Armchair Dragoons Forums
The Reference Desk => History and Tall Tales => Topic started by: bayonetbrant on March 12, 2022, 07:28:04 AM
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Brest-Litovsk: Eastern Europe’s Forgotten Father
https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/4094-brest-litovsk-eastern-europe-s-forgotten-father-2.html
One of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century—perhaps ever—Vaslav Nijinsky was born to Polish parents in what is now Ukraine, was at the time Imperial Russia (and for a brief six-month period, was a puppet-state of Imperial Germany). He is supposed to have thought of himself as Polish, for whatever that’s worth. He married a Hungarian woman and raised his children as Polish. He spoke Russian.
One of the elements I find so extraordinary about Brest-Litovsk, personally, is the assumptions that the Germans made about how populations and peoples worked, what identity meant at the dawn of the 20th century. Although Germany had expended great military, financial, and political capital in annexing or expanding its influence at Russia’s expense—a fact that they hoped would be to Germany’s financial and political benefit—to the people who lived within that territory, Germany’s sovereignty must have seemed like a distant abstraction, a matter of architecture and linguistic preference. As intellectually similar and similarly modern as even the most cosmopolitan people of that time were to people today, they were, nevertheless, different—there was a kind of existential freedom to choose one’s path, to pick an identity, rather than having it forced upon one.
much more at the link
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^That is...mindbending.
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https://twitter.com/Clint_Davey1/status/1661318214784262144
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My brain...make the ache go away.
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I suspect it would be easier if that teacher compared Gavrilo Princip's pistol shot to someone tossing a tennis ball into a large room with a floor completely covered in armed mousetraps.
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I suspect it would be easier if that teacher compared Gavrilo Princip's pistol shot to someone tossing a tennis ball into a large room with a floor completely covered in armed mousetraps.
:bigthumb:
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAZcJ2gCpEo&pp=ygUiQ29saW4gbW9jaHJpZSBzdGVwcyBvbiBhIG1vdXNldHJhcA%3D%3D
Up the danger, and the pain.