Anthology of Russian Vocal Performance

Here are a couple of classical albums that have earlier works performed in the Russian language.  These albums are formatted to work with your Spotify account.  If you do not have Spotify, I highly recommend that software since it's free, legal, and full of resources.  You are required to have a Facebook account to use this software.

A General Overview of Tale of Bygone Years

According to Henryk Paszkiewicz's book The Origin of Russia, The Tale of Bygone Years was composed by the monk Nestor of the Crypt Monastery in Kiev.  It was written during the the early 12th century.  The chronicle covers the history of Kievan Rus, which lasted from the 10th to the 13th centuries (Paszkiewicz).  You can read these documents below for more information:

Click here for the Samuel Cross translation.

Click here for the Wikipedia article.

Click here for the NWE article.

Author information can be found in the blog's bibliography.

A brief look at video gaming in Russia

This is a brief overview of video gaming in Russia.  I came upon this by chance and thought it was worth sharing.  If you're new to learning Russian or don't care about the Russian, click on the video and find the close captions button or "CC."  You can activate English subtitles by clicking on "CC."

I see music genres as a scientist may see classification.  I see it as a way to classify music and a method to understand it.  It's very difficult to define a genre (like a species) because there are many variables to consider when classifying a song.  How is a genre separated from other genres?  When do you add a prefix to a genre?  Are some genres equal?  It's easy to say that art genres are nothing like species of animals because art is man-made and therefore has a political, cultural, and personal qualities that can not be observed objectively as if a science because humans are political, cultural, and personal with each other.  And so since art is not something like a foreign object (a dog for example), a rock, or a math problem, it's harder to develop some definite science.

Thoughts on Crime and Punishment

Because of the way other people have been responding to me lately, I thought only you would care to listen to these thoughts.  I've been reading Russian Philosophy: Vol. I -- The Beginnings of Russian Philosophy, The Slavophiles, the Westernizers, and its authors Edie, Scanlan, Zeldin, and Kline seem to agree that Russians, throughout history, have been keenly concerned about "practical truth-justice" or "pravada" (pravda or пра́вда), which is now related to Soviet propaganda (no doubt).  I do not know if there has been any separation between propaganda and "pravada" in modern time.  However, according to the same authors, philosophy survived in the Russian tradition via literary criticism, resulting in literature being the best medium to philosophize in the Russian language because of academic censorship in the universities: Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pasternak are examples of writers who concerned themselves with philosophy.

Failed Experiment

I once thought that translating a language would better help you learn it.  I got the idea of learning language through translating from Duolingo.  Though I knew nothing of the program and had yet to join it, its video preview explained that users would learn a language by immersing themselves into it: forcing them to learn.

This attempt failed because I did not have the correct format.  Now, to prepare for undergraduate work, I'm trying to use Duolingo (since I received an invite now and can have access).  At first, I wanted to use it for Spanish, but now I'm using it for German.  It's cute and inviting, but I'm afraid that it's not what I need for the long term.

I've reduced myself to flashcards now.  Hopefully that will help me.

Packing and Reading Russian Children Stories

Instead of amateur philosophizing, I thought I should use this blog as a journal for translating and perhaps a resource for those who are learning Russian/German.  Academically, I'm a Humanities major with an emphasis on the Foundations of Western Civilization, but I also earning a German minor.  That means I'm learning both Russian and German.  What a headache!