This is a guest editorial by “L”. It was brought to Dangerous Minds by Elizabeth Veldon, who writes this short introduction:

This is her story, her voice.”

My name is L., and I am a woman with a transsexual past (male-to-female, MTF). I have had gender dysphoria since my early childhood, so I always had a lot of problems with socialization.

I have never seen my father because he left my family before my birth. I grew up with my mother and grandmother, who were extremely transphobic and authoritative and did not pay attention to my mental difficulties. I had to hide my real self from everyone from when I was 11 years old. It wasn’t until I was 21, in 2007, that I decided to stop hiding, and took my first attempt to bring my appearance in accordance with my self-perception.

This gave me other troubles, and I’ll only give one example: in October 2007, I was stopped on the street by a police officer, who took my IDs and took me to a police station. So-called “state authority representatives” made me strip nude and began to beat me and to urinate on me, laughing and shouting “fags must die!” When they put my head into the toilet bowl and cried out, “Drink Russian water you queer,” I lost consciousness. Eventually I woke up in an unfamiliar yard, my clothes torn and dirtied with urine and faeces. After this, I attempted to commit suicide. Thanks to my friends with the same problems, they helped me to find strength to withstand. But, I was hiding my real identity again for almost a year, and this was a real torture. I couldn’t stand it.

I learned that Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) in the Russian Federation would require a conformance letter from the Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Psychiatry, and in order to obtain one, a psychiatric examination was necessary. My friend in the transgender community told me about terrible violations of human rights in such clinics (unsanitary conditions, mobbing, rape, tortures, etc). Nevertheless, I could not live ‘as-is’ anymore, so I began Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) at my own risk. When my mother and grandmother discovered what I was doing, they threw out my female dress and hormones, but I continued with HRT secretly.

In September 2009, I met Anton, the man who totally understands me. Our relationship grew rapidly, but when my mother and grandmother found out they turned my life into hell. So, I left them for him, and we started living together.

Unfortunately, the problems connected with my transgender identity followed me through all my life in Russia. My boss – who was the head of the IT department of the local Federal Tax Inspection Office – told me (quote), “You have the choice – resign or face big problems. Fags are not welcome here.” I was forced to resign.

You can read the rest of L’s story after the jump…

The forced sterilzation of transgender persons and those with a transgendered past has now been abandoned by the Swedish authorities, but Russia still actively discriminates agains its LGBT community, as this video demonstrates:
 

 
Ah, it’s getting near that time of year again, when the very best of European culture, as represented by bad songs, interpretative dance, fake tans, hair extensions and political in-fighting battle, battle it out, in front of a world-wide television audience, to win the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest.

As always, there is a host of strange, unlikely and bizarre entries, most notably this year are the pensioners who will be representing the U.K. and Russia.

The legendary Englebert Humperdinck will be carrying the weight of Britain’s hopes on his velvet-suited, 75-year-old shoulders, and he may well end up winning it for the U.K., which would be the first time that has happened since Katrina and The Waves back in 1997.

But for those with a betting streak, the interesting outsider is a group of 6 grandmothers representing Russia with their unlikely Euro Pop song “Party for Everyone”. The “Buranovo Grannies” beat 24 other acts to win the honor of singing for their country, reports the BBC:

Buranovskiye Babushki, from the Udmurt Republic, say they will use any cash raised to build a church in Buranovo.
“Grandmothers do not need glory and wealth,” a member told Vesti news.

The singer, named only as “Grandmother Olga”, said building the village church was their “only goal”.

Their winning song, which begins as a traditional folk tune before a modern dance beat kicks in, features the refrain, “party for everybody, come on and dance”.

The lyrics to the song, which feature a mixture of English and Udmurt - a language related to Finnish - were written by the grandmothers.

Buranovskiye Babushki became known in Russia with covers - sung in Udmurt - of classics including the Beatles’ Yesterday and the Eagles’ Hotel California.

For novelty value alone, the Grannies are well in with a chance. Qualifying heats for the Eurovision Song Contest take place between 22-26 May, so let’s see how far these gallus Grannies can go.
 

 
Badly shot footage supposedly showing a mammoth lumbering across a river in Siberia, has been posted on that renowned comic The Sun, which reports:

A BEAST lurches through icy waters in a sighting a paranormal investigator thinks could prove woolly mammoths are not extinct after all.

The animal—thought to have mostly died out roughly 4,000 years ago—was apparently filmed wading through a river in the freezing wilds of Siberia.

The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed.

He filmed the elephant-sized creature as it struggled against the racing water.

Its hair matches samples recovered from mammoth remains regularly dug up from the permafrost in frozen Russia.

The official was reportedly in the area surveying for a planned road.

Paranormal writer Michael Cohen said: “Rumours of a handful of mammoths still kicking around in the vast wilderness of Siberia have been circulating for decades and occasionally sightings by locals have occurred.

“Siberia is an enormous territory and much of it remains completely unexplored and untouched by humans.”

Woolly mammoths roamed the Earth 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.

A small pocket remained on and around Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, and these did not die out until 3,500 years ago.

Mr Cohen, 41, added: “It is highly possible that a number of species, extinct elsewhere, survive in the area.

“If surviving woolly mammoths were found in Siberia, it could run against Russia’s plans to further develop and exploit the area’s considerable resources.

“It would be potentially one of the greatest discoveries ever.”

Question: Who are these “paranormal investigators, and what are their scientific qualifications for identifying living animals?

Question: Why are these videos always so fucking crap? A drunk jakey with a cell phone could take better footage than these muppets.

Question: Why didn’t the “government-employed engineer” get any closer? Why didn’t he approach the lumbering beast to ensure he had indeed photographed a mammoth?

Question: Is Siberian Mammoth versus “Russia’s plans to further develop and exploit the area’s considerable resources” a possible Steven Seagal movie?

Question: Mammoth or elephant or Steven Seagal or, who gives a fuck?
 

 
The footage examined by someone or other, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

40,000-year-old Mammoth

 
Before the police dragged them off, the members of Pussy Riot, the Russian day-glo balaclava-clad punk rock protesters, sang their anthem “Revolt in Russia” (“Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest / Revolt in Russia, Putin’s got scared!”) near the Kremlin. Their inspiration for a style of resistance never before seen in Russia, was the riot grrrl punk movement, including groups like Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill, and flash mobs. The young women of the collective, average age 25, have revealed only the smallest details about their lives. None will divulge their day jobs. They only use first-names.

In the two weeks since their mid-January action, the all-female group has become a potent symbol of anger at the status quo in Russian society and their videos have gone viral all over the world. Like many young people in Russia, the members of the Pussy Riot collective are furious at Vladamir Putin’s plans to seek the presidency again and his return was the impetus behind the formation of the group (as well as their song “Putin Has Pissed Himself”). From The Guardian:

“We understood that to achieve change, including in the sphere of women’s rights, it’s not enough to go to Putin and ask for it,” said Garadzha. “This is a rotten, broken system.”

Her bandmate Tyurya said: “The culture of protest needs to develop. We have one form, but we need many different kinds.”

The band began writing songs with lyrics such as: “Egyptian air is good for the lungs / Do Tahrir on Red Square!” and performing on trams and in the metro. Videos of the flash gigs began spreading across the internet. When the protest leader Alexey Navalny was jailed for 15 days after his arrest during Russia’s first post-election protest on 5 December, three members of Pussy Riot took to the roof of the jail where he was being held, setting off red flares as they sang “Death to prison / Freedom to protest!”

The fear of arrest long ago left the band members, steeped in the tradition of illegal protest. “We have experience with it, we’ve been detained at protests before,” said Tyurya. “It’s not scary – you’re surrounded by good, normal people, those who protest against Putin.”

All eight women were detained during the Kremlin performance, questioned and released. Most got off with administrative fines rather than the 15-day jail sentences often doled out to those who stage illegal protests.

“The revolution should be done by women,” said Garazhda. “For now, they don’t beat or jail us as much.”

“There’s a deep tradition in Russia of gender and revolution – we’ve had amazing women revolutionaries.”

The band is getting ready for its next performance, something that usually takes a month to pull together. Its members don’t discuss plans on the telephone or give away details, out of fear that the security services will disrupt the project. Is what they do art or politics? “For us it’s one and the same.”

Despite projected temperatures of -20C, tens of thousands of protesters are expected to march on Bolotnaya Square, across from the Kremlin, on Saturday. The Russian presidential election will be held on March 4. Vladimir Putin, is, of course, expected to win handily.

Read more:
Feminist punk band Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin (The Guardian)
 

 
Compiled by friend of Dangerous Minds Elizabeth Veldon, and available as a free download from the net label Black Circle, Russia’s Full of Queers is a 29 track album designed to highlight the abuse of LGBT people’s rights currently being passed as law in several Russian cities. Elizabeth says:

This album is a response to proposed laws in Russia that would outlaw any discussion of homosexuality, bisexuality or transgenderism.

The artists involved gave their tracks free and in many cases produced work to a tight (24 hour) schedule.

There is a wide variety of styles here from Harsh Noise through weird Jazz Cut-Ups to Hip Hop and Ambient.

We only ask that you sign the online petition against these laws and pass the word on.

Alone our voices are tiny, when raised together we can change the world.

 
You can sign the petition here, and you can download Russia’s Full Of Queers here.
 

 
Previously on DM:
Petition to stop Russian authorities passing “draconian” anti-gay bill

 
In what has been described as “a throwback to Soviet times”, Saint Petersburg passed a law banning the promotion of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender lifestyles, last week. It is now feared that other Russian cities will follow St Petersburg’s homophobic and bigoted lead, and pass similar laws against the LGBTI community. The Arkhangelsk and the Riazan region have already introduced such legislation.

The law was passed by a majority of 27 to 1, and bans members of the public who acknowledge gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender or inter-sex issues in the presence of a minor. The law is on the same level as pedophilia, and enforces fines of up to $1,500.

A petition has been launched by All Out, which aims to alert the international community to stop what is happening in Russia:

TO: WORLD LEADERS

The party led by Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin is pushing discriminatory legislation against lesbian, bi, gay and trans people that could eliminate their freedom to speak publicly and assemble.

Russia is a signatory to numerous international human rights treaties - including the European Convention on Human Rights. We call on you to urgently speak out and hold Russia accountable to its treaty obligations - and stand with LGBTI Russians whose ability to speak for themselves is under attack.

It was in 1993 that President Boris Yeltsin repealed the law against homosexuality, and in 2009 GayRussia launched its campaign for same sex marriages. However, homophobia is still rife in Russia, which can be seen by Moscow’s ban of Gay Pride rallies over the past 6 years, and Chechen authorities claim Chechnya is a gay free zone.

Amnesty International has asked St Petersburg not to enact the new law which Amnesty claims will lead to violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community.

Amnesty International Europe and Central Asia Director Nicola Duckworth said:

“This bill is a thinly-veiled attempt to legalise discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in Russia’s second-biggest city.

“The notion that LGBTI rights activists are somehow converting Russia’s youth through ‘propaganda’ would be laughable if the potential effects of this new law weren’t so dangerous and wide-reaching.

“Legislation like that proposed in St Petersburg will only further marginalise LGBTI people, and must be stopped.

“Instead of seeking to restrict freedom of expression and assembly for LGBTI people, the Russian authorities should be doing more to safeguard their rights and protect them from discrimination and violence.”

All Out’s petition can be signed here.
 

 
They first met through a love of theater, at a production of The Flies. It drew them together, this collective experience towards a creative good. And then, of course, their love of literature and writing, and during the war through the Resistance, and endless conversations in the cafes, which later became famous through association with their names. Jean-Paul Sartre was the leader. Albert Camus the talented writer, a leader in waiting.

Though close, there were early signs of division - Sartre knew Camus was the better writer, something he would never acknowledge publicly - and when the war finished, it wasn’t long for their friendship to fail.

Against the background of Cold War tensions and the threat of nuclear war between East and West, Sartre took the side of the Soviet Union, while Camus said he was on “the side of life”.

“I’m against a new war. To revolt today means to revolt against war.”

But it was Sartre’s blind acceptance of Russia’s concentration camps that proved too much for Camus. He wanted Sartre to denounce them, in the same way they had once denounced the German concentration camps. Sartre refused.

This led Camus to question the idea of rebellion and revolution, in particular the value of the Russian revolution, this at a time when writers on the Left held it up as the socialist dream.

In The Rebel Camus wrote:

‘In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself.

“In contemplating the results in an act of rebellion we shall have to ask ourselves each time if it remains faithful to its first noble promise or whether it forgets its purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny and servitude.

“In Absurdist experience suffering is individual, but from the moment that a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience, as the experience of everyone. Therefore the first step towards a mind overwhelmed by the absurdity of things is to realize that this feeling, this strangeness is shared by all men, and the entire human race suffers from a division between itself and the rest of the world.”

Camus’ intention with The Rebel was to change accepted ideas about rebellion, with a new concept of questioning revolutionary action. For many it was too abstract and too damaging to the communist cause.

Sartre, therefore, decided something had to be done to redress Camus’ apparent attack on Soviet Communism, and by implication all communist belief, and he organized a damning and high-handed response. It proved to be a devastating blow to Camus.

While Sartre could separate the world of ideas from his personal friendship, Camus could not. He believed friendship was essential, and depended on his friends like the strong camaraderie shared by a theater company. Camus believed friendship united people together in the struggle for a better world. He therefore saw Sartre’s actions as the worst kind of betrayal, and it finished their friendship.

This is a short but fascinating extract examining the friendship between Camus and Sartre.
 

 
In 1959, a Polish journalist, Zdzislaw Ornatowski paid a visit to the Russian film studio Mosfilms. He wanted to meet the next generation of film-makers and hear their plans for the forthcoming decade. Amongst those Ornatowski met was a young and ambitious man, who discussed his forthcoming graduate film The Steamtoller and the Violin. Ornatowski was so impressed by this youngster that he made him the focus of his article, “Films of the Young”. In it he interviewed the young film-maker about his intentions for making his diploma film, The Steamroller and the Violin: 

“It will be a short-feature film. My original idea was not to use this screenplay for a full-length feature - that would ruin the entire composition. The story in the film is very simple. The action takes place within one day, the dramaturgy is without sharp conflicts, it is non-traditional. Its main characters are a young worker driving a steamroller at a road construction and a young sensitive boy who is learning to play the violin. They become friends. Those two people, so different in every respect, complement and need one another.

“Although it’s dangerous to admit - because one doesn’t know whether the film will be successful - the intent is to make a poetic film. We are basing practically everything on mood, on atmosphere. In my film there has to be the dramaturgy of image, not of literature. I offered the role of the worker to Vladimir Zamyansky, an actor from the youngest and perhaps most interesting theater “Sovremennik.” The little Sasha is played by a seven-year old music school student, Igor Fomchenko. I am very happy with them.”

The young film-maker was Andrei Tarkovsky, and The Steamroller and the Violin was his first film.

Ingmar Bergman once said of Tarkovsky:

“Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

The Steamroller and the Violin is the first annunciation of Tarkovsky’s “new language”, from its poetic use of mood and atmosphere, to its dreamlike imagery and ending. Co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky, the pair spent 6 months on the script before committing a frame of film. It is a beautiful and memorable film, which tells the story of the unlikely friendship between Sasha, a little boy, and Sergey, the operator of a steamroller.
 

 
final part of ‘The Steamroller and the Violin, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Svetlana Volkova
 

 
Alexey Titarenko has photographed Saint Petersburg since he was 8-years-old. In fact, he says, he has dedicated his whole life to the city. Titarenko sees his photographs as reflecting the history of his city, and Russia, over the past 20 years. 

“Through the prism of my native city, I attempt to show events that occurred not only here, but throughout the country - the changes, the catastrophies, and the human tragedies, which have swept this city and the people of this land.”

In the 1990s, Titarenko was working on a series of photographs about totalitarianism, centered on the signs and statues that were crumbling around him as Soviet communism failed. Poverty spread as rationing was introduced.

“Food was rationed. To obtain food in exchange for the ration tickets, people would run from one store to another, with a desperate air, and their eyes full of sorrow. I’d place my camera at the subway entrance and take photographs.

“The activity around the station, which was located in a shopping district, overlapped with the sensations I felt when I listened to certain musical compositions, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony in particular, the movement entitled “At the Shop”.

“The mass of people flowing around the subway station formed a sort of human tide, giving me a sensation of unrealness, of phantasmagoria, These people were like shadows, one would meet in the Underworld. I decided to express that feeling in my work, to convey my personal expressions. I had to find a visual metaphor that would enable the viewer to share my feelings as acutely as possible. That is what prompted me to try a long exposure process.”

Titarenko’s pictures were haunting, disturbing, like malevolent ghosts crowding the frame. He called the series City of Shadows,
 

 

 

 
Via My Modern Met. With thanks to Tara McGinley
 
More hauntings pics, and rest of documentary on Alexey Titarenko, after the jump…
 

W.C. Hardy’s “St. Louis Blues”
 
Between the years of 1946 - 1961 one of the only ways to listen to American blues, jazz and rock’n’roll in Russia was to obtain smuggled records, some made on old x-rays. There’s a long article and back story about these interesting x-ray records on Spiegle.de, but it’s all in German and a little bit difficult to make sense of using Google Translate. 

If you got caught with American popular music back then, you could find yourself in a world of hurt. Apparently it could get you thrown out of school or even arrested in extreme cases, but still the population wanted to hear the music. These x-ray records are physical artifacts from that era of Soviet censorship.
 

Percy Faith’s “Delicado”
 

Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek”
 

Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Let’s start with the painting, for that was the sign something ominous was about to begin.

In East Germany during the Cold War, you didn’t join the Stasi, the Stasi asked you to join them. This is what 19-year-old, Hagen Koch discovered when the Stasi approached him and said, “We need you to help secure our country’s peace.” 

Koch arrived in Berlin on April 5th, 1960, to a city without a wall, without barbed wire, without division. He had been chosen for a specific job and was soon promoted to Head of Cartography.

It was a warm day in August 1960, when Stasi Private Hagen Koch arrived at Checkpoint Charlie and started painting a white line. No one took much notice, which was understandable, only in the following days would the enormity of Koch’s actions become apparent. For unknown to Berliners and the West, Koch was marking the ground for the building of the Berlin Wall.

Years later, Koch said the Wall was not against the West but “against the population of East Germany.”

It was also the first sign that East Germany’s so-called “Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Heaven” had failed, and marked the start of the slow and difficult demise of Soviet bloc Communism. 

Moreover, the creation of the Berlin Wall led to a standoff between Russia and America that nearly caused World War Three.
 

 
How the Berlin Wall nearly led to War and how holidays brought it down, after the jump…
 

 
The headline says it all:

Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days… fed only Viagra

The Mail reports on a Russian man who is said to have tried to rob a hair salon, but soon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for 3 days.

Viktor Jasinski, 32, admitted to police that he had gone to the salon in Meshchovsk, Russia, with the intention of robbing it.

But the tables were turned dramatically when he found himself overcome by owner Olga Zajac, 28, who happened to be a black belt in karate.

She allegedly floored the would-be robber with a single kick.

Then, in a scene reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, police say Zajac dragged the semi-conscious Jasinski to a back room of the salon and tied him up with a hair dryer cable.

She allegedly stripped him naked and, for the next three days, used him as a sex slave to ‘teach him a lesson’ - force feeding him Viagra to keep the lesson going.

The would-be robber was eventually released, with Zajak saying he had learned his lesson.

 

A blurred image of Olga Zajac, who allegedly held would-be robber Viktor Jasinski prisoner for 3 days in a back room of her hair salon, where she fed him Viagra and had sex with him “a couple of times”
 

Jasinski went straight to the police and told them of his back-room ordeal, saying that he had been held hostage, handcuffed naked to a radiator, and fed nothing but Viagra.

Both have now been arrested.

When police arrived to question Zahjac, she said: ‘What a bastard. Yes, we had sex a couple of times. But I bought him new jeans, gave him food and even gave him 1,000 roubles when he left.”

All far too reminiscent of that famous scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction

Update

Thanks to DM reader Tom for posting a link to Kiri Blakely‘s blog on Forbes, which explains that this story is over 2-years-old:

The entire wacky incident happened over two years ago, in April of 2009. Here is the Moscow Times story on it. The story wasn’t exactly underreported, either. Google “sex slave Moscow hair salon” and over 200,000 results come up, all of them dated April 2009.

The Daily Mail also acts like the Russian sex slave incident just happened today. Was there some new news here that would entail [the Daily Mail and Gawker] republishing this two-year-old story? Maybe a trial or sentencing or something? Not from what I can see in either the Gawker or Daily Mail pieces. It’s the same old story—though granted, it’s a good one!

Read the whole article here.
 

 
Via the Daily Mail
 

 
There’s a super bleak story in The Independent about a home-made heroin substitute that’s becoming popular in Russia. The problem is that “Krokodil” is so detrimental to the human body that it practically eats right through it. There are up to two million junkies in Russia, the most in the world and around 100,000 of them are addicted to Krokodil which can be easily produced for a fraction of the price of smack. 

Even hardcore methfreaks are better off than Krokodil addicts. Withdrawal from the drug can take an agonizing MONTH (Heroin detox lasts a week to ten days, a relative walk in the park).

The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or “crocodile”. It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be “cooked” from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

“If you miss the vein, that’s an abscess straight away,” says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh. One of their friends, in a neighbouring apartment block, is further down the line.

“She won’t go to hospital, she just keeps injecting. Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore,” says Sasha. Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

This is like something straight out of Burroughs or Cronenberg, but as I was reading the article, I was thinking more about what a modern day Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky would make of a plague like this.

Read the entire horrific story: Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies (The Independent)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Scarface: Attack of the Flesh-Eating Cocaine

 
YouTuber KirkCliff2 says, “In Soviet Russia, toy throws YOU!”

 
In the opening titles of his 1968 animated short Glass Harmonica, Russian director Andrei Khrzhanovsky claims to present a cautionary against “boundless greed, police terror, [and] the isolation and brutalization of humans in modern bourgeois society.” Of course, it was more complex than that.

At the time Khrzhanovsky made the film, Russian animation had experienced a creative renaissance that spanned most of the ‘60s, fuelled by the Soviet Union’s post-Stalinist liberalization policy best known as the Krushchev Thaw. Although that period yielded cutesy and colorful satires like Fyodor Khitruk’s 1962 short Story of a Crime, Glass Harmonica—which posits music to symbolize beauty repressed by avarice—stands apart.

Amid desolate modern landscapes, Khyrzhanovsky and his dozen animators tell the tale with some industrial age and Renaissance visual elements, along with some zany zoomorphic caricatures of paranoia and envy. Buoyed sonically by Alfred Schnittke’s Quasi una sonata and drawing from Breugel, Dali and George Dunning (the director of Yellow Submarine), Glass Harmonica reaches even proto-Python-esque heights towards the end.

Despite its semi-socialist utopian resolution, Glass Harmonica comes off as surprisingly quaint and archaic, even as an indirect product of Kruschev’s less ideologically rigid era.
 

 
After the jump: check out part 2 of Glass Harmonica…