Tag Archives: political repressions

Poetic Tuesday: Boris Pasternak, Winter Night

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It has been a good while since we decided to broaden our for­mat a lit­tle and intro­duce some new excit­ing series for our blog. So today we are intro­duc­ing our Poetic Tues­day: every Tues­day we will (try to) post a remark­able Soviet poem, most prob­a­bly on a fort­nightly basis.  This par­tic­u­lar poem, Win­ter Night by Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture of 1958, the author of Doc­tor Zhivago, Boris Paster­nak has been hand picked to open this col­lec­tion. We thank Andrey Kneller for the trans­la­tion. The best way to enjoy it, we sug­gest, is by click­ing Read More.., then play the youtube video and when the words begin, read the poem. The video fea­tures Win­ter Night read in Russ­ian by Boris Vetrov, vio­lin by Secret Gar­den. It is truly mov­ing — we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Thanks for being such a won­der­ful audi­ence — you are a plea­sure to write for.

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The Victory Aftermath. Russia in Second World War.

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den pobedy 500x385 The Victory Aftermath. Russia in Second World War.

The V-Day. Copy­right unknown

On May, 25th 1945 Joseph Stalin made a cel­e­bra­tory speech devoted to the end of the Russ­ian Great Patri­otic War. The Sec­ond World War was com­ing to an end, but the Soviet Union was done fight­ing. The Russ­ian troops had exited Ger­many and ahead lied a long road of rebuild­ing and reha­bil­i­ta­tion. So in Krem­lin, at the V-day Meet­ing, Stalin had said the following:

Do not expect me to say any­thing extra­or­di­nary today. I have a very sim­ple, very ordi­nary toast to make. I would like to raise a glass to health of those peo­ple who are low in rank and invis­i­ble in the hier­ar­chy. Of those who we con­sider to be the “small screws” of our huge state mech­a­nism — they might be small but with­out them us gen­er­als, mar­shals and other top army lead­ers wouldn’t have made it. They are plen­ti­ful, they are a legion, it is tens of mil­lions of peo­ple who have not been heard of — yet they hold us together, as the base holds the top. To their health!

Today we have brought to your atten­tion a frag­ment of the inter­view with Yelena Bon­ner, a human rights activist, a dis­si­dent, a writer, and a widow of the late Andrei Sakharov — dur­ing the war she was a teen and now, cour­tesy to the Internet-magazine Snob.ru, she tells us about her expe­ri­ence dur­ing the war.

So — We did not fight for Stalin or the Soviet Union. We fought because we had no other choice.

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Good Soviet Kids Go to Heaven? Nope, They Go to Artek!

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198 500x348 Good Soviet Kids Go to Heaven? Nope, They Go to Artek!

Kids in the tra­di­tional uniform.

The most famous PR image of the pio­ne­ria of the Soviet Union was a sum­mer vaca­tion camp sit­u­ated in the Crimea (Ukraine), next to Gurzuf town. Founded as a sana­to­rium for the kids suf­fer­ing and recov­er­ing from the TB by the Russ­ian Soci­ety of the Red Cross, it first opened doors in 1925, June 16th, accom­mo­dat­ing about 80 kids from Moscow and the near­est Ukrain­ian towns.

Then it was just a step ahead of a basic camp­ing ground, with kids sleep­ing in tents out in the for­est. How­ever, it grew rapidly until in early 1930s a few per­ma­nent build­ings were built. It was then Artek started work­ing all year round due to its mild Mediterranean-like climate.

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Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbelievable Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

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kurilov2 Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbelievable Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

The only per­son to escape the Iron Cur­tain by swimming.

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

Since his child­hood, Slava Kurilov had been very keen on swim­ming and he loved the sea so deeply, he made it his career — he was an oceanog­ra­pher, a deep sea diver. He knew the sky — all the major con­stel­la­tions, he knew mete­o­rol­ogy, he had a vivid inquis­i­tive mind  — he also spoke good Eng­lish, had a sis­ter liv­ing in Canada and his father was in a Ger­man prison camp dur­ing the WWII, which also con­sid­ered some­what of a treach­ery. A few times Slava applied for a per­mit for research trips out­side the coun­try, but to no avail — the rea­son being “endan­ger­ing the secu­rity of the USSR”.

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Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet ‘Tiananmen’

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1962 maslo1 500x332 Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet Tiananmen

Meat, but­ter, pay rise!

Novocherkassk is a small town in the South of Rus­sia, also known as the unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of the Cos­sacks, the Slavic mil­i­tary com­mu­nity. Unfor­tu­nately this town was the place of a huge tragedy, when in 1962 the civil­ian demon­stra­tion was opened fire on.

The tur­moil started on June, 1 when the Soviet gov­ern­ment announced the gro­cery price increase of about 30 per cent. The riot began at the pro­gres­sive elec­tro loco­mo­tive fac­tory: just before the price increase, the salary had been low­ered, which already was below the liv­ing min­i­mum (about a hun­dred rub­bles). The work­ers demanded an expla­na­tion, and threat­ened to strike. Faced with an ulti­ma­tum, the CEO Kurochkin mounted the plat­form and demanded that peo­ple went back to work. ‘If you do not have enough money for meat, buy the liver pie’ answered Kurochkin with the snarl.

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The case of The Kremlin Doctors and its Consequences: the State of Anti-Semitism

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display diligence The case of The Kremlin Doctors and its Consequences: the State of Anti Semitism

Be Vig­i­lant! Dis­close an Enemy Under any Mask!

1953 was the last year of long and ter­ri­fy­ing gov­ern­ing of Stalin. In Jan­u­ary the huge coun­try although accus­tomed to repres­sions shud­dered from the new hor­ror –  this time the enemies-saboteurs were Krem­lin doc­tors of a Jew­ish ori­gin. The com­menced per­se­cu­tion also applied to ordi­nary doc­tors.  Soviet peo­ple who believed to the polit­i­cally edited sto­ries broad­cast in the media were scared to be patients of Jew­ish doc­tors. On March, 5 of 1953 Stalin passed away and the case of Krem­lin doc­tors was dis­missed. Humil­i­ated, maimed doc­tors were released. How­ever this was only the begin­ning of the polit­i­cal repres­sions of the Jew­ish spe­cial­ists and today we would like to intro­duce you to a strik­ing exam­ple — the story of my family.

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