Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out as well soon. Not especially my forte from what I've read on the thread, but then a great chance to learn something new about the subject. :DL

Unlike apparently some others. :nope:

That's really interresting. Thanks for sharing.

My ex's grandma worked for Pasternak, but she didn't know much about her family tree beyond that.

For 8 months in 1917 there was a coalition government in Russia under Alexander Kerensky that included both groups that would becomes known as the Reds and Whites, and began democratic reforms. This fell however when elections that were scheduled were not held.

This was perhaps of the seed of the real Russian that we all lost.

Not really quite so simple, but yeah, the failure of the transitional government is a major historical moment. The Bolsheviks were not, by the way, part of that government, so it's not quite accurate to say that it included both Reds and Whites - it did, broadly, include liberals, moderates and some socialists. They were, on all accounts, well-intentioned but couldn't come to any sort of agreement. The elections fell through not because the Directorate didn't want them, but because noone could push through a definite plan. There were simply no effective, visionary politicians among them.

In fact the Bolshevik success in the revolution is one of history's greatest coups by the underdog - or greatest flukes. Contrary to how Soviet propaganda portrayed them, they were almost irrelevant up to that point. Ironically, that worked in their favour. Laying the ground for the revolution, the aborted 1905 revolution, the years of radicalism/terrorism and political activity, the overthrow of the Tsar - the Bolsheviks had almost nothing to do with any of that. They were underestimated by the authorities and little of the reprisals, arrests, scrutiny and persecution against radicals in Russia was directed at them. The Bolsheviks were simply not taken all that seriously or thought of as a threat - and certainly next to wealthy liberals, widespread social revolutionaries, leftist and anarchist radicals who were shooting and bombing authorities at every opportunity, they looked weak and tame. They were not the most important, nor largest, nor best funded, nor the most Socialist, nor the most radical or the most idealistic. Lenin and Trotsky were certainly ideologues to some extent, but objectively speaking they were hardly 'true' Marxists - they bent socialist ideology as they saw fit. Cricially, the Bolsheviks were ruthless, efficient organizers that were able to covertly build up a network of cells throughout the army and among worker organizations just as the Tsarist regime was collapsing/had collapsed. They had a small but exceptionally well-run propaganda machine. And then a weak, ineffectual transitional government of the Directorate put all the cards in the Bolsheviks hands without even realizing it. What follows is an ingenious move by Lenin's and Trotsky's (or maybe they should be in the other order) lean, efficient organization that, by design or fluke, played all those cards right. The rest is history.

Thanks CCIP for the better write up than I could do before running to class. :salute:

Kerensky's goverment has to be one of the biggiest "what ifs" of the 20th century. :hmmm:

The time period I'm thinking of is ~1905(post revolution) to 1914 (pre-WWI). The Russian economy was really starting to hum along, then WWI happened.:dead: I tell you, I think WWI was the stupidist war with reprocutions we are still living with.

It would have been interesting if the Russians managed to stay out of WWI, thus the Bolsheviks never come to power. Just think how powerful Russia could be today!:o (assuming they never adopt communism) All of her natural resources within her boarders, not being wasted or mismanaged.:hmmm:

We had a discussion on time in class, what if Russia had adopted Islam instead of Christianity.:o

ditto! It would be interesting to get some of the other Russian opinions in here.

That's still a big "if"! While I think some forward-thinking Russian industrialists definitely deserve credit, I don't think mismanagement was a purely communist trait. And the fact that so much money and property was in the hands of aristocrats who had more interest in clinging to their status than moving the country forward really wasn't helping. There was, I think, a revolution still in the works - but it could've been a much more peaceful, gradual and liberal one. There needed to be a transition of power and some measure of transition of wealth and status.

Otherwise, in the late Tsarist Russia, corruption was as rife as ever. Nicholas II's weak, nervous government had only made it worse. Rasputin (who near the end of his life was selling ministerial titles on the Tzar's behalf) was just one of the many examples of how wrong things could go.

Likewise, the Bolshevik government DOES deserve some credit for management. You might not agree with their methods, but they did, at least initially, solve a whole bunch of problems... and then created a myriad of new ones, that eventually led to mass starvation, repression, etc. etc. What they did have, though, was big cojones to tackle economic and social issues that nobody before them - neither Nicholas, nor Stolypin, nor Kerensky - would touch with a 40-foot pole. And while collectivization was largely a mass disaster, many of the Bolshevik industrial programs were a resounding success. WWII showed the fruits of that success. Tzarist Russia started and fought WWI on much better geographic, political and military terms than Stalin did WWII, but they lost spectacularly. I think some credit IS due to Soviet industrial planning and ability to manage diverse, disparate populations that WWII went very differently.

If WWI didn't happen, it'd be a very interesting world we'd be living in indeed. But Russia would probably not even be the biggest difference. Russia would still be facing many of the same choices it faced after the war - to Westernize or cling to its own way of things; to embrace capitalism and liberal democracy, or experiment with socialism; to keep its imperial ambitions or develop its vast resources and territories at home. Those choices were still being made in the 1920s by the Soviet government, which was a much more fluid, pragmatic body than most give it credit for - it was only after the rise of Stalin that the whole system clapped shut and the choice for totalitarianism, vast central planning, and focus on developing a socialist system within Soviet borders was made. Even after the Bolshevik revolution, the Stalinist Soviet state we know of today wasn't a guarantee (and Stalin's own rise was itself a big fluke). So WWI wasn't what decided everything either, although it did change everything in a big way. And of course, WWI wasn't something that showed up on Europe's doorstep overnight - took decades to get there.

Either they would not have stopped at the Elbe, or WWIII would have started on the 14 of May 1948. :hmmm:

Otherwise, it's also important to remember that there weren't just one or two historical points of change in Russian history. Just as big as what-ifs would be... what if Russia wasn't invaded by Mongols? By Napoleon? By Hitler? What if Ivan the Terrible didn't leave a terrible mess behind himself and the Rurik dynasty continued? What if Peter the Great lived longer, or instead didn't rule at all? What if Alexander II wasn't assassinated?

Of these, the last one is possibly the biggest "what if" for the survival of "Lost Russia" and a more moderate, successful path. Alexander II was an idealist and reformist, eager to catch up with modern values and create a fairer, more constitutional society. He abolished serfdom and helped promote freedom of speech; his court was full of progressive thinkers and liberal idealists from the West. He had an ambitious reform program. Ironically, it was this attitude to freedom that helped radical nihilist and socialist groups run rampant. They were the ones that tried to kill him multiple times, as the representative of the authority they hated, and ultimately they succeeded. His son, Alexander III, was a more conventional, conservative thinker to begin with - but he was also deeply affected by his father's assassination and quickly drew the connection between reform and radicalism. As a result, he backtracked and undid a lot of the reforms of his father. He went after the radical groups that killed his father and liberal, freedom-oriented elements in society in general - which ironically only created more radical groups. He broke up and chased away the progressive thinkers of Alexander II's court. Alexander III's Russia was a much more conservative, backwards-looking place, authoritarian and restrictive. That in itself, in my view, was a big problem. Had Alexander II lived and had his reforms continued, Russia could've been on par with the west socially before the 20th century and its troubles really hit.

The other thing that people forget is that things kept changing. Even the Soviet times were not just one big blob of Stalinism and total oppression. The USSR in 1923 and 1937 were VERY different countries. The USSR of 1940 and 1948 - I needn't even mention. The USSR in 1950 and 1960 were very different countries. The USSR in 1983 and 1988 were very different countries. Russia in 1991 and 1995 were very different countries. And so on and so forth...

Japanese cooking videos
 

For anyone interested in Japanese cooking, there are 4 lovely videos here with english subtitles on japanese cooking by a London-based chef.

For those familiar with it you'll see that the spirit of Japan breezes through these videos.

sushi:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...=ILCNETTXT3486

rice bowls:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...=ILCNETTXT3486

tempura:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...=ILCNETTXT3486

miso soup:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...=ILCNETTXT3486

YUMMY, :DL

Remember the Techno Viking?
 

Techno Viking became famous on the Internet because of this video:
Techno Viking

This caused an Internet meme, as you can see in the second video
The Story Of Technoviking - Crowdfunding Campaign

Now 10 years later, Techno Viking has successfully filed for injunctive relief and compensation for damages at a Berlin court but his file on non-pecuinary compensation was turned down.

The movie maker of the first video now plans to shoot a documentary about the whole issue as he tells us in the second video in beautiful German-English, because the movie maker needs money to pay all his legal costs:arrgh!:

I don't get it. The guy who danced in front of a camera during a public event 10 years ago is complaining that his image is splashed all the over the internet?

Crazy people...crazy philosophy :hmm2: