The Rise of the Slavs

 Salvete Omnes,

a short entry - Razib Khan talks to Peter Nimitz about the rise of the Slavs-  from the Proto-Indoeuropeans to the medieval Slavic explossion all over Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. 

Through the more than a 1000 years of war against the Germanic invaders, and the 500 years of wars against the Turkic-Tatar nomads and the Ottoman empire, until the conquests of Vienna 1683, capture of Crimea in 1770s and liberation of the southern Slavs in the XIX century. 

Finally, until the victories of 1944-45 wiped out 1000  years of the German Drang nach Osten.

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Mucha's Slavic epic 

enjoy

Valete

Justinian I in art

 Salvete Omnes,

 

 

let us corral some imagery depicting or thought to depict   Byzantine emperor Justinian I (died 565 AD in Constantinople ) 

 

 

who in his long days of rule(started in the spring of 527AD)  saw many wars and victories, calamities, defeats, reversals of fortune (especially his great general Belisarius) and successes, including the coming of the Slavs from the vastness of Eastern European plains and mountains.

 

including the famous Column of Justinian I

and more mosaics

ps

Osprey Military Publishing has a number of books on the Byzantine period - like this on the clothing from the Justinian period, but I still like the Montvert Publications book from 1993 -  Justinian's Wars by Roy Boss.
Valete

Grant's Monument

Salvete Omnes,
 
I just learned that the monument to our president Ulysses S. Grant  in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park was damaged and toppled by the rioting mobs of barbarians, ignorant products of US public education  and the sworn enemies of beauty, harmony and Western society.

I have seen enough ignorance  towards the art and beauty in America (just look at any statistics on how many people graduate the high school, youngsters without any art or history or culture schooling, and a large percentage those graduating have no reading or comprehension skills, no knowledge of history nor poetry nor aesthetics), but this is the newest low.
It is a very direct assault on the Anglo-Saxon or WASP-controlled America, and myself, being a Polish Slav look at this barbarity with revulsion while recalling how the Nazi Germans would destroy historic monuments and our cultural heritage in Poland 1939-45, how the Soviets would do the same destruction to our cultural heritage 1939-41, and again post 1945 in the greater Polish territories. Soviet Union rule over Poland ended in 1989 but Polish people still live in the shadow of this ruthless destruction, and falsification of our history and of culture and heritage.
Nota bene look at our ethnic Indo-European group name - Slav - and it is interesting that  the word 'slave' comes from the word 'Slav'  in the English language - eg  etymology: slave comes from the ''Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus, from Sclāvus, Slav (from the widespread enslavement of captured Slavs in Europe and Middle East'' between VI century through XVII century).

So to lighten the spirit let us look at some of the pictures from the Wiki Commons gallery showing horses from the tremendously glorious, monumental and dynamic Grant's Memorial at the US capital.
The monument was created and executed by architect Edward Pearce Casey and sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady  between 1902-22 (Shrady died two weeks - 12th April 1922-  before the monument was unveiled on April 27, 1922 ). It may be of interst that maestro Shrady took many years of studying horses including dissecting them, like the famous horse painter from the XVIII century Britain -George Stubbs.


 

 






 
Valete

Viking and Slavic Ornamental Design vol. 3 from WHP & Triglav

Salvete Omnes,
 
Winged Hussar Publishing LLC in cooperation with Triglav from Szczecin, Poland, publish the 3rd volume of the Viking and Slavic Ornamental Design - fantastic reference material and study of the designs obtained from archaeological artefacts and iconographic materials, collected during research trips to museums and sites ranging from Ireland to the eastern Slavic lands of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
 
 
Written by Igor Gorewicz,
 here at the 2018 Wolin Slav and Viking Festival

and illustrated by Marek Piłaszewicz, it is a treasure of imagery from the Viking and Pagan Slav period - be it for a reenactor costumes and equipment, tattoo idea or drawing exercise etc.
there are some sample pages kindly provided by the publishers


 Slavic horseman reconstructed - Wolin Festival 2019


photos from the various Wolin S&V Festival taken from Wiki Commons - here-
nota bene Slavic music bands at the festival- eg Javaryna & Dziwoludy.


Valete