A happy land

Historian Alexander Yanov has lived in the US since 1974 and has taught Russian history at the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, and CUNY. He must have retired from regular teaching but keeps contributing to Russian media projects and sites, such as Snob. He remains a prolific writer with controversial views on Russian history from the Mongols through to Putin.

Prof. Yanov is also a vehement anti-Trumpist. There is no shortage of such nowadays, but his most recent column includes a still unusual expression. He has called Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and Sarah Margon of Human Rights Watch, literally, heroes of the Resistance. This from a historian who graduated from a Soviet university months after Stalin had died and was forced to leave the USSR as a dissident twenty-one years later. Yes, heroes; yes, the Resistance – and without a hint of irony.