1.
Telogreika
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Telogreika or vatnik is a Russian kind of warm cotton wool-padded jacket. It was also a part of winter uniform first issued by the Red Army during the German-Soviet War, telogreikas continued to be issued until the late 1960s. The basic cut the uniform followed was that of a quilted jacket, the trousers had a button fly and tied at the bottom of the legs. There were usually pockets on the hips of telogreika trousers and a pocket on the front of the trouser leg. Telogreika jackets buttoned up the front, and the jacket sleeves buttoned closed, early issue variants had high collars, though these were absent later on. Telogreika jackets usually had a pocket on the front of the jacket. The clothing was usually khaki in colour, although black uniforms were issued to crews and some grey variants can be seen. The jacket and trousers usually had a design with the quilting. The telogreika was particularly effective at keeping the wearer warm in the harsh Russian Winter, when worn with valenki and an ushanka a wearer can comfortably remain warm in sub-zero temperatures for long periods. This made it the perfect uniform not just for the Red Army, in contrast to the usual shortages in the Red Army, soldiers received regular issues of winter clothing, as their combat effectiveness could be hampered in cold conditions otherwise. The Wehrmacht also regularly made use of captured Red Army winter uniforms, often taking them from the deceased, the Telogreika faded from military issue in the early 1960s, being largely replaced by the return to the old woollen shinel greatcoat and the bushlat. In the early 1980s the introduction of the Afghanka field uniform marked the dawn of a new era in the Soviet Army, today, the Telogreika is still used in Russia and many Soviet Bloc countries by private citizens. In Russia it is popular amongst night watchmen and workers in the construction industry. Afghanka Ushanka Valenki Stalins War, Soviet Uniforms and Militaria 1941-45 by Laszlo Bekesi The Red Army of the Great Patriotic War, 1941-45 By Stephen J Zaloga
2.
Boycott Russian Films
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Boycott Russian Films is the Ukrainian civic campaign that supports the boycott of Russian films and television series. It is a part of a boycott campaign called Do not buy Russian goods. Started by the Ukrainian social movement Vidsich, the campaign arose as a reaction to the occupation, military actions and mercenaries by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in 2014. The goal of the activists is to significantly limit Russian content shown on Ukrainian television, in March,2014, with the restoration of the campaign Do not buy Russian goods. Civic activists together with some politicians reached out to the public for a boycott of Russian TV series and overall television. The first notable case of the boycott of the Russian cinema was announced on April 11,2014 when some movie theaters in Kyiv, Lviv, in late August,2014, activists of the Civil Movement Vidsich as a part of the campaign Do not buy Russian goods. Launch a campaign to boycott Russian films and TV series, the Internet exploded with official pages and people massively started distributing messages, pictures, etc. urging not to watch Russian films. On August 27,2014, activists struck Ukrainian TV channel ICTV, the demand of the protesters was to remove Russian TV series off the air. Young protesters demanded to establish a control over the content of Russian films. In addition, activists point out that the majority of the profits from the selling the rights to show movies goes to Russia, the protests also address the shooting of the Russian serials in Ukraine and so on. According to activists, the zombies at the protest portrayed ordinary viewers who have become victims of Russian propaganda, the National Council pledged to work on new legislation to combat Russian propaganda. On December 11,2014 activists picketed the head office of TV channel Inter in Kyiv, during the action Do not kill our defenders with Russian propaganda. Young people glued the main entrance with photographs of Ukrainian dead soldiers in the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, according to activists, Inter ranked 2nd among channels showing content of Russian origin. Protesters emphasised that Russian films and serials glorifying Russian security forces at the time of war is unacceptable, young people announced that an amount of Russian content on Ukrainian TV is increasing. Activists gave petitions and propositions to administration representatives, addressed to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, during it bloody zombies with sham machine guns and ribbons of Saint George demanded retrieval of Russian films in which Mikhail Porechenkov and Ivan Okhlobystin acted. From December 29,2014 activists picketed a screening of the Russian films in Kyivs movie theaters, activists combined the pickets with another performance of Russian goods kills. Flash mobs, which made for Do not buy Russian goods. Pickets were to shows the film Fir-trees 1914 on December 29 and this event immediately caused a burst of resentment in Ukrainian blogosphere and social network
3.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
4.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
5.
Belarusian language
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Belarusian is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is spoken abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and small parts in far-eastern Poland. Following independence, it became known as Belarusian. Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group, to some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage is known as Ruthenian, in turn descended from Old East Slavic, at the 1999 Belarus Census, the Belarusian language was declared as a language spoken at home by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens. About 6,984,000 of Belarusians declared it their mother tongue, other sources put the population of the language as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home,29. 4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52. 5% can only read and speak it. Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, especially Ukrainian, Belarusian phonology is distinct in a number of ways, the phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes,6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants, depending on how they are counted. When the nine geminate consonants are excluded as mere variations, there are 39 consonants, the number 48 includes all consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may be semantically distinct in the modern Belarusian language. The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language, the modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. Before that, Belarusian had also written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet, the Belarusian Arabic alphabet. The Glagolitic script had been used, sporadically, until the 11th or 12th century, there are several systems of romanizing written Belarusian text in existence, see Romanization of Belarusian. Standardized Belarusian grammar in its form was adopted in 1959. It was developed from the form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich. Historically, there had existed several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk-Vilnius region. Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall is similar to Russian grammar. The most significant instance of this is in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular akannye, the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, Belarusian always spells this merged sound as ⟨a⟩, whereas Russian uses either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩, according to what the underlying phoneme is. This can significantly complicate the task of foreign speakers in learning these paradigms, besides the literary norm, there exist two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there exist the transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group, the North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by the soft sounding R and strong akanye, and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the hard sounding R and moderate akanye
6.
Latvian language
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Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It was previously known in English as Lettish which remains the standard today in various forms in most other Germanic languages, there are about 1.3 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether,2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, of those,1.16 million or 56% use it as their primary language at home. The use of the Latvian language in areas of social life in Latvia is increasing. Latvian is a Baltic language and is most closely related to Lithuanian, in addition there is some disagreement whether Latgalian and New Curonian, which are mutually intelligible with Latvian, should be considered varieties or separate languages. Latvian first appeared in Western print in the century with the reproduction of the Lords Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münsters Cosmographia Universalis. Latvian belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family and it is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status. The Baltic languages are of particular interest to linguists because they retain many archaic features believed to have present in the early stages of the Proto-Indo-European language. There is some evidence to suggest the existence of a Balto-Slavic language group after the break-up of Proto-Indo-European, there exist a number of Baltic words that are similar to Sanskrit or Latin and which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. Latvian, Lithuanian, Armenian, Albanian, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are grouped as satem languages, while the possession of many archaic features is undeniable, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European language is not clear. According to some speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from Western Baltic between 400 and 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800, with a period of being one language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century and this process of consolidation started in the 13th century after the Livonian Crusade and forced christianization. These tribes came under Livonian rule thus forming a political, economic. The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a made by Nikolaus Ramm. Until the 19th century, the Latvian language was influenced by the German language. In the middle of the 19th century the First Latvian National Awakening was started, led by “Young Latvians” who popularized the use of Latvian language, participants to this movement laid the foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized the Latvianization of loan words. However, in the 1880s, when Czar Alexander III came into power, during this period, some Latvian scholars even suggested adopting Cyrillic for use in Latvian
7.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
8.
Internet meme
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An Internet meme is an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet. Some examples include posting a photo of people lying down in public places, a meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. An Internet meme may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, website and it may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email. They may relate to various existing Internet cultures or subcultures, often created or spread on various websites, or by Usenet boards, fads and sensations tend to grow rapidly on the Internet, because the instant communication facilitates word-of-mouth transmission. The concept of the Internet meme was first proposed by Mike Godwin in the June 1993 issue of Wired, dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a hijacking of the original idea, the very idea of a meme having mutated and evolved in this new direction. Further, Internet memes carry an additional property that ordinary memes do not—Internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate that renders them traceable and analyzable, Internet memes are a subset that Susan Blackmore called temes—memes which live in technological artifacts instead of the human mind. Image macros are often confused with internet memes and are often miscited as such, however, there is a key distinction between the two. Primarily this distinction lies within the subjects recognizability in internet pop-culture, in the early days of the Internet, such content was primarily spread via email or Usenet discussion communities. Messageboards and newsgroups were also popular because they allowed a simple method for people to information or memes with a diverse population of internet users in a short period. They encourage communication between people, and thus between meme sets, that do not normally come in contact, furthermore, they actively promote meme-sharing within the messageboard or newsgroup population by asking for feedback, comments, opinions, etc. This format is what gave rise to internet memes, like the Hampster Dance. Another factor in the increased meme transmission observed over the internet is its interactive nature, many phenomena are also spread via web search engines, internet forums, social networking services, social news sites, and video hosting services. Much of the Internets ability to spread information is assisted from results found through search engines, an Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations, parody, or by incorporating news accounts about itself. Internet memes can evolve and spread rapidly, sometimes reaching worldwide popularity within a few days. Internet memes usually are formed from some social interaction, pop culture reference and their rapid growth and impact has caught the attention of both researchers and industry. Academically, researchers model how they evolve and predict which memes will survive, commercially, they are used in viral marketing where they are an inexpensive form of mass advertising. One empirical approach studied meme characteristics and behavior independently from the networks in which they propagated, theoretical studies on media psychology and communication have aimed to characterise and analyse the concept and representations in order to make it accessible for the academic research
