#nazira

[shellibisshe]

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER - OUTWORLD OCS

enid belongs to @bloodofvalyria, inara belongs to @loriane-elmuerto, nazira and su belong to @jendoe, odette belongs to @perpetuagf, vyllaki belongs to @ghostfvcker, and xinbei belongs to @bloodskinandteeth

[template by @unholymilf] [icons]

tag list! check out this post if you would like to be added! @malefiquinn @risingsh0t @kyber-infinitygems @gwynbleidd @captastra @swanfey @statichvm @xtinafrye @calenhads @poetikat @nonfunctioning-queer @dickytwister @inafieldofdaisies

#mortal kombat #hi. look at them #also sorry yall ur gonna have to click on the images #my edits #happy early birthday aj btw #enid malice #inara daiyu #nazira akhmet #odette haliçi #su ming tian #vyllaki nanoya #tatiana “xinbei” reyoh #if theres spelling mistakes i literally do not need to know #oc: venera mai #oc: sayuri anam

[shepard-you-are-in-my-chair]

Dragon's Dogma II

Tried to my make my BG3 OC Ardreyth Mizzrym with the DD2 character editor...

I think I have to wait for the next oppertunity to change hair etc. :D

#personal series #dd2 #dragons dogma 2 #mydd2screenshots #psedit #oc: nazira

[acridtongue]

CLOSED FOR: @stcnehearts: nazira! LOCATION: gravity nightclub

by no means did eunha have a shred of corrective power at his job. all his responsibility entailed was: ensure the clubbers had a good time, convince another round of shots, sweet talk a little too close to an ear for a tip and maybe locate a suspicious figure or two. that's it. however, when it came to nazira ... he finds himself trapped in situations he'd rather avoid at this employment. annoyance seeps into his bones at the sight of a heated exchanged between her and a customer. typically, it was the men in particular that started the problems or blacked out college kids. but when he saw nazira involved? who the hell knows with her temper.

still, he's weaving through the bumps and grinds and flashing lights to involve himself. a vague moment of deja vu hits eunha like a train ; he's seen this customer before. they were definitely the start of the problem — the already lit flame. nazira, the match. regardless of the friction sparked between the coworkers, he'd take her side half the time. " you know ... this is the part where you leave. " he says from behind nazira, look in his eye about as sharp as some of the stilettos he's seen. maybe it's realization who he is, maybe it's the general aura eunha exudes ( though, he hardly thinks he looks intimidating right now ), but he leaves. belligerently swearing, shoving past uninvolved parties. nazira gains eunha's rapt attention now. " so, the fuck started that? "

#* EUNHA / interactions #* EUNHA ft nazira #lmk if this works for u hehe

[warystares]

✘ CLOSED / ft. nazira el-khoury ( @stcnehearts ) at gravity nightclub

FOR ALL THAT THERE IS SOMETHING to be said about arriving anywhere ❛ fashionably late ❜ ― and there IS, thank you very much, it's an unwritten rule amongst anyone that cares to truly be anyone and a rule that angel cardona abides by religiously ― there are always exceptions to be made, particularly when they're to her benefit. for instance, angel wouldn't be caught DEAD showing up early for work if she didn't already know for certain that she'd be able to charm the bartender into letting her behind the counter for a little pre-shift PRE-GAME. but here she is ! and all it takes is a pleading flutter of dark lashes, a few strategically-placed dots of pheromone oil ( a love potion in its own right ) and a promise for a favor angel never intends to see through. manicured hands sort through glasses in search of their favorite and angel is already considering which cocktail she'll be mixing herself tonight when she feels a pair of eyes on her and actions pause as she lifts an expectant stare toward nazira, hands still hovering mid-air.

( FIRE & ICE , the pair of them, a reflection of the drastic hot & cold that permeates their relationship ; neither could be trusted not to hide a BLADE behind the smiles they wear within these... what, round walls ? ew. fucking architecture, ruining her point. whatever. )

angel blinks, taps fingernails filed into LETHAL points and polished crimson red impatiently against the glass. ❝ what ? you want one too or something ? speak up, honey, i'm trying to have time for a refill before girardo comes back and ruins my bartender barbie dreams. ❞

#✘ angel cardona | conversation #✘ angel / nazira 001 #i hope this is okay !! #lmk if you need me to change anything ofc

[hcavysoulss]

event starter for @stcnehearts, level two / ft. ximena + nazira.

"fan of mythology?" she asked, as she looked down to the other's bracelet. the harpy. a bird with the head of a woman. interesting choice. she figured they would've picked it for the significance of it's duty. either doing the bidding of zues or the fact they were carriers of evil to the underworld. a curious thing to pick. but, alas she was the chariot. a sign of war and destruction. "fan of mythology?" she asked, as she looked down to the other's bracelet. the harpy. a bird with the head of a woman. interesting choice. she figured they would've picked it for the significance of it's duty. either doing the bidding of zues or the fact they were carriers of evil to the underworld. a curious thing to pick. but, alas she was the chariot. a sign of war and destruction.

#ximena: threads. #ximena. #ft. nazira

[murdcrofcrows]

who: @stcnehearts ( nazira )

where: gravity nightclub

he'd initially gone there to drop some things off for angel, but stayed for a drink and to try and shoot his shot with someone. maybe just get attention, he liked attention. never seemed to matter if it was good or bad - as long as it was on him. besides, everyone learned to love him eventually? how could they not? the thought made him laugh quietly into his drink. when he spotted one of the dancers who he'd seen before, if he remembered right she wasn't impressed with the group he'd come around with last time. so naturally, this time, he grooved on over to her. "yo, what is up?" he wasn't exactly flashing the best dance moves but he was getting into it. "got a dance for me, or what?"

#bash | interactions #bash x nazira 001. #idk man idk

[yourgirlsfriday]

“Beachball-y belly.” Wynne @ anyone

"It is, look at you!" Nazira smiles brightly at Wynne. "Have you been eating plenty of bone broths or adding collagen to your supplements like you should? It'll help with keeping your skin from stretching too tight and itching. You'll still have the marks, but they may be less noticeable."

#c. nazira #i. nazira + wynne #( mail | a n s w e r e d ) #( nephilimofexhilaration | a n s w e r e d ) #marvariants

[dare-g]

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996)

#chronicle of a disappearance #elia suleiman #nazira suleiman #fuad suleiman #ali suliman #juliet mazzawi #fawaz eilemi #leonid alexeenko #talks

[skwonkk]

EPISODE 1

(THEME MUSIC) ♪NAZIRA THE STIR-CRAZY INDIVIDUAL♪

[SCENE OPENS. The titular NAZIRA is hunched over the KITCHEN SINK, either laughing or crying.]

NAZIRA: WHAT WAS THAT. Why were the walls so weird? That’s the worst wallpaper I’ve seen in my life! Oh, why was it like that? No wallpaper on Earth should look like that!

[THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD APPEARS BEHIND HER. It is hideously airbrushed in a 90s mixed media style, and it sneers.]

THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD: So upset over a wallpaper? You won’t survive a day seeing what some people do to cheese!

[Next to THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD appears MR. MOUND, the mound whose eyes are bloodshot but always smiling.]

MR. MOUND: As if cheese has got anything to do with that abomination! [GIGGLES] Oh, that was some of the worst wallpaper, all right!

ALL THREE CHARACTERS, IN UNISON: It was a hideous shade of red that would make anyone lose their appetite! Every crack in it was filled with a horrid specimen of termites that probably aren’t supposed to naturally be found in this country, let alone this planet! The termites crawled into the shape of an abstract face, and moved together around the mouth, making it look as if it was laughing! Oh, what a horrid sight to behold!

[They fall over onto the floor.]

THE MAN: QUIT YOUR NONSENSE!

THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD: And why should we listen to THE MAN, huh?

THE MAN: (ignoring THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD) That wallpaper... psh! It didn’t exist! You’re just hallucinating it! It’s definitely not real! Ha ha ha!

[THE MAN suddenly gets dizzy. MR. MOUND situates himself beneath THE MAN, as a makeshift fainting couch.]

THE MAN: (clearly being held up by MR. MOUND) YOU’RE NOT REAL!

THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD: Nobody in this house takes you seriously, by the way.

THE MAN and MR. MOUND: Who, me?! [They look at each other.] No, you!

[When they look back, NAZIRA has disappeared.]

THE GLAUCOUS CLOUD: No one can watch over you now.

[Enter MOTHER. THE MAN falls silent in terror.]

[MOTHER smiles softly as powerful flames swirl around her.]

#Script #Nazira the Stir-Crazy Individual

[bachpansivsagar]

Bachpan Play school in Sivsagar, Assam aims to work upon a research-driven curriculum & use of technical aids to cater to nursery school needs of kids. Bachpan Pre school in Sivsagar, Assam consists of a child-oriented environment with trained teachers for fruitful kindergarten experience. We have a multilayer teaching & facilitation programme at Play group, Nursery, LKG & UKG. We have so far taught & nurtured more than five lakh kids of 2-5 years of age. Our technology aided & latest teaching tools like Smart Class, Talking Pen, Robotics, Virtual Reality & Pritab make preschool life of a child unforgettable & cherishing. We, at Bachpan, endeavor to take regular steps towards developing an exceptional Kindergarten set up & grow in the area of top preschool education provider.

#Preschool in Nazira Sivasagar #Best play school in Nazira #Nursery school in Nazira

[sartorialadventure]

Hi! I read an interesting article and I wondered if you'd feature some of the designers and dress of the World Nomad Fashion Festival?

The article

Oo--I've posted photos before from the World Nomad Games, but I didn't know they had a fashion festival!!

^Members of the Tyvan Folk Dance Ensemble of Adygea perform in clothing by designer Kima Dongak

"The World Nomad Fashion Festival is the first and only project in Central Asia and some European countries that glorifies the civilisation of nomads," the event's founder, Nazira Begim, said. 

More 2022 photos

See more photos from the 2021 event below the cut!

^ designer Kima Dongak, 2021

^ designer Kima Dongak, 2021

^ designer Kima Dongak, 2021

^2021

^A model displays an outfit from the collection by Kyrgyz designer Cholponay Almaz Kyzy

^ designer Elmira Davletova, 2021

^ Kyrgyz designers Nazira Aidarova and Zukhra Kemelbekova, 2021

^ Kyrgyz designer Cholponay Almaz Kyzy

^ Kyrgyz designer Cholponay Almaz Kyzy

#kyrgyzstan #kyrgyz fashion #couture #haute couture #dance costume #costumes #costuming #headdress #men's fashion #central asia #central asian fashion #tyvan #tuvan #hats #russia #russian fashion

[eerna]

Radu and Nazira made me realize the untapped potential of WLW/MLM marriage of convenience setups. they love each other so much and can't stop platonically holding hands, kissing, hugging, and giving each other massages after a long day of espionage. sometimes a family is a woman and her wife and her husband and his husband and their collective child

#idk why i love it so much when characters who aren't in love call each other ''husband'' and ''wife''. i don't KNOW #i liked book 1 best but these 2 were the highlight of books 2 and 3 fr #eernatalk #i refuse to make a liveblog tag sorry. this is about and i darken

[alfedena]

Drawings by Palestinian children presented in Beirut in 1980.

Palestinian Sun

Commando, Faten

Dream, Nazira Assraf

On the Way to Liberation, Aziza

#palestine

[wrvtchedhearts]

@stcnehearts ft. Nazira @ the streets

"Ah, you've come to finish me off, have you? Or to beg for a rematch. I cannot recall, was it I or was it you who won last time, bhai?" He smiled brightly. Veer had very little to fear. Not their own life, that was for sure, they gambled with that too often. And the cash currently in their pocket spoke only of a good day. But to con a fellow conner, that wasn't as easy. Chances were he'd never get his chance to defeat Nazira in a battle of wits. So he'd annoy, his best quality.

#thread.nazira #veerthreads #//i hope this works! #//have some unhinged energy

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: Crossed out

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet!

I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of this weekly dispatch from Meduza that brings you feature stories from across Eurasia. If you missed last week’s long read about the trials and tribulations of Belarusians living in exile, you can now read it on Meduza’s website. That’s also where new readers can join The Beet’s mailing list. We’re approaching our next subscriber milestone, so if you could help us cross the finish line, we’d really appreciate it.  

Over the summer, I started coming across media reports about monuments going missing in cities across Russia. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, memorial plaques dedicated to the victims of Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror were pried from the walls of the buildings where they last lived. A plaque commemorating Anna Akhmatova, a poet famous for chronicling the terror, disappeared from the defunct Kresty Prison. Much larger monuments to the victims of repressions, deportations, and war were also destroyed and disappeared, including in far-flung cities like Tomsk and Yakutsk. 

In the case of the Akhmatova memorial, a local lawyer named Vladimir Filatov later came forward and handed the plaque over to the police, who reportedly passed it along to the prison authorities for safekeeping. Ironically, Filatov told journalists that he took down the plaque because he feared it would be destroyed. “It represents great meaning, great value, and historical memory in an era of globalism,” the lawyer said. “I absolutely would not want anyone to break this monument with their filthy hands.” 

Curiously, it’s not just Stalin’s bloody legacy being erased from public view. Back in June, a memorial to the Polish exiles killed during the 1866 Baikal Insurrection was destroyed in Rechka Mishikha, one of several tiny villages perched on the southern shore of Lake Baikal that make up the Tankhoy settlement. Although it’s unclear who was responsible, it turns out that residents had been complaining about the monument for years. And their efforts to campaign against it offer a fascinating insight into how the Kremlin’s memory politics foster grassroots support for rewriting history. So, for this week’s issue of The Beet, Meduza news editor Sasha Slobodov has translated a nuanced investigation into the controversy, first published in Russian by the Siberia-based outlet People of Baikal. The following English-language translation has been lightly edited and abridged for context and clarity. Enjoy! 

Crossed out

On the shore of Lake Baikal, a memorial to Tsarist-era Polish exiles meets an unfortunate end

By Alina Golovina for People of Baikal

A metal marker stands in a small clearing on the shores of Lake Baikal, where the Bystraya River flows into the world’s deepest lake. The riverbank is overgrown with bushes, but there’s a trampled path coming from the nearest village. The locals come here to fish hoping to catch omul, a type of whitefish, though there are barely any left in the lake.

Apparently, this is where Tsarist troops fought rebelling Polish exiles in the summer of 1866. The Poles killed in the short-lived revolt were buried in a mass grave not far from Lake Baikal — and the metal marker supposedly indicates its location. The village of Mishikha is just a few hundred meters away. 

“We’re removed from civilization altogether,” says Rakhimzhan Suleimanov, waving his hands expressively. “We don’t have schools, daycares, stores — nothing. We used to have everything, but now there’s nothing.”

Suleimanov, a 66-year-old Tatar who goes by “Uncle Roma,” came to Buryatia in the early 1970s to serve in the USSR’s Automotive Troops. He met his wife Nazira here, a fellow Tatar whom everyone in the village called “Natalia.” Her family came to Buryatia even earlier to escape famine in the Volga region. Two years ago, Nazira fell ill with the coronavirus and was shuttled back and forth to a hospital 100 kilometers (62 miles) away. She died a month later at a hospital in the regional capital, Ulan-Ude. 

Mishikha is one of six small villages on the shores of Lake Baikal with a combined population of about 1,000 people, 900 of whom live in the main village of Tankhoy. The others are home to just a few dozen people each. After train service here stopped in 2013, life in the villages practically reached a standstill. 

The metal marker shows where the original monument to the exiled Poles used to be, Uncle Roma says confidently. “But as far as I can remember, there was never a cross here,” he continues, adding that sometimes fresh flowers appeared. His neighbors told him they were laid there in memory of the dead. 

That this could be a mass grave site doesn’t surprise Uncle Roma. He recalls what his late wife’s elderly grandfather always told him: “Son, under every railroad tie here, there’s a human life.” 

‘Separatists, insurgents, and rebels’

After the January Uprising of 1863–1864 (an unsuccessful rebellion against Russian rule in partitioned Poland), the Tsarist regime exiled between 18,000 and 22,000 people to Siberia. 

In 1866, a group of exiles assigned to construct the Circumbaikal Highway plotted another rebellion. They had hatched an adventurous plan: disarm the guards, ride on horseback to the Chinese border, and, from there, board English ships and return to their homeland — Poland. 

“March to Siberia” (1866) by Polish painter Artur Grottger depicts the deportation of Polish rebels after the January Uprising

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN POZNAŃ / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

On June 24, 1866, several dozen exiles working on the road near Kultuk (a village in the Irkutsk region) left their posts, captured weapons and horses, and set off eastward along Lake Baikal. The mutiny was supposed to grow into an uprising of Polish prisoners throughout eastern Siberia. But a few days later, Russian troops caught up with the rebels at the Bystraya River, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Kultuk. A battle ensued, and 15 to 30 people died. 

The surviving rebels were put on trial and publicly executed in Irkutsk, their bodies buried in an old industrial area on the city’s outskirts.

“Of course, from a 19th-century point of view, they were separatists, insurgents, and rebels. In the Soviet context, it was a struggle for your freedom and ours — a struggle against Tsarism. And if you’re looking at it from a modern point of view, then it’s a completely different situation. Right now, everything is tense and strained,” historian Evgeny Semyonov carefully explains.

Semyonov is the deputy chair of Nadzieja, a Polish cultural organization founded in Buryatia in 1993. Today, it has 37 members. “We’re Russian citizens, but we preserve and remember our roots,” explains the organization’s chair, Yulia Petelina. 

According to Semyonov, the executed Polish prisoners were buried in a mass grave marked with a cross, as shown in a surviving photograph from the late 19th century. However, as one local told him, the remains were reburied in another location after the waters of Lake Baikal flooded the burial site and washed the bones away. Scientists conducting field research last documented the grave’s location in 1973. They photographed a mound where the rebels may have been buried, but it’s hard to tell its exact location. Buryatia’s list of cultural heritage sites catalogs the mass grave as a “lost object” located 300 meters (328 yards) east of Mishikha station, near the railway track. 

In 2001, the Polish authorities helped finance the construction of a memorial cross in Rechka Mishikha, a village five kilometers (three miles) from the battle’s presumed location. The cross stood above a marble plaque affixed to a concrete mound covered in large stones. According to Semyonov, the monument’s location was “purely symbolic” and in no way connected to the site of the mass grave. 

‘A provocative act’

The memorial cross annoyed locals almost immediately. 

Every year, in early July, a delegation from the Polish cultural organization would visit the cross for a commemorative ceremony and hold a memorial dinner at a nearby campsite. Locals would peek through the fence to see the spread. They describe the memorial dinners as ��real feasts” and claim that the Poles who came from Ulan-Ude drank a lot. 

Evgenia Shelest, a local councilwoman in Rechka Mishikha, says she began receiving complaints about the monument immediately after she became a deputy. “I’d be walking with my kids, and locals would come up to me and say, ‘Evgenia, we don’t like that it’s still standing.’” 

Most of the complaints came from the village’s summer residents, Shelest explains. Only 13 people live in Rechka Mishikha all year round, six of whom belong to the deputy’s family. The summer residents own different types of homes, but they all have extra space to accommodate relatives from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other major cities who come to vacation on Lake Baikal. The land here doesn’t come cheap — a dilapidated, 30-square-meter (300-square-foot) house far from the lake costs around $20,000. 

“Every year, they [the Poles] come here to celebrate and lay wreaths! We went to [Lake] Baikal, looked, and there were nuns, the cross, and music was playing from a speaker. Our eyes bulged: Who gave them the right?” recalls Lyudmila, a retiree from Ulan-Ude who owns a dacha closer to the highway. 

“Of course, it’s very convenient for them: a federal highway, a gorgeous, quiet place. It’s as if we’re being pushed to the side, even though this is our land,” Lyudmila fumes.

In 2021, locals discovered that the Poles had come to pay their respects not in July, as usual, but late in the evening on Victory Day, May 9, when Russians celebrate the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. They noticed the fresh wreaths at the memorial cross on the morning of May 10. “We have our holiday, and they have their memorial day. They came deliberately to make a point. Even to me, this felt unpleasant, like a provocative act,” Shelest recalls. 

The memorial cross in 2013

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

After Victory Day in 2021, residents began their campaign against the Polish memorial in earnest and officially appealed to their local deputy. Lyudmila wrote a letter arguing that “Poland is our enemy, an unfriendly state, and nobody shot any Poles in [this] village.” At least 15 people signed the letter, she says.

“Before that, people had only told me verbally that they didn’t like that it [the memorial] looked like a grave. They said that this is a place for people to vacation. And when Russophobic hysteria kicked off in Poland, the patriotic feelings people already had started coming back up. They started to remember their fathers and grandfathers, who fought in the Great Patriotic War — people started to feel a sense of injustice,” Shelest says. 

The councilwoman brought the appeal to the Kabansky district administration, which initiated an inquiry into Nadzieja, but the Polish cultural organization had allegedly changed its address, and district officials couldn’t even find its phone number. (The organization’s chair, Yulia Petelina, says she never received any communications.) In the end, the case fell by the wayside.

Smashed to pieces

At least two memorials commemorating Poles and Lithuanians have been destroyed in the Irkutsk region since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May, someone dismantled a Polish monument and a Lithuanian cross commemorating the victims of Joseph Stalin’s 1937 terror interred at a mass grave site in Pivovarikha. And in the Ziminsky district, a court ordered the demolition of a monument at a local cemetery that bore the names of 107 victims of Stalinist repressions. According to Evgeny Semyonov, local activists have also been campaigning for years to remove Polish graves from a cemetery in Buryatia’s Tunkinsky district. 

In early June 2022, while sunbathing on the shore of Lake Baikal with her neighbors, Lyudmila noticed that the memorial cross had been wrapped in a Polish flag. Enraged, she went over to the mound and, grasping the wooden cross, ripped down the red-and-white banner and threw it in the trash, along with a wreath bedecked with ribbons and inscriptions in Polish. However, she didn’t write any more letters of complaint.

One year later, on June 1, 2023, residents of Rechka Mishikha and neighboring Mishikha organized a gathering. Only a dozen or so people came, Uncle Roma recalls. As usual, they complained about the poorly cleared roads in the winter — and about the Polish cross. Tankhoy settlement head Marina Titoruk says locals again expressed their discontent over the Victory Day incident two years prior. “What disregard for our victory! It’s tasteless, [the Poles] are doing this on purpose to upset us and demean the memory of our ancestors,” locals reportedly told Titoruk. 

A wooden Orthodox Cross on the shore of Lake Baikal. A Rechka Mishikha resident put up this cross in 2001, in response to the installation of the Polish memorial.

PEOPLE OF BAIKAL

Almost immediately after the gathering, the cross disappeared: Someone chopped it off at the base. All that remained was the concrete mound and scattered wreaths. 

Semyonov says he had feared the cross would be vandalized, but he never thought it would be destroyed completely. “It was a fact of history. These things should still be noted somehow. But now this memorial site in Mishikha wasn’t just ruined, it was smashed to pieces. Someone probably thought it was an appropriate response to the way they treat Soviet monuments in Poland,” the historian says. 

Since 2016, Poland has permitted the demolition of Communist-era monuments under a law prohibiting the promotion of totalitarian ideology. This process accelerated after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, Karol Nawrocki, said the authorities planned to tear down 60 monuments to Soviet troops. Four memorials to Red Army soldiers were demolished that October. 

‘These bastards want to finish off Russia’

While some locals are glad the Polish monument was destroyed, others appear indifferent. Only Marina Titoruk openly condemns it. “We have a bloody history, but it’s ours, so why pull the wool over people’s eyes and say something didn’t happen?” she asks rhetorically. 

“It bothered us morally! Because somewhere deep within Russia, there’s a little village where they come hanging their Polish flags under our noses,” Lyudmila says, cursing. “There were absolutely no Poles here. There were no battles! We’re all outraged!” 

While Lyudmila concedes that the Polish exiles did exist and that many of them did good things — teaching in schools, working as doctors — she insists that “peace is impossible now.” “Everyone here hates the Poles. The memory of our fathers has risen from the depths of our souls. These bastards want to finish off Russia.”

A discarded wreath from the destroyed memorial in Rechka Mishikha

PEOPLE OF BAIKAL

Shelest doesn’t believe that local retirees could have sawed off the cross. In all likelihood, it was soldiers on leave from the frontline, she speculates. The local deputy adds that she doesn’t oppose the monument but thinks it should stand “in the historically accurate place” — namely, the neighboring village of Mishikha. 

Titoruk also thinks the monument should be restored but doesn’t know where to put it.

“We’ll set it up in your village,” she tells Uncle Roma. 

But Uncle Roma waves his hands and says his village doesn’t want the monument either. At the same time, he admits he was impressed when he first saw it. “I thought, look at that. How beautiful: a marble slab and a huge cross. I forget what it said. Something like — they fought for life, and they were heroes, I think.” Asked if the memorial bothered him, Uncle Roma replies, “Nah.” 

At first, Lyudmila theorizes that the Poles demolished the monument themselves. (Allegedly, the marble plaque wasn’t broken but carefully removed.) But then she gets heated and suggests that “partisans came and chopped it down.” The concrete mound will also be removed, she adds. 

“An excavator will be put to work, and it will be demolished. We want to put up something athletic — for working out,” she says, vigorously moving her arms as if she were on an exercise machine. “That’s better than crosses, especially Polish ones.” 

Asked how she would feel if the monument were to be restored, Lyudmila grows silent and then turns serious. “We’ll blow it up in the night,” she replies. 

Thanks for reading! 

To learn more about memory politics in Russia, check out this episode of The Naked Pravda about the Kremlin’s new history textbook and what schools are teaching students about the invasion of Ukraine. Until next time,

Eilish

[yourgirlsfriday]

#( i am the sense of excited a d v e n t u r e | nazira lilitu ) #( i am the sense of w o n d e r o u s contentment | norine lilitu ) #( the s n e a k y sister | delta grady ) #( the a l p h a of ilsa nublar | blue grady )