Cossack Dances and Songs Video

Cossacks were members of multinational militaristic communities living in Ukraine and southern Russia.
In the 18th century the Russian Empire's expansionist ambitions relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension with their traditional independent lifestyle. This resulted in rebellions led by Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin and Yemelyan Pugachev. In extreme cases whole Hosts could be dissolved, as was the fate of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775. By the end of the 18th century, Cossacks were transformed into a special social estate, they served as border guards on national and internal ethnic borders (as was in the case in the Caucasus War) and regularly supplied men to conflicts such as the numerous Russo-Turkish Wars. In return they enjoyed vast social autonomy. This caused them to form a stereotypical portrayal of 19th century Russian Empire abroad and her government domestically (http://en.wikipedia.org/).

Watch the Cossack Dances and Songs Videos, enjoy those vivid and bright performances:

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin

A Rye Field









Morning in a
Pine Forest











Pine Forest, Mast Timber
in the Viatka Province


Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement.

Shishkin was born in the town of Elabuga of Vyatka Governorate (today Republic of Tatarstan), and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium. He then studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for 4 years, then attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860, graduating with the highest honors and a gold medal. He received the Imperial scholarship for his further studies in Europe. Five years later Shishkin became a member of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg and was professor of painting from 1873 to 1898. At the same time, Shishkin headed the landscape painting class at the Higher Art School in St. Petersburg.

For some time, Shishkin lived and worked in Switzerland and Germany on scholarship from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. On his return to Saint Petersburg, he became a member of the Circle of the Itinerants and of the Society of Russian Watercolorists. He also took part in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882), the Nizhniy Novgorod (1896), and the World Fairs (Paris, 1867 and 1878, and Vienna,1873). Shishkin's painting method was based on analytical studies of nature. He became famous for his forest landscapes, and was also an outstanding draftsman and a printmaker.

Ivan Shishkin owned a dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg. There he painted some of his finest landscapes. His works are notable for poetic depiction of seasons in the woods, wild nature, animals and birds. He died in 1898, in St. Petersburg, Russia, while working on his new painting.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/)