Mathemagenic

Today is the last day to nominate weblogs for Best of the Blog award. Although I can think about many really good weblogs, I nominated only two...

Both weblogs are Russian, both are powered by LiveJournal (which is most popular blogging platform in Russia) and both are examples of "more than a weblog"...

The first one, Moskva kotoroy net ("Moscow that do not exist" literally, but I'd translate it as "Dissappearing Moscow") is a journal from the site with the same name. It's about historical buildings of Moscow that are being destroyed or reconstructed in a way that there is not much left...

This journal gives voices to buildings - those that do not exist any more tell their stories and those that are threathened cry for help - so more people hear those voices and then words are turning into actions that help to save some buildings... For me this is one of the most powerful examples of "weblog activism".

The second one, We are successors of our Victory is a LiveJournal community (working as a group weblog) for Our Victory. Day by day project, which portrays Second World War through the eyes of people. The weblog is there to collect stories of people participated in the war and their families...

Most of stories are written by people of my generation, telling stories of their grandparents. The stories are very different, but all make that war very personal and very close... And, between other stories I found a story from memories of Michail Katukov, which added another dimention to the street named after him where I lived for almost 20 years...

It's pity that most of you don't read Russian - these two are powerful examples of what weblogs could do...