Category Archives: Culture & history

The Eider Book is here!!

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Finally, it has been printed and delivered to Kandalaksha. Here we are after unloading nearly two tons of books (900 Russian ones and 500 English copies, over two kilos each):

The author (center), the typesetter (left), and I, the humble translator (right) in my home office, where the bulk of the books is presently stored

Actually, they arrived two or even three weeks ago but I was a bit busy with teaching English and then buying/registering a “new” car to make a timely announcement. 

See the book description at www.alexandra-goryashko.net/en_eider_book.htm. 

The cost of the English version is 50 dollars/Euros plus shipping (another $35-40). Free (except for shipping) from those who sponsored the book while it was being written. If interested in purchasing it please write to manfriday@yandex.ru.

A few dozen of them stayed in St. Petersburg and some went to Moscow, and you can pick them up there if convenient. Please write to me for details.

The City Day June 30 at the Monastery Cape

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The festivities start at 12:30 and include historic reconstruction, the sale of local arts and crafts, and a sailing regatta.

A good opportunity to meet the active part of the local society for anyone for whatever reason is interested in Kandalaksha.

(Photos are from last year’s City Day.)

 

 

The City Day June 30 at the Monastery Cape

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The festivities start at 12:30 and include historic reconstruction, the sale of local arts and crafts, and a sailing regatta.

A good opportunity to meet the active part of the local society for anyone for whatever reason is interested in Kandalaksha.

(The rest of the story went south because of a screw up with the site.)

The most spectacular of Kandalaksha’s ruins is set to be exploded and leveled

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Photo by Dr. Morita. August 2018.

The Officers’ House, built in late 1930s, was abandoned in 2010, suffered from a series of fires, and up to now has been standing as the most spectacular of local ruins. Recently a decision to bring it down by a series of explosions and demolish it starting October 15 was announced. I’m truly sorry to see this monument to the Soviet epoch go. Here are a few photos by Alexandra from our last visit there in September this year..

The facade is there. I’m neither an architect nor a civil construction economist but isn’t a building restorable as long as the facade and the walls are there? Perhaps restoration takes more subtlety and flexibility, compared to leveling things and building anew, than we Russians are capable of?

The roof is gone, and the central stage is exposed..

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“Stepping on Bones – Solovki and Russia’s Past” radio broadcast by BBC

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Natalia Golysheva, a BBC correspondent whose grandfather was a Gulag prisoner, visited Solovki in June 2018. She joined pilgrims on their journey to the far-off skits, heard from local residents and spoke to the granddaughter of perhaps the most famous Gulag survivor Dmitry Likhachov asking her what Solovki represents in modern day Russia.

Among other things, Natalia explores the conflict between, on the one hand, the monastery, which is said to try to erase the traces of the prison history of the place, and, on the other, historians and human rights activists, who want Solovki preserved as a Gulag memorial.

«Stepping on Bones – Solovki and Russia’s Past». See the BBC site: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxgtj

Rock concert and Arctic cooking festival in Kirovsk on August 4 2018

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Little Wood 2018 festival is happening in Kirovsk on August 4 2018. The event begins at 4pm. Location: Stadium Tirvas. The festival features several local and one rock group from Petrozavodsk as well as Arctic cooking, which I assume includes lots of fish and deer meat. The weather, with daytime temperatures way above 20C, is especially conducive for visiting such an event, and it is still quite light at night.

Why is Russia like it is?

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Here is a comprehensive yet of manageable size, profound yet easy to read article by Martin Levine, former Foreign Service Officer, explaining why Russia is what it is with all her peculiarities, which are likely to make our lives more difficult than they have to be for a long time to come. I stumbled onto it on Quora.com

I have spent a few months in Russia so I maybe understand their attitude a little bit.

The Russians have a set of issues that make it difficult for them to relate to the rest of the world, not just the USA.

A Profound Sense of Loss

The Russians are sort of like the British. They had an Empire and they lost it. Some parts of the Soviet Union were kept there by force, an internal empire. The Uzbeks, the Ukrainians, the Kazakhs, might have preferred to do their own thing. Then of course there were the “satellite “ countries of Eastern Europe. And, the Russians had outposts in Cuba, Vietnam, Angola and elsewhere.

The link to the rest of the article >