{"id":106126,"date":"2017-03-02T11:18:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T16:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=106126"},"modified":"2017-08-03T09:17:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T13:17:46","slug":"object-lesson-a-photograph-of-a-russian-citizen-raising-her-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/03\/02\/object-lesson-a-photograph-of-a-russian-citizen-raising-her-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Look What We Found: A photograph of a Russian protester raising her voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Hedge Hall office of Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, hangs a framed photograph of a Russian woman holding a protest sign in one hand and her snacking child in the other.<\/p>\n

The woman in the picture had joined others to protest a construction project in St. Petersburg, explains Costlow, who took the photo in 2009 while co-leading a Bates Fall Semester program in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

In their fight, citizens were trying to \u201cuse what available legal processes there existed in post-Soviet Russia to try to protest and stop the project,\u201d says Costlow \u2014 hence the message on the woman\u2019s sign: \u201cAll Power to the Laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

The slogan is a play on words, Costlow says, because it \u201cechoes the Bolshevik slogan \u2018All Power to the Soviets.\u2019 She has re-appropriated it, by putting bars over the word \u2018power\u2019 and making the word \u2018laws\u2019 so prominent.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Costlow, the photograph \u201cresonates with other situations in Russian and Soviet history, where women have been the bearers of conscience. I love that it\u2019s a picture of this woman holding her child and maybe symbolically hoping for a better future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costlow\u2019s co-leader of the Bates semester abroad was \u00c1slaug \u00c1sgeirsd\u00f3ttir, associate professor of politics, and the subject in her photo was the homestay mother of one of their Bates students.<\/p>\n

\"170301_Costlow_Campus_Ladd_0019A\"<\/a>

Above a selection of works by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, a photograph of a Russian woman holding a protest sign hangs in the office of Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

During their stay, a conflict erupted over plans by the Russian energy giant, Gazprom, to build a huge skyscraper \u2014 the tallest in Europe \u2014 in the center of St. Petersburg, an extraordinary city that has retained its 18th- and 19th-century architecture.<\/p>\n

The protest that Costlow photographed \u201cwas really lively and really creative.\u201d In retrospect, she adds, it was like some of the post-inauguration protests in the U.S. \u201cbecause of the creativity and the spirit, the humor, irony and parody that were displayed in the signs that people were carrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2009 protests worked, and Gazprom decided to move the proposed building to a different site, though it has yet to be built.<\/p>\n

“I was really excited to see people acting as citizens and publicly raising their voices.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Costlow\u2019s academic training is in Russian literature and culture, and she has traveled extensively to Russia and the Soviet Union. Her publications include the book Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the 19th-Century Forest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Beyond the creativity she witnessed in St. Petersburg in 2009, something else grabbed her. \u201cI was really excited to see people acting as citizens and publicly raising their voices and trying to do what they could as citizens to protect a city that they love.\u201d<\/p>\n

They spoke up in part to preserve a historical and culture treasure, in part to protect their neighborhoods. \u201cThey were really fed up with corruption and money controlling everything,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Costlow explains the significance of the photo in her office showing a St. Petersburg woman holding a protest sign in one hand and her snacking child in the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":106135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,30,133,232],"tags":[10760,4583,11321,10761],"class_list":["post-106126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-civic-engagement","category-creativity","category-environment-sustainability","tag-environmental-studies","tag-jane-costlow","tag-look-what-we-found","tag-russian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106126"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108768,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106126\/revisions\/108768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}