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A club from Moscow reenacting 1st Markov Officers regiment.
Here lies a huge collection of photos from different events, some of them very impressive.

Very nice.

Thanks for sharing.

Cat

Least I could do

Thanks for the link.

I enjoy link, and enjoy irony of this photo:



Edit: the irony is they have "Soviet Champagne"

How interesting, for some reason the idea of RCW reenactors had never occurred to me.

I'm curious, is there a tendency for people to depict Reds or Whites? And is there a current political component in these reenactments?

Akmatov wrote:I'm curious, is there a tendency for people to depict Reds or Whites? And is there a current political component in these reenactments?

Whites, mostly. Absolute majority of reenactors are educated young people coming from intelligentsia backgrounds, meaning White sympathisers. Same strata that formed the bulk of the White army, actually.
There is no politics in the reenactment itself, at least not officially, but... well, RCW is still a very, very painful subject. People do have strong feelings about it.

Rasputin's Own Bear wrote:Whites, mostly. Absolute majority of reenactors are educated young people coming from intelligentsia backgrounds, meaning White sympathisers. Same strata that formed the bulk of the White army, actually.
There is no politics in the reenactment itself, at least not officially, but... well, RCW is still a very, very painful subject. People do have strong feelings about it.

What ? nobody wants to play a Tchekist ? How surprising...

Interesting parallel to the ACW reenactors. Many ACW people have a Union uniform in the car, just in case there aren't enough Yankees to put on a good looking battle, but there is a clear preference for the Confederacy. Our civil war is almost 150 years in the past but people still feel strongly about the politics.

TheDoctorKing wrote:Interesting parallel to the ACW reenactors. Many ACW people have a Union uniform in the car, just in case there aren't enough Yankees to put on a good looking battle, but there is a clear preference for the Confederacy. Our civil war is almost 150 years in the past but people still feel strongly about the politics.

Or rather, the losing side still feels strongly about the politics. The winners happily pay their reparations (to the South) and go about their merry way.

Another fotos from our recent reenactor's festival on station Kyn,Perm -battlefield between Sibs,Czechs and Reds-Internationalists
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very nice!

very interesting indeed...

greetings

Hohenlohe

Rasputin's Own Bear wrote:Whites, mostly. Absolute majority of reenactors are educated young people coming from intelligentsia backgrounds, meaning White sympathisers. Same strata that formed the bulk of the White army, actually.
There is no politics in the reenactment itself, at least not officially, but... well, RCW is still a very, very painful subject. People do have strong feelings about it.

Can it also be that many more families were hurt by the Red Terror during and after the war than were by the White Terror during the war?

It might also have something to do with 80 years of communist rule. Especially the 30 years of Stalin. I've just been reading Voices of the Dead by Hiroaki Kuromiya. It is a collection of the stories of people who were "repressed" during the 1937-38 period in Kiev. Just about every story ends the same way: "Ivan Ivanovich was convicted and sentenced to death March 1, 1938 and shot March 2 at midnight. He was one of 40 people shot that day in Kiev. His body was buried in the Bykivnia mass graves. He was rehabilitated in 1989 and no family members were found at that time." All kinds of people too: men, women, party members, workers, artists, poor old ladies on pensions, etc. Pretty grim stuff.

Its fascinating to see people from another country reenacting another brutal Civil War.

I've seen many American Civil War Union & Confederate reenactors and have often thought how no one in my country reenacts World War II or the Vietnam War. No war brings out such passion in America as the 150 year old Civil War. I suppose this is likely one reason why people reenact it.

Obviously the passions for the Russian Civil War still run deep many decades later.

I just stumbled upon two galleries of pics of Polish-Soviet War re-enactors. Many groups were recently hired by the makers of "Battle of Warsaw 1920", a Polish blockbuster (currently in cinemas here in Poland) and... well, it was a splendid marriage: re-enactors' passion and knowledge coupled with filmmakers' money and effects (not to mention functioning FT-17 tanks, a rarity these days).

The galleries are hereand here.

Oh, and for cavalry afficionados, here's a video of a group of reenactors returning from the shooting of one of the scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOkkN3RXfaQ&feature=related. Interestingly, the song is still used by Polish soldiers as a marching tune, 90 years later (check this link)
Cheers

The one bit almost half of all "re-enactors" gets wrong... They're not thin enough. You'll hardly ever see a chubby guy in uniform in photos from 70+ years ago.

Also, I'd dress up as a Chekist, no problem. Gotta love those coats.