Our friend Ivan has sent us this clip of a Russian version of Tolkien’s story, “The Hobbit.”

The animation and the interpretation of the story were all done by Russians.

Ivan’s opinion is that Tolkien’s very deeply English stories are especially beautiful when translated into Russian.    But you can judge for yourselves.   Meanwhile, please enjoy:

From Radio Free Asia:

Authorities in China’s westernmost city of Kashgar are stepping up pressure on government employees to go clean-shaven, and the city’s large ethnic Uyghur population, whose adult males overwhelmingly sport moustaches, aren’t happy about it, residents say.

…

In an online posting, one teacher reported that, as part of the campaign against facial hair, officials at his school had even removed from the auditorium and classrooms portraits of mustachioed Communist icons Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.

2007 rule

Authorities appear to be enforcing a 2007 regulation from the Kashgar City Party Committee, which stipulates that employees must be secular in appearance or face penalties ranging from fines of 100-300 yuan (U.S. $15-45) to dismissal, an employee at Kashgar City No. 1 Upper School said.

This is not the first time China has borrowed a bad idea from Russia in the name of modernisation.   Nor is it the first time that the irony of looking to Russia as a model of modernity has been lost on the Chinese Communists.  But it is a milestone on China’s determined path to become ever more backward, because now China has jettisoned the 19th century model of Lenin for the 17th century model of Tsar Peter the Great.

In 1698, pursuant to his paradoxically Asiatic, despotic campaign to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the European Modern Age,  Tsar Peter ordered all freeborn Russian men to shave their beards in order to accord with the then current fashions of Western Europe.    Serfs were exempt because of their insignificance, and clergy were exempt in order to maintain their loyalty to the state whose authority was interdependent upon theirs, and of course bearded women were not mentioned.    The rule applied only to men of any political significance.

And the fact that beards had come and gone out of fashion in regular cycles in Western Europe, was not even considered.   As far as Peter was concerned, the fashions of 1698 were Modern, and it was inconceivable for them ever to change back to prior forms.    Such thinking was, and remains, typical of all historically ignorant persons in all cultures who regard present fashions and ideas as the most advanced of all time.    In today’s America and Europe, their name is Legion.   And in today’s China too.

But Peter was a pragmatist, even if he exercised his pragmatism in despotic ways.   Certainly he was more pragmatic than Chairman Mao, and considerably more fair and willing to compromise in small matters.    So, in 1705, consequent to the recalcitrance of many aggrieved Russian men who refused to shave their beards, Peter offered as a compromise the option of paying a beard tax.    Any man subject to the beard law was permitted to keep his beard if he paid the beard tax, and then as proof of his compliance he was given a token depicting an ugly beard on the obverse, and on the reverse were the words, “beards are stupid”.

Congratulations, China!   You’ve caught up to the cultural standards of 17th century Russia.   Or almost caught up.    The next thing you need to do, China, is to allow basic  religious liberty to Muslims – beginning with the liberty to teach their own religion to their own children, and to attend their mosques without state supervision of religious teaching – such as the religious minority of Muslims enjoyed in the Russia of Peter the Great.   

The discussion on our previous post, “Headlines”, inspired me to write a bit about Jack Reed, an American Communist who had – and still has – the honour of having his remains interred in the Kremlin Wall, because he was instrumental in assisting Russia’s Communist Revolution of 1917.

Why have I been inspired to remember Jack Reed?  Well, as the previous post’s discussion and some related blogosphere discussions have indicated, I (and my China Blogosphere friend, “Ivan”) seem to be regarded by many, as rabid anti-communists who hate the Chinese Communist Party (and all “Communists”) for blinkered, unthinking, ideological reasons.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

My friend Ivan – my “kindred spirit” – has some close personal connections with former members of the Soviet Communist Party.  And he has told me about an American Communist named Jack Reed (1887-1920) - a man whose life was a bit like Ivan’s, with the happy difference that Ivan has lived longer than Jack Reed.

Jack Reed became disillusioned by the failure of socialism in America, and so he went to Russia to participate in the Bolshevik revolution.  He went to Russia with honest and charitable intentions.  But the Revolution quickly began to mutate in ways which Reed had not expected.  (Karl Marx did not anticipate such mutations either.)  The revolution killed him, perhaps indirectly, but it killed him all the same, at age 33, when he died of disease and weariness, and I speculate that part of what killed Jack Reed was the wound which the corrupted “revolution” had inflicted upon his  heart.

I am not a Marxist – although I do agree with a lot of what Marx said – and in fact I am a man of the Right, the leftish side of the Right.  But still, I admire Jack Reed’s chivalry, his integrity, and his dreams of “progress”which were, paradoxically, all too American for his own good.

So now, I would like to share two clips from the 1980 movie “Reds”, about the life of Jack Reed.  In these two scenes, he goes to the Soviet province of Azerbaijan to preach the “gospel” of Marxist revolution to people who – I would say, very much like the Chinese – misinterpreted what Marx, and Jack Reed, were trying to say.

In that sense, yes, Jack Reed was a fool.  But the most lovable kind of American fool, as in the old joke, “God looks after drunks and fools and Americans”.  Communism is nonsense, and Jack Reed died young because he didn’t perceive the folly of “progress”.  But then I remember, one of King Arthur’s Knights, Parzifal, was allowed by God to see the Holy Grail precisely BECAUSE he was a “Holy Fool”.

Here’s a toast to all “Holy Fools”, including the noble American Communist, Jack Reed!

Part one of the scene from “Reds”:

…followed by part two of the same scene:

Last night I received another drunken phone call from Ivan.   He has asked me to post this song on 23 February, Russia’s “Defender of the Fatherland Day”, the anniversary of the founding of the Red Army:

And for good measure, here’s one of Ivan’s favourite cartoons, “Russian Rhapsody” by the American Orpheus of surreal animation, Bob Clampett: