#Eastern europe!

[amerasdreams]

there are still some Aramaic speakers and some of them are in Ukraine!

[rienafoutre]

[diamondtrashangel]

[gorskivijenac]

serbian girl among the meadows of drvar, bosnia and herzegovina. photographed by petar dešić.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

I've almost reached my breaking point with this genocide in Ukraine. I'm older than most Tumblr users, so I was being yelled at in university tutorials in the early 00s for talking about the Holodomor, and being told that "If it happened, Ukrainians deserved it for being Nazis".

I was out there in 2007 when we had the worldwide march for the Holodomor to be recognised as a genocide, only for so many countries (the USA being one of them) to tell us that they won't do it because it might upset russia.

I remember when russia invaded in 2014 and Obama said it wasn't his business, and that russia can decide what happens in Ukraine. And then he sent Ukraine fucking helmets and "hygiene kits" instead of the military aid he was supposed to.

My family in Donetsk walked out of their homes with their lives packed in plastic shopping bags nearly eleven years ago. But people prefer to believe the russian lies that Donbas wants to be part of russia.

I remember sitting at home on the 17th of July 2014, hearing about russia shooting down MH17, and feeling my blood run cold because the initial reports said the aeroplane was full of Americans. Being so sure that the USA might finally live up to the Budapest Memorandum and get involved in the war.

Of course they didn't.

And then the Malaysians went and protested at the Ukrainian embassy, as if they were to blame for being invaded by their genocidal neighbour.

I remember being at a protest at the russian embassy in Canberra just after Crimea was annexed, and the only people who turned up for us were other Ukrainians. Soon after there were massive protests for Palestine and BLM from Melbourne to Dublin and beyond. Ukrainians are too white for leftists and too foreign for right-wingers to care about.

More people dumped buckets of ice on their heads than supported us.

I spent Easter 2016 in a hotel in Ukraine. 8.5 years ago I was the only guest who wasn't a soldier on leave from the war.

Now I go on reddit and see that Americans are discussing how Ukraine "has a neo-fascist problem". Um, you guys just voted for Donald fucking Trump?

Then I see an Australian journalist say that the US election result means that America is "becoming like Eastern Europe". No. Eastern Europeans aren't Nazis. They suffered more under the Nazis than anyone.

We're always on our own. Millions upon millions of Ukrainians have been killed in the last ninety years, millions more sold into slavery in Germany (including my grandparents), hundreds of thousands sent to gulags (including the entire population of my grandmother's village), and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands dead or missing now, but we're still not seen as worthy of caring about.

I have family members whose dead bodies have been lying on battlefields for over a year. One killed in Bakhmut, a city that no longer exists. Another taken hostage from Mariupol, a city russia bombed to the ground. The mass graves there can be seen from space.

We can't get the bodies back because russia has colonised the area. I have a relative who was moved on from fighting in Vovchansk because there was no point fighting for another city that no longer exists. My relative who was taken hostage in Mariupol was starved and tortured for 2.5 years.

And then last week our city's magazine had a three-page interview with the russian ambassador, explaining why his country "has" to commit genocide in Ukraine. The editor laughed at my aunt when she phoned to register a complaint.

But teenaged tankies on sites like this will mock Ukrainians' deaths, stick a fucking hammer and sickle in their profile, and lecture people like me about things they know nothing about.

The world needs to end its ridiculous love affair with the russian federation.

[ya-nje-znayu]

First Light

Last Light

[meanpersonaart]

Kolęda - during winter months in Poland, just after Christmas and even after New Years you can be visited by a group of wandering carolers (kolędnicy) who go door to door, singing christmas carols and pastorałki , wishing health and good fortune for the occupants of the house (in exchange of small fee of money or something good to eat). The characters seen in the group vary depending on the region of Poland, but most of the time we can meet - a Death, a Devil, an Angel, an Old man (dziad) or old woman (baba), someone could see a King, a bearer of the colourful star that make them more visble, but almost always you will meet Turoń - a bovine like creature with large mouth and horns, opening and closing it's mouth threathningly. Then again, it's also a custom in other eastern european countries so the lineup may be different. These ones look friendly, right? Why don't you let them in?

(watercolour on paper, digital re-touch)

Check out my Tiktok, also my Deviantart

[drum-cu-naluci]

the crows I run into on a field

[rottingangelwings]

[mapsontheweb]

Approximate death toll of Stalinism by each country, from 1924 to 1953.

[amerasdreams]

ha! I wondered where it was from. Since I found the Russian word for "work" sounds similar to robot. It is from a Czech scifi writer Karel Čapek.

[rienafoutre]

[sidebee-hive]

Triptychs by Polish painter Kazimierz Sichulski:

1. The Hutsul Madonna, 1909

2. Adoration of the Shepherds, 1938

3. Adoration of the Magi, 1913

4. Spring, 1909

[brandyvampirexx]

kafkaverse

[bloodyykissess]

[vuyrvlyer]