Category Archives: USSR

Impearls, a blog with footnotes and appendixes, reminds me to link to a photo essay in which:

A motorcyclist named Elena, her 147-horsepower Kawasaki “Ninja,” and scientist’s access pass provide us with a troubling and unparalleled tour of the ruined landscape about the city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine with its doomed nuclear power plant which, in 1986, devastated the area with radiation, destroying surrounding cities and towns as living communities and leaving the whole region uninhabitable for, it’s claimed, six hundred years. Elena’s pictorial diary of her visit is eerily reminiscent of films like The Omega Man and post-apocalypse science fiction wherein one navigates through a radioactive landscape as one would through a minefield, armed like a lifeline with geiger counter and dosimeter. The heavily radioactive “magic woods” that Elena regards — from a distance — are horrifying. Much of the rest has the melancholy of a recent Pompeii. Don’t miss it. (Thanks to Armed Liberal at Winds of Change.)

Fast internet connection recommended.

The promising new blog SiberianLight notes a poignant pair of anniversaries on 23 February 2004:

Today is the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the entire Chechen nation. Ingushetians were also deported, along with the populations of 10 other nations (approximately 1.4 million people) thought to be enemies of the state during World War II. Their exile lasted for more than ten years until Khruschev allowed them to return home after Stalin’s death….

Today is also Motherland Defender’s Day (previously known as Army Day), dedicated to the memories of those who have fought for the Soviet and Russian armies, and their heroic efforts defending the Motherland. Spare a thought for those Chechens who continued to fight in the Soviet Army even after the deportation of their families …

Read the whole blogpost and check out a bright outlier in the far north.