The difference is that there was never a country named Ukraine, it was created out of a subdivision of Russia and #Soviet Union. A subdivision labeled Ukraine which was more than double in size of what ethnic Ukrainians occupied.
Wasn't part of California #Russian also (Sonoma Co. Fort "RUSS" ? That was before Mexico was founded. And #Mexico lost #California in a war.
St. Augustine is the oldest city in N.America.
One day I will organise and process all my photos and be a better person for it. This one is titled #Sunset in #Ashgabat and was taken last May in the former #Soviet Republic of #Turkmenistan #photo #photography #travel #TravelPhotography
"For the workers"
Budapest, Momento Park, taken September 2024.
It's a Soviet monument park where all the old Soviet monuments around Budapest were banished, forgotten, then collected together.
Missing Lenin? He's here!
Anyway. Shot this on Hansa 100 expired film. Bloody awful.
In fact avoid any Hansa or Fortepan film they sell there. Terrible results.
#believeinfilm #filmisnotdead #photo #photography #travel #travelphoto #travelphotography #Budapest #Hungary #soviet #history #filmphotography
sadly my post dodges the disgusting reason why #Putin doesn't have a problem here
it's not that Putin doesn't know #SerhiyKorolyov is #Ukrainian
it's that Putin and #Russian #ethnofascism deny the existence of #Ukraine as a people
so any famous Ukrainian, is merely Russian
anything good from #Soviet times is simply the triumph of #Russia
colonized people don't matter
they don't exist, in the #fascist mind
and govt of Russia is working hard to make them not exist, in reality
"Putin praises Elon Musk, compares him to father of Soviet space program"
...
Oh Mr. #Putin! Mr. Putin sir!
I understand you are buttering up Elon #Musk's manchild ego for... reasons
But just a teensy footnote for you sir:
#SerhiyKorolyov (which is misspelled as Sergei Korolev), the father of the #Soviet Space Program, was #Ukrainian
(here's a nice post I made about Serhiy in January for his birthday:
Kremlin to revive Soviet-era Komsomol school to indoctrinate youth
Russian govt to open a #political education workshop for youth that will be analogous to #Soviet-era Higher Komsomol School, which #indoctrinated young #Communist Party members
#Komsomol was a youth division (ages 14-28) of Communist Party during Soviet times
https://kyivindependent.com/kremlin-to-revive-soviet-era-komsomol-school-to-indoctrinate-youth/
29 March 2025
Sony a6700 + 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6
https://osm.org/go/x_uMNYmUL--?m=
https://kerobian.me/2025/04/03/playing-with-a-new-camera/
Today in Labor History April 14, 1919: Workers in Limerick, Ireland, initiated a General Strike against the British military occupation. They ran the city as a soviet for two weeks. Workers printed their own newspaper and issued their own currency, which local businesses accepted. They also regulated food supplies to keep prices low and prevent profiteering. Numerous other soviets were created during the Irish War of Independence.
Today in Labor History April 13, 1953: CIA Director Allen Dulles launched the MKUltra mind control program. The program ran from 1953 to 1973. It involved giving human subjects LSD and other drugs, often without their knowledge. Then, researchers would try to “weaken” their minds and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Over 7,000 U.S. war veterans were unwitting test subjects, as well as many Canadian and U.S. civilians. The program was a continuation of Nazi mind-control experiments, which utilized mescaline against Jews and Soviet prisoners, hoping it could be exploited as a “truth” serum. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA, recruited many of these Nazi torturers in the wake of World War II to exploit their knowledge and research. MKUltra was headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who later devised plans to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, and saturating his shoes with radioactive thallium to make his beard fall out. He also tried to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo, with poison. Several well-known liberals and radicals knowingly participated in MKUltra and its OSS predecessors, either as test subjects (e.g., Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hunter), or as researchers (e.g., anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson). Others who have been alleged to have been victims or volunteers include Sirhan Sirhan, Ted Kaczyinski, Charles Manson, and Whitey Bulger.
For a really fascinating look at Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson’s exploration with hallucinogens and their connection to MKUltra, check out the recent book, Tripping on Utopia, by Benjamin Breen. And for a truly amazing documentary on the 1961 CIA-supported coup in Congo, check out the 2024 documentary, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.” But the film is really about so much more than the coup. It covers Cold War machinations, propaganda, and covert operations in the early 1960s; the superpowers’ jockeying for control of puppet regimes and spheres of influence in the global south; the Pan-African movement; racism in the U.S., the Civil Rights movement, and the repression against it; and, of course, jazz music, including tons of interviews and live footage of Lumumba, Ghanian president and revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, activist and writer Andree Madeleine Blouin, Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, surrealist artist Rene Magritte.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #cia #mindcontrol #torture #lsd #mkultra #castro #nazis #oss #allenginsberg #lumumba #malcolmx #coltrane #jazz #imperialism #kenkesey #margaretmead #charlesmanson #mescaline #castro #soviet #coldwar #books #nonfiction #ussr #communism #film #documentary @bookstadon
The Zenit Horizon 202 Panoramic Film Camera
This was supposed to be a ‘Gearing Up For The Crappy Commie Camera Party’ post, but I quickly discovered that the Zenit Horizon 202 panoramic film camera was not a Soviet-era camera, and so is not CCCP compliant. I guess that the prominent stamp ‘Made in Russia’ should have been a bit of a giveaway, but digging into the history of the Horizon 202 suggests that it was launched in 1993, a few years after the Berlin Wall came down.
Still, it’s one of those cameras that I’ve always wanted but never ever expected to get. I have a Horizont, the earlier panoramic camera, but this has flaws that make it difficult to use (I will persevere with this one, mind. I hate to let a camera beat me, and besides, the Horizont is CCCP compliant). Of course, it was in the ‘Not Passed’ category of the Kamerastore website, with ‘flaws that will affect typical use,’ but since this was because it couldn’t ‘be tested with our machinery,’ but it was ‘in good condition and seems to be working normally,’ I thought it was worth investing in.
Like its predecessors, the Zenit Horizon 202 is a fixed focus swing-lens panoramic camera. It takes 35mm film that is loaded by wrapping the film around its curved innards, and each frame is 24x58mm, so you should get approximately 22 images from each 36-exposure roll of film. Although it has a plastic body, the innards are metal, and the Horizon 202 weighs a hefty 700g.
It’s not the easiest camera to use, or to grip, since holding the Horizon 202 as you would normally hold a camera results in the wide 120° field of view picking up fingers on the front of the device. Besides, the shutter button is towards the back of the camera, near the humongous viewfinder. So for that reason it’s best held by a handle below — or in my case a mini-tripod — with one hand, and then pressing the shutter button with the other.
The Horizon 202 has a limited range of shutter speeds in two ‘zones’ which are toggled by a little lever next to the rewind knob. There’s 1/2s, 1/4s, and 1/8s (yellow zone), and 1/60s, 1/125s, and 1/250s (white zone).You can (and should) only change the aperture and shutter speed when the shutter is cocked, and the Horizon 202 helps with this by only showing the tabs to change the shutter speed and aperture when the shutter has been locked.
The lens of the Horizon 202 is a 28mm f2.8 fixed aperture lens, and when the aperture is ‘set’ what it actually does is widen or close the slit that exposes the film to light as the whole lens assembly swings from one side of the film to the other. The idea is that as the lens assembly rotates it exposes the film equally across the whole frame. In practice, what happens is that at slower shutter speeds the lens assembly will take several seconds to completely rotate, so in these instances it is probably best mounted on a tripod. At fast shutter speeds, though, the lens whips around with a pleasing whirr.
Last week, storm Nuria passed (it’s April and we’re already into the ‘Ns’ for storm names, can you believe) and the skies cleared for a few days. I had a film to collect from the lab so took the opportunity for a morning out in Aveiro with a couple of film cameras. One was the ‘Golden Wonder’, the half-frame Welta Penti II that I’m using for the Frugal Film Project, and the other was, of course, the Horizon 202. In the Welta I used a previously loaded canister of Harman Phoenix, and in the Horizon I loaded a roll of pre-production Harman Red film that Harman Technology were kind enough to send me.
Loading the Horizon 202 is quite tricky. With the Horizont I’ve never actually successfully loaded a film without tearing it, though I have been practising and I’m getting much better. With the Horizon 202 loading the film is very similar, with the film being pushed under the roller next to the 35mm cassette, fed across the circular film gate, and pushed under the wind-on spindle. It’s important to keep the film tight as you load it into the take-up spool since any loose film will most like wrap itself around the wind-on spindle and tear or jam the film.
As soon as the film is loaded, close the rear door and wind on the film by firing off a couple of frames. The camera is now ready to use. I was dropped off near the hospital in Aveiro, which is close to my favourite footbridge, the wonderful metal structure in the Parque Infante Dom Pedro. Also in the park is the bandstand that is a regular fixture of my walks around Aveiro and for the first time, I thought I would try a vertical panorama (a vertorama?) Of the tower to one side of the park.
From the Parque I took a walk down to the canals near the centre of Aveiro, and then down to the Yacht Club. From there I walked to the circular footbridge, known in Aveiro as the Ponte do Laço, before heading for the railway station and the journey home. On the way I finished off the film with more views of the canal and the Forum shopping centre, before unloading the camera and dropping the film at the lab.
When the images arrived in my email less than 24 hours later, I was absolutely thrilled with the redscale images from the not-CCCP compliant Horizon 202. Yes, there was banding on some, and others looked a little funny, but on the whole they were awesome. I assume that the not flat horizons were mainly because it was difficult to keep the bubble in the centre of the measure as I was hand-holding the Horizon 202 using my mini tripod as a handle. However, the vertoramas came out perfectly straight. Much better than I had expected.
I’ve posted the whole roll in an album on my Flickr, light leaks and all, if you want to see the rest of the images. In conclusion, I was really happy how the Harman Red redscale film came out. I must admit, I was a quite nervous that I might break the film, especially when a small piece of film with a couple of sprocket holes fell out of the camera as I was trying to load it. I’m really encouraged with these result, though, and I’m already thinking that the next roll will be some Lomochrome Turquoise.
If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow my WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.
29 March 2025 Sony a6700 + 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 https://osm.org/go/x_uMNxFd~?m= https://kerobian.me/2025/04/03/playing-with-a-new-camera/
Today In Labor History April 7, 1870: German-Jewish anarchist and pacifist, Gustav Landauer, was born. He was friends with, and influenced, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He served as the Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction during the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, but was killed when the republic was overthrown. He was also the grandfather of film director, Mike Nichols (The Odd Couple, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate).
Today in Labor History April 6, 1919: The Bavarian Soviet Republic was declared. Novelist, B. Traven (Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), served on its Central Council of Workers, Soldiers and Farmers. The socialist republic was quashed a month later by the Freikorps, which included Rudolf Hess and other future members of the Nazi party.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #soviet #socialism #communism #germany #nazis #btraven #fiction #fascism #writer #author #books @bookstadon
Their adoption of new meanings reflects the gradual progress of Ukrainians in reshaping their views, rethinking their #Soviet legacy, and becoming more open to new phenomena.
Sure, I have no idea what the Soviet-era Armenian art film called The Colour of the Pomegranates is about, but each shot is so carefully and beautifully staged like a photograph or painting that it is hard not to find it intoxicating. Free on YouTube.
Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol were adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,” (made famous by Billie Holiday). The sons maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958.
The Modern School movement began in 1901, in Barcelona, Spain, when Francisco Ferrer opened his Escuela Moderna. It was one of the very first Spanish schools to be fully secular, co-educational, and open to all students, regardless of class. His ideas were so popular that 40 more Modern Schools opened in Barcelona in just a few years, while 80 other schools adopted his textbooks. In 1909, there were mass protests and a General Strike against Spanish intervention in Morocco. The state responded with a week of terror and repression, during which they slaughtered over 600 workers and falsely executed Ferrer as an instigator of the protests. His execution led to worldwide protests. Modern Schools started to pop up outside of Spain, inspired by his original Escuela Moderna, including 20 in the U.S.
For more on the Modern School movement, read my article: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/
![Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen, as they leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury. Ethyl is wearing a bonnet. Julius has glasses, and a thin mustache. By Roger Higgins, photographer from "New York World-Telegram and the Sun" - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c17772, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1309692](https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/246/399/733/234/918/original/1905fd5cf8efe95f.jpg "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen, as they leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury. Ethyl is wearing a bonnet. Julius has glasses, and a thin mustache. By Roger Higgins, photographer from "New York World-Telegram and the Sun" - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c17772, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1309692")
