2,202 words
Janusz Bugajski
Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture
Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, 2022
Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture is a sober examination of the Kremlin’s weaknesses and the prospect of Russia’s disintegration in the near future. (more…)
4,031 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
II. To Winter Wonderlands
The road through the Almond and Raisin Gate led Nutcracker and Marie to Rock Candy Mountain and the Christmas Woods, Bon-Bonville, Marzipan Castle, and Jamburg. Upon crossing Lemonade River, six monkeys in red vests began “playing the most beautiful Turkish military music,” while they walked “farther and farther on multicolored tiles, which, however, were nothing but nicely filled lozenges.” (more…)
Putin meeting with families of the victims of the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.
4,319 words
Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
In the several chapters which deal with Russia’s transformation from a state-run to a mixed economy, Putin is described as frequently involved, but only indirectly: never the main mover and never in the spotlight. (more…)
120 words / 2:04:05
On yet another exciting episode of The Writers’ Bloc, host Nick Jeelvy was joined by special guest Endeavour to talk about the situation on the ground in Russia (pictured) and “The Moral Equivalent of War,” a 1906 speech by William James, and it is now available for download and online listening.
First impressions of Russia
Russian architecture (more…)
Bolshoi Zlatoust Church in Yekaterinburg
876 words
I walked amid thousands of pilgrims carrying icons and clutching crosses close to their breasts in the shadow of the bell tower of the Bolshoi Zlatoust church. The magnificent Russo-Byzantine edifice, now bathed in silver starlight, having been so faithfully reconstructed in 2010 after the communists had blasted Saint Maximian’s holy place with dynamite some eighty years before to make way for a statue to their new gods, Lenin and Stalin.
2,072 words
Part 3 of 4
The Red Terror: Lenin and the October Revolution
Prison of the Nation presents an original view of the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917. (more…)
Viktor Vasnetsov, Ivan the Terrible, detail, 1897
2,888 words
Part 2 of 4
The Archetype of the Tyrant: Ivan the Terrible
While Ivan III laid the foundations of an independent Russian kingdom (or rather a Muscovite Orthodox khanate) it was his grandson Ivan IV Vasilyevich, better known as Ivan the Terrible who created tsarist Russia and began the real Muscovite expansions of the 16th century.
4,747 words
Part 1 of 4
Алексей Широпаев
Тюрьма Народа. Русский взгляд на Россию
Москва 2001
[Alexiey Shiropayev, Prison of the Nation: The Russian Perspective on Russia (Moscow, 2001).]
There are different approaches to telling the history of Russia and the Russian people. (more…)