Soviet History Fall 14 Comments

[…] Finally, we give Товарищ Слаттери  (aka Joe) the prize for best title with “When the Tsar is Away, the Monk will Play.”  We can’t wait to curate what comes in next […]

[…] Close to Me (on the Sino-Soviet Split), Corn Flakes for Comrades (on agriculture under Khrushchev), To Free or Not to Free, Treblemakers in a National Cause, and Sticking it to […]

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[…] emphasized freeing women from “domestic slavery”. As I discussed in my week three post Social Women: This one’s for the Girls, Lenin focused on not only creating a revolutionary society, but on liberating women from their […]

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I’ve done a lot of reading on the Aral Sea in the past, and it really is beyond tragic what’s happened. The Kazakh government has built dams as a way to keep a tiny bit of water in the north and bring the sea closer to some of these towns than it’s been in years, but the Uzbeks don’t have the money or the will to do anything of that sort. Here’s to hoping that one day the Amu Darya and Syr Darya are allowed to be directed back to how they’re meant to be.

Putin really is a fascinating character. Yeltsin tried to reshape his country’s culture, creating a continuation between the Russian Empire and the new Russian state. Lots of Soviet remnants were whitewashed. Putin has done the opposite, bringing back the old anthem, leaving the red stars on top of the Kremlin, etc. It certainly seems like he’d be perfectly happy had the Soviet Union never fell.

Also, speaking of Putin’s “action hero” image, I recommend you read SuperPutin: http://www.superputin.ru/englishski/

It is amazing on how much the country has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia went from absolutely no Western influence to accepting it freely in less than a decade. The societal changes that took place must have been drastic and swift.