Attempted Bloggery: Blog Post No. 1200: The Ukrainian Situation

Monday, June 30, 2014

Blog Post No. 1200: The Ukrainian Situation

"They stayed away in droves."
--Samuel Goldwyn

The Attempted Bloggery header in Ukrainian

More and more my political view of the world has taken on the perspective of a blogger. A year ago, while commenting on the increasing number of visits to this blog from China, I noted the then-current all-time leaders in page views as ranked by countries. At the time only the United States, the U.K., and Russia had accumulated more than 10,000 page views of this blog. Today they remain the top three countries and the only ones now with more than 20,000 page views each. Right now more than half of this blog's page views come from the United States, which is not really a surprise. It is a bit surprising to me to have Russia placing third, but over time the strong page view rankings from this country have been consistent.

Attempted Bloggery All-Time Page Views by Countries, July 4, 2013

China itself didn't make it onto the top-ten list until September 19, 2013, when it edged out Brazil for tenth place in all-time page views of this blog. At the time, I conjectured that virtual private networks were allowing some Chinese citizens to circumvent government censorship although, admittedly, I didn't have any proof of this. To this day, though, it's really the best explanation I have.

Attempted Bloggery All-Time Page Views by Countries, September 19, 2013

Meanwhile, Poland, Ukraine, and Serbia were themselves making some headway in the monthly blog statistics, suggesting that one or all of them might be making their way eventually into the all-time page views hit parade.

Attempted Bloggery Monthly Page Views by Countries, September 19, 2013

When Attempted Bloggery attained 400,000 page views just this May, I noted that Ukraine had come seemingly out of nowhere to tie China for eighth place in all-time page views. Of course, as I've already suggested, it really wasn't out of nowhere. Nevertheless, I conjectured that the Pro-Russian conflict had led to this happy (for me) state of affairs, and I all but declared Vladimir Putin to be my new best friend.

Attempted Bloggery All-Time Page Views by Country, May 24, 2014

Today Ukraine has pulled well ahead of China in page views--in fact, China has lost some ground in the page view count since May as Google possibly may have discounted some referrer spam--but my assessment last May of what was going on in Ukraine may have been altogether incorrect. For one thing, as we have seen, page views from Ukraine were increasing last September or even earlier, suggesting that the current Pro-Russian crisis which started in February may not be the precipitate cause of my newfound Ukrainian readers. Furthermore, I have really no idea what percentage of these 3,500 or so total page views now come from the part of Ukraine under Russian control or the part under Ukrainian control. My initial belief that Russia may have loosened the reins of internet censorship in the Crimean Peninsula may be completely mistaken, as I have found no news articles reporting general censorship in Ukraine. To complicate matters further, I have written a good number of blog posts since April about Russian-born artist Constantin Alajálov and these may have been of some interest in Ukraine, particularly among those who identify themselves as Russian.

Attempted Bloggery All-Time Page Views by Country, June 29, 2014

All this leads me to conclude that I have a very incomplete understanding of what drives readers here, whether from Ukraine, Russia, China, or anywhere else. One of the more refreshingly simple ideas I've stumbled upon is that just maybe it could be my own content such as the Alajálov pieces, rather than far-off political intrigue, that is bringing people here. It's just too bad that I've already said all I have to say about Constantin Alajálov. Or have I...?

Constantin Alajálov, The New Yorker, September 26, 1942

I like the unconventional use of space in this magazine cover. It reads from left to extreme right with the triangular group of GI's pointing like an arrowhead to the true object of their attention.

Note: Go ahead, be my guest. Read Attempted Bloggery in Ukrainian. You know you want to.

Take a look once more at the classic blog posts about Constantin Alajálov. I don't think anyone's had quite so much to say about him in a long while.

Do you like nice round numbers? Well, all the previous Attempted Bloggery centennial posts are just a click away: