April 26 in Russian history

1164: The Golden Gate is built in Vladimir marking the finishing of the city wall. There were five gates in the wall, but only one of them survived. The gate is a limestone tower with a large arch, a battle ground above it and a miniature temple on the top. The arch was 15 meters high in the XII century, but now the ground level is 1.5 meters higher than it was. There is a stairway leading from the internal side of the gate to the battle ground and to the temple. There is an old inscription (XII-XIII centuries) on one of the windows, but I couldn't read what is written there :). The earth wall with wooden fence was adjacent to the tower. Now, there's a museum in the Golden Gate where you can see a diorama of the siege of Vladimir by Tatars in 1238, weapons of XIII and later centuries. Tatars couldn't get through the gate and entered the city through the broken wooden fence. The gate was rebuilt many times since then. For example, in XVIII century, when the empress Catherine visited Vladimir, her cart was too wide to squeeze into the arch (about 5 meters) and she ordered to make a road around the gate. The parts of the wall adjacent to the gate were dug out and a road was built. Unfortunately, the wall was supporting the gate and the gate began to fall apart. It was decided to enforce it with counterforts. These counterforts now hide a large part of the original structure. The temple at the top was also rebuilt. The remains of the earth wall are still seen from both sides of the gate.

1912: Vladislav Starevich finishes in Moscow the first puppet cartoon, The Beautiful Leukanida, a parody of medieval novels. Starevich was born in 1882 in Moscow and spent his childhood in Lithuania and Estonia. Since childhood he was interested in entomology and in 1910 he became the director of a museum of natural history in Kaunas. Then he began to make films about insects. The first films, The life of dragon-flies and The Stag Beetles, were made in 1910. Filming insects was not an easy task and then he finds a great idea. He saw the puppet animations made by the French father of animation, Émile Cohl, and decided to use dead insects to film a stop-motion animation. In 1911, he moved to Moscow and met one of the first Russian movie entrepreneurs, Alexander Khanzhonkov, who was so impressed by these cartoons that offered Starevich to make a stop-motion animation with a consistent storyline. The Beautiful Leukanida became the first such animation in the world. It was very successful (an reviewer of a British newspaper admitted that he does not understand how it was made. If the beetles are trained, the trainer must be a man of a magic fantasy and patience. That these are the real beetles is clearly seen.) and was quickly followed by other similar cartoons from the life of insects: The Cameraman's Revenge, Dragonfly and ant, Christmas in the woods, etc. Later, Starevich makes also traditional movies mixed with animated scenes: The Night Before Christmas (based on N.Gogol's stories) and Terrible Vengeance. After the revolution of 1917, Starevich moves to Yalta and then emigrates to Paris. Unlike other Russian refugees, he finds a new job immediately after arriving to France. He adapts his name to a more comfortable for a French ear Ladislas Starevich and continues making his animations. He makes Aesop's fable into the movie The Frogs That Demand a King and tens of other movies. His highest achievement became The Tale of the Fox (Le Roman de Renard), the first feature-length puppet animation. He started this film in France, but it was later financed by the Third Reich, interested in popularization of the German culture, and this Goethe's masterpiece suited their goals. This association with the Nazis was, probably, the reason why this film is not remembered today. Some other cartoons by Starevich may be found online. For example, Cameraman's Revenge and The Insect's Christmas are available here. A good article about Starevich is Entomology and Animation: A Portrait of An Early Master Ladislaw Starewicz.

April 17 in Russian history

1912: Lena massacre. On March 13, workers of the Andreyevski goldfield on river Lena in Siberia began a strike. The working conditions were terrible. They worked for 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, in Siberian cold weather. The salary was very low and it was partially substituted with coupons which could be ecxhanged for food in the shops belonging to the owners of the goldfields. The prices were high and the food itself was of a poor quality. Also, the workers had to pay fines for every fault. Safety regulations simply did not exist, so about 700 accidents per 1,000 workers happened every year. The workers demanded to shorten the working day to 8-10 hours, to increase wages and supply them with better food. By mid-March, about 6,000 people participated in the strike. On April 17, about 2,000 workers marched to protest against the arrest of their leaders, which took place one day before. The workers were met by soldiers who opened fire, killing about 270 people and wounding around 250 more.

95 years later, in 2007, the authorities of Moscow and St.Petersburg ordered the police to attack the participants of other peaceful marches. In Moscow, about 9,000 policemen beat 3,000 protesters with clubs and kicked the fallen people, dragged them by hair to the police cars. About 500-600 people were detained in Moscow and about 200 in St.Petersburg. Many of them were arrested before the march began. Many people from Moscow suburbs were arrested on railway stations. Few were hospitalized. In St.Petersburg, one woman was hospitalized with broken nose and jaw. Another man is suffering from broken rib, which damaged his lung. A member of the prohibited National-Bolshevist Party was hospitalized with cranial trauma. In Moscow, an operator of a Japanese TV channel was severely beaten. A number of other journalists became victims of the police violence, too. The arrested people were trialled and found guilty in "chanting anti-government slogans and using foul language" on the basis of the evidences given by policemen. Many of them were passers-by who did not participate in the protests. Testimonies of other witnesses were not taken into account. Of all national TV channels, only one covered the events in depth. "President" Putin at the moment of the massacre was visiting a show called "fights without rules". A nice choice.

5 years after the Lena massacre, the tsar abdicated the throne. In 1918, he was executed.

1923: The XII congress of the RCP(b) Russian Communist Party (of bolsheviks) began. There were 836 delegates who represented 386,000 members and candidates of the Communist Party. It is interesting that in April 1922, during the XI congress, there were 532,000 people in the party. Moreover, in March 1921, during the X congress, there were 732,521 members.

Lenin was ill and did not attend the congress. Among the most important matters was the question of the industrialization. K.Radek and L.Krasin offered to seek the assistance of foreign capitalists (which implied certain concessions, of course). The proposal was rejected. Idiot Trotsky came up with a stupid idea to close the larges factories of the country and to boost industrialization by providing more support to the agriculture. The congress decided to give special attention to the heavy industries (the accent which survived till the last years of the USSR). Another important point was the position of the party on the national question. The extreme danger of all kinds of nationalism was recognized. The liquidation of the inequality of the nations of the Soviet Russia was stressed by the congress.