Quotations and comments from "Word for Word - A Translator's Memoir of Literature, Politics, and Survival in Soviet Russia" by Liliana Lungina as told to Oleg Dorman - translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon, assisted by A. Moore
"The entire sum of happy, trying, unhappy, bright, and bland moments you live through is the essence of life."
"From 1936 to 1938, during the worst of the terror, daily life seemed to improve, however strange it may seem."
"Suddenly, after Stalin uttered the words "Life has become happier," everything changed. The people obeyed."
"He never appeared to the people. He was invisible, like God. < > Ordinary people < > could only see him two or three times a year .."
In the summer of 1939 "On the front pages of all the newspapers there was a picture of Stalin shaking Ribbentrop's hand. Underneath was a caption that read: I know how the German people love their Fuhrer, and I drink to his health."
"Now its common knowledge, {but} less than two months prior to the outbreak of war{June 1941}, Stalin had destroyed the remaining top military commanders of the country. One of my friends lived in Lefortovo, next to the prison. < > for two nights in the beginning of May 1941 < > Rounds of rifle fire rang out all night long. They were executing those who had been imprisoned, for the most part, in 1937 .." An example of Stalinist eugenics?
"For the first time{when the author was with her mother in evacuation near Kazan in 1941} I saw a convoy of prisoners, they were women. Accompanied by guards on horseback, exhausted, bedraggled figures, almost all of them barefoot. Their feet swaddled in rags, carrying satchels of some kind, surrounded by packs of dogs. I felt I was watching some sort of horror film. It was hard to believe that I was seeing this in real life .."
"Svetlana Alliueva, Stalin's daughter, relates in her memoirs that she heard her father talking over the phone about a murder, and ordering that the death be made to look like an accident." This relates to the death of a member of the Jewish Antifascist Committee that Stalin had initiated.
This is a very vivid and informative book. It is also interesting that, in spite of how much they sometimes allowed the author to travel outside the Soviet Union in Western Europe, Liliana Lungina never seems to have gone to America, or even Britain.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Friday, November 14, 2014
Experimental Blog # 190
Quotations from and comments on "Africans" - The History of a Continent{New Edition} by John Iliffe
"The story begins with the evolution of the human species in Africa, whence it spread to colonise the continent and the world, adapting and specializing to new environments until distinct{?} racial{?} and linguistic groups emerged."
"The skull of the first known hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, was discovered in 2001 by an African student examining the shores of an ancient Lake Chad. Apparently some six or seven million years old < > During the following five million years, a wide variety of other hominims, mostly known as Australopithecines, left remains chiefly in eastern and southern Africa."
"Found at Rift Valley sites < > from 2.6 million years ago < > with remains of a hominim known as Homo habilis."
"Some 1.8 million years ago, a more clearly human creature entered the archaeological record. Homo ergaster{from a Greek word meaning work} was to survive with remarkably little development for over a million years. < > Homo ergaster is also found in Eurasia."
"Scientists have therefore compared the mitochondrial DNA of living people to estimate the point in the past at which human beings shared a single female ancestor. < > most researchers believe that this was between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago, or in the broad period when the first anatomically modern people appear in the fossil record. Initially, these ancestors of modern humans spread within the African continent < > a subsequent expansion took them to parts of Asia by at least 40,000 years ago and from there to Europe.
From 1519 to 1867 there were 11,061,800 slave departures from Africa to the Atlantic.
"In 1807 the British Parliament resolved to abolish the Atlantic slave trade." But "parliamentary resolutions had little impact in Africa."
"In all, the navy captured 1,635 ships and freed just over 160,000 slaves, landing many at the colony in Freetown created in 1787. Yet no fewer than 3,446,800 slaves left Africa for the Atlantic during the nineteenth century ..."
"Whereas in 1948 the National Party{South Africa's apartheid party} had won only 40 percent of votes, in 1977, at its peak, it won 65 percent .."
"Within little more that a decade of the electoral victory in 1977, apartheid lay in ruins."
" ..Prime Minister P.W. Botha had dismissed apartheid in 1979 as 'a recipe for permanent conflict.' Recognising the impossibility of controlling an advanced industrial society by police methods.."
" the new president, F.W. de Klerk, explained in 1990, 'The decline and collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia put a new complexion on things. < > We had to seize the opportunity.'
He legalized the ANC{African National Congress}and released its imprisoned leader, Nelson Mandela, to provide a negotiating partner.
De Klerk had underestimated the ANC. It proved more popular with Africans, more united, and less easy to marginalize ..."
The historical connection and coincidence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe with the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa went unnoticed by many people, but is very thought provoking and instructive.
"The story begins with the evolution of the human species in Africa, whence it spread to colonise the continent and the world, adapting and specializing to new environments until distinct{?} racial{?} and linguistic groups emerged."
"The skull of the first known hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, was discovered in 2001 by an African student examining the shores of an ancient Lake Chad. Apparently some six or seven million years old < > During the following five million years, a wide variety of other hominims, mostly known as Australopithecines, left remains chiefly in eastern and southern Africa."
"Found at Rift Valley sites < > from 2.6 million years ago < > with remains of a hominim known as Homo habilis."
"Some 1.8 million years ago, a more clearly human creature entered the archaeological record. Homo ergaster{from a Greek word meaning work} was to survive with remarkably little development for over a million years. < > Homo ergaster is also found in Eurasia."
"Scientists have therefore compared the mitochondrial DNA of living people to estimate the point in the past at which human beings shared a single female ancestor. < > most researchers believe that this was between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago, or in the broad period when the first anatomically modern people appear in the fossil record. Initially, these ancestors of modern humans spread within the African continent < > a subsequent expansion took them to parts of Asia by at least 40,000 years ago and from there to Europe.
From 1519 to 1867 there were 11,061,800 slave departures from Africa to the Atlantic.
"In 1807 the British Parliament resolved to abolish the Atlantic slave trade." But "parliamentary resolutions had little impact in Africa."
"In all, the navy captured 1,635 ships and freed just over 160,000 slaves, landing many at the colony in Freetown created in 1787. Yet no fewer than 3,446,800 slaves left Africa for the Atlantic during the nineteenth century ..."
"Whereas in 1948 the National Party{South Africa's apartheid party} had won only 40 percent of votes, in 1977, at its peak, it won 65 percent .."
"Within little more that a decade of the electoral victory in 1977, apartheid lay in ruins."
" ..Prime Minister P.W. Botha had dismissed apartheid in 1979 as 'a recipe for permanent conflict.' Recognising the impossibility of controlling an advanced industrial society by police methods.."
" the new president, F.W. de Klerk, explained in 1990, 'The decline and collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia put a new complexion on things. < > We had to seize the opportunity.'
He legalized the ANC{African National Congress}and released its imprisoned leader, Nelson Mandela, to provide a negotiating partner.
De Klerk had underestimated the ANC. It proved more popular with Africans, more united, and less easy to marginalize ..."
The historical connection and coincidence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe with the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa went unnoticed by many people, but is very thought provoking and instructive.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Experimental Blog # 189
Quotations from "And Man Created God" - A History of the World at the Time of Jesus by Selina O'Grady
"At the end of the first century BC, the world was full of gods. Thousands of them .."
"Galilee probably had more holy men, or Hasidim, living a life of poverty and performing miracles and healings than any other district of Palestine. < > As for miracles, people in the ancient world found nothing surprising in the idea of exceptional people performing exceptional deeds ..."
"Most Jews, including Jesus' family, thought they could juggle the demands of being both Jewish and Roman < > Some of Jesus' brothers had Greek names; some Jewish."
"Cults sprang up all over Galilee and Judaea, proclaiming their belief that the kingdom of God was at hand and that the Messiah would appear in their lifetime."
"About one or two years after he started preaching, Jesus and some of his followers joined the hundreds of thousands of Jews from all around the empire travelling to Jerusalem for Passover."
"Yet, according to the biblical historian Geza Vermes, Jesus would probably never have been executed if he had < > not made his religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was in the already tense city of Jerusalem that his opposition to the Pharisees, his association with John the Baptist{his executed cousin}, and the claims made by some of his followers that he was the Messiah became such an incendiary combination to the authorities."
"Jesus was arrested by the Temple guard, which Paul had already or would soon join, and was charged with blasphemy. But blasphemy was a crime only under Jewish not Roman law < > So he was further charged with being a royal pretender, or political agitator, claiming to be the Messiah. This was an act of sedition, which was a crime under Roman law .."
"Pilate passed the buck for the final time and let the mob decide Jesus' fate."
"But why the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and Caiphas, the Roman-appointed ruler of Jerusalem, and Antipas, Rome's client king, were so keen to escape responsibility for Jesus' execution is unclear. It may have been because Jesus had come to Jerusalem at a time when tensions between Jews and Romans were riding so high that the need to appease both 'sides' was particularly important and particularly difficult. It was unlikely to have been fear of Jesus' popularity, since the crowd standing in the courtyard of Pilate's fortress gave the thumbs down to Jesus."
"At the end of the first century BC, the world was full of gods. Thousands of them .."
"Galilee probably had more holy men, or Hasidim, living a life of poverty and performing miracles and healings than any other district of Palestine. < > As for miracles, people in the ancient world found nothing surprising in the idea of exceptional people performing exceptional deeds ..."
"Most Jews, including Jesus' family, thought they could juggle the demands of being both Jewish and Roman < > Some of Jesus' brothers had Greek names; some Jewish."
"Cults sprang up all over Galilee and Judaea, proclaiming their belief that the kingdom of God was at hand and that the Messiah would appear in their lifetime."
"About one or two years after he started preaching, Jesus and some of his followers joined the hundreds of thousands of Jews from all around the empire travelling to Jerusalem for Passover."
"Yet, according to the biblical historian Geza Vermes, Jesus would probably never have been executed if he had < > not made his religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was in the already tense city of Jerusalem that his opposition to the Pharisees, his association with John the Baptist{his executed cousin}, and the claims made by some of his followers that he was the Messiah became such an incendiary combination to the authorities."
"Jesus was arrested by the Temple guard, which Paul had already or would soon join, and was charged with blasphemy. But blasphemy was a crime only under Jewish not Roman law < > So he was further charged with being a royal pretender, or political agitator, claiming to be the Messiah. This was an act of sedition, which was a crime under Roman law .."
"Pilate passed the buck for the final time and let the mob decide Jesus' fate."
"But why the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and Caiphas, the Roman-appointed ruler of Jerusalem, and Antipas, Rome's client king, were so keen to escape responsibility for Jesus' execution is unclear. It may have been because Jesus had come to Jerusalem at a time when tensions between Jews and Romans were riding so high that the need to appease both 'sides' was particularly important and particularly difficult. It was unlikely to have been fear of Jesus' popularity, since the crowd standing in the courtyard of Pilate's fortress gave the thumbs down to Jesus."
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Experimental Blog # 188
Comments on 2 books:
# 1 "Math on Trial - How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom" by Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez
This mother and daughter mathematical team describe 10 historical or recent criminal trials where mathematics, that is, statistics and probability, were seriously misunderstood and/or misapplied to determine guilt or innocence. These math subjects, statistics and probability, turn out to be far more complicated than very many people really understand. This results in that the verdict of innocent or guilty depends on the authority of those explaining the particular math application.
The conclusion seems to be that a jury of peers of the accused can not and does not really decide the case, when such complicated mathematics is used. It might be said that this book subtly suggests that prison is not the right place for all guilty people.
#2 "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an - Islam and the Founders" by Denise A. Spellberg
About 20 years ago many people were calling Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite. Another way to put the matter is to question whether "actions really, or always, speak louder than words", as the saying goes.
It certainly appears that in the life and work of Thomas Jefferson it was not so. The author, Denise Spellberg, describes Thomas Jefferson's intellectual efforts, that is, his words, in overwhelming detail; and he still seems overwhelmingly intellectually impressive. At the same time, Thomas Jefferson lived his whole long life on the product of African slavery, and not once convincingly spoke or acted against this way of life.
Thomas Jefferson's contemporary, John Adams, was intellectually just the opposite on the matter of African slavery, but he is hardly remembered very positively for anything.
Comments on 2 books:
# 1 "Math on Trial - How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom" by Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez
This mother and daughter mathematical team describe 10 historical or recent criminal trials where mathematics, that is, statistics and probability, were seriously misunderstood and/or misapplied to determine guilt or innocence. These math subjects, statistics and probability, turn out to be far more complicated than very many people really understand. This results in that the verdict of innocent or guilty depends on the authority of those explaining the particular math application.
The conclusion seems to be that a jury of peers of the accused can not and does not really decide the case, when such complicated mathematics is used. It might be said that this book subtly suggests that prison is not the right place for all guilty people.
#2 "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an - Islam and the Founders" by Denise A. Spellberg
About 20 years ago many people were calling Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite. Another way to put the matter is to question whether "actions really, or always, speak louder than words", as the saying goes.
It certainly appears that in the life and work of Thomas Jefferson it was not so. The author, Denise Spellberg, describes Thomas Jefferson's intellectual efforts, that is, his words, in overwhelming detail; and he still seems overwhelmingly intellectually impressive. At the same time, Thomas Jefferson lived his whole long life on the product of African slavery, and not once convincingly spoke or acted against this way of life.
Thomas Jefferson's contemporary, John Adams, was intellectually just the opposite on the matter of African slavery, but he is hardly remembered very positively for anything.
Experimental Blog # 187
Quotations from "China's Silent Army" - The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing's Image by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo, translated by Catherine Mansfield
" ... at exactly 8:08 p.m. on August 8, 2008, history changed its course. That moment marked the beginning of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games..."
"September 15, 2008, just three weeks after the end of the Olympics, marked the beginning of the crisis which threatened the downfall of the Western financial system."
"In a little less than a year, China's prestige and position in the rest of the world had taken a 180-degree turn, from treacherous dictatorship to savior of the world's economy."
"In just ten years the country has multiplied its trade with the rest of the world six times, with an increase from $510 billion in 2001 to $2.97 trillion in 2010."
"As there is no welfare state, the Chinese people save over 40 percent of their earnings, which represents the highest rate of savings in the world. < > this huge quantity of deposits is combined with < > "financial repression," which < > means that depositors are forced to lose money with their savings."
"Therefore the magic wand of limitless funding is paid for at great expense by Chines savers ..."
" ... the whole planet can now hear the deafening grinding of the tectonic movements caused by the rise of China < > The new world order is excellent news for many countries in the developing world. China's pragmatism offers undisputable benefits to < > many African countries that today have access to infrastructure which they had never even dreamed of .."
" ... who is capitalizing on the opportunities offered by China if it is not the local populations?
" ... you probably already know the answer: the local elites, whether economic and/or political, in both democratic countries and autocratic regimes."
Friday, August 1, 2014
Experimental Blog # 186
Notes and quotations from "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" - How Two Men Revolutionized Physics by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon and "The Age of Radiance" - The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson
From "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field":
"Faraday's first notion of lines of force, < > grew into Maxwell's sophisticated mathematical theory, which predicted that every time a magnet jiggled, or an electric current was turned on or off, a wave of electromagnetic energy would spread out into space < >, changing the nature of space itself."
" ... something in space must be storing electromagnetic energy and transmitting its forces, .."
"Maxwell had achieved the seemingly impossible - he had derived the theory of the electromagnetic field directly from the laws of dynamics."
"These were the laws of motion that had been discovered by Newton, with one addition - the principle that energy was conserved in any closed system. The concept of energy in space was central to Maxwell's new approach ..."
"It{the mathematics} described how the various quantities interacted with one another and how they varied in space and time."
From "The Age of Radiance":
Of all the scientists referred to in this very comprehensive and probably controversial book, Robert Oppenheimer seems to be a close second to Enrico Fermi.
In the photo section of the book Craig Nelson says that, "Edward Teller{possibly fourth most referred to scientist after Leo Szilard} was the Richard Nixon of physics, testifying against Robert Oppenheimer and leading Ronald Reagan down the path of Star Wars. But many believe his invention if the hydrogen bomb made Alfred Nobel's dream come true, keeping the Cold War cold and the world at peace." The author expresses these opinions more than once in his book.
From "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field":
"Faraday's first notion of lines of force, < > grew into Maxwell's sophisticated mathematical theory, which predicted that every time a magnet jiggled, or an electric current was turned on or off, a wave of electromagnetic energy would spread out into space < >, changing the nature of space itself."
" ... something in space must be storing electromagnetic energy and transmitting its forces, .."
"Maxwell had achieved the seemingly impossible - he had derived the theory of the electromagnetic field directly from the laws of dynamics."
"These were the laws of motion that had been discovered by Newton, with one addition - the principle that energy was conserved in any closed system. The concept of energy in space was central to Maxwell's new approach ..."
"It{the mathematics} described how the various quantities interacted with one another and how they varied in space and time."
From "The Age of Radiance":
Of all the scientists referred to in this very comprehensive and probably controversial book, Robert Oppenheimer seems to be a close second to Enrico Fermi.
In the photo section of the book Craig Nelson says that, "Edward Teller{possibly fourth most referred to scientist after Leo Szilard} was the Richard Nixon of physics, testifying against Robert Oppenheimer and leading Ronald Reagan down the path of Star Wars. But many believe his invention if the hydrogen bomb made Alfred Nobel's dream come true, keeping the Cold War cold and the world at peace." The author expresses these opinions more than once in his book.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Experimental Blog # 185
Quotations and notes from "The Cold War - A New History" by John Lewis Gaddis
"He{Stalin} acknowledged, in a wistful but revealing comment in 1947, that" {had}"Churchill delayed opening the second front in northern France by a year, the Red Army would have come to France < > {we} toyed with the idea of reaching Paris.""
"Atomic bombs were meant to be dropped, as soon as they were ready, on whatever enemy targets yet remained."
"Truman and his advisors < > encouraged Soviet military officers to tour the ruins of Hiroshima, and allowed them to witness the first postwar tests of the bomb, held in the Pacific in the summer of 1946."
"By 1959, he{Eisenhower} was insisting gloomily that if war came "you might as well go out and shoot everyone you see and then shoot yourself.""!!
"The charges made against Khrushchev" < > "on the day his Kremlin colleagues announced their intention to depose him{October 13, 1964}". " He was accused of rudeness, distraction, arrogance, incompetence, nepotism, megalomania, depression, unpredictability, and growing old."!!
On the night of May 9th, 1970, "unable to sleep, the president of the United States{Richard Nixon}, accompanied only by his valet and a driver, slipped out of the White House to try to reason with students maintaining a vigil in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Nixon was nervous to the point of incoherence, rambling on about Churchill, appeasement, surfing, football, his own environmental policies, and the advantages of traveling while young."
"Most experts would probably have agreed", in 1980, that "the global balance of power < > had been tilting in Moscow's favor through most of the 1970s." But "it has long since been clear - and should have been clearer at the time - that the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies were on the path to decline, and that détente was concealing their difficulties."
"He{Stalin} acknowledged, in a wistful but revealing comment in 1947, that" {had}"Churchill delayed opening the second front in northern France by a year, the Red Army would have come to France < > {we} toyed with the idea of reaching Paris.""
"Atomic bombs were meant to be dropped, as soon as they were ready, on whatever enemy targets yet remained."
"Truman and his advisors < > encouraged Soviet military officers to tour the ruins of Hiroshima, and allowed them to witness the first postwar tests of the bomb, held in the Pacific in the summer of 1946."
"By 1959, he{Eisenhower} was insisting gloomily that if war came "you might as well go out and shoot everyone you see and then shoot yourself.""!!
"The charges made against Khrushchev" < > "on the day his Kremlin colleagues announced their intention to depose him{October 13, 1964}". " He was accused of rudeness, distraction, arrogance, incompetence, nepotism, megalomania, depression, unpredictability, and growing old."!!
On the night of May 9th, 1970, "unable to sleep, the president of the United States{Richard Nixon}, accompanied only by his valet and a driver, slipped out of the White House to try to reason with students maintaining a vigil in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Nixon was nervous to the point of incoherence, rambling on about Churchill, appeasement, surfing, football, his own environmental policies, and the advantages of traveling while young."
"Most experts would probably have agreed", in 1980, that "the global balance of power < > had been tilting in Moscow's favor through most of the 1970s." But "it has long since been clear - and should have been clearer at the time - that the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies were on the path to decline, and that détente was concealing their difficulties."
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