RUSSIA

http://russianculture.miningco.com/

Your Mining Co. Guide to Russian Culture:  This is one of a series of excellent cultural sites hosted by the New York-based Mining Company (an organization devoted to "mining" the web for treasures -- a.k.a. about.com).  It has as its expert site-coordinator and guide, Linda De Laine, an artist (see my "Grail" section for one of her works), Navy wife and mother who's also a doctoral candidate in Biblical Studies.  Her love for theatre and history drew her to Russia.  Each week she writes "Features," an illustrated piece on some aspect of Russian culture -- e.g., sacred ikons, famous Russian composers, authors, and leaders, Easter egg painting.  Each Feature is rich with links to further background; all back issues are saved on-line.

This is a site where you could spend days exploring all the possibilities.  It has a search engine, chat room, bulletin board, and discussion groups for those so inclined.  Of more interest to me are such sections as "Architecture" -- here are many thorough and well-photographed sites covering everything from wooden churches and houses to marble palaces; and "Folklore & folkart" --e.g., ancient toys, folk medicine, proverbs, food recipes, music, death rituals -- and even a plea to join a team of Russian scientists and folklorists trying to save rural Russian folklore (they invite you to travel with them, interviewing, sketching, video-taping, recording, reconstructing, restoring, etc).  There are also features on historical subjects  -- e.g., a 2/23/98 article on Alexander Nevsky with hyperlinks to the Baltic States, and Teutonic Knights (including their persecution by the Nazis who misused their symbols).

There's a whole section of maps of Russia and Siberia -- extraordinary, extremely detailed, colored, huge, beautiful maps, many from an 1882 Edinburgh Atlas.  I only had time to look at three of these -- for the Caucasus, the Baltic, and Lake Baikal (it's found under "South Central Siberia" -- the Lake Baikal region interests me because, as Joseph Campbell explains in The Way of the Animal Powers, it is the site of a little girl's grave from 16,000 years ago where ivory "Venuses," waterbirds, and the first known spiraling labyrinth were found). Note:  type "maps" in the search-engine to locate these maps.

This is Sergei Naumov’s homepage (see under "The Tale of Dazhdbog" in RUSSIAN FOLKLORE), which contains a large collection of annotated links related to Naumov’s eclectic interests, including science; law; Russian TV and print media; e-mail addresses of many major organizations in Russia; politics; Russian music (with actual excerpts, if your computer supports sound); literature (mostly in Russian); and "day to day life" (with cooking tips, weather, and a lovely globe updated every 15 minutes to show how the sun falls across Russia).

RussianVillage
From "The Stone Flower" (Mstera)
(Author's Collection)

This site calls itself The Best of the Russian Internet.  It offers 44 sites (more to be added), including Russian TV, newspapers, universities, religious icons, the Mir space program, and the Russian Mafia.  I've added a few of these to my own site. Of the handful of others I checked, the quality was uneven.  Nevertheless, if you're patient, and depending upon your interests, there are some real "finds" here.

This site offers very practical, earthy advice if you should happen to be visiting St. Petersburg -- for example, thieves are stealing genuine icons and other religious sacra from the Chernobyl region and selling them cheaply -- but they're highly radioactive (found under "What to Do"/ "Shopping").  I'm haunted by the sad irony of this.

This is just for fun:  the site is the 19th century St. Petersburg Conservatoire.  Most of the site is in Russian, except for some minimal data in English under "History" on composers who studied there.  But what's really original is an animated picture ("applet") of  the Conservatoire in the 19th century  with horses and several pedestrians crossing in front of it from both directions, and at different speeds.  It has nothing to do with mythology, but is quite ingenious and worth a look.

Today's Weather Map of Russia:  I happen to love maps.  I also love knowing weather patterns around the globe because they offer such a clear indication of how interconnected we all are.  The ancients too loved weather patterns, and must have been fascinated by them, or they wouldn't have had so many gods and goddesses of rain, thunder, wind, clouds, sun, and lightning.  This site shows a series of small maps for four major Russian areas.  They don't look like much until you click on them.  Then you get enlargements, with names of cities, and whatever is going on weather-wise.

Up to Europe's Opening Page

Eastern Europe Menu:

EASTERN EUROPE:

Pan-Slavic Traditions & Beliefs:

Russia:

Fairy Tales & Folklore: ||| Sacred Ikons: ||| Music:

The Balkans:

(Note: here you'll find links to individual Balkan countries/states/kingdoms: Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia, once these have been activated.
*** For Greece, see under "Western Europe"; for Hungary, see under "Eastern Europe: Finno-Ugric Peoples.")

Kosovo/Serbian Peace Invocation:

Other Slavic Lands

Baltic States:

Estonia: ||| Latvia: ||| Lithuania

Finno-Ugric Peoples:

Finland: || Hungary:

(Note: for Estonia, see "Baltic Sates";   for Sami and western Siberian peoples, see "INDIGENOUS: Circumpolar.")

Eurasia: The Caucasus & Beyond:

Down to Western Europe

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