2015-10-12
Prezidentas, kuris tvirtina neturintis jokio turto ir uždirbantis 31 tūkst. JAV dolerių, neseniai buvo nufotografuotas savo užmiesčio rezidencijoje mokantis šienauti dalgiu 2013 metais Rusijos pilietybę gavusį prancūzų aktorių Gerard'ą Depardieu.
Ir tikrai, šienauja abudu:
Po šienapjūtės ir Manheteną galima aplankyt.
Diktatorius, diktatorius...
Baltarusijos lyderis padarė netikėtą diplomatinį ėjimą, kuris sugrąžino Minską į tarptautinio dėmesio centrą, pasiūlęs čia organizuoti kelis taikos derybų dėl Rytų Ukrainos raundus, kuriuose dalyvavo ir Vokietijos kanclerė Angela Merkel bei Prancūzijos vadovas Francois Hollande'as.
Diktatorius...
Ar tik nerasim Batkos čia?
The fog of history
By James Ferguson VINE VOICE on July 9, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition 2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Too bad I didn't see this kindle selection before writing a review of Vanished Kingdoms, as my biggest gripe was with this chapter. Norman Davies is a well respected historian, but it seemed he relied more on his reputation than scholarship on writing of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For whatever reason he chose to frame the chapter within the context of Belarus, which didn't even exist at the time. Belarus, like the Ukraine, was divided among noble fathers, who more or less answered to Patriarchs within the Orthodox Church. There was no federated state like you see today in the Ukraine. These lands were fought over by neighboring rivals, and eventually came to coalesce under the Grand Duchy from the 13th to the 16th century, briefly making it the largest kingdom in Europe. The central authority rested in Trakai (Lithuania), where the main castles of Mindaugas and Vytautas were located, but as their kingdom spread, castles were built in these Slavic lands, notably at Mir and Nargaudukas in modern-day Belarus.
Davies does credit the Lithuanian Dukes for the inception of the Grand Duchy, but in his Slavic-centered mind the heart and soul of the kingdom rests in Belarus. Even the name Lietuva he believes springs from the Litva marshes of Belarus, blithely unaware that most of the place names in this area have Baltic, not Slavic roots. Lithuanian predates the Slavic languages by several centuries. Unfortunately, Davies seems to have worked backward from present-day nation states rather than treating these "vanished kingdoms" within the context of their own time and place.
Belarussians would dearly love to claim Lithuanian history as their own, and have done so under Lukashenko who seems determined to dig beneath the Soviet history that so dominates Belarus. A trip to Minsk is like a trip back into the Soviet Union, as the city was almost completely destroyed in WWII and rebuilt under Stalin. What few fragments of the historic city that remain have become museum pieces, but virtually all their architectural context has been lost.
Sadly, Davies just can't seem to bring himself to give Lithuania its due. For him it is a rump state of the former Polish-Lithuanian Joint Kingdom, with heavy emphasis on Poland. In his epic history of Europe, he took the Polish stance in Vilnius, or Wilno as he preferred to call it, unwilling to even accept its name. Here too we see Lithuania Slavicized for his own convenience, not for that of history.
O ką sakiau?
Beje - kur toji Baltoji Rusija kadaise buvo?
Kaip ji vietoj Juodosios Rusijos atsidūrė, a?
В широком смысле, Чёрной Русью (Russia nigra) иногда называли все русские земли, находившиеся под властью Великого княжества Литовского и Речи Посполитой, противопоставляя им Белую Русь (Russia alba), находившуюся под властью Великого княжества Московского[1]
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