Russian Culture and Cuisine (Sort of)

Hey guys!

Sorry that I didn’t post yesterday! It has been a hectic couple of days. MIDTERMS ARE HERE!! Because I am currently in the middle of midterms, this post will be really short. I need to study!!!

This weeks post was supposed to be about the culture and cuisine of Russia, but because I do not have time to much research, I am going to just attach links to some Russian cuisine. I hope that is ok!!!! Next weekend I will be home for spring break so hopefully I’ll be able to write a better post!

First off, did you watch the Olympics?! What did you think!? I loved it!

Ok so here is a link to a Huffington Post article:

10 Food Reasons Russians Are More Hardcore Then the Rest of Us

And here is a link to a website that has so many Russian recipes!

Russian Cooking Recipes

OK guys! Im so sorry again for not posting yesterday and I am so sorry this is so short! But I promise that I will try to do better next month! I can't believe it's already mid-semester! I hope you are enjoying the slightly warmer weather! See you next week with a post about North Korean music!

Political Figure in Russia

Hello again!

Sorry I haven’t been posting much this month. It has been hectic! So much work and so many activities! But, I must say, so much fun! February has really been pretty good. I am, though, really ready to be home for a week over spring break. Spring break won’t be necessarily relaxing, but it will be fun and great to see my mom again. I feel like I haven’t talked to her in forever. With the craziness that has been the weather this month, she’s been ridiculously busy or I haven’t been in a place that I can talk, i.e. the library… I’ve quite literally have been living in the library the past few weeks.

Well anyway, one thing that I’ve been doing a lot of recently has been watching the Sochi Olympics. I absolutely love the Olympics, both summer and winter. I might like the winter ones better than summer though. I just love winter much more than summer, including the sports in the winter versus the sports in the summer. Well, one thing that has come along with the winter Olympics in Russia has come news about Vladimir Putin… and this weeks post will be on the one and only Putin…

Putin was born in October of 1952 in Leningrad, USSR. His grandfather was the cool for Lenin, then Lenin’s wife, and later Stalin. His father was a member of multiple communist party committees. Putin’s family had deep connections with the communist government in the USSR.

In 1975, Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in International Law. While getting his education, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and maintained membership until 1991 with the fall of the iron curtain.

After school, Putin joined the KGB, where he was given the job of monitoring foreigners in Dresden, East Germany. When he returned to Russia, he was given the position of surveillance maintenance on students and recruiter at Leningrad State University. He resigned from his position and from the KGB because he did not support the 1991 coup d’état attempt that the hard communist party supporters led with the support of the KGB.

After the fall of the iron curtain, Putin was given a position in Boris Yeltsin’s Presidential Staff. In 1998, he was appointed as head of the FSB and later became a member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation permanently. In August 1999, Putin was named Prime Minister by then-President Boris Yeltsin. Then, in December of the same year, Yeltsin suddenly resigned and Putin took over the presidency. When the upcoming Presidential elections came, Putin easily won the election.

During his first term, Putin altered the Chechnya constitution that declared it as part of Russia.

During his second term, he worked to improve health care, education, housing, and agriculture. He also continued the crack down on Russian oligarchs for fraud and tax evasion that he began during his first term. There were some very negative things that Putin has done as well. He lessened media freedom and has been suspected as the one to order the murders of several people, many of which work within the media.

In 2008, Dmitry Medvedev became president because Putin was limited to two terms as president. Putin became the Prime Minister. During Medvedev’s presidency the constitution was altered so that someone could not be president for more than one term in a row, the key being, in a row. This allowed Putin the run for president again in the 2012 elections, which he won. Putin is the current President of Russia. This election however was criticized for not being very transparent and possibly corrupt, which the entire election process in Russia cannot be considered every democratic to begin with. As a result, there were many protests and Putin responded violently. One protest in Moscow resulted in over 500 arrests and over 50 people injured by the police. One example of Putin’s violence came out in the news when he attacked musical artists, Pussy Riot.

In 2012 and 2013, Putin supported legislation that restricted the LGBT community. This legislation prohibited things like the usage of the rainbow flag. This was an issue as the Sochi Olympics approached.

Well, there is some of Putin’s history. I should go into more issues that Putin has caused, but I will become too heated and want to continue to think rationally. I also really have to study for a computer science quiz that I have tomorrow. The Breakfast Club is also on in an hour and a half and I want all my work to be done by then.

Well, I hope this sort of gave you a good idea of Putin’s background. Let me know in the comments what you think of Vladimir Putin. Here is a quiz to try: Which Vladimir Putin Are You? Enjoy! And enjoy the rest of the Olympics! But remember to keep the dogs of Sochi in your hearts as they face injustice. What events are you still looking forward to see?

Have a great week!

Humanitarian Organizations in Russia

Hello everyone! I hope you had a good week!

This week I will be writing about Humanitarian Organizations in Russia. This will slightly different from the humanitarian organization in South Sudan post, because Russia has recently put unique restraints on NGOs, especially foreign ones, in the country. It will also be a shorter post because mid terms are coming up and I have so much reading to get through. I am currently sitting in library with a large cup of Starbucks coffee and books, notebooks, and folders piled around me wearing my comfiest big sweater, my comfiest jeans, and my warm Toms with my hair pulled back out of my face and ear buds in my ears that are playing “In the Beginning” by the Stills from Spodify.

Well, on to Russia.

When I went to look up works that humanitarian organizations were doing in Russia, I couldn’t find much of any kind. What confused me, however, was that you constantly hear of how people are being mistreated in the totalitarian (or authoritarian depending on your definitions of the two) country. I remembered from the AP Comparative Government class in high school that Russia had been pushing some foreign NGOs out and so that is exactly what I will write about. In the case of Russia it is almost easier to write about the lack of humanitarian organizations than trying to find one to write about.

Putin wants NGOs to allow themselves to be listed as “foreign agents,” which is a term with a very negative connotation. Putin also wants to kick out any of these organizations that he sees as not cooperating with Russian law. But this is difficult to do when Putin continues to change the law and continues to do whatever he wishes without considering the affect a decision will have on the country and its citizens. More and more NGOs are being investigated and it seems that the majority of them are being dissolved right away once they are investigated. As of September 2013, Russia has named 80 NGOs are “foreign agents,” including NGOs with purposes to address voter’s rights, environmental issues, gender equality and LGBT issues.

Here is a link to an article by “Civic Solidarity” that lists these NGOs and what they grounds they were convicted of being “foreign agents” on. 

Even though many have urged Putin to stop this investigation process, it seems that he firmly believes that “Western states use NGOs to spy on Russia and to meddle in its affairs” (Reuters article listed below).

Well, for now it looks as though, for conditions to become better in Russia, the people will need to protest. To me Russia seems to be taking a step back to a combination of two elements of its history. To me the current (apparently transitional democratic) government to me seems to actually be an odd combination of the government under Tsarist Russia and the government under the communist USSR. (It appears that despite it labeling itself democratic, Russia is still defining the people who live in it as peasants, rather than citizens.

Without the influence of NGOs in Russia, I am sort of afraid of what might happen to Russia. I get the feeling that it wants to once again cut itself off from the rest of the world, especially the West, just like it had during the reign of the Soviet Block.

I might be a little weird, but this is the type of thing I think about all the time. I will even get distracted from hanging out with friends just so I can look things up about the humanitarian happenings around the world, This stuff truly worries me. Well, I should probably try to force myself to focus on schoolwork now. I really hope that I am putting myself in the position to do something about humanitarian issues in the future.

Have a wonderful week and if Valentines Day is a thing you do, have fun! I’m heading back to get some work done. I now have coffee in my system, so I should have the energy to knock everything out.

Thanks for reading my blog. Please comment letting me know what you think about the direction Russia is going, or just anything at all. And please share my blog with anyone you think would be interested, if you like it. That would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Sources:

http://www.rferl.org/section/crackdown-on-ngos-in-russia/3272.html

http://www.dw.de/ngos-in-russia-refuse-agents-label/a-16947586

http://civicsolidarity.org/article/676/russia-list-ngos-named-foreign-agents-updated-20-september

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/15/us-russia-ngos-idUSBRE96E0DK20130715

"Princess" - by Melnitsa

"Nochnaya Kobila" - by Melnitsa

Music in Russia

Hello!

This month, my weekly posts will be revolving around Russia because of the Olympic games that will be held in Sochi later this month!

So for this week, I am going to talk about music in Russia. I have written an academic paper on this topic before and there is so much to talk about especially the battle musicians and composers had with the government during the Communist Regime. I will try to touch on as much as I can without making this post to ridiculously long and without taking away too much of my studying time.

Now to start off with, there are many different ethnic groups in Russia, so like in many other countries, the music differs depending on where in the country you are.

Music in Russia, like in many countries, can be traced back to the beginning of the people living in that area of the world. And, like in most cases, the original consisted of folk music. By the 18^th and 19^th century Classical music began to come to Russia with composers like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Anton and Nikolai Rubenstein, and Sergei Rachmaninov. By the 20^th century and the Russian Revolution, a group called the Association for Contemporary Music emerged. This organization was supported by the government and sort of acted as the police officers of music. They wanted to prevent any western influence from entering Russian produced music. They wanted to exterminate any signs of genres such as jazz. They supported the usage of classical sounds and sounds that the masses would be able to interpret. Therefore, experimentation was not allowed. Composers like Dmitri Shostakovich tried to push the boundaries with their compositions and many faced the wrath of the government for it, losing their careers and in some cases being criminally punished. After Stalin’s reign ended, however, there was a shift to a slightly less strict system and western music began to enter the Soviet Union.

While much of the Top 40 in Russia are songs that do not come from Russia, one popular Russian folk rock musician is Melnitsa from Moscow. This group combines Russian, Irish, and Northern European folk music. They began as a cult/ teenage sub-culture band, but when their song “Nochnaya Kobyla” was released in 2005 it went to number one becoming the best song of the year and bring the group up with it.

Well, that’s all I have time to write today. I have a load of homework to still get done for tomorrow. But I hope you enjoyed this post. I will be putting a link to “Nochnaya Kobyla” up following this post if you were interested in listening to it. Let me know what you think and if you know any other Russian artists! Have fun watching the Super Bowl tonight!