Commercialism comes to Russia.
Borodino, the battlefield immortalized in such works as Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, is about to be turned into a place filled with summer cottages.
The Battle of Borodino marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon's campaign against Russia in 1812 and, subsequently, his brilliant career as both a general and an emperor. For while the two armies essentially fought each other to a standstill - an estimated 70,000 men lay strewn on the blood-soaked ground by the time it was over - and Napoleon was able to march his troops into a largely abandoned Moscow, the battle so weakened his army that it was never able to regain its original glory and eventually dwindled away in a humiliating march through the horrendous winter back to Paris.
Now many Russians are up in arms over what they see as commercial desecration of this sacred historical site.
http://www.latimes.com/...
Two-story dachas, slick and modern, are springing up on the rolling grassland where Russian soldiers, whom Leo Tolstoy described as "tortured" and "terrified," waged a battle that many see as a turning point against the invading French.
Russians are outraged that local officials had taken advantage of lax land regulation to sell off parcels of national parkland — many of them, locals allege, to rich people from nearby Moscow.
"A cottage village could have grown right behind a monument!" said an incensed Anna Pakhomova, the public relations director of the State Borodino War and History Museum and Reserve.
This, of course, comes at a time when Russians are particularly focused on the historical event, as September 7th marks the bicentennial commemoration of one of the great battles in world history.
The situation also points up the corrupt nature of life in modern-day Russia.
Last month, President Vladimir Putin, who on Sunday will be the first head of state to show up for an anniversary since Czar Nicholas II visited Borodino in 1912, ordered subordinates to draft laws that will protect Borodino and other historic sites.
But land sales, especially in the Moscow region, are the most corrupt sphere of governance in Russia, said Moscow anti-corruption activist Sergei Korolev. Land-grabbing officials know they have nothing to fear because few face any reprisals, he said.
"Local officials are ready to sell this land without thinking of the legacy, probably because many of their children don't live in Russia, so they don't care," Korolev said. "Neither the government nor the citizens follow the laws."
East, West - I guess the quest for the almighty buck (or ruble) is a universal one.