crime.

Once he parked the car, Dr Lazavert got rid of his chauffeur disguise and joined the rest of conspirators in the first floor rooms. Vladimir Purishkevich was also there, a monarchical and anti-semitic politician, member of the Duma ^[3] and who had already delivered controversial speeches against both Rasputin and the Tsarina Alexandra Fiodorovna, calling her a German in Russia’s throne, alien to the country and its people. Together with Purishkevich were the lieutenant Sujotin (a young officer who was in [Yevgeni] Preobrazhensky’s regiment) and the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II and another character to play a main role in the conspiracy.

Dimitri was a tall, hefty and handsome Imperial Guard officer. An athlete who took part in the Olympic Games, he was a scrounger and a member of the exclusive Yacht Club -back in those days a main place where seditious conspiracies were forged under the country’s growing instability. Without a shadow of a doubt he was Nicholas’ favourite, who probably saw and admired in his libertine relative everything that fate had denied him, making him first a hypochondriac with an extreme lack of will power and then loading him with duties in a time of serious internal and international conflicts. Dimitri had been engaged to Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, the Tsar’s eldest daughter, but the engagement had been called off at the Tsarina’s and Rasputin’s urges. Tsarina Alexandra was aware of the fact that Nicholas’ cousin despised The Elder, so she uncovered the scandal of Dimitri’s homosexual indiscretions with Felix Yusupov. She also reported his hardened drinker’s temper, him being a duel provoker hooked on never-ending wild parties. Rasputin predicted that Dimitri would soon contract a skin condition as a result of his licentious life, and thus Coco Chanel’s lover saw himself being put aside from his grand wedding, already announced in society.

Thus, the four conspirators were listening by the staircase on the first floor to Rasputin and Felix’s voices coming from the basement. Down there they were sitting facing each other, talking lively by the fireplace. Grigori had walked the blurred, enigmatic and almost always inexplicable path of his own life and had ended up in that basement.

He was born in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen (a district in the Tobolsk province), on the 10th of January 1869, St Gregory’s day. We know very little of his early years, apart from the fact that his life initially looked like one most of Siberian peasants were destined to: the routine of a drunken man. That was until he converted through pain and humiliation. His Dostoyevskian-type ecstasy was inflicted to him by a neighbour, who caught him stealing in his fields and thrashed him. From then onwards, he became a begging pilgrim with a strange nervous system. Some witnesses of the time recall that he looked like a retard, always fighting his inner demon. The origin of the legend that he had predictive powers, that he could make prophesies (some having to do with the fall of the Romanovs, others about the end of disastrous draughts), comes from this pre-history of his.

Rasputin was doubtless linked throughout his life to the teachings of the heretic Khlysty, flagellators who became living christs during delirious ceremonies of sexual promiscuity, which they called joys. The Khlysty used to practice a spiritual training which required three compulsory steps: sin, repentance and purification. Without this mystic heretic background Rasputin’s future behaviour towards matters of the flesh could never be understood.

The Tsars must have met him in November 1905, although introduced them remains unknown. The temper of the Tsars is as mysterious to us as Rasputin’s, for at the end of the day it was the Tsars themselves the ones to decide to believe in him –against the warnings of the rest of the Romanov family, the high aristocracy, the political class and other commoner witnesses. Nicholas, who had been born surrounded by blood –as was his dynasty’s story, was a taciturn and superstitious human being. Alexandra, despite her firm character and her interfering intents to become a great statistician was prone to all sorts of mysticisms. Apparently they took Rasputin as the reincarnation of a deceased old spiritual adviser, Monsieur Philippe, a French magician who had a therapeutical reputation. In their first meeting Rasputin showed to have the intuition of a cheat. He asked to see Alexei, the Tsarevich, whose ill health, caused by haemophilic crisis, had the Royal family upside down, which had desperately looked for an heir after the birth of four Grand Duchesses. Rasputin put his hands on him, stared at him, prayed out loud and the kid felt relieved instantly. Ever since then he became indispensable to the Tsars. Nobody ever found out whether Alexei’s improvements were more related to the old man’s hypnotic powers or to his knowledge of ancient pagan healing secrets, but the bottom line is that the improvements did take place.

In the meantime, Grigori Yefimovich, settling down in St Petersburg, started to climb up within the Palace’s hierarchy and winning the Royal Family’s trust completely. By 1910 he already allowed himself to deal with politics. He influenced Russia’s recognition of both the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the part of Austria-Hungary and in the Tsars’ warlike neutrality (interpreted by many as a betrayal to Serbian Orthodox brothers). Moreover, Rasputin treated the Head of the Holy Synod, Sabler, in order to earn himself a follower in the Tsarina’s clique. From then onwards Alexandra and Rasputin managed to reciprocally wish for the same: The Elder corroborated with God all the Empress’ political maneuvers.

At the same time, Rasputin’s circle of devoted admirers was growing. They were idle members of society, bourgeois ladies who had religious pretensions, but also simple commoners. They looked after him as devouts would have dotted over scarlet cardinals. Countesses and Duchesses used to visit him, kissed his hand, kneeled in front of him, showered him with gifts and, before they left, requested, as the highest favour, to be able to take his dirty clothes, with sweat if possible, in order to wash them.

The sexual favours he received from women were already legendary back then. He went to bath houses surrounded by devout ladies, he administered his disciples –his fools, in the mystic sense of kind purity, private healings from the devil of lubricity in his office’s sofa, and he chased any stranger who crossed his way. In the police reports of those years, policemen recorded his visits to brothels, which took place several times a day. Sometimes he fell into a fit, kidnapped a street prostitute, disappeared into an apartment and came out shortly after, talking loudly and making strange gestures. The rumour in the capital was that his cock was as big as a horse’s. The Tsarevic’s nanny, Mary Vishnyakova, accused him of having thrown himself on her and stealing her virginity in a joyful ritual.

In those days Rasputin had also accomplished a sociological kind of feat: he managed to unite everybody in the common task of loathing him. The [political] left took him for a reactionary and anti-Semitic person; the right and the Monarchy feared his preferences towards characters they detested; the Court despised him as a peasant; the Orthodox Church was suspicious of his airs of heretic Khlysty; the Prime Minister back then, Stolypin, did not understand the power Rasputin had over the Tsars; the Romanovs were scandalized by his influence; the military high command complained about his opposition to war. All things considered, what is it surprising is not that there was a conspiracy against his life but that dozens of them had not been carried out already.

In much the same way, it is nothing but a mystery the fact that the Tsars not only turned a deaf ear to all the accusations that reached them –which came from their family circle, from the members of the Duma and from the regime’s secret police informants, but that they systematically went on destituting and putting aside any person who tried to set them against The Elder.

The only likely explanation lies once again in the Emperors’ extraordinary supersticious religiousness: it is not that they were blind but that they were convinced they could see the hereafter. They believed they could see what others were incapable to understand. Alexandra and Nicholas thought Rasputin had the gift of the iurodstvo, the holy foolishness ^[4] . In the Russian mystic tradition, mad saints have a great historical importance. St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square is devoted to one of them. They were usually beggars who went around naked and weighed themselves down with chains, screaming oracles and prophecies. They pretended they were mad in order to suffer humiliations and to experiment pain and prosecution, like Christ. They mocked conventions and wordly vices as a way to become mirrors for hypocritical sinners. They harassed women, fornicated in public. Such were the exploits of the iurodstvo.

Alexandra’s private library contained the volume Holy Fools of the Russian Church, with margin notes, including a chapter on the sexual libertinage of ascetics. That is why the Tsars knew how to interpret Rasputin’s behaviour like nobody else.

Before the beginning of The Great War, an unknown woman inspired by Iliodor –a religious enemy of The Elder stabs Rasputin in Pokrovskoye. For days, Grigory is on the brink of dying. When he returns to St Petersburg he is another man: he drinks desperately, dances in circles kicking his boots for hours without feeling dizzy, and he turns more prone to obscure predictions: Angels in the ranks of our warriors, the salvation of our fearless heroes with delight and victory…Nevertheless, whenever he was called to Tsarkoe Selo in the middle of his drinking binges in order to treat Alexei he surprisingly managed to clear up and became suddenly sober.

When the war begins to go astray Nicholas dismisses the Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaievich Romanov ^[5] as Commander in Chief of the Russian Army. At Alexandra and Rasputin’s request the Tsar himself takes charge of military operations. The Tsarina then takes charge of the Government and organizes a true coup d’état with the help of her main advisers: Anna Vyrubova and Grigori Yefimovich. The Home Secretary, the Holy Synod’s General Agent and the Head of Police are also dismissed and substituted by more trusted people. The indignation felt towards the role of the Tsarina could not be greater. She was thought to have bewitched Nicholas, to be hastening the fall of the Monarchy and to be secretly working in the signing (after ordering the dissolution of the Duma) of a unilateral peace treaty with her country of origin, Germany, which would be considered as a national embarrassment.

When Felix Yusupov heard about such rumours he decided he had to kill Rasputin at any cost and as soon as possible.   All the Elder’s steps had taken since his early wandering times around Siberia like a feverish visionary brought him to that basement in the Moïka canal. Thus, when Prince Yusupov had him sitting in front of him, he offered him a few pink creamy tea cakes poisoned with potassium cyanide crystals.

According to the legend, Rasputin refused them together with the Madeira wine, also laced with cyanide. When Felix Yusupov started to run out of conversation topics and suspect signs of his victim’s premonitions, Grigori decided to eat and drink. Felix later wrote that that night The Dark One drank enough glasses of Madeira wine and tea cakes to kill a regiment of Cossacks, but that he did not show any symptom of poisoning, apart from an incresase in salivation and a constant yawning. Desperate, he left the basement, checked with the rest of conspirators and asked Dimitri Pavlovich his regulation weapon. He went back to where Rasputin was with the gun behind his back and shot him in the chest. The mythological tale states that he fell on the polar bear’s skin, and that the rest hurried to move him so as to avoid it to get soaked with blood.

They left him in the basement, in the dark, on the naked floor, and went upstairs. In his memoirs Felix recounted that shortly after he could not resist the need to see the corpse again. They went back to the crime scene, shook the body and felt it was still warm. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and stared at his assassin’s face. Next he stood up and grabbed Felix powerfully by the neck. When the Prince managed to let go, Rasputin, who was repeating Felix’s name without stopping, escaped towards the garden through the staircase. Purishkevich caught up with him in the backyard and shot him four times with his Savage revolver in two rounds of shots. He missed the first two. The third one, he later wrote, hit Rasputin in the back as he was running, and the fourth one hit him in the head. The servants in the Yusupov Palace dragged the corpse back into the house through the snow. Once there Felix suffered a hysteria crisis and started to hit Rasputin’s head with an iron bar covered with rubber until he fell exhausted, drenched by the splattered blood.

Just then two police officers on duty in the Moïka canal precinct knocked on the Palace’s doors. They thought they had heard some shooting. The nervous Purishkevich identified himself as a member of the Duma, confessed to the murder and appealed to the policemen’s patriotism in order to keep silent –for Mother Russia’s benefit. Nevertherless, early next morning St Petersburg’s Mayor Alexander Balk reported to Protopov –Minister of Home Affairs the unbelievable conversation that had taken place between one of the murderers and the two accidental witnesses of the shooting. The rumour of Rasputin’s murder spread all over the city until it reached the Tsarkoe Selo and the Tsars’ ears.

Although we will never know exactly what happened in that basement, Radzinsky’s doubt on both Yusupov’s and Purishkevich’s written accounts do make sense. Rasputin’s amazing resistance to arsenic can be explained by two reasons. First, the wine’s dissolution was not appropriate and the arsenic dose was insufficient. As far as the tea cakes, Rasputin did not eat them: he never skipped his diet, which prescribed to abstain from meat and sweets because they darkened one’s halo. The most probable explanation is that Felix, who hated weapons and was of an apprehensive nature, wounded him only slightly. Thus his resurrection. As far as Purishkevich is concerned, it is not credible that a civilian missed the first two shots and then managed to hit him later, when he was further away, with two precise shots in the back and head. The Duma’s member took some trouble during the following days in trying to acquit Dimitri Pavlovich in as far as possible. He said many times that the Royal hands were not blood-stained. But it had to be Dimitri, a courageous soldier and elite shooter the one to strike Rasputin in the yard. The second round, the mortal shots, came from the Tsar’s cousin’s pistol. That is why Nicholas imposed Dimitri, his favourite, the most severe punishment and sent him to the front in Persia. He did not have any doubt about who had taken Rasputin down.

The floating corpse showed up in the freezing waters of the Neva River with a naked torso on the morning of the 19^th of December. The face was disfigured; there were bullet holes in the thorax, back and head. It was strange: its arms were up. According to the doctors in their autopsy report, Rasputin was still alive and trying to break his ties when he was thrown by his murderers into a hole dug in the ice under the Great Petrovsky Bridge.

Soon after that Nicholas would abdicate and a cloud of blood would rain over Russia.

Translated from “El místico depravado”, by Carlos Marzal in El País Semanal, published on the 12^th February 2006 (available in http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/mistico/depravado/elpeputec/20060212elpepspor_8/Tes)

by CARLOS MARZAL

EL PAIS SEMANAL – 12-02-2006