Ivashka and Baba-Yaga
A evening pause: An entertaining animated cartoon from Soviet Russia, 1938. It subconsciously reveals much about Russia’s rough society of that time between the world wars. Even in the 1930s Russia was still largely an illiterate peasant culture, less than three generations since the freeing of the serfs and now ruled by Stalin and the communists with an iron hand.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
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I get the sense that the national character of the Russian people was dramatically changed by the killings of WW II and then Stalin. That is, entire genetic traits , personality types were eliminated.
Steve-
minor quibble– Lenin, Stalin, then WW-2.
When Victimhood Leads to Genocide
Prof. Jordan Peterson on Dekulakization
(excerpt from Maps of Meaning)
https://youtu.be/DeYRK16PIlA
7:10
Pretty tame by Soviet standards. I thought the kid would of told the local commissar about Baba Yaga’s counter- revolutionary activities. I can see Baba Yaga being arrested by the NKVD, her house burned down and she is beaten to sign the confession of her crimes against the state. Denounced for her bourgeois lifestyle and exploiting the proletariat (the blacksmith) during her court proceedings, she is sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in Siberia or shot.
Ivashka joins the Kosomol, fights in the “Great Patriotic War”, and later becomes a manager at a shoe factory since he never had shoes growing up.
At another level, this venerable Russian folktale might serve as a parable of our situation in the United States today. Baba-Yaga is, of course, a stand-in for Kamala Harris, the Crow is Sleepy Joe Biden, and Ivashka represents the good-hearted, if sometimes too trusting American electorate. (The obliging blacksmith would seem to be George Soros, lol.)
As the tale unfolds, Ivashka is lured by Baba-Kamal’s siren song of “free stuff,” and only his quick wits (as he foils the dim-witted Crow) and the intervention of the friendly geese (a nod to Donald Trump and his supporters?) save the day.
May we be so fortunate in November!