I apologize for the unfortunate interruption in content. New articles will be added by the middle of the month. Stay tuned for more updates.
History as an Advertising Tool, Part II
More Bank Imperial ads (you can find Part I here). These commercials feature the work of the Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, famous in the US for directing the film Night Watch. Personally, I think he’s one of the worst directors who ever lived, but that’s just my opinion. He is good at making ads, though. (more…)
History as an Advertising Tool
In the mid-1990s, a Russian bank, the Bank Imperial (which, along with many other banks, went bankrupt in the 1998 Financial Crisis in Russia, which resulted, among other things, in yours truly coming to the USA) released a series of television commercials, which are considered to be among the best ever produced in Russia, and have entered the national consciousness. These commercials consist of a re-enactment of a famous scene from history, followed by the tagline – “World History, Bank Imperial.” A few days ago, I’ve ran across some of them on Youtube, and I now offer them for your viewing pleasure. (more…)
The Birth of the Blog
On History
The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright [Sophocles] says, it “brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.”
Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion….
-Anna Comnena, The Alexiad.
This account, written by a princess of the Eastern Roman Empire almost 900 years ago, is still, in my opinion, the best description of what history is, and what it should be. However, that quote does not tell the most important thing of all: why? Why preserve “both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration?” After all did not a prominent American industrialist once declare that “history is more or less bunk?” (more…)
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