The first one is more recent. According to local sources, it only appeared a few weeks ago on the side of the Teatro Valle Occupato. The second is more weather-beaten, older, you can already see it in the reports from last May on the Piazza del Popolo. A printed, glued poster along the lines of the Soviet coat of arms, in the manner of a South American folk cult of saints and revolutionary pseudo-holy images. But why in French, on the outskirts of Rome? From whom and for what? As viewers sensitive to iconographic crosstalk, we are looking forward to the explanations of our more au courant readers.
Demolition of a statue of Lenin in a small town in Ukraine in the summer of 1941, after the German invasion
We have already pointed out that, beginning in 1918, in Russia and later in the Soviet Union they preserved the pedestals of the tsarist public monuments, while exchanging the statues standing on them for the figures of Lenin (and later of Stalin). Traveling in the Ukraine in the past two decades, we could observe the opposite: preserving the pedestals of the statues of Lenin in the main squares, the figure on them was replaced by the statue of Shevchenko, as the symbol of Ukrainian language, history and unity. But not everywhere. Like in so much else, here also, it was the Zbruch, the former Galician-Russian and later Polish-Ukrainian border river, that was the invisible dividing line, and when traveling eastward from Czernowitz, soon there appeared the first preserved Lenin statues, the symbols of the protest of Eastern Ukraine against the new concept of nation and history propagated from the western part of the country. What is more, as if pointing out that the statues were not accidentally left in place, in many localities – mostly small towns – they added a new iconographic element to them, by completely painting them gold or silver.
This invisible border seems to be broken now, with the statue-demolishing actions carried out yesterday throughout Eastern Ukraine. According to @ukpravda_news, they hurled down the statues of Lenin in thirty-two towns, although the accompanying map indicates only sixteen locations, and among them at least the ones in Kiev and in Berdichev were already destroyed one or two months earlier by the protesters. Even in the following video, published yesterday by Yuri Kovtsunyak, we only see eleven, the majority of which, however, are destroyed in observance of the traditional rules of ritual statue-hurling as an execution in effigie: with the rope tied around the neck, pulling it down with a truck so that it falls head first to the ground, then pulling the body for a while on the pavement, and finally smashing it in pieces.
Click here for the text and translation of the music accompanying the video.
The pedestals, however, are still standing, and an empty pedestal cries for a statue. As to who will be put on them next in Eastern Ukraine, this question will be answered by the political developments of the next weeks and months.
At the video of the previous post the question was raised, what is the Ukrainian song performed with such dedication during the tumbling down of the Lenin statues. Let us then have the original text with its translation, and, below the video, the song itself, free from the background noise of the events.
Дванадцять комуністів в однім куротнім місці Зутрілися на з'їзді чи на пленумі ЦК. В готелі поселились, а чим це закінчилось, Про це моя історія не радісна така.
Дванадцять комуністів пішли купатись в море, І в хвилі променисті кожен весело стрибав, Та двоє з перепою лишились під водою, От вже і починається, як я попереджав.
Бо тільки десятеро вийшли із води, Ось так і зменшуються в партії ряди.
Вже десять комунітсів покупані та чисті В покоях ономісних перетравлюють обід, В вісьмох перетрамилось, а двоє отруїлось, А троє в моїй пісні ще захворіли на СНІД.
Всі вісім комуністів останні чули вісті, Про СНІД, що ходить в місці, попередив партактив, Розважились приємно в непевнім товаристві, Типовий сексуальний кримінальний детектив.
Трьох неслухняних довелося поховать, І залишилось із вісім тільки п'ять.
З п'ятірки комуністів один помер на місті, Бо кунив сигарету на імпортний килим, А четверо тушили, з них троє так спішили, Що довго не прожили, бо попав у горло дим.
Багато комуністів померло в моїй пісні, Сама Агата Крісті позаздрила б мені, Та ще один лишився, що в морі не втопився, Обідом не втруївся і не загинув у вогні.
Таки не тонуть і в пожежах не горять, Вони і досі на шиях в нас сидять.
Twelve Communists gathered in a spa for the CC meeting or plenum. They stayed at the hotel, and as to how it ends, will be told by my not too happy story.
Twelve Communists went to bathe in the sea, and cheerfully frolicked in the golden waves, but two with hangovers remained under water, lo, how it begins, did I not tell you before?
Only ten came out of the water: this is how the ranks of the Party decrease!
All ten Communists, bathed and clean, retired to their rooms to digest lunch. Eight digested it, but two were poisoned, and three in my ballad got AIDS there.
All eight of the Communists knew the latest news about AIDS from the party activist, but somehow mingled with their cheerful company a detective specializing in sex crimes
who managed to bury the three naughty ones, so that only five of the eight were left.
Of the five Communists one died in the city when he put out the cigarette on an imported kelim. And the other four were so enthralled by the fire, that three of them did not survive, as the smoke went down their throats.
Many Communists die in this song of mine, even Agatha Christie could envy me. There was only one left, who was not drowned in the sea, was not killed by the lunch, and did not die in the fire.
No water kills, no fire burns this race: look, they are still sitting in our neck.
And in fact, only eleven of them are pulled down in the video.
We have repeatedlyshown, that WWI propaganda, for the purpose of euphemism and thereby a better acceptance of the war, showed a taste for depicting the soldiers fighting on the front in the guise of children, like here the representatives of the three countries of the Central Powers. Nevertheless, some tension and ambiguity is always lingering in these representations, as these children obviously do the job of the adult soldiers. For example, they really slaughter the enemy in heaps, like the little Willi and his friend in Herbert Rikli’s wartime children’s book.
However, this postcard is even more embarrassing. The three, obviously prepubertal allies look down and wave to the lady bathing in the image just as tauntingly as their fifteen or twenty-year older colleagues did in the real world, or at least in their imaginations. But at the same time, in a sign of generalized euphemism, the designer adjusted the age of the lady to match that of the little ones.
After this I would not even be surprised if I saw in Rikli’s book this postcard hanging on the wall above the bed of little Willi, in the same way as those of her fifteen-year older contemporaries hung on the walls of real soldiers in the entrenchment of Isonzo.
Self-portrait of Franz Aigner (1891-1983), a Czech buck sergeant of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, from his photo album compiled on the Isonzo front
In recent days, probably everyone has seen the pictures circulating on the internet about the expelled Ukraininan President Yanukovich’s dacha in Mezhigorye, glamorous and tawdry beyond bounds. The history of the dacha, called “the museum of corruption” by Ilya Varlamov, is especially nice, in that it stands on the territory of one of the most ancient monasteries and spiritual centers of the Kievan Rus, the Transfiguration Monastery, founded in 988 and demolished in 1935, and which in 2007 was transferred by secret presidential decree to Janukovich.
Now, however, it has turned out – writes Dmytro Gnap, a blogger of Українська Правда–, that Yanukovich has not only stolen Ukraine’s money and land, but also its history. The activists of the Right Sector doing the inventory of the dacha yesterday showed him a box full of old books.
The works were the first and most valuable Ukrainian printed books, stolen on the order of Yanukovich from the safes of various state museums. Their genuineness is beyond doubt, as a detailed description and certificate by L. Khaukha, Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Book and Printing Museum, was enclosed with each volume.
The first volume, for example, was the Apostol, the first Ukrainian-language book printed in 1574 in Lwów by that Ivan Fjodorov, whose statue, as we have shown, stands in the middle of the antiquarian fair of Lemberg, holding the 1581 Ostrog Bible in his hand.
But Gnap has also seen such priceless pieces of Ukrainian book history, as I. Hizel’s Great menaion of 1680, M. Slozka’s Apostol of 1654, or the Evangeliary of 1704.
“Nowadays the ancient prints of Kiev which survived wars and Russian censorship, natural disasters and the burning of the Lavra library in 1772 and 1849, are considered great rarities”, writes the Ukrainian encyclopedia of book history. “Now ex-president Yanukovich is also included in the list of the catastrophes they have survived”, adds Gnap.
Neighboring peoples hating each other from the heart always have some nice names in store for the other, in which they compress their contempt and aversion. In Russian-Ukrainian relations, such is the pair of names which are particularly common these days in the flames of Ukrainian and Russian forums: katsap and khokhol.
The хохол, used by the Russians to mock the Ukrainians – yes, the great Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol [pronounce Khokhol] was also called like this –, originally meant the single, long lock of hair left on the otherwise completely shaved head of the Zaporozhye Cossack warriors. The Cossacks, of course, were only one amongst the several Southern Russian, Ruthenian, Rusyn and other ethnic groups with radically different historical traditions, who were involved in the Ukrainian ethnogenesis. Nevertheless, as this nickname, documented since the 17th century, was used for all the “little Russians” in today’s Ukraine, it in fact the first comprehensive ethnonym of the Ukrainian nation, crystallizing itself since the late 19th century. Perhaps this also contributes to the fact that today the figure of the warrior or funny Cossack is a mascot of Ukrainian identity even in such regions as Podolia or Galicia, which have nothing to do with the Cossack tradition, and where the local Ruthenians even considered the Cossacks as a different and hostile ethnic group. And perhaps also to the other fact that today they try to put a positive spin on the name khokhol, and thereby the image of the Ukrainian nation, with the long hair.
“I am XXL / khokhol. – The Ukrainian girls are the most beautiful!”
However, the origins of the name кацап– used by the Ukrainians to mock the Russians – are disputed. According to Vladimir Dal’s authoritative Great Russian dictionary, it was borrowed from the Turkish and Tartar kasab,ʻbutcher’ in the meaning of ʻwarrior, soldier’, and it also came to the Ruthenians from the Cossack territories over the Dnester.
Nevertheless, The etymological dictionary of the Ukrainian language (1985, II. 572.) is not satisfied with this etymology:
“…очевидно, утворене від цап за допомогою специфічного компонента ка-, як жартівливе позначення людей, що носять довгі бороди (Фасмер II 213, Преобр. I 302, Bruckner 211), недостатньо обґрунтоване виведення (Крымский Укр. Гр. I 20, Яворницький 342) від тур. крим.-тат. аз. kassap«м'ясник», яке походить від ар. qaşşăb.”
“…obviously from tsap,ʻbilly-goat’, with the addition of the prefix ka,ʻlike’, as a comic reference to people wearing long beards (Фасмер II 213, Преобр. I 302, Bruckner 211). The explanation (Крымский Укр. Гр. I 20, Яворницький 342), which derives it from Turkish and Crimean Tartar kassapʻbutcher’ or Arabic qaşşăb (with a similar meaning) is not satisfactory.”
The Ten Commandments of the [marriageable] daughters. A ten-piece series of postcards by Hulak Vasil, 1918. Seventh commandment: Never fall in love with a katsap!
Although the source of the pejorativeness of ethnic nicknames is, in most cases, the fact that exclusively the people disdaining us uses that name, nevertheless, it is not even so that the source of the nickname is indifferent. It just feels better if you are mocked as a formidable enemy. And it just feels better if you can mock them as miserable billy-goats.
With the escalation of the Katsap-Khokhol conflict, it is very timely to keep expanding our vocabulary with the informal naming(национальные прозвища) of a few other peoples. The links in the pop-up windows lead over to the Russian meme encyclopedia Lurkomor to the deepening of the respective national stereotypes.
And how are called the dear neighbors and friendly peoples in your language?
Only a few hours, and with the burning of the straw puppet, the symbol of the winter ends the Maslenitsa, the last week before the Orthodox Lent which begins tomorrow. In this week, you already cannot eat meat, but milk and eggs are still permitted. Therefore, the festive meal of this week is pancakes, блины, from which the week has its other name: Блинница, Pancakes-week. This is the week of carnival amusements, traditionally with fairs, sledge races, fire-jumping. And on Sunday – like all day today on the Russian internet – everyone begs for pardon and everyone forgives to everyone.
“Hey, I’ve put down the soutane, in spite of all my relatives; let him be a priest who wants it!”
Old revolutions and counter-revolutions also used propaganda. They employed all sorts of texts and images for it, and every part of society, each group of revolutionaries distributed their messages this way.
These five etchings date back to the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1795.
Marco Beasley, Accordone – Marcia delle truppe Sanfediste. From the CD Fra Diavolo: La musica nelle strade del Regno di Napoli (2010) A counter-revolutionary version of La Carmagnole, sung in 1799 by the Sanfedians, a folk movement against the Republic of Naples, which mobilized peasants and brigands with the support of the Church. The movement rose up in Calabria under the command of the cardinal Ruffo and resulted in anti-French riots.
Revolutionaries opened assemblies, where they were free to speak. This enigmatic etching (1790) represents the club as a stage. The actors are performing a mock pageant of the regime, especially of the king’s duplicity (hence the reference to Acts 23 and the hypocritical Sanhedrin), with the king dancing on a rope, assisted by a priest (the Church) who keeps the Constitution topsy-turvy. The personages dancing on the scene might be masqued aristocrats. A well-dressed woman, perhaps Théroigne de Méricourt, directs the orchestra, assisted by two clerks. The public, enthralled, awaits the resolution.
After 1792, the wars – both civil and foreign – following the revolution created a new Frenchman, at least in revolutionary propaganda: “mort aux rats”– rat poison – from top to toe.
In 1793, the devil got sick from eating too many “sans-culottes”. He seems to symbolize a moderate faction which had tried to suppress the radical one, but the resulted too heavy to digest, and stronger than the devil himself. He gives up, and they flee to the “Société des Frères et Amis”– Society of Brothers and Friends –, one of the radical far-left clubs during the Reign of Terror. In the background, a cart is waiting to bring convicts to the guillotine which the devil has overturned in vomiting.
After the Terror, this etching shows a Jacobin, a partisan of Robespierre, fraternizing with Discordia on the ruins of a burning village.
And the last words belong to this True Ordinary Guillotine: “A good support for freedom, indeed!”
“Ask what you don’t know, for the humiliation of asking will guide you to the dignity of knowledge” The Gulistan of Saʿdi, trans. Thackston (2008)
Gulistan – Vargaar: همسادهHomsadah (Neighbors)
Those who travel the río Wang know the value of serendipity. At the end of last year in a local antique market, two documents with striking calligraphy caught my eye. A 200-year old Persian manuscript turning-up in East Yorkshire suggests an interesting journey! With the documents came a type-written letter dated 30th August 1967, from G. Meredith-Owens, Deputy Keeper of the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts at The British Museum. It reads:
Dear Sir,
The three documents which you left in the Oriental Students’ Room are as follows:
1) Diploma from the Shah of Persia dated A.H. 1227 (A.D. 1812-13) conferring a decoration (the Order of the Lion and the Sun) on Sir Gore Ouseley (d. 1844), British Ambassador to Persia.
2) A letter (probably a copy – not the actual letter) addressed to ʿAbbās Mīrsā, Governor of Azerbaijan, by his brother. It is really a petition asking for favours from a rich relation.
3) Letter in Armenian. I am afraid that we have no full-time expert on the staff but it certainly looks as if the Italian is a translation of the letter.
I am returning the three documents by registered post.
It seems I have two of the three documents so described, but which two? The Diploma conferring the Order of the Lion and Sun on Sir Gore Ouseley and the letter in Armenian? I have nothing in Italian. While one can gather some background on Sir Gore Ouseley, information on the second document is more difficult and insight from río Wang scholars would be welcome.
The Diploma shows some water damage to one edge and appears to have been tightly folded in the past, but is otherwise in good condition. It is currently framed and behind glass, so the images below are preliminary, but legible. Enlarging the view is recommended.
Who was Sir Gore Ouseley?
Sir Gore Ouseley in 1830, with two distinguished orders (see below)
“Sir Gore Ouseley, 1st Baronet (1770-1844). In India from 1787-1806, attached to the Court of Oudh at Lucknow, 1800-4. A considerable Persian scholar. Author of Biographical Notes on Persian Poets. One of the founders of the Royal Asiatic Society.” This is how Sir Denis Wright introduces Ouseley in The English Amongst the Persians: Imperial Lives in Nineteenth-Century Iran.
Ouseley’s appointment in 1810 as ambassador to the Qajar court of Fath Ali Shah marked a shift in British interest in Persia, which hitherto had been largely left in the hands of the East India Company. Anticipating what was to become the “Great Game”, with Persia as a buffer between Russia and India, relations were now deemed too important to be left for the Company. The aims of the Company’s agents in Calcutta and the British Government in London were increasingly at variance and the appointment of Ouseley as “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary” at the Qajar court, was “a slap in the face” for the East India Company and a clear indication of the intention to have permanent diplomatic representation.
Banyan leaves and fruit. A watercolor from the collection of Gore Ouseley, now at Kew Gardens.
Ouseley had served in India and was proficient in Persian and Arabic and a collector of manuscripts. His instructions from the Government were all-embracing, and probably at his own instigation, included a petition to Fath Ali Shah for a grant of land on which to construct a residence appropriate to the dignity of the Ambassador in Tehran: the cost, including furnishings, was not to exceed £8,000. He was instructed to purchase manuscripts for the British Museum and seeds for Kew Gardens.
His party left England on 18 July 1810: it included Lady Ouseley and their infant daughter, his brother the scholar Sir William Ouseley as secretary and, on a second vessel, the returning Persian envoy Mirza Abdul Hasan and his Persian servants. After several port calls, they reached Bombay in January 1811. After resting and exchange of letters, they reached the port of Abu-Shahr on 1st March. The overland journey from Bushehr to Tehran was slow and arduous involving as it did Ouseley’s large ambassadorial party, replete with baggage and diplomatic gifts. It must have even harder for Lady Ouseley who gave birth to their second daughter in Shiraz! There was also continual friction on matters of protocol as this was no mere trading delegation and Ouseley “was strict in asserting the honours due to him as Ambassador and Plenipotentiary”.
British delegation at the Court of Fath Ali Shah: Gore Ouseley, John Malcolm and Harford Jones (Partial image of the Nigaristan Palace Mural, 1816-20)
On reaching Tehran, Ouseley refused to deal with Court intermediaries and was granted audience with Fath Ali Shah on 30th November 1811, within the three days that precedent demanded. Ouseley had brought from London the “Definitive Treaty”
Fath Ali Shah’s portrait in the Gulistan Palace. For more portraits of the Shah, check here
based on earlier drafting by Harford Jones. With one eye on France, it promised British assistance to Persia against European aggression, but with Napoleon checked, it was already overtaken by events, including renewed Persian hostilities with Russia. It was finally signed in March 1812.
“Upon the 25th May, 1812, the Embassy departed from Tahrán, which was an unhealthy residence during the heat of the summer, to the cooler capital Tabríz, (i.e., the city Febrifuge, or Fever-dispersing) passing through the celebrated city of Káswín. On the road, the Ambassador received information that peace had been probably concluded between England and Russia, and that a Russian diplomatist, Colonel Freygang, had arrived at Tabríz, sent by the Commander-in-Chief in Georgia to the English Embassy. This event was soon verified, and afforded facilities to Sir Gore for the commencement of negotiations for peace between Persia and Russia, through the mediation of England.” (Memoir, lxxviii).
Acting as a mediator at the request of Russians, Ouseley persuaded the Shah to accede to a treaty with Russia, the infamous Treaty of Gulistan, signed on the River Seiwa on 12 October 1813, in the village of Gulistan (today Goranboy, Azerbaijan). As Wright describes it: “The resultant Treaty of Gulistan of 12 October 1813 was a bitter blow for the Persians who were obliged to surrender virtually all their territory north of the river Aras, which became, as it has since remained, the country’s north-western boundary.” While the Caspian Sea was open to both countries commercial fleets, Russia had the exclusive right to the Caspian for its military fleet. It was not helpful when London then had second thoughts about the “Definitive Treaty” of March 1812, and renegotiated another version, duly signed in November 1814. By then, Ouseley was on his way back to London via St Petersburg. Whatever the political realities this was not a high-point of English-Persian relations and is remembered to this day. One wonders therefore, for which treaty did Sir Gore Ouseley receive the Order of the Lion and Sun? The Definitive Treaty between England and Persia of 1812 or the Gulistan Treaty between Russia and Persia of 1813?
In St Petersburg, Ouseley received the Grand Cordon of the Russian Order of St Alexander Nevsky. This medal, and that of the Order of the Lion and Sun may be the medals draped over what appears to be Ouseley’s coat-of-arms, but the date of the diploma seems problematical: nonetheless, the red-ribboned medal shown does look like the St Alexander Nevsky medal.
This somewhat primitive “miniature” may not be recognised by the College of Arms, but is rich in symbolism, not least the red-gloved hand, and is worthy of further analysis.
“According to a tradition preserved in ancient pedigrees, during many generations, in the family of Ouseley, a gallant warrior of that name had married a most beautiful young lady, named Agnes, about the period of King Edward the First, after his return from the Holy Land, marched through Shropshire to attack the Prince of Wales (sic). Ouseley being a man of some rank in that county, considered it his duty to go a day's journey to meet the King and invite him to his house, although he left his bride, even for a short time, with reluctance. Agnes, on the following day, proceeded a short distance to meet the King and her husband; but just as, accompanied by her maidens, she approached the royal party, a huge black wolf rushed out of a holly thicket and bit off her hand. So intent was the ferocious beast upon his prey, that the enraged husband was able to seize him, to strangle him in the presence of the King, and to tear his head from his body. Before this adventure, the arms of the family of Ouseley were “Or, a chevron in chief, sable;” but upon this occasion the King granted the augmentation of “three holly leaves, vert,” and added the crest of “a black wolf's head, erased, with a right hand in its mouth, couped at the wrist, gules, on a ducal coronet, with the motto. ʻMors lupi, Agnis vita;’” and it is said that there existed in a church in Shropshire a monument, containing the figures of this warrior and his lady, in which the latter was represented without the right hand.”
From “Memoir of Sir Gore Ouseley” in Biographical Notices of Persian Poets; with Critical and Explanatory Remarks by The Late Right Honourable Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart., London & Paris 1846.
Details of the Lion and Sun diploma bear some similarity to a firman in Shikasta Nastaliq script of about that period.
One of several signatures and seals from the reverse:
__________________________
Of the second document, in Armenian, nothing is known, and help would be welcome. Its association with the Persian diploma may not be accidental, the dates being the same. Being 200 years old, the style may be formal and courtly. If anyone is willing to attempt a translation of either document, please contact me via Studiolum.
“So long as you don’t speak, no-one will bother you, but when you do speak, be ready to back up what you say.” The Gulistan of Saʿdi, trans. Thackston (2008)
“The days of the revolution. Filling out police travel documents”
Everyone knows when the October Revolution was. In November. But when was the February Revolution, which preceded it? Naturally, in March. Namely on March 8, Women’s Day.
Demonstration of the female workers of the Putilov Plant in Petrograd (today St. Petersburg) on 8 March 1917 (according to the Julian calendar, 22 February). The banners read: “Feed the children of the defenders of the motherland!” “Increase payments to the soldiers’ families – defenders of freedom and world peace!”
Women’s Day was first held on 8 March exactly a century ago, in 1914. Although female workers all over America and Europe had celebrated it since 1908 on one of the first Sundays of March, increasingly linking it to the clamor for women’s voting rights, this fell on 8 March for the first time in 1914, on the eve of World War I. And for the second time in 1917, on the eve of the revolution.
On that Sunday nearly fifty thousand female workers of Petrograd – the places of the men who had been called up were largely occupied by women in most factories – took to the streets, demanding bread and the end of the war. The protests continued the next day, and on the third day all the Petrograd plant workers went on strike. The Duma vainly sought help from the Tsar on the front, but he did not perceive the danger, and furiously dissolved the Duma. The troops ordered to defend the capital were increasingly sympathetic to the protesters. On 13 March, recalling the practice of the revolution of 1905, workers’ and soldiers’ councils were formed. At the request of the Duma representatives, the Tsar resigned, and a provisional government was established. And ten day later, Germany, to further destabilize the situation in Russia, sent home from Swiss exile, with German passports and at German state expense, Lenin and his companions, who in the April theses proclaimed the continuation of the revolution until the final victory of communism.
“The days of the revolution. The sleigh-car of the former Tsar”
The following 54 photos, documenting the first, hectic days of the February Revolution, were only recently published on the internet. The originals are preserved in the Russian State Museum of Political History, and according to the meagre data available, they come from Ion Dicescu’s collection.
“23 March. The funeral of the victims of the revolution. An overall picture of the flags”
Ion Dicescu, Russian name Ivan Osipovich Dik (1893-1938), was born the son of a house-painter in Bucharest. At the age of 18 he joined the Social Democratic Party, and became a journalist for the party’s newspaper. In 1916, when Romania entered WWI, he fought in Transylvania. He was wounded during the retreat, and he was treated in one of the Romanian field hospitals established in allied Russia. At the beginning of 1917 he was taken to St. Petersburg, where he got in contact with the Bolshevik Party. In April he joined the party, and became a journalist for Pravda. From the October Revolution on he fought with the Red Guards. In 1924, together with other Romanian communists in exile, he made a formal proposal for establishing the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova, which at that time was only a narrow strip – roughly today’s Transdnistrian Republic – in preparation for the re-annexation of Romanian Bessarabia. In 1938, he was executed on charges of spying.
The photos preserved in the so-called Dicescu collection were probably not taken by Dicescu himself. Their excellent compositions speak of first-rate press photographers, of which – as we will later write – there were more than one in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century. The captions written on the pictures might suggest that they are editorial duplicates of press photos made or sold to Pravda. It would be worth checking to see if they were published in Pravda or in other dailies. It is certain that after the October Revolution some of them were published in postcard format. But about this we will write more in a subsequent post.
“The days of the revolution. Nevsky Prospect”
“23 March. The funeral of the victims of the revolution. Funeral procession on the Nevsky Prospect.” The banner reads: “You fell victim in the fatal combat”, the opening verse of the workers’ funeral march. On its various versions see our earlier post.
“The days of the revolution. Barricades on the Liteyny Prospect”
Among the photos of the Dicescu collection, presented yesterday, there is one – picture 13 in the first mosaic –, in which, it seems, we can discover the earliest example of the well-known Stalinist photoshop procedure.
In the photo, taken in the first days of the February Revolution, the soldiers posing for a group picture on St. Petersburg’s Liteyny Prospect with drawn swords, cheer the revolution. This is also emphasized by the inscriptions of the banner and flag in the background: В борьбе обретешь ты право свое– “In struggle you find your rights,” and Долой монархию! Да здравствует республика!– “Down with the monarchy! Long live the Republic!”
However, David King’s great overview,The Commissar vanishes: The falsification of photographs and art in Stalin’s Russia (1997) also publishes a previous version of this image.
The waving of the flag is much more natural here than in the previous photo, but we do not know what is written on it, if anything at all. And about the banner, it turns out that it was retouched onto the place of a shop sign in the background, whose original inscription was: Часы, золото и серебро– “Clocks, gold and silver”.
In David King, this beautiful circular story, as the earliest example of Communist photo retouching, ends here. However, there are some additional details that deserve attention.
On the Russian internet you can already find the heretofore unpublished archival original of this picture. The original photo clearly shows that the flag actually had an inscription, and it really began with Долой мо…
And in another photo, which displays the same soldiers in another pose, you can see not only the entire shop sign in the background, but also the inscription of the flag. And it reads the same as in the retouched picture, though somewhat erroneously: Долой монорхію. Да Здравствует Демократическая Республика– “Down with the monorchy. Long live the Democratic Republic!”
That even the previous image is still not completely retouch-free, is proven by this “more original” version, with a larger cut-out and handwritten caption, which suggests that it was also part of the Ion Dicescu collection.
But what is the other inscription retouched on the photo: In struggle you find your rights? For assistance, let us contact the classic:
“Koreyko was attentively watching Sinitsky’s new riddle. On the beautiful image of the goose there was also a sack, from which the following things were peeking out: a letter T, a pine tree, behind which the sun was rising, and a sparrow sitting on musical staves. The riddle ended with a comma upside down. – This is certainly no child’s play to decipher – Sinitsky said. – You will have to rack your brains for a while! – Come on, come on – Koreyko replied with a smile. – Only this goose disturbs me. What on earth does this goose do here? Aha! Got it! Done! In struggle you find your rights! – Yes – said the old man, frustrated, in a drawled tone. – How did you get it so fast? You’re an incredibly talented person. One can immediately see that you’re a first-class bookkeeper. – Second-class – corrected Koreyko. – But for whom did you make this riddle? For the press? – For the press. – Then it was a totally pointless work – Koreyko said. – In struggle you find your rights: this is the slogan of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Not suitable for print.”
The Socialist Revolutionaries– the esers (эсеры or “S.R.s”) – who, until the armed Bolshevik putsch in October, were the leading party of the revolution and the organizers of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, drew the slogan of their movement from the German jurist Rudolf von Jhering.
“In struggle you find your rights!” Socialist Revolutionary posters, 1917
The retouched photo has therefore nothing to do with the Communists; on the contrary, it comes from the party which they considered their most powerful rival, and whose memory after the civil war they condemned to oblivion. And the purpose of the retouching was also not that kind of falsification of history, the Orwellian retrospective change of the past, what we know from the manipulated photos of Stalinism.
Think about it: these photos were distributed right after the well-known events, in the form of postcards. Their purpose was propaganda: to popularize the achievements of the revolution and the party standing behind them. They do not alter the events depicted in them, but, in the manner of folk luboks, they make their message unambiguous for recipients who are familiar with this visual formula. One of the two retouched inscriptions makes clearly visible the slogan which was really carried by the soldiers, and the other represents the one which must be somewhere in the picture in order to make it clear, to whom the republic is due. It could also be placed in a caption, but when there is space for it in the place of the absolutely irrelevant shop sign, let it be there, as in the luboks. Just as in that other picture from the Dicescu collection, of which the postcard version was also complemented with a flag labeled Long live the Republic! with the purpose of disambiguation.
“Absolutely irrelevant shop sign”, I say, in full awareness that, in the later decades of the Russian revolution it is prophetically relevant that you read “Clocks, gold and silver!” in the place of the slogan of the Red Army. Just like the fact that the signs betraying this pursuit are carefully retouched from the picture, which we have already written about in connection with Yevgeny Khaldei’s 1945 Reichstag photo.
Ve třicátých letech podnikl český kněz Josef Baťka (Plzeň 1901 - 1979 Sušice) cestu zaoceánským parníkem Normandie z Čech do Ameriky - země, kterou jen o něco více než generaci předtím mohl ještě jeho krajan Antonín Dvořák nazývat „Novým světem“. Baťka studoval ve Vatikánu a pocestoval většinu Evropy a Blízkého východu jako papežský nuncius. Byl také vášnivým a schopným fotografem. Používal fotoaparát pro střední formát, do kterého se vkládaly negativy o velikosti 60 milimetrů čtverečních. Zůstal po něm poklad čtvercových obrazů, pečlivě uložený v malých krabičkách z fotolaboratoře.
Tyto snímky dokládají, že Baťka měl nejen kněžské schopnosti, ale i výrazný cit pro vyváženou obrazovou kompozici a vytříbenou formu, poněkud neobvyklý v kontextu amatérské fotografie. Jeho snímky často svou přesvědčivou kompoziční jistotou obracejí naši pozornost úplně mimo význam zobrazených objektů.
Baťkovy snímky zobrazují krajinu, lidské charaktery, moderní společnost a její technologie; ve své jasnosti a zdánlivé objektivitě odkrývají charakter překotně se měnící doby téměř před sto lety, sledované pozorným divákem s relativním odstupem cizince. Baťka nezachytil rychle mizející dobu jen na fotografiích – doprovodil své snímky také bezprostředními zápisky z americké cesty.
Na jedné z fotografií vidíme Baťku samotného – trochu zavalitého, pracovitě vyhlížejícího muže středního věku s odstávajícíma ušima a sovími brýlemi. Jeho rukopis je psán úhledným pravidelným písmem včetně oprav a různých barevných značek, podle kterých se můžeme dohadovat, že ho možná připravoval k publikaci. V každém případě se postavil k dokumentaci své cesty velmi zodpovědně.
Mnohé z jeho fotografií zachycují prostě to, co pro něj muselo být novinkou : velké lesklé automobily, letadla, newyorský Luna Park, parník Queen Mary, nebo dokonce skutečného Indiána.
Mnohé se vyznačují promyšlenou geometrií a značnou kompoziční vyvážeností: hory amerického západu, strom joshua, moderní křivky velké Boulder (nyní Hoover) Dam, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Yellowstone. Přestože některá ze zachycených míst jsou turistickými atrakcemi, Baťkovy snímky vynikají pečlivou kompozicí a citem pro fotografické řemeslo, které jim dávají formální čistotu a nadčasovost.
Mezi Baťkovými obrazy najdeme některé, které zachycují - buď záměrně nebo náhodou – řadu běžných situací, které v nás silně zarezonují svou opravdovostí. Navždy zmrazují nenávratně ztracené okamžiky. Vstupujeme do světa Středozápadu Spojených států třicátých let pohledem cizince z neznámé země, kterou by si většina lidí zachycených na jeho snímcích těžko dokázala představit.
Učený Baťka je také laickým antropologem - zobrazuje rodinné a profesní vztahy, zaklíčované v držení těla a ve vzájemných konstelacích, režírovaných na jevišti skutečného života. Stejně jako pozdější američtí pouliční fotografové šedesátých let dobře věděl, jak naaranžovat scénu a světlo z dobrého úhlu a kdy stisknout spoušť.
Většina lidí na fotografii jsou členové českých přistěhovaleckých komunit ve východní Nebrasce
Některé snímky jsou spíše prozaické: můžeme přijmout jejich „objektivní“ pravdu - problematickou pravdu dokumentární reportáže. Ale v jiných můžeme najít vizuální citlivost, která příbližuje tyto amatérské obrazy umění.
Po návratu do Čech učil Mons. Baťka teologii na gymnáziu v Nymburku. Během německé okupace se mu podařilo vyhnout se vězení. Později, po komunistickém puči a následných persekucích náboženské obce, odešel do důchodu do rodného kraje, kde působil jako kněz ve vzdálené farnosti blízko Klatov na Šumavě.
El Paso, Texas nebo Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, třicátá léta
Druhou polovinu svého života prožil Baťka spolu s mladší sestrou Marií v malé vesnici Kolinci v jihozápadních Čechách. Zemřel v roce 1979, a sestra, která o něho na sklonku života pečovala, ho následovala v roce 2004. Rodinný dům a veškerý majetek odkázala církvi. Během vyklízení se našly krabičky s diapozitivy, negativy a zvětšeninami, a také rukopis deníku z cesty do Ameriky s názvem „30 000 kilometrů vlakem, lodí a automobilem“.
V roce 2008 se staly základem multimediální výstavy s názvem „A z tohoto důvodu…“ v Galerii Školská 28 v Praze.
Klikněte zde pro stáhnutí katalogu (pdf)
Autor tohoto článku děkuje Miloši Vojtěchovskému a Daně Recmanové za jejich primární výzkum prací Josefa Baťky a Janu Bartošovi za fotografie Baťkových krabic. Katalog navrhl autor.
Aleksei Fatyanov – Boris Mokrousov: На Заречной улице (On the riverside street). From the film Весна на Заречной улице (Spring on the riverside street, 1956).
“The sun, like the man, wakes up reluctantly. It looks around, one eye open. Then it closes it again for a few moments, until it eventually decides to come out…”
“…from the sea, like from under the blanket, which holds it back.”
“The moment of parting the water. I love to photograph this moment, when it seems as if the sun were followed by another sun… but no, it’s just a few seconds of an optical game.”
“Emerging from the sea, the sun slowly rises above the increasingly louder cries of the seagulls. The magic colors slowly disappear, to return at dusk again. A new, ordinary day begins in the Crimea.”
In the exhibitionHazy mountains, fragrant flowers – Traditional Chinese ink painting in the 19th and 20th centuries of the Kogart House in Budapest, nearly a hundred scroll paintings and calligraphy are on display from the Three Gorges Museum of Chongqing until 30 March. Almost all the paintings lent from China are from the late Qing era, academic works of conservative taste, which carefully imitate the great classical models. Perhaps only the three images by Liu Xiling (刘锡玲, 1848-1923) are truly original and exciting: their ragged brushwork and abstract forms already foreshadow the expressiveness of contemporary Chinese ink painting, as well as its ironic relationship to the classical canon.
This illustration is a different work by Liu Xiling; his exhibited works do not figure in the catalog.
However, nature compensates us for the low-key intensity of the paintings. The four magnolia trees in full bloom at the street front of the Kogart House reveal with explosive force what the masters at the end of the imperial era tried to sublimate from the paintings of an earlier century they deemed happier. The visitors stop in the garden, just like the passers-by outside the fence. They happily photograph each other in front of the sea of flowers.
I just came for a coffee to the Kazimir House in Budapest’s Kazinczy street, but on arriving upstairs, a merry international company greets me, sitting around the long table, with wine, duck liver paté, and live guitar music. “What’s going on?” I ask Andrea, surprised. “We’ve just finished our first tour of the Jewish Quarter, and as you can see, it was a complete success. The next one starts soon. Come along, if you have time.”
Last Sunday, the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association began their sightseeing walks in the Jewish Quarter, as the 7th district of Budapest is traditionally called. On the following two Sundays, 30 March and 6 April, they will present the scenes and traditions of former Jewish life of the quarter, primarily for “outsiders”. Nevertheless, they also have something to show, even to the connoisseurs of the quarter. We also visited two old synagogues, hidden in two inner courtyards, where I had not yet been. The one at Dessewffy street 23 was converted from a stable by Jewish porters of the nearby Western Railway Station – perhaps this is the only synagogue where the two functions followed each other not in the reverse order. And the one at Vasvári Pál street 5 was designed in 1885 by Sándor Fellner, later a renowned architect of Budapest, for the Talmud Torah Society (Shas Chevra), founded for the strengthening of the orthodoxy.
The Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association will repeat the two walks in the next two Sundays: from 1 p.m. they will lead a general presentation of the quarter, and from 4 p.m. they will visit some hidden synagogues. On 30 March, the large walk will be in English and the synagogue tour in Hungarian, and on 6 April, the other way around. If you are in Budapest, come and join them! (Registration in e-mail: mazsike@gmail.com.)
The first one is more recent. According to local sources, it only appeared a few weeks ago on the side of the Teatro Valle Occupato. The second is more weather-beaten, older, you can already see it in the reports from last May on the Piazza del Popolo. A printed, glued poster along the lines of the Soviet coat of arms, in the manner of a South American folk cult of saints and revolutionary pseudo-holy images. But why in French, on the outskirts of Rome? From whom and for what? As viewers sensitive to iconographic crosstalk, we are looking forward to the explanations of our more au courant readers.
With the escalation of 
Ve třicátých letech podnikl český kněz Josef Baťka (Plzeň 1901 - 1979 Sušice) cestu zaoceánským parníkem Normandie z Čech do Ameriky - země, kterou jen o něco více než generaci předtím mohl ještě jeho krajan Antonín Dvořák nazývat „Novým světem“. Baťka studoval ve Vatikánu a pocestoval většinu Evropy a Blízkého východu jako papežský nuncius. Byl také vášnivým a schopným fotografem. Používal fotoaparát pro střední formát, do kterého se vkládaly negativy o velikosti 60 milimetrů čtverečních. Zůstal po něm poklad čtvercových obrazů, pečlivě uložený v malých krabičkách z fotolaboratoře.
