Book Review: Kizil Car'in Uyanisi

Red Tsar[or Gray Cardinal] Putin lead to awakening of the giant, Russia claims the author.
This booklet[can not be a book] is like a collection of a series of journal columns written by the author but all the analysis are weak, repeating the well known facts and does not introduce anything new.Waste of money.Can be seen here.

Book Review: Sovyetler Birligi Neden/Nasil Yikildi

Yet another book with the famous question "Why/How did the USSR collapse'.
This book has several conspiracy theories, Gorbachov being a western agent targetted specially for destruction of USSR.
The author says that everyhing was wonderful in the Union,it should have never collapsed if the westerners did not play tricky games on them ...such funny stuff.

Yes I agree,those might be true to some extend but I bealive the major point is missing: 'This system was against human nature'.

Book Review: Hatirladiklarim

I've read a few books of Zekeriya Sertel, and I've read about him in many other books.For those who have never heard of him: he was a well-known and succesfull journalist who was educated in Paris[he was a student of Durkheim at Sorbonne univ.] but starting of WWI made him go home. In 1919 he went to US and studied journalism at Columbia.
He was the co-founder of Cumhuriyet newspaper with Yunus Nadi, published the famous 'Hayat Ansiklopedisi' and several other publications.
In 1945, his newspaper Tan was destoyed by right-wing protestors. Together with this event and Sabahattin Ali's murder, Nazim Hikmet's escape due to attempts to destroy him he felt unsafe in the country and went on a voluntary exile.

This book was part of a two volume memorirs series but the second volume was never written,the first volume is about his life between 1905-1951. His first days in Thessaloniki,WWI,meeting with Ataturk, journalism days,Tan events and his life in exile, his friendship with Nazim, experiences in Soviet Union.

It is a very valuable resouce for history of journalism ,and political history in general, of the early Turkish Republic. I recomment this book to everyone.

Book Review: Nazim Hikmet'in son yillari

I find Nazim Hikmet's story a very romantic and sad one. He died far from this county with a great love againt his motherland.Eventhough his country punished him with prisons and exile for many years he expressed his aspiration to the very last moment.

He had romantic affairs with few women, both Turkish and Soviet, he loved, he was loved.

Zekeriya Sertel, exiled Turkish journalist, was with him during his last days in Soviet Union. Read this if you are interested in last days of this great poet&lover.His hopes, disappoitments and confusion against the Soviet system..

Book Review : Lizka ve Erkekleri

The novel is about a young girl, calling herself 'Lizka' and her relationships. The story starts in Soviet era, Lizka leaves her hometown and moves another town for work, hard days are waiting for her, the Union collapses, then a new era starts for her and the whole union.
We are following these days together with Lizka's men.Nice read, short book.

Generics and AutoBoxing

Another nice feature of Java is Generics and Auto Boxing introduced with version 5.

see how it simplifies things below:

assume we have a Hashtable that has String objects as keys and a Integer objects as the values.

With generic this is defined as

Hashtable errorList = new Hashtable();
errorList.put("error3",3); --autoboxing
Enumeration fileNames=errorList.keys();
while(fileNames.hasMoreElements()){
String name=fileNames.nextElement(); --no cast thx to generics
int info = errorList.get(name); --autoboxing
}


in the previous versions we would have to write

Hashtable err = new Hashtable();
err.put("error3", new Integer(3));
Enumeration enum4=err.keys();
while(enum4.hasMoreElements())
{
String name=(String)enum4.nextElement();
int info =((Integer)err.get(name)).intValue();
System.out.println(info);
}


Conclusion: I liked them both :)

Movie Review: Defiance (2008)

The movie Defiance is very nice if you are interested in WWII or Soviet history. Otherwise it is still a good action,history movie starring the last Bond, Daniel Craig.

It is about the true story of Bielski Partisans hiding the the forests of Belarus for more than two years building a camp for inhabitants and fighting against Germans during Nazi occupation of USSR in WWII.

The Soviet Movie Come and See (1985) is also on a similar theme, partisans hiding in forests and German cruelty in Belarussia.