151–160 of 210 posts
[1] https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2...
Fun fact: Skype creators Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu also started as game devs in the late Soviet Estonia. A game from 1989, Kosmonaut, is still available on the company's old website, along with other stuff from that era: http://bluemoon.ee/history/index.html
Keeping this old website online is a nice representation of humility and humbleness of the programmers -- and, it also adds a particular sort of quirkiness which is common for many Estonians (okay, I'm biased). Like, these hyper-successful startup founders still seem to be equally proud of those early creations, alongside Skype.
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My mother is Russian. My father is Ukrainian. I never saw any difference between those cultures other than Ukrainian language being a funny version of Russian. I never had any issue communicating with Ukrainian people and then didn't have issues understanding me either. I don't believe there's ANY difference between Russians and Ukrainians. To me it's the one nation and that's about it. Ukrainian-Russian war is a civ…
I am Ukranian and I am strongly disagree with you. First of all don't call Ukranian language funny version of Russian. Second "civil war" - is the war between citizen in the same country. Now answer on 2 questions: - who crossed the border of independed country? - where is the war going on? Yes, there are of course a lot of similarities between Ukranians and people in Russia, as there are between Ukranian and Polish…
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It's hard to describe in writing, but I'll try. There's no "h" sound, like the one where you just exhale, neither in Russian nor Ukrainian. The Russian "г" is hard, like "g" in "get". The Ukrainian equivalent to that is "ґ", but their "г" is something in between , closer to "kh". The fact that many English-language reports about the war do transliterate "г" as "h" in Ukrainian toponyms doesn't help, but it's as close…
The Ukrainian г is a voiced glottal fricative, IPA /ɦ/. This is as the English /h/ sound but voiced. Southern Russian dialects use /ɣ/, a voiced velar fricative, which is pronounced like /ɦ/ but further forward in the throat. East Slavic dialects turn Proto-Slavic /ɡ/ more into /ɦ/ the further south you go.
It should be noted that even in Russian, /ɣ/ used to be the more common pronunciation throughout the Empire until the end of the 19th century or so, due to the influence of Church Slavonic (in which it is also /ɣ/). And it's still preserved in modern standard Russian in some words, such as бог (god) - /boɣ/.
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For me, the surprising part was learning how many Russian people I know have parents or grandparents who were born in Ukraine. I knew that Soviet Ukraine had ~50 million people. Almost 20% of the USSR, and a bit less than France, Italy, or the UK at the time. I knew that Ukraine was one of the most developed and densely populated parts of the USSR, and of the Russian Empire before that. I had some idea how the border…
It's not just about borders. Ukraine has some Russian Empire's/USSR's most fertile land. It was facing serious overpopulation (i.e. peasants with no land to work on) in the end of the 19th century, while Russia had a lot of unpopulated land in Siberia and the Far East, facing imperial Japan and potentially China. Ukrainian peasants were offered free land and transport if they moved east in an attempt to solve these t…
Russia needs people, after all.
Because of the war against Ukraine, I’ve become more aware of Ukraine’s role in the USSR when reading up on history. One thing I’ve noticed is just how much of the most impressive technological feats came from Ukraine.
For me, the surprising part was learning how many Russian people I know have parents or grandparents who were born in Ukraine. I knew that Soviet Ukraine had ~50 million people. Almost 20% of the USSR, and a bit less than France, Italy, or the UK at the time. I knew that Ukraine was one of the most developed and densely populated parts of the USSR, and of the Russian Empire before that. I had some idea how the border…
Because of the war against Ukraine, I’ve become more aware of Ukraine’s role in the USSR when reading up on history. One thing I’ve noticed is just how much of the most impressive technological feats came from Ukraine.
Especially STALKER, given its fanbase. It's a bit soul draining to think that people who played this game are now fighting each other, probably using things they learned from it.
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>"Novgorod was conquered by Moscow" Every territory got conquered at some point. Most "Quite Brutally". This is how current countries were born.
Perhaps, but I was replying to the comment above... Modern Russia is clearly a successor state to the Grand Duchy of Moscow so I don't really see how can it have a bigger claim to the history of Novgorod than to that of Kiev/other ancient city states in the current territory of Ukraine.
Moscow ending up the one who actually pulled it off is kinda ironic, though, given that it was very much an upstart that wasn't even there when Kievan Rus was still a polity united under a single ruler. Goes to show just how effective collaborationism (in this case, with the Mongols) can be to build a power base.
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> We have to agree... No, you just constructed a false dichotomy. Russian Empire and its successor states USSR and Russia is a product of imperialism that was born in Kiev when Grand Prince Vladimir has brought Orthodox Christianity to those lands. This imperialism conquered some territories, lost some territories (Kiev proper), then regained them back and conquered a lot more, then splintered. The current war is the…
It’s a false dichotomy only if you indeed believe that Russia has “created” Ukraine and that Ukrainians are not a real nation. Russia has as much right to claim Ukraine as Ukraine - Russia. None.
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The association "USSR = Russians" is part of the systematic attempt by the soviet regime at cultural (and sometimes literal) genocide. The 90th anniversary of the Holodomor was just two weeks ago.
Ironically, I mainly see foreigners drawing that false equivalence, and am always puzzled by it, as it seems to be far more persistent than anything constructed by the Soviets themselves. So I don't really think it's rooted in Soviet propaganda, it's always been there, even during early USSR which was worshipping the International. The perception in the US was especially persistent, you can see this in every media ar…