November Already!

It's hard to believe that October has come and gone already. It's still very much fall here in NC. Heck, the trees have just barely started to change on campus. It's going to be a beautiful month - made all the better by a big helping of turkey at the end.

On Russian matters, there's about a month left until Russia holds parliamentary elections. There's little doubt which party will win, but nonetheless there is still bickering over allowing foreign observers in for pre-election observation.

On a more personal level, I'm going to be continuing to study Russian in the spring and I hope to have an opportunity to spend six weeks or so in St. Petersburg this summer. It should be fun!

Now for a killer fact update!

Moscow: it's big, but you already knew that. In terms of population, it's got a little over 13 million people. If you toss in likelihood of 1-1.5 million people who live or work there undocumented, it comes out to fully 1/10th of Russia's population. Comparing to the US, it's as if you rolled NYC, LA, and Washington DC all into one and, if it had the same percentage of the country's population, would have about 30 million people!

As it relates to what I've been studying lately, Moscow was one of three main Nazi targets (along with St. Petersburg/Leningrad and the resource-rich lands of the south and Caucasus) when they invaded in June 1941. They reached the outskirts of Moscow, with the closest advances of the Wehrmacht reaching within 40 km of the Kremlin.