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First time in English: a powerful Russian voice from the Ukrainian conflict
A field in the Donbas. (Flickr)
Award-winning Ukrainian writer Vladimir Rafeenko, who writes in Russian, spent his whole life in the city of Donetsk, in the eastern Ukrainian mining region called the Donbas. Since the war between Russian-supported separatists and the Ukrainian state broke out in spring 2014, Rafeenko moved near Kiev.
When the characters in his novels refer to "Westerners," it's western Ukraine, facing Poland, Romania, and Hungary rather than Russia.
Ukrainian writer – in Russian.
It's one of many terms that need unpacking in Семь Укропов (Sem' Ukropov), in English "Seven Dillweeds," taken from Rafeenko's longer work, this year's Долгота дней (Dolgota dnei, The Length of the Day). "Dillweed," in the title, is Russian slang for a Ukrainian. Marci Shore, author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, translated the piece in the current Eurozine, and explains some of the references for us in the introduction to this chilling short story about the conflict in Rafeenko's native land, Donbas.
This story is the first time Rafeenko has appeared in English. An excerpt from the excerpt, about Pashka and his stepfather:
Matvei Ivanovich, having appeared out of the blackness of the coalminers' night, took the boy under his protection, and succeeded in winning his heart.
Matvei Ivanovich had come there at a mature age; he'd come because of his 'work transfer.' And as he himself admitted, it wasn't that he didn't like Ukraine, it was more that he didn't understand it. As he would say to the boy he was raising: 'I don't understand the Ukrainian language, son, and also all these complicated things with Stepan Bandera. I don't like westerners, you understand? They're barbaric somehow. Just barbaric people. And they only hang around with each other. Back at home there were a few of them working at our mine. And they only talked to their own and only in their own way. They even got beaten for that more than once. I don't think there was any sense in that, though – just made them more spiteful. And so I figure: once you've got people like that, what can you do with them?' …
Matvei Ivanovich tilted his head in a funny way, waved his hands, poured himself another shot of vodka, grabbed a half-salted pickle.
спасибо, Marci.
When the shooting started in town, Matvei Ivanovich proceeded to study the situation. By then he'd already left his job, since he had a solid pension and at any rate the miners weren't being paid any more. So he had time on his hands to learn about the state of the world. He walked around, talked to people. He would come back in the evening, tired, restless, but generally satisfied.
In the beginning of June, after he'd gotten his pension and the economy had sunk, Matvei Ivanovich was found in a city park, dead. He was lying in water with a sad smile and a deep gash on the right side of his neck. At the burial, Nina Ivanovna sobbed terribly. When they lowered the casket, she jumped into the pit. She tried to stab herself in the heart with a knife. But after a week she found work in the town centre as a janitor in a student dormitory, and in the new job she revived a little.
Pashka saw his stepfather every day in his dreams. There Matvei Ivanovich smiled and told stories, stories without endings and without beginnings, stories about coal, about Aleksandr Nevskii, about Belka and Strelka and the Battle of the Kalka. Truth be told, Pashka just caught the general tone, the details he could only make out hazily, as if through dirty glass. Eventually he signed up for the war against Right Sector, and thus for Gagarin and Gogol, and above all for Matvei Ivanovich, agronomist by his first diploma. They gave the boy a Kalashnikov and two magazine cartridges and sent him to fight with three dozen others like himself. It turned out, unfortunately, that in combat they were not alone – the enemy was there, too. And it quickly became clear that in a war, people kill each other. But truth be told, Pashka didn't have time to make sense out of any of it.
Tags: Marci Shore, Vladimir Rafeenko
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Marci Shore on Ukraine: fighting continues, and so does trust, loyalty, and love.
Sunday, December 4th, 2016
Reading from "Lives of Maria" in Wrocław, Poland (Photo: Rafał Komorowski)
Over a 24-hour period this weekend, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in eastern Ukraine 42 times, according to the press service of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) Headquarters. (Link here; map below.) These weren't random incidents, but intense fighting, particularly in the Donbas region. "In the Mariupol sector, the enemy used banned 120mm and 82mm mortars to shell the town of Krasnohorivka, and the villages of Shyrokyne and Talakivka," according to the report.
While that's not as exciting as the latest gaffe from our president-elect, it should arouse a little more press interest than it does.
Here's the news in more literary form. We've written about writer Serhiy Zhadan, the unofficial bard of eastern Ukraine, before. (See "They told him to kneel and kiss the Russian flag. Then he told them to…" here, and then a year later here.) In the current New Yorker, Marci Shore writes about Ukraine, and the author whose most recent novel Voroshilovgrad won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland.
Marci reprises the conflict:
On November 21, 2013, Yanukovych, under pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin, unexpectedly declined to sign an association agreement with the European Union. For many Ukrainians this felt like the end of their future. Hundreds of people, students in particular, gathered on the Maidan, the large square in the center of Kiev, to protest. Around 4 a.m. on November 30th, Yanukovych sent his riot police to beat up the students. He was counting, it seems, on the parents' pulling their children off the streets. Instead the parents joined their children there. The next day more than half a million people came to the Maidan, insisting, "They cannot be permitted to beat our children."
"The government has blood on its conscience and has to answer for it," Zhadan said a few days later, in an interview with the young Polish journalist Paweł Pieniążek. All that winter the stakes, and the violence, increased. …
After the Maidan's victory in the Ukrainian capital, the population in eastern Ukraine remained divided. Russian "tourists" began arriving from across the border to take part in "anti-Maidan" demonstrations. On February 26th, Zhadan posted on YouTube, in both Russian and Ukrainian, a six-minute appeal to the residents of Kharkiv. "Don't listen to the propaganda," he said. "There are no fascists, no extremists. None of that is true. Come over to our side." Three days later, on March 1st, Zhadan was led away from a demonstration in Kharkiv bloodied, his head bashed in. The poet was cavalier. "I'm a grownup—it's hard to stun me with a blow to the head," he said in an interview later that month.
Please read her article here, if for no other reason, it dispels the fiction that Ukrainians somehow really in their heart of hearts want to be Russians – a convenient notion that allowed us to turn our backs on Crimea and, increasingly, on eastern Ukraine.
Marci on Zhadan's novel and its protagonist Herman:
In Voroshilovgrad, Zhadan describes a kind of war zone at the Ukrainian-Russian border near Rostov: men wearing camouflage and balaclavas and carrying Kalashnikovs, occasionally taking a hostage or two. He describes omnipresent violence at a time when there is no war—a backdrop of brutality, accepted as a given. "You know, before the war, all of these things naturally appeared entirely different: the border with Russia, the army fatigues, the daily readiness for fighting," Zhadan told me in a letter. "There was no catastrophism in all of that." (I wrote to Zhadan in Polish about a novel he had written in Ukrainian and I had read in English. He answered me in Russian. The whole situation was very Ukrainian.)
The balaclavas and Kalashnikovs and the culture of gangsters are connected to bottomless corruption. The word, or rather one of the words, for corruption in Russian is prodazhnost' (in Ukrainian, prodazhnist'); it means "saleability" and refers to the understanding that everything and everyone can be bought. A peculiar relationship between prodazhnost', "saleability," and chestnost', "honesty," belongs to the essence of the Donbas. Where there is no trust in the system, trust in one's friends is essential. Where there is no law, personal solidarity is paramount. And so what is important is not for whom one votes but how one treats one's friends. Chestnost' is related both etymologically and conceptually to chest', "honor." What is so striking about Herman's experiences amid the savagery of the Donbas is the absence of duplicity. Voroshilovgrad is an unsentimental novel about human relationships in conditions of brutality in which there is not a single act of betrayal.
Herman is willing to risk everything for his missing brother, for [characters in the novel] Injured and Kocha, for Olga, for spectres of times past, even when this appears to make no sense. While attempting to escape from the biplane guys, Herman finds himself on a private train, where the train's "authority" gives him some advice: "You've got this crazy idea in your head that the most important thing is to stay here, not give an inch—you're clinging to your emptiness. There's not a fuckin' thing here! Not a single fuckin' thing." Yet Zhadan wants us to understand that there is something to stay for. In his prose there is no nostalgia, but there is genuine affection, rough and profound. Even in this brutish habitus, there is trust, loyalty, and love. The graduate student I spoke with, Monastyrskyi, prefers the Donbas to Lviv, where he lives now, precisely for the chest' and chestnost' that supercede a more conventional bourgeois morality. For all its violence, Monastyrskyi insists, "the Donbas is full of joy and mercy—and empathy." And he loves Zhadan for portraying these people who don't have a lot of words more authentically than anyone else, for showing us that "these people are beautiful, beautiful in their ugliness."
Tags: Marci Shore, Serhiy Zhadan, Vladimir Putin
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Farewell to one of Europe's leading thinkers, Leonidas Donskis (1962-2016)
Thursday, September 22nd, 2016
"Erudite, ambitious, and prolific as an ethicist."
Leonidas Donskis died yesterday from an apparent heart attack. He was 54. The Lithuanian Jewish philosopher and public intellectual – he was a political theorist, historian of ideas, social analyst, political commentator, and professor –was little known in the West, but is a major figure in Eastern European thought. He was also a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014.
One of Europe's leading poets, Tomas Venclova (his correspondence with Donskis was published last year), wrote to the Book Haven: "Leonidas Donskis was the only one Lithuanian philosopher (mainly historian of ideas) who merited the title. I would say he was on a par with, say, Konrad, Krastev, or even Havel. His sudden and untimely death is a terrible loss." Tomas Venclova and Donskis were both born in Klaipėda, and both attended the University of Vilnius.
Donskis recently coauthored a book with a man he considered of the greatest thinkers of our times, Zygmunt Bauman. The book Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, 2013) was "a high point of my life," Donskis had said. "Such an opportunity can occur only once in a lifetime."
Correspondent Venclova
At a discussion at the Central European Form in Bratislava last November, he spoke on the role of the intellectual in today's world: "The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman said that if you want to be a star in your society you need to invent yourself either as celebrity or as victim. But I think there is also a third way out for the intellectuals, who way too often become fear-mongers. This is in my opinion their sin against societies. At the same time, we still have many sober voices resisting this temptation. The principle of intellectual or journalistic work is not to scare or paralyze people. The best thing to do now is to encourage audiences to live their lives without fear, in dignity."
"The great paradox of modernity is that everything is very close to its polarity, to its own antidote. For instance, in terms of political existence, I am afraid Europe will become even more securitized and surveilled. But the crucial thing is to defend the humanistic legacy of Europe. First and foremost, our task is not to become paranoid or fear-ridden. The challenge for the 21st century is to protect democratic Europe with respect to our humanistic sensibilities, and respect to human rights and civic liberties. This will be quite difficult, but we must stand together for it, especially given the rise of violent political extremism."
A few words on Donskis from some important voices on my Facebook feed:
Marci Shore, author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968: I'm writing from Belgrade, in shock at the news of the death of our friend Leonidas Donskis. I had just seen Leonidas in Krasnogruda, at Fundacja Pogranicze on the Polish-Lithuanian border, at our seminar "Second reading: Tony Judt on Arendt, Camus, Miłosz, Kołakowski." In Krasnogruda, he spoke about Bulgakov's Master and Margarita as a novel about the devil as superfluous in modern politics: we are in the age of do-it-yourself. He spoke about the death of the Left in Lithuania and about "ontological junk food" – quick, ready-made theories for easy consumption here and now. "I'm afraid there is just a void," Leonidas said. But he never stopped trying to fill the void with a passionate insistence on truth and ethics. We were meant to meet in Vienna two weeks from now at this year's Leszek Kołakowski symposium devoted to the topic "Paradises Lost: Entzauberung, Utopia, and their Afterlives." I never imagined "afterlives" taking on this additional meaning. Now of all times our world could not afford to lose Leonidas.
Timothy Snyder, author of Black Earth:The Holocaust as History and Warning and Bloodlands: Between Hitler and Stalin: Erudite, ambitious, and prolific as an ethicist; liberal in his politics, generosity and individuality; trilingual in Lithuanian, Russian, and English. A rapid wanderer in our best traditions, a loyal companion with expansive ideas of friendship; a European link to much of what was admirable his Soviet generation and the ones that came before; an eager interlocutor who wanted to bring out the best in those he admired (such as Zygmunt Bauman and Tomas Venclova with whom he wrote books); a patient teacher whom I last saw among grateful students, filling my notebook with the connections I never would have seen without him.
Mikhail Iossel, author of Every Hunter Wants to Know: A Leningrad Life and contributor to The New Yorker: I am absolutely devastated. I loved him dearly. He was one of the most brilliant, altogether remarkable people I have ever met, one of Europe's leading public intellectuals, one of world's most interesting philosophers and social thinkers, an enormously erudite and prolific scholar and a passionate patriot of his country, son of Holocaust survivors and member of the European Parliament – and also one of the kindest, gentlest, and most decent and honest people I've ever known. In point of fact, I have never known anyone quite like him, in all of my long life: he was absolutely unique, unrepeatable and, to my mind, a perfect human being. I cherished each and every one of our conversations: in Lithuania, in New York, and, most frequently, online – about politics, Europe, Lithuania, Jewish history, Russia, art… It is impossible to believe he is gone. The world was so much better with him in it. There are no words….
Postscript on 9/23: We received this message from Beatriz Miranda in Mexico City, and thought we'd share it (it's also in the combox below): "With great sadness we have received the news about the death of our beloved friend, Leonidas. I met him in Amsterdam. The University of Amsterdam asked me to invite Prof. Bauman to present their book Moral Blindness in Amsterdam. The invitation was accepted by Prof. Bauman with a condition: to bring Leonidas too. It was the beginning of real friendship. Later on, he came to Mexico invited by the 17, Institute of Critical Studies and helped us to think critically about the role of universities and academics. I will never forget the way he conducted himself, with humility and sweetness. He even travelled with me around Mexico City by metro. He ate at the Coyoacan Market and enjoyed visiting the pyramids of Teotihuacan. During that visit and taken by his passion for jazz he proposed to the Institute to give the doctorate Honoris Causa to the great jazz musician Vyacheslav Ganelin. We did it last January but unfortunately, Leonidas could not come. We will keep his words alive in our Institute. This is important especially in this violent time. Leonida's call for peace and understanding will be missed but kept immortal through his work and publications. 17, Institute will keep the promise to translate some of his work into Spanish. Gracias querido, Amigo Leonidas! You will be missed."
Postscript on 9/26: Read a few of his reflections and aphorisms here.
Tags: Leonidas Donskis, Marci Shore, Mikhail Iossel, Timothy Snyder, Tomas Venclova
Marci Shore on Ukraine, a graduate seminar via Skype, and "the return of metaphysics"
Intellectual and cultural historian Marci Shore remembers Tony Judt in the current issue of the New Yorker, which quickly segues into the current plight of Ukraine:
"We are unwise to laugh too quickly at those who describe the world as a conflict between good and evil," Tony said, in a lecture in 2003. "If you can't use the word 'evil,' you have a real problem thinking about what happened in the world." In February, 2014, the Polish philosopher Marcin Król told an interviewer that Europeans were facing a serious political crisis and a potentially fatal spiritual crisis: they had ceased asking themselves metaphysical questions, questions like "Where does evil come from?" As Król's friend Adam Michnik, the Polish writer and dissident, once said to Václav Havel, "This is a civilization that needs metaphysics."
Marci reminds us of Judt's "insistence on the historian's moral responsibility not only to understand, but also to engage." Her own form of engagement, or one of them, took the form of skyping in for graduate seminar on Judt's Thinking the Twentieth Century, Israel: An Alternative, and Past Imperfect. (The first is an excellent series of conversations between Judt and Timothy Snyder, who happens to be Marci's husband.) "And so this spring, from my office at Yale, I saw Mykola [a graduate student and now soldier] in uniform on my computer screen, the unmarked walls of a Soviet-built bunker in the background. He had Skyped in as well, from the undisclosed location, and he appeared on one half of my screen; Yaroslav [Hrytsak], together with Mykolas's classmates, appeared on the other half."
In response to Michnik's call, she said:
The Maidan was the return of metaphysics. It was a precarious moment of moral clarity, an impassioned protest against rule by gangsters, against what in Russian is called proizvol: arbitrariness and tyranny. It united Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers, workers and intellectuals, Ukrainians and Jews, parents and children, left and right. The Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak … described the Maidan as akin to Noah's Ark: it took "two of every kind." For Yaroslav, the wonder of the Maidan was the creation of a truly civic nation, the overcoming of preoccupations with identity in favor of thinking about values. People came to the Maidan to feel like human beings, Yaroslav explained. The feeling of solidarity, he said—it cannot be described.
You can read more about Marci's unusual graduate seminar here.
Tags: Adam Michnik, Marci Shore, Marcin Król, Timothy Snyder, Tony Judt, Václav Havel, Yaroslav Hrytsak
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The "politics of the sinless" and the "superficiality of the everyday": Michnik, Havel, and the post-communist world
Saturday, February 21st, 2015
Long friendship: Michnik and Havel in 2011
Marci Shore, acclaimed author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, has written an important article – indispensable writing, really – over at the Weekly Standard. It's one that merits not only reading, but reading – so I'm printing out a version for slow reading when I get some more work done this weekend. The focus of her essay is a Adam Michnik's The Trouble with History, edited by Irena Grudzińska Gross and published last year by Yale University Press. The Book Haven has written about Polish journalist and Solidarity leader Michnik here and here, and about Marci here and here and here and about Irena here and here. Read Marci's article in its entirety here. Fellow dissident Václav Havel, the playwright, essayist, and president of the post-communist Czech Republic, also plays a role in the piece – we've written about him here and here and here. A few excerpts from Marci's article below:
The story of "living in truth" involves urban intellectuals hiking up a mountain. In August 1978, four Charter 77 signatories (including Havel, who was not ordinarily much of a hiker) met with their Polish counterparts (including Michnik) on Sněžka Mountain on the Czechoslovak-Polish border. Havel pulled a bottle of vodka from his backpack. A lifelong friendship was not all that resulted from that first encounter between the two men.
On Sněžka, they spoke about the political resonance of seemingly insignificant moral acts. Michnik asked Havel to write down his thoughts. Three months later, an underground courier appeared at Michnik's Warsaw apartment with a manuscript entitled "The Power of the Powerless." Havel's essay introduced an ordinary green-grocer who, every morning, displays in the shop window a sign stating: "Workers of the world unite!" Neither he nor his customers believe in the Communist slogan. Even the members of the regime no longer believe in it. All know it to be a lie.
Yet what else can the greengrocer do? If he were to refuse to display the sign, he could be questioned, detained, arrested—which suggests that displaying a slogan in which no one believes is of great importance. If, one day, all the greengrocers were to take down their signs, that would be the beginning of a revolution. And so the seemingly powerless greengrocer is not so powerless after all. He bears responsibility; by failing to "live in truth," people like the green-grocer "confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system."
This is a diagnosis of post-1968 communism as a descent into inauthenticity, and it comes not from the comfortable classics of Western liberal (or conservative) thought but, rather, from Martin Heidegger.
One lesson for the West was about responsibility in conditions of moral ambiguity. In Havel's autobiographical one-act play Audience (1975), Havel's alter ego Ferdinand Vaněk is a dissident playwright working at a brewery. The secret police have demanded that the brewmaster file weekly reports on Vaněk. The brewmaster becomes nervous: He finds it difficult to compose the reports. Could Vaněk, perhaps, write them? "You could do that much for me, couldn't you?" he asks Vaněk. "It would be child's play for you! You're a writer, damn it, right?"
Vaněk appreciates the brew-master's kind treatment of him; nonetheless, he refuses to write the reports about himself. For Vaněk, this is "a matter of principle." The brewmaster breaks down:
And what about me? You're just gonna let me sink, right? You're just gonna say, fuck you! It's okay if I end up being an asshole! Me, I can wallow in this shit, because I don't count, I ain't nothin' but a regular brewery hick—but the VIP here can't have any part of this! It's okay if I get smeared with shit, so long the VIP here stays clean! . . . All I'm good for is to be the manure that your damn principles gonna grow out of . . .
Decries "official memory politics"
In Audience, everyone is implicated: the regime, the brewmaster, Vaněk himself. The brewmaster is a variation of the greengrocer; he is both victim and oppressor.
For Michnik, among the disappointments of post-communism has been the rise of right-wing nationalist populism, accompanied by an official memory politics known as "historical policy." The essence of historical policy is a denial of moral ambiguity and a failure to take responsibility. It is an attempt to enforce a national historical narrative that presents "the thesis that all Polish disasters were the result of Polish benevolence, trust, and gentleness, and of the malice and cruelty of foreigners."
For Michnik, historical policy is absurd: Communism had not simply been a Soviet occupation; everyone had taken part. In order to do something good, one had to participate in a system that was evil. Between heroes and villains there were many shades of gray. This was among the reasons why "lustration"—the purging from government and public life of those who had collaborated with the secret police—was not a straightforward matter. Many were put on secret police lists of potential informers without their knowledge. Others found themselves on those lists because they had once met with an agent at a restaurant or had succumbed to threats to their children.
Moreover, those placed most at risk by lustration were those who had been in the opposition—after all, it was their circles the secret police had tried to infiltrate. Those safest under lustration were the greengrocers. The post-Communist antipathy towards the dissidents, Havel believed, had its roots in the dissidents' serving as people's bad consciences. He and Michnik were among those who, under communism, had sat in prison the longest. They were also among those most willing to forgive. For Michnik, historical policy and lustration reflected a Jacobin-like impulse to impose a politics of the sinless. And the problem with revolutionary purity was that it led to the guillotine.
Read her article. Please.
The trouble with revolution, Michnik finds, is also its aftermath: the superficiality of the everyday. Once upon a time, East Europeans had stayed up all night copying censored poems by hand. Now, no one had time to read serious literature. The omnipresence of Communist propaganda had been replaced by the omnipresence of quasi-pornographic tabloids. The revolution had brought the end of censorship. Then, the market had taken over—and had proven to be tawdry. "Suddenly all great value systems are collapsing," Michnik observed.
"[A]long with the development of this consumerist global civilization grows a mass of people who do not create any values," Havel said during one of his last conversations with Michnik. For Michnik, this "axiological vacuum" was "a typical phenomenon of periods of restoration as described by Stendhal in The Red and the Black: this is a time of cynicism, intrigues, careerism." Michnik grew preoccupied with Julien Sorel, Stendhal's weak plebian hero who seeks authenticity in illicit love affairs: "Let everyone take care of himself in the desert of egoism called life," Julien says.
In 1989, Michnik's friend, the philosopher Marcin Król, was among those who had considered liberty to be the great priority. But individualism began to dominate all other values. "We were stupid," Król said in an interview last year. No longer does anyone pose metaphysical questions like "Where does evil come from?" The dramas of characters like Julien Sorel resulted from their awareness of the weight of their actions. The lack of an answer to the question of whether they behaved well or badly was the source of great suffering. "Today," Król said, "the lack of an answer does not hurt." And that is the problem: It should hurt.
Tags: Adam Michnik, Irena Grudzińska Gross, Marci Shore, Marcin Król, Václav Havel
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"Why was there no 'happily ever after'?" Marci Shore looks at Europe post-1989
We've written about Marci Shore, author of the acclaimed Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, before – here. This week, Wiesława Niziol brought the following interview from New Eastern Europe to my attention. It's rather remarkable. A few excerpts:
One of the first, most naïve questions I wanted to understand was: Why was there no "happily ever after"? From the point of view of an American teenager, nineteen eighty-nine was a fairy tale: for all of my life and my parents' lives, there was an Evil Empire where people were thrown into prison, sometimes beaten and tortured, at the very least condemned to live in greyness and sadness, forbidden from leaving—and then suddenly one day it was over. I thought that coming to Eastern Europe would be like arriving at a non-stop party, that everybody would be celebrating his or her liberation. Of course, it was nothing like that. The 1990s were in some ways not very happy times at all. There was a sense that now people were suffering and being exploited in entirely different ways from the ways in which they had suffered and been exploited under communism. And there was a sense of the past as tormenting.
People had made difficult choices in a world in which those choices had perhaps seemed the best possible ones. And suddenly they had to account for those choices in a new world in which all the rules had changed. What might have felt like the best possible decision in difficult circumstances suddenly no longer seemed liked the best possible decision when judged by the gaze of a new world. In some ways this book is my attempt to explain why the fall of communism in Eastern Europe was not a fairy tale's happy ending. …
Czesław Miłosz was right when he wrote that "the habit of civilisation is fragile"—and that "[t]he man of the East cannot take Americans seriously because they have never undergone the experiences that teach men how relative their judgments and thinking habits are." That sense of the impossibility of understanding, of being understood, and the drama, the resentment, the jealousy and bitterness that often accompanied that feeling—perhaps that has not entirely disappeared, but it has faded. …
I think, in a certain sense, that nationalist populism is a response to a feeling of rootlessness, or groundlessness. It's an attempt at psychic consolation via the exporting of guilt, the displacement of what haunts us onto "others" who are not ourselves. Nationalism is arguably always about that: a failure to take responsibility, an attempt to export that which makes us uncomfortable. It is completely understandable in human terms. I can empathise with the desire to do that. That said, I think this kind of attempt to find a safe place for ourselves in the world will always fail. There is something rootless about the human condition. We are, alas, thrown into the world and then have to go about finding—that is, creating—a place for ourselves in it.
Moreover, space has changed. The West is no longer far away, it's no longer even so clear where the border lies, or whether there is a border. "The West" was once that place that was not accessible. Now the fall of communism, the expansion of the European Union, and the Schengen zone have created a situation in which it's "normal" to wander around Europe without a passport.
Read the rest here.
Tags: Eastern Europe, Marci Shore
Applebaum and Shore: life under communism and its long, bitter aftertaste
I listened to Mummy.
My political education began very young. When people would praise FDR in my family home, my mother would hiss "Yalta" between her teeth. The 1945 photograph of Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting side by side at the Crimean resort elicited the muttered remark, "a bunch of criminals" (although she read Churchill's multi-volume series on the war). "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin," Churchill naively opined.
Having a mother who was 100% Magyar was a good antidote to political correctness. And she never forgot nor forgave the conference that forked over most of Eastern Europe to Stalinist rule. (Perhaps it's no coincidence that her daughter writes so much about Cold War-era writers from Poland and Russia.)
So I read with interest the Christopher Caldwell's discussion of two impressive and recent books in the New Republic, Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 and Marci Shore's The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. I have endless admiration for both women. You can read the article, "When Evil Was a Social System: The Moral Burdens of Living under Communist Rule in Eastern Europe," here.
I pulled out piles of excerpts to cite, but this humble blog post quickly became top-heavy, and I felt the ominous presence of the copyright cops outside my door. Let me settle instead for citing Caldwell's concluding paragraphs:
"These two books are a sign that something is changing in our understanding of the twentieth century. Applebaum and Shore, while close in age, are on opposite sides of a generational razor's edge. Applebaum, born in the 1960s, has adult memories of the Cold War; Shore, born in the 1970s, does not. Applebaum speaks to, and in the idiom of, those who survived totalitarianism. She dedicates her book to 'those Eastern Europeans who refused to live within a lie.' Her big, resolute book gives us the most authoritative knowledge we have about communism, and only the most authoritative knowledge.
"Shore is engaged in a different project. Her book shows what erudition looks like in the Internet Age. Like a blog string, it records every false step she makes on her way to understanding. Shore almost never writes about important matters in her own voice. This means a loss of authority compared with Applebaum's more classical style, but it allows her to share more with the reader. It frees her of the historian's superego. The question of whether the reader can handle certain of the explosive things she has to say about Jews and communism appears not to have occurred to her. …
"Reasonable historians may differ about whether this sort of history-through-memoir is more honest (transparent) or more cowardly (non-
committal) than the standard kind. But it will be clear to any reader of good faith that Shore has chosen historical guilt as her subject in order to deepen our understanding, not to sow discord or rile anyone up. She has found a way to illuminate certain Polish and Jewish ideas about the worst episodes of the twentieth century that is frank, fresh, and gripping. Guilt, after all, is not just self-inflicted injury but productive moral work. At any time, "guilty" will describe almost any conscience functioning as it should."
Meanwhile, a final anecdote lingers: "Applebaum mentions a girl sent home from school for saying, 'my grandfather says Stalin is already burning in Hell'—sent home not because the teacher disapproved, but to protect the girl, her friends, her grandfather, her school, and the people who ran it. In such circumstances, propaganda can be a balm. It provides a way for men to lie to themselves, to rationalize submission to the strong, to save face. 'I don't like everything Stalin says,' you could mutter (quietly!) to your wife, 'but someone has to do something about the illiterate.'" Do I detect a whiff of Czesław Miłosz's ketman here?
Tags: Anne Applebaum, Czeslaw Milosz, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Marci Shore, Winston Churchill
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Applebaum and Shore: life under communism and its long, bitter aftertaste
New York City in 62 hours: revisiting old memories, making new ones
I spent a whirlwind 62 hours in New York City, but they were "cherce." Fortunately, photographer (and friend) Zygmunt Malinowski was on hand to document some of the highlights, and has kindly allowed the Book Haven to feature them.
First, I spoke at a commemorative event for Krzysztof Michalski, the founder of Vienna's Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, where I was Milena Jesenská Fellow a few years ago. "Democracy is Controversy Plus Solidarity: In the Absence of Krzysztof Michalski" was sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Polish Cultural Institute, in conjunction with the P.E.N. Festival in New York City.
The panel left to right: Alfred Gusenbauer, former prime minister of Austria; literary historian and author Irena Grudzinska Gross of Princeton; Andreas Stadler, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum; Marci Shore of Yale author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, and Humble Moi…
Whoops! There's someone missing from this line-up. Same cast of characters, but below you can also see Yale's Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands (and Marci Shore's husband) at far right.
Next, some of us who met for the Czesław Miłosz centenary in New York City two years ago decided to celebrate a reunion. What better place than the famous Russian Samovar, a longstanding mecca for the Russian literati (and other Slavs … and non-Slavs)? The place was a familiar haunt for Joseph Brodsky, a friend of Miłosz's.
The Russian Samovar's legendary proprietor Roman Kaplan appeared toward the evening – he'd founded the hang-out with Mikhail Baryshnikov and he'd also been an especially close friend of Brodsky's. No sooner did he find out about my association with the Nobel poet than he pulled me into the corner seat, where Joseph Brodsky had usually held court, and a photo with the (by then) glassy-eyed Moi was snapped. Glassy-eyed, but nevertheless … stepping into a page of New York cultural history.
Finally, here's the whole reunion crew. This is the only photograph in the group that is not by Zygmunt, because that's him at far left, looking gravely into the camera (in the mirror you can see the mystery guest photographer's arms). The poet Anna Frajlich is next to Zygmunt, then Alla Roylance, Moi, Izabela Barry, and Władek Zając. Couldn't find a better group of people. And you'd hard-pressed to find a better dinner, beginning with vodka infused with horseradish, cranberries, and lemon (you can read about them at the Paris Review here) continuing with Georgian and traditional Russian dishes, and finishing with samovar tea with jam. Dostoevsky would have approved entirely.
After the panel discussion, we ended at the residence of U.N. Ambassador Martin Sajdik. Risotto with white spargel, a perfectly chilled white wine from the Kamp River region, quince schnapps, and plenty of Mozartkugeln. Can't top that … but ohhhhh, I wish I could find that brilliant Austrian wine here, but the ambassador, rightly known as a connoisseur, told me the American market likes its wines a little more fruity, a little less delightfully sharp – you have to go to Vienna to get these. As good an incitement as any, should you need one.
Here's Roman Kaplan reading Joseph Brodsky's poems in the commemorative corner:
Tags: Anna Frajlich, Krzysztof Michalski, Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder, Zygmunt Malinowski


The talks ended shortly before the Senate dealt the administration a symbolic rebuke by voting to recommend an end to United States support for the Saudi-led coalition that has been battling the Iran-backed Yemeni rebels.
The hostilities follow Thursday's agreement at United Nations -sponsored talks in Sweden on a cease-fire in Hodeida, through which about 70 percent of food aid and other imports come.
In a statement by King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the kingdom backed "the agreements reached in Sweden in UN-sponsored talks between a delegation of Yemen's legitimate government and the Houthi rebels", the official SPA news agency reported.
An official in the Saudi-led coalition confirmed the timing to AFP, adding that details on implementing the truce deal "were not clear at the beginning".
The sides agreed on a governorate-wide ceasefire and withdrawal of forces in Al Hodeidah, the establishment of a UN-chaired committee to monitor the process, a prisoner exchange, and humanitarian corridors to the city of Taiz.
This comes despite warnings from the worldwide community and aid agencies that the war in Yemen has left more than 14 million people on the brink of starvation.
On Sunday afternoon, UN Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths issued a plea to both to "respect their obligations as per the text and the spirit of the Stockholm Agreement" and "engage in the immediate representation of its provisions".
It follows their decision to trigger a similar option in David De Gea's contract. We are far from an agreement for the time being".
Severe food shortages mean that a high number of Yemenis have been dying in "very dramatic circumstances", Guterres told a news conference in Doha.
Human rights groups say the death toll could be 5 times as high.
Under the truce, "the existing local authorities" in Houthi-held Hodeida "will be officially in charge of controlling the city and establishing security there under the supervision of the U.N.", Abdulsalam reportedly declared.


Wait Mister Postman Do You Have a Postcard For Me?
Welcome to our first Postcard Lovers Linkup Party!
Thank you so much for your fun new Linky Party feature!
I have been away from blogging so was not around for this.
I found your link from Betty's Tearoom blog.
How often will you be doing this linkup?
I have to go into the attic and find my stash!


What a wonderful sermon that must have been! Oh, the days when dissing one's ancestors was the norm!
Amid the universal homage to Darwin one adverse sentiment is widely noted and rebuked. L'Univers, the Roman Catholic organ in Paris, said, "When hypothesis tends to nothing less than the destruction of faith, the shutting out of God from the heart of man, and the diffusion of the filthy leprosy of Materialism, the savant who invents and propagates them is either a criminal or a fool. Voila ce que nous avons a dire du Darwin des singes.
Google Translate tells me this means This is what we have to say Darwin's apes.
So here's CS/Math from a Bio major for a change. Risky venture, but I have somehow been reminded a lot of MATLAB these days and thought I'd revisit my project.
My project was a Random Text Generator. The whole idea was essentially based upon Markov chains. Markov chains are named after Andrei Markov, who produced the first results for these processes. Markov was a mathematician. Dr. Sabieh Anwar says mathematicians aren't humans, they are super humans. So, even though Markov chains are related to some fundamental physical concepts such as Brownian motion and the Ergodic hypothesis, Markov's motivation was purely mathematical, closely relating it to probability theory. Thus, to me it looks intensely complicated.
Formally, a Markov chain is defined as a "discrete random process with the Markov property that goes on forever." By now, I suppose we all very well know what discrete means. A discrete random process would then mean that the system changes between the 'discrete' states 'randomly'. Having the Markov property means that given the present state, the future states do not depend on the past states, that the current state has 'all' the information necessary for the evolution of the process. And what happens next (future states) will be reached through a purely probablistic process.
A good example I found to explain this is the comparison between board games, suppose snakes and ladders and card games, suppose blackjack. In snakes and ladders, the future state depends only on the current state of the board and what number the dice will give. It doesn't matter 'how' the current state of the board was achieved and it doesn't affect what will happen next in the game. So the process is a Markov chain. However, in blackjack, 'how' the current state was achieved matters a lot. The cards serve as a memory, so a player who remembers better which cards have been shown and which are still in the deck gains an advantage over other players, and the game is not independent of the past states.
Markov chains have many uses in many disciplines including Physics, Chemistry, Mathematical Biology, Economics, as well as gambling, music etc. In Physics, Markovian systems appear extensively in Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics. And for anyone who took the Biochemistry or Mathematical Biology course this semester, the classical model of enzymatic activity, Michaelis-Menten kinetics, is a Markov chain. But what is even more amazing and seems slightly confusing to me is that Markov chains can also be used to simulate brain function, such as the mammalian neocortex, which is involved in higher brain functions such as sensory perception, motor commands, conscious thought and language.
But the most interesting thing you can do with Markov chains is to make a Markov text generator. The text generator produces superficially 'real-looking' text which is based on a sample text. How the text generator works is this: to begin with it picks up a word randomly from the original sample text, suppose its "the". The program knows the words and how many times each of them occurs in the original text after the word "the", so each of the words has different probabilities. The next word produced depends on these probabilities. And the process keeps occuring for every word produced. But this is only a first order Markov chain. This means that a word (n) produced depends only on the word (n-1). An order-2 Markov chain would have the word (n) depending on word (n-1) 'and' word (n-2). Subsequently the new text produced has been done so by a completely probablistic process and is absolute gibberish, but it looks amazingly like the original sample text. The higher the order of the Markov chain the greater the similarity between the new text produced and the sample. I heard that some MIT students produced a research paper using many other research papers as their sample texts and it actually got accepted in one of the journals.
My personal favorite was an Oscar Wilde text. The result was hilarious! It really gives a new dimension to 'playing with words'.
While I was researching for my project, I found out that it was closely related to the 'Infinite Monkey Theorem'. "The infinite monkey theorem revolves around the idea that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, usually defined as the complete works of William Shakespeare".
Eddington was trying for us to consider the great improbability of a large but finite number of monkeys working for a large but finite amount of time to produce a great amount of work and compare this to the even greater improbability of certain physical events (here entropy). What is significant is that anything that is even less probable than monkeys doing this is in effect impossible.
The genetic mutations necessary to produce a tapeworm from an amoeba are as unlikely as a monkey typing Hamlet's soliloquy, and hence the odds against the evolution of all life are impossible to overcome.
But the argument has also been used in favour of Evolution so there's really no saying anything.
But everthing about the theorem is so subtle and the concepts of infinity, probability and time beyond average human experience and practical comprehension that you can't really encompass the whole meaning of it. And I hope they explain this in our Probability course next semester. Fat chance though.
The monkey is doing it!
Currently, I am reading three books. Let's talk about them in turn, mainly because I have little insightful to say and much work of synthesis to do.
But one thing I shall not do is belittle the wonder of the living 'watches' that so inspired Paley. On the contrary, I shall try to illustrate my feeling that here Paley could have gone even further. When it comes to feeling awe over living 'watches' I yield to nobody. I feel more in common with the Reverend William Paley than I do with the distinguished modern philosopher, a well-known atheist, with whom I once discussed the matter at dinner. I said that I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published. 'What about Hume?' replied the philosopher. 'How did Hume explain the organized complexity of the living world?' I asked. 'He didn't' said the philosopher. 'Why does it need any special explanation?'… Paley knew that it needed a special explanation; Darwin knew it, and I suspect that in his heart of hearts my philosopher companion knew it too.
Dawkins goes on explain Hume's position as being one of rejecting Paley's Argument of Design from perfect adaptation and inherent complexity. He [Dawkins] further says that despite Hume's skepticism, he wasn't able to provide an alternative explanation. This, of course, was provided by Darwin. The question, however, arising directly from Paley's work that Darwin addressed was: What criterion must a process meet in order to lead to the consequence of apparent design? But interpolating from that question, what must be our immediate response when we discover the intricacies of biological mechanisms and processes, infinitely more complex and less pattern-oriented than say, a chunk of quartz crystal or a bunch of levers creating a machine? I will talk about Paley's example of the compensation of the lack of teeth in quadrupeds by rumination which he took to illustrate a Creator's intervention to produce the best case scenario for quadrupeds. Dawkins uses similar examples such as echolocation in bats. They both invoke design but ascribe it to different forces: Paley to the all-knowing Creator's hand (not to be confused with Adam Smith's invisible hand, but it is interesting how language was used so similarly in both cases), and Dawkins to natural selection.
Fair enough. Rumination is, for those of you not well versed in Usman Qazi's Physiology course, the act of ingesting food, softening it in the stomach, then regurgitating it so the animal can chew. This, of course, is what cows are essentially doing when they chew cud. As Paley's rule of thumb will dictate, ruminants have thus less of a need for the faculty of front teeth in the upper jaw which is used, in non-ruminants like us, to chew and grind the food before ingesting it. (There is also one further feature that a Creator 'intended' to design: Paley notes that the chewing of cud seems to give the ruminant a sort of gratification, which one can tell when one is observing a cow chew cud. Thus, it is the Creator's intention to make cows ruminate because it makes them happy!) Any Biology student will understand the sentiment behind Paley's work: it is passionate and expresses a great deal of wonder about the biological world. The conclusions he draws from each example, what he terms a cumulative argument (apparently, ten examples which all independently conclude incorrectly might conclude correctly when put together) are that they all demonstrate a clear intention of design.
It is interesting to note how vastly the elegance of Biology and the natural world is interpreted. I keep trying to recall what I first thought of when I saw a sunflower, or dew on grass and was awestruck by its color, its texture or the first time I saw a peacock with feathers that could only have been tie-dyed to create the intricate patterns (patterns similar to the ones aunties wear in Lahore over the summer. Just saying). Did I think: there's something that must have been created! It seems so intuitive to us to marvel at the proverbial watch on the ground and ascribe it to some invisible force, howsoever we wish to define that force, but can we definitely say that we innately ascribe it to a Creator? I happen to think that if I hadn't been taught to continually appeal to a Creator as some sort of cop-out to actually being explained natural processes, I might have taken less time to understand Evolutionary Biology than I actually did.
Where does that leave religion? One possible (but highly unlikely) way of answering such a question would be by invoking the ideas of Matt Rossano who in a new book Supernatural Selection: How religion evolved, talks about how religion's role in early society might actually have conferred benefits that placed a certain selection pressure on the use of imagination. I should say, however, that his ideas amuse me more than appeal to my intuition, for I do not believe we have much to gain by granting religion any kind of special place to begin with, and such explanations are likely to set bad precedent. But in terms of how modern society evolved because religion taught us how to form narratives and episodes the same way say, The OC, might unfold, it might be interesting to speculate. To read more about Matt Rossano, click here.
It is not true that disorder is required in order to describe disorder; it is not true that chaos on the written page is the best symbol of the extreme chaos to which we are fated: I hold this to be a characteristic error of our insecure country.
What a wonderful defense of simple, uncomplicated writing! If only I had paid more attention to Levi, perhaps this blog post wouldn't have turned out so convoluted. Have a wonderful summer!
Anybody who knows me every remotely knows about my fascination with Jazz. I consume it voraciously - from the haunting tale of racial brutality in Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit", the background male chorus set to the musings of Ella Fitzgerald in "I Lost My Yellow Basket", to the vigorous trumpeting of Miles Davis, and even the contemporary revamps of Rihanna by Jamie Cullum. Anybody who knows Jazz even remotely understands that its historical connection to ongoing political change is deeply engrained - not just the racial tensions in Strange Fruit but perhaps even its effect on questions concerning the fate of science in schools.
The Jazz Age of the 1920's was associated, among other things, with moral and ethical degradation in American society by the fundamentalist Bible Belt - much like the '60s hippies, the lifestyle just seemed so shocking to the regular young person's stiff parents. In 1925, a man named John Washington Butler, no doubt influenced by what he felt must qualify as degeneracy, framed the Butler Act in Tennessee because his children returned from school to tell him that the Bible was nothing but hogwash. The subsequent law made it a crime to teach that 'man had descended from a lower order of animals'. Evolution was under threat - the stage had almost imperceptibly and suddenly been set by the Butler Act and the movement of William Jennings Bryan, for a fierce debate in schools across the United States sparked by a wider struggle in society over the maintenance of traditional values and mores.
This debate (the evolution one, not the one where Jazz is awesome) is especially interesting for us biologists given its sensitivity inside and outside the lecture hall. Needless to say, in today's United States, creationists can no longer hope to push forward a law that challenges the teaching of what is largely agreed upon across the board in science, but the evolution (pun intended) of the debate is interesting: in 1925, John Scopes, a physics teacher for the local high school in a sleepy town called Dayton, happened to substitute for the biology teacher, and assigned a chapter on evolution to the students in the classroom. This resulted in an extremely high-profile case which, for most people, represented the aged struggle between religion and science with creationists represented by William Jennings Bryan and the evolutionists by a man named Clarence Darrow. The film and Broadway play, Inherit the Wind, tells the tale with dramatic flair (maybe even a tad too dramatic, felt Stephen Jay Gould according to whom the trial was certainly not the debate of free inquiry vs. dogmatism that it was depicted to be). Scopes was found guilty for violating the law (but not before Darrow famously forced Bryan to admit that creation may have lasted more than 24 hours - the Bible believes the Earth is only about ten thousand years old - for those of you who took Biochemistry, we beg to differ), but on a technicality, the decision was overturned and Scopes returned to the streets a free (thinker) man. The law was never repealed until 1968, when a certain Susan Epperson challenged the law on the basis that it obviously appealed to the Christian faith which of course violates the First Amendment.
The story is fascinating in its own right, as is the fact that the Scopes trial is commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial. The battle, however, continues. Stephen Jay Gould's essay Trouble in Our Own House tells about how creationists, having lost the battle in Tennessee, came back reinvigorated with a different aim under the umbrella term of creation science, intending this time to give equal time to the Biblical Genesis story in schools where evolution was taught.
One amusing anecdote of the trial challenging the law in Arkansas and Louisiana goes like this: a teacher was testifying about how he used a long piece of string to teach children about the origin of life. A long piece of string was strung from one side of the classroom to the other, and children were placed at variable points on the string to represent the extinction of dinosaurs, early man, the Ice Age and other such important landmarks. When asked how he would give equal time to a faith which believed the Earth was only ten thousand years old and that man was 'created' and placed on Earth, the teacher replied that he would need a much shorter piece of string. Cue raucous audience laughter. Stephen Jay Gould elucidates: "the image that had immediately popped into my mind - the thought of twenty earnest second-graders all scrunched up along one millimeter of string".
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and newspapers...Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backwards to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
The story is instructive, however. Consider for one moment what would happen to the state of education in our madrassahs if science was replaced by something pretending. Considered? Now you may break out the Louis Armstrong CD's.
When I feel a little bit like Clarence Darrow, I find Louis Armstrong to be strangely cathartic.


text:
Quotations about space
Elon Musk - Humanity as a space-faring civilization
There's a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars, compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.
- Elon Musk
Bertrand Russell - The Milky Way is a tiny fragment
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot.
On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
- Bertrand Russell
Democritus - The first principles of the universe
The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space. The atoms are unlimited in size and number, and they are borne along in the whole universe in a vortex, and thereby generate all composite things -- fire, water, air, earth. For even these are conglomerations of given atoms.
- Democritus
Democritus - By convention there is color, sweetness
By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.
Carl Sagan - If we are to understand the Earth
Apart from an understanding of the solar system as a whole, it is becoming clear that information about any planet or satellite illuminates our knowledge of the others. In particular, if we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets.
- Carl Sagan
Steven Weinberg - In the beginning, an explosion. . .
In the beginning there was an explosion. Not an explosion like those familiar on earth, starting from a definite center and spreading out to engulf more and more of the circurmambient air, but an explosion which occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the beginning, with every particle of matter rushing apart from every other particle.
- Steven Weinberg
Ronald Reagan - The pain of exploration and discovery
And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.
- Ronald Reagan
John F. Kennedy - The exploration of space
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
- John F. Kennedy
Douglas Adams - How big is space?
Space. . .is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
- Douglas Adams
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Drivers of space exploration
I think we are in a little bit of a moon race even if no one admits it publicly. China has met good on every one of their promises when they said, "We're going to put an astronaut, a taikonaut into orbit." They did that. They're going to build a space station, they're doing that. And so they want to say, declare they want to go to the moon, we should really take them seriously. If we feel threatened by that in any way, this is the kind of response that that triggers. That's why we went to the moon in the first place. Our cleansed memory of that period is, "Oh we're Americans and we're explorers." Well, we were in the middle of a Cold War, and we got scared when Russia, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and we had to respond in some way for our own dignity, for our own place in the world. So a lot of things drive space exploration beyond just scientific motives.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Mikhail Gorbachev - If the U.S. was attacked by aliens
President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?' I said, 'No doubt about it.'
- Mikhail Gorbachev
Elon Musk - Expand life beyond Earth
To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it's gone. I think we should establish life on another planet -- Mars in particular -- but we're not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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I specialize in doing Live Caricatures for parties and events, as well as Custom Caricatures. I was a Caricature artist at Walt Disney for 13 years. I pride myself on my speed, ability to capture likeness, and providing an unforgettable experience for guests, giving them a keepsake they will value and cherish. My humor is family friendly and I never exaggerate peoples features too much. I believe in Magic! When I sit down to draw and capture a child's crooked smile, or write the words "will you marry me" on the paper for someone who is proposing, there is magic in those moments, a palpable electricity. I absolutely love what I do.
Live caricatures are done on-site by a talented artist who can capture likeness in a matter of moments. It is a great addition to any event (formal or casual) for its entertainment value as well as giving your guests something they will take home and frame.
Digital Caricatures are great for Trade shows and conventions because they help drive traffic to your booth. People gather around to watch the drawing come to life and then we print out a picture of them that they can take home or put in their lanyard. People love it!


MissionIR would like to highlight Issuer Direct Corporation, a publicly traded market leader and innovator of Disclosure Management Systems and Cloud–based Compliance Technologies. The company's flagship technology platform is its Disclosure management System (DMS), a secure cloud based workflow compliance collaboration system for corporate issuers and compliance professionals. The company works with several thousand compliance professionals and hundreds of corporate issuers worldwide, through various brand names.
Issuer Direct reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2012.
The company reported GAAP earnings of $213,591, or $0.11 per share, marking a 200 percent improvement over net income of $71,081, or $0.04 per share, reported in the comparable quarter of 2011. Issuer Direct reported non-GAAP earnings of $300,429, or $0.15 per share, compared to non-GAAP net income of $156,325, or $0.09 per share, for the comparable quarter of 2011.
Revenues for the quarter increased by 36 percent to $1.25 million as compared to revenues of $891,576 reported for the third quarter the year prior.
Moving forward the company expects to dock continued growth stemming primarily from disclosure expansion and its reporting business.


text:
New U.S. Citizens
On November 26, 117 people from 41 countries, represented by different flags, cultures and systems of government, became U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony at the Utah State Capitol. Rep. Norm Thurston hosted the event in partnership with the United States...
Utah House Democratic Leadership Team for 2019/20
For Immediate Release: November 20, 2018 Contact: Ross Chambless, Communications Specialist Utah House Democratic Caucus rosschambless@le.utah.gov Utah House Democratic Leadership Team for 2019/20 SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah House Democratic Caucus elected its new...
An agreement has been reached by the legislature, governor, stakeholders who endorsed and opposed Proposition 2. The draft Utah Medical Cannabis Act bill is a result of the leadership of Speaker Greg Hughes bringing members of the House and Senate, stakeholders and...
Utah House Democrats' Statement on the Passing of Congressman Jim Hansen
SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah House Democrats issued the following statement on the passing of Congressman Jim Hansen: "We are sad to hear of the passing of former Congressman Jim Hansen, Utah's longest-serving U.S. congressman. While Democrats did not always agree with...
Speaker Greg Hughes statement about the passing of Jim Hansen
Salt Lake City – Speaker Greg Hughes has issued the following statement about the passing of Jim Hansen, the former Speaker of the Utah House of Representatives and Utah's longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives: "As a former Speaker of the...


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Who are Jacob Ifan's Parent? Bio, Age, GF, Net Worth, Height
Facts of Jacob Ifan
Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
Gerallt Jones
Elizabeth J. Griffiths
Dafydd IwanAlun and Ffred JonesArthur Morus
Jacob Ifan Instagram
View more / View less Facts of Jacob Ifan
1 Where is Jacob Ifan from?
2 What College did Jacob Ifan go to?
3 Does Jacob Ifan have a Girlfriend?
4 Who is Jacob Ifan's Girlfriend?
5 How much is Jacob Ifan's Net Worth?
6 What was Olivia Cooke's Hardest Scene on the House of Dragon?
7 What is Jacob Ifan's Height?
8 Acting Career of Jacob Ifan
9 FAQs of Jacob Ifan
Jacob Ifan is a Welsh actor who came into the spotlight for his role as Jake Vickers in the BBC police drama series Cuffs.
Where is Jacob Ifan from?
Jacob Ifan opened his eyes to this beautiful world on April 28, 1993. He was born in Cardiff, Wales. As of 2022, he is 29 years old and his zodiac sign is Taurus. By birth, his real name is Jacob Ifan Prytherch. Usually, he celebrates her birthday on the 28th of April every year.
Caption: Jacob with his family members (Photo: Instagram)
Jacob's father's name is Gerallt Jones and his mother's name is Elizabeth J. Griffiths. Similarly, he grew up with his other two siblings. His brothers' names are Dafydd IwanAlun and Fred JonesArthur Morus.
Similarly, he holds Welsh citizenship as a nationality and belongs to a Welsh ethnic background. Furthermore, he has a faith in Christianity as a religion.
What College did Jacob Ifan go to?
Jacob went to the Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig in Llanbadarn Fawr, Aberystwyth, Wales. Later, he completed his college level at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Does Jacob Ifan have a Girlfriend?
Jacob is in a romantic relationship with Olivia Cooke. His girlfriend is an English actress by profession. Jacob and Olivia started dating in the year 2020.
Caption: Jacob Ifan's girlfriend Olivia Cooke (Photo: POPSUGAR UK)
Who is Jacob Ifan's Girlfriend?
Olivia Cooke is Jacob Ifan's girlfriend. Olivia was born on December 27, 1993, in Oldham, United Kingdom. She began acting at the Oldham Theatre Workshop when she was eight years old. Olivia has appeared on television as Emma Decody in the thriller Bates Motel (2013–2017). In 2012, Cooke appeared in three BBC mini-series productions: Blackout.
Caption: Olivia Cooke after winning an Award (Photo: The IMDb)
Similarly, she won Awards from Screen International and Newport Beach Film Festival in 2014 and 2017 respectively. In addition, she was also nominated for numerous Awards including Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, MTV Movie & TV Awards, and many more. Some of her movies and tv series are Ruby's Skin, The Signal, The Limehouse Golem, The Secret of Crickley Hall, Bates Motel, and so on.
How much is Jacob Ifan's Net Worth?
Jacob Ifan's net worth is estimated to be around $5 million as of 2022. He earns this million amount from his professional career as an actor. According to some online resources, the average salary of a Welsh actor ranges from $49,322 and $73,076 per year. Also, he must be earning the same amount of salary as his acting career.
Caption: Jacob posing with his car (Photo: The IMDb)
On the other hand, his girlfriend earns $2 million. According to some online resources, the average salary of a British actress is £27,300 per year. She earns this million amount from her primary income source as an actress.
What was Olivia Cooke's Hardest Scene on the House of Dragon?
Olivia Cooke's Hardest Scene in the House of Dragon was when her son, Aegon, is exposed to have raped a servant girl named Dyana and she has to confront her son in his quarters about his actions after hearing the news from her handmaiden and has to physically bring him to his senses with a slap.
What is Jacob Ifan's Height?
Jacob stands at a height of 5 feet 9 inches tall and his weight is around 65 kg. Similarly, he has an alluring pair of hazel eyes and his hair is brown in color.
Acting Career of Jacob Ifan
Jacob is a Welsh actor.
In 2016, he appeared in the movie, Music, War, and Love as David Rosenwald.
Caption: Jacob Ifan with his co-star at shooting set in their Cops uniform (Photo: YouTube)
Some of his other film and television series are Hinterland, A Discovery of Witches, SAS: Rogue Heroes, Music, War and Love, and many more.
FAQs of Jacob Ifan
Is Tom Rhys Harries related to Jacob Ifan?
Rhys Harries is Gruff Harries' older brother and the cousin of Jacob, who has appeared in Hinterland.
What is the color of Jacob Ifan's eyes?
Jacob has an attractive pair of hazel color eyes.
What is Jacob Ifan famous for?
Jacob is a Welsh actor who became famous after starring his role as Jake Vickers in the BBC police drama series Cuffs. He is also famous as the boyfriend of Olivia Cooke.
Tagged:Actor


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Клето де Хесус Гонсалес Викес (, 13 октября 1858, Барва, Эредия, Коста-Рика — 23 сентября 1937, Сан-Хосе) — коста-риканский государственный деятель, президент Коста-Рики (1906—1910 и 1928—1932).

Биография
Родился в семье Клето Гонсалеса Переса и Ауроры Викес Мурильо. В 1889 году он женился на Аделе Эрран Бонилья.

Был известным политиком, адвокатом и историком.

В 1885 году был секретарем посольства в Соединенных Штатах, а в 1886 году — в Гватемале.

 1886—1887 гг. — государственный секретарь в министерстве иностранных дел,
 1887—1888 гг. — государственный министр,
 1889 г. — посол в Никарагуа,
 1889 г. — министр иностранных дел.

В 1902—1906 гг. — второй вице-президент Коста-Рики. С 1902 по 1903 год одновременно являлся министром финансов и торговли. С 1904 по 1905 год занимал пост окружного администратора муниципалитета Сан-Хосе.

Также избирался президентом Коллегии юристов и возглавлял юридический колледж.

С 1890 по 1902 год состоял в оппозиционной партии Национальный союз. В 1905 году он впервые был избран президентом Коста-Рики. Он управлял страной с большой осторожностью, так как не обладал большинством в Конгрессе.

Во время своего второго пребывания в должности с 1928 по 1932 год использовал идеи кейнсианства, чтобы преодолеть последствия «Великой депрессии». Он увеличил государственные расходы и расширил общественные инфраструктурные проекты.

Основные достижения
 Завершение железной дороги к Тихому океану в 1910 году.
 Издание первого закона о железных дорогах.
 Строительство старого здания Национальной библиотеки.
 Инициирование издания Трудового кодекса.
 Учреждение Генеральной прокуратуры республики.
 Основание первого национального сервиса авиаперевозок в 1932 году.

Примечания

Вице-президенты Коста-Рики

Президенты Коста-Рики
Послы Коста-Рики в Никарагуа
Члены Коста-риканской академии языка

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: Network timed out exception I have an Android application which connects to an Arduino server and sends it sockets on a button press, but as soon as I press the button it waits a little while and then throws "Connection timed out". I know the Arduino works; I tried it over the browser and it was fine. Why can't my application access it?
The Android code:
Button.OnClickListener buttonConnectOnClickListener = new Button.OnClickListener() {
    public void onClick(View v) {
        Log.i(Tag,"connecting to Server");
        try {
            Log.i(Tag,"Enters try");
            socket = new Socket("161.53.168.112", 8888);
            Log.i(Tag,"stvorio socket");
            dataOutputStream = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());//and stream

            Log.i(Tag,"Writing 1 on socket.");
            dataOutputStream.writeBytes("1");
        }
        catch (UnknownHostException e) {
            Log.i(Tag,e.toString());
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
            Log.i(Tag,e.toString());
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e(Tag, e.toString());

And here is the code used in the Arduino. It's quite simple, so I can't understand what went wrong. I used many logs, because I wanted to see where the mistake is. I use my Arduino as a server and post something on it. If I type in 161.53.168.112:8888 in a web browser, it finds it and can send a request but my Android phone gets nothing, even using the browser, and not an app. I can't access my server. AM I maybe missing some permission in the server or on the Android?
byte mac[] = { 0x90, 0xA2, 0xDA, 0x00, 0x36, 0xFF };
byte ip[] = { 161, 53, 168, 114 };
int serverPort = 8888;

#define kitchenLight = 9;

Server server(serverPort);

void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(9600);
    Ethernet.begin(mac, ip, gateway, subnet);
    pinMode(kitchenLight,OUTPUT);
    server.begin();
}

void loop()
{
    Client client = server.available();
    if(client)
    {
        while(client.connected()) {
            if(client.available()) {
                char c = client.read();
                appMessage += c;
                if (c == '\n')
                {
                    Serial.println("Message from Client: "+appMessage);

                    if(appMessage.IndexOf("kitchenLight1") != -1)
                    {
                        digitalWrite(kitchenLight,HIGH);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    client.close();
}

A: After you make a connection between your Arduino and Android, you should add a delay, like, for a second or two (more likely two), because it takes that time for Arduino to get ready receiving commands.
Hope this helps :)

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Winifredia sola L.A.S.Johnson & B.G.Briggs é a única espécie do género botânico Winifredia, pertencente à família Restionaceae.

Restionaceae


Range Rover Velar redefined by Overfinch.
The new Range Rover Velar redefined by Overfinch demonstrates minimalist design for maximum impact. Recognisable as Overfinch at first glance, our exterior enhancement comprises front and rear aeros, bumpers, fog light surrounds, and spoiler, to accentuate the simple and clean lines of the Range Rover Velar.
The Overfinch design retains the elegance and sophistication of the base vehicle, without compromising our signature on-road presence.
Exclusively for Velar, our exterior is now offered in state-of-the-art Technical Composite. This strong, yet lightweight material is finished in high gloss for a luxurious and contemporary aesthetic.
To allow a greater freedom of choice, as well as a greater immediacy of conversion, each of the Velar exterior components is available individually, ensuring a truly personalised approach to enhancing your Range Rover Velar. Of course, bespoke commissions are welcomed.
To find out more speak to a member of our team today, shop enhancements online, or view our available stock.
The front aperture surrounds enhance the Range Rover Velar's on-road presence.
Applied to the front bumper, the front splitter adds definition and extends the profile of Range Rover Velar.
Featuring Overfinch branded exhaust tips.


Collection Pertuiset, Paris, 1888; [purchased at Pertuiset sale, Hôtel Drouot, by Thévenet, Paris, June 6, 1888, no. 7]; acquired from Thévenet by Mr. C.C. Haynes, New York; Caroline C. Haynes; Rev. G.W. Eccles, New York; acquired from him by J.K. Thannhauser, New York, August 31, 1928; [his sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, April 12, 1945, no. 97 (Woochuf)]; private collection, New York; bequeathed by the estate of Ann Eden Woodward to the MFAH, 1979.


A consortium that includes Thailand-based Minor International is exploring options to make an investment of around $350m in Hotel Leelaventure.
This offer is claimed to have the backing of investment firm Trinity White City Ventures.
It will be a combination of equity and debt, reported Bloomberg, citing persons familiar with the matter.
If the deal materialises, the consortium will own majority stake in India-based Hotel Leelaventure.
According to the persons, the deliberations may not necessarily lead to an agreement.
Hotel Leelaventure operates nine properties across India. Among its luxury properties include The Leela Palace Udaipur in the North Indian state of Rajasthan and The Leela Kovalam in the South Indian state of Kerala.
Minor's hotel unit CEO Dillip Rajakarier was quoted by the publication as saying: "Minor is always on the lookout for good investment opportunities, which includes Hotel Leela.
Minor has been on an expansion spree through acquisitions. It invested $2.6bn this year to acquire control of Spain-based NH Hotel Group.
Earlier this year, Trinity White City Ventures abandoned its plan to buy New York-based Plaza Hotel for $600m. This transaction was aborted following several lawsuits over the sale process of the hotel. Eventually, the iconic hotel was sold to Qatari firm.


text:
Alicia Keys loves this cover of 'If I Ain't Got You'
What's Fresh 22/09/2016
The Voice contestant Lauren Diaz wowed during the blind auditions as she covered Alicia Keys' hit 'If I Ain't Got You.'
It's a challenging song to attempt at the best of times and to sing it for Alicia Keys is just CRAZY! Alicia Keys was the first judge to turn around and when it came down to it she made sure Lauren knew she wanted to be her coach.
Watch Alicia Keys serenade Lauren with a tweaked version of the track.
Everything means nothing, if I ain't got you, Lauren.
FULL CHAT: Sir John Kirwan on the importance of Mental Health Awareness Week
Mac Miller's 2014 mixtape 'Faces' is heading to streaming services for the first time
WATCH: Troy Kingi & Diggy Dupe deliver a powerful performance of new track 'My Heart Never Sleeps'
Alex's post-match interview if she was captain of the Blues


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Jose Ramirez rediscovered how to hit changeups midway through 2019; How can that help the Cleveland Indians in 2020?
Updated: Mar. 24, 2020, 9:01 p.m. | Published: Mar. 24, 2020, 8:49 p.m.
Jose Ramirez celebrates after his three-run home run off Chicago's Hector Santiago last season.AP
By Joe Noga, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Jose Ramirez rediscovered his feel for hitting changeups and offspeed pitches, it turned around his 2019 season. The question moving forward for Ramirez and the Cleveland Indians: Can he keep it going in 2020?
There's really no good explanation as to why Ramirez stopped hitting over the final six weeks of 2018 and continued to slump through the first three months of last season. Only one thing was certain: "Jose wasn't himself" as manager Terry Francona was enamored with saying.
Hoynes: What to expect from Jose Ramirez with the Cleveland Indians in 2020
Through the season's first three months, Ramirez saw an increased number of breaking balls and off speed pitches thrown his way, while the percentage of fastballs he faced gradually declined.
Jose Ramirez saw fewer fastballs beginning in July and that prompted his midseason surge at the plate.
Normally, Ramirez would eat up fastballs, driving them to all parts of the ballpark from either side of the plate. But once opposing pitchers realized they could get Ramirez out without having to throw him the straight stuff, they seized the opportunity.
Jose Ramirez strikes out against Detroit.
That led to a lot of frustration and impatience on Ramirez's part. He might only see one or two fastballs that he could hit in an at-bat and he started to get jumpy and miss them when he had the chance. More often than not, Ramirez would yank a fastball foul or just miss hitting one out of the park.
He hit .214 through the first 80 games of the season and with five home runs and 30 RBI, well below the standard he'd established for himself since his breakout season in 2016.
Jose Ramirez strikes out against the White Sox.
Then in late June, the light switch flipped. As pitchers continued to challenge him with breaking balls, Ramirez seemingly made the adjustment and started getting results. He hit in 10 of 11 games from June 14-25 and posted an 11-game hitting streak from July 4-19, including a three-hit effort against the Tigers. The momentum carried over into August, where he hit in eight straight games Aug. 2-9 and had a six-RBI game against the Yankees on Aug. 15.
Jose Ramirez doubles against the Angels.
Some of the damage Ramirez was able to do during those two scorching months at the plate was due to his rediscovered ability to hit changeups and breaking balls. When opposing pitchers then went back to attacking him with fastballs, the diminutive Dominican slugger was ready.
"With some success you're starting to see his confidence again," Francona said in July. "No matter who you are when you're struggling, you feel it. Because it had been an extended period, you see him smile a little bit more. He's feeling a little better about himself."
Ramirez said his confidence never wavered during the slump
"My confidence is always there regardless of the results," Ramirez said through translator Agustin Rivero after a July 18 win against Detroit. "I'll just keep focusing on the work that I put in and the results will show."
Jose Ramirez homers against Boston.
Ramirez worked with assistant hitting coach Victor Rodriguez on a lot of the things that helped Carlos Santana develop an approach that turned into an All-Star season for the first baseman. His routines and his focus on keeping the ball in the middle of the field was key.
"I'm aware I was opening up a little bit too much, but now I'm working on focusing on staying in the middle," Ramirez said.
Heading into 2020, Ramirez looks to have maintained that focus. He hit .320 (8-for-25) with two homers, seven RBI and a 1.010 OPS in nine starts before play was suspended. Ramirez regularly batted third in Francona's lineup during his early-season slump, but began to produce better results when he was dropped to the No. 5 spot later in the year.
In early spring games, Francona moved Ramirez back up to the No. 3 spot in the order, but with options including Carlos Santana and (maybe) Francisco Lindor for the three hole, Ramirez could find himself dropping down to provide protection for Franmil Reyes if Francona decides to make "La Mole" the Tribe's cleanup hitter.
Jose Ramirez homers against Kansas City.
Buy Indians gear: Fanatics, Nike, Amazon, Lids
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Tribe players star in Trevor Bauer's sandlot Wiffle ball game highlight video
Indians option Bobby Bradley, four others to Class AAA Columbus


Views of the bay, meadow and sunset as far as the eye can see! All enjoyed from the comfort of your own recently updated two story townhome and bay view deck. The spacious second floor living area is a wonderful surprise as you walk up the stairs and see nothing but great views and amazing sunshine and summer breezes pouring in through wide sliders. The kitchen has been updated with stainless appliances and is convenient to the entire living room. Even the chef can enjoy the view while preparing the family�s meals. Situated on this floor is the master suite with semi-private access to the tiled hall bath. New �hardwood floor like� flooring has been installed along with a fresh coat of paint to brighten the second floor. Brand new heat pump installed spring of 2016.


text:
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  overflow:visible;
}
#id_vehicle_registration {
    width: 350px;
}

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text:
La intelligentsiaEste término debe ser siempre pronunciado con "g de gato" (símbolo IPA: g), ya que ese es el sonido que le corresponde a la letra rusa Г (ge o, en transliteración al español, gue). o, en transliteración al español, inteliguentsia (del latín intelligentia) es una clase social compuesta por personas involucradas en complejas actividades mentales y creativas orientadas al desarrollo y la diseminación de la cultura, incluyendo intelectuales y grupos sociales cercanos a ellos. El término ha sido tomado del ruso интеллигенция (transliterado como intelliguéntsiya), o bien del polaco inteligencja. Los dos, a su vez, derivaron de la palabra francesa intelligence. Al comienzo, el término se aplicó en el contexto de Polonia, Rusia y, más tarde, la Unión Soviética, y tuvo un significado más estrecho basado en la autodefinición de una cierta categoría de intelectuales.

Historia del concepto
La noción de una élite intelectual como un estrato social distinguido tiene orígenes lejanos en la historia. Por ejemplo, los reyes filósofos y los guardianes de la República de Platón, y los monjes de la Europa medieval, quienes ahora son vistos como custodios de la historia y la cultura.

El primer uso del término intelligentsia () parece haber ocurrido en el Imperio ruso en la primera mitad del . Por ejemplo, la palabra aparece casualmente en los diarios de Vasili Zhukovski, datados en 1836. En Polonia —o, más precisamente, en la Gran Polonia (entonces una parte de Prusia)—, el término fue popularizado en un sentido más cercano al presente por el filósofo polaco Karol Libelt, y su uso se extendió en la ciencia polaca luego de la publicación de su O miłości ojczyzny (Sobre el amor a la patria) en 1844. En esta obra, definía a la inteligencja como aquellos miembros educados de la población que asumen un rol de liderazgo en calidad de académicos, profesores, clérigos o ingenieros, y «que se guían por la razón de su superior iluminación». El término fue también popularizado por un escritor ruso, Piotr Boborykin, en la década de 1860. Boborykin se proclamó como «padrino» de la noción en 1904.

De aquí, el término se extendió a otros idiomas. En inglés, la palabra se aplica frecuentemente para describir la intelligentsia en los países de Europa Central y Europa del Este en los siglos  y . La distinción se basaba en la situación cultural y económica de los intelectuales en esos países, diferente a la que existía en Europa Occidental o en Norteamérica. Asimismo, la emergencia de sectores de elites intelectuales o personas con buena formación y cultura ha sido observada en otros países de Europa; por ejemplo, los intellectuels en Francia, o los Gebildete o la Bildungsbürgertum en Alemania. Sin embargo, en el Imperio ruso, este proceso tuvo características propias. Estas diferencias fueron causadas por distintos procesos históricos, cuya influencia está aún en disputa por los historiadores. La presencia de regímenes autocráticos de larga duración o un bajo nivel de educación general en estos países durante el  se cuentan entre estos factores. Esta situación pudo haber motivado a los intelectuales locales a elaborar un sistema de valores comunes y un sentido de empatía mutua.

Adicionalmente, la intelligentsia en Europa Central y del Este, dividida mayormente por cuestiones nacionales, desarrolló un sentido de responsabilidad por la propia nación, incluyendo la creencia de que el progreso de esta dependía del nivel cultural de la intelligentsia nacional. Esta confianza llevó con frecuencia a la intelligentsia de Europa del Este a ocupar el rol de una inexistente oposición política, y las posiciones tomadas por la intelligentsia han tenido consecuencias significativas en las revoluciones o movimientos de liberación nacional en Europa Central y del Este.

Véase también
 Intelectual

Referencias

Bibliografía
Boborykin, P.D. Russian Intelligentsia En: Pensamiento Ruso, 1904, # 12 (En ruso; Боборыкин П.Д. Русская интеллигенция// Русская мысль. 1904. №12;)
Zhukovsky V. A. From the Diaries of Years 1827-1840, In: Nuestra Herencia, Moscow, #32, 1994. (En ruso; Жуковский В.А. Из дневников 1827-1840 гг. // Наше наследие. М., 1994. №32.)
Este registro datado al 2 de febrero de 1836, afirma: "Через три часа после этого общего бедствия... осветился великолепный Энгельгардтов дом, и к нему потянулись кареты, все наполненные лучшим петербургским дворянством, тем, которые у нас представляют всю русскую европейскую интеллигенцию" ("Tres horas después de este desastre común... la magnífica casa de Engelhardt estaba con las luces encendidas y los carruajes comenzaron a arribar, llenos con la mejor nobleza (dvoryanstvo) de Petersburgo, aquellos que representan aquí la mejor intelliguentsia europea''") El uso casual, en un contexto no literario ni filosófico, sugiere que el término era de circulación común.
Li Yi. 2005. The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification. University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-3331-5

Enlaces externos

Artículo de Gabriel Zaid en La Insignia
ВѢХИ. Сборник статей о русской интеллигенции. Москва, 1909. (Landmarks. Artículos acerca de la intelliguentsia rusa, Moscú, 1909)

Clases sociales
Sociología de la cultura