Learning the Russian language is one thing, but it's also nice to learn about the country/countries that speak the language! I'm going to be keeping track of videos I watch and writing my thoughts/interesting things I learned. Most videos will be about Russia, but I'd also like to learn about other countries that speak Russian.

From Wikipedia:
"Russian (русский язык, tr. russkiy yazyk) is an East Slavic language native to Russia in Eastern Europe. It is a part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of four living East Slavic languages, and also part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Russian is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states."

They mentioned фуражка (furazhka), a type of hat, in the video, which is a word I know! I think it came up in the grammar book I was using

Shovels doubled as frying pans. I never thought of that before, but I can see how that could work

The founder of the Romanov dynasty was Michael Romanov. He sent a representative to demand submission from the Cossacks. They threw the representative in the Don river in a sack

They were democratic. Everyone, women included, had a vote, and they elected a leader who served for one year

In the 17th and 18th centuries there were Russian wars against the Cossacks as well as Cossack rebellions

In the 1905 Russian Revolution there were Cossack mutinies

Tolstoy lived among the Cossacks when he was young, and he said what made a Cossack a Cossack was their love of freedom