Tag: Matthew Raphael Johnson

3,585 words

Of all the thousands of cases of academic corruption, few have been more infuriating than the saga of the Amy Bishop murders. It is a distillation and concentration of all America’s evils into a single incident.

Higher education is the single most corrupt institution in American life, (more…)

2,998 words

Part 3 of 3

Stus illustrates the idea of meaningless toil that ends only in death in this excerpt:  (more…)

3,156 words

Part 2 of 3

III.

Solid ground is death; it’s the rule of matter and the mundane; both air and water are the alternative, the boundary between the nominal and the Real it refuses to see. Yet, terms like “desert” or “tundra” refer to the lonely life of non-affirmation. One cannot create a substitute world; civilization is materialization of dominance. (more…)

2,983 words

Part 1 of 3

Moral self-determination is difficult. So are criticism and logic; they are discussed and piously praised until they are used. At that moment, they become oppressive. Vasyl Stus (1938–1985) is not well known in the west; in fact, he is not known at all. Part of the reason is that he is a standing condemnation of the mass society from which poetic “celebrities” are generated. Vasyl Stus spent a substantial portion of his adult life in Soviet Gulags and hence is known to only a few specialists. (more…)

3,409 words

Moldova is Europe’s poorest country. Tiny, landlocked, and with a population of about 3 million and shrinking, she is often ignored in modern writing on Eastern Europe. She is one of the many castaways of the 1990s, the imposition of the “free market,” and the “end of history.” Yet she was an important part of the old USSR. But after the breakup of the empire in 1990–1991, she fared even worse than Ukraine, reaching Fourth World poverty levels.  (more…)

7,366 words

Introduction

In no way can a brief article do any justice to a complex idea like the Ukrainian nation. While this author has dedicated his academic life to these and related topics, its poor treatment in the press and distortion by certain emigre circles calls for a certain clarification. One that will not doubt please no one. (more…)