Two blogs you really have to look at

The first one is a brilliantly erratic Poemas del río Wang. Multilingual, colorful, aimless, meditative and absolute must read.

The second one is in Russian, but in most cases all you need to read is the year in the post title. Visual History (a.k.a. "Photo archives to the people!") is a collection of old photographs. Mostly, but not exclusively, Russian, including the famous photos by Prokudin-Gorsky and equally brilliant images made in USSR by journalists of the "Life" magazine Howard Sochurek and Carl Mydans. Absolute must see.

Here are some links to articles in Visual History:

• Nizhny Novgorod in 1958 (by Sochurek)
• Travel of an Americal along Volga in 1958 (by Sochurek)
• Sports parade in Moscow in 1945
• My hometown, Samara, in 1958 (Sochurek again)
• Post-war Byelorussia (1950s)
• Moscow in 1959 (by Mydans)
• Pskov around 1960
• Rostov: modern and Prokudin-Gorsky's photos
• Travel from Moscow to Rostov in 1964 (by Jacques Dupâquier)
• Soviet cars on the Expo 1958 in Brussels

P.S.: while writing, I found also this collection of photographs: Kansas City with a Russian accent.

Other blogs: languagehat on languages in 19th century Russia

One more favorite blog of mine is Languagehat. Today, he writes about the use of the French language in the early 19th century in Russia, about the decline of Russian language among the aristocrats and what happened that reversed the situation. He quotes Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes:

Princess Dashkova, a vocal advocate of Russian culture and the only female president ever of the Russian Academy of Sciences, had the finest European education. 'We were instructed in four different languages, and spoke French fluently,' she wrote in her memoirs, 'but my Russian was extremely poor.' Count Karl Nesselrode, a Baltic German and Russia's foreign minister from 1815 to 1856, could not write or even speak the language of the country he was meant to represent. French was the language of high society, and in high-born families the language of all personal relationships as well. The Volkonskys, for example, a family whose fortunes we shall follow in this book, spoke mainly French among themselves. Mademoiselle Callame, a French governess in the Volkonsky household, recalled that in nearly fifty years of service she never heard the Volkonskys speak a word of Russian, except to give orders to the domestic staff. This was true even of Maria (née Raevskaya), the wife of Prince Sergei Volkonsky, Tsar Alexander's favourite aide-de-camp in 1812. Despite the fact that she had been brought up in the Ukrainian provinces, where noble families were more inclined to speak their native Russian tongue, Maria could not write in Russian properly. Her letters to her husband were in French. Her spoken Russian, which she had picked up from the servants, was very primitive and full of peasant slang. It was a common paradox that the most refined and cultured Russians could speak only the peasant form of Russian which they had learnt from the servants as children...

This neglect of the Russian language was most pronounced and persistent in the highest echelons of the aristocracy, which had always been the most Europeanized (and in more than a few cases of foreign origin). In some families children were forbidden to speak Russian except on Sundays and religious holidays. During her entire education Princess Ekaterina Golitsyn had only seven lessons in her native tongue. Her mother was contemptuous of Russian literature and thought Gogol was 'for the coachmen'. The Golitsyn children had a French governess and, if she ever caught them speaking Russian, she would punish them by tying a red cloth in the shape of a devil's tongue around their necks. Anna Lelong had a similar experience at the Girls' Gymnasium, the best school for noble daughters in Moscow. Those girls caught speaking Russian were made to wear a red tin bell all day and stand like dunces, stripped of their white aprons, in the corner of the class; they were forced to remain standing even during meals, and received their food last. Other children were even more severely punished if they spoke Russian—sometimes even locked in a room. The attitude seems to have been that Russian, like the Devil, should be beaten out of noble children from an early age, and that even the most childish feelings had to be expressed in a foreign tongue.

See more quotations from Figes at Languagehat.

Other blogs: Soviet Zion and math teaching in USSR

Always entertaining and educating blog Strange Maps writes about "Stalin's Siberian Zion" – the Jewish Autonomous Region in Siberia. To make things more interesting I have collected the results of population censuses:

Year:	Total population of JAR:	Jewish population of JAR:	Total population of Russia (thousands):	Jewish population of Russia: (thousands)
1937	76,500	18,000
1939	108,915	17,695	108262	891
1959	162,856	14,269	117534	855
1970	172,449	11,452	130079	792
1979	188,710	10,166	137410	692
1989	214,085	8,887	147022	537
2002	190,915	2,329	145167	230

So, nowadays the percentage of Jewish population in Jewish autonomous region is about the same as across Russia

The figure below represents the decrease of the population of some ethnic minorities in Russia. Orange line is Jews, green line is Germans and blue line is Ukrainians (1989 is 100%).

I just have to add that the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia questioned these results. They say that the Jewish population in Russia is at least six times larger. The specialists from the Jerusalem university, though, replied that the number of Jews in Russia may be about twice as large as the result of the census (that is, about 500,000), but hardly much more.

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God Plays Dice is a blog about mathematics. Yesterday, the author posted a link to an article in Journal of Mathematical Behavior, written by Andrei Toom: A Russian Teacher in America (PDF). Mr. Toom makes some statements about the attitude of American students and compares it with the attitudes of the students he taught in the USSR. He admits that he has "very little experience with the bulk of the Russian population", since most of his students in Moscow "were children of intellectuals, because in Russia a much smaller percentage of youngsters than in US go into higher education".

I have no figures at hand, but according to this article, "Russia also had one of the highest shares of population with tertiary education (over 50 percent)". Does anyone know the exact figures for Russia and USA?

PS: the difference is that in the USA the salary of the people with higher education grows faster, while in Russia it's the other way round :)

Other blogs: A blog on Bulgarian history

Vladimir Georgiev recently visited our history forum Sima Qian Studio to announce his blog on Bulgarian history: Bulgarian History. There are only four articles there, but I hope he will make the blog an interesting source of information. The history of Bulgaria has enough events to provide the topics for a blog. Good luck, Vladimir!.

Other blogs: Russia, USSR and history

Andy has posted a Russia Blog roundup at his Siberian Light blog, where he mentions my article about Georgy Kosenko written some days ago for ExecutedToday.com. Thanks to Andy, but this is not what I wanted to say in the first place :).

Andy also mentioned some very interesting blogs. One of them is Soviet Russia, born in February 2008. The first two articles written by Xavi are really outstanding: Cold War blazing skies about the training flights of the Soviet air forces in the Atlantic, about the reaction of the US and NATO and about the first victims of the Cold War. The second article is titled Stalin’s golden cage. It's about the building that became the symbols of the Stalin's epoch. Xavi's work is extraordinary, so keep reading his blog.

Another interesting blog, Russia, Past and Present, was launched in October 2007. It's mostly about Russian art and culture, but the author, Seesaw, doesn't shun politics or mass culture. Very well written and with lots of video clips, this is a good addition for your daily reading list.

And, finally, one more article mentioned by Andy in his roundup: The Geography of Russia Through History in otherwise irrelevant Coming Anarchy blog shows the maps of the Russian states from Kievan Rus to the principality of Muscovy to modern Russia.

Other blogs: The Diary of An American Infantryman in WWI Siberia and Beyond

The author of The Diary of An American Infantryman in WWI Siberia and Beyond, whose name, unfortunately, I do not know, posts the records of his great-grandfather, George C. Voegeli.

George Voegeli was part of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in Siberia from 1918-1920. Approximately 8,000 men were part of this force which inlcuded the Amry's 27th and 31st regiments. The AEF was sent to Siberia in an attempt to maintain order after the Russian Civil War and to protect key military interests originally sent by the U.S. to support the previous Russian government's efforts in the Eastern front of WWI from the various local competing groups. The groups included the Cossacks, the Bolsheviks, and the Japanese among others. The AEF was also sent to rescue the Czeckoslovak Legions who had been fighting against the Austrio-Hungarian forces in behalf of Russia.

The blog was started this January and now is a good time to start reading it!

Thanks to Russian History Blog where I found a link to The Diary of An American Infantryman.

Other blogs: two more blogs on history of Russia

Today I searched for "Russian history" at Google's Blogsearch and found two blogs on Russian history. The first one is Russian history, written by a US professor named Igor:

This is a blog for use in both of my HIS 241 and HIS 242 Russian history survey courses at Northern Virginia Community College.

The second blog is an old one, Russian History Blog. The blog was launched by John Potter in November 2005, but was abandoned in January 2006, right when I started this one. Now, someone under nom de guerre Translatorrus has picked the blog and already posted three new articles:

Hello dear Russian History Blog readers! My nickname is Translatorus and I will try to keep this blog up to date with interesting facts and stories about Russian history, Russian culture, Russian cities and towns. Russia is a very interesting country. And it's in its new historical cycle. So, we have a lot to discuss in the future. Please send me your comments and wishes on what you are interested the most and I will try to tell you all I know about a certain topic. Little bit about myself: I speak Russian — it's my native language. I grew up in a Soviet Union, but don't remember a lot about it, since I was 6 when the country disappeared from the map of the World. I went to college in a city called Novgorod, Novgorod Veliky. In my next post I will tell you about this beautiful ancient city. And once again, everybody is welcome to leave their comments.

Good luck, colleagues!

Other blogs: Axis of Evel Knievel on Ivan the Terrible

Axis of Evel Knievel, whose motto is "Another day, another pointless atrocity", wrote about Ivan the Terrible, one of the most popular figures of Russian history (due to his nickname, no doubts):

Ivan IV Vasilyevich -- otherwise known as Ivan Grozny or "Ivan the Terrible" -- formally assumed the title of tsar on this date in 1547. The 17-year-old had technically become Russia's ruler at the age of three when his father Ivan III died, but a series of regents conducted the nation's affairs until the young Vasilyevich asserted his authority over the boyars, the Slavic feudal aristocracy. During the period of his regency, Ivan was often beaten and molested by the two families of boyars -- the Shuiskys and Belskys -- who fought one another for the power to rule in his stead. By his teenage years, Ivan was known as a prolific drinker and a torturer of small animals. In 1543, Ivan ordered the arrest of one of the boyars, a prince named Andrew Shuisky who was then, according to legend, tossed into a pit with starving dogs. Ivan was a renowned rapist and an avid reader of books about history and religion. He beat up farmers and purged his sins while banging his head against the altar. As a result of his bizarre confessional style, he developed a callus on his forehead.

keep reading...

November 7 in Russian history at ExecutedToday.com

Sean Guillory who runs Sean's Russia Blog has discovered a new blog, called ExecutedToday.com. Here's a quote from the About page:

Executed Today is a blog of history, sociology, biography, criminology, law, and kismet — an unrepresentative but arresting view of the human condition across time and circumstance from the parlous vantage of the scaffold.
So what is it?
Executed Today is a daily chronicle — each day the story of an historical execution that took place on this date, and the story behind it.

Today's article is about Richard Sorge, famous Soviet spy who worked in Germany, China and Japan, provided invaluable information on the German and Japanese military plans and was executed together with his assistant Hotsumi Ozaki on November 7, 1944 in Japan. A great article and a very interesting blog.

Other blogs: A Soviet Poster A Day

I have just found an interesting blog related to the Soviet period of the Russian history: A Soviet Poster A Day. The author, Alexander Zakharov, also gives historical and cultural comments to the posters. The blog was started on July, 2007.

Alexander Zakharov also runs other blogs: Posters of Cuba and Woman At War are especially interesting.