The Dilettante abides
The Dilettante abides
Looking for an example of a Constructivist building that would be clearly pre- and non-Brutalist, I’ve stumbled on a half-ruined structure remarkable for reasons not limited to architecture. Actually, it was by coincidence that I spotted it – here’s the…
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…
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” Lenin may have never said it. There is no doubt that some such selling did occur in the decades after his death. Soviet tractor plants – read tank…
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…
Greece is trying to stop Turkey (or, rather, Erdoğan) from turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque: The Greek government is preparing a diplomatic push for the European Union to sanction Turkey as a first response to its decision of converting…
As I used to say on this blog, most early stories of Trump’s connections to the Kremlin seemed to have no legs to stand on. Almost always they came from unscrupulous journalists, biased academic or self-serving politicians. In the summer…
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…
A fund manager running a private equity fund out of Luxembourg writes: Regarding what happened on the ground, one can assume that Saudi Arabia had prepared a plan A and a contingency plan before entering the talks. Plan A was…
The BBC’s Russian service reported on Monday (the translation is my own): The prosecution in the MH17 crash case has claimed that at least two Buk missile launchers were dispatched from Russia to Ukraine in 2014 but one of them…