Pavel Krivenko Rate My Professor

[Malcolm Lozada]

Oftenthe Russian language Wiki was more complete on Russian subjects, so I ran it through Google Translate instead of linking to the English language WIki page. You can use Google Translate to explore this Russian language website by clicking through links in the translation. A good method might be to use Google Translate for exploration then, once you have found an intriguing article, copy the Russian text into DeepL to get and even better translation into English or whichever target language you choose.

As far as China goes, it is in a different cultural zone from the West, and like everyone else, they interpret new ideas with reference to existing ones. The article by Prof Pang of Xiamen University that I translated goes into that. And many of the Chinese ideas about democracy and other ideas from the West were introduced to China through Chinese students in Japan. Though I find Chinese and Japanese culture to be very different ( i think hierarchy is even stronger in Japan than in China, xenophobia too), there was an important influence on early 20th century China.

Mao Zedong was a bit more gentle than Stalin, mostly putting them in prison, although his Red Guard henchmobs killed many of his real and imagined enemies. Russia had seventy years of a communist state before the USSR dissolved leaving black marketeers best equipped to revive capitalism, while PRC China had only thirty years of hard-line communism before Mao died and reform and opening began. This gave China and advantage in its transition to a market economy since many older Chinese entrepreneurs still survived and perhaps even more important, a large Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and elsewhere were ready to invest and perhaps even more important to provide entrepreneurial expertise and technology to the PRC.

The Soviet Union had central economic planning; China never implemented it as thoroughly, perhaps partly because of the chaos involved in killing off the landlords, collectivization, the Maoist eruptions of the Great Leap Forward and the killing famine that followed and then the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as Mao aimed to outdo to the Soviet Union by jumping straight to Communism, rather than making it a long-term goal as it later became.

When I worked in the U.S. Embassy in China in the late 1990s, a professor at Renmin University told me that during the Cultural Revolution, an essay by the PRC Ambassador to the United Kingdom circulated in secret (the professor had read it at the time) arguing that China must first pass through the stage of capitalism before it can become communist. Intriguing, but I have never been able to confirm that story.

And after another couple of months, in 1921, the country suddenly rebelled. The Kronstadt uprising broke out, the Tambov uprising flared more and more, strikes began in Moscow. The rebellious Kronstadt sailors sang ditties:

The tabloid-erotic press of Russia in its own way reflected the coming of the Bolsheviks to power: as the onset of an era of permissiveness. In a drawing in one of these publications in November 1917, an astonished housewife asks her cook, who is walking around the kitchen naked, in only an apron and a handkerchief:

In 1917 Vladimir Ilyich returned to Russia. After European looseness, the domestic beach (in the summer of that year) made a depressing impression on him: deserted, with lonely bathers, who, embarrassed by their half-dressedness, timidly hid behind the bushes.

The revolution generally simplified and made more free communication between the sexes. The boundaries of speech decency have expanded, and it has become possible to discuss previously unthinkable, taboo topics. Boys and girls began to be taught together in schools (which was not the case in Tsarist Russia).

Perhaps the most famous supporter of same-sex love in Russia in the 10s and 20s was the poet Mikhail Kuzmin (symbolist, then acmeist). He deliberately did not hide the nature of his intimate life, preached it in verse and prose, and in general behaved with unusual emancipation for that time. Kuzmin welcomed the February Revolution, and then the October Revolution (he even once called himself a Bolshevik). He dedicated poems to the 1917 revolution:

If you leaf through the Soviet press of 1918-1919, it is striking that one of the main topics for jokes and caricatures is writing (or rather, its lack). Characteristic note: It is reported that the famous artist B. I. Kustodzhiev, fascinated by one topic, cannot start work due to the lack of nature.

Sometimes Lenin, like many in those years, had to drink carrot tea at home. The color of this drink resembled strong brewed real tea, it even felt a faint sweet taste. Instead of sugar, saccharin was often added to tea.

With the introduction of the New Economic Policy, rich, refined dishes returned to everyday life. The transition from horse meat to more refined food was reflected in the joke: Nepman sells cheap hazel grouse cutlets. He is asked:

In a caricature of November 1917, a pompously dressed lady complains: If my Bolshevik cannot feed me, it means that there really is nowhere to get food in Russia. He would have got it, because he is capable of anything!

When the bridge across the Volga was being repaired in frosty weather, it took the permission of Lenin himself to give the workers alcohol. He became alarmed: he began to prove that alcohol does not heat, but cools, and therefore in the Swiss mountains, when climbing the peaks, it is completely forbidden to take alcoholic drinks with you as they contribute to freezing.

Uniforms did not give up just like that, without a fight. The American socialist John Reed cited the following story: A curious incident happened to Senator Sokolov, who, in the midst of the revolution, somehow appeared at a meeting of the Senate in a civilian suit. He was not allowed to take part in the meeting, because he was not wearing the prescribed livery of a servant of the king!

How harmful this bourgeois culture is. How contagious she is. I never thought that this gymnasium rocking technique could penetrate the masses of workers. Where did they get this intellectual idea from? ..

Well, how did Vladimir Ilyich himself feel about the Christmas tree holiday? Apparently, he did not see anything shameful in him. In January 1919, raiders attacked his car, just as he was on his way to such a holiday at the Forest School. (This case is described above.) Despite such a nuisance, Lenin nevertheless came to the Christmas tree and had fun there from the bottom of his heart. The fact that a couple of hours earlier he had stood under the muzzles of two revolvers aimed at his temples did not in the least darken his mood.

This was not the only, but only the most famous case when the head of the Soviet government was engaged in manual labor along with everyone else. So, in the autumn of 1920, he unloaded firewood on the Moscow River. More than once and with passion he was engaged in snow removal in the Kremlin.

Lenin himself took part in the demolition of one of the monuments. Malkov recalled the May Day 1918 subbotnik in the Kremlin: Vladimir Ilyich came out. He was cheerful, joking, laughing. When I approached, Ilyich greeted me cordially, congratulated me on the holiday, and then suddenly jokingly shook his finger.

The independent (close to the liberal opposition) magazine Vestnik Literature in 1919 was indignant that on the first anniversary of October, the streets of the capital were defiled with futurist posters depicting ugly, distorted bodies and green physiognomies of geometric people with dislocated legs, combined with some kind of military armor and kitchen and household items.

On May 1, 1920, Lenin visited an exhibition of monument projects that were supposed to replace the deposed figure of Alexander III near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Lenin asked, examining the sculptures:

Leaving, Altman asked Vladimir Ilyich to wet a rag in the evening. Vladimir Ilyich called Natasha and ordered to bring a kettle of cold water, while he himself, sitting at the table, went deep into his work. Natasha brought water. Vladimir Ilyich, without looking up from his work, said:

The students gave Lenin a look at their wall newspaper, and he deliberately slowly read the slogan from Mayakovsky: We, the pedlars of the new faith, set the iron tone for beauty. So that the frail natures do not defile the squares, we shy reinforced concrete into the sky. He jokingly protested:

Traditional theaters after October 1917 became one of the islands of noble culture that had sunk into oblivion. It is not surprising, therefore, that they were subjected to constant criticism in the press. Typical joke from the early 1920s:

Much greater opposition was caused in society by the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. According to the decree signed by Lenin, after January 31, 1918, it was not February 1, but the 14th. Russia, thus, caught up with Europe according to the calendar, from which it lagged behind in the 20th century by 13 days.

In the end, however, the state resigned itself to the fact that the church lives according to the old, Julian style. The sharp struggle with the church did not subside until the 40s, but it was already on other issues.

However, in August 1918, when the civil war broke out with might and main, the liberal newspapers in red Russia were nevertheless closed, and they migrated to white Russia. However, independent publications in the Soviet Republic also came out later, until the mid-1920s, and Lenin read them carefully.

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