POPULARITY
6 episodes with Tsarist Russia
6 episodes with Tsarist Russia
6 episodes with Tsarist Russia
5 episodes with Tsarist Russia
3 episodes with Tsarist Russia
3 episodes with Tsarist Russia
3 episodes with Tsarist Russia
2 episodes with Tsarist Russia
2 episodes with Tsarist Russia
Russian history is pretty wild. Tsarist Russia was in a league by itself. There were two main dynasties, The Rurikids and The Romanovs. Today we'll be discussing the "patriarch" of the Romanov Dynasty and the guy who brought Russia into the modern age. Peter Alekseyevich Romanov had decided he was going to drag Russia into the future whether they wanted to or not. Now Peter wasn't the kinda of dude to send out envoys or ambassadors to do his business, he wanted to stretch his legs around Europe personally. Learning the crafts of ship building from the Dutch to build Russia's first navy. Seeing how artillery worked Prussia to development a modern army. Studying the systems of governance used by other European powers all while his "Grand Embassy" drank and partied their way across the continent. His accomplishments can still be felt today however, there's always another side to the story, and Peter's gets pretty dark. Join us as we discuss the life and times of Peter the Great. Support the show
Margaretta Eagar is a little-known figure in Irish history. In the early 20th century, she worked as a governess to the last Romanov Tsars of Russia. Eagar was just one of thousands of Irish people who emigrated to Imperial Russia. In this episode, historian Angela Byrne joins me to discuss why these Irish emigrants went east. Our fascinating conversation takes you from 17th-century political exiles to 19th-century tourists and, of course, the gripping story of Margaretta Eagar.Our discussion is based around Angela's book Anarchy & Authority: Irish Encounters with Romanov Russia. You can get your copyhttps://www.lilliputpress.ie/products/anarchy-and-authority?srsltid=AfmBOoqFNCTW-O6aWqZx2WSnQ_L9j9ZCKLSfk55XAz_BqJWs1_TKzK2yAngela's website: www.historianka.comFollow Angela on Instagram @angela_historiankaSupport the Irish History Podcast and get an ad-free version of the show at https://patreon.com/irishpodcast Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/irishhistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the forces that lead to the rise of the Soviet Union before introducing the lesson. In “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” professors of history, politics, and economics look at Marx’s life and writings, the misery and brutality in the Soviet Union, the atrocities of communist China, and the proliferation of Cultural Marxism in America. They explore how many ideas animating American politics today are rooted in Marxism, and yet how they differ from Marx’s thought. By taking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Frankfurt School seriously, we can see the injustice and evil inherent in all strands of Marxism. We also better understand the critiques of communism made by Mises, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn. We are, therefore, better equipped to defeat it. Tsarist Russia was prospering and growing, but Nicholas II was weak-willed. He allowed himself to be badgered into entering World War I and into abdicating his reign after the February Revolution. The weak provisional government was easily overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution despite the Bolsheviks’ lack of popular support. Lenin was a thorough Marxist who introduced extreme and brutal reforms. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the forces that lead to the rise of the Soviet Union before introducing the lesson. In “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” professors of history, politics, and economics look at Marx’s life and writings, the misery and brutality in the Soviet Union, the atrocities of communist China, and the proliferation of Cultural Marxism in America. They explore how many ideas animating American politics today are rooted in Marxism, and yet how they differ from Marx’s thought. By taking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Frankfurt School seriously, we can see the injustice and evil inherent in all strands of Marxism. We also better understand the critiques of communism made by Mises, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn. We are, therefore, better equipped to defeat it. Tsarist Russia was prospering and growing, but Nicholas II was weak-willed. He allowed himself to be badgered into entering World War I and into abdicating his reign after the February Revolution. The weak provisional government was easily overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution despite the Bolsheviks’ lack of popular support. Lenin was a thorough Marxist who introduced extreme and brutal reforms. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Kumul Rebellion. In 1931, tensions in Kumul escalated after a Muslim girl spurned Han tax collector Chang Mu, leading to his violent death at a family dinner. Enraged, Uyghurs retaliated against Chinese officials, igniting a rebellion. Chaos ensued as rebels targeted Han settlers, ultimately capturing Kumul with little resistance. Amidst the unrest, Yulbars Khan sought support from military leader Ma Chongying, who planned to mobilize his forces to help the Uyghurs. What began as a local incident spiraled into an all-out revolt against oppressive rule. In 1931, young warlord Ma Chongying sought to establish a Muslim empire in Central Asia, leading a small force of Tungan cavalry. As his army attempted to besiege Kumul Old City, they faced fierce resistance from Chinese troops. Despite several assaults, the lack of heavy artillery hampered Ma's progress. Eventually, Ma faced defeat due to a serious injury. After his recuperation, his forces joined with Uyghur insurgents, sparking a guerrilla war against oppressive provincial troops, leading to increasing unrest and rebellion. #133 Kumul Rebellion part 2: Uprisings in southern Xinjiang Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So in the last episode we spoke about the beginning of the Kumul Rebellion. Now the Kumul Rebellion is actually a series of other rebellions all interlaced into this larger blanket known as the Xinjiang Wars. To be blunt, Xinjiang was the wild west from the 1930s until basically the formation of the PRC. We briefly went over the various groups that inhabit northwestern China, they all had their own interests. I want to start off by looking at the situation of southern Xinjiang. Back in June of 1924, Ma Fuxing, the T'ai of Kashgar was executed. His executioner was Ma Shaowu who had just received the post of Taoyin over the oasis city of Khotan. There was of course always tension, but southern Xinjiang was relatively peaceful in the 1920s. Then Governor Yang Zengxin was assassinated in July of 1928. During the last years of his rule, southern Xinjiang often referred to as Kashgaria, remained entrenched in the British sphere of influence after the collapse of Tsarist Russia and the subsequent closure of the Imperial Russian consulate-General at Kashgar. Going further back in time, in August of 1918, Sir Geoerge Macartney, the long standing British Consul General to Kashar had retired. His successor was Colonel P. T Etherton, a hardcore anti-communist who actively was cooperating with anti-Soviet Basmachi guerillas in the western portion of Turkestan. One of his missions was to curb Soviet influence in southern Xinjiang. Yang Zengxin understood the British policy towards Xinjiang was to push the Soviets out via enabling the survival of his independent Han led regime. Thus Yang Zengxin was very friendly to the British and allowed them to exercise considerable political influence in Tien Shan. Despite this Soviet influence spread in Ili and Zungharia. This prompted Yang Zengxin to secretly cooperate with the British in Kashgar to counter the looming red growth north of his province. Now by 1924, through a combination of military necessities and the re-emergence of Soviet Russia as Xinjiang's largest trading partner, this forced Yang Zengxin to push away the British. Following the Sino-Soviet agreement of 1924 which effectively saw the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Beijing, the Soviet government at Omsk dispatched an envoy to Xinjiang to discuss mutual consular representation. Both sides reached an agreement on October 6th, providing for an exchange of consulate-generals between Tashkent and Urumqi and for Soviet consulates in Chuguchak, Kulja, Shara Sume and Kashgar. The new Soviet presence in Kashgar was quite upsetting for the British. It also allowed the Soviets direct access to the densely populated oases of Tarim Basin, the source of nearly all Xinjiang's revenue. Shortly after the Soviet Consulate in Kashgar officially opened on October 10, 1925, a local power struggle emerged involving Max Doumpiss, the Soviet Consul, of Latvian origin, Major Gillan, the British Consul-General at that time, and the Taoyin of Kashgar. Sino-Soviet relations in southern Xinjiang took a troubled turn in November 1925 when large quantities of silver bullion were discovered hidden in thirty-four boxes labeled as Soviet 'diplomatic bags,' intended for the Kashgar consulate. The Kashgar Taoyin, who was reportedly offended by the 'subtle spread of Soviet propaganda' in the southern oases, retaliated by expelling several suspected Russian agents. In March 1926, significant riots erupted in Kashgar, which the Chinese authorities attributed to an interpreter at the Soviet Consulate named Akbar 'Ali. The unrest was quelled by a force of 400 local Tungan troops, and Akbar 'Ali was imprisoned; the Taoyin ignored subsequent Soviet demands for his release. The rapid increase in the number of European consular staff from around fifteen in 1925 to between thirty and forty by 1927 also alarmed Chinese officials. All these developments were likely reported to Governor Yang Tseng-hsin in Urumchi, who was likely dealing with similar situations at the newly established Soviet Consulates in Kulja, Chuguchak, and Shara Sume. It appears that, with discreet British support, Yang decided to take actions to curb the expansion of Soviet influence in Kashgar. The Kashgar Taoyin then took up a strong anti-soviet stance. Alongside this Yang Zengxin's nephew, the officer in command of Chinese troops along the Kashgar northern frontier, suddenly became a frequent visitor to the British consulate General at Chini Bagh. After the death of the old Taoyin in 1927, Ma Shaowu came over from Khotan to replace him and with this came heightened anti-soviet policies in southern Xinjiang. Ma Shaowu first began by imprisoning 60 alleged local communists and tightened Chinese control over Kashgars northern frontier. The freedom of the Soviet Consul team to travel within southern Xinjiang was tightened to the extreme and all Kashgar citizens suspected of pro-soviet sympathies became targets for confiscation of their property or deportation to other oases. Yang Zengxin backed Ma Shaowu's attempts to limit Soviet influence in Tarim Basin by imposing severe tax on Muslims leaving southern Xinjiang to go on Hajj via the USSR. Similarly, new legislative was unleashed requiring merchants going into the USSR to deposit large sums of money to the Chinese authorities in Kashgar who would forfeit if the depositor failed to return to Xinjiang within 60 days. These policies did not completely insulate southern Xinjiang from Soviet influence; however, they did ensure that at the time of Yang Zengxin's assassination in 1928, the southern region of the province—especially Ma Shao-wu's domain around Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan—maintained a significant degree of independence from the Soviet Union. This stood in stark contrast to areas like the Ili Valley, Chuguchak, and Shara Sume, where Soviet influence became dominant shortly after 1925, and even to the provincial capital of Urumqi, where, by the spring of 1928, the Soviet Consul-General had considerable sway. It was likely due to Ma Shaowu's anti-Soviet position and the persistent dominance of British influence in southern Xinjiang during the final years of Yang Zengxin's administration that Kashgar emerged as a hub of conservative Muslim opposition to Chinese governance in the 1930s. Yang Zengxins intentional efforts to sever southern Xinjiang from Soviet influence resulted in the Uighurs and, to a lesser extent, the Kirghiz of the Tarim Basin being less influenced by the 'progressive' nationalist propaganda from Soviet-controlled Western Turkestan compared to the Turkic-speaking Muslims of the Ili Valley and Zungharia. This is not to imply that the socialist nationalism promoted by the Jadidists after 1917 was entirely ineffective south of the Tien Shan; however, Kashgar, situated outside the Soviet zone in northwestern Sinkiang, became a natural refuge for right-wing Turkic nationalists and Islamic traditionalists who opposed Chinese authority yet were even more fiercely against the encroachment of 'atheistic communism' and its Soviet supporters in Central Asia. Many of these right-wing Turkic-speaking nationalists were former Basmachi guerrillas, primarily of Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kirghiz descent, but also included several Ottoman Turks and, according to Caroe, "old men who had fought against the Chinese at Kashgar." Among the most notable Basmachi leaders who sought refuge in Kashgar was Janib Beg, a Kirghiz who would play a significant role in the politics of southern xinjiang during the early 1930s. Following Yang Zengxin's assassination in July 1928, Soviet influence in southern Xinjiang began to grow rapidly; nevertheless, at the onset of the Kumul Rebellion in 1931, reports of forced collectivization and the suppression of nomadic lifestyles in Western Turkestan led many Turkic Muslims in southern Xinjiang to be wary of Soviet intentions. If, during the late 1920s and early 1930's, the Turkic Muslims of southern Xinjiang were divided in their approach towards the Soviets and the newly formed Turkic-Tajik SSR's in western Turkestan, they all were united in their attitude towards their Tungan brethren to the east. Unlike the Turkic Muslim rebels of Kumul, the Uyghurs and Kirghiz of southern Xinjiang were far too distant from Gansu to appeal for assistance from the Tungan warlords, such as the 5 Ma Clique. Besides the Han Chinese officials, rule over the oases of Tarim Basin had long been held by Tungans. Ma Fuxing, the Titai of Kashgar had ruthlessly exploited his Turkic Muslim subjects between 1916-1924. He himself was a Hui Muslim from Yunnan, as was Ma Shaowu. The Turkic Muslims of southern Xinjiang therefore had zero illusions of any “muslim brotherhood” with their Tungan brethren. It was Tungan troops who intervened to suppress any demonstration against Chinese rule. The Tungans of Tarim Basin were allies to the Han Chinese administration and thus enemies to the Turkic Muslim peoples. The western rim of Tarim Basin was in a unique political situation during the later half of Yang Zengxins rule as a large part of its Turkic Muslim population looked neither to the progressive Muslim leadership of western Turkestan nor the Tungan warlords of Gansu. Instead they looked at the regimes in Turkey and Afghanistans, both quite conservative. Contacts in these places were sparse ever since the Qing reconquest of Xinjiang. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WW1, contact ceased to exist at all. Emotional links to what once was however lingerd, and the nationalist revolution of Ataturk sprang something of a Turkish renaissance inspiring Turkic peoples from Crimea to Kumul. As for Afghanistan, there existed more concrete religious and political contacts with southern Xinjiang. In 1919, Amir Aman Allah, the last Muhammadzay ruler of Afghanistan had taken the throne after the death of his father. He became an impetuous ruler who brought forth his own downfall through a series of radical reforms that caused a revolution by 1928. Yet in his first years of rule he had widespread support of Muslim peoples in central asia, especially after he began the Third Afghan war against Britain, combined with a Jihad for Afghan independence. Because of this the British were forced to recognize Afghanistan's right to independent foreign policy. During this period, it is rumored Amir Aman Allah had toyed with the idea of forming an Islamic Confederacy which would have included Afghanistan, Bukhara, Khiva and Khokand. He would have also been interested in influence over Xinjiang where numerous Afghan merchants resided under British protection. Following Britains recognition of Afghanistan's right to independent foreign policy, with the 1919 treaty of Peshawar, British diplomatic protection for Afghan citizens in Xinjiang was lifted. Amir Aman Allah then established independent diplomatic links between Kabul and Urumqi, sending a delegation in 1922 led by Muhammad Sharif Khan. The Chinese officials regarded the Afghan mission as a trade delegation, but Muhammad Sharif Khan carried with him printed visiting cards styling himself as Afghanistan's Consul-General in Xinjiang. Alongside this he brought draft agreements demanding full extraterritorial rights and other privileges for Afghan subjects in Xinjiang and the right to import opium freely into the province. It is to no surprise Yang Zengxin refused to recognize the mission causing a dispute that would drag on for years. It became a long standing issue for th Turkic speaking Muslims of southern Xinjiang. There were many who looked to Afghanistan to help them against Chinese oppression. Now getting back to our timeline, with the initial outbreak of the Kumul Rebellion and the Tungan invasion, Jin Shujen had made every effort to prevent news of these events occurring mostly in the northeast from getting into the south. But of course one cannot stop the flow of information completely. Rumors and reports of the rebellious activities northeast flooded into the oases of Tarim Basin, invigorating anti-Chinese zeal, from peoples already suffering from increased taxation and inflation caused by unbacked paper currency paying for Jin's war efforts. Jin was well aware of the discontent south in his province, but he was emboldened by his victory of Ma Chongying as well as the recent delivery of 4000 rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition from British held India. Thus he determined to maintain his current stance. It would prove to be a very fateful decision. The Kumul Rebellion was not crushed by any means. In fact the brutality following the relief of Kumul Old City caused outrage amongst the Turkic speaking peoples and sent refugees westwards towards Turfan. By May of 1932, Ma Chongying had dispatched a young Tungan Lt, Ma Shihming to take command over his Tungan forces remaining in Xinjiang. Ma Shihming quickly established his HQ in Turfan and began to cooperate with the Turkic speaking Muslim insurgents who owed their allegiance to Yulbars Khan and Khoja Niyas Haiji. It's also believed he made contact with Ma Fuming, a Tungan officer in command of the Xinjiang provincial forces at Turfan. By mere coincidence, in May of 1932, Jin had also elected to seek revenge against Tsetsen Puntsag Gegeen, the Torgut Mongol regent inhabiting Tien Shan. That same guy he had asked for military aid from who simply took his army away. Tsetsen Puntsag Gegeen was invited to come back to Urumqi where he was to attend an investigation into the assassination plot laid against him. On May 21st, shortly after his arrival, he alongside two Torgut officers and the young Torgut Prince were all invited to an official banquet at Jin Shujens yamen. Now you might be thinking, who in their right mind would fall for that shit? Especially given the Yang Zengxin banquet story. Well according to R.P Watts, the British Vice Consul General at Kashgar who happened to be in Urumqi at the time. “While drinking the usual preliminary cup of tea the regent and the two military officers were led out into a courtyard and executed. According to Chinese custom in such matters proper observance was accorded to the high rank of regent even at the moment of execution. A red carpet was spread on the ground on which he was invited to seat himself. He was then killed by being shot through the head from behind by one of the governor's special executioners. His two companions being men of inferior rank were not given the privilege of a red carpet to sit on whilst being executed.” The young Torgut prince was allowed to return to Kara Shahr, man that must have been an awkward desert. So Jin hoped the harsh action would terrify the young prince into submission. As you may have guessed, Jin actions were quite toxic for the Torgut Mongols. Might I add the Torgut Mongols were probably the only non Chinese group in Xinjiang that may have sided with Jin against the Turkic peoples? So to tally up things a bit here. Jin pissed off the Uyghurs and Tungans of Turfan, the Kirghiz of Tian Shan and now the Torguts. In early 1932, Turkic Muslim opposition to forced collectivization and suppression of nomadism by Stalin in the Kazakh and Kirghiz regions of Soviet Central Asia, saw many spill over into Xinjiang. By March of 1932, large numbers of Kirghiz fled the border and were pursued by Soviet forces. A series of skirmishes and raids broke out in the border region. The Soviet Kirghiz naturally received aid from the Xinjiang Kirghiz and in June a Chinese official was killed by Kirghiz insurgents in Tien Shan. The Chinese were outraged, prompting Ma Shaowu to unleash 300 troops from Kashgar New City and 200 troops from Kashgar Old City to defend the frontier area. These units were soon joined by another 100 troops from Opal and 200 from Uch Turfan all under the leadership of Brigadier Yang, the nephew to the late Yang Zengxin. In July Yang's men began joint operations with the Soviets against the Kirghiz insurgents who were led by Id Mirab. The Chinese forces were said to quote “The Chinese forces had been suffering badly from want of opium', and reportedly behaved very badly towards Kirghiz, a number of whom were driven to take refuge in Russian territory”. To try a force the submission of the Kirghiz, Yang's forces took 70 hostages from Kirghiz families and brought them to imprisoned them the oases of Khotan, Keriya and Charchan. Thus Jin and Ma Shaowu had succeeded within a few months of Ma Chongyings withdrawal back into Gansu in both alienating the Turkic speaking and Mongol nomads of Tien Shan. The Sino-Soviet cooperation against the Kirghiz had also not gone unnoticed by other Muslim groups. Meanwhile the Kumul Rebellion had spread westwards. By Autumn of 1932, months after the arrival of Ma Shihming to Turfan, Ma Fuming joined the rebels cause. Wu Aichen wrote it was his belief that Ma Fuming's decision was based on the continuing flow of Muslim refugees from Kumul to Turfan combined with reports of mass executions being carried out by Xing Fayu. But like I had mentioned, there is also strong evidence Ma Shihming probably negotiated an alliance with Ma Fuming. Wu Aichen wrote Ma Fumings first rebellious action was to send a telegram to Jin requesting he dispatch reinforcements while he also sent a letter to Xing Fayu over in Kumul to come quickly to Turfan. The reinforcements arrived at the oasis without suspecting a thing and were “shot down to the last man” by Ma Fumings forces as they passed the city gates. A few days later another detachment of 100 men led by Xing Fayu reached Turfan only to suffer the same fate. Xing Fayu was taken captive and “tortured to death in public with every refinement of cruelty and vileness of method”. Following Ma Fumings official defection, the Turfan Depression quickly emerged as the main center of Muslim rebellion in northeastern Xinjiang. Kumul which had been laid to ruin by Jin was abandoned to the Turkic Muslim insurgents and a handful of Tungan troops. A large portion of Tungan forces consisting of those following Ma Fuming and Ma Sushiming massed at Turfan preparing to march upon Urumqi, lying 100 miles northwest. The storm brewing in Turfan was followed up by a series of uncoordinated uprisings amongst the Turkic speaking Muslims of southern Xinjiang. The Uyghurs of Tarim Basin and Kirghiz of Tien Shan realized Jin's grip over the province was weakening and the presence of Tungan forces in Turfan effectively cut off the oases of the south from Urumqi and Jin's White Russian troops, whom otherwise may have scared them into submission. The White Russians and other provincial forces were hard pressed by Ma Fuming and Ma Shihming. Reports also spread that Ma Chongying would soon re-enter the fray in person and that Chang Peiyuan, the Military commander over at Ili had fallen out with Jin. Thus the Turkic speaking Muslims of southern Xinjiang knew the time was ripe to rebel against Chinese rule. In the winter uprising began at Pichan, just east of Turfan and at Kara Shahr about 175 miles southwest. Lack of Torgut support at Kara Shahr following the murder of Tsetsen Puntsag Gegeen basically sealed the fate of the Chinese forces within the city. The new Tungan leader, Ma Chanzeng emerged the commander of rebel forces in the region. Disregarding the increasingly intense conflict between Ma Shih-ming and the provincial forces along the Turfan-Urumqi road, Ma Chan-ts'ang moved westward, seizing Bugur in early February and progressing to Kucha. There, he formed a strategic alliance with Temiir, the local Uyghur leader, who was noted by Wu Aichen as "a capable individual who had managed the mule wagon service." After occupying Kucha without any resistance, the combined forces of Ma Chanzeng and Temiir continued their advance toward Aksu, capturing the small town of Bai along the way. Ma Shaowu was the Taoyin of Kashgar and second most powerful official in the provincial administration after Jin, thus found himself cut off from Urumqi by two separate armies of Muslim rebels each composed of Tungan and Turkic factions. One of these armies held a small but militarily competent Tungan force led by Ma Chanzeng with a large contingent of poorly armed Uyghur peasants owing their allegiance to Temur. This force advanced southwest towards Aksu, while the other army consisting of a loose coalition of competent Tungan troops under Ma Shihming and Ma Fuming with Turkic speaking Muslim peasants owing allegiance to Khoja Niyas Haiji and Yulbars Khan pressed their attack directly upon Urumqi. In February of 1933 to add further confusion in the south, the rebellion against the Chinese spread southwards across the Tarim Basin to its southern rim. Uprising against the Chinese administration broke out simultaneously amongst the gold miners of the southern oases who had long resented the provincial governments fixed rate for the purchase of gold in Xinjiang alongside brutal working conditions. The spiraling inflation from Jin's worthless currency which was used to pay for the gold only made things worse. By spring their patience had run out, the Uyghurs led by Ismail Khan Khoja seized control of Kara Kash killing a large number of Han Chinese. Meanwhile the Uyghurs at Keriya seized control over the Surghak mines and threatened to take control over the whole oasis. Prominent rebel demands included a fair price for gold and silver and prohibition of the purchase of precious metals with paper currency. More urgent demands were lowering taxes, ending government tyranny, introducing Shari a law and stationing Muslim troops in every city. Now these demands were very real, they were willing to stand down if they were met. One anonymous writer of the demand notices placed at Karakash was as follows “A friend for the sake of friendship will make known a friend's defects and save him from the consequences of his defects. You, who are supposed to rule, cannot even realize this, but try to seek out the supporter of Islam to kill him. Foolish infidels like you are not fit to rule ... How can an infidel, who cannot distinguish between a friend and a foe, be fit to rule? You infidels think that because you have rifles, guns ... and money, you can depend on them; but we depend upon God in whose hands are our lives. You infidels think that you will take our lives. If you do not send a reply to this notice we are ready. If we die we are martyrs. If we survive we are conquerors. We are living but long for death”. Ma Shaowu elected to first move against the Muslim insurgents threatening Aksu, most likely reasoning that if Ma Chanzeng and Temur were defeated the weaker rebel forces at KaraKash and Surghak would just crumble. There also was the fact Ma Shihmings men at Turfan had severed the telegraph line between Urumqi and Kashgar, and that line had been re-routed via Aksu, but if Aksu fell to the rebels, communications with the capital would only be possible via the USSR. At this point its estimated Brigadier Yang had a mixed army of 280 cavalry and 150 infantry as he set out for Aksu on February 6th. Ma Shaowu's position was not good. On February 9th, Jin Shujen's younger brother, Jin Shuqi the commander in chief at Kashgar New City suddenly died of illness. He was replaced with a Chinese officer called Liu who took command of his three detachments of cavalry, about 480 men and a single detachment of artillery, about 160 men. Ma Shaowu held control over two regiments of cavalry, 700 men and 3 detachments of infantry, around 300 men all stationed at Kashgar Old City. In mid february reports reached Kashgar that Brigadier Yang was heavily outnumbered by the rebels under Ma Chanzeng and Temur and had fallen back from Aksu to a defensive line at Maral Bashi. On the 23rd celebrations were held at Kashgar to mark Jin handing Ma Shadowu the new title of Special Commissioner for the Suppression of Bandits. During the celebration, salutes were fired at the yamen and KMT flags were flown from buildings throughout the city. Afterwards all of Liu's forces were sent to Maral Bashi to bolster Yang. Now in a bid to suppress the uprisings at Surghak and KaraKash before a full scale uprising could develop on the southern road, 200 men led by Colonel Li were dispatched to Khotan, while another force under Colonel Chin was dispatched to Yarkland. Because of these movements of troops to Khotan and Maral Bashi, there was a serious depletion of defenders for Kashgar. Thus Ma Shaowu ordered a raising of Kirghiz levies and recalled some Chinese troops from the frontier districts west of Kashgar. Thus the Chinese garrison at Sarikol pulled out to Kashgar, leaving the region's Tajik population to their own devices. At Kashgar, troops posted on the walls of both cities had strict orders to close all gates at 7pm, with major curfew laws set into place.Despite all of this the provincial troops proved very inept at stemming the rebel advance along both the north and south roads into Kashgar. On the 25th, the rebels entered Aksu Old City, shooting up all its Chinese residents, seized their property, stormed the arsenal and looted the treasury. Later on Ma Changzeng and Temur led an estimated 4700 ill armed Uyghur irregular army to advance on Maral Bashi and Kashgar. In the Keriya, the Chinese officials consented to convert to Islam and to surrender their possessions; however, on March 3, thirty-five Chinese individuals, including top officials, were executed, with their heads displayed in the marketplace. On February 28, the Old City of Khotan fell into the hands of rebels with little resistance, while the New City of Khotan was besieged before capitulating to the insurgents on March 16th. Following the rebel successes in Khotan, it was reported that 266 Han Chinese converted to Islam, and both the treasury and arsenal of the New City—containing "thousands of weapons and nearly a ton of gold"—were seized by the insurgents. Additionally, uprisings led by a Uighur named ‘Abd ai-Qadir took place in Chira, and in Shamba Bazaar, several Han Chinese and two Hindu moneylenders were killed. Further afield from Keriya, the town of Niya succumbed to the rebel forces from Khotan, while even farther east, at the isolated oases of Charchan and Charkhlik, reports indicate that peaceful insurrections occurred after a small Tungan contingent loyal to Ma Shih-ming entered the region via a little-used desert route connecting Kara Shahr and Lop. Meanwhile, to the west of Khotan, Uighur forces under Isma'il Khan Khoja obstructed the main route to Yarkand at the Tokhta Langar caravanserai, repelling all but two delegates sent from Kashgar by Ma Shao-wu, who aimed to negotiate with the rebel leaders in Khotan. No further news was received from the two Begs allowed to continue to Khotan, and with their diplomatic mission's failure, the entire southern route from the eastern outskirts of the Guma oasis to the distant Lop Nor fell out of Chinese control. To fortify their position against potential counterattacks from Kashgar, the rebel leaders in Khotan destroyed roadside wells in the desert east of Guma and began establishing a clearly Islamic governance in the areas they had liberated. By mid March, Ma Shaowu's control over southern Xinjiang was limited to just a wedge of territory around Kashgar, Maral Bashi and Yarkland. Moral was so low, Ma Shaowu asked the British Indian government for military assistance as it seemed apparent no help would come from Urumqi. Ma Shaowu had received 3 telegrams from Jin via the USSR lines; the first confirmed his position as Commander in Chief; the second relayed Jin's brothers death and the third directed Jin Kashgar representatives to remit a large sum of money to his personal bank account in Tientsin. That last signal must have been a banger to read. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The Kumul Rebellion quicked off a storm of different groups' grievances and Jin Shujen did a banger job of pissing off…pretty much every single group. In the southern portions of Xinjiang massive uprisings began and it seemed a tidal wave would hit the entire province.
Come with me if you will, for just a moment, to the small shtetl of Anatevka, in Tsarist Russia, the year is 1905, and we are in the barn of Tevye, a dairyman.In his reality, he is poor. But in his imagination, ah in his imagination, he is a rich man.I thought of that famous musical number when I read this lesson in a recent podcast guest application – “Never forget the independence of your imagination.”A perfect explanation of Tevye. And hopefully, of you and I as well, after we listen to my latest guest…Jeffery Keilholtz, SVP of Marketing, Broadway Licensing Global [https://broadwaylicensing.com/].Tune in to the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketingWin the day – how daily focus leads to campaign successStay nimbleStay cool under pressure“Never forget the independence of your imagination"Execution sets people apartEndurance is essentialDiscussed in this episodeGet Productive With AI [https://meclabsai.com/GetProductive] – January 8th at Noon EST. There is no cost.Enterprise Solutions Marketing: You can make a big career, and still stay human (podcast episode #99) [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/enterprise]Product Management & Marketing: Surround yourself with the right people (podcast episode #38) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/product]Get more episodesSubscribe to the MarketingSherpa email newsletter [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters] to get more insights from your fellow marketers. Sign up for free if you'd like to get more episodes like this one.For more insights, check out...This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages [https://meclabs.com/course/] free digital marketing course. Apply to be a guestIf you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application
SynopsisToday's date in 1906 marks the birthday of Alexander Naumovich Tsfasman, a Ukrainian composer from pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia who would become an important figure in Soviet jazz. Jazz first came to the Soviet Union in 1922, four years after Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution, and at first was welcomed as the music of the oppressed African-American minority, and therefore considered an expression of the worldwide class struggle. Tsfasman encountered jazz while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory and formed his own jazz band in 1926, the first to be heard on Soviet radio. In the decades that followed, Tsfasman made over 140 records, composed music for films, and gave concerts during WWII for Red Army soldiers.But after 1945, jazz fell out of favor in the USSR. During the Cold War, it came to be seen as a prime export of the decadent bourgeois West and performances were limited. “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he'll betray his country” was a widespread propaganda slogan in the Stalinist post-war USSR. Only in the 1960s did attitudes change, and we're happy to report Alexander Tsfasman lived to see it before his death in 1971.This music is from his Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra.Music Played in Today's ProgramAlexander Tsfasman (1906-1971): Snowflakes and Polka (excerpts), from Jazz Suite;Zlata Chochieva, piano; BBC Scottish Symphony; Karl-Heinz Steffens, conductor; Naïve V-8448
It lasted just over 10 minutes, but on Nov. 22, Henry Wolfond became an astronaut. The Canadian business executive is still processing what it means to have fulfilled his lifelong dream, having flown out as a paying tourist aboard a commercial spaceship operated by Blue Origin, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. During this journey—which took Wolfond and five others roughly 106 kilometres into the sky—Wolfond pinned a yellow ribbon for the Israeli hostages onto his space suit, and carried “Bring Them Home Now” dog tags and other Jewish gear with him, (as well as his granddaughter's Taylor Swift bracelets.) While blasting off on the Blue Origin program, Wolfond reflected on his own family's origins—how his ancestors escaped pogroms in Tsarist Russia, and how members of his wife's family perished in the Holocaust. On today's episode of The CJN Daily, Wolfond explains how he returned to terra firma with a reinvigorated mission: to help end modern-day antisemitism in a post-Oct. 7 world. Related links Watch the whole Blue Origin New Shepard NS-28 mission carrying Toronto's Henry (Hank) Wolfond, on YouTube. Read about Wolfond's son Adam, a poet living with autism, in The CJN. Learn how Henry Wolfond's father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, commissioned a new Torah in memory of his lost family, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer) Music: Dov Beck-Levine Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)
Ben Rivers talks about the play he wrote and performs, 'The invaders' fear of memories: A play about the colonisation of Palestine'.The play is based on the diaries of his great-grandfather, Yousef Nachmani, who fled Tsarist Russia in 1907 for Ottoman Palestine. Full of Zionist ideals, he became complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinian people.Ben's father (Yousef's grandson) became a peace activist, and Ben continues his father's path with this play, believing that descendants have a responsibility to bring attention to history and tell the truth. As he points out, this history can help us understand what is currently happening in Palestine, and the ideology and conditions that have allowed the State of Israel to attack Palestine with such impunity. THE INVADERS' FEAR OF MEMORIES: A PLAY ABOUT THE COLONISATION OF PALESTINETo buy tickets for the Melbourne performance, go to: https://www.themcshowroom.com/whatson/the-invaders-fear-of-memoriesDetails:The MC Showroom, Level 1, 50 Clifton Street, Prahran, VICFriday, 15 November 2024, 7:00 pm Saturday, 16 November 2024, 7:00 pm Duration: 75 minutes performance + post-show Q&A. (Doors open 30 minutes before the show).The production is being organised by the Loud Jew Collective with support and endorsement from the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Averroes Centre of Arab Culture. Additional note from Ben: I would also like to mention that in each location I perform, there is a guest actor who performs excerpts of a poem called 'On This Land' by the renowned Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. The title of the play is taken from this poem. The poem is woven into the text towards the end of the play. The person performing this poem in Naarm, is Yousef Alreemawi - a Palestinian academic and musician and founder of the Averroes Centre of Arab Culture. Yousef will also be joining me onstage after the show for an audience Q&A.
On today's podcast, Woody Allen brings us back to Tsarist Russia to learn about love, death, classic literature, and philosophy, with plenty of laughs along the way. Then, on Malcolm in the Middle, we talk about Cries and Whispers, foreign import trailers, The Hunt, and Longlegs. 00:00 - Love and Death 32:30 - Malcolm in the Middle Get an extra episode every week at https://www.patreon.com/Extended_Clip Send questions and queries to extendedclippodcast@gmail.com
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, this unique autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, both Jewish and non-Jewish. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. The memoir is brimming with information; his adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities (including Muslims, who formed the majority of Crimea's populace), epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, modernity and secularization, holy men and charlatans, acts of kindness and acts of treachery. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire. Michoel Rotenfeld has translated Goldenshteyn's autobiography into English and provided an extensive introduction and helpful notes throughout the text. Rotenfeld's translation, The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, was published in 2023 by Touro University Press. Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher and the associate director of Touro University Libraries. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Join me as I chat with Barbara Quick, author of Vivaldi's Virgins and What Disappears, both listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction.View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nYq1nLL4xv4Inspiration for What Disappears going back several decades to when Barbara was just 22 years old.Revisiting old work after it's "ripened."The role of idential twins in What Disappears.Writing a great villain in fashion designer Paul Poiret. Researching the fashion components in What Disappears.What it was like to be a dancer in Belle Epoque Paris.Barbara's love of dance.Debut of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Paris and the Riot at the Rite.The role played by anti-semitism in both Tsarist Russia and Paris in the novel.The theme of healing in What Disappears.Reading from What Disappears.Writing poetry and prose: two sides of the same coin?One thing Barbara Quick learned from writing novels that she didn't know before.What Barbara is working on now.Press Play now & be sure to check out Vivaldi's Virgins and What Disappears on Art In Fiction: https://www.artinfiction.com/novels?q=barbara+quickBarbara Quick's website: https://www.barbaraquick.com/ Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider helping us keep the lights on so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists. Just $3 buys us a coffee (and we really like coffee) at Ko-Fi. Just click this link: https://ko-fi.com/artinfictionAlso, check out the Art In Fiction website at https://www.artinfiction.com where you'll find over 1800 novels inspired by the arts in 10 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, and Other.
The Irish writer John Boyne is best known for his 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which became a literary phenomenon, selling more than 11 million copies around the world. It was translated into 60 languages and adapted into a film, a play, a ballet and an opera. He has written more than two dozen books, including a number of titles for younger readers. He was born in Dublin in 1971, and had ambitions to become a writer from an early age. He studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin, followed by a Master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. From the mid-1990s, he spent seven years working at a bookshop in Dublin, while trying to launch his literary career. Many of his books have historical settings: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is the story of two boys – one German, one Jewish – during the Holocaust; other books have taken inspiration from the Mutiny on the Bounty and Tsarist Russia. More recently, he's addressed sexual and physical abuse within the Catholic church in Ireland, drawing in part on his own experiences at school. He lives in Dublin, not far from where he grew up. DISC ONE: Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel DISC TWO: The Sound of Music - Julie Andrews DISC THREE: Elton's Song - Elton John DISC FOUR: Take on Me - A-ha DISC FIVE: Lullaby for Cain (Instrumental) - Sinéad O'Connor DISC SIX: Extract from String Quartet No. 4, composed by Noah Max and performed by The Tippett Quartet DISC SEVEN: Make Your Own Kind of Music - Mama Cass DISC EIGHT: Night of the Swallow - Kate Bush BOOK CHOICE: The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot LUXURY ITEM: A cinema screen showing The Devil Wears Prada CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Night of the Swallow - Kate BushPresenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor
I first got interested in the Wakhan Corridor when I read The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. This weird bit of political geography once formed a buffer between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Britain. It's been closed to traffic for more than a century, and it remains one of the world's least-visited corners. Bill Colegrave joined me to talk about the Wakhan region, his search for the source of the Oxus River, and the challenges of traveling to such a remote place.
We start the final episode on Joseph Stalin as he gains full control of the Soviet Union. Prior to WW2 in Europe, Stalin consolidated power by wiping out a hefty portion of his military command structure along with anyone he perceived as a threat to his new rule. Well once Hitler decides to go back on the Nazi-Soviet non aggression pact, this decision comes back to bite Stalin almost immediately. Without experienced battlefield commanders the Russians are barely able to mount a resistance as the Nazi's charge to Moscow. Well we know in the end the Nazi's are beaten by the Russian winter and Stalin remained in power and was seen as one of the "heroes" of the Allies. But without an external enemy Stalin turns his attention to the enemy within, his own people and the new Cold War.
The man who would become one of histories bloodiest and most ruthless Dictators, was born from humble beginnings on the outer fringes of the Russian Empire. At a time when Russia was still ruled by the Czars, young Loseb Jughashvili was captivated by the Communist movement started by Karl Marx and carried forward by Vladimir Lenin. So how does the son of a cobbler who initially started on the path to become a priest find himself ruling the Soviet Union and killing millions of his own people. From the Seminary to Siberia (several times) Joseph Stalin's rise to power is almost impressive were it not for the fact the man appeared to be a murder robot with zero human emotion. Join us for part one in exploring the Soviet Sociopath that is Jospeh Stalin. What's up Highstorians, just letting you know Prof AG's mic wasn't working right for the first 20 min of the episode, you can still hear him but it's a little quiet. Now sure we coulda started over but we were cookin' and wanted to keep the convo genuine, bear with us for the beginning, it's worth it.
Philadelphia, 1837. Twelve-year-old tomboy heroine Rian Krieger has successfully escorted "self-emancipated" slaves from Philadelphia to their next station on the Underground Railroad. When her father, Otto finds out, he renews his plans to send Rian off to a finishing school in Switzerland. This, however, Rian will not have--she would have to wear dresses all the time! For Rian, the Philadelphia of this time is one of industrialization and change. Increased prosperity and commerce lead factory owner Otto to make decisions that come back to haunt him. The Panic of 1837 has threatened the social and economic fabric of the city, and the Krieger business and home face foreclosure. When two visitors from Tsarist Russia present themselves at the factory, Rian believes their mission may save her father's business, and solve her own problems as well. The fantastic journey of Rian Krieger continues in "The Coachman," book two of the series from the pen of Roger A. Smith. He returns to the Sunbury Press Books Show to speak with host Lawrence Knorr about not only Rian's growth, but provides a historical background to the US in pre-Civil War days. Smith is a former high school history teacher who has had many careers: farmer, summer camp and wilderness expedition program operator, cofounder of a participatory science museum, and woodworker. With "The Conductor" and "The Coachman," Smith may with all justification add "author" to his resume. He lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts; find out more about Roger here.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Large Language Models will be Great for Censorship, published by Ethan Edwards on August 22, 2023 on LessWrong. Produced as part of the SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program - Summer 2023 Cohort Thanks to ev_ and Kei for suggestions on this post. LLMs can do many incredible things. They can generate unique creative content, carry on long conversations in any number of subjects, complete complex cognitive tasks, and write nearly any argument. More mundanely, they are now the state of the art for boring classification tasks and therefore have the capability to radically upgrade the censorship capacities of authoritarian regimes throughout the world. How Censorship Worked In totalitarian government states with wide censorship - Tsarist Russia, Eastern Bloc Communist states, the People's Republic of China, Apartheid South Africa, etc - all public materials are ideally read and reviewed by government workers to ensure they contain nothing that might be offensive to the regime. This task is famously extremely boring and the censors would frequently miss obviously subversive material because they did not bother to go through everything. Marx's Capital was thought to be uninteresting economics so made it into Russia legally in the 1890s. The old style of censorship could not possibly scale, and the real way that censors exert control is through deterrence and fear rather than actual control of communication. Nobody knows the strict boundary line over which they cannot cross, and therefore they stay well away from it. It might be acceptable to lightly criticize one small part of the government that is currently in disfavor, but why risk your entire future on a complaint that likely goes nowhere? In some regimes such as the PRC under Mao, chaotic internal processes led to constant reversals of acceptable expression and by the end of the Cultural Revolution most had learned that simply being quiet was the safest path. Censorship prevents organized resistance in the public and ideally for the regime this would lead to tacit acceptance of the powers that be, but a silently resentful population is not safe or secure. When revolution finally comes, the whole population might turn on their rulers with all of their suppressed rage released at once. Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone hates the government, even if they can only acknowledge this in private trusted channels. Because proper universal and total surveillance has always been impractical, regimes have instead focused on more targeted interventions to prevent potential subversion. Secret polices rely on targeted informant networks, not on workers who can listen to every minute of every recorded conversation. This had a horrible and chilling effect and destroyed many lives, but also was not as effective as it could have been. Major resistance leaders were still able to emerge in totalitarian states, and once the government showed signs of true weakness there were semi-organized dissidents ready to seize the moment. Digital Communication and the Elusiveness of Total Censorship Traditional censorship mostly dealt with a relatively small number of published works: newspapers, books, films, radio, television. This was somewhat manageable just using human labor. However in the past two decades, the amount of communication and material that is potentially public has been transformed with the internet. It is much harder to know how governments are handling new data because the information we have mostly comes from the victims of surveillance who are kept in the same deterrent fear as the past. If victims imagine the state is more capable than it is, that means the state is succeeding, and it is harder to assess the true capabilities. We don't have reliable accounts from insiders or archival access since no major regi...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Large Language Models will be Great for Censorship, published by Ethan Edwards on August 22, 2023 on LessWrong.Produced as part of the SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program - Summer 2023 CohortThanks to ev_ and Kei for suggestions on this post.LLMs can do many incredible things. They can generate unique creative content, carry on long conversations in any number of subjects, complete complex cognitive tasks, and write nearly any argument. More mundanely, they are now the state of the art for boring classification tasks and therefore have the capability to radically upgrade the censorship capacities of authoritarian regimes throughout the world.How Censorship WorkedIn totalitarian government states with wide censorship - Tsarist Russia, Eastern Bloc Communist states, the People's Republic of China, Apartheid South Africa, etc - all public materials are ideally read and reviewed by government workers to ensure they contain nothing that might be offensive to the regime. This task is famously extremely boring and the censors would frequently miss obviously subversive material because they did not bother to go through everything. Marx's Capital was thought to be uninteresting economics so made it into Russia legally in the 1890s.The old style of censorship could not possibly scale, and the real way that censors exert control is through deterrence and fear rather than actual control of communication. Nobody knows the strict boundary line over which they cannot cross, and therefore they stay well away from it. It might be acceptable to lightly criticize one small part of the government that is currently in disfavor, but why risk your entire future on a complaint that likely goes nowhere? In some regimes such as the PRC under Mao, chaotic internal processes led to constant reversals of acceptable expression and by the end of the Cultural Revolution most had learned that simply being quiet was the safest path. Censorship prevents organized resistance in the public and ideally for the regime this would lead to tacit acceptance of the powers that be, but a silently resentful population is not safe or secure.When revolution finally comes, the whole population might turn on their rulers with all of their suppressed rage released at once. Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone hates the government, even if they can only acknowledge this in private trusted channels.Because proper universal and total surveillance has always been impractical, regimes have instead focused on more targeted interventions to prevent potential subversion. Secret polices rely on targeted informant networks, not on workers who can listen to every minute of every recorded conversation. This had a horrible and chilling effect and destroyed many lives, but also was not as effective as it could have been. Major resistance leaders were still able to emerge in totalitarian states, and once the government showed signs of true weakness there were semi-organized dissidents ready to seize the moment.Digital Communication and the Elusiveness of Total CensorshipTraditional censorship mostly dealt with a relatively small number of published works: newspapers, books, films, radio, television. This was somewhat manageable just using human labor. However in the past two decades, the amount of communication and material that is potentially public has been transformed with the internet.It is much harder to know how governments are handling new data because the information we have mostly comes from the victims of surveillance who are kept in the same deterrent fear as the past. If victims imagine the state is more capable than it is, that means the state is succeeding, and it is harder to assess the true capabilities. We don't have reliable accounts from insiders or archival access since no major regi...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Large Language Models will be Great for Censorship, published by Ethan Edwards on August 22, 2023 on LessWrong. Produced as part of the SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program - Summer 2023 Cohort Thanks to ev_ and Kei for suggestions on this post. LLMs can do many incredible things. They can generate unique creative content, carry on long conversations in any number of subjects, complete complex cognitive tasks, and write nearly any argument. More mundanely, they are now the state of the art for boring classification tasks and therefore have the capability to radically upgrade the censorship capacities of authoritarian regimes throughout the world. How Censorship Worked In totalitarian government states with wide censorship - Tsarist Russia, Eastern Bloc Communist states, the People's Republic of China, Apartheid South Africa, etc - all public materials are ideally read and reviewed by government workers to ensure they contain nothing that might be offensive to the regime. This task is famously extremely boring and the censors would frequently miss obviously subversive material because they did not bother to go through everything. Marx's Capital was thought to be uninteresting economics so made it into Russia legally in the 1890s. The old style of censorship could not possibly scale, and the real way that censors exert control is through deterrence and fear rather than actual control of communication. Nobody knows the strict boundary line over which they cannot cross, and therefore they stay well away from it. It might be acceptable to lightly criticize one small part of the government that is currently in disfavor, but why risk your entire future on a complaint that likely goes nowhere? In some regimes such as the PRC under Mao, chaotic internal processes led to constant reversals of acceptable expression and by the end of the Cultural Revolution most had learned that simply being quiet was the safest path. Censorship prevents organized resistance in the public and ideally for the regime this would lead to tacit acceptance of the powers that be, but a silently resentful population is not safe or secure. When revolution finally comes, the whole population might turn on their rulers with all of their suppressed rage released at once. Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone hates the government, even if they can only acknowledge this in private trusted channels. Because proper universal and total surveillance has always been impractical, regimes have instead focused on more targeted interventions to prevent potential subversion. Secret polices rely on targeted informant networks, not on workers who can listen to every minute of every recorded conversation. This had a horrible and chilling effect and destroyed many lives, but also was not as effective as it could have been. Major resistance leaders were still able to emerge in totalitarian states, and once the government showed signs of true weakness there were semi-organized dissidents ready to seize the moment. Digital Communication and the Elusiveness of Total Censorship Traditional censorship mostly dealt with a relatively small number of published works: newspapers, books, films, radio, television. This was somewhat manageable just using human labor. However in the past two decades, the amount of communication and material that is potentially public has been transformed with the internet. It is much harder to know how governments are handling new data because the information we have mostly comes from the victims of surveillance who are kept in the same deterrent fear as the past. If victims imagine the state is more capable than it is, that means the state is succeeding, and it is harder to assess the true capabilities. We don't have reliable accounts from insiders or archival access since no major regi...
In the early 20th century, a vast tapestry of tensions - national, political, and social - hung heavily over Europe. It was a volatile era of conflicting interests and loyalties, waiting for a spark to ignite it. This spark came with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, setting off a chain of events that spiraled into the devastating cataclysm of the First World War. At the epicenter of this chaos stood two formidable giants - Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia, each yearning for control, dominance, and security. In a vast theatre of battles and bloodshed, one encounter would emerge as a cornerstone, a turning point that would change the course of the war and etch itself deeply into the annals of history - the Battle of Tannenberg. In the verdant, sprawling plains of East Prussia, armies prepared for a confrontation that would test their courage, resolve, and strategic genius. The tale of Tannenberg is a compelling story of bold decisions and tactical blunders, of strategic prowess and human frailty. It is a tale of leaders like Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, Alexander Samsonov, and Paul von Rennenkampf, whose destinies became entwined in this critical battle, their actions reverberating across time. In the ensuing chaos, an unexpected and decisive victory would tilt the scales, sending shockwaves throughout the entire theatre of war. The repercussions of Tannenberg were felt far beyond the blood-soaked fields of East Prussia, altering strategies, affecting morale, and setting the stage for political upheavals that would reshape the world. Journey with us as we step back into the tumultuous days of 1914, tracing the events from the bustling streets of Sarajevo, through the tense war offices in Berlin and St. Petersburg, to the misty, eerie quietude of the East Prussian landscape. Together, we'll retrace the paths of soldiers and generals, monarchs and commoners, as we weave our way through the captivating, poignant, and unforgettable narrative of the Battle of Tannenberg.
This series is sponsored by Ari and Danielle Schwartz in memory of Danielle's grandfather, Mr. Baruch Mappa, Baruch Ben Asher Zelig HaLevi.In this edition of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Dr. Leslie Ginsparg Klein—an expert on the history of Orthodox girls' education—about the value of education for all people.With the founding of the Bais Yaakov movement, Sarah Schenirer sought to create a culture of education that was inclusive to the marginalized. Over a century later, we encounter a related but simultaneously new set of challenges. In this episode we discuss:What made the early Bais Yaakov movement both controversial and revolutionary? What would Sarah Schenirer think of the state of Jewish education in the 21st century?Are graduating adults still in need of education and youth programming?Tune in to hear a conversation about the indispensability of Jewish education from the early 20th century to today.Interview begins at 29:30.Dr. Leslie Ginsparg Klein is the Academic Dean of Women's Institute of Torah Seminary & College, an Orthodox Jewish college for women. A scholar and author, Dr. Klein speaks on Jewish history, Tanach, leadership and communication skills across the United States and internationally. Dr. Ginsparg Klein received her Ph.D. from New York University, where she researched the history of Orthodox girls' education in America and the Bais Yaakov Movement. References:18Forty Podcast: “Yitzchak Breitowitz: Navigating Controversy”18Forty Podcast: “Yisroel Kaminetsky: The Goal of Jewish Education”Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition by Naomi SeidmanReading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society by Iris ParushIn Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia by Eliyana R. Adler Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 by Melissa R. Klapper Dr. Leslie Ginsparg Klein on Bais Yaakov Education and Culture Across North America, at Harvard Law School
Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Joining us today is critic and professor Bob Blaisdell who unravels the novel's author Leo Tolstoy's family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina in his recent book titled Creating Anna Karenina. Recommended Reading:Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Kent and Berberova (2000)Bob Blaisdell, Creating Anna Karenina (2021)This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show
Why would criminals travel halfway across the world to the Ozarks in search of fish eggs? To answer that question, we need to travel back in time to Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, to understand how caviar became such a coveted and valuable delicacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A post-Tsarist Russia wanted to make its mark...it ended poorly.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy audiobook. Two love stories are set against the backdrop of high society in Tsarist Russia. Anna awakes from a loveless marriage to find herself drawn irresistibly to the dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. Levin struggles with self-esteem, and even flees to the country, before gaining courage to return and offer himself to the beautiful and pure Kitty. Through troubled courtships, reconciliations, marriage and the birth of each one's first child, Anna and Levin experience joy and despair as they each struggle to find their place in the world and meaning for their lives
In today’s Sunday Letters essay, I’m taking a look at the Anarchist Communist philosophy of the Russian Prince and social activist, Petr Kropotkin. He envisioned a socialist revolution, a revolution of the people, but was his vision for society too idealistic to work? Is our society today any different from Kropotkin’s era? Most commentators suggest our working conditions and freedoms have improved one hundredfold. But large numbers of people are dissatisfied with work, still seeing it as a means to an end. So have things really improved? One hundred years after Kropotkin’s death, let’s examine his Anarchist philosophy and its parallels with today’s society.Become A Patron of Sunday LettersIf Socialism is a dirty word, Anarchism is outright filth. Where the former is a cynical means by which the lazy and inept in our society scheme to lie about all day doing little while hard-working citizens like you and me pay for it, the latter steals from our pockets and destroys everything we own. Of course, this is the Fox News or Daily Mirror version. The reality is very different. Anarchism, and by extension, Socialism, are not about you and I propping up wasters and wielding the wrecking ball on society. Rather, their fundamental premise was founded on equity and fairness for all and the removal of exploitation by dictators and bureaucrats of those in society who are weaker.Anarchism has its roots in the socialist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where its idealism centred upon ultra-democratic principles of fairness, economic equality, individual and collective freedom, the integrity of self-directed work, and non-hierarchical socially-led politics. Unfortunately, as it has been with most if not all social change through history, violence and destruction are never far away and served to taint the ideals that gave birth to those movements. Lenin’s version of socialism and corruption of Marxist ideas — the communist dictatorship of the proletariat—is a case in point.One of the modern era’s most recent Anarchist initiatives was the Occupy Wall Street movement post the 2008 global financial crash. People were irate with the boldness and arrogance of the political and financial elite that ran the show. These were and are the real pick-pockets of ordinary working people, not the unemployed and disadvantaged. However, in spite of the sympathy the movement received, its leftist ideology, which sought to address the imbalance, failed to drum up a long-lasting following. It was merely a flash of idealism that peered out from a gap in the capitalist fabric of US society. The reason to fight must become compelling and inevitable for real change to happen. It must be enduring too, and I wonder if most Americans, British, Europeans and others in the Global North, are simply too comfortable to fight even in spite of the raging inflation we’re currently experiencing.Anarchism’s 2011 display of rage against the machine of Capitalism and the inequality it breeds petered out, and people once again settled into their jobs (or their unemployment). Powerless to make a lasting change and alienated once again from the promise of work that might possibly bring about fulfilment and freedom, people got on with their lives. Although founded on the principle of freedom and liberty from the tyranny of hierarchical systems, some suggest that Anarchism may be too interested in making bold statements through violent action. It is argued that it has no lasting impact because it lacks the ability to think strategically about the change it wishes to see. As the populist idea goes, Anarchism is too interested in looting, burning, rioting and being a general nuisance to society to become a popular long-lasting movement for change.But perhaps this idea is too simple.The Sunday Letters Journal is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.What Is Anarchism?The late David Graeber, in a 2011 article for Aljazeera, said the following of Anarchism;“The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society – that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.”There is a long tradition of political and intellectual anarchist thought, one of the most astute being the nineteenth Century anarchist communist Petr Kropotkin. (For an extensive collection of political and intellectual writings from Kropotkin and others, see The Anarchist Library, the Monthly Review, and Freedom Press). Kropotkin was a blue-blood aristocrat born to an ancient noble family descendant from the Ninth Century Rurik Dynasty and the first rulers of Russia. Despite his privileged background, he railed against its imperial status and its abuse of power over the people. His father was, in his eyes, the embodiment of Tsarist Russia and its military-bureaucratic state, and although highly regarded in political and social circles, Kropotkin dedicated his life to activism. Petr’s home life was irrationally disciplinarian, and he viewed his father’s contempt and cruelty towards servants as despicable. As such, Petr developed a strong empathy for ordinary people. He wrote, “I do not know what would have become of us if we had not found in our house, amidst the serf servants, that atmosphere of love which children must have around them.”It was this childhood experience and the contrast between the cold imperialist attitude of his parents and the open and loving arms of the servents that laid the foundation for his later thought and writing, the most influential of which was The Conquest of Bread. The book is said to capture Kropotkin’s philosophy more than any other of his writings. His vision of the anarchist society was based on camaraderie rather than hierarchy and goodwill rather than coercion and was founded on a profound optimism about human nature. It is a system of society based on cooperation, fairness, collectivism, and the belief that these traits of being are natural and innate to human beings.Kropotkin on Work & CapitalismHowever, Kropotkin’s Anarchism wasn’t without its challenges. For example, how may Anarchism be made compatible with the modern technological society and growing consumerism? The Conquest of Bread was first published in a series of articles, then republished in a single volume in 1892 and was his attempt to address these concerns in simple terms. He started from the assumption that property must be collectively owned because, in the complex modern world where everything is interdependent, claiming a single origin for a product of industry was untenable. He also wrote that keeping the wage system unequal would only ensure the survival of competitiveness and selfishness. Wages would have to be distributed equally, and goods and services distributed freely by democratic bodies. The economy would then be organised according to the communist principle — from each according to their ability and to each according to their need.These ideas are so alien to a mind educated and raised in a Capitalist culture that they seem completely absurd and unworkable. But Kropotkin believed that this radical equality should govern all spheres of life. He argued that the normal division of labour that privileged intellectual, white-collar workers enjoyed over manual workers, consigned most people to monotonous and soul-destroying lives. Labour was to be shared, and “mental” and “manual” tasks integrated so that work would no longer be a curse, and instead, be the free exercise of all the faculties of humankind.His critique of specialisation and hierarchy was also applied to the global economy. An early critic of globalisation, Kropotkin argued that industry and agriculture must be integrated into all regions of the world, ensuring self-sufficiency. Developing countries were to be aided towards industrialisation and, therefore, rectify the growing gap between rich and poor.It [economics] should try to analyse how far the present means are expedient and satisfactory… [, and] should concern itself with the discovery of means for the satisfaction of these needs with the smallest possible waste of labour and with the greatest benefit to mankind in general.Kropotkin’s Anarchism was a rigorous and coherent application of radical democracy and equality to all areas of life. It did not, for example, require a central state body to distribute wages according to performance and so avoided the potential authoritarianism of other versions of Anarchism. However, it did show Kropotkin to be overly idealistic with a naive view of human nature. What about people who refused to work or those who behaved antisocially? Would eliminating market incentives not undermine a functioning economy bringing it to its knees? On the subject of production, Kropotkin insisted that collective organisation and participation were more efficient than the managerialism common in private firms. Enjoyable work, Kropotkin argued, and workers’ knowledge that they were working for the common good provided higher incentives than being compelled to work under the threat of starvation or punishment. It was the democratic organisation of work.Kropotkin also insisted that eliminating market capitalism would improve, not undermine, market efficiency and minimise waste. For instance, abolishing private banks, he suggested, would remove parasitic middlemen allowing resources to be directed to those parts of society that desperately needed them. Similarly, local economic self-sufficiency would remove the expense of transport systems and communications required by the increasingly specialised global economy. For Kropotkin, a more egalitarian society with fair patterns of consumption was possible, and at the root of this argument was his conviction that the economy already produced enough to provide everyone with a good standard of living. The problem, he insisted, was with distribution rather than production. In Fields, Factories and Workshops, Kropotkin demonstrated that humanity already possessed the technical means to produce healthy food abundantly for everyone with relatively little effort and expense. We know this today too, although the imperative to hoard wealth and resources remain in place. The precursors to today’s factory farms existed at this time, and which, Kropotkin noted, destroyed the soil for generations and displaced people who might otherwise obtain a comfortable living from the land.On the subject of wages, Kropotkin suggested that if people had the means to support themselves, to meet their daily requirements without the need to hire out their bodies for payment, no one would consent to work for wages. Which are, he insisted, inevitably a mere fraction of the value of the goods or services they produce. Even the independent artisan worker of Kropotkin’s time could barely do better than support his family, let alone save for his old age. Have Things Changed For The Better?Here we are today, just over one hundred years since Kropotkin’s death, and I wonder, are things fundamentally any different? Technology is a bit of a double-edged sword insofar as it has improved materially the lives of millions of people. But it has also worsened the lives of many more. African children still dig in mines for precious metals, Indian girls are forced into the sex trade in the slums of Mumbai, and illegal migrants in the US are forced to work in cramped rooms all day and night for meagre wages. Jason Hickel, economic anthropologist and author, writes extensively on globalisation and the damage it does to people in the global south. They are, he suggests, paying for the luxury that we in the north enjoy. In a recent article, Hickel says that extreme poverty is not natural; it’s created. Exploitation in the name of Capitalism carries on.Kropotkin sought a global revolution by working people over their capitalist overlords. It didn’t happen, and although there are brief flurries of anarchist activity, as we saw in the 2011 Occupy movement, they are short-lived. I sense that we have become too comfortable, too easily manipulated and made weak by the ease at which life comes to us. Yet, ironically, we are deeply dissatisfied and unhappy with work. We may wear different clothes, have access to a universe of information in our pockets, enjoy better healthcare, have access to endless “entertainment”, and the opportunity to satisfy our every whim, but are we really better off? And crucially, have we found a way to work free? I’m not so sure the conquest of bread has ever been satisfied and perhaps it never will.The Sunday Letters Journal is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sundayletters.larrygmaguire.com/subscribe
Episode 96:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2-5]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 6-7]2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917Prospects for ReformOn the Eve of WarFirst World War[Part 8 - This Week]2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917Politics and the Economy - 0:40[Part 9 - 11?]3. From February to October 1917[Part 12 - 15?]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 16 - 18?]5. War Communism[Part 19 - 21?]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 22 - 25?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 26?]ConclusionFootnotes:91) 1:36Kolonitskii, Tragicheskaia erotika, 396.92) 2:17Hubertus Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).93) 3:03Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire.94) 3:28Jahn, Patriotic Culture.95) 8:51Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 42–3.96) 9:01E. N. Burdzhalov, Russia's Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd, trans. and ed. Donald J. Raleigh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 60.97) 9:58Porshneva, Mentalitet, 191.98) 10:28Lewis Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, 1914–1917: A Study of the War Industries Committees (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983), 165.99) 10:42David R. Jones, ‘Imperial Russia's Forces at War', in A. R. Millett and W. Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, vol. 1: The First World War (Boston: Unwyn Hyman, 1988), 249–328 (260).100) 11:05Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 45.101) 11:34Andrei Markevich and Mark Harrison, ‘Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia's National Income, 1913–1928', Journal of Economic History, 71:3 (2011), 672–703.102) 12:35Gatrell, ‘Tsarist Russia at War', 693.103) 12:51Jones, ‘Imperial Russia's Forces', 271.104) 13:08Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 126.105) 13:27Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 136.106) 14:07Jones, ‘Imperial Russia's Forces', 260.107) 14:14Gatrell, ‘Poor Russia', 247.108) 14:26Yanni Kotsonis, States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).109) 15:06Steven G. Marks, ‘War Finance (Russian Empire)', .110) 16:22Marks, ‘War Finance'.111) 17:31M. D. Karpachev, ‘Krizis prodovol'stvennogo snabzheniia v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (po materialam Voronezhskoi gubernii)', Rossiiskaia istoriiia, 3 (2011), 66–81 (67).112) 19:17M. V. Os'kin, ‘Prodovol'stvennaia politika Rossii nakanune fevral'ia 1917 god: poisk vykhoda iz krizisa', Rossiiskaia istoriia, 3 (2001), 53–66 (55).113) 20:39S. G. Wheatcroft, ‘Agriculture', in Davies (ed.), From Tsarism, 93.114) 21:20I. I. Krott, ‘Sel'skoe khoziaistvo zapadnoi Sibiri, 1914–17gg.', Voprosy istorii, 11 (2011), 103–18.115) 23:01N. F. Ivantsova, Zapadno-sibirskoe krest'ianstvo v 1917—pervoi polovine 1918gg. (Moscow: Prometei, 1993), 71, 75.116) 23:39Mark Baker, ‘Rampaging Soldatki, Cowering Police, Bazaar Riots and Moral Economy: The Social Impact of the Great War in Kharkiv Province', Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 35: 2–3 (2001), 137–55 (141).117) 24:06D. V. Kovalev, Agrarnye preobrazovaniia i krest'ianstvo stolichnogo regiona v pervoi chetverti XX veka (Moscow: Moskovskii pedagogicheskiki gos. Universitet, 2004), 123.118) 24:38Peter Waldron, The End of Imperial Russia, 1855–1917 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997) 155. Tiutukhin states that there were about 800 rural disturbances between July 1914 and March 1917. S. V. Tiutukhin, ‘Pervaia mirovaia voina i revoliutsionnyi protsess v Rossii', in V. L. Mal'kov (ed.), Pervaia mirovaia voina: prolog XX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 236–49 (245).119) 24:45Shkaratan, Problemy, 219.120) 25:31Porshneva, Mentalitet, 165.121) 26:51Porshneva, Mentalitet, 201.122) 27:34A. S. Sidorov (ed.), Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie posle sverzheniia samoderzhaviia (27 fevralia–14 aprelia 1917g.) (Moscow: RAN, 1957), 421.123) 28:05Iu. I. Kir'ianov, ‘Massovye vystupleniia na pochve dogorovizny v Rossii (1914–fevral' 1917g.', Otechestvennaia istoriia, 3 (1993), 3–18 (4).124) 28:28Kir'ianov, ‘Massovye', 8.125) 28:41Barbara Alpern Engel, ‘Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War One', Journal of Modern History, 69 (1997), 696–721.126) 29:03Engel, Women in Russiā, 133.127) 29:50Iu. I. Kir'ianov, Sotsial'no-politicheskii protest rabochikh Rossii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny. Iiul' 1914–fevral' 1917 gg. (Moscow: RAN, 2005).128) 30:49Porshneva, Mentalitet, 202.129) 31:02Iu. I. Korablev (ed.), Rabochee dvizhenie v Petrograde v 1912–1917gg. (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1958), 484.130) 31:30Shkaratan, Problemy, 198, 210.131) 32:08McKean, St Petersburg, 394.132) 32:53Kir'ianov, Sotsial'no-politicheskii protest, 185.133) 33:12Michael Melancon, The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Russian Anti-War Movement, 1914–1917 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1990), 113–14.134) 34:16S. V. Tiutukhin, Men'shevizm: stranitsy istorii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 307.135) 36:47Roger W. Pethybridge, Witnesses to the Russian Revolution (London: Allen Unwin, 1964), 76, 78.
Episode 95:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2-5]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 6]2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917Prospects for Reform[Part 7 - This Week]2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917On the Eve of War - 0:32First World War - 12:47[Part 8]2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917[Part 9 - 11?]3. From February to October 1917[Part 12 - 15?]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 16 - 18?]5. War Communism[Part 19 - 21?]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 22 - 25?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 26?]ConclusionFootnotes:45) 1:23Michael Melancon, The Lena Goldfields Massacre and the Crisis of the Late Tsarist State (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 116.46) 2:34Haimson and Petrusha, ‘Two Strike Waves in Imperial Russia', 107.47) 3:07Hogan, Forging Revolution, 161.48) 3:29F. A. Gaida, ‘Politicheskaia obstanovka v Rossii nakanune Pervoi mirovoi voiny v otsenke gosudarstvennykh deiatelei i liderov partii', Rossiiskaia istoriia, 6 (2011), 123–35; Jonathan W. Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 147.49) 4:29Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).50) 5:24Shestoi s”ezd RSDLP (bol'shevikov): Avgust 1917 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1958), 47.51) 5:37D. A. Loeber (ed.), Ruling Communist Parties and their Status under Law (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 63. Not all historians are persuaded that the Bolsheviks were taking over leadership of the labour movement: see R. B. McKean, St Petersburg Between the Revolutions: Workers and Revolutionaries, June, 1907–February 1917 (London: Yale University Press, 1990).52) 6:20Postnikov, Territorial'noe razmeshchenie, 56.53) 6:44Patricia Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 145.54) 8:34V. B. Aksenov, ‘ “Sukhoi zakon” 1914 goda: ot pridvornoi intrigi do revoliutsii', Rossiiskaia istoriia, 4 (2011), 126–39.55) 8:44For a view that individual and collective actors recoiled from taking decisive action in the political and social crisis on the eve of the war, for fear that they would be overwhelmed by an accelerating process of social polarization, see Leopold H. Haimson, ‘ “The Problem of Political and Social Stability in Urban Russia on the Eve of War” Revisited', Slavic Review, 59:4 (2000), 848–75.56) 8:58Dowler, Russia in 1913, 279.57) 9:24Gilbert, Radical Right, ch. 6.58) 9:29Rossiia 1913 god: statistiko-dokumental'nyi spravochnik (St Petersburg: BLITs, 1995), 413–14.59) 9:58William C. Fuller, Civil–Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 257.60) 10:50Mark D. Steinberg, Petersburg: Fin de Siècle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 244.61) 11:40Gatrell, Government, Industry, and Rearmament.62) 12:17.63) 13:02Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London: Penguin, 1998).64) 15:43Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 1998), ix; David Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London: Penguin, 2005), xix.65) 16:10G. F. Krivosheev (ed.), Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: poteri vooruzhyennykh sil. Statisticheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: OLMA, 2001).66) 17:34Boris Kolonitskii, Tragicheskaia erotika: obrazy, imperatorskoi sem'i v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: NLO, 2010), 73.67) 18:25Joshua Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 29.68) 19:26Cited in Peter Gatrell, ‘Tsarist Russia at War: The View from Above, 1914–February 1917', Journal of Modern History, 87:3 (2015), 668–700 (689).69) 19:54David R. Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), 48; Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 136.70) 21:17Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War One (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 3.71) 21:29Tomas Balkelis, ‘Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries after the First World War', Journal of Contemporary History, 50:1 (2015), 38–57 (38).72) 23:22Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).73) 24:04Edward J. Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War One (London: Routledge, 2007), 1.74) 24:04A. B. Astashov, Russkii front v 1914-nachale 1917 goda: voennyi opyt i sovremennost' (Moscow: Novyi Khronograf, 2014), 19, 23.75) 25:54P. P. Shcherbinin, ‘Women's Mobilization for War (Russian Empire)', International Encyclopedia of the First World War, .76) 27:34Stone, Russian Army, 4.77) 29:05Stone, Russian Army, ch. 7.78) 30:33Edward D. Sokol, The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954). Gene Huskey refers to an ‘unknown genocide', in which 100,000 to 120,000 out of 780,000 Kyrghyz were slaughtered: Gene Huskey, ‘Kyrgyzstan: The Politics of Demographic and Economic Frustration', in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 400.79) 31:01Astashov, Russkii front, 116, 160.80) 31:10William G. Rosenberg, ‘Reading Soldiers' Moods: Russian Military Censorship and the Configuration of Feeling in World War I', American Historical Review, 119:3 (2014), 714–40 (716).81) 32:54A. B. Astashov and P. A. Simmons, Pis'ma s voiny 1914–1917 (Moscow: Novyi khronograf, 2015), 128.82) 33:25Joshua Sanborn, ‘The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation', Slavic Review, 59:2 (2000), 267–89; S. A. Smith, ‘Citizenship and the Russian Nation during World War I: A Comment', Slavic Review, 59:2 (2000), 316–29.83) 33:38Astashov, Russkii front, 133–4, 179–87.84) 34:24Quoted in A. B. Astashov, ‘Russkii krest'ianin na frontakh Pervoi mirovoi voiny', Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2 (2003), 72–86 (75); Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 91.85) 34:44Mark von Hagen, ‘The Entangled Front in the First World War', in Eric Lohr et al. (eds), The Empire and Nationalism at War (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2014), 9–48 (36); Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse, 130.86) 35:28Igor V. Narskii, ‘The Frontline Experience of Russian Soldiers in 1914–16', Russian Studies in History, 51:4 (2013), 31–49.87) 36:21Astashov, Russkii front, 224, 279–300.88) 36:45Krivosheev (ed.), Rossiia, table 52.89) 37:02Dietrich Beyrau, ‘Brutalization Revisited: The Case of Russia', Journal of Contemporary History, 50:1 (2015), 15–37 (18).90) 37:29Krivosheev (ed.), Rossiia, table 56.
Episode 90:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2 - This Week]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905 - 00:38Autocracy and Orthodoxy - 21:23Popular Religion - 33:17[Part 3 - 4?]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 5 - 7?]2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917[Part 8 - 10?]3. From February to October 1917[Part 11 - 14?]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 15 - 17?]5. War Communism[Part 18 - 20?]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 21 - 24?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 25?]ConclusionFigures:1) Nicholas II, Alexandra, and their family. - 21:31Footnotes:1) 00:58Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996).2) 05:08V. O. Kliuchevsky, A History of Russia, vol. 1 (London: J. M. Dent, 1911), 2.3) 07:13D. C. B. Lieven, Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2015), 9.4) 08:05Cited in Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 177.5) 13:02Lieven, Towards the Flame, 85.6) 14:07http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97.php7) 14:38Jane Burbank and Mark von Hagen (eds), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); John W. Slocum, ‘Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of “Aliens” in Imperial Russia', Russian Review, 57:2 (1998), 173–90.8) 15:05Theodore Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); Alexei Miller, ‘The Empire and Nation in the Imagination of Russian Nationalism', in A. Miller and A. J. Rieber (eds), Imperial Rule (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 9–22.9) 15:37Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).10) 17:26Paul Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).11) 18:11Alexander Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).12) 18:38Robert Geraci, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late-Imperial Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).13) 19:13Charles Steinwedel, ‘To Make a Difference: The Category of Ethnicity in Late Imperial Russian Politics, 1861–1917', in D. L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (eds), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 67–86.14) 19:49Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (Harlow: Pearson, 2001); Willard Sunderland, ‘The Ministry of Asiatic Russia: The Colonial Office That Never Was But Might Have Been', Slavic Review, 60:1 (2010), 120–50.15) 20:04Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (London: Fontana, 1998).16) 21:19Miller, ‘The Empire and Nation', 9–22.17) 21:48Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).18) 22:25http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/royalty/russia/rfl.html19) 25:04Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 2: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 222.20) 25:09Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Penguin, 1977).21) 26:36Peter Waldron, ‘States of Emergency: Autocracy and Extraordinary Legislation, 1881–1917', Revolutionary Russia, 8:1 (1995), 1–25.22) 26:56Waldron, ‘States of Emergency', 24.23) 27:26Neil Weissman, ‘Regular Police in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914', Russian Review, 44:1 (1985), 45–68 ( 49).24) 27:47Jonathan W. Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 5–6. Daly, incidentally, gives a higher figure—100,000—than Weissman for the number of police of all kinds in 1900.25) 28:14Figes, People's Tragedy, 46.26) 28:50T. Emmons and W. S. Vucinich (eds), The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 215.27) 30:25Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (London: Longman, 1983), 72.28) 31:18J. S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 10.29) 32:09Gregory L. Freeze, ‘Handmaiden of the State? The Orthodox Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 82–102.30) 32:46Simon Dixon, ‘The Orthodox Church and the Workers of St Petersburg, 1880–1914', in Hugh McLeod, European Religion in the Age of Great Cities, 1830–1930 (London: Routledge, 1995), 119–41.31) 33:49Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).32) 35:23A. K. Baiburin, ‘Poliarnosti v rituale (tverdoe i miagkoe)', Poliarnost' v kul'ture: Almanakh ‘Kanun' 2 (1996), 157–65.33) 36:28Vera Shevzov, ‘Chapels and the Ecclesial World of Pre-revolutionary Peasants', Slavic Review, 55:3 (1996), 585–613.34) 37:00Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 159.35) 37:59J. S. Curtiss, Church and State in Russia: the Last Years of the Empire, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 118.36) 38:46David G. Rowley, ‘ “Redeemer Empire”: Russian Millenarianism', American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 1582–602.37) 39:18James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 514.38) 40:18Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 271.39) 40:34Sergei Fomin (comp.), Rossiia pered vtorym prishestviem: prorochestva russkikh sviatykh (Moscow: Sviato-Troitskaia Sergieva Lavra, 1993). This is a compendium of prophecies of doom about the fate of Russia by saints, monks, nuns, priests, theologians, and a sprinking of lay writers, including Dostoevsky, V. V. Rozanov, and Lev Tikhomirov.
Cooking With Grief is the comedy podcast that covers everything from history to science, pop culture to geography, and everything in between. Join us as we learn about a Japanese fisherman who washed up in Tsarist Russia and was then charged with being the authority of all Japanese knowledge in St Petersburg, and we learn the extreme cyberpunk-esque lengths an Indian student went to in order to cheat at a medical school exam.If you enjoyed the show, and even if you didn't, please leave a review, and follow us on Twitter at CookinWithGrief !★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Waller Newell, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Carleton University, joins the show to discuss tyranny and tyrants—and Vladimir Putin in particular. Times 02:05 Introduction 03:43 Let's talk about Vladimir Putin 05:40 What is the Russian "Soul"? 07:19 Quote from "The Russian Idea" 08:40 Who was Nikolai Berdyaev? 09:54 Is Berdyaev an influence on Aleksandr Dugin? 11:05 The West has a hard time understanding non-economic motivations. Why? 13:06 Who is Aleksandr Dugin? 15:21 “Eurasian Nationalist Bolshevism” 16:55 Rehabilitating Stalin 18:40 Are we seeing a perpetuation of Tsarist Russia? 20:40 What is fascism? 22:35 The many types of tyranny 25:12 What kind of tyrant is Putin? 26:50 Why has millenarian tyranny appeared so relatively recently in history? 29:51 The relationship between liberalism and millenarian tyranny 31:25 The next ten years in Russia 34:00 Did Putin know what he was getting himself into in Ukraine? 35:36 The prospect of Russian and Chinese collaboration in the future 36:55 Who drives Chinese policy - Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party? 38:56 Staying sane while studying tyrants 42:10 What should we be reading to better recognize hostile actors for what they are?
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries such as Russia...seem as remote as ever." (185). Covering the period from Catherine the Great to the early 20th century, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2020) provides the reader with plentiful evidence that this is the case. Rampton argues that at the core of liberalism is an ongoing compromise between competing claims, as with the interplay between positive and negative liberty. As liberalism currently finds itself under attack from multiple sides, Rampton's case Russian case study is valuable. Russian soil's general hostility liberalism illuminates some of the ideas' strengths and weaknesses, and the historical conditions under which it is and is not likely to flourish. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.
Today I talked to Nancy Churnin about her book Irving Berlin: The Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing (Creston Books, 2018). Irving Berlin came to the United States as a refugee from Tsarist Russia, escaping a pogrom that destroyed his village. Growing up on the streets of the lower East Side, the rhythms of jazz and blues inspired his own song-writing career. Starting with his first big hit, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Berlin created the soundtrack for American life with his catchy tunes and irresistible lyrics. With "God Bless America," he sang his thanks to the country which had given him a home and a chance to express his creative vision. Mel Rosenberg is a professor of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is also the founder of Ourboox, a web platform that allows anyone to create and share awesome flipbooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964, many thought that this Yiddish-inspired portrait of Jewish shtetl life in Tsarist Russia would be a huge flop. But audiences flocked to the musical, and its songbook soon entered the popular lexicon. Hollywood set its sights on a film version and United Artists signed the well-respected, but hardly household name, Norman Jewison to direct. The fascinating behind-the-scenes story of what happened next is the subject of Oscar-nominated director Daniel Raim's (“The Man on Lincoln's Nose”) delightful new documentary “Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen”, which has its world premiere at the upcoming Palm Springs International Film Festival (Jan 6 – 17, 2022). Mike and Ken's conversation with Daniel Raim marks the first in a series of interviews they will be having with documentary directors as part of a special Top Docs partnership with the 33rd annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. A formative musical and movie-going experience for both of them, Mike and Ken were very excited to chat with Daniel about Fiddler. What was the shocker that Jewison told the studio head that might have cost him this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? How did the filmmakers try to be authentic to the Jewish lived experience and also appeal to a general audience? And casting Topol or Zero Mostel as Tevye? How did Jewison make the call? Find out the answers to these questions and more, plus discover what three albums Mike's parents had in the house when he was growing up. Please join us for this lively conversation. What better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this much beloved classic? Follow on twitter: Daniel @DanielRaim The Palm Springs International Film Festival @PSfilmfest Top Docs @topdocspod “Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen” – Palm Springs International Film Festival Screenings Information: Sat. Jan. 8, 7:00 PM, Annenberg Theater Sun. Jan. 9, 9:45 AM, Regal Cinemas Sun. Jan 16, 9:00 AM, Mary Pickford is D'Place Top Docs and the Palm Springs International Film Festival Top Docs is thrilled to announce that we are partnering with the 33rd Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (January 6 – 17, 2022) as a media sponsor, with the goal of spotlighting documentary filmmakers whose work is screening at the upcoming Festival. In the coming weeks, please look out for our interviews with filmmakers featured in this year's lineup, including Vivian Kleiman (“No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics”), Daniel Raim (“Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen”), Lisa Hurwitz (“The Automat”) … and more! Check out the complete Festival lineup and information about pass and ticket sales at: https://www.psfilmfest.org/film-festival-2022 Hidden Gem: ABC Africa Influences mentioned in the pod: Sholom Aleichem Marc Chagall Roman Vishniac
Welcome back to The Freaky Deaky! We've got a treat for you this week, as we take a look into tales, both wholesome and horrifying, from the open road! That's right, we're diving into the ever so mysterious world of Phantom Hitchhikers (Phantom Travelers). The vanishing or phantom hitchhiker is an urban legend in which people traveling by vehicle, meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle. Public knowledge of the story expanded greatly with the 1981 publication of a non-fiction book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker. In this book, the author suggests that the story can be traced as far back as the 1870s and has "recognizable parallels in Korea, Tsarist Russia, among Chinese-Americans, Mormons, and Ozark mountaineers." Similar stories have been reported for centuries across the world. Have you ever had an experience with a phantom hitchhiker? You know what to do! Submit your story via the email below! WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR STORIES! Do you have an experience with the Paranormal? Ever been abducted by Extraterrestrials, or had a 1-on-1 slap fight with Bigfoot himself? We want to hear about it! Submit your stories to be featured in our Listener Story episodes. Email Your Experience to thegang@thefreakydeaky.com, or leave a message on the dedicated TFD Voicemail Line by calling 801-997-0051. Sources From Today's Episode: Thought Catalog Ranker Wikipedia Reddit. If you're enjoying the show, please consider taking a moment to rate, review and share the show with your friends. It truly is the only way around these pesky algorithms, and it really does help us grow the show! Follow Us on Social Media For Photos, Video Shorts & Behind The Scenes Looks From Each Episode: Website: The Freaky Deaky Podcast Instagram: https://bit.ly/2HOdleo Facebook: https://bit.ly/3ebSde6 TikTok: https://bit.ly/35lNOlu YouTube: https://bit.ly/3goj7SP Twitter: https://bit.ly/3mJ8Ron TFD Merch: TFD Merch The Freaky Deaky: If you're new to the show, Welcome! The Freaky Deaky focuses on true accounts of the paranormal, the unexplained, and all things FREAKY. Hosted by 3 friends that offer wildly differing opinions on some of life's greatest mysteries. Whether you're a believer in the stories shared on this podcast, a paranormal agnostic, or a full-fledged skeptic that thinks the experiences shared within are nothing more than fabrications of an overactive mind, we hope you enjoy your time with us. The truth is, nobody knows anything. No matter what your beliefs may be, everyone is welcome in The Freaky Deaky, and we're making an effort to prove that you can believe different things without spreading hatred to those that disagree with you. Leave your ego at the door, open your mind, and enjoy your stay here in The Freaky Deaky! Recorded in Beautiful Wasilla, Alaska.
This lecture is in Memoriam of Herb Romerstein. About the lecture: When Natalie Grant (Wraga) died in November 2002 at the age of 101, few people other than family, friends, and some intelligence professionals were aware that one of the keenest minds on the horrid Soviet experience was lost to the western world. Mrs. Grant (Wraga was the surname of her husband Richard) was born in Tsarist Russia. She witnessed and survived the Russian Civil War, one of the bloodiest of modern history; trained some of the early State Department cadres of Soviet specialists; served as a Foreign Service Officer; and wed a storied former Polish counterintelligence officer with whom she partnered in producing some of the most penetrating and original studies on Soviet political warfare — specifically; deception, disinformation, and the whole panoply of active measures. One of the products of that partnership is the book Disinformation, just published by Leopolis Press. Natalie's husband Richard died in 1967 before she started drafting Disinformation. But she and Richard had been diving deep into the myriad cases of Soviet deception operations for decades, calling attention to what is now termed information warfare, fake news, etc., all of which have a pedigree dating to the earliest years of the USSR and well before. This presentation will focus on Natalie Grant's story and how she came to write such a seminal work on Soviet political warfare and the difficulties she faced in getting the right people in government, media, and academia to accept the realities of deception and disinformation. Her book couldn't get traction with publishers, notwithstanding the help of numerous intelligence friends, scholars, family members, and others, Herb Romerstein and this writer included. Given its long gestation period due to lack of publisher interest, Natalie kept on writing and revising until legal blindness made that just too difficult. Fortunately, Leopolis Press brought her efforts to fruition, almost twenty years after her passing. Disinformation is presented to the reader by Leopolis Press as she wrote it, other than the necessary copy-editing process and the need to handle the vagaries of transliteration of the myriad Russian personalities and place names. About the speaker: Dr. Dziak is a consultant in the fields of intelligence, counterintelligence, counter-deception, and national security affairs. He has served over five decades as a company president and as a senior intelligence officer and senior executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the Defense Intelligence Agency, with long experience in counterintelligence, hostile deception, counter deception, strategic intelligence, weapons proliferation intelligence, and intelligence education. He received his Ph.D. in Russian history from Georgetown University, is a graduate of the National War College, and is a recipient of numerous defense and intelligence awards and citations. He was the co-developer and co-director of the master's degree program in Strategic Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence School, the original predecessor to the current National Intelligence University. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of World Politics, and has taught at the National War College, National Intelligence University, Georgetown University, and The George Washington University; and lectures on intelligence, military affairs, and security issues throughout the US and abroad. Dr. Dziak is the author of the award-winning Chekisty: A History of the KGB, numerous other books, articles, and monographs, including The Military Relationship Between China and Russia, and Soviet Perceptions of Military Power. He currently is preparing a book on foreign counterintelligence systems.
The Plough and Stars hosts discuss the pre-revolutionary conditions of Tsarist Russia and the conditions that led up to the revolution, from the unique position of the Russian Empire in terms of ethnicity, to the freeing of the serfs.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/ploughandstars)
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
