In 2000, Alsou recorded her first English language single and was promptly entered into the Eurovision Song Contest, eventually coming second overall. The song she sang went on to sell 100,000 copies and became the biggest selling single of all time in her home country, surpassed only by Alsou`s next single, a duet with Enrique Iglesias. "I really enjoyed performing with him in the Kremlin and I hope our paths will cross again".
Text from: http://www.alsou.com/AboutAlsou.asp
Thanks to Egor Zhgun for this delightful picture. That is it about? See the chronology of events:
Whether you knew what at Livejournal.com, it is possible to find communities of almost all large cities of Russia? Look there:
It is written with great help of LJplus.ru.
English, French and Russian soldiers are caught by nazis. They all are sentenced to death. Nazis lead them to the yard and ask if they have any last wishes. The Englishman says:
- A mug of beer.
He is brought a beer. The Frenchman says:
- A bottle of wine.
He is brought some wine. The Russian says:
- Kick me in the butt real hard.
A big 2-meter tall nazi steps forward and gives him a real mighty boot. The Russian flies several meters, falls to the ground like a piece of shit, jumps to his feet, grabs a machine gun from one of the Nazis, shoots them down and then the three prisoners run away. After a while the other two ask him:
- Why didn't you do that earlier? We were almost killed!
- We Russians cannot do anything unless someone kicks our butt!
Originally posted: http://www.jokes.pp.ru/c16p2.pl
So... You know... I should work!
The shattered outlook of modern youth expressed in daily house conditions, nakes the broken communication between generations and a difference in their perception of modern culture
See photo exhibition Extra body by Dmitry Shubin.
Update: Blogger Raffi Aftandelian also has looked online exhibition and translate author's opinion. Read his comments in Maaskva: nashimi glazami.
You don’t consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food; however you might eat some suspicious looking mushrooms that you've picked up in the wood. Sometimes you get poisoned by them but that doesn't stop you from mushroom-picking next time.
Court system? Suing someone for damaging you is just a dream... actually, it isn't even a dream because you don’t consider it a possibility. You wouldn't want a crazy court system like in the US, where people can sue for a spilled cup of hot coffee anyway. Police and the courts are just another form of criminals and if you have money you can buy your way out of almost anything (except making Putin angry at you... right Khordokovsky?)
The date comes first and the month second, as in 9/5/1945 (and you know what happened on that date, don’t you?) We may criticize our country 364 days a year, but all Russians feel proud of their Motherland on May 9.
Many have tried to conquer Russia, but none have succeeded, unless you count the Mongols long ago. But eventually Ivan Grozny defeated them also at the battle of Kazan. No country is as strong as Russia and we remain a great military power, despite any evidence to the contrary.
The police are armed with submachine guns, but the mafia is even better armed. Chechen terrorists are well armed as well.
W. Shedd investigates Russian people and culture. I see he know Russians a lot, and had a great sense of humor. =)
Big thanks to W. Shedd and best recomendations for his blog The Accidental Russophile.
In the third session of the CIK of the USSR on 12 November 1923, the description of Soviet flag in the Constitution was changed, and article 71 was edited to be: 'The state flag of the Union of SSR consists of a red or scarlet field, and in the canton a golden sickle and hammer, and a red five-pointed star bordered in gold above them. The ratio of width to length is 1:2.'Originally posted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union
The newly adopted official flag of the Soviet Union consisted of a plain red flag, with a hammer crossed with a sickle and a red star in the upper hoist. The hammer symbolized the nation's industrial workers, while the sickle symbolized the nation's agricultural workers. The red star represented the rule of the Communist Party. The back side of the flag was red, without symbols.
Photo by The Sherlock Holmes Museum of Baker Street
Livanov acted Holmes in nine television films made in 1979-1986 by Igor Maslennikov on the base of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Livanov is widely admitted as the best Sherlock Holmes that ever appeared on screen. His photo is the biggest of those of all actors who ever played Holmes in the movies hanging in Sherlock Holmes museum in London.
Originally posted: http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/22/livanov.shtml
Image text: Happy New Year!
Catch the link on another archive of postcards! Now this is Soviet New Year postcards.
76-82.ru. Encyclopedia of our childhood is a site of generation of 1976-82 years. It is ideal place for nostalgia on life in Soviet Union. Also you can explore a lot of Soviet artifacts! See cinema, schools, media, science, games and much more - everything that was loved by nowadays managers, politics and oligarchs in childhood. Sure it can help you to understand Russians. =)
Vladimir Putin goes to bed one evening and Stalin appears to him in a dream. Putin asks Stalin for some help with the state of Russian economy, crime, etc... Stalin says:
- Round up and shoot every male between the age of 21 & 30 and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue.
Putin asks:
- Why blue?
Stalin retorts:
- I knew you would ask me about the second part first.
A tragic fire on Monday destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was devastated, as he had not finished coloring the second one.
In England, what is permitted, is permitted, and what is prohibited, is prohibited.
In America everything is permitted except for what is prohibited.
In Germany everything is prohibited except for what is permitted.
In France everything is permitted, even what is prohibited.
In the Russia everything is prohibited, even what is permitted.
During his visit to the USSR, Nixon was intrigued by a new telephone capable of connecting with hell. He spoke briefly with the devil, and the call cost him 27 cents. When he came back home, he found out that this same service was now available in the US too. He tried it again and received a bill for $12,000. Nixon was distressed.
- How come?! The same call only cost me 27 cents in the USSR.
- Well, said the operator. Over there it is a local call.
What was the nationality of Adam and Eve?
-Russian of course. Why else would they think they're in Paradise when they were homeless, naked, and just had one apple for both of them?
Is it true that under communism people could order food by phone?Originally posted: http://www.jokes.pp.ru/c16.pl
-Yes, but the delivery was by TV.
However, there are other reasons behind the growth of pirated products. Economic Development Minister German Gref opines that the main reason is that the services sector amounts to hardly 30% of Russia's GDP, while in developed Western countries it exceeds 70%. So stealing copyright products is not considered a serious offense in the Russian system of values. As the share of provided services will be growing, the volume of piracy will be decreasing, he maintains.Originally posted: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20060220/43661275.html
Loopholes in the Russian legislation also encourage piracy, and so do mild punishments that are inadequate to the scale of the offense, which many people acknowledge. A high-ranking officer in the Interior Ministry's economic crimes department, who has been fighting against intellectual property-related crimes for several years, says that piracy can be stopped only by force. To do so, cases of piracy should be tried in courts of general jurisdiction rather than arbitration courts; and amendments should be introduced to the Criminal Code to make punishment for piracy tougher.
Generally, the women who decide to find a foreign husband can be very different and can have completely different motivations. Some women are sincerely looking for a partner to create a family together, some women just want to have fun, others want to make money. So, the following classification might be helpful:
Read more about "Family-Oriented" Woman, "Russian Lover", "Russian Blonde", "Russophobiac" and "Money Maker" Russian brides.
The colors are generally said to be symbolic of different things. One example is it's being symbolic of human qualities. These are:
- White – nobility, frankness
- Blue – honesty, commitment, chastity
- Red – bravery, self-sacrifice, love
However it would seem that the colors have been given many different meanings over the years and if there is one specific meaning, it is difficult to be sure of what it is. It is more likely that the coloring of the flag was simply adopted from the coat of arms and has no symbolic meaning.
Originally posted: http://www.russia.com/about/flag/
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sobibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine.
Originally posted: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html
Preview for animation "Los dias sin dias" by Andrey Bakhurin.
KOMS.ru (Ideologically Distinctive Animation System) is non-commercial community of artists, which presents the new wave of Russian flash-animation.
This is not a sequel of flash junk-collections located all over the world, which don't have any system or ideology. We want to introduce you intellectual flash-animations made of different styles: gothic, urban, vanguard, neo-psycho, etc.
Originally posted: http://www.koms.ru/eng/index.php
By this post I want to start new topic in my blog: Russian Art and Design. I hope, it will be interesting. ;)
G - Number of Gold medals, S - Number of Silver medals, B - Number of Bronze medals, A - Number of All medals.
See medals rating in real time.
You should know some facts about Russian Army, first of all:
53 Russian servicemen were killed in January because of various crimes, Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement on Monday.
829 crimes and incidents were registered officially in the Russian Armed Forces in January.
Of course it better to read complete article, and after that go to article, published in popular magazine:
The coldier hangs between two beds, keeping for one with fingers, and for another with feets. Sometimes for an extreme sensations there is a bayonet-knife under the stomach. Popular in internal armies.
Read pictured top of mockerys in Russian Army by Boris Levich.
It's not surprising. After the anarchy that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a period when democracy came to represent confusion, crime, poverty, oligarchy, anger and disappointment, it turned out that Russians didn't like their new, "free" selves. Having for centuries had no sense of self-esteem outside the state, we found ourselves wanting our old rulers back, the rulers who provided a sense of order, inspired patriotic fervor and the belief that we were a great nation. We yearned for monumental -- if oppressive -- leaders, like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin. Yes, they killed and imprisoned, but how great were our victories and parades! So what if Stalin ruled by fear? That was simply a fear for one's life. However terrifying, it wasn't as existentially threatening as the fear of freedom, of individual choice, with no one but oneself to blame if democracy turned into disarray and capitalism into corruption.
Originally posted: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti...
Interesting article by Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev USSR leader in 1953-1964.
There is interesting new word in this article: "Putinism". I will write about another interesting word: "Putinofacism", in one of next posts.
Oxana Fedorova (born December 17, 1977) is a Russian woman who became the first Miss Russia to win the Miss Universe contest. She began in the entertainment business as a model and became Miss St. Petersburg in 1999 and Miss Russia in 2001, but declined to go to the Miss Universe 2001 pageant (where her runner-up Oxana Kalandyrets was a semifinalist).
Fedorova, a native of Pskov, Russia also held a job as a policewoman in Russia before contesting at the 2002 Miss Universe contest, held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After winning, she was showered with honors, awards and presents.
Text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxana_Fedorova
The appointment is set for tonight at the Stadio Olimpico in Torino: among the most important names of the world of sport, entertainment, politics and the international jet set will be spectators of one of the greatest media events of the past years, the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games. At the stadium 35 thousand spectators are expected, while there will be over 2 billion people glued to their TV screens.
Originally posted: http://www.torino2006.org/ENG/OlympicGames/new...
The first auction ended on February 6 at 8:56 a.m., with only one bidder. That was from "markcook64", who offered ten bucks for the sumptuous harbor. We doubt Mark, if that is his name, expected to win the boat: His last purchase was a chintzy watercolor of some blue crustaceans entitled "Crabs Galore". Anyhow, maybe we and Mark are missing the point.Read in Forbes.com about Gigayacht - Most Expensive eBay Item buyed by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for €140m ($170,000,000).
Russian thieves have stolen more than €1m (£680,000) from personal bank accounts in France using "sleeper bugs" to infect computers. French authorities claim the thieves can take control of and empty a bank account in seconds. In one hit, a bank customer lost €40,000.Originally posted: http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1703777,0...
The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world--the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.
In the early 1900s Prokudin-Gorskii formulated an ambitious plan for a photographic survey of the Russian Empire that won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, he completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation.
Originally posted: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html
See exhibitions: Photographer to the Tsar: Prokudin-Gorskii, Architecture, Ethnic DiversityTransportation, People at Work.
You are browsing a resource which is devoted first of all to the history and culture of the Soviet Union, the country which the West for a long time usually named as "The Empire of Evil", the country to which some people in the West perceive as "something big and snowy".
I offer you to try to look outside the frames of usual stereotypes, to try to understand life of a unique country, with its interesting history, beautiful culture and miraculous relations between people.
The music submitted on this site - is an evident sample of a totally new culture, which completely differs from all that, with what Hollywood and MTV supply us so much. This culture, being free from the cult of money , platitude, violence and sex, was urged to not indulge low bents of a human soul but to help the person to become culturally enriched and to grow above himself.
Excellent collection of Soviet music. It's still popular in Russia! Pleasant listening.
Today as never before there is an urgent need for this world organization [UN] to find solutions of two principal and interrelated problems. The first one is to liquidate loopholes in international law and national legislation, which allow terrorists and their allies to elude responsibility. The second is to overcome "double standards" in evaluating terrorist threat in respect of terrorists themselves.
Russia is not thinking about filing an application for NATO membership so far but, as the saying goes, never say never again.
There is every reason to wait for increase of terror surge and new major terror attacks.
It is natural that we are continuing to improve our strategic deterrence forces. But our efforts are focused only on their qualitative modernization. There is no question of increasing their quantity.
A major BBC World Service poll exploring how people in 33 countries view various countries has revealed that Russia is one of the most unpopular countries, ranked third following Iran and the U.S.
Originally posted: http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/03/globalpoll.sht...
What will be if rewrite war actions of 1945 year in comics? That's the answer.
In addition, the G8 is a club which addresses global problems and, first and foremost, security problems. Can someone in this hall imagine resolving, shall we say, problems concerning global nuclear security without the participation of the largest nuclear power in the world, the Russian Federation? Of course not. So everyone who talks about this, whether Russia belongs there or not, can just talk. It is their job. The dog barks, the caravan rolls on.
About Ukraine and gas:
We expect that we shall be able to find an equilibrium in our relations with our Ukrainian partners. I am happy about the fact that, in contrast to previous years, our Ukrainian partners said straight out that they were taking this gas, there was no tentative to cover up, nor to distort the fact. It is important to us that we are paid for this gas according to the prices we agreed on.About Hamas:
Our position concerning Hamas differs from the American and western European positions. The foreign ministry of the Russian Federation never declared that Hamas is a terrorist organization. But this does not mean that we approve and support everything that Hamas does and all the declarations that they have made recently. We think that it is one thing when this political force was the opposition and trying to get into power and we know that throughout the whole world very often the opposition makes very radical statements. It is another thing when it receives the people's vote of confidence and must make sure that the people who believed in this movement feel the positive results of their authorities' work. And for this it is necessary to leave behind the extremist positions, to recognize Israel's right to exist and to have relations with the international community.About English spyes expelling:
I have already talked about the decision to expel the diplomats. Let them just stay here, in the residence. It is pleasant for us that these people are now under our control. And how will their colleagues react? I imagine you know that in the residences and among the diplomatic representatives of any country there are a number of clean diplomats and representatives from the special services. This is not everything that we have found out. Let them sit here.
About Georgia and gas:
There was an unfortunate incident, and yes, deliveries were suspended. Our experts worked around the clock in the mountains in minus 30 degree weather to restore Georgia's power supply.
What have we heard and seen from the Georgian leadership? Some were simply spitting at us. And the citizens of Georgia must understand that such policies vis-a-vis Russia will not improve the situation of the ordinary Georgian. The responsibility for this lies with the Georgian authorities.
About successor:
We have a great many people in Russia, a great many, who could head the country. Only the voters, the Russian people, the citizens of the Russian Federation can give the final answer to this question.
About oil deprivatization:
We have about ten quite large private oil companies such as LUKOIL, TNK BP, Surgutneftegaz and others – there are a great deal of them. Nobody is going to nationalize them, nobody is going to interfere with their activities. They are going to develop according to market conditions like private companies. I think that such a balance is better for the Russian economy today, and this includes active participation from our foreign partners and shareholders. Shall we look at TNK BP which, as you know, is 50 percent a Russian company and 50 percent owned by British Petroleum. I regularly meet with shareholders. Our British colleagues have told me that they are happy with working in the Russian market.
Full transcript of the press conference you can read here.
Named after an internationally fashionable word, the teen pop duo delivered captivating melodies and controversial lyrics and signed up to Universal Music Russia on May 16, 2001. Their debut single, "Ya Soshla s Uma (I've Lost My Mind)," based on a story about a lesbian affair between two young girls, became their first smash, gaining international exposure through MTV.
Text from: http://www.mtv.com/music/#/music/artist/t_a_t_u_/b...
