Book Review: Yalnizca Eglenmek icin

The book is the story of Linus Torvalds,creator of Linux, his life, his ideas, how he created Linux.
The book should be half in size,there is unnecessarily long opinions on open source,licenses,Richard Stallman...

Well..not a big loss if you did not read.

Book Review: 1989 Berlin Duvari

I liked this book very much,it contains the most logical,deeper analysis of collapse of socialist block.

In fact the book only makes these analysis for East Germany but I believe most are applicable to the whole block of countries.Here is the ideefixe link if you want to buy.

The Soviet Story

The Soviet Story is a 2008 Latvian documentary about Soviet terror and Soviet-German relations before 1941 and is sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament.

The documentary says that Soviets inspired Nazis about the holocaust since they invented concentration camps and mass murders long before WW2.

Also they state many documents about Nazi-Soviet cooperation before and during the war.

There are also shocking scenes about the famine in Ukraine.The homepage of the movie is http://www.sovietstory.com/

The documentary contains several interviews with victims of those days and soviet officers.

Parks of Moscow

Whenever my visits to Moscow happen during spring or summer I realize how green and bright is Moscow.I read somewhere [from an architect] that modern capital cities of Europe has 10 meter square green area per person and this ratio is only 2 for Istanbul and it is 55-60 for Moscow!!

Moscow has many many beautiful parks all around the city,I had a chance to view only a few of them,let me briefly introduce them with one sentence. The list is in the order I visited.

Kolomenskoye: Can be reached of with metro station Kolomenskaya on green line.This is a lovely and huge park with a beautiful green environment



Tsaritsino : Hosts the palace of Caterina-II,also a nice park with beautiful nature.It also has a metro station with its name on green line.

VDNX: This huge park contains soviet era buildings and statues with Stalinist architecture.Not a nature park but it also hosts a nice lake with green atmosphere. Also a VDHX station exists on moscow metro,the orange line.

Gorki : The only park I had to pay to ente and the worst one :) I even do not remember what was inside. Can be reached at Metro Park Kultury,in fact Park Kultury is right across Gorki Park,but i did not have time to visit.

Park Pobedi: Very nice park again,a must see.It also hosts a World War museum but it was closed when i got there.Everyone was skating in the park even children and old-aged couples.

It can be reached through Park Pobedi station which is the deepest one in Moscow Metro and it is claimed to be the deepest in the world.

Katyn (2007) Movie

I have a very interesting story with this movie. I did not hear about Katyn massacre before. When I saw this movie in our local DVD store with cryllic letters on it,I thought it was a Russian World WarII movie so I bought it.

The film was so boring and its message was so compicated that even after watching 45 minutes of this movie [i did not finish because it was so boring] I did not get any clue about Katyn being a place or a massacre about it.

Yes, some war prisoners were killed and both Nazi and Soviet officers blame the other side which is usual for a war.After a few months while I was reading something else I read about Katyn massacre and many Polish people being killed and that light a bulb.

Anyway 2008 Oscar Nominee for best foreign movie is about this Katyn Massacre .And I think it is so obvious why they did not win the oscar.

Four Sergei Eisenstein Movies

I organized a Sergei Eisenstein movies session for myself:) with the help of this great site:
http://www.foriegnmoviesddl.com/search/label/Sergei%20M.%20Eisenstein

I downloaded four of his movies; The BattleShip Potemkin(1925-Bronenosets Potyomkin), Alexander Nevsky(1938), Ivan The Terrible (1944-Ivan Groznyy), Ivan The Terrible II The Boyar Conspiracy (1958- Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky zagovor).


I will shorty review each movie in a few sentences.
Battleship Potemkin: Silent movie about the uprising of soldiers in Poemkin Batteship in 1905 to their Tsarist officers.Well...might be a very famous movie and i know it is a milestone in history of cinema but I still found this movie boring and did not watch till the end,some scenes are unnecessarly long.









Alexander Nevsky: Prince Alexander beat the Swedish in Neva and is called by the people of Novogrod for help against German invasion. Slow tempo,again unnecessarly long scenes but this time i was able to watch till the end.











Ivan The Terrible I :Starts with crowning ceremony of Ivan and continues with his power struggle with the boyars. The most fluent one among all the four Einstein movies I watched.









Ivan The Terrible II : Starts from the point where part-I ended.Ivan is the Tsar of all Russia and starts eliminating the boyars around him. It was interesting that some parts of this movie were in color.

Nazim by Can Dundar

After I read parts of Nazim Hikmet's life in three books,2 of them about his relationships and love to Galina and Vera and other one about his days in Azerbaycan I decided to hear the full story from the always-romantic point of view of Can Dundar.

This is a book+DVD documentary. The book infact contains the documentary contents in written form.The musics of the documentary are prepared by Fazil Say. This is a nice,high quality production as all other Can Dundar works.

Russian learning material

I've been studying Russian for 2 years [not regularly],I wanted to write few words about my experience with Russian Language teaching materials.

I have language cards from TIYDEM.It is a bunch of small cards for your pockets what has many Russian words and their Turkish equivalents. A smal CD also contains spellings of all these words.

I am also using Fono's photo dictionary and am quite happy with it.

My first text-book during my Ankara Doruk Russian courses days was Fono's Kendi Kendine Rusca Ilk Adim and I loved it! It has the best coverage,best samples. And I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is planning to learn russian.

I also own Yeni Baslayanlar icin Rusca by Alkim which is a disaster, a complete waste of money.

At some point I decided that I was not a beginner and needed deeper knowledge,especially on the 'padej' subject so I bought Rusca Gramer by Ayse Pamir who is a professor at Ankara Univ. DTCF.



I think this book is not suitable for amateurs like me,but for collage students at Russian Language departments,boring and unnecessary details with unnecessary phililogical keywords.


















Fono publishing has also 3 short-story books for Russian learners.
one page of the book is in russian and the next page is its Turkish translation.I liked those books very much. I also own a dictionary from Fono named Rusca'da ilk 300 sozcuk.

I also like Russian for Beginners from Multilingual,this book has short texts with pictures,nice questions about the text.This books also has another variant Russian for Everybody but I don't have that one.

During my second Russian course we studied "Russian in Excersises", the book gives a small model and sample about the topic and gives many exercises on the topic which has the answer at the end of the book.

We also used Pulkina's A Short Russian Reference Grammer as supplementary textbook but i found its text boring.

I also own Rusca'da Hareket Fiilleri,Rusca'da Fiil Cekimleri as guide books.

The Assasination of Tsar Nicholas II

As far as i guess there is a series named "Infamous Assassinations" by UKTV History and this documentary on execution of the last Russian Tsar by the bolsheviks is a part of this series.

The documentary starts form the days when the Romanov Dynasty is in power and goes on to revolution and arresting of the Tsar and surely his execution.

The documentary mentions about the rumors of those days,first being being not all the family but only the Tsar is excuted which is disproved by bolseviks suddenly.And second one being, Anastasia did not die.

But in the late 80s bones from all of the Romanov family are found.Documentary also has a section on those endeavours.

Very interesting movie- Battle of Russia

This movie , named The Battle of Russia is prepared by USA WA Department as a propaganda publication.What makes it interesting is the American opinions about Russia,Russian People and Russian Army.












you can get a clue from the screen shots but you'll never believe until you watch it yourself.Anyway I will summarize: The US War Department -Special Service Division -Army Service Forces says that Russia is a huge and valuable country with vast amount of resources, the Nazi Germany wants these richness and devoted,patriot,high-sprited Soviet People are 'heriocally' defending their country together with Red Army which is commanded by qualified strategists.











Hard to believe, but if this shooting is not fake, that is what Americans themselves say.

The Spanish Inquisition by History Channel

This documentary explains 'why' and 'how' the Spanish Inquisition is started,what they did and how and why they disappeared.







Shockingly brutal tortures were applied to men and women in the name of God and religion..

History of The MIG

I found this documentary on rapidshare by a production company named Caste Vision.
This 50 minutes documentary is on history of the MIG fighter planes staring from MIG-I and it's long-term designer from 40s to 1970,Artem Mikoyan.

It is surprising to learn that his brother Anastas Mikoyan was a very powerful politician in politburo also,what a family :)

Well,about the documentary...if you are documentary or aviation fan,you might like it.

Discovery Channel's The Most Evil Men In History - Rasputin

This twenty minute documentary on Rasputin, part of the "the most evil men in history" series of Discovery Channel was far from being informative.It keeps on saying Rasputin influenced the family of Tsar which lead to many awful events among Russia but does not name one. This documentary does not deserve the name of Discovery Channel.

Discovery Channel's The Most Evil Men In History - Ivan The Terrible

This twenty minute documentary of Discovery Channel on Ivan The Terrible belongs to a series named "The Most Evil Men In History".
It is in fact Ivan for dummies,repetition of widely known issues in books one more time.