We marked the 100th anniversary of Gerald Durrell with many publications and photographs at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, staring from this post. Let us also celebrate it here at Beorn’s Beehive!
100 Year Anniversary of Gerald Durrell
A great British naturalist, writer and one of the pioneers in animal conservation, Gerald Durrell, was born on January 7, 1924.
From a very young age he developed a fascination with and a love for the animal kingdom. This love and humility of our place in this world shone in his books. This love lead to the search for ways to save the animals that are on the brink of extinction, often-times because of human ignorance and activities. Durrell envisioned zoos not as places for the amusement for the visitors, but as tiny safehavens for the endangered species, where they could be bread and re-introduced back into the wild. This was a revolutionary vision at the time when he, against all odds, managed to establish such a zoo on the island of Jersey.
And the books that Gerald Durrell has written throughout his life shine with that boyish fascination and enthralling narrative. They inspire both children and grown-ups to see the world around them differently.
Durrell’s book were translated to Russian and were readily available in the libraries in the USSR, and many a kid, including yours truly, immersed themselves in every book by Durrell that they could get their hands on, travelling with him, laughing at his witty humour and pondering his insights!
In 1984 -1985, Gerald Durrell visited the USSR to film the series “Durrell in Russia”. In fact, his film crew was the first Western film crew to be allowed to film in the USSR, and to travel across the whole Union — such was the respect and trust extended to this remarkable man.
🦧 The legacy of Gerald Durrell’s work lives on, in the Jersey Zoo (https://www.durrell.org/), in many education and species reintroduction projects across the world. And thanks to support and donations from people with kind hearts, who do not remain indifferent, like Gerald Durrell himself.
The memorial picture reads: “They are afraid of his memory, even after death. Because for them, The Truth is like a aspen stake!”
Oles Buzina was the real Ukrainian patriot, seeing his country developing along its own unique path, but not as a ramming tool against Russia, not as “Ukraine Is Not Russia”, in Kuchma’s words, but as something special in its own way. He loved Ukraine, he loved his Fatherland.
That did not agree with the ultra-violent neo-Nazi views of those whom the USA installed in power in the Ukraine.
Oles Buzina was killed 9 years ago, on the 16th of April 2015 in Kiev with four shots in the back. The perpetrators were known, coming from OUN. The perpetrators were arrested, and then released. No one was sentenced for his murder.
In 2014, after Ukraine started the war on its own people in Donbass, Oles Buzina wrote this verse:
Cry, Ukraine, cry!
You are your own traitor and executioner!
With your very own hand,
You’ve crushed your reason and peace!
You’re killing your best sons!
…Up in arms against the “evil Muscovites”!
And biting, like a snake, your own tail,
You created in your borders HOLOCAUST!
With whom will you stay afterwards,
Having destroyed it all, cast over which board?
Maybe you’ll rebuild your home?!
But you won’t resurrect those who died in it.
The words of a prophet, that ring even stronger these days.
🔥🔥🔥
Oles Buzina
13.07.1969 – 16.04.2015
A memorial plaque on the house where Oles Buzina lived.
“The well-known historian, writer, journalist and Kievan resident. He died for truth.”
The following poem was written by Oles Buzina about a month before he was murdered.
I don’t like a lethal outcome,
I don’t like war, war is shit.
I will not understand the silent people who
who’s put on the yoke without a word.
On the 25th of October 2019, the Norwegian state TV channel NRK 2 aired a 3 hour 20 minute long TV marathon, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of liberation of Finnmark, Northern Norway, by the Soviet troops. The documentary went under the title “Saved by the Russians”.
It featured a wide range of materials – interviews with the surviving witnesses, official ceremonies, both Norwegian and Russian documentaries, the efforts to locate the unburied remains of the fallen Soviet soldiers, interviews with the politicians and historians, a cultural part, where we could even see the choir of the Russian Northern Fleet sailors performing the Norwegian anthem.
Here are the chapter titles to give an idea of the scope of the documentary: Russians are coming; The King is giving his thanks; Russian liberation; The last days of the war; The battle of Neiden; Mothers and children in a war; War-zone Murmansk; Russian captives; The partisan Trygve Eriksen; The history of the partisans; The choir of the Northern Fleet; Forced evacuation on the North; The liberation anniversary in Kirkenes; The Prime Minister is giving a commentary; The battles on the Litsa front; The big losses of the Litsa dale; Dead soldiers in Litsa dale; The year under Russian governorship; Nidviser speaks about the local population; The children of war; The Swedish children; Child-soldier Alf Rafaelsen; Still finding the remains from the war; The culture of memory; The cooperation across borders; The choir of the Northern Fleet.
At a time when the rest of Europe was descending into a historical amnesia when it came to the events of World War II, with the history being actively re-written, this Norwegian program was a bastion of steadfast remembrance of history.
Norway will never forget the Soviet army’s heroic efforts.
The newspaper published a series of Telegram posts and articles, commemorating that turn to the worse in Russian history. Below, I will translate three materials from Telegram, finishing with a longer article by Doctor of Political Sciences Sergej Obuhov, who asks several highly-relevant questions about those times and how the events echo in today’s Russia.
All the images can be clicked on for higher resolution.
Today, after exactly 30 years, our editorial office publishes the historical Moscow edition of the newspaper “Pravda”, published on the 1st of October 1993 under the general headline “Politics is over. The dictatorship has begun”. It truly became a barricade leaflet, a “battle leaflet” that contained both a chronicle of what was happening, an analysis of the situation, and the thoughts and experiences of the participants in the events. Even now one can see in it the intensity of those events, the nerve of that time of troubles. For the edification of future generations.
In just two days there will be a bloody suppression of the popular uprising in the worst traditions of Pinochet, and “Pravda” became banned for a long time.
Here’s what the deputy editor-in-chief of Pravda, Viktor Linnik, wrote: “…It is absolutely not necessary to admire Hasbulatov and Rutskoy in order to be outraged by Yeltsin’s utterly cynical actions. Although it is precisely today that both Rutskoy, Hasbulatov, and every defender of the “White House” deserve the gratitude of the Russians for daring to throw the gauntlet in the face of tyranny.
In Russia, June 22 is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. On this day, in 1941, the Great Patriotic War, which became the bloodiest and most destructive in the history of the country, began.
The Great Patriotic War had affected every family. More than 27 million people perished. Owing to the heroism of our soldiers and officers, the enemy was defeated, but Victory came at a high price.
Today, we pay tribute to the memory of all those who went through incredible hardship, those who died, but never gave up for a peaceful future for their descendants. We, the descendants, are full of deepest respect and gratitude for their sacrifice.
The declassified data below were presented at the State Duma hearing on the 14th of February 2017. Archived source is here.
By the beginning of the war, in June 1941, 196.7 million people lived on the territory of the USSR. According to declassified data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the losses of the Soviet Union in World War II amount to 41 million 979 thousand, and not 27 million, as previously thought. The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the factors of war – more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians.
The total demographic losses of the USSR as a result of the war amounted to 27 million people. Military losses were calculated at 11.4 million, including the war with Japan. From this number, it is necessary to subtract 1.8 million who returned from captivity and 0.9 million called up on the territory liberated from the occupation and sent to the troops from among the military personnel who were previously surrounded or missing.
THE POLITICS
The 22nd of June 1941.
Leaflet No. 2:
The German-Russian War
In a proclamation signed by Reich Chancellor Hitler, the Germans march on Russia on a front of 2400 km., from Finland to the Black Sea.
To the north, German troops are advancing from Norway along with Finnish divisions, from the Carpathians German and Romanian forces.
Hitler declared that Bolshevism stood in mortal enmity with National Socialism. Russia had been threatening Germany for a long time and eventually there were 160 Russian divisions positioned on Germany’s eastern border. The Soviets had thus broken the Treaty of Friendship. The imminent struggle revolved around the civilized world.
Mines have been laid in the Arctic Ocean and in the Baltic Sea, among other places between Bornholm and Sweden and between Bornholm and the German Coast.
Read THE POLITICS tomorrow
– Copenhagen
80 years ago, in the summer of 1943, the underground Communist Party of Denmark illegally published the book “2 Years” with newspaper clippings from the major German-controlled Copenhagen newspapers. The book is 70 pages long and is a rare historical document of the occupation-era official press coverage of the first 2 years of the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the outcome of which became decisive for the future of mankind.
To honour the Resistance fighters and strengthen the memory of the great Victory of the USSR and the Red Army over fascism, we are now launching a digital reissue of “2 Years”!
The book is photographed and can be studied page by page and read in graphically adapted versions in Russian and English, respectively, as well as in a linguistically edited version in modern Danish. An extensive historical notebook has been added as well as text-to-speech descriptions for the blind and visually impaired of the book’s many fine colour illustrations in silkscreen by artist and resistance fighter Viggo Rohde, with sharp political caricatures of the Nazi Menagerie and the course of the war.
We see our collective memory as an important weapon against the advanced means and methods of modern war propaganda to which we are daily exposed, and, that Dr. Goebbels could not even dream of.
I wanted to make a simple and poignant commemoration of the 9th of May celebration in these difficult times, when Russia once again is fighting against Nazism – and not just in the Southern Russian lands, currently known as Ukraine (Ukraine is just a battlefield, where, after 8 years of genocide of the Russian population, it was said, “enough is enough”), but also on the wider, so far, diplomatic front against the resurgence of the Nazism in the whole West. When the West is cancelling and banning the commemoration of the Victory Day – both in the birthplace of the 20th century Nazism – Austria, and in the hotbeds of Nazi SS punisher battalions, like Latvia.
Then I came across the post by the VGTRK journalist Andrei Medvedev. Facebook twice blocked his account for this cry of the sould, which is a badge of honour in itself! Incidentally, Andrei Medvedev produced the investigative documentary, which I translated and now re-uploaded: The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrei Medvedev
“If I had to speak in the Bundestag like the boy Kolya, then I would probably say these words:
– Dear deputies. Today I saw a miracle. And this miracle is called Germany. I walked to you and looked at the beautiful Berlin streets, at the people, at the wonderful architectural monuments, and now I’m standing here and looking at you. And I understand that all this is a miracle. That you were all born and live in Germany. Why do I think so? Because considering what your soldiers did in our occupied territories, the Red Army soldiers had the full moral right to destroy the entire German people. To leave in place of Germany a scorched field, ruins and only textbook paragraphs would remind that there was once such a country. You probably don’t remember all the details of the occupation, but it’s not necessary. I’m just going to remind you of what the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers did to Soviet children.
They were shot. Often in front of parents. Or vice versa, first they shot at mom and dad, and then at the children. Your soldiers raped children. Children were burned alive. They were sent to concentration camps. Where their blood was taken from them to make serum for your soldiers. Children were starved. Children were eaten to death by your sheepdogs. Children were used as targets. Children were brutally tortured just for fun.
Or here are two examples. The Wehrmacht officer was prevented from sleeping by a baby, he took him by the leg and smashed his head against the corner of the stove. Your pilots at the Lychkovo station bombed the train on which we tried to take the children to the rear, and then your aces chased the frightened kids, shooting them in a bare field. Two thousand children were killed.
Just for what you did with children, I repeat, the Red Army could destroy Germany completely with its inhabitants. It had a full moral right. But it didn’t.
Do I regret it? Of course not. I bow to the steely will of my ancestors, who found some incredible strength in themselves so as not to become the same brutes as the soldiers of the Wehrmacht.
On the buckles of German soldiers it was written “God is with us.” But they were a product of hell and brought hell to our land. The soldiers of the Red Army were Komsomol members and Communists, but the Soviet people turned out to be much bigger and more cordial than the inhabitants of enlightened religious Europe. And they did not take revenge. They were able to understand that hell cannot be defeated by hell.
You should not ask us for forgiveness, because you personally are not to blame for anything. You cannot be responsible for your grandfathers and great-grandfathers. But I will be honest – for me the Germans are forever an utterly alien people. It’s not because you’re personally bad. It’s the pain of the children burned by the Wehrmacht that screams in me. And you will have to accept that at least my generation – for whom the memory of the war is in my grandfather’s awards, his scars, his front-line friends – will perceive you this way.
What will happen then, I do not know. Perhaps mankurts will come after us who will forget everything. And we have done a lot for this, we have foiled a lot ourselves, but I hope that all is not lost for Russia yet.
Of course we need to cooperate. Russians and Germans. We need to solve problems together. Fight ISIS and build gas pipelines. But you will have to accept one fact: WE WILL NEVER REPENT for our Great War. And even more so for the Victory. And even more so in front of you. Anyway, I repeat, my generation. Because back then we saved not only ourselves. We saved you from yourself. And I don’t even know what’s more important.”
In the pencil drawing on the right, the shadow of the old woman standing her ground is the iconic “Motherland Calling” poster of The Great Patriotic War. Here is that drawing in a greater resolution:
UPDATE: the minute granny has become a powerful living legend. Here is another, artistic, rendition of her image:
UPDATE 2: In Reutov, near Moscow, huge graffiti was created with a Ukrainian grandmother, who was mocked by the radicals of Ukraine because of the flag of the USSR. The author is reportedly a local artist. Earlier, images with the old woman appeared in the Murmansk and Belgorod regions. View the video of the painting process.
UPDATE 3: A video with comments from the foreign viewers embedded towards the end, to the “Sacred War”, the anthem of the fight against Nazism during the Great Patriotic War. It was great that the concern for her safety was raised at the UN level.
The video below made the headlines. It is quite heart-wrenching to watch as the Ukrainian soldiers are making a mockery of the elderly Ukrainian pair. I am writing a transcript below the video, and if it gets removed from YouTube, I’ll re-upload it to Odysee.
UPDATE 2024: The video at the address https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5y_CrCAcoc did get deleted by YouTube in their customary zeal to promote freedom of speech, so here it is on by Odysee and Rumble!
On the 22nd of June,
at 4am sharp,
Kiev was bombed and we were informed,
That the War had begun.
The War started at dawn
so that more people were killed.
Parents slept, their children were sleeping
when on Kiev bombs fell.
Birds are not singing here,
Trees do not grow in these parts.
Only we, shoulder to shoulder,
Are sinking into the Earth.
The planet is burning and spinning,
Smoke is above Motherland.
And so we only need one Victory!
One for everyone, and we’ll pay any price.
One for everyone, and we’ll pay any price.
The following article by a Ukrainian political analyst and historian in exile Rostislav Ischenko provides a much-needed context for both the current proliferation of Nazism in Ukraine, and the Banderite phenomenon of WWII.
The Great Patriotic War in Ukraine
by Rostislav Ischenko, published 09.05.2020 on the portal Ukraina.ru and at the open blog platform Kont.
It is sometimes said that the war started earlier for Ukraine than for the rest of the USSR. Thinking of the fact that when Hitler attacked Poland, the Western Ukrainian and Western Belorussian lands were part of the latter and thus also came under attack
German checkpoint
This, however, is not entirely true. By the way, this interpretation of events has almost got no traction in Belorussia. And this is logical. The fact is that the German troops attacking Poland did not advance further than the Brest-Lvov line. Serious fighting was only for Lvov over the course of 2 days. After defeating the Polish group that retreated to the city, the Germans abandoned the city, which the Red Army entered, and it, along with all the Western Ukrainian territories, was annexed to the Ukrainian SSR.
If anyone in Ukraine entered the war on September 1, 1939, it was Ukrainian nationalists who opposed the Polish state on the side of Nazi Germany, just as they sided with Hitler against the USSR on June 22, 1941.
This difference between the Western Ukrainian territories and the Ukrainian SSR, the Belorussian SSR, and even the territories of Western Belarus (which were part of Poland before 1939) was well understood by Hitler. The Nazi dictator clearly understood the mentality of the peoples who inhabited the UkSSR much better than his generals and party bonzes. Let’s see how he administratively divided the occupied territories of the USSR.
This post is a translation of an article by a Ukrainian politolog and historian in exile Rostislav Ischenko. The translation will be supplemented with commentary, references and images added by yours truly. This is an important reading to understand the symbolism and history of St.George ribbon – “Georgievskaja lentochka” in Russian.
by Rostislav Ischenko, published 05.05.2020 on the portal Ukraina.ru and at the open blog platform Kont.
On the eve of the Victory Day in Ukraine, as it happened before, there is an increased activity among the nationalists who indict how to “properly” celebrate the holiday. Naturally, leading them all is the Institute of National Memory, the head of which, Anton Drobovich, zealously continues the work of his predecessor Vladimir Vyatrovich to eradicate the memory of the great Victory from the citizens of Ukraine. [Translator note: the naming of the “institute” is the direct nod to Orwell’s “1984”]
It is not accidental the “Anglosaxons” are derisively called “Naglosaxons” by lots of Russian-speaking Internet users. By swapping the first two letters, the meaning of their name starts to reflect their deeds: “impudent saxons”.
I wrote a year ago how is History being rewritten in front of our eyes… when a memorial coin without the Soviet flag was issued in the West. And now it happens again, with even greater impudence!
This song by the famous Russian heavy-metal group “Kipelov”, written 5 years ago to the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War deeply touched me. The powerful words, the strong voice of Kipelov and the documentary footage from the blockaded Leningrad, all merged into a whirlweend of emotions and memory.
The title of the song is “Непокорённый” – “Nepokorjonnyj”, which means both “Unconquered”, abut also “Defiant”, “Unbowed”. And this word takes all these meanings in the song.
Lyrics translation is mine.
Небо Балтики давит свинцом, город держит за горло блокада;
Медный всадник и ангел с крестом батальонам подвозят снаряды.
Львы из камня срываются с мест, чтоб с бойцами подняться в атаку –
Непокорных жестокая месть. Наступление. Крушение мрака!
Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!
Пишет Жизнь слабой детской рукой даты смерти на саване снега.
Что тогда бы случилось с тобой; смог остаться бы ты человеком;
Не сдаваться и в голос не выть, убивая за хлебные крошки;
Свет надежды сумел бы хранить под раскаты немецкой бомбежки?
Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!
Чернота. Хрупкий Ладожский лёд, уходящие дети под воду.
Метроном отобьет скорбный счет всех погибших в блокадные годы.
Нервы города – к сердцу земли, силы взять, и к весне возродиться,
Медный всадник к победе летит, неподвластной забвению птицей.
Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!
Город Петра!
Непокорённый!
The Baltic sky is laden with lead, the city is held by the throat by blockade;
Bronze Horseman and Angel with Cross bring shells to the forces forth.
Lions of stone break from their plinths to rise with fighters in charge –
The unconquereds’ brutal revenge. Offensive. Darkness will fall!
Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!
Life writes with a weak child’s hand the dates of death on a shroud of snow.
What would have happened to you back then; could you have kept yourself human;
Not to give up and howl out loud, killing for crumbs of bread;
Would you be able to hold onto the light of hope under the thunder of German shelling?
Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!
Blackness. The fragile Ladoga ice, and children going under.
The metronome will mournfully beat the count of those, died in blockade.
Nerves of the city reach to Earth’s heart, strength to take, and be reborn by the spring,
The Bronze Horseman flies to Victory, a bird that’s beyond the oblivion.
Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!
The liberation of Prague from the Nazi German occupation was brought about 75 years ago by the Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev. Seeing as the Czechs have recently decided to erase that particular page of their history, we must do all in our power to counterbalance the destruction of memory, by remembering the events of 5th through 12th of May 1945 in all the unaltered detail.
Who doesn’t know the history of the liberation of Prague? On May 5, 1945, Prague rose in revolt, Soviet troops came to the aid of the rebels, and on May 9, Prague was liberated.
But it happened not quite like that, or rather, it wasn’t like that at all. In May, parts of the German garrison were really conducting bloody battles in Prague. Only their main opponents were not the rebelling Czechs, but the fighters of the 1st division of the RLA (“Russian Liberation Army”, or Vlasovtsy [Translator note: The name Vlasov is synonymous to that of Quisling in Norway]).
Czech Republic – the reliable industrial rear of the Third Reich
Czechoslovakia as an independent state disappeared from the political map of Europe before the Second World War. First, in April 1938, under pressure from Britain, France and Italy, Czechoslovakia abandoned the Sudetenland in favour of Germany (the so-called Munich Conspiracy).
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the Victory over the German Fascists, where Soviet Union played the decisive and definitive role in sealing that Victory. This role of USSR is like a thorn in the eye of the modern day revisionists and neo-Fascists, who over the past decades have been ferociously rewriting history and smearing Russia as the heir to the USSR. The history is remembered as long as there are physical manifestations of said history left in the world.
As such, the especially vicious battle has been wielded against the monuments commemorating the Soviet (and by that meaning all nationalities, not just Russian) soldiers and commanders on the post-Soviet space. Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and others started the trend as soon as the CIA assets took power in those countries. After 2014, once the neo-Fascits took hold of power in Ukraine with the help of the USA and EU, the demolition of the WWII memorials was put on the assembly line rate level, at the same tempo as the destruction of the Ukrainian economy that it inherited after the USSR.
Now, that the date of the 75th Anniversary is drawing ever nearer, the newest salvo in the war on the historical monuments was heard from Prague, Czech Republic, where the memorial to Marshal Ivan Konev – the saviour of Prague – was torn down. If not for Konev’s army and his decisive, yet careful actions, Prague would be looking like Dresden now. Albeit, not because of the American firebombing, but because of the demolition charges that the retreating German forces put all around the city. It is the remembrance of the salvation of such cities as Prague and Krakow – at great self-sacrificial cost on the part of the Soviet troops – that the CIA assets are eager to destroy.
Below is my speed-translation of an article from “Argumenty i Facty” from 09.04.2020, showing the shame of Prague district 6 in all its ignominious glory.
Descendants of the Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev began collecting signatures for the transfer to Russia of the monument to the commander that was dismantled in Prague. The daughter of the Marshal, Natalia Koneva, hopes that the monument will be installed in Moscow.
“We have Marshal Konev street. And it will be natural if the monument would stand on it.”
And the books that Gerald Durrell has written throughout his life shine with that boyish fascination and enthralling narrative. They inspire both children and grown-ups to see the world around them differently.
