A Site on History and Something Else
Our opponents were rather active this time. No comments, only some translations:
You can also see the flag that looks like the Ribbon of Saint George which used to be widely associated with the commemoration of World War II, but now became a symbol of radical Russian nationalists.
Our demonstration was also crowded:
As I have promised previously, here is a list of newly published books and articles on J. R. R. Tolkien’s fiction. I’ve included also indexes of the library of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, in case if anybody tries to find any of these things there: information about new books usually appears in our electronic catalogue with a delay, it’s a paradox of the out-of-date software ;-( Continue reading
In short:
The march was successful, the authorities didn’t put any obstacles, in spite of the organizers’ anxiety. There were provocations, but elsewhere; I’ve seen only the tomatoes on the asphalt. What was a surprise for me in comparison with the previous oppositional marches and rallies:
There were of course not so many people as at the ‘marches of millions’, but surely much more than at the first March of Peace six months ago, that is really fine. The type of people was mostly the same as previously—polite, friendly, with a good sense of humour. Maybe we are only sixteen per cent of the population, but these sixteen per cent are mostly those people I don’t feel ashamed to walk in one column with. Fighters against Maidan are quite different.
…On my way to the march, I met my schoolmate in the railway station, he was going to see off his friend moving to the USA. It looked symbolic, unfortunately…
Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, German Historical Institute in Moscow and Centre for French and Russian studies in Moscow are going to organize an international web-conference “Russia in the First World War: New trends and research directions” in August–October. The main goal of the conference is to discuss the modern approaches to the history of Russia’s participation in World War I, new viewpoints and interpretations, new research directions and their perspectives. The official announcement can be seen here (in Russian) 🙂
An interesting material has appeared on the website of the Doctor Web company, well-known for its antivirus software. They added a new function into their products not long ago: since version 9.0, Dr.Web antivirus for Windows can block not only websites infected with malicious software, but also websites with piratical content (a user can disable this function); the reason is that when downloading such a content, one can receive a virus in addition. A new survey was also begun on the company’s website on 5 February (in Russian only, finished on 15 February) – whether such a feature is really necessary. Its results are more than clear: although 75 percent of respondents agree that there can be viruses on piratical websites (where can’t they be?), and only 42 percent ‘certainly would not buy’ an antivirus ‘that has a function of informing the user that visiting piratic websites is undesirable (which can be disabled, however)’ (41 percent don’t mind to buy such a software), yet 56 percent of respondents are going to turn off this function and to decide themselves which websites they shouldn’t visit. What is more, 61 percent of respondents think such a function is not required in an antivirus at all (and it’s in fact reasonable because a function like this is of not so great importance for protecting the computer against viruses).
Probably these answers were an unpleasant surprise for developers of Dr.Web because as early as 17 February, two days after the survey was over, a new article was published on the company’s website (in Russian only). The text is rather incoherent, even hysterical, full of resentment and, I would say, with little respect to the participants of the survey; the author simply insists all the users of piratical software are no more than ill-mannered, screwed-up, irresponsible outcasts who can’t respect not only the others’ work, but also the others’ care about their own well-being (that is, the new function of blocking the access to piratic websites). All the arguments about often unreasonable prices for licensed software are rejected completely: the author thinks these are nothing but a pretext. I’m afraid he (or she) has absolutely no experience of salary of $500 a month or even less, which is still quite usual in Russia, for example for a school teacher in the country, or even for a scientist at a state research institution.
Honestly speaking, I didn’t expect such an approach to the clients’ opinion. Hope this article is no more than a private view of its anonymous author and its publication won’t be followed by any changes for the worse in the company’s licensing policy or in the quality of its software which I’ve used (legally) for quite a long time and still recommend to my friends and colleagues in spite of the doubtful assertions of the developers.
Christ is risen! Ha Mašiyaḥ qam! Hristo ortane!
Languages are numerous, the God is One; there’s enough of Him for everyone 🙂
Quite an interesting document, could be useful for Russian historians as well.
Russian and Ukrainian military have fired at each other in Simferopol. The details are still unclear, as well as who exactly was guilty (although it’s of course Putin’s government who’s guilty first of all because it was their decision to invade the Crimea), but several persons are wounded and at least one was killed. Ukrainians still hope to find a diplomatic decision, but the limited mobilization is going on, and the Ukrainian troops in the Crimea received an official permission to make use of arms:
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1679599.html (in Russian)
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1679594.html (in Russian)
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1679597.html (in Russian)
http://news.liga.net/news/politics/1040686-ukrainskim_voennym_v_krymu_razreshili_primenyat_oruzhie_.htm (in Russian)
One more (and almost inevitable, unfortunately) step has been made on the way to war. God help us to avoid an escalation…
The route of yesterday’s March of Peace (against the Russian invasion of the Crimea) was traditional for the oppositional marches in recent years in Moscow: from Pushkinskaia Square along the boulevards to Turgenevskaia Square with final meeting on Sakharov Avenue. There were surprisingly many people – less than at the ‘marches of millions’, but definitely more than at the autumn demonstration in favour of political prisoners. The organizers told about 50 thousand, I’m not sure it was really so, but there were certainly tens of thousands of participants, much more than 3,000 (the figure from the police reports). Taking into account how strongly have the Crimean events split the Russian society, including the oppositional part of it, this is really a good news.
Moscow authorities hoped of course that there would be much less people. They opened only one side of the boulevard for us so it was rather narrow to walk from time to time.
We were walking in one column, without any division according the political preferences. There were several communists, but this time not many – some of them support the occupation of the Crimea. There were almost no nationalists, although I’ve seen two flags of the former Russian Empire (with black, yellow and white stripes) that they usually use.
The mood was rather serious, not like at a carnival as it was at the first rallies against falsification of the elections’ results. It was nevertheless very friendly as previously – that was always an advantage of the ‘white-ribbon’ movement. There were not so many flags and placards as usually, but there were a lot of Russian and Ukrainian flags and a lot of peace symbols (☮). The placards were quite witty as usually, I hope to post the photos soon. I especially enjoyed the word putriots (Putin+patriots) 😉
We successfully failed to meet the Sergei Kurginian’s march in favour of annexation of the Crimea (it began from Trubnaia Square that was on our way), so there wasn’t any provocations.
I don’t know what will follow – and I don’t think our yesterday’s walk will make Putin and Co. change their policy toward the Crimea. But at least we said our ‘no’ (I even saw a placard with the only word no), and at the same time made sure that there are quite a lot of us, and spent several wonderful hours in the company of the people with similar world view (as said my former scientific adviser whom I met at the march, ‘I have such an impression as if I knew the people around although actually I don’t’). In today’s Russia, full of hatred, intolerance and xenophobia, such a breath of fresh air is absolutely necessary from time to time.