korobeiniki

Probably the most well known game of all time, tetris,  also had one of the most recognized themes of every video game. What most people do not know, is that it is actually based upon a russian folk song called Korbeiniki. While around the world it is known as tertis them A, in russia it is  avery popular song. Linked below is a version sung by the red army choir:

The Portrait by Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol's  "The Portrait" is a fantastic novel about a very talented poet.  This poet is doing well but is painting pictures that will increase his talent rather than increase his wealth. But, once he becomes famous he starts to produce portraits that require very little talent but get a decent amount of wealth in return. This truly was one of the first modern novels to cover someone selling out their talent.

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol is Ukranian dramatist that was wrote many of his works based on the Russian empire, to the point that some even call him a Russian author. He has written many great works including "The Overcoat", "Dead Souls", and the one I am reading,  "Evening on a farm near Near Dikanka". Many of his later works satires of the imperial Russian Government. The overcoat is arguably his most famous work, and it had a large impact on Russian literature. Fyodor Dostoevsky once   expressed this with his comment "We all come out of Gogol's Overcoat".

Russo-Japanese War

Although the Russian started losing prestige at the end of the Crimean war in 1848, it was not until the Russo-Japanese War that they truly started to decline in the eyes of the western countries. For some time Russia was a major world power in the western world with strong victories, one even dismantling the Swedish empire in the Great Northern War.  Due to this Tsar Nicholas the second started thought nothing of the newly modernized Japanese army. After negotiations and land disputes went south between the Japanese and Russian empires, Japan declared war and besieged Port Arthur, which was soon taken. Nicholas believed the might of Russia would eventually win; however, after many naval defeats, the he surrendered  with a "humiliating peace". The two powers signed the treaty of Portsmouth with President Theodore Roosevelt as a mediator in Kittery, Maine. This loss was a shock to many in the western world, boosting the prestige of the Japanese Empire while diminishing Russia's. The picture below is the delegates from both countries meeting in Portsmouth,  New Hampshire.

Tetris

Tetris, or Тетрис, is a Soviet Era Russian video game. It was made by Alexy Pajitnov while he was working at the Academy of Science in Moscow in 1984. The game was the first exported entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US.  The game was sold for many arcades and home computers but it was made famous by and made famous from the Nintendo's Gameboy. It went on to become one of the most regarded video games of all time. Electric gaming monthly, a well known game magazine, gave it #1 in their greatest video games of all time. Even now its being ported to the news consoles, the Xbox One and the Playstation 4.

In the eighties, when computer programming was starting to be available to the average person, the USSR decided to create their own, russian based,  programming language, called рапира. This was unusual compared to most languages that just used the english based languages. The language was high-level and used in schools to teach computer programming.  Look below for a hello world program in the рапира language.

ПРОЦ СТАРТ()
    ВЫВОД: 'Привет, мир!!!'
КОН ПРОЦ 

Come and See

Come and See is a soviet anti-war film from 1985. It takes place in 1943 Belarus and follows a young boy trying to survive as part of a group of Belarusian partisans fighting the German occupation. At first the young boy is excited about joining the cause against the nazis, but he soon finds out about the harsh realities of war, and especially the atrocities done by the Nazis. Many of the scenes of this movie, although accurate, are truly vile and will put you in a state of shock. The director was truly trying to portray the evil deeds done by the Nazis in the war against the Eastern European countries. Although hard to watch, this remains one of my all time favorite movies. The title refers to the beginning of several sentences in the Book of Revelations, which tell you to look upon the destruction brought upon by the four horsemen of the aocolypse.

The Queen of Spades

Alexander Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" is my one of my favorite Russian works of literature. Its about a Russian/German man that resisted the urge of gambling for his entire life, due to not wanting to lose too much. However, he soon learns of a secret, but sure way to win at gambling and does anything he has to do in order to get that secret. With a few surprises here and there, this short story kept me entertained all the way through, and had an amazing ending. It's also nice that it takes only forty-five minutes or so to read.

Tolstoy's "Family Happiness" *SPOILERS*

This blog contains spoilers so if you plan on reading this book turn back now.

My favorite part of all tolstoys works is that they can be interpreted in many different ways. Many see his works as terribly depressing, and others see them as uplifting. I am in the latter group,  and family happiness is on the examples that put me in that group.

Summery: This short story pries into the life of  Mashechka, a young woman in 1800's Russia. She believes that marriage is whimsical, romantic and full of love. She soon marries one of her fathers friends, Sergey, who had known her  since she was young.  Sergei was weary of the marriage because he believed that here youth would cause here to want to find adventure and excitement when he only wanted a happy and simple(aristocratic) lifestyle and especially detested the upperclass society of dances and city life. They lived on his estate in the country and had an easy and happy life. However, Mashechka wanted to go to St. petersburg and see the city. Wanting for her to learn of the horrbilness of the city life on her own, Sergey agreed and and they kept going back. However, she never does and keeps wanting to go back. Eventually they confront each other, but both are too full of pride to talk  it out. They eventually go back to his estate in the country and have a family. At one point Mashechka  full of despair, asks her husband why he does not have the same love and passion that he had for her when they first married. He explains that nothing has changed with his love for her, It is merely that they are not young anymore. While early in their marriage he loved her passionately, and their marriage was romantic, he  know loved her in a different way. She finally understood that she too did not want what they had in the past, but instead loved him as the father of her children and as an old friend. This gave her happiness that she had not had in a long time, and it stayed with her forever.

Many will believe that this is a depressing story about marriage that exemplifies how marriages can lose their passion and fall to pieces. However, I see this as a story that truly shows what it is like to grow old with one another, from the point of a passion filled new marriage to the days of a family where you see your spouse as an old friend who gives you happiness. "Family Happiness" is one of my all-time favorite's of Tolstoy's works.