ivan

One of my favourite books that I definitely need to re-read, The Good Soldier Švejk, has a gag about an officer getting frustrated due to constant audible toilet flushing at floor above.

That thing once made me do a little research to find out that there was indoor plumbing at least in administrative buildings in my localty during Austria-Hungary times. My local school predates USSR and it had indoor toilets, that were partially disassembled during Soviet times and not used in favour of outhouse in school’s backyard. So when did my town started getting indoor plumbing again? - fucking 70’s. It’s such a little detail, but it just shows how USSR was actually un-civilizing places, not other way around.

Stalin, until his last days, was really pissy about the fact that he didn’t get to have entire Germany, not to mention initial pre-war plan to have entire Europe. Of course he was mad. 🌝

Yeah, invasion of USSR by Germany already was a sketchy decision, with Göring and some other military leaders expressing doubts about whole “we only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down” plan.

But legit arguments didn’t really have a chance against fascist hubris, so initial top nazi officials attitude towards both invasion of USSR and Pearl Harbour was very positive.

Most of us believe in some weird shit. Now imagine being given intellectual authority by being recognised as one of the greatest minds - specialty becomes secondary matter here and journalists, for example, will just ask one whatever and that will just add sensationalism element to one’s weird shit beliefs - and bam, “Nobel disease”.

There’s an idiom that is used in ex-Soviet countries - “voluntary-compulsory”. Usually meaning things that people were forced to do that they weren’t legally required to do, like “subbotniks” (Saturday workdays) - clean streets, build stuff, clear rubble. It was voluntary on paper, but should one refuse - that’s a risk of social penalties, including risk to one’s career.

On the other hand, wartime leader being retired after war makes perfect sense (Winston would later return back for another term, but anyway).

Austrian duchy among its early rulers had Henry I, who was a son of Henry II. 🌚

We don’t even have to go 150 years back if we take a look at North and South Korea’s. Photos of soldiers from both countries standing side by side show staggering difference.

Yeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.

And in political history there’s a lot of discrediting one’s predecessors, and retroactively paitining some personalities as crazies.

And part of modern historian’s job is to point out all the possible conflicts of interest in historical sources, so that we can know that we’re presented specific perspective of events or if it was written hundreds of years after events.