Guardiola, Jaden Smith, Jimmy Smits, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Giancarlo Esposito return for the musical drama set in the 1970’s. The streaming platform has now premiered part II of its Hip Hop-themed series The Get Down. “My dream is to leave this country and go where there is peace.(AllHipHop News) Netflix continues to produce original content connected to urban culture. Those pretty buildings are built on blood,” she said. “What is happening there now, it’s all foreign to me. While the Kremlin has funded an opulent facelift to erase the physical scars of war in Grozny, Zherebstova has not been back since she fled in 2005 and says she never will. it was black from the fires and we mixed in a spoonful of rotten flour.” “I used to dream of eating a piece of bread before dying,” she said. The shards of shrapnel in her right leg still pain her, and after going hungry for weeks during the war, Zherebstova’s stomach is weak and her teeth have nearly all fallen out. It is hardly enough to cover the costs of frequent bouts in hospital, she says. She has received no war compensation and works odd jobs from tutoring to babysitting to make ends meet. “During the war, it saved me from going crazy,” she said.ĭespite glowing reviews and extracts published in prominent magazines, Zherebstova earned only enough to pay a month’s rent. She began when she was nine, prompted by her grandfather’s death - a famous journalist who was killed in the first Chechen war. Keeping a diary is tradition for women in her family. The websites of publications featuring extracts of Zherebstova’s diary quickly filled with bilious commentary.ĭesperate to not take sides, Zherebstova is at great pains to portray herself as ethnically mixed, though she inherits a Slavic-sounding last name from her mother’s side of the family. Moscow has become a flashpoint for such tensions in recent months fuelled by a resurgent post-Soviet nationalism, economic migration and populist campaigning ahead of this year’s parliamentary polls. Her account is especially controversial in today’s Russia because it tells of a flare-up of ethnic tensions. They tell no one where they live, and Zherebstova has stashed her journals with friends scattered across the country.īut she was pushed on by recurrent nightmares: “I still dream of all these people who were killed and I feel like I have a duty to them,” she said. Out of fear, the young couple moves roughly every six months. In others, she confesses her schoolgirl crushes alongside clear-eyed descriptions of Grozny under siege. She was wounded in the first days of heavy bombardment that preceded the return of Russian forces to the region, when bombs hit the outdoor market where she worked in the Chechen capital.ĭoodles filling some of the journal’s pages show plumes of smoke sketched like bunches of flowers. “I don’t know anything about politics, but this country is finished,” she told the small crowd at a book reading. A new fear has replaced the flashbacks that still haunt her - that her drive to tell her story will bring harm to her or her husband. Under Putin’s continued rule - once again Russian prime minister but seeking to return to the Kremlin as president after elections in March - lingering social taboos remain on writing about the war and its aftermath. Tens of thousands were killed in the first Chechen conflict from 1994 to 1996, but Vladimir Putin sent troops back into the mainly Muslim region on Russia’s southern fringe as prime minister in 1999 - a move that helped boost his popularity and won him two terms as president from 2000-2008. “I think it’s important for people to understand what kind of country they live in, to wake up from their stupor.” “This book doesn’t scold anyone, but it tells the truth,” she said. I thought if I die someone might find it in the ruins,” Zherebtsova said, her bleach-blond fringes peeping out from a pink and turquoise head scarf framing her round cheeks. “I didn’t think it would ever be published. The flow of words were an act of catharsis, but Zherebstova, now 26, says she has also come to see them as a testimony against official efforts to paper over the horrors of the war.įacing down threats and fears for her safety since she began looking for a publisher four years ago, Zherebtsova read out from her newly printed diary at a modest book presentation last week in Moscow, where she has lived since 2006. Through it all, she wrote about it, detailing the shattering of civilian life during the second Chechen war and confiding her hunger and fears in a carefully kept diary. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Polina Zherebtsova was 14 when the bombing began, smashing apartment blocks and leaving corpses in the street of her hometown of Grozny.
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