#in leningrad ofc

[frogchiro]

I hear it is time to spread the word of our lord and savior Tachanka? 👀

link: (https://rainbowsix.fandom.com/wiki/Tachanka_(Siege) Context of link: Just the wiki page of R6 operator Tachanka.

But I wanna highlight a few things!!!

Alexsandr Senaviev was born on November 3rd in Leningrad, Russia to a military family. At the age of eighteen, Senaviev was conscripted into military service just as the Soviet Union was ending its operations in Afghanistan. Upon the dissolution of his draft, Senaviev opted to enlist full time. He was part of the wrestling league, where his formidable frame and match strategy earned him accolades. 

Alexsandr Senaviev has a boisterous sense of humor with a booming laugh. He can be quite blunt, but without the intent to offend

Senaviev's younger sister is a doctor and our discussion had barely started when he was showing me pictures of her in her doctor's smock, along with a dozen more photos of his nieces and nephews and his own kids. […] He and his sister grew up in a strict household without many things, which is why he makes a great effort to enjoy life. They both make sure that their kids are loved and raised with laughter. At the same time, he doesn't like to buy or accumulate physical objects and emphasizes this with his children, much to their consternation. I suspect that's also partly to do with his divorce. […]

(Also the main reason why we refer to Tachanka as 'lord'/godly is mainly 'cause his weapons/loadout is shit.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves a REAL LIFE DILF <33

From what I gathered on his wiki he has at least two children, one of them a son and an ex-wife! Also him being an ex wrestler because of his size and strength...

Imagine being a babysitter for his kids, a 6 year old boy and a sweet 3 year old girl who absolutely adore their nanny who spends the majority of their time with them since their father is still a busy man and their mother is using her newfound freedom as a divorced woman so you're babysitting the little ones for a hefty sum from their dad whenever you're free from college.

But you have to admit, while the kids are literal angels and a delight to babysit, they nor the money are the sole reason for you being so eager to babysit and their father, Alexsandr, played a huge part in it too.

He was so large and heavily build, no doubt from his years in the military but his charming, boisterous attitude combined with his broad, toothy grin that almost seemed boyish on his mature face was what really made you fall for him :(( Whenever the kids were playing or napping, you two had a little time with each other to just talk and spend time together, get to know each other better because 'Let's not make this one of those stick-in-the-ass rigid employer-employee relationships, yes?' as Alexsandr put it himself.

The connection between you deepened but you were still so shy under his clear blue eyes :(( You couldn't possibly do the first move, what if he doesn't return your feelings? He's much older than you, he has a military career, two kids and a divorce, surely he wouldn't ever be interested in someone like you...right?

Ofc little did you know that Alexsandr was tugging his lengthy, heavy cock every night after sending you off with a thick wad of cash and a loud, happy thank you for taking care of his kids, though in reality he was everything but happy :(( Like it or not but the burly male fell for you, the most cliche thing on earth, the young, sweet babysitter that visited him home almost every day to care for his little ones with a gentle smile towards them and him too, such a stark contrast from his ex wife...

He was cumming every night multiple times to the thought of you right here beside him, in his bed, all nice and naked, sated and warm after a night of passionate love making. He came on his hairy tummy with a displeased growl, once the post nut clarity set in and realized that he wasted so much precious seed when it could be inside you >:(

Alexsandr knew he had to have you, had to confess to you how he felt but didn't know how; his loud, charismatic attitude failing him for the first time in years but these thoughts were for the time being pushed back once again to the back of his mind. He could think of a better solution on how to win you over once he wasn't so terribly horny, testosterone clouding his mind as his heavy cock jumped to life once again, thick potent sperm oozing from his swollen tip and Alexsandr could only think about how well he could breed you, he was a real stud despite his age y'know? Plus he always wanted another kid anyway <33

[skitskatdacat63]

Would you mind if I asked for any classical recs. I started listening to Bartok and something clicked (also because I like hearing you talk 🗣️ )

- Penalanon

Aaahhh omg penalanon hiiii!! 🥺 so glad you liked Bartók! That's on such the deep end of classical honestly so I'm rly so glad to hear you like his work! Alright sry in advance if any of these are basic bcs im not sure what you've listened to before. But here you go, in no particular order

1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky

Okay hear me out ik this is pretty basic but I love this recording so so much, I listen to it constantly. Tho it's especially fun to listen to when I'm drawing something Napoleonic, it's very fitting

Marche Slave - Tchaikovsky

Another Tchaikovsky piece! I just really like this one :)

Piano Concerto No.2 - Rachmaninoff

Most beautiful piano concerto of all time?? Perhaps. I just love this one, and the story behind it is very sweet to me(Rachmaninoff was very depressed but his therapist helped him get back to composing, and he dedicated this piece to him)

Rite of Spring - Stravinsky

If you liked Bartók, you'll definitely like Stravinsky!!

Firebird - Stravinsky

Also must link this hilarious vid that I always think of every time I listen to this piece

Gayaneh - Khachaturian

My fav ballet EVERRRR. Okay bear with me, I know it's two and a half hours long, but I listen to it constantly

The Planets Suite - Holst

You've prob heard these before but ahhhh one of my favorite pieces, it never gets old. They are all so unique, and I love how you can tell how much they inspired modern film scores like Star Wars

La Follia - Vivaldi

My fav Vivaldi piece other than Four Seasons(not linnking it here bcs I think most people have def heard it, but go listen to it again ofc dklaskjl.) But man Vivaldi always goes off so hard

String Quartet No.8 - Shostakovich

I linked this in my prev music reccs but I'm not sure if you listened to it so I will again!!

Symphony No.5 - Shostakovich

I love Shostakvich so much waahhhhh, his life makes me sad :( But he's one of the reasons I got more into classical music!

Symphony No.7 - Shostakovich

The story behind this one is so sad to me :( It was a song of resistance for the people of Leningrad while they were being seiged in WWII. Also I love how the conducter in this vid literally looks exactly like young Shostakovich

Battle on The Ice - Prokofiev

such a sick piece

Dance of the Knights - Prokofiev

Symphony No.2 - Weill

I randomly heard this at a classical concert, and I've been in love with it every since!

Masquerade Suite - Khachaturian

Gnossienne No.1-6 - Satie

I can't link all of them so just start with the one I linked!!

New World Symphony - Dvorjak

I love the fourth movement especially, there's parts that sound like Jaws and Star Wars

Danse Macabre - Saint-Saëns

The Swan - Saint-Saëns

This song is what I imagine falling in love feels like. It always makes me teary eyed. Also Vienna has stars like the hollywood stars in some subway station, and I took pics of both Saint-Saëns and Debussy when I saw them, and two people I was with had no idea who they were SOBBB

Raindrop Prelude - Chopin

Arabesque - Debussy

I'd recc Clair de Lune but I'm sure you've heard it, so here is another Debussy piece :)

Miserere mei, Deus - Allegri 

IDK I LIKE CHOIR MUSIC BE QUIET

Lacrimosa - Mozart

You've def heard this before but GOD it makes me cry every time, soooooo iconic

Funeral March (Orchestral Version) - Mendelssohn

There's such a cool video of this as an actual march but it's for Thatcher's funeral ugh, so here's the orchestral version too

[janiedean]

25th hour and city of thieves I never read the book so why did you compare them to jaime jon and ygritte

eeeeh it's been years since I dealt with either and god why do I even have to admit benioff can write when he wants to but anyway

25th hour has nothing to do with asoiaf it's just a really good script and it turned into a really good movie

the thing with city of thieves is... okay tldr the basic plot is two russian men (lev and kolya) are taken prisoner during the leningrad siege and are promised freedom if they manage to find eggs to bake a birthday cake for the daughter of the guy who arrested them (obv hard to find during a siege where everyone was dying of hunger), they go around trying to find the eggs, at some point they go out of town in this mansion where they supposedly had a bunch of chickens and it turns out that the mansion is full of girls who were kept there as nazi prisoners for you can imagine which reasons, they team up with the local partisans to save them, the partisans include a young girl named vika who is v good at warfare and eventually falls in love with lev, blah blah blah not spoiling things but at the end they have to separate then *she* finds him post-war bringing eggs, he tells her they can make an omelette and she replies she can't cook, that was your basic plot thing is, lev is a 17yo bucket of walking angst who has Issues because his father was arrested and deported by the government because he was too much of a free thinker for them and jewish, bad combination when it comes to stalin government (as far as I recall), doesn't really want to admit that he might be dead-dead at least in the beginning, doesn't talk too much and isn't too social, also being jewish he already felt singled out and like he had to mix/blend/be better than his father or smth like that kolya was taken prisoner for being a deserter, doesn't appreciate authority all that much, cracks bad jokes all the time and irritates lev bc he doesn't take shit seriously except when he gets serious when it comes to saving the girls used as unwilling prostitutes, if I don't recall wrong he was extremely attractive/charming vika basically was going guerrilla stuff, was a better shot than them, went at lev every other moment like I know way mroe than you about stuff (which she did btw), was the one pursuing him more actively and I don't remember if she was a redhead or not but like... the personality fit the bill now like idk if it was obvious from my bad summary and ofc there were differences (like for one kolya had a nice active sex life with a bunch of female friends instead of yknow toxic rship with his twin) but when it comes to character archetypes/personalities lev and jon were pretty much the same deal from the teenage angst to the daddy issues to needing to keep the family name honorable, jaime and kolya had a good 70% of basic traits in common and vika and ygritte were the exact same type including the romance where they make the first move and not being stereotypical feminine which is why idg why the fuck benioff managed to write a book with three main chars that are the exact same archetypes as jon jaime and ygritte with the obvious differences and then completely fucking up adapting jon/jaime in the series because if he could write city of thieves there is absolutely no way he actually misread the og characters nor didn't realize what they were there for so...................... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk and I guess I never will but if I wrote an asoiaf au of city of thieves with that recast no one would bat an eyelid, I compared them because they're the same tropes obv written different and in another context but it was so glaringly obvious I'm still asking myself wtf went wrong there almost ten years later

anyway as much as it pains me to say city of thieves was actually a pretty good book so like idk if anyone feels like obtaining it through whichever mean they find most ethical when it comes to maybe or not financing benioff it's not a waste of your time

[centrally-unplanned]

Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East was good but frustrating.

It's on the side of "going for Leningrad and Ukraine was the right move though still hopeless," but for all of its coverage of the command "crisis" of mid-summer, it failed to really go in to the feasibility of either option. I wish it covered more about "what would it actually take to knock out the Soviet Union?" to highlight how far short Germany was or wasn't. The fundamental point is that Germany's offensive power rapidly diminished with panzer attrition, which is fine, but it seems not to have much else to offer. Barely even covered what the combat was like either! Very much feels like a book for someone who already knows the operational outline and essentially agrees with the thesis, too. I'm surprised he didn't even manage to get through Operation Typhoon considering the book's length. 

What was your take on it?

I should definitely dust off my review and post about it in "outline" form at least! (A la my Exowombs essay) But anyway:

He definitely is writing a book that is simultaneously a "history of the first ~3 months" and also a judgement of the whole operation, which yeah is a really awkward fit. It makes you feel like its half-finished, or as you mention for someone who already knows the intricacies of the operations and can slot his arguments into that data. Which is partially true ofc, its an academic book, and hey he did write two more books about Barbarossa covering the other months! But still, I think you can tell the book changed in scope halfway through.

Yeah Leningrad is perhaps debatable but at this point I hard judge anyone who thinks the Ukraine push was the wrong move, there was simply no way to push as deep as Moscow demanded while leaving both flanks of said push so heavily exposed. It hyperprivileged "geographic" collapse; Moscow was relevant but its fall wouldn't doom the USSR, that doom would be multi-factorial, so passing up the greatest operational victory the Nazi's would ever get in the war in order to try to take it earlier seems short-sighted.

I did appreciate his deeper discussions of the the inner dysfunction of both the German general staff, and the individual field commanders, and the just lack of analytical structure going into their strategic planning. To spoil my outline, you essentially have two questions: Could any German high command have won an invasion of the USSR in 1941, and could this German high command have won such an invasion? He believes both, he makes a weak case for the former, but he makes a much stronger case for the latter.

Agreed on the book's true weakness - its just impossible to answer the question he wants to answer only looking at the German side. Germany could grind its entire army into dust as long as at the end of that grinding the USSR broke, its still a win. The fact that he is a specialist in the German archives really shows in this regard. He also through his focus on "planning" falls prey into overgeneralizations on sides of tactics and combat. For example, in 1941 the T-34 was not a "better" tank than the Panzer III & Panzer IV by the judge most analysts of battlefield dynamics, instead having strengths & weaknesses fit for different contexts, but you see him buying into the idea that that the Germans were inherently "out-teched" as being a ticking clock on their operations. (Airpower is another category this occurs in, the ability of airpower to serve as a stopgap for declining armor stocks and the like, you again can tell he isn't an air historian.)

Overall though I do think its one of the best books around on the question of "how did the individual German operational commanders and high command planning officers conceive of, execute, and think about the changing dynamics of Barbarossa in its opening months". Its thesis overpromises but it delivers a core value all the same.

[oldfritz]

6, 13 and 16 for the music asks 🤨

6:A song that makes you want to dance

Any Lady Gaga song, except ofc the slow ones. Classic is Scheiße, which I saw her do for the Joanne world tour and lost my fucking mind between that and Bloody Mary (which is one of my all time faves)

13:One of your favorite 80’s songs

I was gonna say Vogue, but that came out in '90. Have my second fave Madonna song instead, Material Girl. Got a lot of good memories with my dad to this, when he'd speed around with me in the convertible after picking me up from elementary school.

16:One of your favorite classical songs

Easy! What made me fall in love was Shostakovitch was Leningrad. It's an emotional journey, utterly transports me every time. When I first heard it, I was legitimately moved to tears. To me, he's the greatest composer of all time

[araiz-zaria]

Klaus Mäkelä: *conducts Shostakovich's Symphony no. 7*

Youtube comment section: Is this Dmitri Shostakovich???

[laws-are-like-sausages]

cold war commies (soviets)

Beria (1899-1953)

Georgian like Stalin

Headed the Soviet atomic program

Executed after Stalin’s death

Gromkyo (1909-1989)

“Grim Grom”, “Mr Nyet” (= mr. no)

1943: ambassador in Washington

Deputy foreign minister under Molotov

Attended Yalta and Potsdam

UN Soviet delegate during 1946-48

Khrushchev (1894-1971)

Nivita no wait its Nikita Khrushchev

Admirer of Stalin (until Stalin died!)

Communist Party leader in Moscow and Ukraine in 1953+ (after Stalin’s death)

Supported purges

Lenin (1870-1924)

Inspired by European Enlightenment (that stuff from yr 12) --> utopian (Commie) ideals

Democratic centralism!

McCauley: “Stalin was a key aide in 1917 and afterwards Lenin tried to smooth the acrimonious relationship between Stalin and Trotsky”

I guess we know enough about this guy anyways?

Testament before he died: warned Bolshies about Stalin’s tendency to abuse power but too late!!

Maisky (1884-1975)

“Pussy face” hahahah what

Soviet ambassador to Britain (Court of St. James); popular among British diplomats

Pressed for the 2nd Front (which finally opened up in 1944)

Deputy foreign minister as well

Attended both Yalta and Potsdam too (like Gromkyo)

Malenkov (1902-88)

Wartime: member of GKO

GKO = state defense committee

Joined politburo in 1946

Deputy prime minister

Pro-West!

Molotov (1890-1986)

Loyal to Stalin

“Bootface”

Foreign minister

Signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact (a.k.a. molotov-ribbentrop pact!)

If you’re not Stalin, I can’t love you

Anti-West, like really really anti-West.

Stalin (1878-1953)

Crazy megalomaniac

Pushed collectivization and socialism to the limits, by his standards ofc

There’s no time for Stalin’ if you’re Russian to industrialize!

In 1942 pushed for a 2nd Front

Western allies tried to stall and instead invaded Italy in 1943 which made Stalin suspicious about Western intents, until it finally opened up in like 1944

80% of Axis resources during the war directed against the USSR

Eastern hoard (thanks lucas!) --> until D-Day (Jun. 1944) all resources were directed against the USSR

Cautious and paranoid as hell

Everything a matter of Soviet “honor and security” and couldn’t afford another invasion from the West

Russia invaded 3 times since 1900s from the West

--> partly reason for sphere of influence? who knows

Tito (1892-1980)

The Commie guy Yugoslavia needed, but not the guy Stalin needed

Participated in Oct. 1917 and returned to Yugoslavia a Commie

During WW2, led Partisans

Made himself Marshall who managed to suppress Yugoslavian nationalism

Admired Stalin, but wanted to develop his own Communism

Salty about Stalin during the Greek Civ. War that he wasn’t helping the Greek Commies enough

Expelled from Cominform in June 1948 --> Tito-Stalin Split

Backed by the US and later accepted the Marshall Aid

Didn’t get enough aid from Stalin!

Vyshinsky (1883-1954) - creds: lucas         

Called a “human rat” by Leonard Schapiro

Led the Moscow Trials

Born to a Polish bourgeois family affiliated with the Mensheviks, not trusted by Stalin

Well-educated, but a puppet of Stalin

Admired by Hitler

Thought to have said “Give me a man and I will find the crime”

Zhdanov (1896-1948) - creds: lucas

Overseer of cultural orthodoxy, but personally more open-minded

Enforced Socialist Realism

Led the creation of Cominform (1948) at Szklarska Poreba

Died in 1948, Beria and Malenkov used this as an excuse to arrest his associates for murdering him

Zhukov (1896-1974)

WW2 Red Army Marshall / commander

Defeated Japanese in 1939 in Mongolia

Jul. 1941: Chief of the General Staff

Commissar for Defense

Also June 1941 was Operation Barbarossa (Hitler invades USSR)

Oct. 1941 successfully defended Leningrad, then Moscow

Troops reached Berlin in Apr. 1945

Stalin cautious of Zhukov’s popularity (Jun. 1945 Victory Parade)

USSR Deputy Minister of Defense