For example, would Alexander the great have known about it? What about the Romans? Any of the Muslim empires?

I was unable to find previous posts answering similar questions, but if this question has already been answered, feel free to let me know!

As an undergraduate studying English, I've recently encountered the Russian formalist movement in literary criticism and it's gotten me curious as to what the humanities were like in the USSR. Growing up in the US one is sort of taught to assume the USSR was a cultural wasteland, devoid of art and literature, but college has helped me realize that this is most certainly untrue. Several very important literary critics, most notably the incredibly influential Mikhail Baktin, were publishing during the Soviet era. Moreover, Marxism is quite a significant movement to the contemporary study of literature and culture, and I assume the Soviet government would have been very open to publications with a Marxist point of view.

Anyways, my question is: what was the status of the humanities for the Soviet government? Was there much funding for things like literary criticism or history? How much freedom was there in academic publishing? Were university students required to study any sort of core curriculum or general education requirements that included the humanities?

If my question is broad it's because I'm very open to a broad range of answers.

I don't know if this is an idea that people would like, so I figured I'd ask a question and see what moderators/users think.

I love this sub, and I love going through it. However, when I want to read more about a specific region or area, I typically have a lot of trouble doing so; I'd have to research an event, instead of just a region. So, for example, if I wanted to research Middle Eastern history, I can't usually just search "Middle East" and learn about interactions people have asked, about; I have to search for specific countries, and hope that I find international histories as well as national histories when I do.

My suggestion is this: /r/relationships (yeah, it's nothing like this sub, just a format thing!) provides the option to assign flairs to your posts, and then organizes each post into the sub-sections based on the flairs. There's a tab for all posts, and then tabs if you want to read about a specific topic. If you don't assign a flair to it, it'll either be assigned for you or it'll just be left to go into the general section, as it is now. I was thinking; why not do the same here?

It doesn't have to be too specific or anything, just a basic tab structure that organizes things based on dates, or regions, or whatever mods/people think best. This would help people find answers by categorizing their questions into areas that are more easily found by experts, and would also help those who are just roaming the sub occasionally (like me) and want to learn more about entire regions/eras while finding source material to look at in those questions.

Thanks for reading!

tl;dr: Wondering if there's support for introducing tabs based on subject area/time/geographical regions (any or all).

It is often said that attacks on pilgrims is one of the reasons the crusades happened, but how common were attacks on pilgrims?

An (apparently good) friend and I got onto this topic, and given the historical taboo on menstruation, but the varying use of public bathhouses or bathing at all, it seems like at least some cultures would have actual proscriptions regarding vaginal odor.

Note: if you need a more specific area of focus, medieval Europe is the only place I know of associated with a taboo on bathing, so...anything from there?

I find it hard to imagine there's a culture that would see it as a good thing, but your indulgence of our curiosity is much appreciated.

(Would downvoters please explain how this question is poorly framed? As vagina bearers, we would like real answers so I'm happy to revise.)

Just tribal raids? If so, what tribes specifically?

Was everyone but nobles fugly 4'9 shit covered broke as shit toilers in the soil? Did everyone have gingivitis? Was everyone either incredibly skinny or plump? Were brutal tortures and executions as everyday as evening traffic?

I'm reading through Jonathan Parshall's book 'Shattered Sword' and its one of a best books I've ever read on such a pivotal moment in the second world war.

but theres something I don't quite grasp and its the time taken between ordering a strike and one being launched off the flight deck. can somebody help me break the entire process down?

What is your opinion on how the world war 1 started?

Over 80% of Mexicans claim to be of full or partial indigenous descent, and you see similar high percentages in other Central American countries.

In the US, it's around 8% (if you exclude people who identify as White Hispanic/Latino). Canada is around 5-6% depending on how you slice it.

Why is this? Were there simply more natives in Central America? Fewer colonists? Were the settlers in the southern part of the continent less brutal? More willing to intermarry? Were the natives less devastated by European diseases?

So yeah as the title says, what was the accepted explanation with what happened to the sun at night and the moon in the morning? Was there something that was considered to be below the Earth where the Sun and Moon went or something else, am genuinely intrigued as to what the wide opinion was on this subject.

How did having white clothes mean you were poor because you couldn't dye the clothes turn into having white clothes being a symbol of wealth, like Italians with white shoes and a big white Cadillac.

Another question stemming from this : Did Roman senators actually wear togas? What color were they? Follow up question if they were white : Why were they white, instead of purple, or any other color that would require a dye?

This came up in a history class today and it struck me as odd that the Allies would have structured the reparations agreement in a way that would have allowed the Germans to inflate their way out of it. And even if the Germans hadn't done so, it seems to me that German currency would have been good for a whole lot in the years after WWI. So what was the nature, both intended and actual, of the post-WWI reparations scheme?

The Constitutional framers considered the Judiciary “the weakest branch” of the federal government. But it doesn't seem as weak as I've heard it described. What caused this transition?

I'm listening to the history of Rome podcast and it seems like several times during the Republic, Rome got their butts kicked but then managed to find enough men to make up another massive army. Hannibal for example, killed or captured 30,000 men at Lake Trasimene but by the next year the Romans had managed to raise another 100,000 for Cannae. How did they keep doing this?

What was their stance regarding the Holocaust, Rwandan Genocide, etc?

Muslims in Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula were systematically deported until every last one of them had either converted or left. The Muslim Tatars who started out as Mongol captives were in a relative state of co-existence with the Polish and Lithuanians.

If we were to look at the period of 800 AD - 1500 AD, how come the Muslim Tatar integration in Poland-Lithuania went smoother than the Arab Muslim integration in Span and Sicily?

By the way, I'm reposting this from earlier because I had the luck to ask my question during yesterdays bot-rampage.