George Orwell once said: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on the human face, forever.” What does Orwell mean in this quote?
Tag: war
Pilgrim’s Progress
As long-time readers know, my life has taken a lot of strange twists and turns. But the one thing I never ever thought I’d be saying about myself is that I am the world’s greatest expert on Transnistria. Yes, I know. I realize that the topic is boring or irrelevant to 99% of my readers….
Monumental Stupidity
While it’s apparently perfectly acceptable to honor American soldiers who dropped bombs on innocent civilians with two separate monuments in the same city that they attacked, the deputy mayor of Bucharest is now agitating for a small park in the city to be renamed because it honors a Soviet general. Located in northeastern Bucharest, Tolbukhin…
The First Movie Ever Made
Last week the 15th annual TIFF film festival kicked off in my old hometown of Cluj-Napoca. It reminded me of a story that I’ve wanted to tell for a long time. If you ask a film buff or historian of motion pictures about the world’s oldest movie, they’ll probably mention names like Thomas Edison, the…
Dill Heads
WORD COUNT: 530 One of the unexpected bonuses of learning Russian is discovering just how how much comedy exists in that language. I was always raised to think of Russia as a dour, dull place, but underneath that grey exterior exists a beating humorous heart. Russians engaged in fighting Ukrainians have come up with an…
Agitprop
Not too long ago, someone left an angry comment on this blog, complaining that s/he came for stories about wine and other “pleasant” subjects, and didn’t want to hear any more pro-Russian stories. All that’s fine and good, and I urge anyone who doesn’t like this site (or any other website on the internet) to…
The Curious Case of the 100 Thousand
I was feeling pretty good the other day after writing my post about the December 1 festivities when someone pointed out to me that maybe I had my history wrong. I portrayed the 1918 declaration as a heroically brave but mostly symbolic gesture by just a few people but the history books say that over…
