Posted on 02/26/2019 5:26:12 AM PST by vannrox
"The most thrilling part of the coloring process is when suddenly the person looks back at you as if he’s alive" - Olga Shirnina
“My heart yearned to be there, in the boiling caldron of war, to be baptized in its fire and scorched in its lava” – Maria Bochkareva, commander of the Russian Women’s death battalion in her 1919 autobiography Yashka, My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile.
Maria Bochkareva
Color can bring the past to the present, giving black and white images a spritz of life. We’ve seen color photos of the Russian Empire in Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii’s gorgeous photos. But what would the goofy Romanovs looks like in color? Thanks to Olga Shirnina (aka Klimblim) we get a good idea. She colorizes black and white images of Russians in World War 1.
The lead photo show us Maria Leontievna Bochkareva (1889–1920), a Russian soldier who fought in World War I and formed the Women’s Battalion of Death. She was the first Russian woman to command a military unit. She was executed by a Bolshevik firing squad. “Passing her on the street, you had to look three times to make sure she was not a man,” Bessie Beatty (January 27, 1886 – April 6, 1947), the American journalist, editor, playwright and radio host, wrote in The Red Heart of Russia. “After the first few days of grumbling protest, her comrades seldom remembered she was a woman.”
“Sometimes a picture can say more than many words,” says Olga, “and I’ll be glad if people learn more about Russia and its people through my colourings, especially about our brave women … The most thrilling part of the coloring process,” she adds, “is when suddenly the person looks back at you as if he’s alive.”
Russian scout Alekseev and his sand sculpture
Maria Bochkareva
Vasily Karabanov, sub-ensign of the 146th Tsaritsyn Infantry Reg
Russian Empire : Russian Empire, military exercises: Machine gun position – 1914 – Photographer: Karl Bulla
1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death
Burial of a fallen Russian soldier, 1916
Kagul (renamed Ochakov, later General Kornilov) was built by Sevastopol dockyard. Laid down 1900, launched October 1902, completed 1905, seized by the White forces in the Russian Civil War and interned in Bizerta in 1920 as part of Wrangel’s fleet, sold for scrap in 1933
Karel Vašátko
Russian expeditionary force in Paris
Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Romanov in a military hospital
Members of the Women’s Battalion
The first Russian military pilot Evgeny Rudnev
Zinaida Malynich
Easter at the front – 1916
See more of Olga Shirnina’s work on her website.
I am concerned that our government is essentially going to do the same thing with the same result with women in combat.
I don’t have Prime, but am wondering if I should consider it.
“Fiddler on the Roof” makes me feel the same way. Although I’m a gentile, I have many Jewish friend and wonder about the horrors their ancestors must have gone through.
Those who made it out, who got to the US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, etc. did OK or very well; their relatives and friends left behind in Russia didn’t fair well at all. My grandfather visited what was left of his family in 1969, and told of the Hellish existence that they had in the nearly 50 years since he had left. Cousins of my father who got out in the ‘90s told much the same stories, but the Hellishness wasn’t reserved just for the Jews - anyone not a part of the power structure lived in Turd World conditions much of the time.
Now, you want to contemplate a REALLY lousy existence? Think about what all of our ancestors went through living during the Middle Ages. No running or clean water, no electricity, no medicine or medical care worthy of the name, brutality like we can barely conceive of...and those were the good times, when there was no war, plague or both going on around you. I am glad for sites like this one, they give us some perspective when we start to complain about how badly off we are...we live better than kings did 100 years ago, and not by a little.
Bumpski.
5.56mm
“XB” The initials for “Christ is Risen” in Russian...made out of ordinance.
Very Interesting.
I saw that picture with the bayonets on the rifles and immediately thought of this website.
http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/MosinHumor.htm
Indeed I have. I’ve found the best way to make certain that I have open lanes on either side of me at the range is to start with the Mosin. After about 3 rounds they all move.
L
Sounds like the name of a new metal band. Or something (and ping to checkout the pics at home later)
The artillery shells spell out "X B" = "Christ Is Arisen!"
Regards,
The only “regular” TV we do anymore is Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and then Fox. The wife also watches the Panthers’s games (I don’t). The rest is nothing but garbage and repeats. We pretty much do Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Plex. All but Prime come thru our adult kid’s accounts and so, don’t cost us anything. Prime = Amazon, so there’s the added free shipping and some other benefits, if you’re willing to sell your soul to Bezos (I personally buy stuff thru Amazon).
As for women in combat, I’m not a fan. I guess I’m an anachronism...putting women on pedestals. I just think woman are special.
Women are special.
I don’t mind saying that, and that is because I do believe there is a ying-yang kind of thing going on with us, that makes (or should make it) more interesting and fun.
There is a level of maturity that most women have (or had) that they maintain throughout their lives, and there is a level of immaturity or silliness that guys have that they maintain to a degree throughout their lives. I have always respected that reserved and mature part of many women, and appreciated with a smile that silliness found in men.
It is why we are different. We were discussing on FR one time the phenomenon where there are more men at the very top of the IQ spectrum than there are women, but there are more men than women represented at the lower end of the IQ spectrum as well. A Freeper stated that the same impulse that makes a guy light a fart on fire is the same impulse responsible for all the great things invented by men in the world, which I found hilarious to consider, that grain of truth somehow seeming valid to me.
I am a guy, and I appreciate what women bring to the table from an attitude and intellectual perspective. Females see things in a different way than I do, and instead of resenting it (as I think some guys do) I find it both illuminating and helpful.
That said, I still roll my eyes at my wife’s perspective on certain things, as she rolls her eyes at me!
However, one of the things I find distressing is the apparent current desire of a lot of young women to show that they can be as coarse, promiscuous, and stupid as young men can be. I just don’t see any value in that, and it bothers me, because there is something different about women apart from simple anatomy.
They are wired differently than we as men are, and I like that.
Heh, me and a few of my friends all took our Garands down to the range one memorial day, and with all of us shooting, attracted some attention!
I try and imagine those boot camp ranges where they would have 200 guys firing them out there all at the same time, and how anyone managed to retain any hearing function!
A wonderful comment. Can I share that with my wife (my best friend)?
Of course you can! I say this kind of thing to my wife all the time!
And she rolls her eyes at me...:)
Thanks vannrox. BTW, I think this broke your record for longest primary thread message. :^)
Loved the detail of this one, the ship's priest, the ship's doctor and the ship's cat—I enhanced the color—looks like an oil painting:
Those brown tabbies get around!
Apparently hand colored. What an amazing job!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.