|
StashAugustine posted:What was Russian performance in ww1 like? I've heard plenty of stories about how incompetent the army was, especially in the early stages of the war, but tbh I've heard that about every other war they've been in. Obviously morale was low enough that the entire country collapsed and no country really covered itself in glory there, but how did they compare to the rest of the major powers? people have recommended some stuff about the eastern front but I would give Shattering Empires a shot if you wanna learn about the fight with the ottomans
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 05:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:22 |
|
|
Bro Dad posted:people have recommended some stuff about the eastern front but I would give Shattering Empires a shot if you wanna learn about the fight with the ottomans I tried to keep the Caucasus Front out of my incredibly short summation but yes it was a part of the war that was very dramatic in the moment but it was fought between two powers that were shortly about to not exist. The main thing about that part of WWI is how it would affect the future boundaries of the smaller states in the area. And, gently caress, you could write like three solid books about that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 06:13
|
|
|
If you want to imagine the Caucasus Front in WWI just think of a shot for shot remake of the big fight from They Live but it's two 90 year old men riddled with final stage cancers. I mean lots of people did braveries and lots of people died, I don't want to diminish it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 06:22
|
|
|
ive been reading the revolution of marina m and am kind of intrigued how this book promotes a very antibolshevik viewpoint by making statements that are technically correct in regard to how bad life under the bolsheviks was and at times even acknowledging that other alternatives werent exactly good but however you cut it this is a book principally concerned with how bad the red terror was because thats the main thing the characters depicted actually witness how and in what way the white terror happened is beyond that scope but like everyone knows the red terror was a thing while the white terror which directly preceded it is just sort of ehhhd aside on the grounds that the various groups running around killing all the jews werent doing it in like a coordinated way they were just independently being antisemitic to give you an idea of how this books ideology works i just finished the penultimate division and the heroine has decided to leave her on again off again boyfriend not because she just accompanied him on a business trip to buy grain from a peasant whos been deliberately hoarding it during a food crisis because he doesnt want to pay bolshevik set food prices but because said boyfriend hosed the heavily pregnant wife of said peasant because she like all russian peasant wives is chronically pregnant in an unhappy marriage and thats a shame because wow look at those bazongas bowchickabowwow theres actually another book after this one im likely to read too because i find this kind of liberal oprah club historical revisionism to be genuinely fascinating i cant imagine what the bizarro version of this story would look like as in some random bougie chick talking about life under the white russians and how awful they were to be more specific i cant imagine anyone publishing a story like this in english and it being treated as anything other than communist propaganda although if anyone knows of any such stories by all means please let me know im just having a lot of trouble reading the revolution of marina m in general as saying anything except communism went too far things werent so bad at the start of the book compared to this so clearly russia should have just given incremental change a chance instead of inevitably resorting to savagery as such orientals typically do Some Guy TT has issued a correction as of 06:39 on Feb 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 06:36
|
|
|
Which parts were you wondering about, specifically?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 06:59
|
|
|
im not sure any of it is actually wrong is the thing it all sounds like stuff that actually happened and the author did her research its just a matter of emphasis and perspective the main character being the daughter of a major liberal politician for example obviously colors a lot of the presentation like the bolsheviks are portrayed as just banning elections and unions and turning into the very tsarists they claimed to hate the exact nuances of why they did that are skipped over but theyre also not the kind of thing a political dilettante like marina m herself would necessarily be familiar with or care about theres an offhand line about how bougies whod been cheerleading the war against germany until like a week ago were suddenly stoked about theyre actually making it to petrograd and freeing russia from bolshevik tyranny and to be clear these bougies are treated unsympathetically but at the same time weve got the boyfriend who even before the revolution got going was using his official connections to be a smuggler and his self interestedness is just portrayed as regular rear end self interestedness and not literally the very same individual raindrop kind of corruption bullshit that prompted the revolution in the first place if you want something to nitpick theres a scene where she takes shelter with a bunch of senile astronomers and then the bolsheviks come and arrest them for some reason that doesnt make sense maybe the bolsheviks actually arrested a bunch of senile astronomers at some point i dunno
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 07:13
|
|
|
The Bolsheviks were really really really horrible. I don't think every single story was overblown. But you need to understand that every member of the Russian nobility were monsters. They only spoke French. They considered Russian the noise of peasants. As in, cows go moo, sheep go baa, peasants go Russian. I read a memoir that talked about a landowner who had his peasants pose for him in a living sculpture garden. When the Revolution came, he was strangled to death by one of his statues. These loving people had so completely entrenched themselves into a system of oppression, while living as far separate as they could from their victims, that the system was never going to be upended without some significant loss of life and physical property. Add on to that the effects of more than 2 years of amoralizing war, and yeah, you've got some bad stuff that happened. Teriyaki Hairpiece has issued a correction as of 08:00 on Feb 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 07:58
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The Russian invasion of East Prussia was essentially a sleepy fat cat batting its paw at a mote of dust. Operation Bagration, which trod the same ground, by the same peoples, was the greatest land-based offensive ever undertaken by humans on this Earth. 30 years apart. Manchurian strategic offensive operation > Operation Bagration imo
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 11:35
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The Bolsheviks were really really really horrible. I don't think every single story was overblown. The Bolsheviks Did Nothing Wrong. gently caress the Russian nobility, they deserved to be buried alive, same as all nobility.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 13:48
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:What was Russian performance in ww1 like? I've heard plenty of stories about how incompetent the army was, especially in the early stages of the war, but tbh I've heard that about every other war they've been in. Obviously morale was low enough that the entire country collapsed and no country really covered itself in glory there, but how did they compare to the rest of the major powers? It wasn't good. Eastern front was a lot more dynamic than the stalemate of the west, or the defeats in the colonies. Everyone, including the conscript army of Russia hated, Tsarist Russia.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 14:44
|
|
|
mycomancy posted:The Bolsheviks Did Nothing Wrong. gently caress the Russian nobility, they deserved to be buried alive, same as all nobility. The Mensheviks sound like Mensch and are therefore the swell guys. I root for them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 14:46
|
|
|
I'm interested in learning more about the Irish Republican Army and its post-civil war history, particularly later in the 20th century. I'm particularly interested in books or works that discuss: - A history of the IRA's activities, the Troubles, the peace process, etc. that isn't pro-UK or otherwise mired in in "b-b-b-b-but they're terrorists" pearl clutching - Marxism and left wing politics in the various IRA groups (and I guess the IRA's relationship to Sinn Féin) - The IRA's tactics, operations, organization (the IRA sorta-kinda won their struggle, so I'm interested in contrasting the IRA against other 20th century insurgencies like the USA's Black Panthers) I'm thinking about reading some of Gerry Adams' books, but I worry he won't be able to talk too much about the IRA side of things since he hasn't officially acknowledged his involvement in the paramilitary activities. Additionally, there was a Radio War Nerd episode on the War of Independence and the Civil War with guest Dr. Brian Hanley so I'm going to see if he has written anything for the layperson. Very grateful for any leads! edit: since I mentioned the War Nerd, here's that very nerd contrasting the IRA and Al Qaeda back in 2011: http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/ zero knowledge has issued a correction as of 19:13 on Feb 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2024 17:20
|
|
|
my marina m book has references to ukraine as being this place where people still had food since those lousy good for nothing bolsheviks went and started a famine my question is would people at the time have called this area ukraine i was under the impression that the eastern half of the country we today call ukraine is where most of the food production takes place but this region was never historically settled by the people who we tend to describe today as being ukrainian
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 16:54
|
|
|
HootTheOwl posted:The Mensheviks sound like Mensch and are therefore the swell guys. I root for them. mensheviks means the minority Bolshevik means the majority tmyk
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 16:57
|
|
|
Some Guy TT posted:my marina m book has references to ukraine as being this place where people still had food since those lousy good for nothing bolsheviks went and started a famine my question is would people at the time have called this area ukraine i was under the impression that the eastern half of the country we today call ukraine is where most of the food production takes place but this region was never historically settled by the people who we tend to describe today as being ukrainian yes, they would have. Both the 1897 Imperial census and the 1926 Soviet census identified the east as majority Ukrainian, despite their differing methodologies (asking about language in 1897 versus asking about nationality in 1926, calling Ukrainian "Little Russian" in 1897 versus identifying Ukrainian as a distinct nationality in 1926, etc.). For example, the 1897 census identified Ekaterinoslav Province (which included cities like Luhansk, Mariupol, and Bakhmut as well as surrounding rural areas) as containing 364,000 Russian speakers and 1.46 million Ukrainian speakers, and Kharkov Province (including cities like Kharkiv and Izium plus surrounding rural areas) as containing 441,000 Russian speakers and 2 million Ukrainian speakers. Not every smaller region was majority Ukrainian but even in the locations that had a Russian majority there was a large Ukrainian-speaking minority (Donetsk district within the Don Host Province, for instance, in 1897 had 273,000 Russian speakers and 177,000 Ukrainian speakers), and there was often a heavy rural/urban divide where cities had more Russian speakers and rural areas had more Ukrainian speakers, but it would be very incorrect to say that there were no Ukrainians in the east. The 1926 census asked about nationality rather than language, but came up with similar results. In Lugansk okrug, for example, they found 263,000 Russians and 317,000 Ukrainians; in Donetsk okrug (at the time, "Stalinskii okrug" because Donetsk was named Stalin from 1924-1929) there were 224,000 Russians and 349,000 Ukrainians. Others were more heavily Ukrainian: in Izium okrug there were 57,000 Russians and 317,000 Ukrainians, in Mariupol okrug there were 77,000 Russians and 227,000 Ukrainians, in Kharkiv okrug there were 362,000 Russians and 1.1 million Ukrainians, etc. Whether you asked people about nationality or language, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the east had both Russians and Ukrainians, but either methodology over several decades tended to find more people identifying as Ukrainian than identifying as Russian. Besides population and identity you can also consider geographic terminology. For example, during the revolution/civil war era there were multiple competing governments identifying themselves as explicitly "Ukrainian" that covered either the central or the eastern regions or both, like the Ukrainian Rada in Kyiv and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in Kharkiv, both of which called themselves Ukrainian and claimed to rule what we would today consider both central and eastern Ukraine. When the Bolsheviks finalized the Ukrainian SSR's borders in 1922, they included the east but not Crimea, and Kharkiv was the capital of the SSR until 1934.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 17:47
|
|
|
can you expand what you mean by this little russian classification was that for ukrainians specifically or just a catchall term for any minority so similar to big russians an outsider would not easily be able to tell the difference
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 00:39
|
|
|
Some Guy TT posted:can you expand what you mean by this little russian classification was that for ukrainians specifically or just a catchall term for any minority so similar to big russians an outsider would not easily be able to tell the difference "Little Russia" (Малороссия) was specifically a term to refer to what's now Ukraine, and by extension the Ukrainian language and people, up until about the end of the 19th century.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 00:49
|
|
|
official russian imperial ideology held that there were a bunch of slav-taxa and a big russian-taxon within that. the big russian-taxon included white russians (belarusians), great russians (russia-russians basically) and little/small russians (ukrainians) among others iirc what they would consider little-russian is meaningfully distinct from the galician identity which forms a good deal of the present official ukrainian national project, in particular wrt religion (galicia was mainly catholic whereas little-russians were to my knowledge mostly orthodox). there was also a clear idea that little-russians/ukrainians were distinct from great-russians to some extent, but not as distinct as e.g. russians and south slavs. the national question in the russian empire was a genuinely difficult problem for the russian revolutionaries and they ended up with a pretty spacious interpretation in the bolshevik nationalities policy. by my understanding - which may be wrong - it's sort of like seeing danes, swedes and norwegians as "brother peoples" within the broader germanic context. there are meaningful differences between the three, but everybody agrees that scandinavia is a Thing and that all these groups have a lot of commonalities, and that e.g. germans and dutch people are a part of a greater outgroup.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:14
|
|
|
do they have better words to describe this in the russian language because i swear ive seen all of those terms used to refer to like two or three completely different things
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:21
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:by my understanding - which may be wrong - it's sort of like seeing danes, swedes and norwegians as "brother peoples" within the broader germanic context. there are meaningful differences between the three, but everybody agrees that scandinavia is a Thing and that all these groups have a lot of commonalities, and that e.g. germans and dutch people are a part of a greater outgroup. are icelanders czechs or slovenes here
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:23
|
|
|
i say swears online posted:are icelanders czechs or slovenes here i don't know enough slav lore to say but probably some weird holdover from the novgorod period
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:25
|
|
|
yeah i guess there are many peoples like the kashubians who never had a large enough presence to attain their own nation-state
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:27
|
|
|
keep in mind that iceland is one of those countries that exist because the brits found it convenient to have a small country in a particular location
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 01:29
|
|
|
i say swears online posted:yeah i guess there are many peoples like the kashubians who never had a large enough presence to attain their own nation-state Au contraire   
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 04:27
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:keep in mind that iceland is one of those countries that exist because the brits found it convenient to have a small country in a particular location
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 11:44
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:did the brits actually have a hand in the independence process? always just figured it was an internal affair. not directly but the WW2 occupation of both iceland and denmark by the two sides of the war placed iceland firmly in the atlantacist camp and they severed any remaining ties from after WW1 I think
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 15:03
|
|
|
i say swears online posted:not directly but the WW2 occupation of both iceland and denmark by the two sides of the war placed iceland firmly in the atlantacist camp and they severed any remaining ties from after WW1 I think Maybe the Danes should have actually formed a government in exile and fought the Nazis? Just spitballing here. "The Act of Union, signed on 1 December 1918 by Icelandic and Danish authorities, recognized Iceland as a fully sovereign state (the Kingdom of Iceland), joined with Denmark in a personal union with the Danish king. Iceland established its own flag and asked Denmark to represent its foreign affairs and defense interests. The Act would be up for revision in 1940 and could be revoked three years later if agreement was not reached. The Act was approved by 92.6% of Icelandic voters (turnout at 43.8%) in a referendum on 19 October 1918. Historian Guđmundur Hálfdanarson interprets this low turnout as a sign that Icelandic voters did not consider the referendum of importance. Consistent with the transfer of sovereignty in 1918, the Supreme Court of Iceland was established in 1920, which meant that Icelanders were in charge of all three branches of the Icelandic government. Union through the Danish king was finally abolished altogether in 1944 during the occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany, when the Alţing declared the founding of the Republic of Iceland. A referendum on 20–23 May 1944 to abolish the Union with Denmark was approved by 99.5% of voters in a 98.4% turnout."
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 15:06
|
|
|
It's funny how all the conquest and occupation of neutral countries by the people who won WW2 was actually technically not conquest and occupation in any way and was actually good for those countries and done only with the best intentions. It's sort of like how most wartime atrocities are committed by the losers of wars.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 17:20
|
|
|
The Danes were pretty lovely though. Not that it was a reason to peel off Iceland, which I agree was cynical and deliberate, but also Denmark did suck in WW2.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 17:30
|
|
|
DJJIB-DJDCT posted:The Danes were pretty lovely though. Not that it was a reason to peel off Iceland, which I agree was cynical and deliberate, but also Denmark did suck in WW2. i say swears online posted:not directly but the WW2 occupation of both iceland and denmark by the two sides of the war placed iceland firmly in the atlantacist camp and they severed any remaining ties from after WW1 I think
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 17:44
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:You're just mad that we're the only occupied country that can honestly say it opposed the Holocaust. 99% of Jews rescued is incredible, ngl. Considering that the Baltic states are also just across the sea from Sweden... it really makes you wonder how that statistic was inverted. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 21:16
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:You're just mad that we're the only occupied country that can honestly say it opposed the Holocaust. Why would someone from a country that won without getting occupied be mad about that?
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 01:36
|
|
|
when did europeans first start eating with forks
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 04:57
|
|
|
ContinuityNewTimes posted:Why would someone from a country that won without getting occupied be mad about that?
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:03
|
|
|
Some Guy TT posted:when did europeans first start eating with forks before the scope of this thread. this thread is for 1815 and later. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:06
|
|
|
id just heard that they apparently only started eating with forks after napoleon presumably because the grimy little corsican forced them to at gunpoint is why im asking here
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:14
|
|
|
Answer changes depending on which Europeans you're talking about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:16
|
|
|
Some Guy TT posted:id just heard that they apparently only started eating with forks after napoleon presumably because the grimy little corsican forced them to at gunpoint is why im asking here Anyway, the whole problem is arguably caused by "modern" in this thread cutting off the first 300 years of the modern era. Dameius posted:Answer changes depending on which Europeans you're talking about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:42
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:Anyway, the whole problem is arguably caused by "modern" in this thread cutting off the first 300 years of the modern era. the mods will politically persecute me for unsourced quoting long serious articles but refuse to fix the cspam history thread conundrum smdh
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:22 |
|
|
Some Guy TT posted:the mods will politically persecute me for unsourced quoting long serious articles but refuse to fix the cspam history thread conundrum smdh that's right
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 05:48
|
|