Yesterday we talked about the birth of statesman Potemkin.
Today we remember the birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich, a quite brilliant Soviet composer and one of the most celebrated ones of the 20th century.
Shostakovich 1906 - 1975
Dmitri was born in Saint Petersburg. One of his most well known symphonies came during the Leningrad siege (1941-1944) and was titled after the city. It raised the spirits of many people nearing starvation and death by frostbite. Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. His music is complex and requires large scale orchestras to fully achieve the desired effect.
Life was not easy for Soviet artists. Art was, certainly during the period of Stalin (1922 - 1953), stricly regulated and could only serve the Socialist/ Communist cause. It is true that poets and other writers were under stricter scrutiny (a sentence should leave no room for interpretation contrary to socialist purpose). In music, composers managed to introduce certain elements of opposition which could not have been possible in written or printed art.
Shostakovich was denunciated twice but in the end won many prizes issued by the Soviet leadership, including the Order of Lenin and Hero of Socialist Labor.
218 years ago Grigory Potemkin was born. He is well known as the lover of Catherine the Great but he was also a military leader, statesman and nobleman.
Catherine the Great with her lover, G. Potemkin
In Imperial Russia he was born as the son of a diplomat. The same fate awaited him and he is well known as an 'anglophile', negotiating deals between Russia and England. Climbing the ladder of aristocracy, he was noted by Catherine the Great. The latter, Empress of All the Russias, appointed him commander-in-chief.
The notion of Potemkin villages.
A village where fake settlements are being erected to impress someone is called a Potemkin village. A historical myth suggests such villages were erected to fool Empress Catherine II to her visit to the Crimea. In her trips around Russia, Catherine II wanted to observe and inspect the welfare of the Russian people.
Knowing that all was not well in Russia and to improve his standing with the Empress, Potemkin is alleged to have given orders to erect fake façades, in order to impress as opposed to disappoint Catherine.
Today, 100 years ago, the Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin died after being shot at the Kiev Opera House.
Stolypin was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. He exercised this function from 1906 to 1911. He aimed to repress revolutionary groups, a continuing threat to Imperial Russia and its Tsar. He also aimed to reform the agrarian sector by creating a class of market-oriented smallholding landowners. With this aim he hoped to amicably settle the continuing peasant unrest.
His political agenda and vision were never truely implemented. He travelled to Kiev to attend an opera with the Tsar and his family. Eventhough he was aware of assassination plots he refused to wear his bullet-proof vest. On 14 September he was shot in the chest twice while attending the opera. He was very brave in his last concious moments and allegedly claimed he was 'happy to die for the Tsar'. Today, 100 years ago, Stolypin died of his injuries.
In 2008, Pyotr Stolypin came second in the polls for 'greatest Russian', with Alexander Nevsky taking first place.
The Kiev Opera House where Stolypin was assassinated
The Russian city of Bryansk is liberated from the nazi's.
During the Second World War (Great Patriotic War), Bryansk was occupied by the Germans. Before this war claims were made on the city by both the Belarusian People's Republic and the Bolshevik forces with the latter eventually gaining control. The city is located some 400 kilometers south-west of Moscow. The Germans occupied Bryansk from 6 October 1941 to 17 September 1943, nearly 2 years. The city was heavily damaged by fighting. About 60,000 Soviet partisans were active in and around Bryansk, inflicting heavy losses on the German army. Soon after its liberation, Bryansk became the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast. Today approximately 415,000 people are inhabitant of Bryansk.
Bryansk is located near the Belarussian and Ukrainian border
Monument for the victims of the War
a Russian nuclear submarine of the type Delta IV also carries the name Bryansk.
The railroad between the People's Republic of China and Kazakhstan gets completed at Dostyk, adding a sizeable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.
Dostyk, Kazakhstan
This Eurasian Land Bridge currently comprises the Trans-Siberian Railway, which runs through Russia and is sometimes called the Northern East-West Corridor, and the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge, running through China and Kazakhstan. As of November 2007, about 1% of the $600 billion in goods shipped from Asia to Europe each year were delivered by inland transport routes.
The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow.
Occupation would last only a bit more than a month though. Moscow was a deserted city, it was difficult to supply the troops, and eventually fires forced Napoleon out.
The French emperor ordered the Kremlin be blown up. Fortunately this decision was hardly implemented. Where explosions and fires did threaten invaluable buildings, the weather gave a helping hand by extuingishing the fires through rains. Weather would again play a key role for the Russian people some 129 years later in a similar, yet so different, combat situation...
After Napoleon had to flee from Moscow, the Russian and Prussian troops hunted him down all the way back to Paris in France. They also freed the Dutch and Belgian territories from French occupation. After this, in 1813 and under the Treaty of London, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was founded. This 'Union' comprised the Dutch and Belgian territories. In 1830 Belgium split from this United Kingdom after increasing tension with the ruler Willem. Belgium thus became an independent state.
The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.
Luna 2 was the second of the Soviet Union's Luna Programme spacecraft launched to the Moon. It was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. It successfully impacted with the lunar surface east of Mare Serenitatis near the craters Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus.
Luna 2 was similar in design to Luna 1, a spherical spacecraft with protruding antennae and instrument parts. The instrumentation was also similar, including scintillation counters, geiger counters, a magnetometer, Cherenkov detectors, and micrometeorite detectors. There were no propulsion systems on Luna 2 itself.
When the trip to New York in the USA was over I started to intensify my interest for Russia. The seeds for love had been planted some time before though.
30 July 2008
In early 2008 I started being interested in aviation. With a big but quiet international airport nearby (Oostende) I could do 'field-studies', watching planes from nearby and admiring them. We have a few passenger flights here but the focus is mainly cargo. I got used to seeing the American-built planes of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and the European-built Airbus planes. I especially liked the big types and thinking about how far these planes had travelled, what they all had seen. Of course I had heard before of the Russian plane makes such as Tupolev, Ilyushin and Antonov, but I had seen none before. However, I did do a look-up on one specific plane type that comes here occaissionally, the Antonov 124. It is bigger than the American Boeing 747 jumbo jet and is very impressive indeed, carrying cargo.
Some days before 30 July there was such a plane in Oostende airport, but it flew at night and so it wasn't exactly worth to see it. But then, on one hot Wednesday-afternoon, a Volga-Dnepr operated Antonov 124 came flying in from Arkhangelsk. I was immediately very much impressed by its size, shape and distinct Russian-ness. It came from Arkhangelsk, in the north of Russia, and made a stop here in Oostende to 'swallow' (one of its cool characteristics, see photo) some cargo before taking off to Casablanca in Morocco in the evening.
This hot Wednesday afternoon was the start of a fascination, not only of the plane in question, but of the biggest country in the world.
Some photos of that day:
On approach to Oostende
Ready for touchdown
Bent down and ready to eat cargo
Continuing interest in the Antonov 124 and growing interest in Russia as a whole
The interest for this big plane didn't cease to exist. I found out more and more and with it, the interest for Russia grew. I started associating Russia with 'alternative and bigger', the sort of association I still have today. Every time an AN124 came flying in, I tried to capture it, either by taking photos or by recording videos.
Antonov 124 shining in the early morning sun after a trip from Trinidad & Tobago (+/- 6AM)
Movie at the end of November 2008 showing an Antonov take off procedure
I was very fortunate that in May 2010 I had the opportunity to see an Antonov 124 up close. This was one of my many dreams to be fulfilled in life. It was difficult because it required persistent urging, but in the end the airport authorities gave in and drove me to board a Ukrainian Antonov 124 (UR-82072) that had arrived from a German Airforce base. It was amazing. The main cargo room looked like a massive hall, the cockpit is massive and it has so many distinct features which make it unique. It was just so big and impressive. I was very happy to have finally succeeded and see one up close.
Some pictures from my visit on an Antonov Design Bureau Antonov 124
Flying in from Germany with its impressive landing gear extracted
A lot of wind to deal with, but no problem for this Russian beast!
Up close
Cargo area
The cockpit: this plane is flown by 6 people, excluding crew
Soviet Russia and planning my trip to Moscow
The Antonov 124 was built in Ukraine, but at the time the Soviet Union still existed. I had long been interested in the Cold War. I knew quite a lot about the American side of things, but with the Antonov impulse I started to develop a dinstinct interest in the other side of the story: the Soviets. It was something completely new to me, although not completely unrelated to my interest in modern history. Watching Victory Day parades was impressive and added more enthousiasm on learning the history of this particular country. Plans were pretty quickly in place to travel to Moscow with all its special buildings, but first I had to pass all my exams at university. With the potential Moscow trip in mind I managed to do just that and the trip was planned for the end of August - early September. During the summer I showed specific interest in the communist/socialist-era (1917-1991). A scare for my trip came in mid-summer 2010 when forest fires erupted and left Moscow in thick smog. For a moment it looked like the trip would not go ahead, but with about 2 weeks to go, the smog lifted. As someone interested in WWII I was especially interested in seeing the military side of things, but I wanted to see the classical Moscow tourist attractions as well of course (such as the St.-Basil Cathedral, Kremlin, VDNKH, Christ the Savior Cathedral, etc.). Thanks to the help of a Muscovite I managed to plan ahead what I wanted to do some weeks in advance. On 30 August 2010, 25 months after the initial impulse of my liking for Russia, I nervously but gratefully boarded a Brussels Airlines plane to go on my way to Moscow's Domodedovo Airport! The first time on Russian soil, but with so much still to learn.
The plane crash in Russia, wiping out nearly the entire ice hockey team of Yaroslavl, leaves the country saddened. President Medvedev ordered a major and urgent overhaul of domestic airlines in response to Wednesday's events. The airliners of Russia (with names such as 'Ilyushin', 'Antonov', 'Yakovlev' and 'Tupolev') essentially do what our planes do: they fly, they have wings, they have cockpits, they have engines and they carry passengers or cargo. But while the essentials might be similar to our Western-type planes (most notably Boeing and Airbus) there are some distinct differences. This is where the love for Russia originated from for this Belgian blogger.
Early roots...
Of course I had heard from Russia before, when I was just a small child. Although I cannot be sure, Russia must first have come to my active knowledge when studying a map of the world. There the country was described as the biggest. As a child, certainly for me, it was no surprise I liked the biggest things out there: everything jumbo fascinated me. So naturally I kept the notion of Russia alive. But I didn't do a lot with it.
In secondary school I had geography tasks, describing the country whichever I wanted. It wasn't Russia but Japan. A similar assignement for my English class directed me to Monaco instead of Russia. So to say I was in love with this country at the time of secondary school was a long shot.
In history classes of the last year of secondary school (2005-2006) I did learn about people like Stalin, processes such as the New Economic Policy of Lenin, the five-year-plan of Stalin, collectivisation etc. But the major attention for me was always nazi-Germany. As someone taking an interest in World War II I always found it interesting to find things out about our neighbouring country. My interest very much went to Hitler, to the allied invasion of Western Europe and to all sorts of Allied (excluding Soviet-Union) - Axis relationships.
Mind you, the educational system did put the emphasis on exactly that. The system of the Soviet-Union was perceived as a sort of necessary evil to teach us. A sort of alternative, but by no means truely important.
Early university years and heading to the West
When I started university in 2006 as a lawstudent my attention shifted towards the United States of America. This interest slowly grew in my final year of secondary school and lasted till around my final bachelor year (2008-9). In January 2010 I visited New York city. An 8 hour plane trip that headed me to the land of dreams for many. It was a nice holiday in that I had never been further away from home than before and that it was a welcome relief from tiring exams. But in essence what I saw was a big busy city, like we may have Brussels here in Belgium, with tall buildings everywhere and the mentality being very similar to ours. It was a fun experience to be in America and the January month was very mild for us. It was nice to see iconic scenes from the movies with my own eyes and to think of everything that happened there. Some of the highlights were certainly the NHL game -which my brother gave to me as a delayed Christmas present- and the visit to the Intrepid -a flightcarrier with all sorts of fighter jets on it-.
After the trip ended both my brother and I felt as if we had seen NYC. It is often said though that NYC is not the USA, a quote I'm certainly willing to accept. The USA has a lot of beautiful things to offer (thinking mainly of natural reserves), but for now we had seen it. I needed a different sort of thing.
On Wednesday 7 September a charted Yak-42 airplane crashed very shortly after take off from Yaroslav's Tunoshna Airport.
The plane was charted by Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, one of the best known hockey teams in the Russian competition. Lokomotiv's chartered Yak-42 jet, which had a crew of eight and carried 37 passengers, including natives of Canada, Latvia, Belarus, Sweden, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Two people, Lokomotiv winger Alexander Galimov and flight attendant Alexander Sizov, survived the crash and were hospitalized with severe burns.
This news highlights the current unsafe environment in Russian aviation. While a lot of passenger companies have changed their flightequipment to western standards (introducing Airbus and Boeing in the fleet), a large number of old and ill-maintained soviet-built airplanes remain in service. The Tupolev 154 was already grounded after a few crashes and incidents in quick succession (one killing the Polish president), and also other types have had to endure criticism or an outright ban. President Medvedev is pushing to modernize the Russian air industry and make it safer along with it.
Given the media-coverage of this air disaster, reminiscent of when a plane carrying the Manchester United football team crashed, there is certainly going to be a quick and strict response.
For now, the nation -big on ice hockey- grieves the Yaroslavl Hockey team, one of the most successful in the competition.
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