On Thursday, March 15, 2007 a man who had survived some of the worst the old Soviet Union could throw at a human being encountered a soldier of God at a rest stop in New Jersey. At the hands of a madman, 75-year-old Michail Makarenko breathed his last.
Because he didn't want some damned cds.
According to New Jersey authorities, Makarenko and his driver and interpreter, Greg Burnside, were on the way from Makarenko's home in Virginia to visit friends in New York. Makarenko happened to stop at the same rest area as 26-year-old Brian White, an independent hip-hop artist from Humble, Texas.
White allegedly asked Michail Makarenko if he wanted to buy some cds. The elderly Russian demurred.
Witnesses told police that after it was clear that Makarenko wasn't interested, Brian White grabbed a rock and struck Mr. Makarenko repeatedly about the head. White then fled the scene in his car, heading towards New York.
In less than half an hour, New Jersey State Troopers saw White on the road just outside Trenton. An hour-long car chase ensued. White was captured in Teaneck. An AP report published later that day indicated that upon exiting his vehicle, Brian White charged the cops who'd pulled over to arrest him.
Authorities said they subdued White with relative ease.
Brian White is currently being held in Mt. Holly, NJ, on $750,000 bail, with a stipulation that he can't be released without a psychiatric evaluation.
Mention of Michail Makarenko in American newspapers could be found as far back as 1978. A short article printed in the Washington Post that September told of Makarenko's journey from Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to Vienna, Austria. Makarenko was traveling with his daughter and her family. According to the Post, the dissident planned at the time to settle in Western Europe.
Makarenko was 47 in 1978, and he'd just spent 8 years Soviet prison camps for activities that didn't comport with being a good communist at the time (recent reports about Makarenko's murder state that he was in the gulag for 11 years). Some of Makarenko's "crimes" in Soviet Russia were organizing labor strikes, being part of an "underground" political party, and organizing gallery showings of artwork by other dissidents.
A quote in a September 1983 column written by George Will for the Post illustrated just how harsh life must have been for Michail Makarenko prior to 1978. Will was writing critically about President Ronald Reagan's response to the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007. After underlining other infractions by the Soviets, Will moved on to the issue of the 4 million people then estimated to be in Soviet prison camps. Will must have consulted Makarenko for some of his information, for he wrote the following:
In at least 40 extermination camps, the work inevitably causes leukemia or other fatal effects as a result of such things as exposure to radioactivity in uranium mining, or cleaning exhaust tubes of nuclear submarines, or polishing glass without ventilation. According to Mikhail Makarenko, who spent eight years in Soviet camps, the diet for "heavy labor" prisoners is 2,000 calories a day. For "strict regime" prisoners, 1,300. In Auschwitz it was 2,050...In 1990 the communists were truly on their way out of power, the Soviet Union on the verge of disintegrating. Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev was in Washington early that summer and naturally his visit was greeted by protesters, among them Michail (also often transliterated as Mikhail), Makarenko. He was quoted in an article published June 1, 1990 in the Fresno (CA) Bee:
[Under] the same crisp blue sky, a Soviet rock band named Gaza hammered out a moody tune that sounded like it was born in a dissident nightclub at 1 o'clock in the morning. And standing with arms outstretched to support signs urging freedom for Lithuania, a former Soviet political prisoner held forth on Gorbachev.It was in an article published in the Daily Herald in 1997 that Makarenko himself was able to speak at length. His words were resonant with courage and defiance still. The piece was a commentary by Burt Constable on religious freedom in the still newly-communist-free Russia and here in the United States:
"This is the end of him," white-bearded Mikhail Makarenko said through an interpreter. "We are present at the funeral."
Once the so-called evil empire of godless Communists, Russia has gotten religion.For his faith, among other things, Michail Makarenko was a criminal in the eyes of the Soviets.
"The general trend is that way," begins former Soviet dissident Mikhail Makarenko, 65, speaking through an interpreter. A frequent lecturer at Lindstrom's suburban school, Makarenko was instrumental in establishing the Christian branch school in Moscow.
"I was baptized by soldiers at the front during World War II," explains Makarenko, who had been separated from his family. "I was 9 years old."
Christianity stuck with him.
"I just remembered it and I hid it," he says. "I could never go to church."
On Christmas and Easter, the churches would open, but only the aged could worship without harassment, Makarenko says.
"Now all the churches are open in Russia. They are re-opening churches, building churches," Makarenko says.
However, some of the same Communists who used to oversee the few churches before the collapse of the Soviet Union still call the shots, he says.
"It's not true believers," Makarenko says of those churches. "It's like theater."
Having grown up and been imprisoned in a nation where fear, suspicion, brutality and lying were common, Makarenko laughs when asked if America is losing religion.
"I think American society is very moral," says Makarenko, who has lived in Washington, D.C., the last 14 years.
(...)
What about the liberal media? Aren't we ruining the nation?
"The press is owned by the people who own it," Makarenko says with a shrug. He says the Washington Post is different from the Washington Times and they are both different from any newspaper he'd publish.
"That is their right," he says. "I don't want a country where everybody is Pat Buchanan...
"We should be grateful to the Constitution," Makarenko adds.
Religious people who think our laws are immoral must understand "Congress is elected by the majority," he says. "It is a democratic Congress. What can you do?"
Well, you can always vote in a new Congress, he says.
But you also can send your kids to private religious schools or worship services, conduct religion classes at home or, best of all, teach them morals by example, Makarenko says.
Coming from a country without choices, Makarenko appreciates the freedom to make choices - even bad ones.
"Do we want Pat Buchanan to be president, or do we want Louis Farrakhan?" Makarenko asks with a wry smile. "I want that right to choose."
In 1988, Washington Times security writer Edmund Jacoby was assigned to write a profile of Makarenko. Jacoby said much of Makarenko's story was fabricated (scroll down once you click the link to the heading, "Starting the presses"), but it seems as though Jacoby's contention has been ignored by many other journalists, based on a survey of news pieces written about Makarenko after the late '80s.
As has already been mentioned in the first articles about Makarenko's alleged killer, Brian White also had religion.
From www.myspace.com/coldbloodedbeatmaker, the MySpace page White built for his music, we have the mad manifesto Brian White wrote in his "About Me" section. Emphasis has been added to some of the stranger portions of White's statement:
I prayed for God to give me wisdom and understanding and that I make the right decision and my whole life changed. Later that week people everywhere kept approaching me telling me God told them to tell me this or that or they would pray for my future. So, I made the turn around sincerely in my heart, and God has changed my music. THe Holy spirit tells me what to play and what to sing. "All glory to God maker of all things"!!!!!!!I had a dream where he gave me special green and black tatoos, and I didnt want the tatoos, and you know tatoos dont go away so I had to accept my calling because there was no running "this time". God has given me different gifts that where always there but he has put his touch on them, and I tell you it is really a blessing. I can help you in any situation. Try me. 281 229 4532 djcoldblooded@djcoldblooded.net. ANyways my real name is Brian Kuo Catrelle White and my Album which I believe will be part of The next century Bible is called the Book of Brian. The Book contains ? Chapters and in them is True Secrets straight from God. Aliens are among us, the secret scrolls is real, We have a secret city the Gov has made, and the cloning of men is now and real. God is very angry with us, and he will soon change his face. God is real, and you Presidents and so called Men of God should tell the people the Truth so that they will be saved. You all know what Aliens, Scrolls, and the Secret City I am talking about and you need to Free peoples minds so they can stop believing our God is not Merciful. The thing I can't stand most is when God gives me a message for someone and the "worldly" person accepts it and even says thanks, the "christian" tries to test me and then give me their oppinion. I dont go around trying to ruin peoples life, I just obey God. It kind of reminds me of when Jesus was teaching and the Rabbi's where testing him. Church people get jealous when they see someone being used by God and its not them, no wander why knowone wants to go to Church. But realize God lives in your heart so you dont have to go to Church 2 find him. A simple prayer will do, all you have to do is ask him to come into ur heart, and hes allready there waiting to turn the light on in your closet. God bless (...)Brian also created a separate page for himself:
www.myspace.com/therealdjcoldblooded.
That profile was not nearly as strange as the music profile, but there were some stray, odd statements. In "General interests," Brian White wrote, "God, music, and stackin' paper." Where the profile asked who he'd like to meet, DJ Coldblooded responded, "The man who decides what goes on the radio."
The real DJ Coldblooded's allegiance to a God of aliens, clones, blood and stones was apparently somewhat recent. In 2004 he published a website at www.djcoldblooded.net. A survey of various incarnations of White's old site (via The Wayback Machine) between 2004 and 2006 showed no evidence of a Christian bent in his music.
In fact, the first words on the page in 2004 were, "Give it to us, or we will take it from you."
Two years later a visitor the page (it was offline as of March 16, 2007) could read a marquee that said, "full time hustla," and learn that DJ Coldblooded also went by "B Weezy" on occasion.
Brian White had plenty of experience and some talent at his chosen art, though -- in 2003, a listing of student activities at the University of West Florida contained this glowing promotion for an appearance by DJ Coldblooded:
Brian White, a.k.a. DJ Coldblooded, knows how to work the 1's and 2's and slow the music down for the crew heads. Plus, he writes his songs, can sing and rap over any track and compose and produce his own background music. The guy is amazing! Come out and see what he can do!Then again, it could be that White was asked to send in his own promotional listing. Yet his music MySpace page showed nearly 5400 friends -- pretty impressive for an independent performer.
Michail Makarenko and Brian White -- a Soviet refugee who believed in the value of artistic expression to the degree that he would risk jail to facilitate that expression, and a DJ who had found what he thought was his calling in his own strange version of God. Somehow they crossed paths late at night at a rest stop in New Jersey, and the aged dissident fell dead in the cold, stoned because he wasn't interested in the lunatic's message. One died, in the words of of a pastor who knew him, "a martyr's death."
Brian White, the alleged killer -- was he a martyr, too? Had White fallen prey to psychosis, to madness? Will he spend the rest of his days wondering why God led him to such a ferocious, vicious moment?
Or was White sending a subtle signal all along, from the moment he named himself DJ Coldblooded?
Additional mainstream media sources for this blog entry:
"Former Soviet dissident met 'a martyr's death,'" The Star-Ledger, March 17, 2007.Any other sources were linked in the entry.
The Washington Post, archived articles, 1970s, '80s, '90s.
