#bc i study soviet history

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

I've found a really good way that I come up with titles is start work at 8.30am, think about literally nothing but the fic for the next 8hrs (while getting no work done), finish work, edit the fic a bit, scream, edit the fic a bit more, realise the time, realise when I'm due to get up the next morning, scream again, pick a word at random from the fic by closing my eyes and danger-scrolling, google synonyms for the word, post the fic, and then think of nothing else but that one word for the rest of the night.

voila. bone apple teeth.

honestly valid 😭 screaming is a vital part of the titling process. my strategy is basically step 1: descriptive working title — i don't remember what it was for THD but my favourite is be gay do crime (the crime is treason) from a later section of my original fic series. step 2: basically your strategy, i.e. think about the fic while i'm supposed to be doing other stuff (in this case, marking papers) and hope something occurs to me. step 3: check if i have any title ideas written down somewhere (this is where THD's title comes from — I saw a post about this paradox and had it in the back of my mind as something that would make a good title). step 4: look up lists of unusual words to see if any of them are vaguely thematically relevant and then step 5: basic descriptive title of what the fic is about

[sappymix1]

girl why are you learning russian isn’t your life sad enough

lmao?? this is a crazy thing to say

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Cool dice 🤩

hiiii!!!

so I have a few hyperfixations and I post about them a lot :> as of now it’s the black rider opera and tom waits’ music in general, the cabinet of dr. caligari, and the life and works of dmitri shostakovich (although that one isn’t as strong as it was a few years ago but if you get me going abt shostakovich I WILL get going)

so, the black rider!! it’s an avant garde opera by tom waits and william s burroughs and the music is. SO SO good. like if you liked over the garden wall but wish it had more demonic energy. you’ll like it. the plot is pretty simple; it’s a retelling of der freischütz, a previous opera by carl maria von weber (in turn based on a v old folk tale) where a guy sells his soul to the devil in exchange for magic bullets so he can win a shooting challenge and marry a forester’s daughter. which isn’t terribly interesting on its own, but MAN. robert wilson was the director of the black rider and the acting, set design, and costumes are AMAZING. every scene is hypnotic. and the music is SO SO good. it’s got this eclectic folk/rock/opera/cabaret/etc feel and the lyrics are genius?? most of them don’t even support the plot, but are rather there to set the tone. but they’re full of waits’ excellent poeticism and genius foreshadowing and callbacks, plus some references to his other work if you can pick up on that stuff. the whole thing has this dark fairy tale/halloween/carnival kinda vibe and I’ve seen it so many times

speaking of things with the same vibe. “caligari” was a big influence on the black rider, and GAH THIS MOVIE RUINED MY LIFE. I’m not even kidding I am a fundamentally different person than I was before I saw it for the first 10 times. again, it also has a pretty simple plot and characters, but what’s REALLY neat about it is all the ways you can interpret it. I can talk about it literally forever there are so many ways to read this movie. I’ve come up with so many headcanons and interpretations and stuff (and I also write fanfic. please someone read my caligari fanfic) and I’m chewing at the drywall I love coming up w ideas to complicate the characters and find new themes in it !!!

shostakovich is. this man is my roman empire. for like three or four years I dug in DEEP about everything to know about this guy because the discourse around him is INSANE. basically he was a soviet composer who’s primarily known for his complicated relationship with stalin’s government. but he was so so fucking interesting beyond that!!! he was such a fascinating guy who often went out of his way to help people in extreme political circumstances, and his music has so many interesting details hidden in it- cryptograms, quotations, references, some people think there are hidden messages about his personal life and his political views in there (the specifics are kinda controversial bc they’re mainly based in interpretation, but there definitely are a lot!!!). the debates around him are so complicated and I love researching him and trying to figure out the truth amid all the discourse, which is often wrapped up in ideological arguments and speculation. I fucking studied russian to intermediate level because of this guy (and also his best friend ivan sollertinsky. I LOVE reading about sollertinsky but info on him is so hard to find in english!!!) and soviet classical music history as a whole is such a nuanced and interesting subject to me

[intothedysphoria]

Dude, DUDE - you gotta listen to the WTYP episode on the Vulcan Bridge. Or else, look up the story of the Vulcan bridge in West Virginia.

TL, DR; Vulcan’s a remote rural community in WV. In the 70s a one lane bridge over the Tug Fork collapsed, cutting off the people on either side. Kids had to drop out of school bc there always no feasible way for them to attend anymore etc.

Bc of its position they had difficulty getting funding to replace it, and finally, the mayor got fed up and wrote a letter explaining the town’s predicament to the foreign office of the USSR. The soviet government weren’t interested, but it fell into the hands of a sympathetic Russian journalist who then travelled to Vulcan and brought international attention to the lack of a bridge.

With threat of international embarrassment looming, the US gov paid for the bridge to be built and Vulcan’s mayor and the soviet journalist toasted its opening with Vodka.

There’s more detail in the episode, including the coal mining in the area (and types of coal). You ever need a break from your studies it’s good one.

Oh my god that sounds so interesting

I may be doing my MA on American blue collar jobs in the late 20th century, particularly coal mining so 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

I love a good history documentary/podcast/book so I will be running to listen to it in my free time, probably next week when I’m on holiday

[master-of-the-opera-house]

4, 9, 17, 21, 25 - ☂️

4. Favourite historical era?

*sighing* guess I'm still 20th century bitches at heart for studying hmm. Right up to the early cold war,,, I'd say I'm more Europe Between Franz Ferdinand and Khrushchev? I keep coming back to the unparalleled terror and violence like a doomsday prophet i do. Keep coming back bc we are still reeling in many ways from the previous century, keep coming back because we are repeating the same mistakes even though they were committed close enough to the present that we should know better. Keep coming back to find loads ofblack comedy in the bleakest times bc there's nothing else you can do after all the fighting and warning and crying besides laughing.

For the Silly Goofies which is THE most important part of history actually, DEFINITELY Stalin-era Soviet and Early Modern - Modern Habsburg ((so like 1500-1700 Spain approximately, 1500-1914 approximately for HRE/Austria minus enlightenment. We unenlightened™ here that's why it's funny)). I did say black comedy.

Aesthetically I'm Rococo and then Baroque.

9. Favourite historical film?

You know this one. We all know this one. On the count of three. 1, 2, 3 tHE DEATH OF STALIN!!1!1!1!

17. What historical item would you like to own?

SIGH Philip II's Battle of St. Quentin armour bc of the historical significance of it being passed down from him to Charles II and the weight of a legacy and a romanticised one at that against a backdrop of the end of the line,,,,

But most importantly ofc bc i know i could fit RIGHT into it and id enjoy that.

genuinely so embarrassing to be a manlet

21. What is your favourite history-based game?

This is so sad I don't play games >:3 I once saw a Twilight Struggle set in my college history class shelf and really wanted to play it but never got round to doing that. Does DnD with my shitty Habsburg based oc count?

25. Who is the most overrated historical figure, in your opinion?

Depending who I'm talking to & therefore what is pissing me off bc there are SO many overrated people to me ((Fr*nz J*seph, Elizabeth I, HENRY VIII FOR HELL'S SAKE, Louis XIV kill me!!1!1! Actually KILL ME!!)) but since I have been in MULTIPLE classes where the Protestant Reformation pops up. And had MULTIPLE Christian Kids™ fawn over his dumptruck arse with no shame. It's Martin Luther. Had to see his stupid face in my partner's slides on our presentation of the 80 Years War like miss girl pls u can just mention the Counter-Reformation briefly you didnt have to go into all that he's not gonna kiss you. Had to listen to a classmate go off about him for 5 minutes RIGHT after we established he was an anti-Semite too. Nightmare so it is.

[khamomile-kitty]

oppenheimer is actually a great movie. the acting, cinematography, score and overall production was outstanding. it really did american prometheus justice. i don’t see how this propaganda when it is literally just telling his story. was he a good man? that’s not for me to judge. is he a massive part of the history of physics? of course he is. he changed the game and as someone who is currently studying mathematics and physics i greatly appreciate what he’s done for my field of study.

Y’all have to be baiting at this point this is insane. Leave me the fuck alone dipshit. You ignored both of my recent and easily seen posts abt this bc you were so desperate to justify your guilty pleasure to me. Do you not see how much of a loser that makes you. Just bc the dinner guests wear a mask doesn’t mean you don’t share a table w fascists. And frankly you talking abt something that harmed so many ppl, from the downwinders, the ppl in Mexico that they tested on, to the citizens—not soldiers, citizens—that are still affected by what this piece of shit did in such a casual manner tells me everything I need to know. You don’t see this as a tragedy, not really. It’s just another note in the history book for you. You’re far more enamored a the pissing contest the US and Soviet Russia were having. Christopher Nolan had no right to sensationalize this story, and ESPECIALLY when he outright rejected to have any other direct input from anyone ACTUALLY affected by the bomb. And if I may say, this attitude screams white apathy. YOU weren’t affected, and the ppl who were are far away, so why should you care? You’re all falling for what was a very common fascist talking point t after the bomb; that the US did something bad but uhhh LOOK new science!!!!! Sweep under the rug all the nasty ways it came into existence!!! And LOOK!!! Japan was bad too, so they must have deserved it!!! Don’t worry about the fact that it was dropped on citizens who could not control what their armies and governments did, that there were entire schools worth of children horrifically killed!!!!

All of you leave me the fuck alone I’m done being nice abt it. You all are a bunch of bigoted idiots.

[unexpectedly-haunted]

Soo about art history! Well I studied a lot about applied art history - I really hope that's the right word but it's like furniture and stuff as well around architecture, sculpted and painted art (boii oh boi I really don't know the English terms sorry!!) And that was really interesting and I love learning more bc there's always so much more to know! I think my studies mainly focused on being able to put dates on art pieces and sort them into a time period - but also.. random funny artist stories my beloved XD Also for my thesis I had a look at Soviet war memorials so that's up my alley as well!

Hbu? Do you have any fav periods/genres/artists? :3

ooh applied art history sounds great! i wish my courses covered more architecture and practical crafts like furniture, it's pretty centered on painting and sculpture for the most part. and Soviet war memorials?? damn that's such a good topic, and hey hell yeah, congratulations on writing a thesis!!

and YES i do have favourites, putting it below a read-more sdkfgh:

RIGHT so my favourite movement is absolutely Impressionism, i love the depiction of light and the painting style of lots of small distinct brushstrokes is Such a wonderful effect. i'd have to say Claude Monet is one of my all time favourite artists, i especially love his sunsets:

Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, 48 × 63 cm, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Also really like his snowy landscapes, and how he paints water, as well as his colour choices! it's not really displayed in these paintings, but in a lot of his more natural landscapes- especially the floral ones- the colours are so vibrant :D

Train in the Snow, 1875, oil on canvas, 59 x 78cm, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

The Magpie, 1869, oil on canvas, 89 x 130cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Water Lily Pond (Nymphéas), 1904, oil on canvas, 90 x 92cm, private collection

The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas, 60.5 x 80cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Similarly, I really like J.M.W. Turner, particularly for his dramatic seascapes and his paintings of ruins! Some favourites would be:

Fishermen at Sea/The Cholmeley Sea Piece, 1796, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 122.2cm, Tate Britain, London

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, 1934, oil on canvas, 92 x 123cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Melrose Abbey, 1822, pencil and watercolour on paper, 19.6 x 13.3cm, private collection

and these are some more things I've studied that I ended up really liking!

Edouard Manet: he was So controversial in nineteenth century Paris it's ridiculous, and i found it fun to look at all the layers of constructed identity in his works! Most well known for Olympia.

Chez le père Lathuille, 1879, oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts Tournai

Caravaggio: LOVE the horror and detail and drama of his works, third life enjoyers might like all the beheadings skjfhdg. highly recommend looking into this guy's life story and historical context because he. man. he sure was a character! it's also hilarious to read about how hated he was for painting in a naturalistic style. (and. the murder but honestly it seems like they hated his painting more)

Saint Jerome Writing, c. 1605-6, oil on canvas, 112 × 157 cm, Galleria Borghese (one of the tamest of his works skjdfh)

Hiroshige Utagawa and Katsushika Hokusai: had a unit on Japanese print making and !!! i hadn't known much about print as a medium but Holy Shit it's so versatile and the works by these artists are just stunning! want to look more into print for sure :D

Utagawa Hiroshige, Plum Garden, Kamata (Kamata no Umezono), in One Hundred Views of Edo, 1856–59, woodblock print, 34 x 24.1 cm, Brooklyn Museum

Awa Province: Naruto Whirlpools, in Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces, 1855, woodblock print, 36.5 x 24.4 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Hokusai made SO MUCH work but his most famous work by far is:

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave Off Kanagawa, in Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, woodblock print, 1830-1832, 25.7 x 37.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Gothic architecture: haven't gone into much depth with architecture, really liked what i learnt though, and the round arches, ribbed vaults, and tall windows with stained glass are beautiful.

St. Francis Xavier Church, c. 1840, Amsterdam, Holland

and thank you so much for the ask!!! i'd love to hear more about anything art history related from you (or anyone else!), as specific or in depth as you like :D

[cherryb0mb0mb]

This sort of notion always sort of exhausts me as someone from eastern europe whose family did not appeal to any sort of lucky demographic during these times. It is preciesly bc ppl like the one commenting refuse to do a deep dive (or even a surface one for that matter) on their history and live by the notion that capitalism is better because of a fake imposed sense of freedom and fear of critical thinking. What happened in the Soviet Curtain was in technicality modeled after communism to a degree but people seem to completely miss the part where these were totalitarian regimes that employed the cult of personality which resulted in nationalistic pride, surveilence states and political inprisonment. I am romanian, I have studied its history and I can tell you that for a period, communism worked for the country, because there was no cult of personality, heavy nationalism and there was a focus on making the country self suficient while taking care of its people ( slightly related is the fact thar for example women had acess to medical abortions which was completley scrapped post Ceausescu being introduced to a totalitarian, worshiping, nationalist perspective)

Its good to inform yourself on these things bc the capitalistic machine wants us to take these instances of horrific things that have happened and think "Well if communism was like that, I rather suffer capitalism!"

What would we do without the insights of tumblr user in-love-with-draco-malfoy

[lilyflxwers]

Hi! Could I have the answers to 1, 15 and 25 please? 💛

hi lovely!!

1. Do you have freckles?

no, I wish I did though

15. What’s your favourite season?

spring :) I love everything beginning again and all the pretty flowers blooming. and I also like that it’s still cold but the sun is starting to come back out and it makes everywhere look so pretty

25. Favourite decade

okay so I’ve answered this and said 60s mainly bc i love history and studying it has been my life for the last four years lmao but if I had to pick my second favourite it would be the 80s bc the collapse of soviet communism literally fascinates me

[rubashev]

shocked and appalled to realize I never posted this here, but possibly the most On Brand image of me that exists is this picture my friend took of me with Joey Steel himself at the Volgograd Stalin Museum last semester

our tour guide in this establishment was an elderly lady who punctuated every point with a wooden sword and insisted vehemently that the subject of her lecture was an objective hero who did no wrong in his entire life; she also at one point gestured at me (with the sword) and informed the entire group “Stalin was actually quite small, much like this young man actually,” which is still possibly the most devastating comment about my stature to date. according to every source I’ve seen old joe was actually my height exactly so this image makes it clear they boosted their model up a little bit; truly the propaganda never ends

[alliluyevas]

@kitmarlowes dkjfkjgdhh We Are All Love Architecture

[mossadspypigeon]

“as a jewish” 😂

wars you start with fucking MASSACRES and end up losing terribly are not genocides. casualties in war are terrible but are still not genocides. trying to eradicate a population like arabs did several times throughout history and failing? again, not genocide.

i am a born and raised jew. same with everyone else on this thread. jewish orgs have said the genocide myth is rooted in jew hate. just bc some christians support Israel does not negate what zionism is or what israel is. or that most jews in the world support israel in some way. many muslims support israel btw. many hindus and jains and buddhists do. does not negate the fact that jews are indigenous to judea and israel. that is historical and archaeological fact. being forcibly removed from our land as a portion of our population was does not negate our indigeneity.

if that were the case, all indigenous tribes would have lost their indigenous status when they were forcibly relocated throughout history.

meanwhile, palestinians are ARABS. arabs are from ARABIA, not the levant. they conquered the region and guess what? COLONIZED IT.

from hamas’ fucking charter:

that isnt indigeneity. that is colonization.

the fact that you dont even know israel’s history OR jewish history in general and you demonize your own people by spreading blood libel is frankly disgusting.

you are literally villainizing the ONE jewish country and half of the world’s jews. you are spewing shit the arba league, fatah, and hamas came up with to justify ethnic cleansing of jews and the erasure of our history and indigeneity.

hmm. love how they just admit it.

if you support ukraine lmao, russia arms and assists hamas and the irgc. they also created anti zionism:

being murdered every day? israelis die weekly in rocket attacks and terrorist attacks. their lives don’t matter though i guess.

tell this to the mother shot by terrorists while holding her baby at a bus stop and the people who just died in a truck ramming. attacks occur daily there, but those are two recent examples.

keep up your bullshit. you just look like a fool.

Genuine question but so many pro-israelis i see have telegram, like are yall all just a group of pdfs?

[needcake]

Another question for ya: what's your favourite thing that you've written and why?

THIS IS SUCH A HARD ASK RAINBOW WHY

I have one unfinished Naruto fic that is ancient from when I was 17 (it was NaruHina bc I'm a basic bitch (◕‿◕)) haha I used to have it up on ffnet but I purged my accounts a few years ago so it now only resides in my hard drive. Even though it's old and probably now very good anymore, it will always have a special place in my heart for being what I wanted to write at the time and for all the positive feedback I got from it from my friends (someone even stole it to post it on orkut! *gasp*), it was a story about them being older and feeling out of place in a world they didn't think they fit anymore, which in retrospect was very telling of my 17-year-old self haha

But within Hetalia, I have not one, but a few favorites haha

The first one is an entry to the Kink Meme, the whole anonymous aspect of km to me was great because I wasn't very confident with my English yet and it allowed me opportunity to try new things without exposing myself too much if it turned out to be awful haha

It's a RusCan fill, a simple drunk pwp that I wanted to try a different drabble format of doing 100 words in the first paragraph, 90 in the second and so on until I reached 10 in the last. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

-

The second one is one that used to be up on lj, but now only lives in my hard drive as well haha It would have to go through a massive rewrite because there are SO many things wrong with it, from disconnected verb tenses to poor choice of words, but it also has a special place in my heart.

It was a character study for Belarus, and I spent a lot of time trying to make it concise and a little bit poetic because I wanted the segments of her history to flow like a memory.

Here's a part of it from the 90's and the fall of the Soviet Union (I had to clean it up a little before posting haha):

There was a crisis at the Kremlin, but she didn’t think much of it because there was always a crisis at the Kremlin. Except this time they entered their house during the night, took her brother to a psychiatric hospital, and said things would be different in the morning. When she finally realized what was happening, her sister, Lithuania and everyone else had already gone away. Only Kazakhstan remained, sitting by the window of their shattered house. He watched as she pulled on her coat and scarf and gloves. There wasn’t judgment in his eyes, no matter how much Belarus wished there were. It would be easier if he blamed her for not staying with her brother, but he didn’t, so it wasn’t. Truth was, she didn’t want to be there when her brother came back. She didn’t want another king or a tsar or a tyrant. “Happy new year,” was the last thing she heard before the end of their Union.

It was also my first try at Kazakhstan who turned out to be one of my favorites from the Soviet block, and it made me enjoy Belarus as a character so much more. (I have A TON of problems with her canon version, Hima why do you hate women?)

-

I have a few Cold War RusAme drabbles that make me very proud of my younger 20 something self, which I reposted here.

I'm particularly proud of Winter of our discontent and Missiles on parade.

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Of the new stuff I'm still riding the high of novelty, so I'd have to give them a few years to see what stands out, but I'm very proud of We meet in the middle and the drabble Cherish, I thought they came out nicely.

This was PAINFUL hahaha but thank you for the ask!

[amerasdreams]

Why don't we learn about Ukraine's history in World War II-- For me and what I learned in school it was hardly on my radar that I remember. I don't even remember learning of it

How they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, really (like much of their history). They were being killed by the soviets then the Nazis came and some thought they might be liberators, coming from the West, at 1st but they killed and enslaved them...

I'm reading this in The Gates of Europe

I know we can't know every detail about all countries but. What happened there seems pretty significant. It's like World War II history from our education's perspective ends at the border of Poland. (And maybe they mention Nazi boots getting stuck outside Stalingrad or sth) Bc Ukraine was part of Societ Union? But its history is way more complicated than that (perhaps they think it's too complex for us to learn in an overview class... or it has to do with the remnant of a cold war mindset that sees all soviet countries as the same, or a broader western worldview which prioritizes western countries and sees the east as more "barbaric", Slavs as less "civilized" or something, less worth studying, which is the impression I get sometimes... what our culture's perspective seems in a way... idk I'm just trying to figure it out, thinking "aloud") In any case, we should at least learn some of it. Maybe we do and i dont remember

I'm trying to learn now. It's very interesting. And just 1 book of historical overview of entire country is of course just scratching the surface

[milfzatannaz]

my politics professor thought I was really well informed on Soviet maneuvers during Brezhnev but actually it was bc I listened to We Didn’t Start The Fire a lot to study during AP us history

[unhonestlymirror]

"I have an undergraduate degree in slavic languages and literatures. i am also fluent in russian and czech and have intermediate proficiency in bcs. the grouping of russian, ukrainian, and belorussian as east slavic languages is common to all slavic linguistic studies as far as i know."

"I find it difficult to wrap my head around the idea that slavicists all over the world, including in the west, have all decided to unquestioningly follow russian propaganda in this area, especially considering how critical most of them are of russia in every other area."

Well... It is common. Because slavic linguistic studies, especially East slavic, were developed under the russian empire and then soviets. So, russia has been controlling its development for centuries. That's the saddest part - because even the most sceptical, the most critical linguists have to rely on sources controlled by russia. It's just like with people who learn Mongolian history by books written at soviet times, for soviet people, books which call Aleksandr Nevsky "hero prince liberator". All the sources that didn't correlate with the "politics of the party" were redacted, censored, removed, and hidden. No more proofs - no more people who ask questions - "no more problems"(c). It's hard to imagine - but that's exactly what it is.

my question to you is: if this grouping is solely based off of russian influence, as you say, then why isn’t lithuanian classified as a slavic language? surely, since the russian nationalist argument is the same, it would also fall under that classification? but lithuanian is not classified as a slavic language at all, let alone east slavic.

I agree! The funniest part is that... many russians DO classify Lithuanian as slavic language. The only reason why Lithuanians were able to save their language as officially Baltic is that 1)they are obsessed with its independence enough, 2)they were "lucky" to be between two empires, that changed "the politics of the party" every time they got Lithuanian lands. The same is true with religion, btw, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine are very un-religious in terms of mentality. When you have Polish "the only one right" Church from one side and russian "the only one right" Church from another - sooner or later, you would trust neither of them. XD

Where did people get the idea of russian being a slavic language /genuinely

I am Ukrainian, I know Ukrainian language. I can perfectly understand Belarus, most of Polish and more or less Czech, Slovak, and others.

Average russians, on the other hand, can not understand a single one of other slavic languages. They constantly make videos on YT, "Trying to guess Ukrainian/Polish/Belarus/Bulgarian/etc words!! You laugh, you lose!!" And they choose the most average ass words EVER like парасолька/parasol/парасон.

Russian language is an artificial language created from Church Slavonic trying to digest languages ​​of Finno-Ugric, Caucasus, and other people.