“Bukvar” – Learn the Russian alphabet like a 7-year-old native!

The question of learning the Russian alphabet – or Azbuka, as it’s called in Russian – is one that occasionally pops up.

At the first glance, it may appear hard – 33 letters, half of which are unfamiliar or have a different reading from Latin. But that’s only at the first glance. The first-graders in Russia can do it, and so can you! 😁

Enter “Bukvar” – the letter learning book for the afore-mentioned first-graders. Its approach is to present letters not in the alphabetical order, but rather in such a way that new letters can be combined with the ones already learned to build more and more complex words and sentences. That way the learner builds associations between the shapes of the letters and the sounds they make in the words.

A foreign student can draw on most of this methodology. One part of the learning process that will require a work-around is the expected native-speaker fore-knowledge of how certain words sound.

After a very short introduction on the linguistic notation used in the book, one new letter is presented per day, with the explanations of the reading and of the example images used in Bukvar – this will be a great opportunity to learn new words while connecting the new letters to a context.

Should any questions to the materials arise, the readers are welcome to ask them in the chat of our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”!

This image covers the symbology. It’s something you can come back to as a reference throughout the book.

Another aspect of learning new letter is writing. Though few of us actually write using a pen nowadays, when learning new letters, writing makes for a good additional venue of memorisation – you start associating hand movements and strokes with the shapes of the letters. Here are two writing templates used by schoolchildren in conjunction with Bukvar’. I managed to find the versions that I myself used in the distant 1980s 😁

Template 1Template 2 (the 1985 edition, originally found here)

You can skip over the first 4 pages (they tackle hand coordination and fine motion of writing) and start on page 5, practising the letters as they come.

Another letter recognition aid that I created for this course is the complete alphabet, where each letter is shown using several different typefaces, some closer to the printed version of the letter, and some – to the handwritten one. The images from this aid will be given as we learn each new letter, but you can download the whole set for future reference.

Don’t try to take it in all at once, but rather take one letter per day, and play with it.

And now, imagine, that you have just come to your first day at school – on the 1st of September – and are getting into the learning mood by leafing through the first pages of Bukvar, thinking how wonderful it will be to when you can read all the words…

To help you get into the mood, here are two postcards – from 1956 and 1959 – greeting you on the 1st of September!




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Ukrainian children – zombified, brainwashed and trained by “Azov” terrorists to become children-soldiers

I have known for some time that the Ukrainian “education” system took a sharp turn to the worse in the 2000-s, when the school books were written on the grants from Soros and the like, but I was not aware how much worse it became after the USNATO-backed Nazi coup d’etat of 2014, though I should have guessed.

I wrote earlier about children displaced to the West, and often-times disparaging without a trace. But the brainwashing that the Ukrainian children were subjected to over the course of the last 8+ years is equally disturbing.

Below, there are two articles. One is a complete repost (with locally-hosted images) of an article from Sputnik News, seeing as the West is blocking the truth from reaching the people. The second article is a translation of how the ukro-Nazi “Azov” battalion was creating the children-soldiers, ISIS-style.


Zombified Nation: How Young Ukrainians Were TAUGHT to Hate Russians

The psychological warfare front in Ukraine was opened decades ago, but the distortion of history became a key strategy after the 2014 Maidan coup. Western consultants distributed budgets in a diversified manner. Information strategies directed at children became a key focus of their work, regardless of the harm caused to children’s psyche.

‘Invincilble Ants’ by Larisa Nitsoy is a national bestseller – a brightly coloured book with good printwork and printed on quality paper telling the story of an ‘invincible ant’. The book is meant for children ages five and up.


Cover of ‘Invincible Ants’ – a book by children’s writer Larisa Nitsoy. © Photo

The book is about an ant community that lived, worked, and knew no sorrow before getting attacked by a neighbouring insect colony who had beforehand sworn their fraternal affection. The neighbours attacked and destroyed the anthill and ruined their happy life. However, in the end the good ants unite, defeat the invaders, and drive them from their land.


Excerpt from ‘Invisible Ants’ by Larisa Nitsoy. © Photo

“Grandfather, let’s take away the weapons from the ants. Why should children learn about such things? We are a peaceful people. Why should they shoot?”
“When I was young”, the old ant said, “we were attacked by enemies”.
“What enemies grandfather? When was this?”
“Ordinary enemies! Ant lions. They were our neighbours, and always looked upon us with envy, and eventually got up and attacked us.”
– Excerpt From Larisa Nitsoy’s ‘Invisible Ants’

The little ants are taught to shoot, with the main character – a tiny tot ant, always carrying a machine gun with him. Because the ‘enemies’ are always nearby.

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Uncertain fate of the Ukrainian children evacuated to the West

They say that the first victim of war is truth. That’s not true. The first victim are the most defenceless – the children.

The children, who lose their parents; the children, who lose homes; the children, who lose lives (a testimony to that is the Alley of Angels in Donetsk); the children, who are taken alone abroad; the children, who are sold into adopted families; the children, who are sold as sex slaves; the children, who are killed for donor organs…

Below is a translation of the second part of the article The Ukrainian Mafia Has Occupied Europe, published on the 5th of April 2022:


One can hear more and more often stories about the abduction of Ukrainian refugees right on the Ukrainian-Polish border, as reported by the Reuters news agency. Polish police are distributing leaflets warning about human traffickers who have become more active amid the crisis.

Polish volunteers report that rumours about some men who kidnap children for sale to criminal gangs, and of women who are forced into slavery and prostitution, have been heard for a long time and suspicious people are periodically noticed near the border.

They say that once the Polish military caught two men in a van, in which there were a lot of women. It is alleged that the military took the women out, and the men were handed over to the Polish police. However, those were bribed and the criminals left without charges. Poland has not yet commented on this episode, as well as other rumours about human trafficking.

According to the press secretary of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Shabia Mantu, the organization is “seriously concerned” about the reports and is helping governments to strengthen preventive measures. These include the distribution of those leaflets and some encouragement to countries to create verification systems or procedures for those who offer support to refugees.

Increasingly, there are reports of the abduction of Ukrainian children both on the borders with European countries and on the territory of Ukraine itself.

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“Stolen Sun” children’s rhyme by Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky as a moral code of conduct

I was leafing the other day through the children’s books from my childhood. Many of those books are actually from my mother’s childhood, so two generations grew up on them.

It is no secret that a person’s moral compass is calibrated and adjusted during one’s childhood, and depending on which books the parents read to their offspring (or don’t read at all), so will the person become in his grown-up life. I was lucky to have grown up on Russian fairy tales and the children’s rhymes and short stories of the Soviet authors. One such rhyme-book drew my attention yesterday, unconsciously, for no apparent reason.

Rereading the words, parts of the rhyme still sitting in my memory from when I learned it by heart in my childhood, I understood why. This is a poem by Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky – “Stolen Sun”. The Russian text can be read and listened to at the Chukovsky Family site, and I will present an un-rhymed translation of the verses at the bottom of this post. But why did it draw my attention?

It presents a clear concept of what to do in a dire situation – big or small, and it sets some premises for the child to learn to live by:

  1. realise that there is trouble
  2. get your act together
  3. try to negotiate with the wrongdoer
  4. and only if diplomacy fails, resort to force

And this is exactly what we see playing out on the grand geopolitical scale. Since 2007 Russia went though points 1 to 3 and is now resorting to the undesired, but unavoidable point 4.

Here are the photos of my mother’s book from 1958 with English translations below the corresponding pages. You can click on the images for the full-size versions.



The Sun wandered across the sky
And ran behind a cloud,
A hare peeked out of the window,
It was all dark to him.

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The Reason for the Destruction of the Family Values in the West

The following translation of an article, published in “Argumenty i Fakty” #42 on the 16th of October 2019, probably gives the best explanation for the underlying reasons for the systematic destruction of the family values in the Western countries. This is also, so far, the best explanation that I’ve seen for the seemingly senseless abductions of normal kids from normal families by the assorted Western CPS “childprotection” services, like the case of the Lisovs, which luckily had a happy outcome.

The Time of Transgenders. Why is Europe demolishing the traditional family?

Mattel has started selling “gender-neutral” Barbie dolls, which the child itself can transform into a boy or a girl at will.

The new toy has no secondary sexual characteristics (breasts) and the usual shape of the figure (for example, the female waist). Barbie-transformer has already been called “a symbol of the LGBT community” and “a blow to childhood.” Experts on the family argue that in this way it is planned to finally undermine the psyche the new generations. Igor Beloborodov, a demographer, sociologist, Executive Director of the Dniester-Prut information and analytical center, a member of the working group on improving legislation in the social sphere at the state Duma, explained to “AiF” why it is necessary for ideologists of gender equality.

The king fell in love with the king

Vladimir Kozhemyakin, “AiF”: Igor Ivanovich, why dos Europe, despite the obvious decline of the indigenous population, deliberately destroy the traditional family? It seems unnatural to a normal person.

Igor Beloborodov: this is a matter of political lobbying. Many politicians at the helm of the European Union are childless, without a family. They are not interested in all our problems – the decline of the population, the crisis, the decline of the family. Their standard answer to these fears is that the family is dying, and for childbirth there is surrogacy. Moreover, the family for them is a red rag, the enemy number one, because they see in it, as in a mirror, their own perversion. Therefore, they will continue to welcome juvenile justice (CPS), which takes children from normal parents and gives them to homosexuals, to promote sexual education starting from kindergarten. And in the future we will see not only a gender-neutral Barbie, but also a change in the fairy tales, where a king falls in love not with a beautiful mystery girl, but… with another king.

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Remembering the Slain Children of Donbass – #101LIFE

In my previous post I pointed my readers to a documentary about commander Givi. He was a soldier – just like hundreds of other Russian soldiers of Donbass – giving his life defending the land of his father from a Ukro-nazi invasion.

The other tragic side of this war, are all the lives of the people of Donbass lost to the Ukro-nazi artillery shellings, the lives of civilians – women and children, elderly…

I encourage everyone to go to 101 Life – referring to 101 child killed so far, to learn about the victims of the war, and to sign a petition for the Western powers to stop the madness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ocU_OBBxH4

Spread the word!

Below are several outstanding songs by Artem Grishanov…

When the enemy is at the gates… At 4:30 onwards, you can see what those brave souls are defending, can you say that that girl, reading a poem with tears in her eyes is the “terrorist” that Poroshenko tries to show the people of Donbass to be?

Here are the “toys” that Poroshenko sends to the children of Donbass – Grad shells and mines… And the children, asking for peace #ИгрушкиДляПорошенко


This is how it started…

Another song, which shows that tragedy of the anger–riddled, brainwashed children of Ukraine. While in Donbass the people wish for peace, for everyone, in Ukraine they talk war. Also, not that while in Ukraine the Ukro-Nazis mistreat the Novorossian flag, in Donbass Zaharchenko carefully folds the Ukrainian flag of a defeated battalion.

Child Kidnapping by the Norwegian state
New development

Following the criminal act by the Norwegian state, highlighted in my previous post, here are some new developments:

http://sledcom.ru/actual/420508/

Investigation Committee started preliminary examination of the facts of the removal of children from Russian families in Norway

On the facts of the removal of children from families in Norway, Russian Main Investigation Department of Russian Federation initiated investigation verification. Today, the media became aware of the withdrawal by child protection services in Norway of a six-year girl from a Russian family, only shortly after when from the Russians of Pskov region, living in Norway, was seized five year boy. In each case, children under false pretenses were taken from their parents and placed in foster care.

As part of the preliminary examination it will be established circumstances of gross violations of the rights of Russian children under manifestly illegal acts by transferring them into foster care, and legal assessment of actions of officials, which resulted in a substantial violation of the rights and legitimate interests of Russian citizens. If criminal signs will be found in the actions committed against Russian children, Russian Investigative Committee will start criminal investigation based on the audit .

It should be noted that the penal laws of the Russian Federation gives us the right to prosecute, including foreign nationals, if they committed a crime against the citizens of the Russian Federation, regardless of where it occurs.

Particular attention SK Russia pays investigate crimes against minors and citizens of the Russian Federation intends all possible legal means, and promote the restoration and protection of the rights of children.

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