M.N.: "Who owns the Russian language?"
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M.N.: "Who owns the Russian language?" After the century of bloody revolutions, endless and continuing waves of emigration, Gulag and cultural decline, it is the World that owns the Russian language. Russia just rents it out. - Headlines Review - 10:39 AM 4/24/2016 by Mike Nova (noreply@blogger.com)
M.N.: "Who owns the Russian language?"
After the century of bloody revolutions, endless and continuing waves of emigration, Gulag and cultural decline, it is the World and the Russian speaking community outside Russia that owns and sustains the Russian language and Russian cultural heritage. Russia just rents it out.
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 23 – The bilingual Ukrainian poet Sergey Zhadan, who writes exclusively in Ukrainian, says that Russia “for the first time in its history has lost the monopoly on its own language,” a development that many in Russia find hard to accept and that even more in Ukraine see as a factor in the development of their country.
Aleksey Tsvetkov, a Russian poet, notes that “more than once” he has heard others say the same thing and that Zhadan’s observation is important both in explaining Vladimir Putin’s anger and the implications for Russia of a truly independent Ukraine (inliberty.ru/blog/2303-Komu-prinadlezhit-yazyk).
According to Tsvetkov, the issue of “who owns the Russian language” has always been resolved in Russia by silent acquiescence, with most Russians passively assuming that “the language belonged to the empire and that anyone who uses does so … as it were by a license extended to him from the center.”
Obama’s farewell visit resembled a tour of the wreckage not only of decades of efforts to give the region an anchor of stability but also of his own illusions.
Obama says he is practicing 21st century diplomacy. Maybe. But others, notably in the world’s most unstable and dangerous zone, everyone else is engaged in 19th century diplomacy of the deadliest kind.
- Obama: Ground Troops in Syria ‘Would Be a Mistake’
- Obama Arrives In Germany To Boost Trade
- Russia and China rush to fill Mideast void left by Obama | New York Post
- At least 14 killed as fighting rages in Syria’s Aleppo - The Washington Post
- Lawmakers look to get tough on Russia | TheHill
- The Lawfare Podcast: Cliff Kupchan on Russia in Syria - Lawfare
- Why Did Russia’s Pivot to Asia Fail? | The Diplomat
- Soviet Nash-stalgia
- Window on Eurasia -- New Series: Russia ‘For First Time in Its History’ has Lost Its Monopoly on the Russian Language, Zhadan Says
- Russian Tanker Catches Fire In Caspian Sea, 1 Killed
- Emergency declared after oil spill in Mediterranean | Europe | News | The Independent
- Dutch journalist who criticized Erdogan detained in Turkey: official | Reuters
- NEWS: The World and Global Security Review: » Why Did Russia's Pivot to Asia Fail? - The Diplomat 24/04/16 10:06 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
- NEWS: The World and Global Security Review: US Library of Congress Awaits New Leaderby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News) Sunday April 24th, 2016 at 10:26 AM
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NEWS: The World and Security Review: http://newslinksandbundles.blogspot.com/ The main news stories from the major sources; selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Mike Nova
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A prominent Dutch journalist has been detained by Turkish police, a Dutch official said on Sunday, a week after she wrote a column published in the Netherlands in which she criticized President Tayyip Erdogan for his clampdown on dissent.
US president tells British broadcaster he would not consider sending ground troops into Syria, says there needs to be more than just military effort to solve country’s problems
U.S. President Barack Obama has arrived in Germany to push for a new EU-U.S. trade pact and take part in a summit with key European leaders on issues including security.
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty broadcasts in 28 languages. Most of our programs are available on FM and medium-wave frequencies of local radio stations in the countries of our broadcast area.
Source: Soviet Nash-stalgia
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North Korea is calling its submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test on Saturday a “great success,” while South Korea labeled it a failure. Military analysts, however, are classifying the missile launch as a “successful failure.”
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An opposition monitoring group says at least 14 people, including two young siblings, have been killed in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, as rebels and government forces trade fire.
Blocked from Europe, and unwilling to return home, Afghan migrants in Turkey say life is passing them by.
Pope Francis is praying that a “merciful” God will touch the hearts of those in Syria who have abducted Catholic and Orthodox faithful, including bishops and priests, so that the captives will be released soon.
The fire-worshiping traditions of Zoroastrianism have echoes in the hit HBO series.
He argues that the United States has good reason to talk to and work with Russia on a host of crises, including Syria. While he calls Russia a “revisionist power without a vision,” he also warns that the United States would be foolish to dismiss the country’s concerns out of hand. Instead, American officials should strive to work with Moscow in Syria, where he argues that the national interest requires it, as an anti-Russian obstructionism will benefit neither the United States nor the international communi
Russian aggression will be high on lawmakers’ minds when they mark up a defense bill.
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It was meant to be a farewell visit by a cherished friend heading for retirement. Instead, Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia Tuesday and Wednesday turned into an unwanted call by an uninvited
Russian authorities deny that Hovi Star’s sexual orientation was connected to the incident which took place at passport control.
Russia needs China, but China has options.
A local emergency has been declared on the north-west Italian coast after hundreds of tonnes of oil from a spill at a refinery reached the Mediterranean. There are fears the oil, originally spilled a week ago, might wash up on the beaches of either the Italian or French rivieras just as the tourist season opens. “The situation is complicated. We do not know how much crude could end up in the sea,” a local civil protection officer, Gianni Crivello told local media.
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A fire broke out on a Russian oil tanker on the Caspian Sea, killing one crew member.
US Library of Congress Awaits New Leaderby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
Sunday marks the 216th birthday of the U.S. Library of Congress, an institution that not only protects historic books and papers but preserves the best of American writing, song and film. The collection — the largest in the world, by collection size — is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington. The oldest of the three, the Jefferson Building, is just across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Among its holdings are an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, a Gutenberg Bible, 1 million issues of world newspapers, 3 million sound recordings and at least two famous Stradivarius violins. The library is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. It is in a period of transition, as President Barack Obama's nominee for librarian of Congress awaits the results of her confirmation hearing with the U.S. Senate April 20. If approved, Carla Hayden, currently the head of the public library of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, would take over the leadership of the Library of Congress, becoming the first African-American, and the first woman, to do so. Hayden's goals Hayden has said she would like to make more of the library's resources available online, making it more useful to people in the rural United States who may never get to travel to its headquarters. She has also said she would like to expand the library's outreach to smaller libraries around the country and continue the public and private partnerships that help the library manage its extensive collections. Hayden got a warm welcome at her hearing Wednesday, but confirmation is not guaranteed. The Senate is expected to make a decision on Hayden before its summer recess begins in July. The library has had an interim leader since September, when former Librarian of Congress James Billington stepped down after 38 years on the job. His resignation came just weeks after the library was criticized for widespread computer failures and a watchdog agency's report that the library was wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Venerable institution If confirmed, Hayden will take leadership of an institution whose history goes back to the second president of the United States, John Adams. In 1800, he approved legislation to spend $5,000 of federal money to buy "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress," essentially as research materials for legislation lawmakers might be considering. The first library catalog was published in 1802 and listed 964 volumes and nine maps. The collection has suffered several fires. The original 3,000-volume collection was largely destroyed in 1814 when British troops attacked Washington in what is known in the United States as the War of 1812 — a territory and trade dispute between the British and the new American forces who had won a war of independence from Britain in 1783. Rebuilding collection After the British left Washington, President Thomas Jefferson helped replenish the library in 1815 by selling his entire personal collection — 6,487 books — to the federal library for $23,950. The books were indeed a boost to the fledgling institution, as Jefferson was a scholar on many subjects: law, language, horticulture, philosophy and various branches of science. He is known to have written in a letter to his predecessor, John Adams: "I cannot live without books." Unfortunately, a fire in 1851 destroyed much of his original collection. In 1998, library staffers began a 10-year effort to replace those volumes. By 2008, they had managed to replace all but 300 of the original works. Over the years, the library has become a resource less focused on simply aiding lawmakers with research and more with becoming a cultural repository for American creative works of all kinds, as well as collections of foreign literature. It also serves as the U.S. copyright agency, a research library containing works in 450 languages, and a public institution featuring 22 reading rooms. It sponsors prizes in American fiction and music and is the home of the nation's poet laureate, a post currently held by California writer Juan Felipe Herrera. Today, while the library's three massive buildings may seem an oasis of peace on busy Capitol Hill, it is not fully insulated from contemporary politics. In the past week, a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill blocking the library from changing its subject headings and search terms from "illegal aliens" — a term critics complain is negative and unclear — to "noncitizens." The library's stance on this issue is just one of the many issues the next librarian of Congress will have to confront.
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