Google Doodle
The Google Doodle supporting Gay Rights Sochi Olympics
Claire Carter, “Olympic Charter: Google Doodle Enters Sochi Gay Rights Debate,” Telegraph, February 7, 2914, accessed May 4, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/10623519/Olympic-Charter-Google-Doodle-enters-Sochi-gay-rights-debate.html.
February 2014
Crimea Google Maps
Crimea is portrayed differently on Google Maps depending on whether you are in Russia or not.
“Google Maps Marks Crimea as Russia...But Only in Russia,” RT, April 11, 2014, accessed May 4, 2014, http://rt.com/news/google-maps-crimea-russian-924/.
March 2014 and Putin's signing of the treaty annexing Crimea
The Treaty of Nerchinsk
Amur Region, part 1
As Russia sent explorers and settlers eastward in the mid-seventeenth century, they struggled over the land in the Amur basin. At the time of Yerofei Khabarov’s 1649 expedition, one bank of the Amur river was ruled by the Daurians and the other by the Manchu, at the time the ruling dynasty of China. Khabarov captured a Daurian fortress that he called Albazino and installed a Russian settlement there, which fought against the Manchu in numerous battles and sieges. Several times the settlers escaped from Albazino to Nerchinsk, where they regrouped before returning to the fortress. Only 100 of the 800 settlers escaped from a 1685 siege, but returned the next year. The next siege lasted a full year and was more deadly still, leaving 40 out of 900 settlers alive. Finally, in 1689, Russian and Manchu delegations met at Nerchinsk to agree on a treaty that gave the Amur region to the Manchu rulers of China.
The Treaty of Nerchinsk gave the lands of the upper Amur to China and called for the destruction of the Russian settlement at Albazino, with the Chinese promising not to populate the Amur basin. The treaty also opened trade with China and included provisions allowing travel and extradition of criminals between Russia and China. China’s northern boundary was extended, now marked by the river Gorbitsa, and a neutral zone was left between the river Ud and the frontier mountains. However, with a lack of both accurate maps and clear descriptions the exact boundary was and is ambiguous.Because the treaty was written using Latin as a lingua franca and translated into Russian and Manchu separately, a great number of differences exist between the various translations, exacerbating the boundary ambiguities. This border between Russia and China held, legally if not precisely, from 1689 until the Treaty of Aigun in 1858.
Group 3
The Territorial Terms of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689. V. S. Frank. Pacific Historical Review , Vol. 16, No. 3 (Aug., 1947) , pp. 265-270
"The Amur's siren song." The Economist. Dec 17th 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/15108641
"Treaty of Nerchinsk, the first treaty between Russia and China, concluded." Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library. Web. 10 Feb 2014. http://www.prlib.ru/en-us/History/Pages/Item.aspx?itemid=658.
Image source: http://history.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/upload/upfiles/2009-11/09/treaty_of_nerchinsk__the_first_treaty_between_russia_and_china8ece83df84e905ad63a3.jpg
1689-1858
Damansky Island Conflict
Amur Region, Part 4
After the collapse of Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s, the Chinese began to dispute the current borders on the argument that "unequal treaties" by the Russians had stolen Chinese territory. On March 2, 1969, the border units of the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China clashed at Damansky (Zhenbao in Chinese) Island. After fierce fighting, the Soviet border forces managed to hold control of the island. Ultimately the Chinese and Soviets would not escalate the matter any further, but the border incident demonstrated that old rivalries between the Romanov and Qing dynasties had not been swept away by Communism. Russia had only gained control of the region in the last one hundred years, and the escalation of the conflict to the level of bloodshed demonstrated that the border remained an open question to the Chinese.
Besides causing loss of life and nearly dragging two nuclear powers to war, the incident also resonated in historical memories on both sides. In China, Yang Kuisong notes how the Cultural Revolution stoked flames of both ideological assault against the Soviet "revisionists" and cultural memory of national humiliation by colonial powers. In the Soviet Union, popular imagination sprung on the fear of outposts of Russians being subsumed by waves of Chinese invaders. One poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, even went so far as to claim "Vladimir and Kiev,/you see in the smoking twilight /The new Batu Khans, /bombs rattling in their quivers." Although these examples may be the most heated examples of propaganda, they demonstrate how important this region was on a cultural level. For both nations, the Amur region, as distant as it might be from the Russian or Chinese heartlands, was as dear as Moscow or Shanghai. Just as the legal matter of the border dispute would not be resolved in this period, the societal impact of this region would resonate even in contemporary times.
Group 3
Kuisong, Yang. "The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement." Cold War History 1, no. 1 (2000): 21-52.
For the poem cited,
Yevtushenko, Yevg. "(Poem)-ON THE RED USSURI SNOW." Current Digest of the Russian Press, The (formerly The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press) 21, no. 15 (1969): 12-13.
Image: "We will not attack unless we are attacked, if we are attacked, we will certainly counterattack," Chineseposters.net. Accessed February 12, 2014. http://chineseposters.net/images/e13-783.jpg
March 2, 1969