ITAR-TASS Presents… Memories of Soviet New Years

New Year celebration in 1963 in the Dom Profsoyuzov, Moscow (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) USSR

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Ded Moroz and Snegurochka entertain children in the Kremlin Palace of the Soviets, Moscow, 1977

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New Year celebration in the Kremlin Palace of the Soviets

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New Year celebration in the Kremlin Palace of the Soviets

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Queue at Detsky Mir (Children’s World) toy store, Moscow, 1983

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New Year celebration in the Tbilisi Palace of Sports, Tbilisi (Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic) USSR

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Buying a new TV set ahead of the New Year holiday, 1963

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New Year programme on Estonian TV, 1982

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New Year celebration in a kindergarten, Moscow, 1964

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Sale on the Arbat ahead of New Year, Moscow, 1985

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Ded Moroz at a winter Pioneer camp in Moscow Oblast, 1984

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Antonov An-2 aircraft delivered New Year trees to residents in Bukhara Oblast, Uzbek SSR, 1965

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Ded Moroz and Snegurochka in Altai Krai USSR, 1980

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New Year celebration, 1985

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Ded Moroz leads gymnastics class in Moscow, 1985

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Ded Moroz in Riga, Latvian SSR, 1986

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The first official New Year performance for children in the USSR was in the Column Hall of Moscow’s Dom Profsoyuzov (House of Trades Unions) in 1936. These images recall Soviet New Year celebrations and activities.

29 December 2014

ITAR-TASS

http://itar-tass.com/en/non-political/769813

Editor:

THIS is the “Evil Empire” that pigs like Victor Potapov and Patrick Buchanan expostulated about. Living standards in the USSR were lower than in the USA because the Soviets had to spend huge amounts on armaments to defend against Western aggression and rebuild their war damage, all at once. The USA suffered NO war damage… so American boasting about the Cold War is wrong, not to the point, and mendacious in the extreme. The main Sov forces were in the Western Military District in Byelorussia, that’s where all the most-modern stuff was… the forces in Germany and Czechoslovakia were meant to absorb the impact of a Western attack. The history of the last twenty-odd years proves that wasn’t paranoia… the Anglo Americans are violent and peevish toddlers… ask the Serbs, Afghans, Yemenis, Palestinians, Iraqis, and Novorossiyans… and the Native Americans and Filipinos before them (a Filipino said, “The Spaniards were bad, the Americanos were worse, the Hapons were worse than that, but the worst of all were the New Americanos”).

The USSR was done in by Gorbachyov’s incompetence, not the “superiority” of the West. VVP is right… the fall of the USSR was a historical tragedy. These photos prove it. One last thing… this image set is NOT anti-Soviet… fancy that… it proves that Russians do NOT despise their past, as Anglo Americans do. I think that a new socialism is arising in Russia. A spectre haunts the country clubs and Tea Party haunts… methinks that the prideful rightwing obituaries for socialism were a bit premature…

BMD

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2 June 2014. Floods in Altai Krai… Serbia STILL Needs Your Help

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The people in Serbia still need your help to recover from the serious flooding. St  Sava Cathedral in New York is raising funds, and all those interested in participating can do so using checks, credit cards, and PayPal by clicking the “donate” button on the church’s website (click here to do so). Those using credit cards and PayPal should type in “Flood Aid” in the “special instructions” section of their accounts. This money goes directly to the SPC with no middleman taking any cuts.

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There are floods in Altai Krai and the Republic of Khakasiya in Siberia. Here, we see MChS rescuers with a canine friend.

BMD

Link Between Native Americans and Siberia Encoded in DNA History

Tlingit people of Alaska in traditional regalia

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Recently, a team of scientists, including seven researchers from Russia, revealed the results of a study on the DNA of the ancient inhabitants of Siberia during the Upper Palaeolithic period. Scientists were able to obtain new data on the early stages of human settlement in various continents, including the Americas. The research confirmed that the first inhabitants of the Americas, the Paleo-Indians, arrived via Beringia, an isthmus between Siberia and Alaska that existed at that time. Scientists consider Altai Krai the genetic birthplace of the first Americans. Their ancestors settled in Siberia and eventually reached the Americas. Whilst the first Americans were thought to have a close genetic relationship with East Asia, until now, scientists weren’t able to determine exactly to which people of the Old World their genes could be most closely be associated with. Through the study, scientists were able to make new conclusions about the makeup of ancient Native Americans.

The team, led by Maanasa Raghavan of the University of Copenhagen, studied the genome of the ancient inhabitants of Siberia and compared these data with the genes of other peoples. They published their results in Nature. The researchers took a DNA sample from the 24,000-year-old skeleton of an ancient inhabitant of Siberia, discovered during excavations in 1928–58 in Usolsky Raion (Irkutsk Oblast), near Malta station. Now, it’s part of the State Hermitage Museum collection. Scientists conducted DNA sequencing on the remains and compared the data with the genomes of individuals belonging to 11 modern ethnic groups, four Eurasian groups (ancestors of modern Mari, Tajiks, Avars, and East Indians), as well as with the genome associated with Denisovans, a subspecies of Homo Sapiens discovered recently in the Altai Mountains. The results showed how the Karitiana, an indigenous people from Brazil, are genetically close to ancient Siberians.

From these results, the study concluded that genes typical of the people of West Eurasia came to the Americas earlier than previously believed… namely 24,000 years ago, during the Upper Palaeolithic period. Furthermore, the data revealed why Native Americans carry haplogroup X, a mitochondrial DNA haplogroup commonly occurring among the peoples of western Eurasia, but not found among East Asians. Lyudmila Osipova, co-author of the study and head of the Population Ethno-Genetics Laboratory at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAN, said, “The results refer to the early stages of peopling of the continents, particularly Siberia and the Americas. In addition, they have indirect links to the issues of race genesis, although scientists discuss the matter cautiously. However, the issue is biological in nature and deeply connected to the topic of adaptation of human populations and to their different living conditions in different climatic zones of the globe”.

Osipova argued that despite the relatively good degree of research conducted by geneticists on the early peopling of our planet and the identification of early human migration patterns, life is more complicated than any taxonomy, saying, “The question is… ‘At what level of organisation were race genesis processes taking place… Homo sapiens, or, even at earlier stages?’ There are a lot of discoveries still to be made”. According to Osipova, the study confirms an earlier hypothesis about the origins of Native Americans, and provides a great deal of fundamental knowledge on lesser known aspects of migrations, including the movements of the people belonging to the European type towards the territory of Siberia in ancient times.

1 December 2013

Yana Khlyustova

Russia Behind the Headlines

http://rbth.ru/science_and_tech/2013/12/01/link_between_native_americans_and_siberia_encoded_in_dna_his_32159.html

 

Prokuratura Sez JWs Broke Public Rally Law

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On Monday, the Prokuratura said that a Jehovah’s Witnesses group in Siberia broke the law on public rallies by holding a mass gathering of 3,000 followers over the summer. Officials in Barnaul said that JWs should’ve informed the authorities of its plans to hold a public prayer meeting at a horse racetrack in the city on 23-25 August. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, with more than seven million followers worldwide, including over 130,000 in Russia {that’s less than 0.1 percent of the population: editor}, face frequent pressure from Russian authorities; it’s been banned in a number of federal subjects and in some former Soviet republics over its religious beliefs.

In 2004, a Moscow court ordered the dissolution of the local JW branch and banned its activities amidst charges that the group was brainwashing children and breaking up families through its teachings. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the decision was unlawful and ordered Russia to pay 70,000 Euros (3.07 million Roubles. 95,000 USD. 98,500 CAD. 100,000 AUD. 60,000 UK Pounds) in damages.

Last year, President Vladimir Putin approved changes to the law on public rallies to increase penalties substantially for people involved in unauthorised demonstrations. He said that the authorities designed the change to the law, which followed a series of large-scale street protests against Putin and the government, to combat radicalism, but opponents of the government accused the President of seeking to clamp down on opposition to his rule.

14 October 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131014/184140427/Russian-Prosecutors-Say-Jehovahs-Witnesses-Broke-Rally-Law.html

Editor’s Note:

The JWs (or, more precisely, “Russellites”, after their founder, Charles Taze Russell) aren’t a real religious group. They’re a sect and we must treat them accordingly. One mustn’t be nasty to individual JWs, but one shouldn’t give its looney-tunes “theology” any quarter (just as one should never countenance the lies of Mormon, Pentecostalist, and “Evangelical” sectarians). We can NEVER join forces with the groups named… they deny the Eucharist, ergo, they deny Christ, and that’s the end of the matter for any believing Orthodox Christian.

BMD