Aristarkh Lentulov

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Aristarkh Lentulov (1882 - 1943) was a Russian avant-garde painter. His main influence was cubism, but he also used the colorful palette of fauvism and mixed in other influences as he evolved. He painted a lot of cityscapes.

He supported the October Revolution and for a while after it he was heavily involved in the Russian art scene: he painted murals, did set design, and taught art. However, when Stalin embraced the Soviet Heroic Man style of art for propaganda Lentulov's influence waned. Although he was never caught up in the purges, he faded into relative obscurity.

Aristarkh Lentulov self-portrait

Nikolay Dubovskoy paintings

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Nikolay Dubovskoy (1859-1918) was a Russian romantic landscape painter. He traveled extensively and painted landscapes of different regions. He also was active in artist salons and academia. While well known in his day, the Soviets ignored him and his works were forgotten for a period.  

Portrait of Nikolay Dubovskoy by Vladimir Makovsky

Space food

As demonstrated by Homer Simpson in the above clip, eating in zero gravity is a problem. You don't want food particles floating about creating a mess, so since the start of manned flight ways have been created to provide food and drink to spacefarers in a controlled manner.

In the video below we go to the NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory where they expain the development, and some of the issues of space food packaging. That's followed by a video of a rather chipper young lady taste testing old-timey Soviet space food. The final video is about Japanese space food. It ends with a segment about some Japanese high schoolers making canned mackerel in soy sauce which they eventually send to the ISS. The jokes about American teenagers TikTokking themselves into terminal stupidity write themselves, so I'll just leave it at that.

Rasputin's daughter

Maria Rasputin with a picture of her father
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Grigori Rasputin, the infamous Mad Monk of Tsar Nicholas II's court, started as a preacher in Siberia. He gained a reputation as a holy man and eventually made his way to St Petersburg where he caught the eye of the Tsarina Alexandra. Because she believed that Rasputin had healed her sickly son Alexei, he became a favorite of hers and soon moved into the court. Rasputin had a wife, two daughters and a son. They moved into the court as well, and the children were tutored in social graces and became friends with the Tsar's children.

By 1915 things were not going well for the Russians in WWI. Rasputin, who was a drunkard and a womanizer along with being a charlatan, was unpopular and blamed for discrediting the royal family. In 1916 a group of conspirators shot and killed Rasputin (the stories that he was also poisoned and tossed still alive into an icy river are almost certainly embellishments). 

His family continued to live in the court until the October Revolution of 1916. At that point the Tsarina gave them some money and suggested that they flee from Russia. Only Maria, the eldest daughter, escaped to Europe. Her mother and brother disappeared into Russian labor camps and her sister died of mysterious circumstances in St. Petersburg.

Maria first returned to her home in Siberia where she married Boris Soloviev. The two of them led a fugitive existence in Russia until they fled to Europe where they travelled from city to city as refugees. They finally settled in Paris where Boris worked in a soap factory, as a night porter, and as a car washer. They had two daughters.   

In 1926 Boris died and Maria was left alone with her two daughters. She made ends meet by working as a maid and a companion to a wealthy fellow Russian expat woman. She then, because of her father's notorious name, got an offer to be a cabaret dancer in Bucharest. I think her act may have involved dramatizing her father's lunatic reputation, which could not have been pleasant for her. Still, she spent several years dancing in Europe. She also published her first book, The Real Rasputin, about her father.

She then moved on to, of all things, being an animal trainer in a travelling circus. She published a second book at this time. In 1935 while working with Ringling Bothers Circus she went to the United States. She was a successful draw. From Atlas Obscuras post The Many Lives of Maria Rasputin, Daughter of the 'Mad Monk':

Americans were unsurprisingly fascinated by Maria, and papers across the country carried pictures of her with captions like, “European wild animal trainer and self-declared daughter of Russia’s ‘mad monk’ tries to hypnotize a circus elephant in Philadelphia.” She was also featured along with other Ringling Brothers stars on the back of a Wheaties box, extolling the cereal as “the breakfast of champions.”

Maria formally immigrated to the U.S. in 1937. After being mauled by a bear she quit the circus, got married and settled in Los Angeles. The marriage did not last. To support herself she became a machinist in a shipyard, becoming one of America's wartime Rosie the Riveters. 

When she retired from the shipyards, she supported herself with Social Security and the occasional babysitting jobs and interviews. She also published her final book Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth. She died in 1977.

Altogether a remarkable life: from a Siberian village to the Russian imperial palace, on the run from the red army, cabaret dancing in Europe's capitals, animal training acts in circuses, a machinist in the U.S., and an eventual peaceful retirement. She certainly didn't lead a dull life.  

Khrushchyovka

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Khrushchyovka are Soviet era apartment blocks. They were designed to be cheaply and quickly built and intended to give every Soviet citizen a home. They were constructed very shoddily. The apartments were small and had low ceilings with poor wiring and plumbing. They were up to five stories tall and had no elevators. They are ubiquitous, and falling apart, across the area of the old Soviet Union. 

I was amused by the East German toy above. It was their version of a sort of Lego blocks, but from the looks of it all you could do with it was to stack square apartments to make Khrushchyovkas. That seems about right.  

Immediately below is what I assume was marketing for the new housing. Following that are some pictures of the interiors of the apartments. They were small and cramped.

   

Artwork by Issachar Ber Ryback

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Issachar Ber Ryback was an early 20th Century Ukrainian artist. After the Russian revolution he was part of the group of avant-garde Russian artists. While influenced by cubism and impressionism, he drew his inspiration from his early life and Jewish folktales. In 1928 he moved to Paris where he spent the rest of his life. 

These images, and those after the jump, are a sample of his paintings and lithographs. 

Issachar Ber Ryback self portrait

Popadanets -- Russian pulp propaganda

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Popadanets (попаданцы) is a popular genre of Russian pulp literature. It features time travelers, usually military types, who journey to important historical times where they can use their superior 21st century brains to alter events for the glory of the Motherland. It's sort of like Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthor's Court, only instead of cornpone Yankee ingenuity you get soldiers looking to restore Stalin's U.S.S.R.

Above you can see one of their covers which features a demolished Statue of Liberty after the time traveler helped free the U.S.A. from the running dog capitalists. Below we see Comrade Hitler, after the time traveler salvaged the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, assisting the Soviets in defeating England (I never thought I would see Hitler as an action hero, but then again, I also never thought I would see Edison invading Mars). 

We then, still on the England theme, have the time traveler helping Russia win the Battle of Trafalger (!) and Josef Stalin piloting his star fighter in an outer space battle. There's even more tomfoolery after the jump. 

The style of the illustrations is old-fashioned. Maybe their cover artist is a time traveler from the 1940s. I was also struck by the lack of buxom babes adorning the covers. Methinks that the ultra-nationalistic, yearning for the good ol' days of Stalin's U.S.S.R. patriotic readers need to work on getting their priorities straight. Although, come to think of it, maybe the two rather fey looking time travelers taking a selfie of themselves (image after jump) goes a long way to explaining that lack.  

This aged strangely

I forgot I even had this video bookmarked. I had been holding it in reserve in case I ever got desperate for a TGIF music video. I have no idea what to make of it, between dancing soldiers, rocket barrages and tanks tipping over it is a bit of a mixed message to say the least (or maybe it's not mixed at all if you're familiar with the milieu it came from). From the Wikipedia article that discussed XS Project, the folks who made this video:

In 2010, XS Project, a group of four music producers from Saint Petersburg, released yet another satirical movie on YouTube, together with radio presenters of Gop FM station, accompanying their Bochka, Bass, Kolbasyor (Kick drum, bass and kolbasyor) track, which was released in 2003. In a movie, several artists, DJs and radio presenters, disguised as gopniks, danced in gopnik style on a Saint Petersburg children playground. The movie was intended to mock the so-called subculture of rave gopniks - young people in tracksuits who would go to rave parties in Russia not to have good time, but to get trashed and cause trouble. The mockery was in lyrics, who called for sober and healthy lifestyle, contrary to way rave gopniks lived. However, street youth in Eastern Europe liked the video and preferred to eschew the irony, and, given the rise of sober right-wing lifestyle in Russia around that time, the dancing moves showcased in the movie became basis of a long-lasting series of flash mobs akin to Harlem Shake meme of the time, when young people in verious cities of Eastern Europe were starting to dance, all of sudden, in gopnik style in the middle of public areas outside.

...

Some commentators in Slavic countries of the European Union at first considered these flash mobs to be serious manifestation of the right-wing propaganda, especially given the lyrics in the song, saying "We bring hardbass to your home, 1 4 8 8", with "1 4 8 8" being a neo-Nazi lingo for "Fourteen words" and Hitler salute. However, experts quickly grasped that the usage was ironic, and that the hardbass crowds consisted mostly of football hooligans and bored teenagers, rather than of actual neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis around that times also dismissed the connection to hardbass, blaming it on left-wing and anarchist circles instead. However, commentators still identified some right-wing sympatizers in the hardbass attacks, but, according to Miroslav Mares, an expert in far-right extremism from Brno Masaryk University, the influence of hardbass attacks on public opinion was negligible.

 

Siberian fast food joints

As a Florida boy for me Siberia is so cold it is hard to imagine, unless you're Jussie Smollett, going out in the cold to a fast food restaurant for some convenience food. Of course Siberians are used to their climate and when the urge hits, the urge hits.

Matt and Julia are a young English couple that travel and make YouTubes and guides. Above is their video about Siberian fast food restaurants. While the usual international chains are starting to open stores in the area, there are smaller local chains that have menus offering more local fare. It is these chains that they sample.

  

I walked, I walked

A while back I posted a song called Djelem Djelem. This song, Gelem Gelem (I walked, I walked) by Esma Redźepova is actually the same song, although if you listen to them back-to-back they sound considerably different. 

It was composed in 1949 by Žarko Jovanović and is considered the anthem of the Romani (Gypsy/Travelers) people. They're originally from Northern India, but they've spread widely through Eastern and Western Europe and have no homeland. His lyrics are below.

I went, I went on long roads
I met happy Roma
O Roma, where do you come from,
With tents happy on the road?

O Roma, O Romani youths!

I once had a great family,
The Black Legion murdered them
Come with me, Roma from all the world
For the Roma, roads have opened
Now is the time, rise up Roma now,
We will rise high if we act

O Roma, O Romani youths!

Open, God, White doors
So I can see where are my people.
Come back to tour the roads
And walk with happy Roma

O Roma, O Romani youths!

Up, Romani people! Now is the time
Come with me, Roma from all the world
Dark face and dark eyes,
I want them like dark grapes

O Roma, O Romani youths!

Redzepova changed the first and third stanzas to:

Little tent roams the world
Like a bee from flower to flower
The tramp of horses is heard far away
But the song echoes even farther

It makes the song more cheerful, but it strips meaning from it. The Black Legion who murdered them refers to the Nazi's rounding up the Romani during the holocaust. Like the Jews, they were a stateless people slated for extermination.

The film clips used in the video are from the 1975 Soviet film Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven. 

 

Cooking a Tatar meal with a wood fired oven

Some women fire up an old wood oven in a Bashkir-Tatar village, I'm not certain, but I think it is in Bashkortostan which is in the south of Central Russia just north of Kazakhstan. They use it to cook öçpoçmaq (echpochmak), which is a Tatar pastry stuffed with meat, onions and potatoes. The video is subtitled, so you can follow the cheerful conversation of the women. 

  

Cossack sword dancing

Cossack sword dancing started out as a pantomime of fights in battles. It has evolved into showing off as you dance around while twirling swords. Above is a collection of various people doing a sword dance. I wonder what an American helicopter mom would think of their tyke swinging swords around like the lad in the video.

Below is a video by Evgeny Kolot, a Cossack martial arts instructor demonstrating a sword dance in slow motion. It is nicely filmed and rather hypnotic. There are other good videos on his channel.

Ekranoplans

During the Cold War the soviets worked on a series of ground effects crafts, called ekranoplans, that were neither ship nor plane, but a hybrid between the two.  

Below, from La Boite Verte, are pictures of the Lu from both today and when it was active. It is a missile firing variant that was the last of the Soviet ekranoplans built.

 

Valery Barykin's faux Soviet pin-ups

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Valery Barykin is a contemporary Russian artist who blends the Soviet era propaganda poster style with Western pinup art from the same period. He says it was from his time in the Soviet Army when he was exposed to both Soviet propaganda posters and Western pin-ups. He blends the two, sometimes as a montage sometimes redrawn, to create his works. In fact, I recognize the one immediately below of the woman in a low cut blouse serving hotdogs as a piece of American art that he repainted.

The information and images are from a post at Все интересное в искусстве и не только (Everything is interesting in art and not only). It has more samples of his work. 

Valery Barykin

Pre WWI Russian posters

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This is an interesting period in Russian poster design. It is nestled between the florid and highly decorative style of the late 19th Century and the heroic realism of the Soviet era. A lot of graphic experimentation is taking place, you can see the gradual evolution towards the cleaner and bolder style of the later 20th Century. There are more examples after the jump.

Soviet motorhead nostalgia

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These are pictures and those after the jump, are via Vintage Everyday's article 50 Vintage Pics Show Cars of the Soviet Union From Between the 1950s and ’70s. There are many more pictures at the link.

I chose ones that were in color and appeared to be pictures used in advertisements. The themes are familiar, although oddly different all the same: shiny cars, upscale locales, pretty girls and destinations the cars will take you to.