Category Archives: religion

by Joel | 18 June 2026 · 12:19 am

Rus’ Elites Lose to Poland-Lithuania

From The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, 2017), Kindle pp. 105-107:

FROM THE VIEWPOINT of the Rus’ elites of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the unions with the Kingdom of Poland had caused nothing but trouble. The immediate outcome of the Union of Kreva was the loss of Rus’ influence on the grand prince, who not only moved out of the duchy but also became a Catholic, setting a precedent for his brothers, some of whom were Orthodox. The Orthodox hierarchs’ hope of establishing Byzantine rather than Latin Christianity in the last pagan realm in Europe were dashed.

But the real challenge to Rus’ political status came in 1413, when the Union of Horodło, which historiography treats as a dynastic union, enhanced the Union of Kreva, a personal union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Concluded between Jogaila, now king of Poland, and his cousin Vytautas, the grand duke of Lithuania, the new agreement extended many of the rights and privileges of the Polish nobility, including the right to unconditional ownership of land, to the Lithuanian nobility. Close to fifty Polish noble families offered to share their coats of arms with the same number of families from the grand duchy. But there was a catch: only Lithuanian Catholic families were invited to the party. The new rights and privileges were not accorded to the Orthodox elite. This was the first instance of discrimination against the Rus’ elites at the state level. Denied the new privileges, the Orthodox aristocrats were thus barred from holding high office in the central administration of the grand duchy. To add insult to injury, the Union of Horodło came on the heels of the curbing of Rus’ autonomy by one of the authors of the new union, Grand Duke Vytautas, who replaced the prince of Volhynia and rulers of some other lands with his own appointees.

An opportunity for the Rus’ elites to express their unhappiness with this encroachment on their status came soon after Vytautas’s death in 1430. In the succession struggle for the Lithuanian throne, which deteriorated into a civil war, the Rus’ nobles, led by the Volhynian boyars, supported their own candidate, Prince Švitrigaila. His rival, Prince Žygimantas, responded in 1434 by extending the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Union of Horodło to the Orthodox elites of the grand duchy, turning the tide of war in his favor. Although the Rus’ princes and nobles of Volhynia and the Kyiv Land remained suspicious of the intentions of Žygimantas, their support for Švitrigaila declined, allowing the grand duchy to return to a state of relative peace. With religion eliminated as a source of grievance among the Rus’ elites, the Lithuanian court had more room to maneuver in its continuing efforts to restrict the autonomy of the Rus’ lands and principalities.

In 1470, the grand duke and king of Poland, Casimir IV, abolished the last vestige of the princely era: the principality of Kyiv itself. Ten years later, the Kyivan princes conspired to kill Casimir and install one of their candidates, but their plot failed, leading to the arrest of the ringleaders and forcing the other conspirators to flee the grand duchy. With their departure came an end to the last hopes of restoring the way of life associated with the princely traditions of Kyivan Rus’. By the turn of the sixteenth century, not only Ukraine’s political map but also its institutional, social, and cultural landscape showed few traces of the period two centuries earlier when Galicia-Volhynia had striven to throw off Mongol suzerainty and become a fully independent actor in the region. While Rus’ law and language remained well established, they began to lose their previous dominance. These essentials of Rus’ culture could no longer compete with latinizing influences and the Polish language, which took pride of place in the grand duchy after the Union of Kreva.

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Filed under Baltics, democracy, language, nationalism, Poland, religion, Ukraine

by Joel | 17 June 2026 · 8:59 am

Three Polities of Kyivan Rus’

From The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, 2017), Kindle pp. 83-86:

THE AUTHORS OF the Primary Chronicle (the laborious task of recording events and commenting on them passed from one generation of monks to another) had to reconcile three different historical identities in their narrative: the Rus’ identity of the Scandinavian rulers of Kyiv, the Slavic identity of the educated elites, and local tribal identity. While the Kyivan rulers and their subjects adopted the name Rus’, the Slavic identity associated with that name, not the Scandinavian one, became the basis of their self-identification. Most subjects of the Rurikids, who ruled their realm from the Slavic heartland, were Slavs. More importantly, the dissemination of Slavic identity beyond the Kyiv region was closely associated with the acceptance of Christianity from Byzantium and the introduction of Church Slavonic as the language of the liturgy, sermons, and intellectual discourse of Rus’. Christianity appeared in both the Slavic and non-Slavic parts of the Kyivan realm in the garb of Slavic languages and Slavic culture. The more Rus’ became Christian, the more it turned Slavic as well. The Kyivan chroniclers incorporated local history into the broader context of the development of the Balkan Slavs and, more broadly still, into the history of Byzantium and world Christendom.

On the local level, tribal identity gave way slowly but surely to identification with local principalities—the centers of military, political, and economic power associated with Kyiv. Chronicle references to the lands surrounding princely towns replaced references to indigenous tribes. Thus, the chronicler refers to the army that sacked Kyiv in 1169 as consisting of people from Smolensk instead of Radimichians, residents of Suzdal instead of Viatichians or Meria, and natives of Chernihiv instead of Siverians. There was a sense of the unity of all the lands under the rule of the Kyivan rulers, and despite conflicts and wars between Rurikid princes, the inhabitants of those lands were considered “ours,” as opposed to foreigners and pagans. The key issue was recognition of the authority of the Rus’ princes, and when some of the Turkic steppe nomads accepted that authority, they became referred to as “our pagans.”

The political and administrative unification of the diverse tribal territories entailed the standardization of their social structure. At its very top were the princes of the Rurikid dynasty, more specifically the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise. Under them were members of the princely retinue—originally Vikings but also increasing numbers of Slavs who merged with local tribal elites to form the aristocratic stratum called the boyars. They were warriors, but in times of peace they administered the realm. The boyars were the main landholding class, and depending on the principality, they had greater or lesser influence on the actions of the prince. Church hierarchs and their servants were also among the privileged.

The rest of the population paid taxes to the princes. The townspeople, who included merchants and artisans, had some political power that they exercised at town meetings, where they decided matters of local governance. Occasionally, as in Kyiv, or quite regularly, as in Novgorod, such meetings influenced the succession of local princes. The peasants, who accounted for most of the population, had no political power. They were divided into free peasants and semifree serfs. The latter could lose their freedom, usually because of debts, and reclaim it once they had paid their debts off or after a certain period. Then there were the slaves—warriors or peasants captured in the course of military campaigns. The enslavement of warriors could be temporary, but that of peasants was permanent.

…

The change in the geopolitical aims of the Kyivan princes, from Yaroslav the Wise to Andrei Bogoliubsky, reflects the reduction of their political loyalties from the entire realm of Kyivan Rus’ to a number of principalities defined by the term “Rus’ Land” and eventually to peripheral principalities that grew strong enough to rival Kyiv in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Historians look to those principality-based identities for the origins of the modern East Slavic nations. The Vladimir-Suzdal principality served as a forerunner of early modern Muscovy and, eventually, of modern Russia. Belarusian historians look to the Polatsk principality for their roots. And Ukrainian historians study the principality of Galicia-Volhynia to uncover the foundations of Ukrainian nation-building projects. But all those identities ultimately lead back to Kyiv, which gives Ukrainians a singular advantage: they can search for their origins without ever leaving their capital.

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Filed under Belarus, economics, labor, language, military, nationalism, religion, Russia, Scandinavia, Ukraine

by Joel | 16 June 2026 · 12:09 am

Volodymyr Goes Full Byzantine

From The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, 2017), Kindle pp. 67-70:

VOLODYMYR TOOK THE throne in 980. He spent the first decade of his rule on warfare, ensuring that the realm created by his predecessor stayed together. Following in Sviatoslav’s footsteps, he again defeated the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars, reasserted his power over the Viatichians in the Oka basin, and pushed westward to the Carpathians, taking a number of fortresses from the Poles, including the town of Premyshl (Przemyśl) on today’s Polish-Ukrainian border. His main concern, however, was the southern frontier, where the Rus’ settlements were under continual attack by the Pechenegs and other nomadic tribes. Volodymyr strengthened border defenses by building fortifications along the local rivers, including the Sula and the Trubizh. He settled those areas with prisoners of war and subjects from other parts of the realm. Rus’, born of conquest, now sought stability by defending its borders instead of attacking the frontiers of other states.

Under Volodymyr’s rule, Kyiv’s relations with Byzantium were also changing. Whereas his predecessor on the Kyivan throne, Helgi, allegedly had sent troops against Byzantium to obtain trade preferences, and Sviatoslav did the same to acquire new territory in the Balkans, Volodymyr invaded the Crimea in the spring of 989 in pursuit of marriage, if not love. He besieged the Byzantine town of Chersonesus, demanding the hand of the sister of Emperor Basil II. A few years earlier, the emperor had asked Volodymyr for military assistance, promising the hand of his sister Anna in return. Volodymyr sent his troops to help up the emperor. But Basil was in no hurry to fulfill his promise. After receiving this slap in the face, Volodymyr refused to turn the other cheek and instead attacked the empire. His tactic worked. Alarmed by news of the fall of Chersonesus, Basil dispatched his sister Anna to the Crimea. She arrived with a retinue that included numerous Christian clerics.

Volodymyr’s request for marriage was granted in return for an assurance that the barbarian chieftain (as the ruler of Kyiv was regarded in Constantinople) would accept Christianity. Volodymyr went along. His baptism would start the process of the Christianization of Kyivan Rus’ and open a new chapter in the region’s history. Once the wedding party had moved back to Kyiv, Volodymyr removed the pantheon of pagan gods, including the most powerful of them—Perun, the god of thunder—from a hill above the Dnieper and put the Christian clergymen to work baptizing the population of Kyiv. The Christianization of Rus’ had begun—a long and difficult process that would take centuries to complete.

Our main source on the baptism of Rus’, the Kyivan chronicler, writes that Muslim Bulgars, Jewish Khazars, Christian Germans representing the pope, and a Greek scholar who spoke on behalf of Byzantine Christianity, the religion that Volodymyr chose, had all importuned Volodymyr. The story of the choice of faith as told in the Primary Chronicle is of course naïve in many ways. But it reflects certain real alternatives facing the Kyivan ruler, for he indeed did the picking and choosing. Volodymyr chose the religion of the strongest country in the region, in which the emperor was no less important an ecclesiastical figure—more important, in fact—than the patriarch. By choosing Christianity, he gained the prestige of marrying into an imperial family, which promptly elevated the status of his house and realm. Volodymyr’s choice of Christian name sheds additional light on his reasons for accepting Christianity. He took the same name as the emperor, Basil, indicating that in Byzantium he had found a political and religious model to emulate at home. A generation later, Kyivan intellectuals such as Metropolitan Ilarion would compare him and his baptism of Rus’ to Emperor Constantine and his role in establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

To be sure, the Byzantine political and ecclesiastical elite helped Volodymyr make the “right choice.” They were unhappy with the marriage but not with the conversion. The Byzantines had begun sending missionaries to the region soon after the Rus’ Vikings attacked Constantinople in 860. Back then, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople, the same clergyman who left us the description of the Viking attack, had sent one of his best students, Cyril of Thessalonica, to the Crimea and then to the Khazar kaganate. Along with his brother Methodius, Cyril devised the Glagolitic alphabet to transcribe Christian texts into the Slavic languages. The two men subsequently became known as the apostles to the Slavs and gained sainthood. Attempts to convert Kyivan rulers were undertaken long before Volodymyr’s conversion, as attested by the story of his grandmother, Olha, who became the first known Christian ruler and the first Christian woman in Kyiv named Helen. Apart from propagating Christianity, the Byzantine elites began to gain influence over the “barbaric” rulers and peoples, who had no fancy genealogies and little in the way of sophisticated culture but a great deal of destructive power.

After Volodymyr’s conversion, the patriarch of Constantinople created the Metropolitanate of Rus’, one of few ecclesiastical provinces named after its population and not the city where the bishop or metropolitan would reside. The patriarch reserved for himself the right to appoint metropolitans to head the Rus’ church—most of them would be Greeks. The metropolitan in turn controlled the appointment of bishops, most of whom would come from the ranks of the local elite. The first monasteries were established, using a Byzantine statute. Church Slavonic, the first literary language of Kyivan Rus’, initially functioned predominantly as a translation tool, making Greek texts understandable to local elites. Volodymyr issued regulations defining the rights and privileges of the clergy and gave one-tenth of his income to the church. Christianity in Kyivan Rus’ began at the top and moved slowly down the social ladder, spreading from center to periphery along rivers and trade routes. In some remote areas, especially northeastern Rus’, pagan priests resisted the new religion for centuries, and Kyivan missionaries who ventured there would end up dead as late as the twelfth century.

Volodymyr’s choice would have a profound impact on his realm and on the history of eastern Europe as a whole. Instead of continuing warfare with Byzantium, the new Rus’ polity was entering into an alliance with the only surviving part and continuator of the Roman Empire and thereby opening itself to the political and cultural influences of the Mediterranean world. It would prove fateful that Volodymyr not only brought Rus’ into the Christian world but also made it part of Eastern Christianity. Many of the consequences are as important today as they were at the turn of the second millennium.

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Filed under Greece, language, migration, military, nationalism, religion, Scandinavia, Ukraine

by Joel | 11 June 2026 · 12:09 am

Defining Ukraine and Ukrainian

From The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books, 2017), Kindle pp. 24-27:

Nation is an important—although not dominant—category of analysis and element of the story that, along with the ever changing idea of Europe, defines the nature of this narrative. This book tells the history of Ukraine within the borders defined by the ethnographers and mapmakers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which often (but not always) coincided with the borders of the present-day Ukrainian state. It follows the development of the ideas and identities linking those lands together from the times of the medieval Kyivan state, known in historiography as Kyivan Rus’, to the rise of modern nationalism and explains the origins of the modern Ukrainian state and political nation. In doing so, the book focuses on Ukrainians as the largest demographic group and, in time, the main force behind the creation of the modern nation and state. It pays attention to Ukraine’s minorities, especially Poles, Jews, and Russians, and treats the modern multiethnic and multicultural Ukrainian nation as a work in progress. Ukrainian culture always existed in a space shared with other cultures and early on involved navigating among the “others.” The ability of Ukrainian society to cross inner and outer frontiers and negotiate identities created by them constitutes the main characteristic of the history of Ukraine as presented in this book.

Politics, international and domestic, provide a convenient storyline, but in writing this book, I found geography, ecology, and culture most lasting and thus most influential in the long run. Contemporary Ukraine, as seen from the perspective of longue durée cultural trends, is a product of the interaction of two moving frontiers, one demarcated by the line between the Eurasian steppes and the eastern European parklands, the other defined by the border between Eastern and Western Christianity. The first frontier was also the one between sedentary and nomadic populations and, eventually, between Christianity and Islam. The second goes back to the division of the Roman Empire between Rome and Constantinople and marks differences in political culture between Europe’s east and west that still exist today. The movement of these frontiers over the centuries gave rise to a unique set of cultural features that formed the foundations of present-day Ukrainian identity.

One cannot tell the history of Ukraine without telling the story of its regions. The cultural and social space created by the movement of frontiers has not been homogenous. As state and imperial borders moved across the territory defined by Ukrainian ethnic boundaries, they created distinct cultural spaces that served as foundations of Ukraine’s regions—the former Hungarian-ruled Transcarpathia, historically Austrian Galicia, Polish-held Podolia and Volhynia, the Cossack Left Bank of the Dnieper with the lower reaches of that river, Sloboda Ukraine, and finally the Black Sea coast and the Donets basin, colonized in imperial Russian times. Unlike most of my predecessors, I try to avoid treating the history of various regions (such as the Russian- and Austrian-ruled parts of Ukraine) in separate sections of the book but rather look at them together, providing a comparative perspective on their development within a given period.

In conclusion, a few words about terminology. The ancestors of modern Ukrainians lived in dozens of premodern and modern principalities, kingdoms, and empires, and in the course of time they took on various names and identities. The two key terms that they used to define their land were “Rus’” and “Ukraine.” (In the Cyrillic alphabet, Rus’ is spelled Pycь: the last character is a soft sign indicating palatalized pronunciation of the preceding consonant.) The term “Rus’,” brought to the region by the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries, was adopted by the inhabitants of Kyivan Rus’, who took the Viking princes and warriors into their fold and Slavicized them. The ancestors of today’s Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians adopted the name “Rus’” in forms that varied from the Scandinavian/Slavic “Rus’” to the Hellenized “Rossiia.” In the eighteenth century, Muscovy adopted the latter form as the official name of its state and empire.

The Ukrainians had different appellations depending on the period and region in which they lived: Rusyns in Poland, Ruthenians in the Habsburg Empire, and Little Russians in the Russian Empire. In the course of the nineteenth century, Ukrainian nation builders decided to end the confusion by renouncing the name “Rus’” and clearly distinguishing themselves from the rest of the East Slavic world, especially from the Russians, by adopting “Ukraine” and “Ukrainian” to define their land and ethnic group, both in the Russian Empire and in Austria-Hungary. The name “Ukraine” had medieval origins and in the early modern era denoted the Cossack state in Dnieper Ukraine. In the collective mind of the nineteenth-century activists, the Cossacks, most of whom were of local origin, were the quintessential Ukrainians. To link the Rus’ past and the Ukrainian future, Mykhailo Hrushevsky called his ten-volume magnum opus History of Ukraine-Rus’. Indeed, anyone writing about the Ukrainian past today must use two or even more terms to define the ancestors of modern Ukrainians.

In this book, I use “Rus’” predominantly but not exclusively with reference to the medieval period. “Ruthenians” to denote Ukrainians of the early modern era, and “Ukrainians” when I write about modern times. Since the independent Ukrainian state’s creation in 1991, its citizens have all come to be known as “Ukrainians,” whatever their ethnic background. This usage reflects the current conventions of academic historiography, and although it makes for some complexity, I hope that it does not lead to confusion.

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Filed under Hungary, language, migration, nationalism, Poland, religion, Russia, Scandinavia, scholarship, Ukraine

by Joel | 9 June 2026 · 2:10 am

Patron Saint’s Day in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 193-195:

Riscani’s town birthday, a day festival called hram, fell on a Tuesday.

Only a handful of students had come to school; none of the kids higher than sixth grade or any of the village classes showed up that day. I was thankful that my older kids had taken the day off. They would have certainly arrived to class intoxicated. Instead, they wandered the streets with cans of beer, toasting anyone they recognized.

My fifth grade girls asked if I’d be celebrating in the town center. I assured them I wouldn’t be drunk.

“Why not?” asked Olia. “It is hram.”

“Do you realize that drinking so much can damage your health?”

“You are not little,” the class explained. “You can drink without problems.”

After school, I called my friends. I wouldn’t be going out into the hram without backup. Michael was in the capital, so he couldn’t help. With such short notice, Colin was the only one who could make it there in time. He was in Riscani an hour after I called, ready to take on the best the Russians could offer.

Colin was in the apartment for ten minutes before I realized he’d arrived. Dima had met him at the door and taken him to the kitchen for a shot of vodka in honor of Riscani. I walked into the kitchen and found Dima talking to Colin in broken Romanian. Dima pushed out a chair for me, explaining that he and Colin had started while I finished my nap. “Dude,” said Colin, his cheeks flushed. “I really like your father.”

Dima poured three more shots of vodka. We drank. Then Dima reached down to the cabinet below the sink and produced five different bottles: apple garilka, Moldovan samagon [самогон, self-distilled, i.e., homemade moonshine], cognac, high-class vodka, and red wine. We took a shot from each bottle. Then Dima took a bottle of cold beer from the ice box and we drank that. Colin had been a bartender in Virginia before joining the Peace Corps. Now he offered his professional commentary: “Dude, we just drank ten shots of alcohol in twenty minutes.”

“Go enjoy yourselves in the street,” said Dima. “It’s a party.”

…

Colin was already something of a celebrity in Riscani. The town folk who’d met him on his first visit recalled meeting the tallest man in the world. Those who hadn’t seen him carried in their minds an image akin to Big Foot.

From my front door we followed the techno music to its source at the Lenin statue. A crowd of a thousand cheered when we arrived. People hugged me and shook Colin’s hand, took pictures of us with their cell phones. In Russian, Colin said, “Good evening, Riscani,” and the crowd lost it. Students appeared holding beers for us to drink. I refused and told Colin not to accept anything from a minor—even former students like Edgar. Soon enough adults gave us drinks. The Riscanians gyrated to the techno music in disorganized, Russian-head-bobbing, non-circle dancing. Dariya appeared, only the second time I’d seen her since she went off to college. She’d dyed her hair black and wore even tighter clothes than she’d worn in high school. She kissed me on the cheek without her previous childhood awkwardness, whispered she’d see us back at the apartment, and then disappeared into the crowd.

…

Soon after hram, a well-known student from the Moldovan lyceum passed away from illness. My ninth graders had played with him as kids and weren’t in the mood to study, so I let class out early. With a handful of sunflower seeds, I walked down the main street. Live music carried through the air, trumpets and drums. I said hello to Katya at the bazaar and ate one of her sugar rolls. Outside the bazaar, I stepped into a tractor-trailer that had been converted into a shooting range, and I paid five lei to shoot twenty bee-bees at paper targets. I only hit one. Back on the main street, I decided to have a beer. As I walked toward the lake, the live music grew louder. The drumming vibrated my stomach. Then the funeral procession for the dead boy turned a corner into my view. Pedestrians stopped walking and removed their hats; I did the same. The casket was carried on the back of a flat-bed truck. His body was open to the air and slightly blue. Some type of jelly made his face look shiny. The priest walked directly behind; he made eye contact with me and smiled, placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head. I mirrored him, placing my hand on my heart and bowing my head. Several of my students were in the procession following the casket and the priest. They waved to me. Everyone looked sad, but no one cried. I continued on to the lake. The sounds of the trumpets and drums diminished until I only heard them in memory. At the bar they only had liters in the fridge, so that’s what I drank.

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Filed under education, language, Moldova, religion, Russia

by Joel | 5 June 2026 · 3:36 am

Christmas in Moldova

From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 81-82:

Orthodox Christmas came in January. Dima and Katya lay prostrate on the unfolded divan, still wearing the Barcelona sweatshirts I’d given them three days before. Dariya wore her new sweatshirt also—red and yellow like Spain’s flag with the number 7 thrown across the back. She read quietly in the chair after Dima had complained the TV volume was too much to handle. Both Dima and Katya had worked twenty-hour days for the past week in preparation for the strains Christmas brought to the baking world; Christmas Day itself was for bakers to relax.

I woke and joined them in the living room, slipping into the chair next to Dariya. I wore the bright red Soviet propaganda t-shirt the family had given me: CCCP—Always Forward! Everyone wished me a Merry Christmas; I spit the Russian words back at them and all seemed pleased. And then, suddenly, everyone in the room (except me) discussed my religion; I wasn’t orthodox, they knew, so therefore a Baptist or a Catholic, like John F. Kennedy. I explained, as best I could, that my father’s family descended from Hungarian Jews and my mother’s from French Catholics. Dima and Katya repeated old stories of hard working Jews that had lived in Riscani years ago before emigrating to Israel; they talked of President John F. Kennedy, a man they seemed to associate with religion even more than the Pope.

“But can Aaron go with me?” asked Dariya.

“It should be fine,” said Dima. “Just don’t let him touch anything.”

“Go where?” I asked.

“Yes, don’t let him touch anything,” agreed Katya. “And take his hat off at the right time.”

“Go where?” I repeated.

“To Church,” said Dariya. “Go put on better clothes.”

* * *

What had changed in Riscani since the fall of the Soviet Union? A history text would mention the collapse of the farming collective, the breakdown of local government that led to widespread corruption, perhaps the cutting of the trade pathways that provided markets for the locally manufactured goods—cheese, wine and perfumes. In Moldova, I observed the effects of Soviet collapse every day, but only understood the fragments of disrupted life as they affected my new family. Dima spoke frequently over vodka shots of longer workdays and fewer vacations; a decade had passed since he’d relaxed by the sea in Odessa. Katya complained about the value of the family’s bread decreasing slowly every year; soon the people would expect bakers to give it away for free. And Dariya worried, with reason, that her education was far inferior to the quality of the common village schools her parents had passed through decades earlier.

But gloom did not permeate everything; the collapse had destroyed the compulsion to worship the state. Riscani now had a proper church—a gray, sloping, Orthodox Church—situated on the path leading to the bar on the lake. This church had been constructed before WWII. It had survived that conflict, only to be stripped of its icons, murals, priest, and renamed “The Museum of Atheism” during its time in the hands of the Soviet Union. Now the church had taken back its name.

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Filed under language, Moldova, nationalism, religion, U.S., USSR

by Joel | 1 May 2026 · 4:02 am

MLK Jr. Funeral Service, 1968

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 284-286:

IN THE HISTORIC quadrangle at Morehouse College, the mule-drawn wagon wound its way to the steps of Harkness Hall, and the large public requiem began. Some 150,000 people crammed onto the campus green and stood for hours in the oppressive heat beneath jumbled canopies of parasols. Mahalia Jackson sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” the spiritual King had asked Ben Branch to play “real pretty” moments before he was shot on the Lorraine balcony. So many old ladies fainted in the crowd that the lengthy schedule of eulogies had to be radically truncated. The final speaker, and the marquee attraction, was Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, the president emeritus of Morehouse, a distinguished lion of an orator and King’s most beloved mentor. The grizzled theologian, whose parents had been former slaves, spoke plainly, with a measured indignation in his voice.

“I make bold to assert,” Mays said, “that it took more courage for King to practice nonviolence than it took his assassin to fire the fatal shot. The assassin is a coward; he committed his foul act, and fled. But make no mistake, the American people are in part responsible. The assassin heard enough condemnation of King and of Negroes to feel that he had public support. He knew that millions hated King.”

Mays went on to deliver a majestic eulogy in the black Baptist tradition, leaving bitterness behind and building toward a triumphant crescendo. “He believed especially that he was sent to champion the cause of the man furthest down. He would probably say that if death had to come, there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors. He was supra-race, supra-nation, supra-class, supra-culture. He belonged to the world and to mankind. Now he belongs to posterity.”

The great funeral broke up, and a smaller crowd of family and friends followed the hearse in a slow motorcade to South View Cemetery, a grand old place that had been created in the 1860s when Atlanta’s blacks grew weary of burying their dead through the rear entrance of the city graveyard. This would not be King’s final resting place—he was to be only temporarily buried here with his maternal grandparents until a permanent memorial could be built beside Ebenezer Church. Beneath flowering dogwoods, Ralph Abernathy rose to address the winnowed crowd. Drawn and weak, Abernathy had not eaten since the assassination. Like the old days when he and King went to jail together, he was fasting, to purify himself for the trials ahead.

“The grave is too narrow for his soul,” Abernathy said, tears streaming down his face. “But we commit his body to the ground. We thank God for giving us a leader who was willing to die, but not willing to kill.” Then a retinue of attendants rolled the mahogany casket into a crypt of white Georgia marble that was inscribed:

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
JANUARY 15, 1929–APRIL 4, 1968
“FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I’M FREE AT LAST”

As the last of the crowds fell away, Martin Luther King Sr. laid his head on the cool stone of his son’s mausoleum and openly wept.

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Filed under labor, language, nationalism, philosophy, religion, U.S.

by Joel | 30 April 2026 · 12:08 am

Silent March in Memphis, 1968

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 268-270:

Coretta King hadn’t really planned on coming back to Memphis to join Abernathy’s great silent march. She had a funeral to organize in Atlanta, she had a family to look after, and she had her own world of grief. But Memphis needed her there, she realized; the movement needed her, the garbage workers needed her. So that morning, Harry Belafonte had arranged a plane for her to return to the city of her husband’s murder. She arrived with the children, and her motorcade sped downtown, escorted by good-ol’-boy policemen astride fat Harley-Davidsons in swirls of flashing lights, and she saw for the first time the world of shadows that Memphis had become. She joined the march at Main and Beale—the literal and figurative intersection of white and black Memphis. It was the very spot where King had been when the rioting erupted during the March 28 demonstration, the violence that had swept King toward the dark eddy that overwhelmed him.

This time around there was no violence whatsoever. The march was silent, just as Abernathy had promised it would be: only the sound of soles scuffing on pavement. Bayard Rustin had carefully choreographed every inch of the march—and had done so with his usual good taste and raptor’s eye for detail. He was thrilled and relieved by the outcome. “We gave Dr. King what he came here for,” he said. “We gave Dr. King his last wish: A truly non-violent march.”

It had come about through meticulous planning. The Reverend James Lawson had personally trained the hundreds of marshals of the march—many of them members of the Invaders, who only a few days earlier had been calling for burning the city down. Lawson had had flyers printed up that were handed out to the marchers: it was to be a solemn and chaste affair, a requiem. There was to be no talking, no chanting, no singing, no smoking, no chewing of gum. “Each of you is on trial today,” Lawson said. “People from all over the world will be watching. Carry yourself with dignity.”

Almost no uniformed policemen could be found along the route of the march. Holloman, rightly figuring his men in blue had outworn their welcome in the black community, did not want to risk provoking another confrontation. Instead, several thousand National Guardsmen lined the street—projecting a federal and presumably more neutral presence. The guardsmen’s M16s were fixed with bayonets, but (though the marchers didn’t know this) the rifles were kept unloaded.

Holloman, for his part, was much less worried about potential violence from within the ranks of the marchers than from outsiders who might be “intent on discord,” as he put it. He genuinely feared that King’s killer was still in Memphis and that he might attempt an encore, setting his sights on Abernathy, or Mrs. King, or any one of the score of powerful dignitaries and popular celebrities marching in the procession. His fears were well-grounded. Jim Lawson, for one, had received a death threat the previous night; someone had called his house and vowed that “once you reach Main Street, you’ll be cut down.” Abernathy said he was worried about people out there for whom “the spilling of one man’s blood only whetted their appetite for more.”

All morning, before the march started, Holloman had his men sweep the entire march route clean: All office building windows were to remain closed, and no one would be allowed to watch from a rooftop or balcony. Every potential sniper’s nest was investigated and blocked off. Hundreds of undercover cops and FBI agents were posted throughout the march to look for suspicious movement.

All their precautions proved unnecessary, it turned out. The march was beautiful, pitch-perfect, decent. It moved forward without incident, a slow river of humanity stretching more than a dozen city blocks. Arranged eight abreast, the mourners silently plodded past department store windows that had been carefully cleared of lootable items, which were replaced with discreet shrines honoring King. Coretta marched at the front, with Abernathy, Young, Jackson, and Belafonte. There were clergymen, black and white, and then labor leaders and garbage workers. Farther back could be found such celebrities as Sammy Davis Jr., Bill Cosby, Ossie Davis, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Isaac Hayes, and Sidney Poitier (whose racially charged In the Heat of the Night was up for Best Picture in the now-postponed Academy Awards).

Most of the marchers were black, but there was also a surprising sprinkling of prominent white Memphians—some of them well-known conservatives. Foremost among these was Jerred Blanchard, a lawyer and staunch Republican city councilman who’d gotten drunk on whiskey the previous night and then awakened with something of an epiphany. “I guess it was my mother speaking to me, or my wife,” Blanchard said. “I really am a right-wing Republican. I’ve fought in several wars … I’ve never liked labor unions. But it was decency that said, ‘You get your old south end in that march. To hell with the country club.’ ”

The long column of mourners kept snaking north on Main Street toward city hall, with Mrs. King still in the lead. “There she is, there she is!” bystanders exclaimed under their breaths.

Among the businesses that Mrs. King passed was the York Arms Company, the same sporting goods store Eric Galt had visited just four days earlier. The shop’s owners had removed all the hunting rifles from the windows and locked the place up tight in advance of the march. One of the items left in the window, however, was a pair of binoculars: they were Bushnell Banners, 7×35, with fully coated optics.

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Filed under democracy, labor, military, nationalism, religion, U.S.

by Joel | 26 April 2026 · 3:32 am

Polish Guide for Hebrew Gravemarkers

In an old Jewish shop in the Village Museum of Kielce (Muzeum Wsi Kieleckiej), I came across a very interesting poster to help Polish Jews inscribe gravestones in Hebrew.

Przykładowe Symbole Zawodu Zmarłego
Example Symbols of the Profession of the Deceased

Gęsie pióro – symbol skryby przepisującego Torę lub pisarza i literata
Goose feather – symbol of a scribe copying the Torah or a writer and intellectual

Wąż eskulapa – symbol lekarzy
Snake of Aesclepius (Caduceus) – symbol of a medical doctor

Możdzierz – symbol aptekarzy
Mortar – symbol of an apothecarist/pharmacist

Ekierka i cyrkiel – symbol inżynierów i architektów
Square and compass – symbol of engineers and architects

Lira lub harfa – symbol muzyków
Lyre or harp – symbol of musicians

Zegar – symbol zegarmistrzów
Clock – symbol of watchmakers

Napisy Nagrobne na Macewach
Tombstone Inscriptions on Matzevah
(with two columns, Hebrew column omitted here)

Tu pochowany (po nikbar) Here is buried
Ojciec father
Matka mother
Admor (nasz nauczyciel, pan i mistrz) rebbe (our teacher, lord, and master)
Cadyk (błogosławowionej pamięci) tzadik (of blessed memory)
Syn son
Córka daughter
Mężczyzna man
Kobieta woman
Kobieta (niezamężna) woman (unmarried)
Kobieta (zamężna) woman (married)
Moja żona my wife
Kohen (członek rodu kapłańskiego) Cohen (member of a priestly family)
Zmarł died

Miesiące
Months
(listing Hebrew month names with roughly overlapping Polish months)

image here

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Filed under education, language, Poland, religion

by Joel | 20 April 2026 · 12:37 am

Seeking Hypnosis & Recognition?

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 73-74:

A FEW DAYS later, January 4, 1968, Galt went to see another L.A. hypnotist, the Reverend Xavier von Koss, at his office at 16010 Crenshaw Boulevard. Koss was a practitioner of good reputation in Los Angeles and the president of the International Society of Hypnosis. Galt consulted with Koss for an hour and discussed his desire to undergo treatment. But to Galt’s irritation, Koss pressed him with larger questions. “What are your goals in life?” Koss asked him.

Galt tried to answer him as narrowly as possible. “I’m thinking about taking a course in bartending,” he said.

“But why are you interested in hypnotism?”

Galt said he thought hypnosis would improve his memory and make him more efficient in carrying out mental tasks. “Somewhere,” he said, “I saw where a person under the influence of hypnotism can solve problems in thirty seconds that would take an ordinary person thirty minutes.”

Koss could sense that there was more to Galt’s interest in hypnosis than merely mind fortification. Koss thought he was a lost soul, someone searching for some kind of validation—and a way to fit into society. “All persons, like myself, who work in the profession of mind power can readily discern the main motivational drive of any person,” Koss later said. “Galt belongs to the recognition type. He desires recognition from his group. He yearns to feel that he is somebody. The desire for recognition for him is superior to sex, superior to money, superior to self-preservation.”

Koss advised Galt that in order to reach a better and more meaningful life, he had to see in his mind’s eye what he wanted to achieve—a statement that Galt seemed to agree with vigorously. He recommended three books for Galt to read—Psycho-Cybernetics, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz; Self-hypnotism: The Technique and Its Use in Daily Living, by Leslie LeCron; and How to Cash In On Your Hidden Memory Power, by William Hersey. Galt was grateful—he jotted down the titles and would later buy every one of them.

Yet books alone would not accomplish much, Koss cautioned. He began to tell Galt about all the hard work that lay before him if he truly wanted to improve his station in life. Koss said, “You must complete your course in bar-tending, you must work hard, you must go to night school, you must construct a settled-down life.”

It was all too much for Galt, and he began to retreat from the conversation. “I lost him,” Koss said. “I could feel a wall rising between us. His mind moved far away from what I was saying to him.”

Still, Galt said he was interested in undergoing hypnosis, and the Reverend Xavier von Koss was willing to oblige. He began a series of tests to ascertain whether Galt would be a good candidate. Quickly, however, he detected “a very strong subconscious resistance” to his procedures. “He could not cooperate,” Koss said. “This is always the case when a person fears that under hypnosis he may reveal something he wishes to conceal.”