Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
From a conversation with Edward Luttwak published by the Wall Street Journal in March 2020: Ranching has been more than an investment. It has helped him understand the fundamental weakness of post-Soviet Russia. “Between Vladivostok and the North Korean border,…
At the Vereshchagin retrospective in 2018, I spent some time staring at a painting of a ruined Chinese theater somewhere in Central Asia. After posting these notes on Altishar and Kashgaria, I wondered if had Vereshchagin found his theatrical ruins…
Orwell’s 1984 begins comically: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. “Oh the horror of the continental (Papist) 24-hour clock! Anything but that!” sneered John Dolan. Good enough, but there’s also the obvious…
Alexander Adams has reviewed a number of books on architecture in the Soviet block (aka the Second World) and the Third World. It’s in the Critic, one of those Save Western Civilization mags whose writers are generously paid to keep…
To quote myself: Vietnam’s quarantine, I imagine, was much facilitated by the people’s apprehension of threats and dangers coming from the north. That is, from China. Back in 1979, China invaded Vietnam, devastated the borderlands and withdrew in the face…
Not that I know much about Joseph Beuys‘s work but this episode from his younger years – perhaps invented – keeps interjecting itself into my random thoughts. Actually, I’m pretty sure he did invent it now. Here’s the deal: When…
Here’s Sophie Pinkham for The Nation, reviewing The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia by Anya Bernstein: Aleksandr Bogdanov, a prominent early Bolshevik and science fiction writer, investigated the rejuvenating properties of blood transfusions in the…
Russians haven’t gotten politically smarter in the past decade, according to the latest Pew report (as compared with these polls from 2009). Only 38% believe that free media are important, a negligible increase from 37% in 2009. Only 40% believe…
Early in 1892, Chekhov bought a modest estate in Melikhovo, forty miles south of Moscow. In March, he moved there from Moscow together with his parents and sister, and would live in Melikhovo until 1899. From time to time, he…
Alice Cherki, a friend and colleague of Frantz Fanon, writes in her memoir: Fanon went to Moscow in mid-January 1961. He had put on some weight, and his white cell count was substantially lower… [Dr. Michel] Martini remembers that Fanon…
It has been reported that hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million people have taken to the streets in Hong Kong to protest against a law that would make the city’s residents extraditable to China. A huge turnout for a city…