Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 September 16

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September 16

Do we know how many of the Soviet people who were evacuated in 1941-1942 permanently stayed in the eastern USSR?

Do we know how many of the Soviet people who were evacuated in 1941-1942 (in response to Operation Barbarossa and Case Blue) permanently stayed in the eastern USSR? My own Jewish paternal grandfather and his parents and brother fled from Vinnytsia (then in the Ukrainian SSR, now in Ukraine) to Stalingrad and then again to Kuybyshev Oblast (now Samara Oblast; then in the Russian SFSR, now in Russia) once the Nazis were on the verge of reaching Stalingrad. None of them ever moved back to Ukraine after the end of World War II but instead remained in the Russian SFSR--with the parents remaining in Kuybyshev Oblast while my paternal grandfather and his brother eventually moved to other parts of the Russian SFSR once they became adults.

This personal family story motivated me to ask this question--how many of the Soviet people who were evacuated in 1941-1942 never actually moved back to the western USSR after their former homelands were liberated and instead permanently stayed in the more eastern parts of the USSR? Any thoughts on this? Futurist110 (talk) 00:56, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

First, your family was wise to get out of there when they did. As for records, somehow I doubt if the Russians much cared to keep those type of records or to make them public. If they did, then they might be asked why people didn't feel safe enough to return, and that would bring up the massacres they committed there. So, finding records could be tricky, if any still exist. SinisterLefty (talk) 03:33, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This looks like it might have some promising leads to help you with your research. --Jayron32 12:05, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

The Gulag Archipelago indicates that most of them would not have reached the east and of those that did, many would have been interred and then if any of the remaining had chosen to relocate this would more than likely have been viewed as a crime and they too would have been interred, most likely to never emerge. Thanks Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 12:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I think you mean "interned" (kept prisoner) rather than "interred (buried), but in any case, as Jayron32 has pointed out below, you're referring to events entirely different from those Futurist 110 was asking about. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.210.107 (talk) 15:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Plenty of Stalin's subjects were "interred" as well. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:24, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

And I wouldn't have put it past Stalin to do an occasional immurement as well, just for fun. SinisterLefty (talk) 05:32, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

The OP was asking about people who evacuated to escape the invading German army during WWII, not those who were sent to the Gulags. That's a different question. --Jayron32 12:42, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the relevant article is Evacuation in the Soviet Union. Not a very helpful title but it describes "...the mass migration of western Soviet citizens and its industries eastward as a result of Operation Barbarossa, the German military invasion of June 1941. Nearly sixteen million Soviet civilians and over 1,500 large factories were moved to areas in the middle or eastern part of the country by the end of 1941". Unfortunately, no information on the post-war period, but since the arms factories mostly stayed put east of the Urals (see Chelyabinsk or "Tankograd" for example) the people who worked there must have had to stay put too. The state decided where you lived and worked. See also Population transfer in the Soviet Union and Forced settlements in the Soviet Union. Alansplodge (talk) 18:54, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Sport as vanity

Are there major views, philosophical theories or other approaches that regard sport (particularly professional competitions) as a sort of vanity fair and/or costly business model of transient importance that benefits only a limited number of people? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 11:59, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps for the more expensive sports. Possibly golf and tennis, and definitely polo and yacht races. But the health benefits of inexpensive sports, like soccer, effectively counter any such arguments there. There has also been concern that in some sports, like boxing, those at the top get rich, while the rest barely make enough to survive, especially when medical expenses are included. SinisterLefty (talk) 12:05, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

One can argue that the health benefits of sport become health damage if professionally practiced. --Error (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Early roots of sports are founded in military practice. There are always attempts to claim that one sport or another has no practical background. For example, surfers often claim that surfing is the only leasure sport, created just to enjoy life. However, it was actually started as training to catch a wave and make it over shallow reefs. Once you were good at it, you could easily ride an outrigger over the reefs. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 13:38, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

"Early roots of sports are founded in military practice." Can't speak for any other sports, but that's certainly not the case for cricket or football, both of which arose bottom-up as popular entertainment in English villages and towns, played by people who wanted to have fun. The same thing would therefore apply to that self-serving claim from surfing. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:20, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

All or most of these sports involve exercise, which I don't think qualifies as "vanity". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:26, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

The "football" sports were mounted sports, played on foot (hence the name, football). The mounted version was a way to demonstrate ability to move around on horseback. There are also "hit a ball with a stick" games originally used to train boys in swordmanship. The issue is where the "game" starts. If I create 5-base baseball, is that a completely new game or is it rooted in existing 4-base baseball? Depending on your opinion, you move the start of the game earlier or later. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 18:05, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a source for the claim that bat-and-ball games originated as training in swordsmanship? Having done certain forms of historical fnecing myself, the techniques are totally different to hitting a bat with a ball. (Although there may still a benefit in training hand-eye coordination, and in building the strength and stamina needed to swing a sword around for the duration of a fight). Iapetus (talk) 13:34, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, bat and ball training would be more applicable for training to use a club or mace, where the ball represented the head of the enemy. SinisterLefty (talk) 05:35, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

For baseball history, see rounders. SinisterLefty (talk) 18:14, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Without getting too deep in the weeds here, most of our modern sports developed (as broad classes of games) independently in many cultures around the world. "Running around and advancing a ball into a goal" broadly describes not only European-style football games, but also various forms of the Mesoamerican ballgame, the North American Pasuckuakohowog, Cuju in the far east, Kī-o-rahi among the Maori, etc. etc. Many of these developed independently, and aside from the various minutiae that makes them different, would all be broadly recognized as football in some form. Native American lacrosse bears much in common with various forms of hockey, Sepak takraw with various European net-and-ball sports like volleyball or tennis, etc. Really, it's amazing how many times similar sports arose in unrelated cultures around the world. --Jayron32 18:51, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Let's not forget the social benefit of sports: amicable competition, cooperation, comradery, team spirit, friendly rivalry, etc. 2606:A000:1126:28D:F881:E9AE:5500:8658 (talk) 16:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Several Basque rural sports come from laborer activities after the addition of betting.

America’s Wildly Successful Socialist Experiment argues that, simplifying, sports in America is entertainment, sports in Europe is another thing. I think I have read it described as a continuation of war by other means.

--Error (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

If so, that would be a variation of the more famous quote by Carl von Clausewitz, being in the original "War is the continuation of politics by other means." --Jayron32 19:00, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Surprised no-one has yet answered this by saying "everything is vanity". But maybe someone thought of doing so, but decided it was vanity. Anyway, here's a version of the primary source. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:02, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway supposedly said that mountain climbing and automobile racing are the only real sports, while the rest are only games. On the other hand, Garry Kasparov said that chess was the most brutal and violent of all sports. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 20:22, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Don't forget Bean Bag. W.C. Fields once said he had attended the world championships in Paris, and that there were many fatalities. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:15, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Highest number of points received in any video game

What is the highest number of points that has been received in any video game?? I understand these terms for units larger than a point, each one 1000 times the preceding one:

Kilopoint, megapoint, gigapoint, terapoint, cetiopoint, seismopoint, zettapoint, yottapoint

(For the reason I use the fifth and sixth of these, please see section #16 of Talk:Metric prefix.) Note that I suggest you use whichever of these units produces a number of the unit greater than or equal to 1 but less than 1000. Georgia guy (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

There are browser games that have exponential growth in "points" limited only by the ability of computers to store and display large numbers. Most stop at a bit less than 10³⁰⁸ (the largest number in double-precision floating-point format), but I've seen one or two that went past that, into four-digit orders of magnitude. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:00, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I half remember something where you could get a score of infinity. If that hasn't been done, it should be. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 06:01, 19 September 2019 (UTC)