Happy October Revolution Day, you hug shaped Soviet Bears!
It's the anniversary of the October Revolution! I hope you're all having a great time today... now quit wasting this special day on Hexbear and go do something stereotypically Red.
SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them] - 1mon
It happened in early November? wtf I feel ripped off.
8
alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns] - 1mon
Calendar differences.
The date was in October by the Julian calendar used by the Orthodox churches, which was also the official civic calendar used by the Russian state at that time, before the West and the East all synchronized on the Gregorian calendar the Western world was already using and that we use today. Same reason the USSR then and most post Soviet states today celebrate the New Year later into January by the Gregorian calendar than the actual Gregorian calendar New Year.
I used to be a bit of a religious splits and schisms nerd before I was an outspoken communist, so it seemed completely sensible to me when I looked up the date, but yeah, if you don't know why the Orthodox liturgical calendar is different from the Catholic and High Church Protestant one, or even that it is, you might not realise that Eastern Europe didn't always use the Gregorian calendar and this created some confusion prior to and immediately following the revolution. Confusion that keeps enduring even now, because of the term "October Revolution".
10
starkillerfish [she/her] - 1mon
Same reason the USSR then and most post Soviet states today celebrate the New Year later into January by the Gregorian calendar than the actual Gregorian calendar New Year.
You probably mean Christmas. New years is celebrated on new year.
4
Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name] - 1mon
A Russian friend of mine just told me about her grandfather who recieved the Order of the October Revolution. Very cool. And she was impressed by how much of the history of the revolution I could recount in Russian, which wasn't much, but better than most Americans.
3
alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns] - 1mon
That's neat!
I'm ashamed to admit you definitely did better than I possibly could. Yeah... I oscillate between feeling ashamed about not knowing any Russian at all despite my Soviet sympathiser schtick, and being very frustrated with my fellow Western Bolshevik types for being... stuck in the Great Patriotic War, is one way to describe it. That whole "commies should all speak Russian, because the Warsaw Pact and the Comintern happened" thing. Which was definitely true in the 40s and 50s and still just as true in the 70s and early 80s, but... you could see the cracks in the Berlin Wall before '91, and now that the USSR is gone, a lot of these culturally rooted political paradigms really do not work anymore. But hey, I guess it sucks less than some other cultural and linguistic nationalism communists as a whole could have chosen to tie ourselves to. Certainly easier for native English speakers to learn than some of the languages used by current socialist states. Not that that means I'll actually end up learning it. I suck at languages. (Even though my mum swears the opposite. It's a long story.)
2
Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name] - 1mon
Yep, definitely a long story.
I'm lucky that I started learning Russian when I was really young (~5 years old). I should be able to speak like a native, but im absolutely terrible. At one point I didn't engage with it at all for almost 20 years, so that didn't help.
Like you, my mom also thinks I have an aptitude for languages (and music). She's wrong! However, she did make the right choice when she decided that a child descended from Russian jews (no matter how dumb they are) should know some Russian. It was a rare moment where she seems to have decided that keeping a connection to centuries of shtetl community was more important than a couple generations of Americanism. It occurs to me now that some of her motivation on this may have been because her father was dying and for her that was going to be her last tie to the world of Russian jewry (we've never been part of a synagogue comnunity).
Anyway, there's a lot to psychoanalyze about my mom. It's very hard to talk about any of this because from 2016 on she's been extremely hostile to anyone that brings forward any ideas that challenge a democratic party narrative about the United States. It makes you just like Trump. This includes getting mad if you challenge the idea that people from the Russian speaking world are inscrutable, violent orcs who's actions will never be understood and are definitely not reacting to threats from the US.
So, I'll wind this down before I really hit my flow. I learned Russian before I knew I was a wannabe Soviet man, but sometimes things just work out the way they're supposed to. There's so much more to say, but I love being able to talk a little bit with old Soviets when I have the chance.
I wish my wife would learn some Russian so we could do some role playing.
3
alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns] - 1mon
Yeah, I don't really have any stories of Soviet ties like that, but there are absolutely things that happened to me as a little kid that turned out to be very useful for me as a communist years down the line.
Like, my liberal family members don't say much of anything about me getting literally all my stuff that has colour options in red and gold for the past decade or more, because they don't see a communist decorating his space in Soviet national colours, they see a Pooh Bear fan decorating her everything in Pooh colours. (Which, to their credit, actually was the real reason, at least back when that tendency of mine began to appear.) None of these people think "commie wearing her politics" when I'm in a red hoodie, no one seems to really realise that my "feeling like shit" baggy hoodie is a Soviet flag red, they just think it's Pooh's shirt red. Admittedly, that defense is pretty flimsy to people who didn't know me as a child, but when my mum's standing right there swearing up and down it's true... it's a lot sturdier.
And if you tell me "no one's born a capitalist", I'll proudly tell you the story of the first time I was ever called a commie by a washed up old McCarthyist, I was five and it was my dad who made the accusation.
The funny thing is, my mum almost named me the Russian form of my name, not the Western form, but it was not that long after the Cold War and my dad scared her out of it, at least that's the story she told on the night my kid brother got the stories of both our given names out of her. (I'm not going to give out my actual given name online, but for a close enough, let's say she almost called me Kateryna instead of Katherine.)
So yeah. Sometimes things work out exactly how they should. Sometimes they don't. And as nice as it'd be to be even more of a case of "someone should really have guessed when I was six that I'd be a communist, the signs were all already there", even just the Pooh Bear thing working out how it did is neat and useful.
1
LadyCajAsca [she/her, comrade/them] - 1mon
It's November 8 here but.. I guess I'll do some revolutionary shitposting ☭☭☭‼️
2
FourteenEyes [he/him] - 1mon
That does it im downloading China Mievelle's October
2
alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns] - 1mon
I'm sure this would be hilarious if I knew the reference.
2
FourteenEyes [he/him] - 1mon
it's a book he wrote about the October Revolution and it's supposed to be pretty good
alexei_1917 in main
Happy October Revolution Day, you hug shaped Soviet Bears!
It's the anniversary of the October Revolution! I hope you're all having a great time today... now quit wasting this special day on Hexbear and go do something stereotypically Red.
It happened in early November? wtf I feel ripped off.
Calendar differences.
The date was in October by the Julian calendar used by the Orthodox churches, which was also the official civic calendar used by the Russian state at that time, before the West and the East all synchronized on the Gregorian calendar the Western world was already using and that we use today. Same reason the USSR then and most post Soviet states today celebrate the New Year later into January by the Gregorian calendar than the actual Gregorian calendar New Year.
I used to be a bit of a religious splits and schisms nerd before I was an outspoken communist, so it seemed completely sensible to me when I looked up the date, but yeah, if you don't know why the Orthodox liturgical calendar is different from the Catholic and High Church Protestant one, or even that it is, you might not realise that Eastern Europe didn't always use the Gregorian calendar and this created some confusion prior to and immediately following the revolution. Confusion that keeps enduring even now, because of the term "October Revolution".
You probably mean Christmas. New years is celebrated on new year.
A Russian friend of mine just told me about her grandfather who recieved the Order of the October Revolution. Very cool. And she was impressed by how much of the history of the revolution I could recount in Russian, which wasn't much, but better than most Americans.
That's neat!
I'm ashamed to admit you definitely did better than I possibly could. Yeah... I oscillate between feeling ashamed about not knowing any Russian at all despite my Soviet sympathiser schtick, and being very frustrated with my fellow Western Bolshevik types for being... stuck in the Great Patriotic War, is one way to describe it. That whole "commies should all speak Russian, because the Warsaw Pact and the Comintern happened" thing. Which was definitely true in the 40s and 50s and still just as true in the 70s and early 80s, but... you could see the cracks in the Berlin Wall before '91, and now that the USSR is gone, a lot of these culturally rooted political paradigms really do not work anymore. But hey, I guess it sucks less than some other cultural and linguistic nationalism communists as a whole could have chosen to tie ourselves to. Certainly easier for native English speakers to learn than some of the languages used by current socialist states. Not that that means I'll actually end up learning it. I suck at languages. (Even though my mum swears the opposite. It's a long story.)
Yep, definitely a long story.
I'm lucky that I started learning Russian when I was really young (~5 years old). I should be able to speak like a native, but im absolutely terrible. At one point I didn't engage with it at all for almost 20 years, so that didn't help.
Like you, my mom also thinks I have an aptitude for languages (and music). She's wrong! However, she did make the right choice when she decided that a child descended from Russian jews (no matter how dumb they are) should know some Russian. It was a rare moment where she seems to have decided that keeping a connection to centuries of shtetl community was more important than a couple generations of Americanism. It occurs to me now that some of her motivation on this may have been because her father was dying and for her that was going to be her last tie to the world of Russian jewry (we've never been part of a synagogue comnunity).
Anyway, there's a lot to psychoanalyze about my mom. It's very hard to talk about any of this because from 2016 on she's been extremely hostile to anyone that brings forward any ideas that challenge a democratic party narrative about the United States. It makes you just like Trump. This includes getting mad if you challenge the idea that people from the Russian speaking world are inscrutable, violent orcs who's actions will never be understood and are definitely not reacting to threats from the US.
So, I'll wind this down before I really hit my flow. I learned Russian before I knew I was a wannabe Soviet man, but sometimes things just work out the way they're supposed to. There's so much more to say, but I love being able to talk a little bit with old Soviets when I have the chance.
I wish my wife would learn some Russian so we could do some role playing.
Yeah, I don't really have any stories of Soviet ties like that, but there are absolutely things that happened to me as a little kid that turned out to be very useful for me as a communist years down the line.
Like, my liberal family members don't say much of anything about me getting literally all my stuff that has colour options in red and gold for the past decade or more, because they don't see a communist decorating his space in Soviet national colours, they see a Pooh Bear fan decorating her everything in Pooh colours. (Which, to their credit, actually was the real reason, at least back when that tendency of mine began to appear.) None of these people think "commie wearing her politics" when I'm in a red hoodie, no one seems to really realise that my "feeling like shit" baggy hoodie is a Soviet flag red, they just think it's Pooh's shirt red. Admittedly, that defense is pretty flimsy to people who didn't know me as a child, but when my mum's standing right there swearing up and down it's true... it's a lot sturdier.
And if you tell me "no one's born a capitalist", I'll proudly tell you the story of the first time I was ever called a commie by a washed up old McCarthyist, I was five and it was my dad who made the accusation.
The funny thing is, my mum almost named me the Russian form of my name, not the Western form, but it was not that long after the Cold War and my dad scared her out of it, at least that's the story she told on the night my kid brother got the stories of both our given names out of her. (I'm not going to give out my actual given name online, but for a close enough, let's say she almost called me Kateryna instead of Katherine.)
So yeah. Sometimes things work out exactly how they should. Sometimes they don't. And as nice as it'd be to be even more of a case of "someone should really have guessed when I was six that I'd be a communist, the signs were all already there", even just the Pooh Bear thing working out how it did is neat and useful.
It's November 8 here but.. I guess I'll do some revolutionary shitposting ☭☭☭‼️
That does it im downloading China Mievelle's October
I'm sure this would be hilarious if I knew the reference.
it's a book he wrote about the October Revolution and it's supposed to be pretty good
It's a great read.