War and Peace redux

Having just finished up the 1500 pages of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet, I decided tha I should continue to read "big books" and that it was time for me to get back to my roots and re-read Tolstoi's War and Peace. This will be at least my third go-round at it, and I am looking forward to the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I still think that this book perfectly captures an era of Russian history--that is not exactly a rocket science deduction--but I am most interested in taking another look at Tolstoi's views on history.

Chernobyl, 1986-2011

Hard to believe that it is now the 25th anniversary of the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl. There has been a lot of coverage in the news, especially in light of the nuclear problems that are occurring at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan after the tsunami. See, for example, A Nuclear Cautionary Tales turns 25. Strange, there are still people poking around the Chernobyl Exclusion zone (much of the area is a modern-day ghost town), and there are even some residents who have returned to live there. There are a lot of answers to common questions on the IAEA site. Please note this: "The initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. Twenty-eight of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from Acute Radiation Sickness and one of cardiac arrest." From what I recall, those fireman stood above the core as it melted down and frantically directed water onto the core in an effort to reduce the magnitude of the disaster. They had to know that they were going to die from the radiation exposure.

Interesting Russian Demographics

I had to look up some numbers for a short presentation that gave recently. They were actually a bit shocking. Russia is still a big country in terms of square mileage (6.5 million sq. mi. according to state.gov, but the population is now only about 142 million (same source). Then I checked the CIA factbook:
Population growth rate: -0.465%, which was 222/233 in the world
Very surprising numbers.

С Рождеством и Новым Годом

Russian Christmas (old style) will be celebrated this first week of January. Tradition has it that it usually snows on, or around, Russian Christmas.

Nukes and Russian Posturing

Medvedev sees arms race if missile shield not agreed. That was the recent headline by BBC news. Further, the article began: "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said a new arms race could begin in the next decade if Nato and Moscow fail to agree on a joint missile shield." Really, a new arms race?

Back to the Katyn Forest

There was a recent news story, "Russian parliament: Stalin ordered Katyn massacre," last week that explained that Russia is still dealing with the repercussions of the Katyn Massacre, which occurred during World War II. Former Russian President Eltsin had initially taken steps in the direction of acknowledging Russia's responsibility for the crime, but since 2000 little had been done. Then earlier this year, there was the disaster of the Polish airliner, with key Polish government officials crashing on their way to a Katyn memorial. This happened just outside of Smolensk. (There is a wiki entry on the crash.) Now the Russian Duma has passed some sort of statement noting that yes, it was Stalin, that ordered the massacre.

Russia Burns

It has been a record-setting summer temperature-wise for most of Russia, and this has lead to the outbreak of forest fires everywhere. The most dangerous were in the western reaches of the country where much of the area had been contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl accident back in the 1980s.

Unrest in Kyrgyzstan

Trouble has again erupted in the former Soviet republic (now an independent country) of Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz Republic). Since independence in 1991, and then the subsequent Tulip Revolution of 2005, political stabiity has been difficult to come by, primarily because of ongoing corruption issues and the failure to the government to develop any sort of firm economic basis for the country's citizens.

Katyn Tragedy Redux

As if the first Katyn Forest massacre was not enough, Poland now must mourn again. A plane of Polish army and political leaders crashed in heavy fog conditions as they were on their way to a memorial service at Katyn (60 years since the original massacre in 1940 of Polish military leaders by the Soviet secret police and military on the orders of Stalin). The memorial service was to be attended by PM Vladimir Putin himself as a gesture to improving Polish-Russian relations, which have tended to be quite frosty over the years.

S novym godom

Happy New Year. I have not been very good about posting to my blog about events in Russia. Mostly because I have been swamped with grading (end of semester in December and start of semester in January). We have been having pretty good enrollments in our online HIS 241 course (History of Russia I) the past few semesters of about 20 per semester--not that many actually finish the course. HIS 242 (History of Russia II) usually enrolls fewer, about 7-10 students.
In the meantime, Russia is experiencing an economic crisis,much like most of Western Europe and the United States, but a recent article pointed out how much of the economy has turned "underground" or non-official or illegal.