#10 It’s All One Big Conspiracy!

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Welcome to the third episode of the 3 episode release week! On this episode, we are going to be talking about the Tartarian Empire Conspiracy! Please enjoy the episode, and check out the other two that were also produced!

TRANSCRIPT:

12:01 AM

Grab  your tin foil hats, it’s time for Architecture, Coffee, & Ink.

30 second Intro song

Hello, this is Hollywood C. and you’re listening to Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. A podcast dedicated to introducing concepts, detailing out designs, and tackling the architecture you might not realize the meaning behind. I’m your hostess and I am here today to start introducing you to the designs that make you wonder why.

tag line:  So I ask you to brew your coffee, grab your sketch book and pen, and let’s begin.

So, weird week! I gave you a BONUS episode on a Tuesday as normal and a Normal Episode as a weekend bonus, along with another BONUS! If you listened to the BONUS episode first, then you know that this is a completely unrelated episode. If you didn’t surprise! This is going to be about Conspiracies and Architecture. I am going to all the websites with funky fonts and questionable music choices! Just kidding, there are actually several completely well documented believed conspiracies about Architecture and some designs that have been around for years, so of course I am going to be focusing on one that started to gain traction on reddit. This one, this one is a doozy. I am going to be talking about the Tartarian Empire.

So I first heard of this through complete mistake. I was researching the Singer Building for an actual class several years ago.  You know trying to focus on the historical facts and create a presentation, diving into the research a little deeper and from a wide variety of sources. I can’t remember at the moment, exactly why, it was either to help tutor someone or something, but, when I was researching I took a quick break to look at images and accidentally stumbled across it. So, to be completely transparent, I was prompted to pull this back up after someone emailed me the article written by a Zach Mortice for Bloomberg, and asked me to do an episode on it. However, there is a reason, that I want to talk about this episode, and explain just why, this is a good case study on information.

The majority of my fellows in academia have probably never heard of this theory, much less the Tartarian Empire, and that is honestly perfect. Please don’t google it yet, listen to the episode before you start reaching for your laptops. Conspiracy theories are a topic that are hard to undergo-especially when you are trying to establish creditability as a serious designer or even professional. While this is a fun episode, I think that they are relevant to understand from an academic standpoint as you need to be aware of the biases you may come across. And more importantly, you have to be aware of what information is being promoted. Enjoy today’s story.

So according to the various sources, which covered everything from YouTube to Reddit, to Bloomberg, to Accuweather, there was a super-secret country that has wiped away from history and removed from all books, due to a mudslide killing the entire population and burying the entire country-as recently as 100 years ago or less. This theory is credited on Wikipedia as starting in Russia. And the two individuals credited with it is Anatoly Fomenko’s New Chronology and Nikolai Levashov. Within this theory, the idea is that a huge, part of Asia-particularly the majority of Russia, China and some of India was originally a country called Grande Tartari, or the Great Tartaria. These people/country are believed to be so advanced that they created a lot of the buildings and features that carry over as archetypes-and are responsible for several buildings that were torn down-such as the Singer Building I was researching. And it is due to the ‘universal government’s’ decision to wipe all mention of this country that the buildings and architecture was completely removed and in many cases destroyed. 

Two distinctive features pop out at very quick glance for the architecture included, 1. is the building is old and buried and 2.  there is a dome. Also, history is “folded” and doesn’t exist before  800 AD. But, since the publication of Fomenko’s books, his books have been officially rejected and declared pseudoscience.

Within the primary articles linked to the reddit post, and a series of follow up articles and reporting the three major sources I was finding was the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. III, a declassified CIA document and a Wikipedia article where it was claimed to be false and dubbed a conspiracy. The same one I mentioned earlier-but in this case, it used the first sentence of the article without any inclusion that the misquoted article was actually condemning the theory. My first issues with researching this topic, is that it is pretty hard to draw a conclusive single narrative. A lot of the listed sources I found attached to articles, link wise just took me to the main home page of the database listed-not an exact article. Searching the database often failed to find the exact articles listed by name-now, that could genuinely be due to the recent publicity or the age of the articles.  The second issue was that if you chased the sources long enough, they would circle back around or run into articles where no citation was needed. So, I didn’t include any of those, but I did include several blogs or opinion based articles in my sources to be completely fair.

So the reason that this has recently popped up in modern history, is that a document was declassified by the CIA, and was dated to 1957. Within the document, a single paragraph seems to be posted on most of the sites, over and over again, and contains the following phrase-

“…a directive ordering the party’s Tartar Provincial Committee “to proceed to a scientific revision of the history of Tartaria , to liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalistic character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history.” In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten — let us be frank, was to be falsified– in order to eliminate references to the Great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar-Russian relations.” 

I finally found the source that this single clip comes from and it was very, very hard to find. And the very, very first line, of the document, refers to the names exactly what group of people it refers to as the Tatars. It says,

“Tatars of Volga and Crimea….Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia”, while the paragraph that keeps getting re-posted is actually on page 10, of a report talking about the communist suppression of the Muslim minority after and during the “40 years”. The names being reference in particular is referring to people who are located around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. A much smaller region than is being proposed by the theory. However, in the theory’s favor is that there are several maps that were labeled as variations of Tataria, and the West when first exploring were prone to getting a bit trigger happy with labeling and dubbing things underneath a title quickly. A good example is Columbus coming to America, and it taking Vespucci to realize he wasn’t in India.

So thus far, I was pretty 50/50 on it. Hard to believe the massive destruction happened not too long ago and we don’t know it. But I do believe, that people could be targeted and ostracized from Society, and maps. And I could even believe the use of the word ‘Tartar’ as a general phrase for a group. And several of the sources, included images of languages, of scripts, some in vertical, some not. Some that crossed over to the Mongols, some that share similarities with the several that cross over clearly with Arabic.

But then, we get to the Giants. Now, they aren’t referring to gigantism or acromegaly, for many, they believe that these people were actually Jack and the Beanstalk, size. For those who don’t know the story, it’s a fable where a child outwits a Giant, a creature over 15 feet tall. Which is very different. One of the more common causes of gigantism is actually tumors or over expressive of IGF-I, or hormones. It is extremely more complicated than that, but it will often times cause individuals to have much shorter life expectancies, and a bunch of problems. However, according to my population genetics professor I took way back, the average heights of humans has overall mellowed out-and height is often influenced by nutrition as well as genetics. So, I suppose to a shorter population genetically, ‘giants’ could be a relative term. There are also issues with the appropriation of ideas from other cultures by several believers and trolls alike, as well as some photoshops, to just get “people to think about the possibility.”

I think that the article by Mortice stated it best when he said,

“At its core, the theory reflects a fear of how quickly things change. As they look at today’s cityscapes, Tartaria believers see an eerie and alienating place, filled with abstract monoliths that emerged out of nowhere in a brief period of time. “

– ZACK MORTICE, BLOOMBERG

Another article also pulled this quote out as well, which I linked in the notes. But what I think is most important to academia is the knowledge and information and how it was treated. First, a lot of the articles, I ended up ignoring because they didn’t consider a full source or took the topic out of context. Even the ones I mentioned did it a lot of the time. Second, trust was a huge playing factor in this topic. When people trusted the source, it didn’t matter how many or few sources were included. They were more willing to trust and go with the source that they knew and were familiar with then risk untrustworthy resources. 3. The access of information played a huge role. Some of the ideas and the concepts took root because no information was available. It was either withheld or didn’t exist on a public level, so people filled in. 4. Many of the articles condemned the major supporters for not having a background or training in architecture, but the way that they addressed them wouldn’t exactly encourage anyone to reach out and ask questions and get information. Gatekeeping didn’t help and it clearly made this situation worse. Many of the supporter felt that they had a passion and drive to understand architecture. But, this created a feedback loop with the first few points, and thus the idea was born.

So, just remember: check your facts, check your sources, and more importantly, check me. 

Thank you, for tuning in, Once again a big thank you to all my listeners! A quick call to action: Please rate and review, share with your friends, neighbors, and family, your professor-whomever you think needs some architecture in their life. We again have a Facebook page and private group, both of which are under the same name: Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. The answer to the question-who is the host-is Hollywood, like the city. And second question is just your opinion, and I might just use it as a recommendation for a show with a little shout out. If you want to either be featured, or have a case study suggestion or perhaps just want to share a story of your favorite design or experience, you can either find me at  Architecture, Coffee, & Ink the website is: https://architectureink.design.blog/ . Insta is now architecturecoffeeandink! Just like the email address! Everything will be linked in the show notes. You can also email me at architecturecoffeeandink@gmail.com all spelt out without the ampersands or commas.  Again, check out the other episode coming out with this one, And as always,

May your coffee mugs be full, and your ink wells never run dry.

60 secs end song re-looped.

SOURCES:

Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory.

J Bryant, Stephen Rose says: and Andrew D says: “Long Live the Tartarian Empire!” UnHerd, May 5, 2021. https://unherd.com/thepost/long-live-the-tartarian-empire/.

Kotzé, Minette Christel. “The Great Tartarian Empire.” LinkedIn. LinkedIn, July 6, 2021. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-tartarian-empire-minette-christel-kotz%C3%A9/.

“Tartary.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, December 17, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartary.

Dharma, Nagato. “Tartary / Tartaria - the Mystery of an Empire Lost in History.” Medium. History of Yesterday, July 3, 2020. https://historyofyesterday.com/tartary-tartaria-the-mystery-of-an-empire-lost-in-history-a99abb5cc9b6.

“R/Tartarianarchitecture.” reddit. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/tartarianarchitecture/.

Google search. Google. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.google.com/search?q=famous%2Barchitecture%2Bconspirators&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS910US910&ei=P1-9YfeuCKWMwbkPkvWNyAs&start=10&sa=N&ved=2ahUKEwi3yuS0vez0AhUlRjABHZJ6A7kQ8NMDegQIARBJ&biw=1474&bih=859&dpr=1.

KorbenDallas. “Tartary Aka Tartaria – an Empire Hidden in History. It Was Bigger than Russia Once…” KD’s Stolen History Blog. KD’s Stolen History Blog, August 23, 2021. https://www.stolenhistory.org/articles/tartary-aka-tartaria-an-empire-hidden-in-history-it-was-bigger-than-russia-once.5/.

“R/Tartaria.” reddit. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/Tartaria/.

“National Cultural Development under Communism – CIA.” Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02771R000200090002-6.pdf.