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Photo: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte
Russian police does not take kindly to protests, even those carried out by toys and dolls:
Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".
"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."
Link - via Metafilter
I grew up during the Cold War, with an image of Moscow as a drab, grey, cold, Soviet citadel. But the Cold War has been over for 20 years! This video shows the city as beautiful and colorful, both historical and modern. -via Everlasting Blort
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In 1948, the Russian dance troupe Berezka formed, taking its name from the Russian word for birch tree. Audiences were mesmerized by its special step, hidden beneath the dancers’ long, flowing dresses. They appear to actually float over the floor! Skip to about 1:30 in the video to see this effect.
Link -via The Presurfer
From what I’ve been able to piece together from a commenter at 9GAG and a few travel books, there’s a bar called The Real McCoy in the Barrikadnaya neighborhood of Moscow that sells vodka bottle loaves like this. It has all of the components of a complete and nutritious breakfast.
Link -via That’s Nerdalicious!
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Russia seems like a chaotic place to live, with giant pigeons lurking around every corner, blighted urban landscapes full of dogs getting it on, and an extremely diverse citizenry trying their best to act like nothing’s wrong.
These photos capture a side of Russia few outside the country ever get to see, and each image has an interesting story to tell.
Okay, we’ve got to sell these Ladas. Guys, fall in. You, take this clarinet thing. And you, here’s a guitar. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know how to play. Every sound that we make is going to get dubbed over.
-via Borepatch
Sergei Ganyushev, a 25-year-old from Arkhangelsk, Russia, was stranded on an island in the White Sea only 150 kilometers from the Arctic Circle for 16 days. He set out along on October first to gather seaweed, but his boat sprang a leak.
Sergei managed to swim to Malaya Sennukha, one of the small stony islets dotting the area. There he survived on seaweed and rainwater, taking shelter in a makeshift dwelling of stones and a few wooden planks.
He said he gave up looking for passing ships three days before rescue and was about to take his own life when the helicopter flew overhead. When he heard the rotor, he managed to get up and wave down the aircraft.
Curiously, no one had reported Sergei missing. The helicopter was looking for survivors from another seafaring incident, in which a motorboat with a monk and a worker from a nearby Orthodox Christian monastery sank in the vicinity of the archipelago last Thursday.
The monk was found dead, but the search continues for his companion. Ganyushev was treated for hypothermia and malnutrition. Link -via Arbroath
This is a triangular letter. During World War II, Russian soldiers folded their letters home in a way that required no envelope -it’s actually quite easy. And it was also easy for censors to open and read them before sending them on. Families back home were excited to see this shape arrive in the mail. Read about the letters and the men who wrote them at Poemas del río Wang. Link -via Metafilter
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DeviantArt user Santani creates unbelievably cool fantasy creatures with fabric, clay and fur. The designs are simply amazing and incredibly realistic even though the creatures are obviously imaginary.
Fans of abandoned places and urban exploration are in for a treat, with a look at an aircraft graveyard at Vozdvizhenka air base in the Primorsky Krai region of eastern Russia, just 40 miles from the Chinese border. There is no security to stop urban explorers, just the aircraft sitting unused, with grass growing under them and nature doing its best to reclaim the base. See more pictures at UrbanGhosts. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Maks Maydachenco)
If you haven’t taken the mental_floss quiz on Soviet leaders yet (and want to), go do that before reading this post, because it contains spoilers. Neatoramanaut Stubb left a comment that blew my mind.
I’m pretty sure most russians don’t consider Malenkov part of the line of sovereign leaders, and that Khrushchev followed Stalin. It all has to do with the hair, you see. Ever since Catherine the Great took over for Peter the Great, the pattern has been:
Catherine I – Full-haired
Peter II – Bald (shaved for wig)
Anna I – Full-haired
Ivan IV – Bald (infant Emperor)
Elizabeth – Full-haired
Peter III – Bald (shaved for wig)
Catherine II – Full-haired
Paul I – Bald(ing)
Alexander I – Full-haired
Nicholas I – Bald
Alexander II – Full-haired
Alexander III – Bald
Nicholas II – Full-haired
Lenin – bald
Stalin – Full-haired
Khrushchev – Bald
Brezhnev – Full-haired
Andropov – Bald(ing)
Chernenko – Full-haired
Gorbachev – Bald
Yeltsin – Full-haired
Putin – Bald(ing)
Medvedev – Full-hairedThis also dictates that the next President should be bald, giving Putin an excellent opportunity to regain (formal) power. Especially since his main opponent, Mikhail Prokhorov has a head full of hair…
A quick check revealed this pattern is correct, explained at NPR in a 2008 post. However, Stubb’s list goes back much further into Tsarist Russia. Link
(Image credit: KoS)
You might not know as much as you think you do when it comes to the USSR. In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you are challenged to name all the leaders of our old Cold War rival. There were 8 leaders of the former Soviet Union, and the 3 leaders of the new Russian Federation -so far. Can you name them all in ten minutes? I got ten of them, but could not remember the current president! Oh, and spelling counts, which is what ate up my time, but you only need the surname. Link
In 1959, ten people went on a skiing expedition to a Russian mountain named Kholat Syakhl, camping along the way there. One turned back due to illness, and the other nine were later found dead.
Caught in a snowstorm, the trekkers veered off course and decided to set up camp on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl – at 5pm on February 2, judging from their photos and diary entries. They went to sleep. Then something horrific occurred, the nature of which we can but guess at. Some have suggested that it was an avalanche, but others aren’t satisfied with this explanation. Only one thing is known for sure. Whatever it was, it was serious enough to make the skiers leap up in the middle of the night and escape from their tent by cutting it open from the inside. Some didn’t even bother to put on clothes or boots as they ventured outside into the bitter cold.
When the bodies were finally recovered, some had unexplained wounds, and the tongue of one woman was missing. Read about the investigation and the various theories about what happened to the campers, at Environmental Graffiti. Link
When I was in school, the only things you could do to show off your originality was to switch up your clothes, hair and make up. One Russian school decided to let the kids have a little more fun by allowing each one to draw up their own background on the chalk boards. The results are delightfully fun so be sure to check out the other pics at the link.
Photo Credit: AP
Not that one is to believe that two heads are better than one… especially when it comes to snakes! Zookeepers in the Ukraine’s Skazka Zoo have experienced a doubling of visitors since this two-headed albino snake arrived on loan from Germany. Each head is able to act and think on its own. Zookeeper Rusian Yakovenko stated that sometimes the two heads will fight for food, not realizing that it has the same destination. They’ll even steal food from each other, making feedings interesting, to say the least. Workers state that the three-year-old two foot long snake is quite a handful. The private zoo is in the resort of Yalta on the Black Sea.
Photographer William Carrick and his partner John MacGregor traveled throughout Russia between 1857 and 1878 taking portraits of Russians of all stations and occupations. These pictures form an ethnographic overview of Russia in the 19th century, and are a historical treasure. This picture shows a young vendor with his hand-carved wooden abacuses for sale. See a varied collection of Carrick’s photographs at Environmental Graffiti. Link
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The Soviet Union had a terrifying system for handling both criminals and political dissidents we know by one word: Gulag.
From 1930 until 1960, Russian authorities ran a tightly-controlled network of forced labor camps, known as Gulags. Gulag was actually a Russian acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies, and these camps were often freezing, and forced prisoners to work and live in harsh conditions with very little food. Thriving under both Stalin and in the aftermath of WWII, Gulags housing petty criminals and political prisoners alike. The Gulag network was officially dismantled in 1960, destroying (almost) all of the prison camps, but their legacy lives on today – in memory and in the formation of many towns in the Russian Arctic.
Today most of those sites are totally gone, with little evidence remaining. However, there is a Gulag museum in Perm, and a KGB museum in the legendary Lubyanka building in Moscow that once housed the city’s political detainees. Read more about them at Atlas Obscura. Link
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An all-female religious sect has sprung up in Russia with a rather unusual belief that Vladimir Putin is actually Paul the Apostle. I can see why. I mean, just look at him all macho and shirtless. Surely you agree (heck the guy’s even met Reagan!):
"According to the Bible, Paul the Apostle was a military commander at first and an evil persecutor of Christians before he started spreading the Christian gospel," the sect’s founder, who styles herself Mother Fotina, said.
"In his days in the KGB, Putin also did some rather unrighteous things. But once he became president, he was imbued with the Holy Spirit, and just like the apostle, he started wisely leading his flock. It is hard for him now but he is fulfilling his heroic deed as an apostle."
Link (Photo: Ria Novosti)
Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps blog posted this map that accompanied the Russian translation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It has a distinctly Slavic motif, including log homes for the Hobbit dwellings (instead of those cute Hobbit houses).
Link – via The Map Room | More Hobbit Maps
A scientist in Russia, Vladimir Obryvkov of the Voronezh State University of Agriculture, found a stray five-eared cat and brought it home to his family.
The scientist, who has been studying animal anomalies for years, took the cat to X-ray its unusual ears but decided to take her home to his children.
Obryvkov said that the cat named Luntya also has big paws but her behavior does not differ from that of normal cats.
He also said that he wants to mate his new pet with a four-eared cat living in Vladivostok to create a new breed of these fluffy animals.
There may be a market for a breed with multiple ears, but who has time to scratch them all? Link -via Arbroath
Phil Rosenthal created “Everybody Loves Raymond,” one of the funniest and most successful sitcoms of all time. Indeed, here in America, everybody loves Raymond – but in Russia? Now that’s a story that only Phil can tell:
Phil Rosenthal created one of the most successful sitcoms of all-time, “Everybody Loves Raymond.” He was a bona-fide expert in his craft. And then…. the Russians called. In the hilarious EXPORTING RAYMOND, a genuine fish-out-of-water comedy that could only exist in real life, Phil travels to Russia to help adapt his beloved sitcom for Russian television. The Russians don’t share his tastes. They don’t seem to share his sense of humor. But what Phil did discover was a real comedy, filled with unique characters and situations that have to be seen to be believed.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] to see the trailer of Exporting Raymond | Official website
Scientists in Russia have developed techniques for successfully farming “bester” (a hybrid of beluga and sterlet) and successfully harvesting the roe without killing the sturgeon.
Rather than being culled, like elsewhere in the world, the female fish is what can best be called “milked”, gently and harmlessly. Each time a fish is milked it can produce up to a quarter of its weight in caviar. This approach not only makes caviar more accessible but also helps preserve this increasingly scarce and beautiful fish… Russia halted commercial harvesting in 2002. Five years later, the sale of sturgeon and black caviar were banned altogether. Poaching escalated, and so did the prices. Now, the country is trying to return to the heady days of Soviet caviar abundance.
A video at the link illustrates the process, which appears to be similar to that used in this country at state-sanctioned fisheries and trout farms. The photo comes from English Russia, which has a photoessay with several recipes utilizing caviar.
Link.
For the first time in history, beer, currently classified as food, is set to be reclassified as an alcoholic drink in Russia. The move is a part of the Kremlin’s war on alcoholism, as beer consumption is rising in the country.
“Normalising the beer production market and classifying it as alcohol is totally the right thing to do and will boost the health of our population,” Yevgeny Bryun, the ministry of health’s chief specialist on alcohol and drug abuse, said.
“We have been talking about and have wanted such a measure for ages. I take my hat off to the parliament.”
The new law would restrict beer sales at night, ban its sale in or close to many public places such as schools, and limit cans and bottles to a maximum size of 0.33 litres.
Many Russians consider beer to be a soft drink. Link -via Arbroath
Talking about driving your point home! Pictured above is a billboard created by the government of Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, to discourage drunk driving. The text on the back side, according to English Russia, reads “Your body could have been here.”
Link via Jalopnik | Photo: English Russia
What good are spam, you say? How about saving the lives of hundreds of would-be victim of a terrorist bomber?
The woman, dubbed "The Black Widow," who Russian authorities suspect was part of the same militant group that killed 35 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday, was at a house preparing for the attack, which would have occurred on New Year’s Eve at Red Square. Instead, the woman’s mobile phone, which served as the device’s detonator, was activated hours early by a spam message wishing her a happy new year. She was killed, while a man and woman suspected of being accomplices escaped from the house.
Russian security forces told The Telegraph that phones are usually kept off until the last minute for detonation, but in this case, "the terrorists were careless."
The oldest fully wooden churches in the world are also architectural wonders. These are “multi-story, multi-cupola, single-block masterpieces.” Built 300 years ago on the Russian Kizhi island, they are called the Church of the Transfiguration and the Church of the Intercession. Read about them and see lots more pictures at Kuriositas. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Jordi Joan Fabrega)
This little feller, a European Hamster (yes, they also exist in Russia), turns out to be quite a feisty little rodent, as these two hapless Russians found out the hard way (they need the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!). In Soviet Russia, hamsters eat you!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via metafilter
At first it looks as if the Tetris L block has messed up your game in this Czech building. However, upon further investigation, the block was planned to fall this way in order to keep the bottom floors of the building from being wiped out. See more views with Google Street View. Link -via reddit
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English Russia has pictures of the offices at the Russian LEGO headquarters. Look who greets you upon entering! They have whimsical LEGO creations in almost every room. I think my favorite may be the monkey. Link -Thanks, fraulein m!
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I can’t speak Russian, which is real shame right now, because I’m really curious about these Russian novels about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The illustrations are truly bizarre, such as the above scene. There are many, many more at the link.
Link via Geekosystem
