As far-Right crime rises in Germany, the Telegraph visits the small village of Jamel where most of the residents subscribe to neo-Nazi ideology.
Easy and cheap credit, combined with crony capitalism and corporate mismanagement, fueled a banking crisis that threatens to make Slovenia follow the path of Cyprus.
Gift t-shirt from anonymous student. #communism #cats
I have seen this happen. Dogs in the outlying housing projects in Sofia Bulgaria will board trains and commute to other areas of the city.
Stray dogs are commuting to and from a city centre on underground trains in search of food scraps.
The clever canines board the Tube each morning. After a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.
Interesting piece on the treatment of Roma (“gypsies”) in Eastern Europe. In a word, atrocious.
The gay club Eldorado in Berlin
Berlin was the leading city for homosexuals during the 1920s with clubs and even newspapers for both lesbians and gay men. The lesbian magazine Die Freundin was started by Friedrich Radszuweit and the gay men magazine Der Eigene had already started in 1896 as the world’s first gay magazine. The first gay demonstration ever took place in Nollendorfplatz in 1922 in Berlin, gathering 400 homosexuals. The homosexual doctor Magnus Hirschfeld did many things to improve the situation for gays. Berlin was well known as the decadent city during the 1920s, which is shown in the musical and movie Cabaret.
Source collective-history
- Via
- oddmanoutphx
Russia is not an easy place to be gay. Though homosexuality is no longer outright illegal — and has not been considered a mental disorder since 1999 — a stubbornly homophobic strain of nationalism persists, as evidenced most recently by an anti-homosexual “propaganda” bill that is gaining momentum in the State Duma.
Russians are at least talking about homosexuality today in a way that wasn’t possible during the Soviet period — a silence that left a gaping hole in Russia’s historical record. Today, however, that history has begun to take shape. Artist Yevgeniy Fiks, a Russian-American artist who immigrated to New York in 1994, has pieced some of it together visually for the first time.
In his latest work, Fiks unveils a particularly well-hidden piece of that history: gay cruising under communism. The artist’s new book, Moscow, is an evocative but unembellished meditation on gay cruising in the capital city, featuring photographs of the public toilets near the Hermitage Gardens; the stairs to the riverside embankment by Moscow University; the Bolshoi Theater; and many other iconic locations.
Fiks said much of his research comes from historians who wrote about gay life in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1970s. “About 30 percent came from me knowing the places,” Fiks said in a Skype interview. “Some of them were common knowledge in Moscow but photographing them was not something people would do. You would not make them into monuments.” But that’s essentially what Fiks did with his haunting images.
In Russian, a gay cruising site is called “pleshka,” which literally means a “clear area.” (It also refers to bald spots on the top of the head.) Toward the end of the Soviet period, the statue of Karl Marx on Sverdlov Square (now Theater Square) was known as “director of the Pleshka.”
“This was typical Soviet humor,” said Fiks. Gay men and women were poking fun at Marx by turning him into their own gay icon. Similarly, statues of Lenin in regional city centers were known in gay parlance as “Aunt Lena” and men arranged dates in code by saying, “Let’s meet at Aunt Lena’s.
Moscow, published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2013, is a mood piece that features the no longer visible, the once furtive. The slim volume showcases lonely streets and empty parks, slick with rain and devoid of people. The result is sad and commemorative. Released a few weeks ago, the book is just making its way to gay activists in Moscow, Fiks said. “They are accepting this project with interest, but it’s still a new concept.”
(read in Russian here)
Henry Louis Gates’ brief biography of an 18th century black slave who ended up in the Russian Empire, where he became the godson of Peter the Great, and the great-grandfather of Pushkin. By the end of his life he ran an estate with 800 of his own slaves, and became proof for Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire that all men, regardless of their environment, were equal.
My friend, interviewed about her gallery exhibitions. #DOX #ArtWall
An excellent blog of communist propaganda images with bits of text in English. #Communism #Propaganda
