Povolzhye Famine

Posted on July 27, 2009 by russia

Soon after the Revolution hit Russia the political changes in the country and bad weather in the south of the state led to the Russian famine of 1921, which is better known as Povolzhye famine. It began in early spring in 21 and lasted through 1922, being the most severe thing that ever happened in Russia. More that 5 million people died during the year and a half, some of them passed away because they just had nothing to eat and some of them fell prey to their neighbors, parents or children. To survive in those terrible conditions people ate corpses of their family members, who were killed or just died of starvation. This period was very hard for the region, but it could not happen so, if the Soviet government hadn’t traded the grains to the other European countries, wanting to get more money for its industrialization purposes. Please proceed only if you are ready to see those disturbing documentaries.

Nothing Else Matters | The Last Imperial Dynasty (Romanov)

Menina prodígio Akiane Kramarik

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An Aristocracy Essential To The Constitution Of A State

A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the State, or separable from it. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of to see nothing low and sordid from one s infancy ; to be taught to respect one s self ; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye ; to look early to public opinion ; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the widespread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society ; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse ; to be enabled to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned wherever they are to be found ; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey ; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty ; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity, and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous conse quences ; to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man ; to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby among the first benefactors to mankind ; to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenious art ; to be among rich traders, who, from their success, are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possgss the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice these are the circumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation. The state of civil society, which necessarily generates this aristocracy, is a state of nature ; and much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is, by nature, reasonable ; and he is never perfectly in his natural state but when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated and most predominates. Art is man s nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of nature in formed manhood as in immature and helpless infancy. Men, qualified in the manner I have just described, form in Nature, as she operates in the common modification of society, the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is the soul to the body, without which the man does not exist. To give, therefore, no more importance, in the social order, to such descriptions of men than that of so many units is a horrible usurpation.

Frase: Roger Scruton

Monarquia (Roger Scruton)

MONARQUIA

Se a escolha democrática deve ser racional, ela deve, portanto, ocupar um lugar no contexto das instituições e dos procedimentos que dão voz às gerações ausentes. Essas instituições e procedimentos instigariam nos representantes uma atitude administrativa, por meio da qual as demandas imediatas dos vivos poderiam ser moderadas ou desviadas em benefício do futuro distante da sociedade. Tal instituição é a monarquia, como é concebida tradicionalmente. Não sendo eleito por voz popular, o monarca não pode ser compreendido simplesmente como representante dos interesses da geração atual.

Sobre Harry Potter – Roger Scruton

Um historiador do futuro, olhando para o tempo em que vivemos, certamente identificará J.K. Rowling como uma figura de elevada importância. De uma forma que tinha poucos precedentes desde “Peter Pan” e “O vento dos salgueiros”, ela capturou a imaginação coletiva do povo britânico e preencheu nossas mentes com personagens e atitudes que serviram como um quadro de referência compartilhado. Não apenas em nossos devaneios, mas também em nossas esperanças e intenções.

[...] Há alguns entre meus colegas literários que rejeitam os livros de Harry Potter como literatura inculta, baseada em personagens descartáveis lançados em enredos extravagantes que não vão a lugar nenhum.

Eu não concordo com eles. J.K. Rowling desfruta do tipo de sucesso que apenas um escritor que tocou em sentimentos reais e universais pode alcançar. Ela tem talento para inventar personagens que engajam os sentimentos de leitores comuns e situações em que as emoções do dia-a-dia são, repentinamente e alarmantemente, colocadas em teste. Os enredos dela podem ser extravagantes, mas existem poucas – se houverem – pontas soltas; e tudo corre suavemente, da descrição ao diálogo, e vice-versa.

Ela também tem algo do talento de Dickens quando se fala em nomes. Dumbledore, Voldemort, Malfoy, Hagrid, Hogwarts. Esses e muitos outros são propriedades domésticas como Magwitch, Peggotty e Oliver Twist. De um modo geral, eu daria crédito à J.K. Rowling por dar uma real contribuição à literatura, ainda que literatura infantil.

Frase: Roger Scruton (3)