Pixelmator.

Alex found Jeremy's boardgame Heroquest, and wanted to know if he could play with the pieces (its like D&D, but with action figures and a board instead of pen and paper). So we let him go nuts. He assembled a zombie army, that was controled by mario and luigi and the RUBIX CUBE O' DOOM, as he called it.

version

Here one version of Batman.

More coming soon.

(You can see the B&W version in www.detripas.blogspot.com )

Version 2 : Recadrement vers la droite et retrait de certains objets !

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

After the division of Czechoslovakia by Germany in 1939, Slovakia was left with a small air force composed primarily of Czechoslovak combat aircraft. This force defended Slovakia against Hungary in March 1939, in the Slovak–Hungarian War in March 1939 in which Hungary reoccupied Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of southern Slovakia. In this the SVZ suffered some losses against Royal Hungarian Air Force. Later, the SVZ also took part in the German Invasion of Poland. The SVZ took part in Axis offensives in the Ukraine and Russian Central front sectors of the Eastern Front under the lead of Luftwaffe in the Stalingrad and Caucasus operations. This engagement resulted in great losses of aircraft and personnel, though.

Since Hs 123 production had already stopped in 1940 and all tools had been destroyed, the permanent attritions could not be replaced - due to a lack of serviceable airframes and spare parts the type’s numbers dwindled. When Romania and the Soviet Union entered Slovakia, they organized with some captured aircraft and defectors a local Insurgent Air Force to continue the fight against Axis forces in country, including the last operational Slovak Hs 123s. No aircraft survived the war.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.33 m (27 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 10.5 m (34 ft 5 in)

Height: 3.2 m (10 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 24.85 m² (267.5 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,500 kg (3,307 lb)

Gross weight: 2,215 kg (4,883 lb)

Powerplant:

1× BMW 132Dc 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with 660 kW (880 hp),

driving a 2-bladed metal variable-pitch propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 341 km/h (212 mph, 184 kn) at 1,200 m (3,937 ft)

Range: 860 km (530 mi, 460 nmi) with a 100 l drop tank

Combat range: 480 km (300 mi, 260 nmi) with 200 kg (440.9 lb) of bombs

Service ceiling: 9,000 m (30,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 15 m/s (3,000 ft/min)

Armament:

2× 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns, 400 rpg

Up to 450 kg (992.1 lb) of bombs under fuselage and wings

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple what-if project, and it took a while to figure out something to do with a surplus Airfix Hs 123 A kit in The Stash™ without a proper plan yet. The Hs 123 is an overlooked aircraft, and the fact that all airframes were used during WWII until none was left makes a story in Continental Europe a bit difficult. I also did not want to create a German aircraft – Finland was an early favorite, because I wanted to add a ski landing gear (see below), but since I won’t build anything with a swastika on it this option was a dead end. Then I considered an operator from the Balkans, e. g. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Slovakia – and eventually settled for the latter because of the national markings.

The kit was built almost OOB, and the Airfix Hs 123 is a nice offering. Yes, it’s a simple kit, but its is IMHO a very good representation, despite the many rivets on the hull, a rather bleak interior and some sinkholes (e. g. on the massive outer wings struts). It goes together well, just a little PSR here and there. I just added a dashboard (scratched from styrene sheet) and modified the OOB 50 kg bombs with extended impact fuzes with a flat, round plate at the tip, so that the bomb itself explodes above soft ground or snow for a bigger blast radius.

The only major modification is a transplanted ski landing gear from a PM Model (Finnish) Fokker D.XXI, which had to be reduced in length to fit under the compact Hs 123. A small tail ski/skid was scratched from styrene sheet material.

Thankfully, the Hs 123 only calls for little rigging – just between the central upper wing supports and there is a characteristic “triangle” wiring in the cowling. All these, together with the wire antenna, were created with heated sprue material.

Painting and markings:

Finland had been a favorite because I would have been able to apply a more interesting paint scheme than the standard Luftwaffe RLM 70/71/65 splinter scheme with a low waterline that was typical for the Hs 123 during WWII. However, as a former Luftwaffe aircraft I retained this livery but decided to add a winter camouflage as a suitable thematic supplement to the skis.

The basic colors became Humbrol 65 underneath and 30 and 75 from above – the latter for a stronger contrast to the Dunkelgrün than Humbrol 91 (Schwarzgrün). Thanks to the additional whitewash mottles, which were inspired by a similar livery seen on a contemporary Bulgarian Avia B.534, I did not have to be too exact with the splinter camouflage.

The cockpit and cowling interior were painted with RLM 02 (Humbrol 240), the propeller blades became Schwarzgrün (Humbrol 91, further darkened with some black) and the bombs were painted in a dark grey (Revell 77) while the small 100 l drop tank became bare aluminum (Revell 99).

However, before the white mottles could be added, the kit received its decals so that they could be painted around the markings, just as in real life. The Slovak national markings had to be scratched, and I used standard white simplified German Balkenkreuze over a cross made from blue decal stripes. Later a separate red decal circle was placed on top of that. The only other markings are the red “7” codes, edged in white for better contrast (from a Heller Bf 109 K) and the fuel information triangles on the fuselage from the Hs 123’s OOB sheet. As an ID marking for an Eastern Front Axis aircraft, I retained the wide yellow fuselage stripe from the OOB, sheet, too, and added yellow tips on the upper wings’ undersides.

The whitewash camouflage was then created with white acrylic paint (Revell 05), applied with a soft brush with a rounded tip. Once this had dried, I treated the surfaces with fine wet sandpaper for a weathered/worn look.

Finally, after some soot stains behind the exhausts and around the machine gun nozzles, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and the rigging (see above) was done.

The Hs 123 might not be the sexiest aircraft of WWII, but I like this rugged pug which could not be replaced by its successor, the Ju 87, and served in its close support role until literally no aircraft was left. Putting one on skis worked quite well, and the exotic Slovak markings add a special touch – even though the national markings almost disappear among the disruptive whitewash camouflage! The result looks quite plausible, though, and the old Airfix kit is IMHO really underestimated.

« Charming » Monochrome version by © SMb Photographie - 2016

Original: www.flickr.com/photos/gonzalobraz/3347455653/

street

Texas Party 2019

51/52/2013

2013.12.20. Ötvenegyedik hét

Texas Party 2019

The actual version of this pic (previous pic in my photostream) was shown in the local NBC news :-)

Video:

www.flickr.com/photos/27077288@N03/2650540371/in/photostr...

Minneapolis 8/25/16

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в or Пе́шков;[1] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist.[2] He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[3] Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), My Childhood (1913–1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun (1905). He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.

Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936.

Contents

1 Life

1.1 Early years

1.2 Political and literary development

1.3 Capri years

1.4 Return from exile

1.5 Povolzhye famine

1.6 Second exile

1.7 Death of Lenin

1.8 Return to Russia: last years

1.9 Apologist for the gulag

1.10 Hostility to gays

1.11 Conflicts[citation needed] with Stalinists

1.12 Death

2 Depictions and adaptations

3 Selected works

3.1 Novels

3.2 Novellas

3.3 Short stories

3.4 Drama

3.5 Non-fiction

3.6 Collections

4 See also

5 Notes

6 Sources

7 Further reading

8 External links

Life

Early years

Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother[2] and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.[2]

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).[4] He started using the pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, "Makar Chudra", was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis, where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops.[5][6][7] The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity.[2]

Political and literary development

Anton Chekhov and Gorky. 1900, Yalta

Gorky's reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.[citation needed]

In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."[8]

He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy.[9]

Leo Tolstoy with Gorky in Yasnaya Polyana, 1900

From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own.[10] Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture.[11] Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s.[11] He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov, who ran the school—to work there.[11] By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project.[11]

As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday"), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered.[12] It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of political plays, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie, Auguste Rodin and Anatole France, amongst others.[13]

In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny. When visiting the Adirondack Mountains, Gorky wrote Мать (Mat', Mother), his notable novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul" but also his admiration for the boldness of the American spirit.[citation needed]

Capri years

In 1909–1911 Gorky lived on the island of Capri in the burgundy-coloured "Villa Behring".

From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy, partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia.[2] He continued to support the work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot's Encyclopedia. During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey".[14] Despite his atheism,[15] Gorky was not a materialist.[16] Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called "God-Building" (богостроительство, bogostroitel'stvo),[2] which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create a religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building' was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements.

Return from exile

An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1913, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography.[2] On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture".

After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana (secret police) on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov.[17] Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over the floor.[18] Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicated that revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery".[19] Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair.[20] In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are the incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness".[21] Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable-I had never known people who were really like this".[22] Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them.[22]

During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917. On the day after the Bolshevik coup of 7 November 1917, Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample the grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too".[23] Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution. One contemporary remembered at how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin.[24] Gorky wrote that Lenin together with Trotsky "have become poisoned with the filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams.[24] Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them".[24] Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia".[24] A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, "New Life") fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918. (It would not be re-published in Russia until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.) The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev.[citation needed]

"Lenin and his associates," Gorky wrote, "consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes ... the abolition of free speech and senseless arrests."[25]

In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg, who later became his unofficial wife. In August 1921, the poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam, a close friend of Gumilev's widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had a strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything."[26] In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis.

Povolzhye famine

In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.[27]

Second exile

Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries, which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to the Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder."[28] This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously."[29] He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov, who acted as Gorky's secretary for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters.

He wrote several successful books while there,[30] but by 1928 he was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in the coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento. In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda, the corrupt and murderous head of the Ogpu and two other Ogpu officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky, who held high office in the Gulag. Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently.[31]

Death of Lenin

After the death of Lenin in 1924, Gorky wrote the following:

Vladimir Lenin, a big, real man of this world, has passed away. His death is a painful blow to all who knew him, a very painful blow! But the black line of death shall only underscore his importance in the eyes of all the world - the importance of the leader of the world’s working people. If the clouds of hatred for him, the clouds of lies and slander woven round him were even denser, it would not matter, for there is no such force as could dim the torch he has raised in the stifling darkness of the world gone mad. Never has there been a man who deserves more to be remembered forever by the whole world. Vladimir Lenin is dead. But those to whom he bequeathed his wisdom and his will are living. They are alive and working more successfully than anyone on Earth has ever worked before.[32]

Return to Russia: last years

Avel Enukidze, Joseph Stalin and Maxim Gorky celebrate 10th anniversary of Sportintern. Red Square, Moscow USSR. Aug 1931

Gorky's return from Fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky, which was for many years the Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhni Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow's main park, and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as was the Moscow Art Theatre. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour.

He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers, founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale "A Girl and Death" to his visitors Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov, an event that was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "Эта штука сильнее чем "Фауст" Гёте (любовь побеждает смерть)"[33] ["This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust (love defeats death)]".

Apologist for the gulag

In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea-Baltic Canal, presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential.[34] For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal were refuted by multiple accounts of thousands of prisoners who froze to death not only in the evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day.[35]

On his definitive return to the Soviet Union in 1932, Maxim Gorky received the Ryabushinsky Mansion, designed in 1900 by Fyodor Schechtel for the Ryabushinsky family. The mansion today houses a museum about Gorky.

Hostility to gays

Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense. His attitude was coloured by the fact that several leading members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung, or Brownshirts, were overtly homosexual. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky claimed "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish."[36]

Conflicts[citation needed] with Stalinists

By the summer of 1934, Gorky was increasingly in conflict with the Soviet authorities. He was angry that Leopold Averbakh, whom he regarded as a protege, was denied a role in the newly created Writers Union, and objected to interference by the Central Committee staff in the affairs of the union. This conflict, which may have been exacerbated by Gorky's despair over the early death of his son, Max, came to a head just before the first Soviet Writers Congress, in August 1934. On 11 August, he submitted an article for publication in Pravda which attacked the deputy head of the press department, Pavel Yudin with such intemperate language that Stalin's deputy, Lazar Kaganovich ordered its suppression, but was forced to relent after hundreds of copies of the article circulated by hand. Gorky's draft of the keynote speech he was due to give at the congress caused such consternation when he submitted it to the Politburo that four of its leading members – Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Andrei Zhdanov – were sent to persuade him to make changes.[37] Even in its toned-down version – very unusually for the Stalin era – he did not praise Stalin, did not mention any of the approved writers turning out 'socialist realist' novels, but singled out Fyodor Dostoevsky for "having painted with the most vivid perfection of word portraiture a type of egocentrist, a type of social degenerate in the person of the hero of his Memoirs from Underground. ... Dostoyevsky in the figure of his hero has shown the depths of whining despair that are reached by the individualist from among the young men of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who are cut off from real life."[38]

Death

With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow. His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as a paid informer.[39] Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg, who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral.

The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded the circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's coffin during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (one of the three Moscow Trials), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda's NKVD agents.[40]

In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical "socialist realism".

Depictions and adaptations

The Gorky Trilogy is a series of three films based on the three autobiographical books: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities, directed by Mark Donskoy, filmed in the Soviet Union, released 1938–1940. The trilogy was adapted from Gorky's autobiography.[41]

The German modernist Bertolt Brecht based his epic play The Mother (1932) on Gorky's novel of the same name.

Gorky's novel was also adapted for an opera by Valery Zhelobinsky in 1938. In 1912, the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice based his opera Radda on the character of Radda from Makar Chudra. Our Father is the title given to Gorky's The Last Ones in its English translation by William Stancil.

The play[clarification needed] made its New York debut in 1975 at the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by Keith Fowler.

In 1985 Enemies was performed in London with a multi-national cast directed by Ann Pennington in association with Internationalist Theatre. The cast included South African Greek actress Angelique Rockas and Bulgarian Madlena Nedeva playing the parts of Tatiana, and Kleopatra respectively.[42] Tom Vaughan of The Morning Star affirmed "this is a great revolutionary play, by a great revolutionary writer, performed with elegance and style, great passion and commitment".[43] BBC Russian Service was no less complimentary.[44]

Selected works

Main article: Maxim Gorky bibliography

Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky. New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270.

Novels

Goremyka Pavel, 1894. Published in English as Orphan Paul[45]

Foma Gordeyev (Фома Гордеев), 1899. Also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid

Three of Them (Трое), 1900. Also translated as Three Men

The Mother (Мать), 1907. First published in English, in 1906

The Life of a Useless Man (Жизнь ненужного человека), 1908

A Confession (Исповедь), 1908

Okurov City (Городок Окуров), 1908

The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина), 1910

The Artamonov Business (Дело Артамоновых), 1927

Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина), unfinished:[46]

The Bystander, 1927

The Magnet, 1928

Other Fires, 1930

The Specter, 1936

Novellas

The Orlovs (Супруги Орловы), 1897

Creatures That Once Were Men (Бывшие люди), 1897

Varenka Olesova (Варенька Олесова), 1898

Summer (Лето), 1909

Great Love (Большая любовь), 1911

Short stories

"Makar Chudra" (Макар Чудра), 1892

"Old Izergil" (Старуха Изергиль), 1895

"Chelkash" (Челкаш), 1895

"Konovalov" (Коновалов), 1897

"Malva" (Мальва), 1897

"Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (Двадцать шесть и одна), 1899

"Song of a Falcon" (Песня о Соколе), 1902. Also referred to as a poem in prose

Drama

The Philistines (Мещане), translated also as The Smug Citizens and The Petty Bourgeois (Мещане), 1901

The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902

Summerfolk (Дачники), 1904

Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), 1905

Barbarians (Варвары), 1905

Enemies, 1906.

The Last Ones (Последние), 1908. Translated also as Our Father[47]

Children (Дети), 1910. Translated also as The Reception (and called originally "Встреча")

Queer People (Чудаки), 1910. Translated also as Eccentrics

Vassa Zheleznova (Васса Железнова), 1910, 1935 (revised version)

The Zykovs (Зыковы), 1913

Counterfeit Money (Фальшивая монета), 1913

The Old Man (Старик), 1915, Revised 1922, 1924. Translated also as The Judge

Workaholic Slovotekov (Работяга Словотеков), 1920

Somov and Others (Cомов и другие), 1930

Yegor Bulychov and Others (Егор Булычов и другие), 1932

Dostigayev and Others (Достигаев и другие), 1933

Non-fiction

Chaliapin, articles in Letopis, 1917[48]

Untimely Thoughts, articles, 1918

My Recollections of Tolstoy, 1919

Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev, 1920–1928

V.I. Lenin (В.И. Ленин), reminiscence, 1924–1931

The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)

Literary Portraits [c.1935].[49]

Poems

"The Song of the Stormy Petrel" (Песня о Буревестнике), 1901

Autobiography

My Childhood (Детство), Part I, 1913–1914

In the World (В людях), Part II, 1916

My Universities (Мои университеты), Part III, 1923

Collections

Sketches and Stories, three volumes, 1898–1899

Creatures That Once Were Men, stories in English translation (1905). This contained an introduction by G. K. Chesterton[50] The Russian title, Бывшие люди (literally "Former people") gained popularity as an expression in reference to people who severely dropped in their social status

Tales of Italy (Сказки об Италии), 1911–1913

Through Russia (По Руси), 1923

Texas Party 2019

Texas Party 2019

Texas Party 2019

alucard

01.29.12 - 120mm

Inspired by the Daily Life picture that went around the Internet lately, I decided to create my own version. I've since lost the link of the person who originally created it. If you know it, please add it in the comments.

I hope you like it. I haven't drawn something for ages...and though the drawing was mostly tracing, it was really nice to sit quietly and actually get it done.

It really made my evening. I created this about a month ago, and am only just getting around to putting it up. Sigh.

If you have enough pixels you can get a portrait shot as well, all from one photograph. Manchester 22nd August 2012

Grenoble 1971

BODY

Manufactured by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, Dresden, East Germany

Model: 1961, Version 1.6, (A&R: 6, Hummel: 050), (produced between 1960-62, quantity 58400)

Special features of Version 6: rectangular shape of the front plate; name plate with Exa metallic white on painted black background.

Version, manufacturing year, body and lens info are as to Andrzej Wrotniak

The original Exa is known as Exa 0 also

All Exa 0 produced between 1951-62

35mm film SLR camera

Engraving on the front plate: Ihagee Dresden

Lens release: via a lever on the left of the lens flange

Focusing: via Fresnel matte screen, ring and dial on the lens, w/DOF scale

Shutter: Mirror acts like a curtain as a part of the shutter, vertical moving, due to this maximum speed is limited to 1/150, speeds: 1/25-1/150 +B

setting : via a lever and scale on the right of the top plate

Shutter release: a knob, on front of the body, left side of the lens,

w/ a safety locking cap, and cable release socket, it can be pressed with the plunger on the lenses, w/ cable release socket also

Cocking knob: also winds the film, on the right of the top plate

Frame counter: window on the right of the top plate, additive type, manual reset by a thumb ring on front of it

Viewfinder: Waist level finder, w/ magnifier and sport finder with a lid, opens by a knob on the back side, interchangeable with SLR pentaprism finder

Finder release: via a knob beneath the Exa logo

Mirror: Stays up after exposure, so viewfinder is dark, cocking the shutter returns the mirror to normal position

Re-wind knob: on the left of the top plate

Re-wind release: a button just beside the cocking knob

Flash PC socket: two, on the right front side of the camera, F and X

Self-timer. none

Back cover: Hinged, removable, opens by a latch on the left side of the camera

Special take up spool

Tripod socket: 1/4''

Strap lugs

Body: metallic, Weight: 588g (wo/ the lens)

serial no. 573828 (inside the camera)

LENS:

aus Jena Pancolar 50mm f/2 (Zebra), 6 elements, auto-diaphragm type, (no internal aperture coupling, diaphragm always in open position, pressing the plunger on the lens closes the aperture to the pre-set f number then the shutter releases),

Exakta bayonet mount, interchangeable with Exakta Varex lenses,

filter thread: 49mm, serial no.8459679 (introduced 1964)

Aperture: f/2-f/22 setting: ring and scale on the lens

Focus range: 0.5-15m +inf

+SLR pentaprism finder, w/split image rangefinder, Ihagee, Dresden

Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, in Dresden, which was the largest independent camera manufacturer in Germany and was founded in 1912 by Johan Steenbergen.

The true Exaktas and Exas are ones made by Ihagee in Dresden.

Although Exa is much simpler than the professional Exakta cameras, the workmanship is equally good, finish similar, and the family resemblance obvious. With its lower price, Exa cameras are addressed to the amateur photographers.

During the 25th year of production of the 35mm Exaktas, Ihagee introduced the black and white labels as for Exacta IIa as for the Exa.

Ihagee did not produce their own lenses. Instead, they relied on many of the major optical firms of their day to each produce a series of lenses for their cameras, eg. Carl Zeiss Jena, Meyer-Optik Görlitz and Schneider-Kreuznach. The lenses from these three makers, in terms of the number and variations of lenses produced, are the most plentiful and in most cases the easiest for collectors and users to acquire. Maybe, over 80% of the Exaktas offered for sale are equipped with normal focal length lenses from these three firms.

The East German Zeiss lenses made for export, were marked from 1954 with different engravings. The brand name Carl Zeiss Jena is replaced by C.Z. Jena or Jena or aus Jena.

Notes about Exa/Exakta classification

I use the Exa/Exakta classification of Andrzej Wrotniak. As to me, it is the best.

Some opinions of a serious Exa/Exakta collector, F W Tappe :

Andrzej Wrotniak uses a very sensible classification, listed on his website, which I personally like the best. It is multi dimensional in setup, without being complicated!

Richard Hummel's 1995 book lists an "one dimensional" classification, which is incomplete, but many sources still refer to this.

Aguila and Rouah (A&R) in their 2003 edition of "Exakta cameras 1933 - 1978", come to an improved classification. They built on their previous 1987 edition classification, which was the leading standard among collectors.

Klaus Wichmann, prolific writer of books about Exakta - and Exa cameras, published his classifications earliest.

More info Captain Jack, Maurizio Frizziero, F W Tappe, Exa Original in Camerapedia

Texas Party 2019

Cropped out the boobage and retouched so you can focus on her pretty face.

նկարած են 0.3 մեգապիքսել խցիկով, սա 2007֊ին

այսօր եմ գտել, ու խմբագրել եմ։ հա, բերած է ուայթ բալանսի, ու գոյների կոր է կիրառոուած։

BODY

Manufactured by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, Dresden, East Germany

Model: 1961, Version 1.6, (A&R: 6, Hummel: 050), (produced between 1960-62, quantity 58400)

Special features of Version 6: rectangular shape of the front plate; name plate with Exa metallic white on painted black background.

Version, manufacturing year, body and lens info are as to Andrzej Wrotniak

The original Exa is known as Exa 0 also

All Exa 0 produced between 1951-62

35mm film SLR camera

Engraving on the front plate: Ihagee Dresden

Lens release: via a lever on the left of the lens flange

Focusing: via Fresnel matte screen, ring and dial on the lens, w/DOF scale

Shutter: Mirror acts like a curtain as a part of the shutter, vertical moving, due to this maximum speed is limited to 1/150, speeds: 1/25-1/150 +B

setting : via a lever and scale on the right of the top plate

Shutter release: a knob, on front of the body, left side of the lens,

w/ a safety locking cap, and cable release socket, it can be pressed with the plunger on the lenses, w/ cable release socket also

Cocking knob: also winds the film, on the right of the top plate

Frame counter: window on the right of the top plate, additive type, manual reset by a thumb ring on front of it

Viewfinder: Waist level finder, w/ magnifier and sport finder with a lid, opens by a knob on the back side, interchangeable with SLR pentaprism finder

Finder release: via a knob beneath the Exa logo

Mirror: Stays up after exposure, so viewfinder is dark, cocking the shutter returns the mirror to normal position

Re-wind knob: on the left of the top plate

Re-wind release: a button just beside the cocking knob

Flash PC socket: two, on the right front side of the camera, F and X

Self-timer. none

Back cover: Hinged, removable, opens by a latch on the left side of the camera

Special take up spool

Tripod socket: 1/4''

Strap lugs

Body: metallic, Weight: 588g (wo/ the lens)

serial no. 573828 (inside the camera)

LENS:

aus Jena Pancolar 50mm f/2 (Zebra), 6 elements, auto-diaphragm type, (no internal aperture coupling, diaphragm always in open position, pressing the plunger on the lens closes the aperture to the pre-set f number then the shutter releases),

Exakta bayonet mount, interchangeable with Exakta Varex lenses,

filter thread: 49mm, serial no.8459679 (introduced 1964)

Aperture: f/2-f/22 setting: ring and scale on the lens

Focus range: 0.5-15m +inf

+SLR pentaprism finder, w/split image rangefinder, Ihagee, Dresden

Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, in Dresden, which was the largest independent camera manufacturer in Germany and was founded in 1912 by Johan Steenbergen.

The true Exaktas and Exas are ones made by Ihagee in Dresden.

Although Exa is much simpler than the professional Exakta cameras, the workmanship is equally good, finish similar, and the family resemblance obvious. With its lower price, Exa cameras are addressed to the amateur photographers.

During the 25th year of production of the 35mm Exaktas, Ihagee introduced the black and white labels as for Exacta IIa as for the Exa.

Ihagee did not produce their own lenses. Instead, they relied on many of the major optical firms of their day to each produce a series of lenses for their cameras, eg. Carl Zeiss Jena, Meyer-Optik Görlitz and Schneider-Kreuznach. The lenses from these three makers, in terms of the number and variations of lenses produced, are the most plentiful and in most cases the easiest for collectors and users to acquire. Maybe, over 80% of the Exaktas offered for sale are equipped with normal focal length lenses from these three firms.

The East German Zeiss lenses made for export, were marked from 1954 with different engravings. The brand name Carl Zeiss Jena is replaced by C.Z. Jena or Jena or aus Jena.

Notes about Exa/Exakta classification

I use the Exa/Exakta classification of Andrzej Wrotniak. As to me, it is the best.

Some opinions of a serious Exa/Exakta collector, F W Tappe :

Andrzej Wrotniak uses a very sensible classification, listed on his website, which I personally like the best. It is multi dimensional in setup, without being complicated!

Richard Hummel's 1995 book lists an "one dimensional" classification, which is incomplete, but many sources still refer to this.

Aguila and Rouah (A&R) in their 2003 edition of "Exakta cameras 1933 - 1978", come to an improved classification. They built on their previous 1987 edition classification, which was the leading standard among collectors.

Klaus Wichmann, prolific writer of books about Exakta - and Exa cameras, published his classifications earliest.

More info Captain Jack, Maurizio Frizziero, F W Tappe, Exa Original in Camerapedia

Collage recorded onto IP with SX70 then lifted onto card.

Advanced trainer T-50 Golden Eagle T-X version (America)

/ T-50 Mock-up for T-X Program

/ Photo by KAI (2014)