#slavic studies

[ohsalome]

The western stereotype about Ukraine and Ukrainians was created by the russiacentrism in the entire field of slavic studies. Remember Yuval Harari, who in 2019 consented to have russian edition of his book censored and even rewrote some parts, because "russia is world-leading power". So it goes: russia is a "world-leading power" and Ukraine is its backyard, a bleak suburb; something that makes no difference if it exists or not. We were invisible, hidden in the shadow of this great giant.

The origin all these stereotypes come from the history textbooks. All politicians, prior to choosing whether to send us weapons or not, were sitting their asses in Oxfords, Harwards, Cambridges, etc. And when they opened the history textbooks, they learned that russian history began at the christening of Kyiv. And what was ukrainians' place in this history? Bah, that's just some primitive tribespeople running around, who cares. That's the worldview russians taught the european politicians.

In 2014 I was approached with an apology from Karl Schlögel, one of the leading german specialists in slavic history, who told me "My whole life, I only saw Kyiv as a third biggest city of the russian empire". This is a very typical situation. You can waste your entire life telling western europeans about our culture, our authors, etc., but they would only be looking through you. We remained unseen and unheard, because there was only "big russia", and who the hell you are? You have never been here. You have 72 hours to spread your legs before great russian army and appease putin, to make everything fine again.

______

- Oksana Zabuzhko, in and interview with BBC News Ukraine

[trystofachlys]

Who knew it’d be so hard to get my hands on ‘Eros and P*rnography in Russian Culture’ the 1991 classic.

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

Mogolian Language Resources

I finally got around to combining and sorting through the various material, so here are the materials that I currently use!

Memrises Mongolian 1/Mongolian 2 Great courses for learning the alphabet (the non-traditional Cyrillic script) and some basics e.g. introduction, some basic verbs.

CJV Langs Traditional Mongolian Script. A solid intro to the traditional writing script. I'm sticking to the cyrillic script for now, but this may come in useful in the future.

Open163 Mongolian Basics (Chinese). Another great video course from Inner Mongolia University for learning mongolian basics and pronunciation. The only possible issue is that it's entirely in Chinese and the traditional script is used.

MGL Radio. My level isn't high enough to understand it, but for now it's good to understand how spoken mongolian sounds and later for listening practise.

Radio Garden. This site allows you to listen to various radio programs from pretty much any country in the world, so it's great not just for mongolian.

MNB. This newsite may be currently a tad too advanced, but it's still good reading practice nonetheless.

This site. I love this site, this is a free collection of works in and translated into Mongolian. Reading Dostoevsky in Mongolian is a challenge that I one day will attempt.

Apps

Gertrainer. This is a relatively new app (6 months old?), which had a pretty good collection of vocabulary. The only downside is that the pronunciation recordings are available only in the paid version which comes at around 5 euros per month or 30 per year. Something to consider if I choose to study Mongolian more intensively, but for now I'm quite content with my current pace.

Ling. This seems to be also ok, but it charges a subscription fee and I am not ready for this commitment yet.

Simply. This is quite basic but it covers some vocab in the free version, with the rest of the vocab charging a fee.

Learn Mongolian. This is also has quite a solid vocabulary set, with pronunciations included.

There appear to be quite a few language schools offering lessons over zoom and classes in person (in Mongolia) but I have no idea if they're legitimate or not.

[pinkcharmette]

my workout routine for the last three days of 2024 ,, to start the new year on a good foot <3

non-negotiables

ballet workout for the core

warmup to prevent injury

stretching to cool down

posture correction exercises

momomi workouts (4)

december 29

weighted abs workout

leg workout

calisthenics ab workout

full body barre workout

december 30

functional core workout

arm workout

barre arms workout

hourglass pilates workout

december 31

standing ab workout

beginner calisthenics

pilates for toned abs workout

tiny waist pilates workout

[love-promethea]

and when the guilt consumes you, what will you hold onto

[snejan]

[hristinasview]

Maybe I'm back, maybe not. .-.

[learnukrainian]

Free online courses about Ukraine

Basics of the Ukrainian Language and Culture - https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/introduction-ukrainian-language-and-culture/

Ukraine: History, Culture, and Identities; this course is available in English, French, Italian, and Norwegian on Coursera: https://ui.org.ua/en/sectors-en/the-first-online-course-about-ukraine-in-english/

The Making of Modern Ukraine with Timothy Snyder: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-making-of-modern-ukraine

Crimea: History and People on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/crimea-history-and-people/

[markantonys]

the music in WOT is never random. even if it's just very soft background music, it's relevant to the scene. practically every time there's music playing while egwene is onscreen during s2, the tune is egwene's theme, rearranged and reinstrumentated in dozens of different ways to match the tone of the particular scene. mat has quick little snippets of his theme tune play during various scenes of his, often mixed with the old blood theme from s1, and it finally blares out in full glory for the first time during the horn of valere scene, to parallel how mat is truly finding himself for the first time. even secondary characters like liandrin, siuan, and aviendha have their own dedicated theme tunes that play during their scenes and are never repurposed as background music in other characters' scenes. and all the themes have lyrics in the old tongue that suit the character or concept the theme is about! in conclusion, lorne balfe is truly doing the Most, and i'm so grateful he's the composer for WOT and i hope he'll return for every season the show goes for.

[ohsalome]

As a fact of history and problem of contemporary geopolitics, Russia’s nature as an imperial power is incontrovertible. After World War I, the Russian Empire avoided the permanent dismemberment that befell other multi-ethnic land empires, such as the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. The Soviet Union not only reconquered most of the non-Russian lands that had declared independence from Moscow in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution (including Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan)—but even expanded the empire in the course of World War II, annexing Moldova, the western part of Ukraine, and other lands. Nor did the Soviet Union participate in the decolonization era. Even as the French and British empires were being dissolved, the Soviet Union was expanding its colonial reach, tightening its grip deep into Eastern and Central Europe with bloody crackdowns and military actions.

[...]

During the Cold War, Western universities, research institutions, and policy think tanks opened numerous centers and programs for Soviet, Russian, and Eurasian studies in a bid to better understand the Soviet Union and its heritage. However, these efforts had a strategic flaw: Born in an era when Moscow’s control reached far beyond today’s Russian borders, these programs inevitably framed the region through a Moscow-centric lens. Today, even as they dropped “Soviet” from their name, most of these programs have inherited this old Moscow-centric framing, effectively conflating Russia with the Soviet Union and downplaying the rich histories, varied cultures, and unique national identities of Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, and Central Asia—not to mention the many conquered and colonized non-Russian peoples inhabiting wide swathes of the Russian Federation.

[...]

In many cases, Western academic programs require students to study the Russian language—often including courses in Moscow or Saint Petersburg—before they have the option of studying any of the region’s other languages, if they are so inclined and if those languages are even offered. A similar problem affects cultural studies, including literature and art, where the many ways Russian works—including the classics read by countless high school and university students—transport Moscow’s imperial ideology are rarely addressed. This only perpetuates the habit of looking at the former Soviet-controlled and Russian-occupied space through the prism of the world’s last unreconstructed imperial culture. Unwittingly, today’s Russia studies in the West still replicate the worldview of an oppressor state that has never examined its history and is nowhere near having a debate about its imperial nature at all—not even among the Russian intellectuals or so-called liberals with whom Western students, academics, and analysts generally interact and cooperate.

Finally, Western academia also presents Russia itself as a monolith, with little or no attention paid to the country’s Indigenous peoples. By now, many who study Russian history are at least vaguely familiar with the Stalin-era genocide of the Crimean Tatars and their replacement on the peninsula by Russian settlers. But why not shed more light on the Russian conquest and subjugation of Siberia, one of the most gruesome episodes of European colonialism? Or Russia’s 19th-century mass murder of the Circassians, Europe’s first modern-era genocide? What have we learned about the short-lived Idel-Ural state, a confederation of six autonomous Finno-Ugric and Turkic republics crushed by the Bolsheviks in 1918? Why not highlight Tatarstan, which proclaimed its independence from Russia in 1990? Nascent efforts to give Russia’s Indigenous peoples a voice have gotten underway, including the Free Peoples of Russia Forum that last convened in Sweden in December 2022—but they have hardly registered in Western academia. Not only are Western scholars’ interests and relationships Russia-centric; within Russia, those relationships and contacts are Moscow-centric. It’s as if Russia’s highly diverse regions didn’t exist.

[brunettesparklejumpropequeen]

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

The 然's

突然，虽然，忽然. and the other 然's can often get mixed up, so here's a quick explanation of some of the most common ones!

突然 (Túrán): This means suddenly or unexpectedly

居然 (Jūrán): This kind of means suddenly, but more in the sense of "surprisingly" or to suggest disbelief at something that happened.

忽然 (Hūrán): This also means suddenly or unexpectedly, but it has a more stronger connotation.

既然 (Jìrán): This is a conjunction meaning "since" or "now that"

既然the weather is great, let's go out!

既然 you aren't busy, let's go watch a movie.

不然 (Bùrán): This means "otherwise" or "or else";

You should study, 不然 you won't do well on the exam.

虽然 (Suīrán): This means although or even though.

虽然 I'm not good at singing, I still like to go to the karaoke.

当然 (Dāngrán): 当然 means certainly or definitely and can be used as a reply:

Can you help me with A? 当然!

自然 (Zìrán): This can mean nature or naturally.

China's 自然 is very beautiful.

She speaks Chinese 得很自然.

仍然 (Réngrán): This can mean "still" or "yet".

I仍然 haven't read that book.

依然 (Yīrán): Similar to 仍然, this also means still" or "yet" but it's usually used in more formal and literary works, whereas 仍然 is more often used in spoken language.

果然 (Guǒrán): 果然 can be used to mean "indeed" or "as expected"

This movie is 果然 interesting.

竟然 (Jìngrán): This is an adverb used to suggest surprise or something unexpected.

He竟然forgot her birthday.

显然 (Xiǎnrán): This means "clearly" or "obviously".

This soup 显然 hot.

偶然 (Ǒurán): This means "accidentally" or "by chance".

We 偶然 met at the same cafe.

How many other 然's do you know about? Drop a comment!

[pol-ski]

Noun genders in Polish | Polish for Beginners

[princessmacabre]

day 8/100 days of productivity

got up at 6.30am

morning tea & poetry

note taking for upcoming projects and new ideas

social media updates // booktok

doing laundry

vacuumed

did the dishes

cleaned the kitchen

some extra cleaning in the bathroom

novel writing; finished my third and final draft. now i have revise it until its ready to be published…

doing a little better. thats all i could ask for. bisous

xx

[snejan]

To achieve your full potential, you have to work like your full potential 🫶🏼

[virgosstudy]

Some Slavic/Russian folklore from a postcrosser in Russia!

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