May 31 in Russian history

I am really sorry for not writing for so long. I was very busy at work and I had to part with the company's notebook I used to write the articles :). Now that I have somehow got rid of the most time-consuming projects, I continue.

1223: Battle of the Kalka river. This was the first time when Russians met the Mongol armies. The river is named Kalmius now and the battle took place not far from the modern city Mariupol. The area was inhabited for more than 150,000 years, when the earliest stone tools of the Acheulean culture are found along the river banks. Now, the river has turned into a sewer ditch. In 1223, the messengers from Polovtsian nomads came to Rus and asked to protect them from the unknown invaders. Mongols at the moment were not inclined to attack Russia and they also sent their emissaries, asking Russians not to interfere into the conflict of Mongols and Polovtsians. Knyaz of Kiev Mstislav ordered to kill the Mongol ambassadors and decided to attack the enemy. Russian knyazes had no idea about the numbers of the invaders and acted carelessly. Some knyazes joined the campaign, others were too busy to spend their precious time. They quickly defeated a reconnaissance team, chased them and were met on a river bank by main Mongol forces, which counted up to 30,000 people. The knyazes were not sure what to do. Some of them preferred to stay on the opposite bank and wait for the Mongols to attempt to cross the river, while others (Daniil of Galich, Mstislav the Brave and Polovtsians) decided to attack. The battle was lost and the Russians fled. Mongols followed them. Mongols surrounded the Russian camp and proposed to give up. When they gave up (what did they hope for after the murder of the ambassadors?) six knyazes were executed by Mongols. Wooden boards were put onto their bodies and they suffocated slowly while the Mongols feasted on the dais. Quite naturally, Genghis Khan liked the easy victory and soon came to Russia with an even larger army.

1891: The construction of the Transsiberian Railroad begins in Vladivostok, on the Far East of Russia. The railroad was built from the east westwards.

1918: One more smart decision of the Bolsheviks -- they introduce the compulsory mixed education. Some psychologists say that this was a "tragic error", arguing that the mixed education makes boys behave more like girls. I always knew that psychology is a pseudo-science. And even if they are right, the advantages of mixed education, in my opinion, overweigh. If you don't believe me, ask Henry Moore :). In 1943, the separate education was re-introduced by Stalin, but after his death, in 1954, mixed education was brought back.

1924: USSR and China sign the Agreement on common principles for solving problems between the USSR and the Chinese republic. Diplomatic relations are established, unjust treaties of the tsarist government are annulled, the Chinese Eastern Railway becomes a joint commercial enterprise. This was the first equitable treaty of China with a European country.

1937: Alexander Kuprin returns to the USSR from emigration. Kuprin was an outstanding writer, the author of many brilliant short stories and some novels. He was born in 1870. His father was a minor government official. He played violin and was a good painter. Kuprin's mother belonged to a poor, but noble Tatar family, and Kuprin was always proud of being, at least partially, a Tatar. In 1880, he entered a military school (Cadet Corps). The school life gave him a lot of material for his novel The Cadets. In 1894 he retires from the army and becomes a newspaper reporter in Kiev and... an adventurer. He travelled to Moscow, Donetsk and back to Kiev. He founded a circus and worked as a manager in an estate, a dentist and a land surveyor (remember Henry Thoreau?!). He writes magnificent stories Moloch and Olesya. In 1895, Maxim Gorky invited him to write for Samarskaya Gazeta newspaper in Samara. Kuprin published one story in the newspaper and left again. In 1901 he moves to St.Petersburg and writes The Horse Thieves, The Duel and The Garnet Bracelet. Many famous Russian writers admired his works. Leo Tolstoy called him "the true successor of Chekhov", Vladimir Nabokov insisted that Kuprin was "the Russian Kipling", Anton Chekhov also praised him. In 1917, after the revolution, Kuprin spent some time in the USSR, where Gorky protected him, but soon left and joined the counter-revolutionary White Guard and worked in a newspaper published by the army of Yudenich. Soon he left to Helsinki and Paris. Of course, the Soviet critics who admired him while he lived in the Soviet Russia, turned to hatred as soon as he had left. Libraries received orders to burn Kuprin's books. Lenin's wife Krupskaya personally controlled the elimination of all writings by Kuprin. And then, in 1937, quite suddenly, the hatred stops. Why? Kuprin has returned. He was poor and his life in Paris was very hard and he fell ill with cancer, and the Soviet envoys promised him a free apartment, free villa, free medical care, etc. (free wine was, probably, also include -- Kupring got used to the alcohol by these years). At last he agreed. He was allowed to take his cat Yu-Yu, but not his cherished library. There was a rumour in Paris that he was made drunk. Soviet newspapers hypocritically wrote that his stories are the favourite reading of the Soviet people. His books were translated into tens of languages of the USSR, theaters staged his plays (which he himself considered rather weak). By this time, he was already dying. One year later, in 1938, he died from the tongue cancer.

March 7 in Russian history

1573: Ivan Fyodorov (Moskvitin), known as the first Russian book printer, founds a typography in Lviv. It is assumed that he was born around 1510. Probably, it happened in Petkovichi, somewhere between Minsk and Brest in modern Byelorussia. In 1529-1532 he studied, it seems, in the Kraków university in Poland).In the end of XIV century, there was a typography in Kraków, run by Szwaipolt Feol (spelling may be wrong. Does anybody know the correct spelling?) and Ivan Fyodorov could learn printing there. Till 1550, he lived in Ukraine, where he became known as a cannon maker and he is said to be the inventor of a multibarrelled mortar. In 1550 he comes to Moscow, where he joins the retinue of the metropolitan Makarius and becomes a deacon in a church and participates in a "commission" to agree variant versions of church books. Fyodorov also works in the so called Anonymous typography, founded on order of metropolitan Makarius. This typography never produced any books, only some sample pages. In 1553, Ivan the Terrible orders to organize another typography. On the request of the tsar, the king of Denmark sent a specialist to assist and advise, but when the typography finally starts working in 1563, it is not managed by a foreigner, but by Ivan Fyodorov. On April 19, 1563, Ivan Fyodorov and Pyotr Mstislavets begin working on a book call Acts and Epistles of the Saint Apostles (or simply Apostolos). In this book, Fyodorov and Mstislavets developed the rules of Russian bookprinting, new fonts and other principles which defined the appearance of Russian books for centuries.

In 1563, Makarius died and the printers lost their patron. Clerics and, of course, scribes, start persecuting the innovators. They print other books, but in 1566, the fire destroyed the typography and Fyodorov and Mstislavets decided to leave to Lithuania. Ivan the Terrible lets them go and they come to the great hetman of Lithuania, H. Khodkevich, who welcomes them and organizes a typography in his estate in Zabludovo. In 1569 Mstislavets goes to Vilnius and Fyodorov keeps working in Zabludovo. By 1570, Khodkevich loses his influence and Fyodorov cannot continue his business and decides to go to Lviv. Here, in 1573, he organizes the first typography in Ukraine. In 1575, he meets knyaz Konstantin Ostrozhsky, the owner of a large estate Ostrog (or Ostrih). Konstantin supported the Ukrainian national movement and tried to collect the Ukrainian intellectuals. While living in Ostrog, Fyodorov prints a number of religious books, the Chronology by Andrei Rymsha, a dictionary by Timofey Annich called The Book, etc. He often visits Kraków and Lviv. In 1576 he visits Turkey. In 1582 he decides to establish a new typography in Kiev, but in 1583 Ivan Fyodorov died.

1757: The first joint stock company in Russia is organized, "Russian company trading in Constantinople". Only members of the royal family were allowed to buy shares. Public joint stock companies appeared only after 1805, when Alexander I signed the decree "On the public liability of joint stock companies". By 1829, 19 new companies were working in Russia.

1891: Diplomatic relationships are established between Russia and the Great Duchy of Luxembourg

1960: Sailors of the USS Kearsarge notice a barge in the middle of the Pacific ocean. They find four Soviet soldiers on the barge. Askhat Ziganshin, Anatoly Kryuchkovsky, Filipp Poplavsky and Ivan Fedotov were on the barge when on January 17 it was driven by a storm into the open ocean. It had happened before but they had managed to use the diesel engines to get back. This time the wind was too strong. They had a loaf of bread and a small bag with grain. They found some kilograms of potato smelling with diesel fuel. For more than a month they survived on these scarce resources. When they finished with it, they boiled and ate leather wrist watch straps. Then came the belts. Then came the boots. They boiled them a number of times, "till the water stopped to get black", cut them in small pieces and fried these cuts using the sea water instead of salt. "It was like potato chips," Ziganshin recalled later. They tried to eat toothpaste and soap, but the idea was rejected. They also drank the rain water. 5 gulps per day. Later the norm was lowered to 3 gulps per day.

During the storm, a wooden box with the name of the barge was lost and later found on the beach, so the Soviet army authorities were convinced that the four had drowned and sent the notifications to their families.

There were so many holes in the hull that every day they spent hours trying to pump away the water.

They were often asked if they had conflicts, quarrels or even why they didn't eat each other. Kryuchkovsky recalled later: "None of us had a nervous breakdown. Under those conditions, if I tried to raise my voice, I wouldn't be talking to you now." When they sailed on Queen Mary to Europe, a sailor told them that he was in a similar situation and a number of people died. Not because of starvation or thirst, but they were killed in fights.

On March 2 and 6 they saw ships passing by, but they were not noticed. On March 7 they saw helicopters. Some hours later the aircraft carrier Kearsarge appeared, but stayed on a distance. The pilots offered them to climb up, but they refused. When asked, why, Kryuchkovsky shrugs: "We hoped that they have elevators on Kearsarge to lift the barge. We wanted to save the socialist property". On the other hand, Ziganshin recalls that when asked why the ship didn't come close to the barge the Americans answered that they were a bit afraid of Russians. A journalist from Life magazine asked them if they would like to sell their story. The notion of selling a story must have been even more weird to them as it is now to me, and they refused. He asked then if they would like to ask for an asylum in the USA. "God forbid," Ziganshin answered, "we want to go home."

This adventure was incredibly popular in the USSR. There was even a song, called Ziganshin-boogy ("Ziganshin-rock, Ziganshin-boogy, Poplavsky ate a letter from his girlfriend! Ziganshin-boogy, Ziganshin-rock, Poplavsky eats his second boot!")

Kryuchkovsky lives now in Kiev. Ziganshin lives in Lomonosov, near St.Petersburg. Fedotov and Poplavsky died.