Tag: history

Book: Nikolai Voronovich “The Russo-Japanese War: Memoirs”

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The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 was a huge failure for Russia, practically a disgrace. It also exposed a host of internal problems, helped fuel the 1905 Revolution, and set in motion events that, twelve years later — after the failures of World War I — led to the collapse of the entire Russian Empire.

But I hadn’t really come across many books about that war, and then I suddenly spotted the memoirs of one of its participants. Nikolai Voronovich began his military career in the Page Corps, where he studied quite well, but at some point he ran off in search of glory and adventure to the Russo-Japanese War as a volunteer. He didn’t get much adventure, especially since he only reached the war closer to the end, when the grim outcome was already a foregone conclusion. Still, even in that period he managed to earn a St. George Cross; after returning, he was reinstated in the Page Corps (though only after nearly a month in the guardhouse for his escape), graduated with honors, and would have continued climbing the military ladder, but… World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War on the side of the “Greens,” and then emigration.

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Book: “Is It True?”

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This book first caught my attention with its cover—styled like a Soviet newspaper—and then with its blurb, which promised an analysis of a whole bunch of dubious “facts” in modern social and classical media, carried out by “Russia’s most famous team of fact-checkers.”

A lot of people really are used to believing everything they read or hear from supposedly competent sources. But we know that in politics, there’s never the whole truth—even if nobody is lying on purpose. You can still tell only part of the truth and emphasize the facts you need. And if propaganda doesn’t even have the goal of not lying, then pretty much any method “goes.”

That’s why even when you’re just reading something online, it’s always better to at least double-check that the alleged fact is real. Otherwise, you’ll sometimes read some nasty thing and, in righteous anger, come down on someone—or start spreading the news yourself. And then it suddenly turns out it was a fake, and you helped it spread. Awkward, if your conscience isn’t just an empty word.

So reading about fakes—and about things that only seem like fakes—along with a solid breakdown by fact-checkers (which is basically a new profession: checking whether a news story is lying) sounded like an insanely interesting idea.

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Mosab Hassan Yousef “Son of Hamas”

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Hamas hasn’t left the news cycle—both in a negative light and, from pro-Palestinian quarters, in a positive one. Yet back in 2010 a book came out about the organization that shows it from the inside—and hardly in a laudatory vein.

It’s called Son of Hamas, and with good reason: it was written by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the seven founders of this Palestinian group. The eldest child in his family, Mosab was raised fully in line with Hamas policy. At 18 he was arrested by Israeli law enforcement for attacks on Israeli soldiers. About a year later he was released and for a long time became his father’s trusted aide.

Only no one knew that from that moment he spent nearly ten years working for Shabak (Shin Bet), Israel’s security service. During that time he managed to prevent numerous terrorist attacks and save many lives on both sides. He helped in the arrest of high-ranking Hamas operatives, and in 2007 he left the Middle East; three years later he was granted political asylum in the United States—something that required Israeli services to officially reveal his identity.

Mosab renounced Islam and in 2005 was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv. Since then he has been an outspoken opponent not only of Hamas but of Islam as a whole.

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David Gay “The Tenth Circle: Life, Struggle, and the Destruction of the Minsk Ghetto”

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Right now, when the whole world has turned viciously on Israel, when denying the Holocaust is fashionable and being an antisemite has suddenly become not shameful again, even politically correct, it is a hundred times more important to remind ourselves what real genocide is. At least to oneself, because those unwilling to hear won’t hear anyway.

Books about the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” have always held a special place on my list. Because, as I’ve said many times, for me this is not an empty phrase and not a “Zionist fabrication.” And then, unexpectedly for me, the BAbook publishing house began selling a book I had never heard of before, even though it was first printed back in the USSR. Now, its author, David Guy, has decided to reissue it, in part in response to the October 7 massacre in Israel.

And I’m grateful the book caught my eye, because people know very little about the history of the Minsk Ghetto. The one that’s usually on everyone’s lips is the Warsaw Ghetto, vast, on whose ruins—among other places—the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 fought, only to be crushed by the Nazis when Soviet troops were already not far off. The ghetto itself has been shown more than once in cinema, and Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning The Pianist is almost entirely devoted to the story of one Jew in that ghetto.

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Solomon Plyar’s Letkajenkka

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Not long ago, my wife and I watched another episode of Leonid Parfyonov’s brilliant show Namedni—this time dedicated to one of the years from the 1960s. One of the topics covered was the dance “Letkajenkka,” which gained massive popularity in the USSR during that era. Interestingly enough, as a dance it was incredibly simple—so simple, in fact, that it felt more suited for kindergarteners than adults, at least in my view.

The melody was originally created in Finland and very quickly evolved into a dance. From there, it swept across the globe, even slipping past the Iron Curtain. Variations with locally adapted lyrics were performed in 92 countries. In the USSR, the dance likely spread so freely because it was completely innocent in nature—simple, cheerful, and definitely lacking any hint of bourgeois undertone. (Though, to be fair, neither rock’n’roll nor the twist had such undertones either—but that didn’t make them welcome in Soviet leadership’s eyes.)

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Book: Boris Akunin “My Calendar”

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At one time, I really enjoyed Boris Akunin’s collections of short essays on various fascinating facts—“The Life of Remarkable People and Animals“ and “The Un-Chekhovian Intelligentsia.” Both were “compiled” from different short posts the author had originally published on his LiveJournal. In a similar fashion, he occasionally shared notes about specific days of the year—highlighting interesting events that had happened on that particular date.

Of course, almost any day you pick from the calendar has seen at least something noteworthy happen somewhere in the world throughout human history. So, in the end, it would be possible to gather an entire calendar of such notes. And that’s exactly what Boris Akunin did when he released his book “My Calendar.”

However, he set a rule for himself: for almost every day, he tries to choose just one event—the one he finds most interesting—and tells its story, whenever possible, backing it up with photos or illustrations. He then wraps up almost every “day” with an optimistic message. He does this so that the book can be used like a tear-off calendar—you wake up, read about the day in the morning, get some encouraging words, and ideally, the day should go well for you.

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Book: Ihar Sluchak “10 Centuries of Statehood and Discrimination of the Belarusian Language”

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Ihar Sluchak is a Belarusian lawyer and an active advocate for the Belarusian language. For many years, he has dedicated himself to preventing the language from disappearing and being undeservedly discriminated against in favor of Russian in the Republic of Belarus. Despite the seemingly hopeless nature of such a mission in the current circumstances, Ihar has managed to defend the rights of his native language. For this, he is strongly disliked by many Belarusian officials and propagandists, it’s worth noting.

Holding a Master of Laws, Ihar Sluchak devoted his dissertation precisely to the history of the Belarusian language. Later, he reworked it slightly and published it as this book: “10 стагоддзяў дзяржаўнасцi i дыскрымiнацыi беларускай мовы” (in English, “10 Centuries of Statehood and Discrimination Against the Belarusian Language”).

The uniqueness of the Belarusian language lies in the fact that it is formally the first state language of the Republic of Belarus. For a time after the collapse of the USSR, it was the only state language; later, Russian was added. However, the actual situation with the language is dire. It has been systematically suppressed for many centuries, and the Soviet era (along with most of the post-Soviet years) is not an exception but rather a direct example of this trend. The majority of the country’s population speaks a form of “trasianka”—a mixture of Belarusian and Russian, often with elements of Ukrainian and Polish, depending on the region’s proximity to a particular border. In Minsk, you are far more likely to hear Russian, while in other cities, even the Russian spoken often includes Belarusian words or carries the accent and nuances of Belarusian pronunciation.

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Book: Boris Akunin “The Destruction and Resurrection of the Empire”

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Originally, when planning his series on the history of the Russian state, Boris Akunin intended to stop at 1917, with the fall of the Romanov dynasty, as he believed that beyond this point, it was no longer the history of the Russian state but of an entirely different country.

However, some time after completing the series, he unexpectedly announced the release of the 10th volume covering the Lenin-Stalin era. Moreover, this volume became the first that was not published in Russia, as when the book was almost ready for print, Boris Akunin was declared a terrorist in Russia, closing off access to publishing in his homeland. So the book was printed abroad.

While the revolution and the last tsar always felt distant to me, despite having lived during the Soviet Union, the events of the Soviet state itself were always closer. I studied this history in school and believed that I lived in the best country in the world. Therefore, I was very eager to see how Boris Akunin would recount this period.

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Book: Igor Mozheiko “West Wind — Fair Weather”

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We often reproach Americans for supposedly knowing nothing about World War II, for thinking they “won it,” when without the Soviet Union Hitler wouldn’t have been defeated. Of course, that’s all true. But it’s just as true that we ourselves know very little about their side of the war.

What can most of us name off the top of our heads? The Normandy landings (which have been chewed over from every angle in movies and in dozens of games)… and then the meeting on the Elbe. Oh right — we might have heard something about Pearl Harbor, and that they fought the Japanese a little bit over there, and that the evil Americans dropped two nuclear bombs, and that was that.

As executive producers, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg decided to tell more of the war through American eyes. First, in 2001, they released Band of Brothers about combat in Europe. And nine years later, in 2010, they followed with The Pacific about a part of the war we barely know at all — because the Soviet Union didn’t take part in it, and so it simply wasn’t something people talked about. (And I very much recommend both series if you haven’t seen them.)

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Book: “White-Red-White. Flag. Nation. Identity”

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The publication in 2024 of a book about the white-red-white flag — or, as it is often called, the BChB (from the Belarusian bel-chyrvona-bely) — is rather symbolic. Once again, numerous myths and layers of dirt are being thrown at it, just as has happened periodically throughout its existence.

As an introduction, it’s worth noting that the white-red-white flag was the official flag of the Republic of Belarus from 1991 to 1995, as was the coat of arms “Pahonia,” rendered in the same colors (since, according to the approved designs, the red of the flag was meant to match the red of the coat of arms). Moreover, to this day these symbols are not formally banned in Belarus. However, in present-day Belarus one can receive a very real prison sentence for displaying them — and even for something as accidental as a white-and-red color combination, whether it’s socks or an LG TV box left on a balcony.

The book “Bel-Chyrvona-Bely” (published in Belarusian) is arguably the first full-fledged scholarly study of the origins of both the flag and the coat of arms, as well as of the color combination itself, released in the form of a substantial volume. I wouldn’t call it popular science — it is genuinely a thoroughly researched work by an entire collective of authors (who, unfortunately or perhaps fortunately for themselves, remain unnamed in the book). It is rich with illustrations, and all conclusions are supported by an extensive array of references, as one would expect from serious academic research.

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