«Kommersant-History» No. 4 (161)

Do you know how many ewes produce one hundred ewes? One hundred? One hundred and twenty? Or much more?

It would seem a strange question. But in late Soviet times, comedians and satirists made rather poisonous jokes on this topic. At that time, they still remembered the fierce struggle that was waged over methods of obtaining multiple births in farm animals in the 1930s and 1940s. And only specialists knew how this problem was connected with the fantastic results of gender reassignment work that began under the most difficult conditions of the Civil War. About them and their author — the text “Performing experiments with experimental transformation of sexes.”

And since the early 1820s, the authorities of the United States dreamed that there would be no colonies of European countries left in North America, as well as in South America. They were especially concerned about Russian possessions in Alaska and surrounding territories. And on April 5, 1824* a convention was signed in which the Russian side made a mistake that allowed this American dream to come true. All details are in the publication “Signed by the Emperor without sufficient study.”

The rulers of Russia, in turn, have long dreamed that the country's capital would become an exemplary city in terms of cleanliness and order. However, making this fairy tale come true turned out to be quite difficult. About how the Russian authorities moved towards the goal — an article in our regular column “Forgotten Life” “The Kremlin gates can be called real sewers.”

It was not for nothing that Soviet leaders were called “Kremlin dreamers,” because, for example, they wanted to obtain as many specialists with higher education as possible at minimal cost, and the overwhelming majority were of proletarian origin. What happened as a result is described in the material “This crippling of youth can be put to an end.”

Jokes about a submarine in the steppes used to be even more popular than jokes about ewes and ewes, but since the Russo-Japanese War this picture has become absolutely real. Especially in those times when there was an urgent need to transfer these warships between fleets under conditions of a blockade of waterways. All the details are in the text “In order to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet.”

This issue of the monthly “Kommersant-History” is about these amazing, but completely real events.

Contents

“The Kremlin gates can be called real sewers”/As suggested in Moscow’s unpretentious cleanliness

“Signed by the emperor without sufficient study” /Because of what oversight in the document Russia lost Alaska

“This crippling of youth can be put to an end” /Why they decided to sharply reduce the number of students

“By conducting experiments with experimental gender conversion”< /b> /What economically valuable result did the study of gender reassignment lead to