#children's russian

[folklorespring]

If you want to support Ukrainians, DO NOT donate to Red Cross. Can't speak about their work in other countries, but they're useless in Ukraine. The only trustworthy international organisation I can think of is World Central Kitchen.

Donate to World Central Kitchen

And it's even better to donate directly to Ukrainian organisations. Here are a few good legit places:

hospitallers.life - "Hospitallers", Ukrainian paramedics on the frontlines

savelife.in.ua - "Come Back Alive", assistance to the army

prytulafoundation.org - "Prytula Foundation", assistance to the army, humanitarian causes

starenki.com.ua - "Starenki", helping elderly people

everybodycan.com.ua - "Everybody Can", helping disabled children, elders and hospitals

uanimals.org - "UAnimals", saving animals

[justacynicalromantic]

Kids with the hardest childhood imaginable, having traveled half the country to receive treatment for cancer, now having to receive treatment for shrapnel wounds and be dug out from under the rubble.

[deluxeyellowflower]

If you're USamerican and feel very strongly about how people vote in this upcoming election, if you feel hopeless about how those around you aren't voting, here's some suggestions.

Sign up to be a poll worker or election worker in your county. You might need to call or email the local election office to find out how to do this.

Get very familiar with your local voting process and its bureaucracy. Know the important deadlines and remind people of them. (Being a poll worker helps a lot with this.)

Ask your friends and family if they're voting. Have progressive voting guides on hand if they don't know who or what to vote for. Offer to drive people or go with them to vote. Fill out your mail-in ballots together.

Organize and join get out the vote campaigns. Canvass. Table. Flyer. Call. Text.

Don't shame people for ambivalence, disinterest, or hostility to voting. Be curious. Provide practical advice and tangible support.

[sovietpostcards]

Ivan Kuznetsov. Illustration for "Wolf and the Seven Goat Kids" (1973).

[momotonescreaming]

I am once again thinking about a season 3 rewrite where it's the American government trying to open a portal underneath the mall, not the Russians

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Doodles Made by a 6-year-old Boy Named Onfim, from Russia, c. 1240-1260 CE: created nearly 800 years ago, these drawings were scrawled onto the homework/spelling exercises of a little boy in Novgorod

Over the last 75 years, excavations in and around Novgorod, in Russia, have led to the discovery of hundreds of documents dating back to the Middle Ages. These documents were made using pieces of bark from the local birch trees; they include letters, notes, spelling exercises, shopping lists, receipts, and legal documents, among other things.

The most famous examples are the panels that contain the writing exercises of a 6-7 year-old boy named Onfim, whose work was often accompanied by drawings of knights, fantastical beasts, battle scenes, and depictions of himself in various forms.

These are just a few examples:

Birch-Bark Document no.199: on the back of a panel that had been used for his spelling exercises, Onfim drew this picture of himself as a wild beast, writing "I am a wild beast" in the center of the drawing; the beast is also shown holding a sign that says "Greetings from Onfim to Danilo," likely referring to a friend or classmate.

Birch-Bark Document no.200: Onfim began writing the Cyrillic alphabet at the top of this panel, but he then stopped to draw a picture of himself as a warrior on horseback, labeling the figure with his name; the drawing shows him wielding a sword while he impales his enemy with a spear.

Birch-Bark Document no.202: the boy's mother and father are depicted in this drawing, which accompanies another writing exercise.

Birch-Bark Document no.206: Onfim began to copy a liturgical prayer (the Troparion of the Sixth Hour) onto this strip of bark, but he apparently got distracted after writing just the first few words, and started drawing a row of people along the bottom of the panel instead.

The examples above are just a few of the many documents that have been unearthed in Novgorod (now known as Veliky Novgorod) and its surrounding areas. More than a thousand birch-bark manuscripts and styli have been found throughout the region, suggesting that there was a high rate of literacy among the local inhabitants. Most of these documents were created during the 11th-15th centuries, when Novgorod served as the capital city of the Novgorod Republic; they had been buried in the thick, wet clay that permeates the local soil, in conditions that allowed them to remain almost perfectly preserved for hundreds of years.

I know that Onfim's drawings are pretty well-known already, but my most recent post involved a very similar writing exercise/doodle from a child in Medieval Egypt, so I just thought I'd post some of Onfim's work, as well.

Sources & More Info:

Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences: Birch-Bark no.200, no.199, no.202, no.203, no.206, & no.210 (the site is in Russian, but can be translated)

Institute of Slavic Studies: Full Database of Birch-Bark Documents

The New York Times: Where Mud is Archaeological Gold, Russian History Grew on Trees

Russian Linguistics: Old East Slavic Birch-Bark Literacy - a history of linguistic emancipation?

[lepetitdragonvert]

The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

Artist :Nadezhda Illarionova

[lionofchaeronea]

The Umbrella, Marie Bashkirtseff, 1883

[thefugitivesaint]

''Murzilka'', #6, 1924 Мы идем, мы идем, Всех буржуев изведем (We're coming, we're coming, we're going to kill all the bourgeoisie) Source

[xoheisse]

russians dropped two bombs on a kindergarten today

[folklorespring]

Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine after russian missile attack.

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Children's Toy - Сockerel.

Place of origin: Karachay-Cherkessia, Russia

Culture: Early medieval culture of the Adygo-Alanian tribes

Date: A.D. 8th-9th century

Place of origin: North-western Caucasus, Karachayevo-Cherkessk Republic; Archaeological site: Moshchevaya Balka Burial Mound

Medium: Leather, thread, silk.

[dontforgetukraine]

"10-year-old Polina faced another horrifying aspect of occupation daily – propaganda at school. She’d return home confused, asking her parents, 'Why did you say we live in Ukraine? At school, they say there’s no such country, that everything Ukrainian should be destroyed.' The girl cried sincerely, unable to understand who to believe, 'because books can’t contain lies.' This situation vividly shows how the occupiers try to erase Ukrainian identity from childhood."

—Excerpt from: He was going to attack the FSB agents with a stick: the story of 14-year-old Vlad and his family

[sovietpostcards]

Pyotr Bagin. Illustration for Yuri Koval's "The Birch Pie" (1989).

[warningsine]

I keep seeing such comments on my notes which makes me wonder: what did I miss?

"The Handmaid's Tale" draws on global histories.

Atwood was inspired by what happened:

during the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979),

in Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos,

in Germany (The Lebensborn project),

in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu,

in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,

in Stalinist Russia.

She was also inspired by what happened to Argentinean women during Jorge Rafael Videla's military dictatorship which was backed by the US.

But killing the pregnant women was a crime that even Argentina’s military men – who referred to themselves in self-aggrandising speeches as defenders of “western and Christian civilisation” – couldn’t bring themselves to commit. Instead, they kept pregnant activists alive until they gave birth, murdering them afterwards and handing their babies to childless military couples to raise as their own. It was, in a macabre sense, the military’s ultimate victory against a despised enemy they had decided to annihilate completely. It is estimated some 500 children were born under these circumstances.

(x)

And what happened to Spanish women under Franco.

Known as the lost children of the Franco-era, as many as 300,000 babies are estimated to have been abducted from their mothers under General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939-75, and in the decades after.

The theft of newborns began in the 1930’s after the Spanish Civil War as an ideological practice, stripping left-wing parents or Franco-opponents of their children as a way of ridding Marxist influence from society. But in the 1950’s, the practice expanded to poor or illegitimate families who were seen as economically or morally deficient, Agence France-Presse reports.

New mothers were often told their babies had died and the hospital had taken care of the burials. These babies were allegedly sold for adoption and involved a wide network of doctors, nurses, nuns and priests, according to AFP. The system carried on after Franco’s death in 1975 until 1987, when a new law was implemented regulating adoption.

(x)

"When I wrote 'The Handmaid's Tale', nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time," she said.

[panimoonchild]

Russian obsession is abduction, hatred, and re-education of our kids

Mykhailo from the Ivano-Frankivsk region. Yana is from Donetsk region. They met yesterday in Lviv at the opening of the Prosthetics Center. They have different stories of amputations, but equally unbreakable willpower. These children do not stop. They live their new lives. This is what we have to work for!

Our kids find unity in the shared trauma. I hope they stay kids longer but unfortunately, Russia takes away that opportunity from them. Make Russia pay!