Oppenheimer (2023) ★★★
Although Oppenheimer is a solid and historically accurate film, it is overly long – making its missed opportunities all the more glaring – and the key dramatic tension rests on speculation that was considered entirely fictional long before 1945.
One of the most frequently asked questions in alternate history discussions concerns whether China could have been first to the Industrial Revolution had Europe also – or instead – been conquered by the Mongols. Answer: It’s sort of a moot question. It seems to be quite unlikely that the Mongols were capable of conquering Europe in principle. In
Ни к одной стране судьба не была так жестока, как к России. Её корабль пошел ко дну, когда гавань была в виду. Она уже претерпела бурю, когда все обрушилось. Все жертвы были уже принесены, вся работа завершена. Отчаяние и измена овладели властью, когда задача была уже выполнена. – Уинстон Черчилль Но даже полная немецкая победа
Перепечатываю часть дискуссии на russians.sexy, где я немного потроллил либеральных националистов: Пуритане – прекрасные чуваки. Но сильно оклеветанные, в том числе в самой США, не говоря уже о СССР-России. Вот несколько интересных фактов, в основном из книги Дэвид Хакетт Фишер, “Семя Альбиона“. (1) Очень интеллектуальные – уровень грамотности даже среди самых ранних поселенцев в Америку в
“Как хорошо, что я не россиянин…” – Егор Холмогоров. Примерно такая у меня возникла реакция на новость, что мои соотечественники считают Сталина “самого выдающего человека всех времен и народов”. Но проблема в том, что россиянин – это все равно на 80% русский, как не крути, и эту проблему простым семантическим способом – не преодолеть. 1989
The Ancient Greeks Were Just the First Society to “Craftsman Literacy”
The response of much western commentary to the Russia China agreements has been scepticism that they can ever burgeon into an outright partnership because of the supposedly long history of mutual suspicion and hostility between the two countries. The Economist for example refers to the two countries as “frenemies”. To see whether these claims are
The German president has decided to teach Russia to fight with remnants of totalitarianism, and could not think of anything better than to call to repent. Original article by Alexander Romanov German president allowed himself to teach Russians to fight “remnants of totalitarianism” The German president decided to teach Russia to fight with remnants of totalitarianism,
Izvestiya runs a piece by political scientist Avigdor Eskin on historical revisionism in Eastern Europe (especially in the Baltic countries and Ukraine) pertaining to World War II. Dark Clouds of Revanchism For more than 20 years, Nazi revanchism in Eastern Europe has been allowed to roam freely in the post-Soviet space. Immediately after the break-up
In a recent poll conducted by the Levada Center, Leonid Brezhnev was revealed to be Russians’ favorite ruler of the 20th century. Do you see his era as a Golden Age, or as a zastoi? Russian Attitudes to Former Heads of State
In one of the most scandalous op-eds of the year, KP’s Ulyana Skoybeda takes the liberal Leonid Gozman to task for equating SMERSH with the SS. The original byline was later toned down, and the author offered a partial – and some insist, halfhearted – apology. The Politician Leonid Gozman Says: “A Nice Uniform is the
In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russian history professor Elena Sinyavskaya in a discussion with Alexey Ovchinnikov disputes the factual provenance of the Red Army rape of Germany. The Myth of the “Rape of Germany” was Invented by Goebbels In recent years, Victory Day has unfortunately acquired a not very pleasant tradition: the closer the holiday comes,
Hard as it is to believe, but in the wake of the Boston Bombings, many Western commentators actively trying to find the roots of the Tsarnaev brothers’ rage in Russia’s “aggression” or even “genocide” of Chechnya. This is not to deny that Chechens did not have an exceptionally hard time of it in the 1990s. That said,