Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Oleg Liskin, once a gubernatorial candidate in Tula and a member of the opposition party Yabloko, is reportedly the first Russian to have received political refugee status in Germany (since 1991, I assume). UPDATE. Yabloko is denying ties to Liskin.
Although it gets disparaged as pop Roman history in anecdotes, I reread Suetonius from time to time, just for the fun of it. This time, I noticed a most unbelievable type of entertainment mentioned at least twice: elephants walking the…
“I love my country, knowing all the limitations and frailties of the American people, and I respect and admire the French, who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is, if greatness means anything loftier…
Let us now consider whether the mass murders in the Katyn’ forest and the other places were a direct consequence of the Soviet-German treaty of 1939 known in the West as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. First, would the camps for Polish…
The one and only J. A. Schumpeter: I know something of the government which preceeded Hitler… and I can only say that I am quite prepared to forgive him much by virtue of comparison. (1933) […] Nor am I a…
Russia and the EU Now that the EU’s great minds are mulling over Turkey’s membership, I wonder if they look back at the great opportunity they missed. Back in the early 1990s, the EU had a chance to offer Russia…
Operas, one would think, provide a plenitude of potential brand names. Cavalleria Rusticana could be a line of ready-made clothing, the Cracker Barrel of the garment business; Mimi Pinson, a chain of home decor outlets; Amneris, exotic lingerie. But Das…
Anatoly Gladilin (Anatol Gladiline), a Soviet Russian writer, left the Soviet Union in 1976 and has since lived in Paris. Back in the 1960s, he was, along with Vasily Aksionov, one of the most famous and promising young Russian authors.…
The aforementioned philosophe has published another one-sided, but this time mercifully brief, piece on Russian affairs, managing to squeeze in a true pearl. Die Pariser Salons standen dem nicht nach, allen voran Voltaire, der ohne falsche Rücksicht auf die Vergangenheit…
In an article on Erik von Kühnelt-Leddihn, a quote from Antoine de Rivarol: Politics is like the Sphinx: It devours all those who cannot solve its riddles. [Added July 18, 2019. Also according to de Rivarol, the same error that…
There are two types of Russian folk tales. One is clean stuff adapted for children’s reading. The other is the unexpurgated tales recorded by Dahl, Afanasiev and numerous others. They go back to the dark heathen days and are naturally unfit…
My blog is now old enough I can quote what I wrote a year ago. Right now I am only trying to identify, naively, two popular perceptions of the Great Revolution. One is that the Revolution was basically a good,…