#soviet wizards

[otterdoingthings]

Okay, hear me out

I have a few headcanons about Grindelwald and Dumbledore.

And I will share them with you. Because I can.

Okay. Let's start with a fact that it isn't entirely my headcanon. Because I was largely inspired by one fanfic. I can't share it, because I cannot remember which one it was. Just that the author was Vladarg. So thank (or curse) him.

The duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore happened on November the 2nd 1945, according to Harry Potter Wiki.

And after that Grindelwald was just imprisoned. Why "just"? Well, Sirius Black was sentenced to Dementor's kiss just for the murder of three wizards and thirteen muggles. And that if we were to count James and Lily. It is obvious that in the War with Grindelwald many more people lost their lives.

So the first part of my headcanon is that it was Dumnledore who made sure for Grindelwald to just be imprisoned. Old feelings and all that.

The second part consists of two parts: one major and one less major. Let's start with the second one.

The Grindelwald (just as Voldemort) is the obvious allegory for Hitler. And in his case it is even more obvious that in Tommy's. Here similar not only the speeches of a superior race, but everything down to the clothes and hair.

So I present to you the idea that Grondelwald worked with Hitler. He did not control him. Because fuck every idea that in any sense makes Hitler less responsible for his crimes.

Then a few facts from canon:

First: Grindelwald knew about the Holocaust. He knew about it twelve (or something like that) years prior. He had the power to stop it. Especially if we remember that Rowling is an idealist (in philosophical sense) and it is her universe.

Second: In "Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince" it is shown that British Ministry of Magic works with Prime Minister. I don't see why the same logic wouldn't apply to Germany. So even if Grindelwald didn't support Hitler from the get-go, he worked with him after he came to power.

So, my major headcanon sounds like this:

Grindelwald knew about Hitler because of his powers. But they began their semi-official cooperation only after 1933 and it lasted till Hitler's death. Therefore, wizards under Grindelwald also were involved in Germany's position. Including the War time. Including on the Eastern front.

And they were worse than non-wizards there. Because magic gives power, great and horrible at the same time.

Soviet wizards wanted Grindelwald's head.

But Dumbledore dueled him. And kept him alive.

The conclusion? Dumbledore can't come to Soviet Union, because he will be executed immedeately.

That's all for today. Tune in at some other random day for more headcanons

[iljowicz]

Black brothers bby!

I want to draw jegulus and my marauders au but this is all I can show you right now ;n;

[super-ion]

Aug-UST Day 17 - From rival factions

Some original fiction of character ideas that have been rattling around in my brain for a while now, based on a prompt from @thepromptfoundry

---

I heave against the barn door and in a horrible cacophony, it grinds closed. It's still cold as hell, but at least we're out of the wind and snow.

I should probably place wards on the doors... and windows... and...

I glance up at the roof of the barn where wind whistles through more than a few holes that need patching. Yeah, no amount of warding is going to make this place defensible. Honestly, it's probably better not to use any magic at all, lest we give away our position.

That and I'm completely exhausted, I very much doubt I have any effort to spare for a half decent ward.

Getting eaten by zombies on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain was not how I imagined myself going out.

A hiss of a match brings my attention back to the here and now. Katerina is stooped over a glass lantern that shortly casts a sickly yellow light over the room. For a moment, I get that same brief impression of too many shadows around her. Spending a week with her has done little at temper the strangeness of her magic to my senses, that blend of traditional Eastern European craft and whatever the hell the Soviets have been dreaming up.

She straightens, bearing the lantern aloft and peering around the room as she carelessly brushes the curtain of her dark hair behind her ear. The flickering lamplight casts her bony features in sharp relief, and it really isn't that hard to imagine her as some witch living in a hut in the woods that walks around on chicken legs. There's something hard yet beautiful about her. She's...

"Elizabeth, you are bleeding," she says cutting through my thoughts.

I raise a hand to the wet spot on my temple.

"It's just a scratch," I reply. "It looks worse than it is."

She frowns and strides towards me.

"Let me see," she demands.

"It's nothing," I insist, probably sounding petulant, which is not at all my intent.

"It is not nothing if those beasts hunt by smell."

Damn, she's got me there.

She sets the lantern on the ground and takes my head in her hands. Her touch is surprisingly gentle as she makes her examination.

My heart speeds up at the touch.

Get it together Liz, I tell myself. She's the enemy.

Is she though?

Only a few months ago, our two nations were bearing down on one another in the waters between Cuba and Florida. Even the mundane world understood how close everything had come to all going to hell.

Right now though? Here in this barn in the East German countryside? We are just two witches, just two women united against a common enemy.

She murmurs something in a language I don't recognize and a blessed warmth flows through me, centering on the cut on my scalp.

Her eyes meet mine, those dark pools of intensity captivating me. The gaze lingers. The gentle touch of her fingers against my cheek linger. Her eyes flicker to my lips briefly, erasing any doubt that she hasn't felt the exact same feelings that had been haunting me.

Unbidden, my breath hitches. We are so close, it would be the easiest thing in the world to close that distance between us.

This is...

This is a terrible idea. At the end of the day, common enemy or no, we are still agents of rival governments.

I watch as the exact same thought plays out in her head. Something in her expression closes off and she jerks her hands away.

"We should get some rest," she mutters. "We will both need all our strength in the morning."

"Yeah..." I agree reluctantly.

[andmaybegayer]

a TV. would be nice for the Thicket so that I can have people over for movies. But for the cost of a TV one can purchase many soviet era microscopy equipment.

[motherlicker]

Headcanons: magic in the Soviet Union

I started thinking about this and then unsurprisingly had a lot more thoughts. ('Pureblood', what's that? Sounds dangerously bourgeois and decadent to me, komrade.)

Read on at your own expense of time; what you see is only the tip of this autistic iceberg.

PRAXES

Most common were folk or pagan magics, persistent enough to survive the targeted purges of political enemies (including magical folk) and became part of 'general superstition', sometimes reinforced or rediscovered via trial and error. The early NRU in particular, had very little continuity of magical education or formal programme for training their agents, and thus relied on word-of-mouth practices; in contrast, the OGNU always enjoyed special privilege and more covert status, and did set up centralised training systems, even later breeding ('family planning') for special abilities and bloodlines (e.g. seers, metamorphmagi, etc.).

Main forms of magic

Verbal magic: Pagan prayers and incantations that had assimilated by taking on forms resembling Eastern Orthodoxy prayers or canon, usually centred on protection / concealment / blessing (zagovory), or healing / binding / transfiguration (nagovory). Quite hermetic and ritualistic, requiring a prescriptive incantation but also symbolic instruments and components.

Alchemy: The whole nine yards of herbal remedies--potions, poultices, witches' brews--these probably work the best / have the most enduring tradition out of all the surviving Soviet magic.

Talismans: Amulets worn by superstitious soldiers are eventually also studied and their basic runic or charmed principles are 'distilled' and standardised by the state. Wands, chalices, other spellcasting focii are included in this category; all of these are later commodified into NRU-issued 'wands' that are more like magical stun batons than anything. The OGNU go wild making talismanic fetishes: aegis-on-a-dogtag, garrote-in-a-box, you name it.

Divination: Tarot, astrology, and numerology (oh THIS for sure is tied to the church calendar, associated calendrical effects/strength, etc.) but also scrying. The latter is usually elemental a la staring into a pool of water or fire or etc; can be looking for visions of the future or visions of remote/secret places. None of this is accurate or a known science and it's the best way to drum up some sketchy charges as an excuse to execute political enemies.

GLOSSARY

Euphemistic terms for magical vs non-magical people

Govorchik (говорчик, 'talker'): Fairly neutral euphemism for a wizard, originally referring to verbal magic practitioners (obviously) but broadened in usage. Both derived from, and then subsequently gave rise to (in pejorative use) zagovorchik (заговорчик, 'conspirator') and nagovorchik (наговорчик, 'slanderer') as NRU and OGNU terms to refer to the other, respectively.

Chuzhak (чужак, 'alien / outsider'): Pejorative euphemism for a wizard, 'defined' by the state around the same time they coined kulak as part of a series of labels for class or political enemies. Carries xenophobic insinuation, i.e. wizards are Beings, not fully human, and certainly the more magical ancestry the more suspect. (Actual Beings like veela, giants, so on, are of course true chuzhak.)

Bezvolshy (безвольшы, 'weak-willed'): Pejorative used by Soviet wizards to refer to their unmagical counterparts. Never really popularised, using this term in front of the wrong person could lead to you being labelled chuzhak.

Myagiy (мягкий, 'soft'): Pejorative used by Soviet military to refer to their wizarding counterparts. Only used by high-ranking OGNU or NRU muggles since most state/military were not aware of the existence of wizards.

State-sanctioned actors

NRU: Extraordinary Intelligence Directorate (Необыкновенное разведывательное управление / Neobyknovennoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye) Magical counterpart to the foreign military intelligence agency (GRU). Formed in 1920, it was a running joke for much of the interwar period to refer to the NRU as the 'Fourth and Half Department'. Like the GRU, the NRU is under the Ministry of Defense. Like the GRU, its focus was gathering magical intelligence (collection, generation, and interpretation of prophecies), human intelligence (torture) and reconnaissance (scrying, divination). Given its Red Army origin, the NRU was mostly wizards (very few witches), who were always regarded with suspicion and received less cooperation from Red Army proper. Recruitment was usually ad hoc, after teenage or adult soldiers displayed signs of magic; the GRU would discreetly flag those individuals to the NRU, who would test for aptitude and compatibility. The vast majority of recruits were muggleborns, and anyone with any magical parentage was liable to come under suspicion of greed, decadence, and being a chuzhak. The NRU remained a rival to the OGNU (and its various later forms), somewhat like the FBI and CIA, but far more hostile; both agencies constantly attempted to paint the other as political enemies and execute them.

OGNU: Joint State Extraordinary Directorate (Oбъединенное государственное необыкновенная управление / Ob"yedinennoye Gosudarstvennoye Neobyknovennaya Upravleniye) Magical counterpart to the secret police (OGPU). Like the OGPU, the OGNU's remit was 'domestic security', i.e. political repression (targeting political dissenters) and counterintelligence (maintaining a pervasive surveillance network). Their cloak-and-dagger nature lent itself to much higher tolerance and interest in magical ('extraordinary') abilities. They were much more advanced in their development of wands and enchanted talismans, and generally trained their agents to fight magical creatures using magic. The OGNU kept tabs on young children who manifested early signs of magic, and would often 'recruit' (kidnap) them to be trained and brought up as its loyal agents.

NKRD: People's Commissariat of Infrequent Affairs (Народный комиссариат редких дел / Narodnyy Komissariat Redkikh Del) Succeeded the OGNU and formed in 1934, ~a year earlier than its NKVD counterpart. By this time, the state was relatively stable and power was centralised, and the NKRD began to turn its attention to the 'domestic threat' posed by Beings. Policing its borders as far as Finland and Japan, the NKRD had quite a lot of interaction (of the hostile, exterminating kind) with veela colonies, tribes of giants, dragons, other extraordinary threats. The commissariat also began to cultivate valuable bloodlines and abilities in records of geneologies correlated against astrological charts. It also permitted its agents to form families and have (likely magical) children.

MBCh: Ministry of Internal Emergency (Министерство внутренних чрезвычайная / Ministerstvo vnutrennikh chrezvychaynaya) While the NKVD underwent various consolidations, the NKRD remained relatively stable until 1946, when Stalin reached the full flower of his power and unleashed the MGB to formalise his hold over the Soviet Union. It's widely believed that Stalin was aware of magic by this point, and more or less obliquely sanctioned the activiites of the magical MBCh counterpart. MGB head Abakumov was certainly and unhappily aware of his magical counterpart. The tension between the MGB and MBCh persisted until the two were combined into the KGB in 1954. Beria was the first and only state Minister with any magical ancestry; following his execution, enemies were quick to smear his perverted reputation as a result of magic (tying him back to folklore about Rasputin and the like), and no such situation was allowed again.

[moss-in-hiding]

(i’m making basically translation of my previous post that’s fully in Russian) 

today I watched an old Soviet two episode show called Ordinary Miracle, which I haven’t seen since I was a kid. however, while I was watching it, I realize that two of the characters the Wizard and his wife are basically just Howl and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle.

because the wizard is on one hand trying to live normally, but also turned a bear into a human just for his own amusement? (but also it’s heavily implied he did it because he wanted the bear to feel love and get to be human) and his wife, who is ginger by the way, just like book Sophie, is basically his conscience telling him that it’s inhumane to force the bear to be human if he doesn’t want to be.

oh, and also the movie starts off with the line my wife who I’ve been in love with since I was a boy- which is literally Howl.

but yeah, it’s on YouTube if you’re into subbed surreal soviet musicals from the 70s!

[sovietpostcards]

I'm trying to learn Russian language. Can you suggest some good movies (with subtitles that I can find on Netflix, prime or youtube) and some of your favourite russian songs?

Can't say much for Netflix (don't have it), but you can check my Soviet Cinema tag for movie ideas! I'd start with something from the most popular list, like Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession, The Office Romance, Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears, 3+2.

Or try these holiday-themed movies: The Carnival Night, Irony of Fate, Wizards, Morozko

[txttletale]

You've helped expose me to a lot of theory that I hadn't read before, and I'm realizing i need to read more theory for real, like. Actually. That being said; The more I start to lean into communist thoughts and not just anti capitalist, I find myself becoming warped and joyless. How does it not take a tole on you? The constant reminder of the endless suffering of the oppressed? How do I enjoy art when I am forced to see all of it as a coerced product, suffering for my entertainment? The constant guilt of life is something I dont think I can stomach at all times. Am i supposed too? (BTW; I mean this more so as an ask of how you do it, not to argue that because suffering is hard to look at we should actually just go back to the status quo and ignore it. I'm just like. Not sure how to deal with it, I guess.)

i don't really feel guilty about anything so i don't know how much i can help. i guess i just think that using communism as like a lense to judge your own individual morality as many people like to do is bound to make you miserable to no real avail. that's not the purpose of communist theory, the point of communist theory is to analyze society and history and guide mass-scale poltical action, not tell you if you're evil for watching the new star wars or whatevsies.

i guess i also personally find that reading socialist history and the more practical, grounded-in-praxis types of theory is liberatory and fills me with optimisim--reading about, e.g., social systems in cuba or people's democracy in the early soviet union is helpful in dispelling the 'oh, everything's going to be horrible forever, socialism is just a utopian pipe dream' insinct that i think liberal hegemony instills in most people, by showing how people took actual sensible pragmatic steps to introduce things like workplace democracy, universal healthcare, women's equality, mass literacy, etc. post-revolution. it helps you understand that communism is not a magic wizard who will come and save us all but yknow something that is doable and achievable by human beings.

[taylor-titmouse]

Re: Cadogan teleportation mechanics, there's an old Russian children's book series about a wizard whose old wizard master leaves him a magical piece of chalk. If you draw a door with the chalk on any surface, it becomes a functional door that will teleport you (in the story's case, to The Land of Fantasy, because the wizard lives in a regular Soviet Russian city.)

ah yes of course, the beloved russian story chalkzone

[otter-popa]

Some old art from beginning of the year.

The first art is a drawing of my character as he was in the Soviet puppet film The Wizard of Emerald City, based on the books by Volkov, which were a Soviet interpretation of the fairy tale The Wizard of Oz.

Second art is drawing of Urfin Juce from book by Volkov Urfin Juce and his wooden soldiers.

Third is just Severus. Nothing more.

Link leads to song from puppet film that I associate with my oc Boris Bobinski (sun dude).

[maxdibert]

As a German I genuinely wonder what muggleborns were doing during ww2, like not even the adult wizards I mean the kids going to school and seeing the Jewish muggleborns and stuff?? Like???

As a Spaniard, I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened to Muggle-borns during our Civil War? Did they go to the French school alongside the children of people from the opposing side? And what about the 40 years of dictatorship? Could the son of a high-ranking regime official go to school with the child of someone who had been executed or imprisoned for political reasons?

Like, wtf, Rowling? This is basic 20th-century European history. How do you not consider this? The woman lived in Portugal, and Portugal had its own dictatorship until 1974. Germany was split in two after WWII. Half of Europe was under Soviet rule. Maybe it’s just that I studied politics and think about these things more, but seriously aren’t these topics you literally study in high school???

[waxminutes]

Ideas for Monkees episodes

- Micky, Peter, and Davy stage a prison break after Mike is arrested for tax evasion

- Davy falls down a storm drain and has a Big Adventure

- They find the secret fifth member of the band, Bill, living in a crawl space. He is played by an actor who has no record of ever existing and the character is never mentioned again.

- Davy gets carried away by a giant bird and the rest of the band has to save him from being eaten by the bird’s horrible wretched offspring (this one is partially @androcola’s)

- Body Swap Episode. Mike ends up in Peter’s body, has a panic attack, and locks himself in the bathroom. Davy in Mike’s body has a great time getting things off of high shelves. Micky is in Davy’s body and takes the opportunity to follow his dreams of fitting inside a shipping crate but it goes wrong and he gets sent to Quebec. Peter is in Micky’s body technically but he doesn’t even notice that anything is going on.

- Micky wants to learn stage magic so he apprentices himself to a guy who turns out to be a real literal wizard

- Davy falls into the space between his bed and the wall and they just lose him for a week

- an episode from the perspective of the ambiguously Soviet agents sent to kidnap the boys for stupid microfilm reasons. They consistently fail due to mishaps indirectly caused by what the boys are up to, which is of course attempting to wrangle the several dozen snakes which have been let loose in the pad for reasons which are never disclosed to the audience. The boys never even notice that there is somebody trying to kidnap them.

- the boys go to Connecticut to visit Peter’s extended family. It turns out that Peter’s folks are deeply unpleasant old-money New Englanders and also are members of an “Innsmouth” style cult, who try to sacrifice Micky to their god, Shmagon.

- Peter gets lost in a parking garage (scary)

[r0bin-d00dles]

Yea so earlier this week I learned there's a soviet oz movie n I made this

[designs n movie link below, no English subtitles srry]

Movie Link: The Wizard of the Emerald City

Designs:

[witchesoz]

The Wicked Witches of the West (10)

Speaking of "alternate" Witches of the West, adaptations that shifted away from the book-character until they became their own thing... There's one more to add, after the MGM green-skin witch and The Wiz Evillene. After the Hollywoodian Witch of the West and the Afro-American Witch of the West, we need to talk a bit about the Soviet Witch of the West... Aka Bastinda, ruler of the Purple Country.

It is well known that Alexander Volkov, when translating Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into the Russian "The Wizard of Emerald City" was... quite imaginative. Ranging from loose translations to entire rewrites passing by the addition of chapters not there before... However with the Wicked Witch of the West, Volkov stayed quite close to the depiction of umbrella-holding hag - just "expanding" her lore to add various details (her weakness to water is talked about more, she has a NAME) or shifting things to fit the new "Magic Land" setting (the yellow of the Winkies being replaced by the purple of the "Violet Country").

(I especially LOVE this drawing, which mixes the original design for Baum's witch with the Walter Crane famous illustrations for the Fairy of the Desert in "The Yellow Dwarf")

In terms of adaptations, I know of four major "appearances" to note. (And since the post is getting a bit long I'll put these under a cut)

These pictures from an animated piece of (to me unknown date, I unfortunately do not have a lot of info about where they come from)

There is the 70s puppet-animation TV show in which Bastinda appears as this tall, skeletal, beaked-nose woman with large round glasses.

You have the 1994 live-action adaptation where Bastinda is given a "regal evil queen" design reminiscent of other classical witch-queens like those of Disney (Snow-White's Evil Queen, Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent, Enchanted's Narissa)

And finally the upcoming 2025 live-action adaptation, where Bastinda's design seems to be "evil Catholic church", from her palace having a Gothic cathedral feel to her outfit looking like the one of some sort of satanic bishop.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

ngl translations drama is so fun, I had a teacher write a whole dissertation on that one time a Soviet author translated wizard of oz and then just. wrote unsanctioned sequels and no one caught him for years. also that one translation of Dracula I think that is just Not Dracula lol

Ooh you mean Icelandic Dracula?? Still kinda thinking about trying to get a hands on a copy <3