11 November 2013. Sergei Yolkin’s World. Events of the Week in Cartoons by Sergei Yolkin: 4 -11 November 2013

Events of the Week in Cartoons by Sergei Yolkin: 4 -11 November 2013

Sergei Yolkin

2013

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Клуб Весёлых и Находчивых (Klub Vesyolykh i Nakhodchivykh (КВН: KVN): Jolly Wits Club) is one of the most popular long-running shows on the Russian telly. It started in Sov times; it ran from 1961-72, and from 1986 onwards. After the August Events, it kept on going. It’s a fun show where contestants from various schools, universities, and enterprises compete in humorous responses to questions, improvisations on a given topic, and in acting out scenes prepared in advance. Click here for the show’s website. KVN is one of the most-loved aspects of Russian pop culture, and most emigrants still follow it.

The ship, of course, is the famous protected cruiser Avrora that fired the first shots of the October Revolution.

BMD 

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Sergei Yolkin noted the important dates that came this week:

• Sergei Shoigu celebrated his first anniversary as head of the Minoborony on 6 November
• The 7 November holiday celebrating Red October
• The birthday of the Jolly Wits Club on the telly on 8 November

11 November 2013

Sergei Yolkin

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/caricature/20131108/975563454.html

22 June 2013. RIA-Novosti Infographics. Chronicle of the October Coup d’ État

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On 25 October/7 November 1917 in Petrograd, an armed uprising broke out that ended with the capture of the Winter Palace and the proclamation of a Soviet government, which lasted for more than seventy years. Celebrations on 7 November (25 October Old Style) began immediately after the event; it was the USSR’s main holiday… the Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Under Stalin, the final shape and traditions of the holiday took hold… a workers’ rally, the appearance of state and Party leaders on the Lenin Mausoleum and, finally, a military parade on Red Square. The entrances of Red Square were specially refurbished to facilitate all this. Even on 7 November 1941, when the Fascists were advancing on Moscow, this programme was still adhered to. The troops who paraded on Red Square went straight from the parade to the front. The influence of this parade on the course of events was equal to that of a major military operation. The fascists had planned to hold a military parade in Red Square on this day to celebrate their capture of Moscow. In the 70s, the situation began to change. The Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution was still an official holiday, but it gave way to Victory Day and New Year’s in the people’s feelings. People were still sent from their workplaces to participate in the rally, but it was more of a duty than a pleasure. On 21 July 2005, President Vladimir Putin signed a Federal Law “On Amendments to Federal Statutes on Days of Russian Military Glory”. The new law established memorial days to commemorate victories of the Russian army that played a decisive role in the history of Russia, and to mark memorable dates in the history of the Motherland associated with the most important historical events in the life of the state and society. Among these official memorial dates, 7 November became Day of the 1917 October Revolution (it also commemorates the anniversary of the 1941 parade).

 7 November 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/infografika/20111107/482782790.html

Editor’s Note:

Some are writing that the influence of the USSR is waning in contemporary Russia. Nothing is farther from the truth. Some, such as Victor Potapov, say such to please their Western cronies and paymasters. Others say such because they must… it’s the official “party line” of the “Jordanville gang” and ROCOR First Families (Drobot, Lukianov, Larin, Krassovsky, et al). So, if you see something written by a rank n’ file priest… be kind, they have to say what they’re saying, the First Families are nastier than the Organy ever were (their OCA counterparts are just as bad… the Schmemann, Meyendorff, Berzansky, and Kishkovsky families, amongst others, are cut from the same bolt of maggoty cloth… they’re identical under the skin, dontcha know). Ironic, ain’t it… those who claim to be hardcore anti-communists are the most vociferous exponents of Orwellian goodthinking and peerless practitioners of Marxist-Leninist Political Correctness (they’re joyless enforcers of the General Line of the Party). Who woulda thunk it…

BMD

7 November 2012. Several Thoughts on this Great October…

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“Whatever past, we may have, it’s ours… it’s all our past”… President Lukashenko spoke wisdom when he said that. That’s why we shoudn’t topple the statues of Lenin… nor those of Tsar St Nikolai… nor those of Gagarin… nor those of Minin and Pozharsky… nor those of Pyotr Veliki. It’s all “our past”, and it formed our narod. If you attempt to erase the past, you attempt to say that what happened didn’t happen… and that’s more formally-absurd than anything Camus ever wrote. There are Five Epic Events in Russian History (there are other Great Events, but these were the real game-changers):

• The Christianisation of Rus
• The Mongol Conquest
• The Time of Troubles
• The Opening to the West
• The Great October

Great October deserves its place. Lenin deserves his place. There’s no getting around it. It’s our past. Great October WAS an epochal event. Lenin was an exceptional leader (I’m not saying that I agree with all of his programme, merely that he was a very talented and gifted man). Russia is forever different because it was Soviet… just as St Vladimir changed it by embracing Orthodoxy… just as Batu Khan changed it via conquest… just as Minin and Pozharsky changed it by defeating the Poles and maintaining Orthodoxy… just as Pyotr changed it by bringing in Western methods and mores. Besides, we’re too close to the events of 1991 to see their true import. Were they a permanent rejection of the Soviet model or was it only a temporary crapitalist interregnum? In historical terms, twenty years is a piffle. No system is cemented in place until fifty years have passed… at least. For instance, the present American system has persisted since FDR’s New Deal… since the time of Reagan (the Russians would’ve called his era of misrule the Reaganshchyna), the Grand Olde Phonies have attempted to topple the New Deal paradigm, but they’ve ultimately failed (they’ve chipped away at this and at that, but the basic edifice stands). Under modern conditions, a powerful federal government’s required, and that’s that.

For the Church, Great October was good, in the end. Yes, kids it was GOOD. The atheist persecution of the early USSR was a GOOD thing. It drove most of the phonies out. It burnt out the cancer of being a “state department”. It made the Church confront its sins and failings. That is, it did much more good than harm, in the long term. That’s why the woman abused by Moriak should sue him in civil court. It’ll force the believers in the OCA to face reality. The SOBs aren’t interested in the truth, they’re only interested in maintaining their situations, and, if they commit crimes against the civil law or break the canons… that’s no biggie to them. “I apologise… see, it’s all right, now!” That’s immoral, absurd, and utterly false at base. We need to burn out the cancer. Paffhausen, Moriak, and Peterson all have to go… not out of office… deposed from the episcopate (they’d still be priests… the Church doesn’t allow multiple punishments). We must utilise the principle of the Great October… not a bad thing in its essence.

Great October is ours. I still say… “Let there be a November Holiday, starting with the Day of National Unity (an old tsarist holiday) on 4 November and ending with the Day of the Great October on 7 November”. It’s the right time for folks to get ready for winter, and the two days between the two book-end holidays would be dandy for that. You can’t shitcan history… what does that tell you about those who try to do such? Here’s a last point to ponder for Russian Orthodox people here in the American diaspora… SVS and Jordanville are trying to “shitcan history”… what does that tell you about them (and their positions on the Church)? Think on that one well…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Thursday 8 November 2012

Albany NY

Ideas of the October Revolution Undergird the Present Policy of Belarus

To the Great October holiday!

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On 6 November, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko stated that many ideas of the October Revolution undergird the foundation of the policy of the present Belarusian state, emphasising, “We celebrate the holiday of the October Revolution on 7 November. I accept all the ideas that the revolutionaries put forth before the people. They had good ideas back then… land for the peasants, factories for the workers, order and recovery in the country, and so on. There wasn’t a single bad idea. These ideas won the revolution. Our present policy relies on many of these same ideas. When we celebrate the October Revolution, primarily, we attach importance to those ideas”.

Lukashenko spoke about why some post-Soviet countries don’t celebrate this holiday, observing, “They didn’t have guts at the time. They faced a storm of criticism, as some said that the Revolution brought misery and killed people. Yes, people were killed afterwards. However, we’re talking about ideas. These bad effects involving the slaughter of people and deviation from the ideas declared prior to the revolution were wrong. However, they happened afterwards, and we condemn it. Nevertheless, one shouldn’t condemn what happened in 1917, and scrap the good ideas that Lenin and his team went forward with”.

Lukashenko advised a careful attitude to an evaluation of the past, noting, “Never hurry to evaluate what happened. It can be politically biased. Whatever past we may have, it’s ours. We can’t get around it. For us to look at our past properly, it’s necessary to see problems, we can’t hush them up, but we should highlight all the good things that happened, too. It’s all our past. Even today, we understand that we did the right thing by preserving this holiday. For this holiday we put aside the best… gifts for the people”. Speaking about the construction of new Minsk Metro stations, Lukashenko remarked that the construction of every kilometre of new metro lines cost 50 million USD (1.575 billion Roubles. 39 million Euros. 31.25 million UK Pounds), stating, “We didn’t do it for executives or rich people. We did it for the people. Isn’t that an embodiment of the ideas that [the Revolution] declared?”

6 November 2012

BelTA

http://news.belta.by/en/news/president?id=698099