Personifications of Russia

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Since medieval times personifications of Russia are traditionally feminine, and most commonly are maternal. [1]

Contents

A cover of Sentry [ru ] magazine, approx. 1932, depicting Russia as a woman in a traditional costume liberated by a warrior in medieval armor, trampling the Bolshevik flag. Thecristisrizenoldrussiancivilwarposter.jpg
A cover of Sentry  [ ru ] magazine, approx. 1932, depicting Russia as a woman in a traditional costume liberated by a warrior in medieval armor, trampling the Bolshevik flag.

Most common terms for national personification of Russia are:

National personification fictional character used to represent a country and its people.

A national personification is an anthropomorphism of a nation or its people. It may appear in editorial cartoons and propaganda.

Russia transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia

Russia, officially the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is by a considerable margin the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with about 146.77 million people as of 2019, including Crimea. About 77% of the population live in the western, European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world and the second largest city in Europe; other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.

Russian language East Slavic language

Russian is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991. Although nearly three decades have passed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian is used in official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states, as well as in Israel and Mongolia.

Romanization of Russian Romanization of the Russian alphabet

Romanization of Russian is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin script.

Notice that in the Russian language, the concept of motherland is rendered by two terms: "родина" ( tr. rodina), literally, "place of birth" and "отчизна" ( tr. otchizna), literally "fatherland".

Harald Haarmann and Orlando Figes see the goddess Mokosh a source of the "Mother Russia" concept. [2] [3]

Harald Haarmann is a German linguist and cultural scientist who lives and works in Finland. Haarmann studied general linguistics, various philological disciplines and prehistory at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra and Bangor. He obtained his PhD in Bonn (1970) and his habilitation in Trier (1979). He taught and conducted research at a number of German and Japanese universities and is a member of the Research Centre on Multilingualism in Brussels. He is Vice-President of the Institute of Archaeomythology and director of its European branch.

Orlando Figes British historian

Orlando Guy Figes ( is a British historian and writer known for his works on Russian and European history. He is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Mokosh deity

Mokosh is a Slavic goddess mentioned in the Primary Chronicle, protector of women's work and women's destiny. She watches over spinning and weaving, shearing of sheep, and protects women in childbirth. Mokosh is the Great Mother.

Usage

During The October Revolution and The Civil War, the image was in the propaganda of the supporters of the White movement, interpreting the struggle against the Bolsheviks as a battle with "aliens" as "oppressors of Mother Russia".[ citation needed ]

October Revolution Bolshevik uprising during the Russian Revolution of 1917

The October Revolution, officially known in Soviet historiography as the Great October Socialist Revolution and commonly referred to as the October Uprising, the October Coup, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolshevik Coup or the Red October, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November 1917. The Bolshevik Party and the left fraction of Socialist Revolutionary Party - a fraction calling to stop the war and land to the peasants with overwhelming support from the countryside - actually had a majority in the Russian population.

Russian Civil War multi-party war in the former Russian Empire, November 1917-October 1922

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the two Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. The two largest combatant groups were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism, economic capitalism and alternative forms of socialism, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists and non-ideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites. Eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the former Allied military forces from the World War and the pro-German armies. The Red Army eventually defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak to the east in Siberia in 1919. The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two more years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. The war ended in 1923 in the sense that Bolshevik communist control of the newly formed Soviet Union was now assured, although armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934. There were an estimated 7,000,000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen.

White movement anti-Bolshevik movement

The White movement and its military arm the White Army, also known as the White Guard, the White Guardsmen or simply the Whites, was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the Communist Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War (1917–1922/1923) and to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations insurrectionists both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II (1939–1945).

Statues

During the Soviet era, many statues of Mother Motherland were built, most to commemorate the Great Patriotic War. These include: Rodina-mat' zovot

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Рябов О. В. (1999). Русская философия женственности (XI—XX века). Иваново. pp. 35–46.
  2. ↑ Harald Haarmann, The soul of Mother Russia: Russian Symbols and Pre-Russian Cultural Identity, ReVision, June 22, 2000 (retrieved May 2, 2016)
  3. ↑ Figes, Orlando (2002). Natasha's Dance: a cultural history of Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books. p. 321. ISBN   9780805057836. [...] the goddess known as Mokosh, from whom the myth of 'Mother Russia' was conceived.
  4. ↑ Казань. Храм на шести сотках — Ольга Юхновская."Не йог, не маг и не святой" — Российская Газета — Этот объект не включен в программу подготовки к казанскому миллениуму. Но его, без сомнений, будут показывать гостям города как редкую достопримечательность. Создатель множества памятников, художник из пригорода Казани Ильдар Ханов к тысячелетию столицы Татарстана строит на своем участке храм всех религий. В свое время творчество Ханова высоко оценил Святослав Рерих
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-01-24. Retrieved 2012-11-02.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)

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