Conor O’Clery’s Moscow 25 December 1991 follows a notably growing trend for picking a pivot point in history and revolving round it to find a popular audience (witness 1066, 1421, 1434, 1491, 1492 etc. All good books by and large but adopting a very similar tact). The date provides a recognizable focus and then the space is open for provide the background and the aftermath in a popular fashion. O’Clery breaks the mold though in a most engaging fashion with the book. Read the rest of this entry »
strikingly random thoughts and 'maximum data existentialisation'
Archives for category: Soviet
Once more I plunder from the idiosyncratic EnglishRussia blog. There’s always a daily dose of intrigue at the site. What better to feature today — especially after Putin has taken another step towards restoring tradition by suspending one of the last credible opposition parties in the Russian Federation — but some eerie/spooky shadows he cast recently. Check them out…
English Russia has posted some great footage of a Stalinist video showing the wonderful architectural rewards that the populace was about to reap. I was particularly impressed by what must have been a rather impressive technique for the time of putting the modeled or rendered structures into live video of the actual construction sites. I am not sure that I’m too won over by the nature of the designs themselves, suffice it to say they are certainly ‘grand’, in scale and scope scope. I’m not an expert on Soviet architectural achievement, but i don’t think I recognized any of the projects as ones that were actually constructed.