Ctrl+V then post

[Trogdor]

Book report on Atlas Shrugged?

 

Yeah, book was crazy long but still pretty nice.

[Lucid]

35. Following WWII, women wanted to stay in their newly appointed positions and women tried to get bills passed giving them rights. It changed the attitudes towards women because they were beginning to be more accepted with these new positions.

36. Germany wanted to keep the U.S. out of the war, so Hitler had a meeting with Tojo and discussed an alliance stating that Japan would attack the United States and attempt to keep us out of Europe and after Hitler finished in Europe both him and Tojo would conquer America in Japan’s attempt to control the Pacific.

37. The Great Depression showed what presidents can do to bring the country out of a recession and the 2nd world war displayed the power that the president had.

[Ganzta]

35. Following WWII, women wanted to stay in their newly appointed positions and women tried to get bills passed giving them rights. It changed the attitudes towards women because they were beginning to be more accepted with these new positions.

36. Germany wanted to keep the U.S. out of the war, so Hitler had a meeting with Tojo and discussed an alliance stating that Japan would attack the United States and attempt to keep us out of Europe and after Hitler finished in Europe both him and Tojo would conquer America in Japan’s attempt to control the Pacific.

37. The Great Depression showed what presidents can do to bring the country out of a recession and the 2nd world war displayed the power that the president had.

I hope you added more punctuations if this was an assignment.

[Jewpiter]

Mark Edele

Strang Young Men in Stalin's Moscow: The Birth and Life of the Stiliagi, 1945-1953

 

WIKI:

Stilyagi ( "stylish", "style hunter") was a derogatory appellation for the members of a youth

 

subculture that existed from the late 1940s until the early 1960s in the Soviet Union. Stilyagi were

 

primarily distinguished by their snappy or fashionable clothing, considered politically incorrect and

 

contrary to the communist-socialist realities of the time, and fascination with modern music and

 

fashions.

 

------

The Stiliagi were a product of late Stalinism. This subculture emerged in the years following WW2.

 

Preconditions for emergence:

1) Young men who had the resources to live a lifestyle based on consumption and leisure

2) A public sphere which was not completely subsumed under the ideological imperativers of the

 

communist youth program

3) Availability of non-Soviet elements of style and information

 

Hedonistic - a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification.

 

Interest in things foreign and the desire to live a version of the good life which did not necessarily

 

conform to the role expectations promoted by the state

 

A style developed by sons of the privileged classes of late stalinism

 

In behavior, lifestyle and dress, the sons of the elite set themselves apart from the sons of lower

 

status groups of society.

 

Their self fashioning stressed liesure, westerness, and a distinctive and original stylishness as the

 

basis of self-representation and self understanding.

 

Youth of the generation too young to fight in the war were confronted with self assertive veterans for

 

whom a man was first of all a "frontovik". The younger men could not imitate the core of self-

 

fashioning of veterans - wartime exploits. What they could imitate was Western clothing, which many

 

veterans had brought back from the West. They thus imitated the part of the dominant form of

 

masculinity, which they could imitate - stylish dress - and radicalized it to such an extent that it

 

became the core of an alternative form of manliness. Sovietness and participation in the war were so

 

tightly interconnected in the postwar Soviet Union, that lack of the latter was best counteracted by

 

refusing the former. And in the context of the Cold War this meant embracing "Westerness." In their

 

struggle to find a positive sense of gendered self in the absence of the defining trait of postwar

 

masculinity - wartime heroism - would be stiliagi thus logically reached for an imaginary West as a

 

source of legitimacy and inspiration.

 

The stiliagi style in the 50s changed, only the tie remained colorful. Trousers became darker and

 

whiter and narrower imitating an American fashion for lean-fitting clothes.

 

Aksenov met such a crowd of "Americanophile" sons of Stalinist elite at the above mentioned party.

 

They stressed openly their "love" of the US and their "hatred" towards the Soviet Union, and no longer

 

tried to be stylish but to be "American". This meant thick-soled shoes and narrow black trousers,

 

while the jackets remained broad-shouldered as in the early stiliagi outfit. They smoked Pall Mall and

 

Camel, and peppered their conversation with English words such as "darling", "baby", and "lets drink."

 

 

The stiliagi remade themselves into the "shtatniki" ("United State-niks")

 

By 1955 Komosol patrols began hunting down stiliagi "hooligans" and other "anti-Soviet elements".

 

Post war Moscow was a place where the elite and middle class could enjoy themselves. In stalins last

 

decade Moscow had a night life it had not had since the 1920s and would not see again until the 1990s.

 

And this night life was an important pre-condition for the emergence of the stiliagi and the

 

reproduction of their style.

 

Banning certain types of instruments, banning jazz music, radio-jamming BBC and VOA

 

"X ray editions", illegal copies of popular Western recordings on discarded xray plates, circulated in

 

the late 40s and early 50s.

In the end, surveillance and repression of jazz proved incomplete. The regime was "completely unable

 

to supress the spread or popularity of this sort of music" and the authorities talked about "complete

 

anarchy" which made distribution of jazz music to dance places possible.

 

Endless stream of western goods pored into Germany and could easily be brought back into Russia prior

 

to the Berlin walls construction in 1961

 

The young men who became stiliagi were too young to remember the fear and threat of the Great Terror.

 

Thus they were more likely to underestimate the state's potential for brutality and act more freely

 

than the older generations.

 

Another reason why the stiliagi emerged was a sense of "return to normalcy" after the deprevations of

 

war. A worldwide trend of hedonistic lifestyles emerged after the war.

 

The dynamics of fashion is a process where the elites of society constantly struggles to express

 

symbolically their difference, while their social inferiors imitate these stylistic innovations.

 

Men too young to fight in the war found stiligia appealing. The high prestige of frontline experience

 

put everybody who lacked it at an emotional disadvantage. Students from what can be called the "school

 

bench generation" were confronted everyday with the self assured behavior of fellow students, who were

 

but slightly older than they were, and who displayed their status as veterans by wearing their orders

 

and medals on a daily basis.

 

The frontovik as the dominant model of masculinity was unobtainable for members of the school bench

 

generation. They could either live with an inferior status or invent an alternative, non-military form

 

of manliness.

 

It is significant that what former stiliagi remember in memoirs and interviews is fear of society, of

 

confrontations with "average soviet people" not fear of what the state might do.

[hanehane]

[delirium]

 

It's to bad the forums shows what the video is before we click.

[SilentGuns]

MANIFESTO TO THE PEOPLES OF ESTONIA

In the course of centuries never have the Estonian people lost their desire for independence. From generation to generation have they kept alive the hidden hope that in spite of enslavement and oppression by hostile invaders the time will come to Estonia "when all splinters, at both end, will burst forth into flames" and when "Kalev will come home to bring his children happiness."

Now that time has arrived.

An unprecedented fight between nations has crushed the rotten foundations of the Russian Tsarist Empire. All over the Sarmatian plains ruinous anarchy is spreading, threatening to overwhelm in its wake all the nations living in the former Russian Empire. From the West the victorious armies of Germany are approaching in order to claim their share of Russia's legacy and, above all, to take possession of the coastal territories of the Baltic Sea.

In this hour, the Estonian National Council, as the legal representative of our land and people, has, in unanimous agreement with Estonian democratic political parties and organizations, and by virtue of the right of self-determination of peoples, found it necessary to take the following decisive steps to shape the destiny of the Estonian land and people.

ESTONIA,

within his historical and ethnic boundaries, is declared as of today an

INDEPENDENT DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

The independent Republic of Estonia shall include Harjumaa, Läänemaa, Järvamaa, Virumaa, with the city of Narva and its surroundings, Tartumaa, Võrumaa, Viljandimaa, and Pärnumaa with the Baltic islands of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhumaa, and others where the Estonians have settled for ages in large majorities. Final determination of the boundaries of the Republic in the areas bordering on Latvia and Russia will be carried out by plebiscite after the conclusion of the present World War.

In the aforementioned areas the only supreme and organizing authority is the democratically supported Estonian Salvation Committee created by the Estonian National Council.

The Republic of Estonia wishes to maintain absolute political neutrality towards all neighbouring states and peoples and expects that they will equally respond with complete neutrality.

Estonian military troops shall be reduced to the extent necessary to maintain internal order. Estonian soldiers serving in the Russian military forces will be called home and demobilized.

Until the Estonian Constituent Assembly, elected by general, direct, secret, and proportional elections, will convene and determine the constitutional structure of the country, all executive and legislative authority will remain vested in the Estonian National Council and in the Estonian Provisional Government created by it, whose activities must be guided by the following principles:

1. All citizens of the Republic of Estonia, irrespective of their religion, ethnic origin, and political views, are going to enjoy equal protection under the law and courts of justice of the Republic.

2. All ethnic minorities, the Russians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, and others residing within the borders of the republic, are going to be guaranteed the right to their cultural autonomy.

3. All civic freedoms, the freedom of expression, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of association, and the freedom to strike as well as the inviolability of the individual and the home, shall be irrefutably effective within the territory of the Estonian Republic and based on laws, which the Government must immediately work out.

4. The Provisional Government is given the task of immediately organizing courts of justice to protect the security of the citizens. All political prisoners shall be released immediately.

5. The city, county, and township local governments are called upon to immediately continue their work, which has been violently interrupted.

6. For maintenance of public order, people's militia, subordinated to local governments, shall be immediately organized and citizens' self-defence organizations established in the cities and rural areas.

7. The Provisional Government is instructed to work out, without delay, on a broad democratic basis, bills for the solution of the agrarian problem, and the problems of labor, of food supply, and of finances.

ESTONIA!

You stand on the threshold of a hopeful future in which you shall be free and independent in determining and directing your destiny! Begin building a home of your own, ruled by law and order, in order to be a worthy member within the family of civilized nations! Sons and daughters of our homeland, unite as one man in the sacred task of building our homeland! The sweat and blood shed by our ancestors for this country demand this from us; our forthcoming generations oblige us to do this.

May God watch over thee

And amply bless

Whatever thou undertake

My dear fatherland!

Long live the independent democratic Republic of Estonia!

Long live peace among nations!

The Council of Elders of the Estonian National Council

Tallinn, 21 February 1918

[PotshotPolka]

I think a new rule for this thread should be that you can only paste stuff when you're not thinking about it first, it's a bit more interesting that way.

[Henrik]

I think a new rule for this thread should be that you can only paste stuff when you're not thinking about it first, it's a bit more interesting that way.

 

Indeed

[hanehane]

It's to bad the forums shows what the video is before we click.

 

rick rolled my friend over steam before posted this