91Èȱ¬

With the forthcoming London Olympic Games next summer, 91Èȱ¬ World Service is preparing a great deal of programs about and around these games.

What I'm going to talk about today are the games which would never make it to the Olympics, but which are dear to our hearts.

There are games, which, I'm sure, you and me were playing in our childhood with no less devotion than football or basketball, but these games might be so local, that even in the next village or in the next country hardly anyone knows about their existence.

Today I'll tell you about two of such games, which are played in the suburbs of Tashkent - Uzbekistan's capital.

The first one is called Chillyak and played outside.

For that game you should have two thin sticks which you could find anywhere: one of the bat-size, another one of the pencil-size.

The number of players is either two or - if there are more - they are divided into two teams.
You mark a circle on the ground and the game starts by playing 'keep it up' by keeping the small stick in the air with the big one.

The player who has the most hits without dropping the small stick starts the game.

Standing in the circle, he raises the small stick from the ground with the end of the big stick and hits it as hard as possible.

Another player, who is out in the field, tries to catch the small stick.

If he catches it, he goes inside the circle and the game continues with the players swapping places.

Yet, if the second player doesn't catch the stick, he or she throws it from the place where it was dropped towards the circle and the first player tries again to hit the stick.

This time the second player has no right to catch the small stick.

He just watches for how far the small stick will fly.

The first player then measures the distance with the big stick.

The game lasts until one player reaches the agreed number of yard-sticks (50-100).

If the second player throws the small stick and it drops within the circle, the first player is out of the game.

((In both cases when the main part of the game is over (one player reaching 50 yard-sticks or another player dropping the small stick into the circle) the winner once again juggles the small stick with the help of the big one and then hits the same number of consecutive times the small stick to a certain distance.))

The punishment of the looser is to run that distance on one breath, making a 'zooooo' noise.
The winner runs along monitoring that the looser doesn't cheat.

Here's a video of this game which was produced by Johannes Dell with the help of Sirojiddin Tolibov.

Another game is called Walnuts and played by any reasonable number of players, but usually - three to four people.

Every player puts onto the ground one walnut (usually unpeeled, green one), which is called 'gun' - in one line, leaving 1-1,5 m distance between the guns.

Then the players throw from the same starting line their small, well-polished walnuts, called 'soqqa' towards the guns.

The aim is either hit one of the guns (in which case you both gain the gun and the right for a first go) or to lay your soqqa closest to any gun.

So when everyone had thrown their soqqa's the player who either hit the gun or is the closest to it starts the game.

If two or more people hit different guns, the closest to the next gun goes first.

Further complication is when the first player hits the gun' and the second player hits the first players soqqa.

In that case the first player is out of the game and passes his gained gun onto the second player.

If the third player hits in the last scenario the second's soqqa, he or she takes all.
But let's assume that the game starts in a dull mode and nobody hits any guns.

In that case the player whose 'soqqa' is the closest to any guns goes first: he hits either the nearest gun to gain it, or another player's soqqa to get him out of the game.

The game lasts either until all guns are lost to different players, or all soqqa's apart from the winning one are out of the game.

There are more complicated rules for the 'endspiel' when one gun and two soqqa's are left in the game, but that one for an advanced level.

When you watch the video all these complicated rules will hopefully make sense.

So take walnuts and try this game in your family.

I'm sure you had the games which are not widely known.

Why you don't share them with me, so along with the majestic Olympic Games we could have our nice and small season of non-Olympic Games...

You can write them up, you can take pictures of them or make a video and send to me, so all of us can share the games which we played in our childhood.

, the contemporary international literary magazine, has devoted its latest issue to the writers that have come out of Bush House - the headquarters of the 91Èȱ¬ World Service.

The first thing that I need to tell you is that our collective work 'E kabo dara ju e kule lo' has been published in that issue! Hurray!

There are also articles about the friendship between George Orwell and Mull Raj Anand; interviews with John Tusa, Zina Rohan and Anwar Hamid; articles about Caribbean literature; excerpts and poems by Zinoviy Zinnik, Annabel Dilke, Vesna Goldsworty, Gwyneth Williams and many other writers and poets that have worked for 91Èȱ¬ World Service.

In the same issue, I've reviewed two Russian books. That review follows:

Late last year Vyacheslav Pyetsuh, one of Russia's leading writers, published his 'would-be Nobel Prize speech'.

In it he appeals to representatives of the entire world literature scene on behalf of Russian writers and argues that only Russian literature is committed to exploring the human soul, that only Russian authors are worthy of the Nobel Prize.

He recalls the names of Russian writers who had never received this award, and indeed the list is impressive: Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Platonov, and many others, true literary giants.

From this point of view it is interesting to examine what is happening in contemporary Russian fiction, particularly beyond the works of well-known icons like Pelevin, Kurkov, Ulitskaya or Akunin. Two books have recently been published by two preeminent authors: Alexander Pokrovsky entitled 'Sea Stories' and Alexander Terekhov's 'Army Stories' and the second one - 'Squaring the circle' is a compilation of stories awarded the best-newcomer 'Debut' prize for novice writers under 25.

The books 'Sea Stories' - 'Army Stories' could be still considered as part of the Soviet literary canon, the events of both taking place in the Soviet Navy and Army. As for the events of the second book they occur in post-Soviet Russia. But there is something that unites both books and if I dare to bring their common denominator to a single word, it is - dysfunctionality.

Dysfunctionality between expectations and reality, ideas and life, and aspirations and results.
In 'Sea Stories' by Alexander Pokrovsky this dysfunctionality takes absurd, comical, and sometimes even tragicomic forms. Indeed - the Army and the Navy at the end of the Soviet era had become a sort of satirical metaphor for the entire Soviet system, left in the gap between utopian ideology and flawed lives. One-dimensional logic of army command which goes against the dismal reality of military life was the best reflection of the absurdity of Soviet life: 'What kinds of people live in the USSR? All are in hurry, but running late. All are poor, but the fridges are full. All talk against it, but vote 'FOR', etc...'

Alexander Pokrovsky served 20 years in the Navy, mostly on a nuclear submarine. Many of his stories are built on the principle of extended joke. Thus, in the story, 'I - Zverev' Captain Zverev who is on leave decides to visit a sauna, but on the way to the public baths he must cross the railway. By coincidence there is a military train at the stop, and Captain Zverev, feeling a certain solidarity with the army, decides to stop to talk with a soldier on the train, enquiring 'where are you coming from, where are you going to, what are you transporting, etc...'

The soldier, suspecting Zverev to be a spy, arrests him and passes onto his commanders. They lock the poor captain in one of the train carriages, while establishing his identity, but forget about him and the train takes off. In short, Captain Zverev finds himself at the other end of the Soviet Union without any documents; indeed, who would ever take documents along to the public baths? His epic continues through the local KGB and other military bodies. After a series of thousands of unfortunate events, this Kafkean situation is finally settled by the intervention of Zverev's relative, who at first does not recognize him as his nephew, he is so dishevelled.

Finally, when Zverev arrives at his village, he shows up to his own funeral, as the villagers, having searched for him for ten days in the river, decide that enough is enough and conduct his funeral.

If in this story Captain Zverev is the only victim, in other stories, the reader faces much bigger scales of concern; after all we are talking about a nuclear submarine. Thus, in the story 'On Science' a duty officer brings some new top-secret equipment onto the nuclear submarine, and before it's been documented, he leaves the box with a guard at the top of the boat. In a while the guard is replaced, then the controller of the boat comes, notes the unknown object next to the guard who knows nothing about it, shouts at him for the mess and throws the box into the ocean. A few minutes later the duty officer arrives back to the top of the submarine...

The same dysfunctionality, bordering on the absurd, could be seen in most stories of the 'debut'-prize winners. The book opens with a story of Alexey Lukyanov entitled 'High pressure'. The story starts with the crisis in Russia when radio, television, Internet, and other media suddenly cease to work. Life seems to stop. But there are some egg-heads, offering the production of transmitters of information working on steam - high-pressure transmitters. A provincial team that is at the centre of the story, duly begins production of these transmitters.

After a number of upheavals, when people in their incredible stress forget even the holy of holies - the Russian curse, when in the end even the disappointed government decides to emigrate to Trinidad and Tobago leaving its people behind, one of the characters exclaims: "We are f***ed up!" and suddenly, with these words, the pressure is restored in the steam system, life is restored to the country and order is restored to life...

In 'Squaring the circle' a motif of universal movement is added to the notorious dysfunctionality. Everything moves in the country, young people aimlessly travelling on the third shelf of sleeper trains, announced by the decree a "dwelling zone" (in 'Modern pastoral' by Igor Saveliev); Sveta, freed from prison, moves as she travels towards her home, learning that life behind the bars was more secure than in the wild ('Free' by Polina Klyukina); a student-narrator enters the Moscow underground to meet his dark glory after he decides to kill his girlfriend ('Another chance at fame' by Arslan Khasavov), a schoolteacher entangled in the confusing relationship with the mother of the 'dimwit' Vietnamese pupil (thereby identifying dysfunctionality of education) goes to Moscow ('Dimwit' by Polina Klyukina).

One can discuss at length the nature of Russian dysfunctionality and its place in the Russian literature. Since Gogol's 'Overcoat' (from which the entire Russian literature grew up by the famous expression of Dostoevsky), it mainly focuses on how to achieve harmony between the internal and external, between the body and overcoat, the spirit and life, and ideas and reality.

There is a constant metaphysical gap among the systems of ideology followed by the Russian public life, whether it's Middle Eastern Christianity, German Marxism, or Western consumerism, and the Russian natural mentality. Different ethnic groups have differently adapted the universal system of ideology to the conditions of their lives: the Iranians have mastered the Shia branch within Islam, the Central Asian nations transposed Islam in the local fashion through Sufism, whereas the English or Germans created local adaptations of Christianity in Anglican or Lutheran forms.

As for Russians, they profess mostly the very orthodoxy. So it was with Christianity, as was the case both with Marxism during the Bolsheviks, and now with consumerism. Is Russia finally ready and able not to be the 'third Rome', neither the 'Third Comintern', nor the 'third Dubai', but itself, when confronted with the fierce and beautiful outside world?

In my opinion, the three most powerful pieces in these two books are on this very subject. Along with the aforementioned 'Dimwit', I would single-out 'Salam, Dalgat' by Gulla Khirachev and the novella of Alexander Terekhov 'The story of lance-corporal Raskolnikov'. 'Salam, Dalgat' is a lively account of today's Dagestan, where the nomenclature corruption multiplies to result in social problems, unemployment matches the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which interferes with the gadgets of modernity - Mercedes-Benz cars, prostitutes and drug addicts.

The story poses the question: which way will the young man Dalgat - Stephen Dedalus of Makhachkala choose? But whatever is happening today in Caucasus will dictate the future of the entire multinational Russia, that is the conclusion to which the author Alisa Ganieva, writing under the pseudonym of Gulla Khirachev leads us.

'The story of lance-corporal Raskolnikov' in its very title hints at the 'Crime and Punishment.' Several new recruits begin to serve in the Soviet Army and while they are still rookies, one of the soldiers steals money from his comrades. Raskolnikov publicly accuses an Uzbek - Zhusipbekov who though he strongly denies it, is sent to the worst military unit as punishment, where after some time he hangs himself. Subsequently it's found that not Zhusipbekov, but someone else had stolen money, and now the fate of the 'damned outcast' falls upon Raskolnikov. Until the very demobilisation, he remains an outcast-rookie, who is bullied by anyone who can be bothered. So when the narrator Maltsev is ready to be demobilized, someone sneaks up on him and his demob is postponed. Consequently the suspicion falls on Raskolnikov, whom Maltsev beats up and who confesses his wrongdoing. But in the end it turns out that the first time and the last time, not at all Raskolnikov, but a certain mate Barintsov who had already been discharged was the sneaking traitor...

Encountering the unknown outside world, looking at which you begin to discover and better understand yourself, and learn to understand your own various dysfunctionalities - isn't this the essence of the 'responsiveness to the world', which was highly praised in Pushkin's works by Dostoevsky? The best stories of those two books by 'Glas' are also about it.

When I meet my readers, many of them ask: why are your novels so multi-national, does this reflect the reality of your own life?

In response, I ponder the lives of those around me - my wife, my daughter and my sister and come out with: 'No, actually, such was life in the Soviet Union.'

As I recall my kindergarten years, my school, my military service in the army and my studies at university - I recall I was surrounded by friends of from all backgrounds and creeds - of all colours: Uzbeks and Russians, Ukrainians and Tatars, Kazakhs and Jews, Koreans and Greeks - you name it.

One sleepless night coming back from Moscow to Tashkent I started to reminisce about my neighbourhood, which I used to consider Uzbek.

But as I doodled my memories of the village layout, house by house, all of a sudden I discovered that hardly any Uzbeks lived in our street. There were Mordvas and Chuvashs, Tajiks and Uighurs, Gypsies and Kyrgyzs apart from those whom I already named above.

Such was the reality of our life.

Interestingly, whenever you read Soviet novels - be it in Russian, Uzbek, or any other language - even the most famous ones scarcely mention the richness of this ethnic diversity.

Maxim Gorkiy's novel Mother was considered by the Soviets as the cornerstone of Soviet literature, the founding piece of 'socialist realism' and all characters in it apart from an odd Ukrainian are Russians.

The latest hit, which recently has been serialised by Radio 4 - Vassily Grossman's 'Life and Fate' is the epic telling of the Second World War, or rather the 'Great Patriotic War' as it was known in the Soviet Union. In it the overwhelming majority of the characters are Russians with the exception of several Jews, who are not Orthodox Jews but Russian Jews.

When you look at the statistics of those killed in the 'Great Patriotic War'; for every 100 Soviet people killed in the war, 66 were Russians, 16 Ukrainians, 3 Belorussians, 2 Tatars, 2 Jews, 3 Kazakhs and Uzbeks, and so on.

So the war and those who fought in it were quite international. Still, you can't glean this fact from the best of the Soviet literature.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's famous novel 'The Cancer Ward' happens immediately after the war and is set in Tashkent - capital of Uzbekistan. In it, you fail to meet any Uzbeks, let alone other local ethnicities. All the characters are Russians, again with the exception of several Jews.

And it's not just the Russian Soviet literature which was largely mono-national.

It's the same in any other 'national' Soviet literature.

'Jamilya' by Chingiz Aytmatov nearly became a worldwide bestseller.

It's a Kyrgyz love story set in war time. Even though it takes place in a Kyrgyz village, there is still no mention of ethnicities - although even in the most remote villages I used to meet Turks and Greeks, Kurds and Germans, as well as Russians and Ukrainians.

Kazakh writer Abdijamil Nurpeisov wrote a novel called 'Night and Day' about the ecologic tragedy of the Aral Sea, which started to dry out. Though different people live around the Aral Sea and the tragedy caused them all to suffer, all the characters of the novel are Kazakhs.

The Georgians Soviet novels consist exclusively of Georgians, the Uzbek ones of Uzbeks, Armenians - of Armenians and so on.

How can we explain this major discrepancy between the Soviet reality and the mono-national literary depiction of it?

Since nobody looked at it methodically, there are no answers, all one can suggest are just working assumptions.

The Soviet ideology declared the formula for the Soviet art: 'socialist by content, national by form'. Was it taken and applied too literally?

Not just literature, but also music and cinema followed the same mono-national rules.

Sometimes it reached purely absurd extent, like creating symphony orchestras in the national republics, consisting of reconstructed national musical instruments.

So the Dutar - a two-stringed long-necked Uzbek lute was reconstructed in different versions - the Bass-Dutar, the Solo-Dutar - and those orchestras performed both Mozart and national composers.

The system of representative quotas had been created at the time in every stream of life, ranging from having national representatives in the Supreme Soviet assembly, to the quotas of students sent to study in Moscow.

Another explanation may lie with the Georgian origin of Stalin, who, as the Absolute Soviet Ruler or Dictator, was hiding his national roots for the sake of his Great Sovietness.

Bitter experience of repressions both for nationalism in the 1930s and cosmopolitanism in the 1940s might have also played its role in streamlining or narrowing the Soviet literature as well as other kinds of art.

The story of Bolshevism falling apart with the Third International might have also affected the Soviet national ideology.

The Soviet Empire broke up 20 years ago.

But even in the modern post-Soviet literature the same tendency of mono-national approach to the poly-ethnic reality still prevails as if some black-and-white glasses prevent writers to see the colourfulness of life around them.

If you remember we are in the middle of the project called Bush House Anecdotes. I thought it would appropriate on this, .

Dozens of people who have worked at Bush House have sent me their stories about our headquarters and the tales are still coming in.

Just to give you a taster, here's some of them on the theme of dignitaries visiting Bush House.
The first one is from Karen Fotheringham:

'Members of minor royalty from around the world coming to Bush House is nothing new.
I am sure they were happy to come to see us and have the opportunity to meet the many creatives here.

'In the spring of 2007 we were expecting a visit from HRH The Duke of York. As a son of the current Queen extra security measures are taken, in advance of the official visit itself.

'Quite early one morning (as is usual with me) I was in the office (a very, very quiet corridor off of the third floor centre block, which goes nowhere) ... preparing some breakfast for myself, when a Springer Spaniel dog came hurtling into the office, at speed. It wasn't expecting to see me and I definitely wasn't expecting to see it...

'Needless to say I parted company with a whole bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes and a nearly full box of the same - the dog and I had a tussle... until the handler arrived and I explained I worked for the Director who the Duke was coming to see and that it wasn't my intention to try and poison their dog with my breakfast... '

Another one is also to do with the dignitaries visiting Bush House and sent by David Morton.

'World Service started radio services for Central Asia and the Caucasus in the summer of 1994.
In the run-up to the Azeri launch, a lot of effort went into securing FM rebroadcasting in Azerbaijan, and a state visit to Britain by the President, Heidar Aliyev, looked as if it might be helpful for our negotiations on the ground.

'The mood at the time, as Azerbaijan and the other former Soviet republics were establishing themselves as independent states, was friendly, positive and open - despite dramatic and tragic problems.

'Azerbaijan had just fought and lost a war (and quite a lot of territory) with Armenia over the enclave of Nagornyi Karabakh.

'The Azeris had a tendency to see Armenian foul play in any obstacle or setback.

'President Aliyev was invited to Bush House and he was met by the Chairman of the 91Èȱ¬ Governors, Marmaduke Hussey.

'I was there as head of the Russian and Ukrainian Service and I had to translate the Russian small talk until we got to the Managing Director's office on 3rd floor Centre Block for more serious discussions.

'The Chairman greeted the President in the car park and immediately impressed him. Duke Hussey was a big man. He walked with a stick, and painfully, after leaving one leg in Italy during the war while fighting as a guard officer.

'We moved towards the Centre Block lifts which the uniformed commissionaires had put specially into manual operation for the President's ride. Hussey, Aliyev and I got into the lift with half a dozen heavily-built Azeri security men.

'The commissionaire shut the doors and the lift started to rise. It came to a halt between the 2nd and 3rd floors and there we stuck. The commissionaire, deeply embarrassed, contacted all of the right people. House services did everything they could to rectify the situation.

'Hussey kept enviably cool and treated everyone to British humour. But, as the delay went on, the security men became more agitated. Aliyev himself was becoming worried. Was it possible that they could have walked into an Armenian plot in Bush House?

'Still the lift refused to move. The security men's hands were beginning to move to the bulges under their shoulders. Eventually we were wound up to the 3rd floor by hand - a more energetically manual operation than the commissionaires had envisaged.

'The doors were cranked open and we were released onto the marble landing. The bodyguards eased up and the mood began to lighten as the Chairman led the President down the corridor past the black and white photos of former World Service Directors, or MDXBs as they were known acronymically for generations.

'Once in the World Service Director's office, Hussey broke the tension with an extraordinary gesture. He presented Aliyev with one of his favourite VIP gifts - a heavy 91Èȱ¬-branded paperweight. And, as he did so, he explained that this very solid gift could be used by the President, if the need arose, to crush his enemies.

'Aliyev, a former head of the KGB in Azerbaijan, warmed to this politically-incorrect remark. Pleasant and productive discussions ensued and for several years 91Èȱ¬ Azeri was broadcast by the state radio of Azerbaijan on its national network.'

And to finish off with dignitaries coming to Bush House here's a bit of a naughty last one from Gordon House.

'In the early 1980s Princess Margaret came on a Royal visit to Bush House.

'At one point one of our secretaries was deputed to take her to the ladies lavatory, and was intrigued to see her turn on all the taps before disappearing into the cubicle to perform her ablutions.

'Plucking up her courage, she asked her on the way out, why she had turned on all the taps.
"Well this is a Broadcasting emporium is it not? " she replied in her cut-glass accent "and we wouldn't want anyone broadcasting the Royal Wee..."'