This article was first published in Vanity Fair.
It takes a lot to terrorize a Russian. Compared to the truly spectacular acts of terrorism and violence that Russians have suffered over the past two decades, today’s suicide bombing at Moscow’s busiest airport, Domodedovo, is too small-time to have much of an effect besides pissing off an already-pissed-off population.
Back in 2004, two passenger jets that took off from this same airport were blown out of the sky by Chechen “black widows”—Chechen women widowed by the brutal war with Russia, and turned into suicide bombers. Shortly after that double-Lockerbie airplane bombing, opposition leader Eduard Limonov explained to me what he thought was behind the logic: “They understood that Russians wouldn’t be moved if only one plane was blown up, so they blew up two planes simultaneously, just to get our attention,” he said. Limonov used to write about Russian hard-heartedness, the result of their brutal experience with Communism, followed by the nihilistic Yeltsin Era, when the average male’s life expectancy plunged from 68 years to just 56, in a free-market Babylon of corruption, plunder, and violence.
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Today is March 8, meaning it’s International Women’s Day in the former Warsaw Pact nations. It brings back mixed emotions–gagging, for starters, just remembering the revolting cheesiness of those fat, vain Russian TV hosts showing off their toasting skills in…
This article first appeared in The Nation.com… If you’ve been wondering what ever happened to that wonderful Orange Revolution in Ukraine–because let’s face it, it was probably the last feel-good moment America collectively experienced in an otherwise bummer-packed decade–Sunday’s presidential…
Here’s a gnarly little story out of Russia I just stumbled across on Newsru.com. This death porn tale comes from a town in the Urals named “Snezhinsk,” which means something like “Snowville.” It’s one of Russia’s last “closed cities,” where…
We’re not sure if this is a photo shoot for a real gymnastics team or a tryout for some sort of jailbait gymnasts’ fetish site. Whatever it is, we look at these tyolkas and cannot help but think: “With ruble…
Russian companies know that sex sells. They also have a ridiculous amount of hot chicks working in them. Putting tyolka and tyolka together, they had a light bulb marketing moment: “Let us not imprison our talent in offices and simply…
Ho ho he-ro-in!
This is part two of our ongoing Russian Calendar Girl series, in which we showcase hot Russian office workers featured in their companies’ souvenir calendars.
Russian companies know that sex sells. They also have a ridiculous amount of hot chicks working in them. Putting tyolka and tyolka together, they had a light bulb marketing moment: “Let us not imprison our talent in offices and simply…
The Russian vacation season has finally come to an end, but for fans of Tyolka Thursdays, this means the real fun has just begun. It is a little known fact that in Russia, autumn is the official start of the…
No this isn’t from the mugshot section of Smoking Gun. These are official portraits of the men in the Russian Duma, which is what they call the parliament around those parts. Looking at these caring faces, you just know that…
These photographs, dating back to early June, are from a graduation ceremony for Moscow’s MVD Academy. These totalitarian tyolkas almost make you wish that Russia would come and occupy your country (i.e. our country). Serve up some of that sovereign…
eXiled Alert! Tyolka Tuesdays has been moved. From now on it’s going to be called “Tyolka”Thursdays” and will appear every Thursday, naturally. Relax, it’s still the same ol’ Russian chick fix, just on a different day of the week. This…
This week on Tyolka Tuesday, we have something totally new. A Russian video sharing website called Smotri (which means “look” in Russian) just launched a new video chat function. It allows people to broadcast a live video feed from their…
Russia got into the social networking game a little late. The industry still isn’t very hi-tech and doesn’t have all those dorky Facebook plugins that people in the West are used to. But Russia’s got a natural resource that Facebook’s…
We’ve been getting a lot of complaints lately. It seems many of our readers have been jonesing for their daily dyev fix ever since The eXile was taken offline by the Kremlin. Well, our policy at EXILED ONLINE is that…
You know how Russia’s threatening to start sending nuke-carrying, long-range bombers to Cuba? Well, meet the Few, the Proud, and the Wasted of Russia’s VDV, the country’s elite Airborne Troops. Look at these faces long and hard, folks. And then…
Posted on: August 4th, 2008
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