On March 12th, Russian Bartitsu enthusiast Sergei Mishenev was a morning guest on Radio Baltica, a popular North-Western Russian FM station with 5 million listeners. His 20-minute talk about Bartitsu was followed by calls and text messages to the station.
That afternoon, Sergei gave a lecture about Bartitsu at the Maiakovsky Library in the centre of St. Petersburg. The lecture-hall was full. The most exiting moment was the arrival of Nikolai Vashilin, the old master of combat scenes of Soviet cinema, who had devised the fight choreography for the famous “baritsu” encounter between Holmes and Moriarty in the Russian “Sherlock Holmes” telemovie (1979). The old master told about the production of that movie, and said he was surprised that so many people were still interested in his work.
Sergei then demonstrated a variety of Bartitsu walking stick self defence defence techniques against a “hooligan”.
