May 09, 2019

Victory Over the Past


Victory Over the Past
War Veterans at a May Day celebration Pavel Losevsky | Dreamstime.com

May they all rest in peace. 

1. “On the sixth of May we announce a subbotnik [Saturday community service day] to collect human remains on the river bank,” read a sign in a village of 400 in Perm region. The area along the river was a mass grave – or, in the kinder Russian phrasing, a brothers’ grave – for victims of the Civil War (1918-1922). Erosion has caused many of the bones to become unearthed. Every spring for the past ten years residents have volunteered to gather them for reburial. 

2. Speaking of dead soldiers, ten Great Fatherland War heroes will forever rest not only in peace, but with honor. The graves of air force officers, including the female division nicknamed the “Night Witches,” were declared objects of cultural heritage of regional significance. The Night Witches played a key role in battles to free Sevastopol, Minsk and Warsaw, just to name a few. One of the other memorialized graves belongs to Vitaliy Popkov, whose life is depicted in the Soviet movie Only Old Men Are Going to Battle. You can pay your respects to all of them at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.  

Night Witches
“Night Witches” pilot Nadezhda Popova buried alongside her husband, general Simyon Kharlamov, who was also a war hero. / Website of the mayor and government of Moscow

3. A Russian psychologist proposed that a new term, “the carry-on bag syndrome,” can help victims understand and move past the tragedy of the airplane that caught on fire at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport this week. Many Russian outlets blamed passengers that grabbed bags on their way out of the plane for slowing down the evacuation, e.g. Komsomolskaya Pravda’s Facebook post: “Are things more valuable than people?” Emergency psychology specialist Olga Makarova explained that, when under extreme stress, people automatically act in accordance with their habits. She also said the media’s reaction has been akin to blaming the survivors of a tragedy. 

In odder news

Boy rides tank
Even severe illness didn’t tank this boy’s dreams. / Press Service of the Central Army Region 
  • A thirteen year old boy suffering from spinal muscular atrophy fulfilled his dream of riding on a tank at the rehearsal of the May 9 Parade in Yekaterinburg. 
  • While we are still shaken by the fire at the Sheremetyevo Airport, here’s a feel-good story about the fire-that-wasn’t. A fourth grader out fishing with his grandpa caught sight of some burning grass and immediately hopped on his bike to ride five kilometers to warn the local fire department, which got there in time to prevent a forest fire. 
  • It will soon become legal to hunt with a bow and arrow in Russia. May the odds be ever in their favor

Quote of the Week

“Can they really do that? State honors are placed on that ribbon, it is a symbol of victory, and they put it on vodka and pasta.” 

– A 97-year-old Great Fatherland War veteran who does not approve of the Ribbon of St. George being placed on food products. 


Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.
 

You Might Also Like

Why Invading Russia was Hitler's Downfall
  • June 22, 2020

Why Invading Russia was Hitler's Downfall

June 22, 2020, marks the 79th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia that changed the course of WWII and, perhaps, history itself.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955