Category Russia

“Being allowed”

J. of Silver Rights quotes a poem by Langston Hughes before getting down to the latest Michigan riots. I first read it fifteen years ago, but it’s only having reread it in J.’s entrly, I finally appreciated it. What I…

Paging Sancta Hypocrisis

I went to a birthday dinner party at an upscale Moscow restaurant last night. Most guests were rich by Russian standards; some were rich by any measure. A few seats from me, there sat one bearded gentleman in his late…

The Old Women

From the Russian daily Kommersant: …The director “ascertained the reality of a ‘gentle Moslem occupation’ exemplified by the co-existence in a faraway Kostroma village of a few lonely old women and a family of Uzbek refugees with their numerous children.…

Labor mobility

Passing by a construction site in the US and seeing mostly Mexican-looking workers — presumably recent immigrants — I used to wonder what kepts native-born Americans away from construction jobs. I came up with three obvious choices. Perhaps Mexicans are…

[Russian schools in Latvia]

If I were the President of the Russian Federation, and happened to be fixated on helping Russians in Latvia, I would amply finance a network of private Russian schools in that Baltic country. They would be equally open to students…

[Slavery and Serfdom]

Concerning the West Indies, I can tell you in short that it is flooded with Negros, bondspeople of Europeans, who produce sugar, coffee, rum and other produce of warm climates, for their masters. The condition of these slaves (esclaves) is…

Russian baby names 2

(Cont’d) Some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s a few Russian names earlier considered peasant, obsolete and/or exotic, started coming back. I call them Russian because they were given to Russian babies at a certain time; most are…

Russian baby names

Have you noticed what the most popular baby names are in your area? How often are girls named Madison, and boys Indiana? I’m perplexed by the persistent popularity of Anastasias and Ksenias as baby names here in Moscow and around.…

Marx the prophet

Schumpeter was not the first to classify Marx as a (false) prophet of a new world and the founder of a new religion. The Russian religious philosopher (to use a common Russian term) Sergei Bulgakov published an article titled Karl…

Marx the apologist for capitalism

Theodore Dalrymple in an interview: <…> in some ways Mrs Thatcher was a mirror-image Marxist. Everything that Marx abhorred she thought was good, and she thought (or she appeared to think—I’m not sure she gave enough attention to it) that…

There will always be a(n)…

Repeating my reply to Alex Tapinsh (whose name I negligently and ruthlessly misspelled in the original version of the post). I’m not implying that Russian kids should not learn Latvian or that all subjects should be taught in Russian. My…

Sad Cypress

Some peasant children who achieved prominence in society are more deeply and genuinely aristocratic in their ways than offsprings of the hereditary noble. Yet it seems an exception, not the rule. Even among peasants who never achieved anything you can…