The Bolsheviks seized power in Moscow and, on March 3, 1918, signed a peace deal with Germany. The pact allowed Germany to focus on the Western Front. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, turned to defending their revolution from White Russians, supporters of czarist rule who were backed by the British and French.
In the late summer and early fall of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson added some 5,300 American soldiers to that volatile mix, sending them to northern Russia with vague and contradictory orders.
This account of the 1918 Archangel campaign is based on century-old military records, declassified government memos, personal letters, diaries, photos and film in the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, as well as soldiers’ memoirs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-one-time-american-troops-fought-russians-was-at-the-end-of-world-war-iand-they-lost-1541772001
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Monday, October 29, 2018
From 1947 until 1953, tens of thousands of prisoners, many of them “politicals” convicted for “anti-Soviet acts”,...
From 1947 until 1953, tens of thousands of prisoners, many of them “politicals” convicted for “anti-Soviet acts”, were shipped to northern Russia to lay a railroad through some of the harshest terrain on Earth.
Stalin, spooked by the incursion of Nazi submarines into the Arctic during the second world war, wanted the railway in place as a means of supplying a planned naval port. The railway also would have connected northern nickel mines to Soviet factories in the west.
But just days after Stalin’s death in 1953, the project was cancelled amid the subsequent Soviet “thaw”. Since then, the railway’s gulag camps have lain abandoned, sinking further into the forest under the weight of each winter’s snow.
_Most of the railway, as evidenced by this old signal marker, has fallen into ruin.
For Snovsky, who now lives with his wife near St Petersburg, the biggest tragedy was the project’s futility: “Tens of thousands of human lives for nothing. For me, the saddest thing was that it was for nothing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/29/the-remains-of-stalin-gulag-railroad-soviet-union-a-photo-essay
Stalin, spooked by the incursion of Nazi submarines into the Arctic during the second world war, wanted the railway in place as a means of supplying a planned naval port. The railway also would have connected northern nickel mines to Soviet factories in the west.
But just days after Stalin’s death in 1953, the project was cancelled amid the subsequent Soviet “thaw”. Since then, the railway’s gulag camps have lain abandoned, sinking further into the forest under the weight of each winter’s snow.
_Most of the railway, as evidenced by this old signal marker, has fallen into ruin.
For Snovsky, who now lives with his wife near St Petersburg, the biggest tragedy was the project’s futility: “Tens of thousands of human lives for nothing. For me, the saddest thing was that it was for nothing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/29/the-remains-of-stalin-gulag-railroad-soviet-union-a-photo-essay
Thursday, October 11, 2018
H/t Ciro Villa
H/t Ciro Villa
Soyuz 23 was launched 14 October 1976 with an estimated 73- to 85-day mission planned aboard the orbiting Salyut 5 space station. Others suggest a 17- to 24-day mission was a more likely intention. It was the first visit to the station after the sudden termination of the Soyuz 21 mission in August. However, on 15 October, during the automatic approach phase, the automatic docking system malfunctioned before the craft was within 100 metres of the station. Crews were normally trained for a manual dock, but not for a manual approach.The mission, accordingly, had to be abandoned.
The craft had only two days of battery power, so systems were powered off, including the radio, to conserve power. The day's landing opportunity had already passed, so they had to wait for the next day's landing opportunity near the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
On 16 October, Soyuz 23 returned to earth and landed 8:45 p.m. local time, but weather conditions were poor and the cosmonauts experienced an unusual recovery. They landed on a freezing Lake Tengiz(average depth 2.5m, max depth 6.7m), 8 km from shore, in the middle of a blizzard, with fog and temperatures at −22 °C. It was the first water landing by a Soviet crew. The capsule was designed to land in any conditions, even in a body of water, so the only concern was the increased difficulty in finding the capsule and crew.
The parachute quickly filled with water and dragged the capsule and its crew beneath the surface, in addition an electrical short caused by water impact caused the reserve parachute to accidentally deploy. The capsule cooled in the freezing water, and the cosmonauts removed their pressure suits and donned their normal flight suits, expecting a quick rescue. The parachutes became waterlogged and pulled the capsule onto its side, preventing the hatch from being opened. The transmission antennas were also under water, so the crew could not communicate with rescue teams.
The capsule's beacons could not be seen in the heavy fog, and rubber rafts used to try to reach them were blocked by ice and sludge. Amphibious vehicles were airlifted to the vicinity, but could not reach the capsule owing to bogs surrounding the lake. Accordingly, the rescue was called off until dawn.The cosmonauts were safe, but they were low on power, so they were forced to shut down everything but a small interior light.
The next morning, frogmen were dropped in by helicopters and attached flotation devices to the Soyuz craft. The capsule was too heavy to be lifted by the helicopter, so it was dragged to shore. The recovery operation had taken nine hours. No attempt was made to open the hatch as the recovery crews assumed the cosmonauts were dead, so they called for a special team to remove their bodies. Eventually, eleven hours after splashdown, the cosmonauts opened the hatch and emerged alive and well, if badly chilled (the interior of the descent module was coated with frost).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_23?wprov=sfla1
Soyuz 23 was launched 14 October 1976 with an estimated 73- to 85-day mission planned aboard the orbiting Salyut 5 space station. Others suggest a 17- to 24-day mission was a more likely intention. It was the first visit to the station after the sudden termination of the Soyuz 21 mission in August. However, on 15 October, during the automatic approach phase, the automatic docking system malfunctioned before the craft was within 100 metres of the station. Crews were normally trained for a manual dock, but not for a manual approach.The mission, accordingly, had to be abandoned.
The craft had only two days of battery power, so systems were powered off, including the radio, to conserve power. The day's landing opportunity had already passed, so they had to wait for the next day's landing opportunity near the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
On 16 October, Soyuz 23 returned to earth and landed 8:45 p.m. local time, but weather conditions were poor and the cosmonauts experienced an unusual recovery. They landed on a freezing Lake Tengiz(average depth 2.5m, max depth 6.7m), 8 km from shore, in the middle of a blizzard, with fog and temperatures at −22 °C. It was the first water landing by a Soviet crew. The capsule was designed to land in any conditions, even in a body of water, so the only concern was the increased difficulty in finding the capsule and crew.
The parachute quickly filled with water and dragged the capsule and its crew beneath the surface, in addition an electrical short caused by water impact caused the reserve parachute to accidentally deploy. The capsule cooled in the freezing water, and the cosmonauts removed their pressure suits and donned their normal flight suits, expecting a quick rescue. The parachutes became waterlogged and pulled the capsule onto its side, preventing the hatch from being opened. The transmission antennas were also under water, so the crew could not communicate with rescue teams.
The capsule's beacons could not be seen in the heavy fog, and rubber rafts used to try to reach them were blocked by ice and sludge. Amphibious vehicles were airlifted to the vicinity, but could not reach the capsule owing to bogs surrounding the lake. Accordingly, the rescue was called off until dawn.The cosmonauts were safe, but they were low on power, so they were forced to shut down everything but a small interior light.
The next morning, frogmen were dropped in by helicopters and attached flotation devices to the Soyuz craft. The capsule was too heavy to be lifted by the helicopter, so it was dragged to shore. The recovery operation had taken nine hours. No attempt was made to open the hatch as the recovery crews assumed the cosmonauts were dead, so they called for a special team to remove their bodies. Eventually, eleven hours after splashdown, the cosmonauts opened the hatch and emerged alive and well, if badly chilled (the interior of the descent module was coated with frost).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_23?wprov=sfla1
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Some good news about Russia!
Some good news about Russia!
Amid a multiyear, brutal slump in grain prices, Russian agriculture is thriving. The country exported more than 40 million tons of wheat in the year ending June, around 50% more than the previous year, and the highest level for any country in the past quarter-century. Russia overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest exporter of wheat in 2016, and again beat the U.S. in 2018.
...
Russia’s surge of agriculture exports, including grains, fish and meat, is part of an effort to diversify the economy away from crude oil. Oil and natural gas were once the source of half of federal budget revenues. With oil prices still down 25% from their high in 2014—recovering from a swoon of more than 60%—exports now account for around 40% of budget revenues.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/grain-is-our-oil-russia-is-besting-the-u-s-as-a-wheat-powerhouse-1537719747
Amid a multiyear, brutal slump in grain prices, Russian agriculture is thriving. The country exported more than 40 million tons of wheat in the year ending June, around 50% more than the previous year, and the highest level for any country in the past quarter-century. Russia overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest exporter of wheat in 2016, and again beat the U.S. in 2018.
...
Russia’s surge of agriculture exports, including grains, fish and meat, is part of an effort to diversify the economy away from crude oil. Oil and natural gas were once the source of half of federal budget revenues. With oil prices still down 25% from their high in 2014—recovering from a swoon of more than 60%—exports now account for around 40% of budget revenues.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/grain-is-our-oil-russia-is-besting-the-u-s-as-a-wheat-powerhouse-1537719747
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Domino’s Pizza in Russia had announced a promotion that was supposed to run for two months offering lifelong free...
Domino’s Pizza in Russia had announced a promotion that was supposed to run for two months offering lifelong free pizza to anyone who tatted up with the company’s logo. But that morning, it posted on social media that it was ending the promotion—although those who were being inked right then could still make the midday cutoff.
The company, it turned out, had underestimated how much Russians love free food.
“More than a million people would have come to demand pizzas” if the promotion had lasted the full two months, guessed 24-year-old Natalia Koshkina, who got a small Domino’s logo tattooed above her left kneecap, just below a skull embellished with roses and butterflies. “After all, this is Russia,” she said.
Bargains and freebies are powerful draws here. The Soviet period—where foodstuffs were often cheap but in short supply—and the economic hardships of the 1990s have conditioned many Russians to pounce on a good deal. A stagnant economy has left average disposable incomes stuck around $500 a month, and Ms. Koshkina said the free pizza would help her put aside a bit of money from her salary working at a piercing and tattoo parlor. “Who doesn’t want free food?” she said.
...
Domino’s announced the launch of its tattoo promotion—named “Domino’s Forever”—on its page on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook , on Aug. 31. The conditions were minimal: Applicants should post a photo on social media of a real tattoo in a visible place with the hashtag #dominosforever. They would receive a certificate allowing them to receive 100 free pizzas a year of any size for 100 years, the company said.
Russians hurried to tattoo parlors. Tattoos in Russia have long been associated with criminals, who have used them to depict status in the underworld. But in recent years, they have become part of a broad assimilation of American hipster culture that includes craft beer, skateboards and boutique barbershops.
Many opted for the simple domino of the company’s logo, which tattoo artist Mr. Gonyshev said he offered for 2,000 rubles, or around $30, and took about 10 minutes to ink.
Others wanted it worked into compositions. Mr. Gonyshev inked a cuffed hand holding the logo with the phrase “Prisoner of Freebie,” riffing on a classic “Prisoner of Love” tattoo design. Others put them on pizza slices, skateboards or pizza boxes carried by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
On Sept. 3, as the photos piled up on social media, the company tightened the rules: The first 350 people to post photos of their tattoos, which should be at least 2 centimeters in size, would receive 100 medium-size pizzas a year.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dominos-offered-free-pizza-for-life-in-exchange-for-a-logo-tattoo-it-found-people-really-like-ink-1537120377?mod=hp_featst_pos3
The company, it turned out, had underestimated how much Russians love free food.
“More than a million people would have come to demand pizzas” if the promotion had lasted the full two months, guessed 24-year-old Natalia Koshkina, who got a small Domino’s logo tattooed above her left kneecap, just below a skull embellished with roses and butterflies. “After all, this is Russia,” she said.
Bargains and freebies are powerful draws here. The Soviet period—where foodstuffs were often cheap but in short supply—and the economic hardships of the 1990s have conditioned many Russians to pounce on a good deal. A stagnant economy has left average disposable incomes stuck around $500 a month, and Ms. Koshkina said the free pizza would help her put aside a bit of money from her salary working at a piercing and tattoo parlor. “Who doesn’t want free food?” she said.
...
Domino’s announced the launch of its tattoo promotion—named “Domino’s Forever”—on its page on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook , on Aug. 31. The conditions were minimal: Applicants should post a photo on social media of a real tattoo in a visible place with the hashtag #dominosforever. They would receive a certificate allowing them to receive 100 free pizzas a year of any size for 100 years, the company said.
Russians hurried to tattoo parlors. Tattoos in Russia have long been associated with criminals, who have used them to depict status in the underworld. But in recent years, they have become part of a broad assimilation of American hipster culture that includes craft beer, skateboards and boutique barbershops.
Many opted for the simple domino of the company’s logo, which tattoo artist Mr. Gonyshev said he offered for 2,000 rubles, or around $30, and took about 10 minutes to ink.
Others wanted it worked into compositions. Mr. Gonyshev inked a cuffed hand holding the logo with the phrase “Prisoner of Freebie,” riffing on a classic “Prisoner of Love” tattoo design. Others put them on pizza slices, skateboards or pizza boxes carried by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
On Sept. 3, as the photos piled up on social media, the company tightened the rules: The first 350 people to post photos of their tattoos, which should be at least 2 centimeters in size, would receive 100 medium-size pizzas a year.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dominos-offered-free-pizza-for-life-in-exchange-for-a-logo-tattoo-it-found-people-really-like-ink-1537120377?mod=hp_featst_pos3
Monday, September 3, 2018
The standard shorthand is to describe Iosif Kobzon as “the Russian Frank Sinatra,” a moniker that encompasses both...
The standard shorthand is to describe Iosif Kobzon as “the Russian Frank Sinatra,” a moniker that encompasses both his career as a popular singer and suggestions that he had connections to the Russian mob.
But what with the hostage-negotiation heroics, the bombing that may or may not have been aimed at him, and the international eyebrow-raising over his political positions, Mr. Kobzon, who died on Thursday at 80, may have outdone even Ol’ Blue Eyes for high drama.
...
Mr. Kobzon had a crooning baritone and a taste for patriotic songs, staking out that territory in 1962 with a rendition of “Cuba, My Love,” a paean to Fidel Castro, which he performed in a filmed version dressed as Castro.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/obituaries/iosif-kobzon-dies-at-80.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/obituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
But what with the hostage-negotiation heroics, the bombing that may or may not have been aimed at him, and the international eyebrow-raising over his political positions, Mr. Kobzon, who died on Thursday at 80, may have outdone even Ol’ Blue Eyes for high drama.
...
Mr. Kobzon had a crooning baritone and a taste for patriotic songs, staking out that territory in 1962 with a rendition of “Cuba, My Love,” a paean to Fidel Castro, which he performed in a filmed version dressed as Castro.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/obituaries/iosif-kobzon-dies-at-80.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/obituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Thursday, April 12, 2018
The Secret History Of Russia’s Most Recognizable Brand
Originally shared by rare avis
How The Race To Space Influenced Soviet Design
Much of the design from the Soviet Union is lost to history, simply because no one was keeping tabs. There were many designers employed by manufacturers as “artistic engineers,” but the words “design” and “designer” were actually banned for much of the Soviet Era.
But a new book attempts to preserve the history of design in the Soviet Union from 1950 to 1989, both in consumer products and government-issued propaganda. Among the knock-offs of American products and socialist realist packaging design, one theme dominated much of the era’s aesthetic: space.
“You can’t imagine the number of objects that were called Sputnik,” says Alexandra Sankova, the curator of the Moscow Design Museum who put together Designed in the USSR, which will be published by Phaidon this month.
Symbols of space–and Russia’s supremacy in the Space Race with the United States–dominated textiles, household goods, and toys, not to mention books, movies, and music. One image in the book depicts the packaging of the Sputnik wind-up shaver, which was manufactured by the Leningrad Patefon Factory in 1968. While the shaver is front and center on the box, there are several rockets flying in the background–as if the connection between shaving and space is perfectly obvious.
The tenuous relationship between the space imagery and the device’s function isn’t isolated to packaging. A vacuum called Saturnas, which dates to the mid to late 1960s, is literally shaped like Saturn. The device, which takes the form of a sphere, was modeled after the American Hoover’s Constellation vacuum cleaner from 1955. But the Soviet version included a ring around the middle, giving the vacuum a space-age twist. The aesthetic also extended to home decor, with a nightlight shaped like a launching rocket, and food packaging, with multiple types of sweets decorated with yet more rockets shooting off into space.
One of the most fascinating space-age designs in the book is a confectionary tin from the Krasny Oktyabr Chocolate Factory in the 1960s. Its backdrop features a starry night sky and the customary Sputnik-shaped rocket emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, but it has some unlikely stars: the dogs Belka and Strelka, who the Soviets launched into space in 1960 and did a full orbit of Earth. “A funny thing is that dogs–the first cosmonauts–they’d be everywhere,” Sankova says. “They were superstars in the Soviet Union. A whole institute was producing these dogs as toys for children.”
Rockets even made their way onto the uniforms for the 1980 Olympic games, solidifying the emblem as a symbol of the country. The book includes the uniform for the Torch Relay, an all-white outfit with a stylized image of a spaceship on the front with a star at its tip, underlined by the Olympic rings. The reserve lamp for the Olympic flame has the same logo, which was designed by the students of the Vera Mukhina Arts and Crafts School in Leningrad under the guidance of designer Boris Tuchin. The fact that Sankova even has this information is evidence that by the 1980s, design was more established as a field in the Soviet Union.
Sankova started the Moscow Design Museum in 2012, and the book codifies some of the treasures of the new museum’s collections–both space age and otherwise. “The Soviet Union collapsed and now no one remembers what was there and who was responsible for design,” she says. “We have to preserve and study whatever we have.”
Even today, space remains a powerful tool for branding. Three of today’s most powerful business moguls–Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson–have all invested in getting to space. Literally transcending our planet to explore the stars is a powerful aspiration–one that will inspire us, and empower brands, for generations to come.
....
Phaidon: Designed In The USSR
[http://www.phaidon.com/store/design/designed-in-the-ussr-1950-1989-9780714875576/]
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90167789/the-secret-history-of-russias-most-recognizable-brand
How The Race To Space Influenced Soviet Design
Much of the design from the Soviet Union is lost to history, simply because no one was keeping tabs. There were many designers employed by manufacturers as “artistic engineers,” but the words “design” and “designer” were actually banned for much of the Soviet Era.
But a new book attempts to preserve the history of design in the Soviet Union from 1950 to 1989, both in consumer products and government-issued propaganda. Among the knock-offs of American products and socialist realist packaging design, one theme dominated much of the era’s aesthetic: space.
“You can’t imagine the number of objects that were called Sputnik,” says Alexandra Sankova, the curator of the Moscow Design Museum who put together Designed in the USSR, which will be published by Phaidon this month.
Symbols of space–and Russia’s supremacy in the Space Race with the United States–dominated textiles, household goods, and toys, not to mention books, movies, and music. One image in the book depicts the packaging of the Sputnik wind-up shaver, which was manufactured by the Leningrad Patefon Factory in 1968. While the shaver is front and center on the box, there are several rockets flying in the background–as if the connection between shaving and space is perfectly obvious.
The tenuous relationship between the space imagery and the device’s function isn’t isolated to packaging. A vacuum called Saturnas, which dates to the mid to late 1960s, is literally shaped like Saturn. The device, which takes the form of a sphere, was modeled after the American Hoover’s Constellation vacuum cleaner from 1955. But the Soviet version included a ring around the middle, giving the vacuum a space-age twist. The aesthetic also extended to home decor, with a nightlight shaped like a launching rocket, and food packaging, with multiple types of sweets decorated with yet more rockets shooting off into space.
One of the most fascinating space-age designs in the book is a confectionary tin from the Krasny Oktyabr Chocolate Factory in the 1960s. Its backdrop features a starry night sky and the customary Sputnik-shaped rocket emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, but it has some unlikely stars: the dogs Belka and Strelka, who the Soviets launched into space in 1960 and did a full orbit of Earth. “A funny thing is that dogs–the first cosmonauts–they’d be everywhere,” Sankova says. “They were superstars in the Soviet Union. A whole institute was producing these dogs as toys for children.”
Rockets even made their way onto the uniforms for the 1980 Olympic games, solidifying the emblem as a symbol of the country. The book includes the uniform for the Torch Relay, an all-white outfit with a stylized image of a spaceship on the front with a star at its tip, underlined by the Olympic rings. The reserve lamp for the Olympic flame has the same logo, which was designed by the students of the Vera Mukhina Arts and Crafts School in Leningrad under the guidance of designer Boris Tuchin. The fact that Sankova even has this information is evidence that by the 1980s, design was more established as a field in the Soviet Union.
Sankova started the Moscow Design Museum in 2012, and the book codifies some of the treasures of the new museum’s collections–both space age and otherwise. “The Soviet Union collapsed and now no one remembers what was there and who was responsible for design,” she says. “We have to preserve and study whatever we have.”
Even today, space remains a powerful tool for branding. Three of today’s most powerful business moguls–Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson–have all invested in getting to space. Literally transcending our planet to explore the stars is a powerful aspiration–one that will inspire us, and empower brands, for generations to come.
....
Phaidon: Designed In The USSR
[http://www.phaidon.com/store/design/designed-in-the-ussr-1950-1989-9780714875576/]
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90167789/the-secret-history-of-russias-most-recognizable-brand
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, have for decades been analyzed in a simplistically binary fashion.
Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, have for decades been analyzed in a simplistically binary fashion. Soviet society was viewed as largely comprising Homo Sovieticus — individuals devoid of free will who blindly followed the party line — and a few heroic dissidents; Russian society, similarly, is divided into the 86 percent of “patriots” who support Vladimir Putin’s policies and embrace “traditional values,” and the “liberal” opposition, which supports Western values, doesn’t like the growing role of the church and occasionally protests. This binary leaves little room for unexpected phenomena such as a funny homoerotic dance clip that is not only created in a provincial state institution but also goes on to inspire over a dozen more clips, made by people across the country, in solidarity.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/homoerotic-videos-russia.html?referer=
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/homoerotic-videos-russia.html?referer=
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