Crimea, as I’m sure you recall from history lessons about the Crimean War and the Yalta Conference (Yalta is in Crimea!), is the southernmost point of Ukraine, a peninsula dipping down into the Black Sea. It is a totally cool place to hang out in the summer and lie around on the beach.
It’s also the home of the Crimean Tatars. The Tatars are a Turkic group that originates in the steppes of Central Asia. They swept west with the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, adopted Islam, and stuck around and made Crimea their home. They founded the Crimean Khanate, a regional superpower that struck fear into the hearts of their neighbors - not only for their fierce fighting abilities, but for their general willingness to enslave the heck out of everyone. Untold numbers of captured people were sold as slaves into the Ottoman Empire by the Crimean Khanate, well into the 18th century.
When Crimea came under the control of the Russian Empire, the Crimean Tatars were looked at with suspicion and were poorly treated, because of their association with the Ottomans, the Russians’ nemesis. Many elite Tatars fled across the Black Sea to Turkey.
During Soviet times, the Crimean Tatars were one of a number of “troublesome” ethnic groups targeted by Stalin for internal migration. In 1944, the remaining Crimean Tartars were forced out of the land their ancestral land and moved to Uzbekistan.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Tatars returned to Crimea, but have struggled to rebuild their community - they now make up about 13% of the population of the peninsula. Another 270,000 Crimean Tatars remain in Uzbekistan.
The Russian language has two words for a ‘whisperer’ – one for somebody who whispers out of fear of being overheard (shepchuschchii) and another for the person who informs or whispers behind people’s backs to the authorities (sheptun). The distinction has its origins in the idiom of the Stalin years, when the whole of Soviet society was made up of whisperers of one sort or another.
(via pisatofevrale)
by S. Byalkovkskaya (1957)
“For the snowy weather: One must shake off the snow at the door, and Tanyusha forgot and dragged the snow home.”
Russia. Moscow.circa 1985 (by Dawn at Bon Island, Phuket, Thailand)
(via cosmogyros)
A collection of all things cultural, political, and social from the Soviet Caucasus. Though mostly familiar with the republics of the South Caucasus, I will do my best for balance and hopefully (eventually) become just as knowledgeable about those of the North. Your submissions, hints, tips, tricks, jokes, and requests are all welcome. Cheers!
A bit of promotion for a new tumblr I thought some of you might be interested in.
Czechoslovakian postage stamp, 1967.
The Soviet Union Was Dissolved 20 Years Ago Today
© David Turnley/CORBIS
On December 8, 1991, a group of Soviet leaders gathered in Belarus to declare the end of the Soviet Union. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the collapse.
(via tookmyskull)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (TV Mini Series 1979) masterpost?
Note these are not my uploads, merely uploads I found after perusing the internet for about an hour. So I don’t own anything about this. No one sue me, or send me mean ask messages. I’m sensitive. They seem to be avi files between 300 and 400 mb. All are megaupload links.
plot summary from imdb (I don’t even own this)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (TV Mini Series 1979)
George Smiley has been retired for about a year when he finds a friend from the circus, his old outfit in British Intelligence sitting in his living room. He is taken to the home of an advisor to the Prime Minister on intelligence matters where he finds evidence that one of the men in the senior ranks of his old agency is a Russian spy. Smiley is asked to find him, without official access to any of the files in the Circus or letting on that anyone is under suspicion. With only a few old friends, his own powers of deduction, and secrecy as weapons, Smiley must unearth the spy who turned him out of the Circus.
Episode 1: Return to the Circus
Episode 2: Tarr Tells His Story
Episode 3: Smiley Tracks the Mole
Episode 4: How it All Fits Together
Episode 7: Flushing Out the Mole
If one is linked to the one episode tell me and I’ll fix it. If a link is broken or taken down…well I’m just the messenger. I will say it’s a bunch of handsome middle aged british guys talking intelligently in nice suits…so you guys should love it.
(via johnhwatson-)
Rubik Ernő is the one to praise or to blame, depending on how frustrated you got with the Rubik’s Cube. Rubik Ernő was born on July 13, 1944 in Budapest, Hungary. Rubik combined the divergent talents of his parents (his father was an engineer who designed gliders and his mother was an artist and a poetess) to become both a sculptor and an architect.
Fascinated with the concept of space, Rubik spent his free time — while working as a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest — designing puzzles that would make his students think in new ways about three-dimensional geometry. In the spring of 1974, just shy of his 30th birthday, Rubik envisioned a small cube, with each side constructed of moveable squares. By the fall of 1974, his friends had helped him create the first wooden model of his idea.
At first, Rubik just enjoyed watching how the squares moved as he turned one section and then another. However, when he attempted to put the colors back again, he ran into difficulty. Oddly entranced by the challenge, Rubik spent a month turning the cube this way and that way until he finally realigned the colors. When he handed other people the cube and they too had the same fascinated reaction, he realized he might have a fun toy puzzle on his hands.
Pavel Štecha - Prague 1974
