Posts tagged Revolution
History, Humanism, and other Shit.
“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle… waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal… The revolutionary posters were everywhere…the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist… All of this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
~George Orwell (the tall one in the middle), Homage to Catalonia. Otherwise known as one of the best possible gifts for a history nerd ever.
Kinda spoilers? I’m mentioning the premise of the film here.
Just saw “The Dark Knight Rises.” Great film, I’d definitely suggest it to anyone considering a movie.
Putting aside the acting, design, effects, etc, what really made the movie for me was that Bane is Robespierre on steroids. The entirety of his plot is basically “reenact the French Revolution.”
Technicals are endlessly fascinating to me, ever since I read up on the Somalia Intervention in the 90s
The one with the Hing rocket pod is particularly ridiculous/cool looking
Horrors of war aside, stuff like this is pretty awesome. Human beings are crazy fucking tinkers in a pinch.
(via historyishuman)
“Necessary Equipment for Money Transfer” by Oscar Schmerling. So, story time.
1907, the Bolshevik revolutionaries were trying to get some cash. So Stalin and others decided to rob a bank in Tiflis. Stalin basically just watched as everyone (dressed as peasants) followed Kamo (disguised as a cavalry man). The money was being transferred at the time, and was being carried in a cart surrounded by guards.
The bomb blasts caused by the revolutionaries shattered nearby windows, and after a gun fight, they made off with about 341,000 rubles, which could be exchanged for 3.4 million dollars today. They left behind twenty thousand, which were picked up by a driver. He was arrested for theft.
When Kamo was charged, he feigned insanity to get out of it. Doctors basically tortured him to make sure he wasn’t just acting. He pulled it off, and it worked - in the sense that he later had to escape a psychiatric ward, instead of a jail cell.
Sorry for the tl;dr, guys. I’m just reading about Russian history, and I thought this was pretty cool.
Stalin, thuggin’.
Tsar Nicholas II, shoveling his own walk whilst under house arrest.
