Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
This past July, Howard Chua-Eoan wrote on Bloomberg: In 1931, the Politburo ordered the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow; it was built by Czar Alexander I to commemorate Napoleon’s retreat from the city and the…
From Britannica’s entry on Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground: The views and actions of Dostoyevsky’s underground man demonstrate that in asserting free will humans often act against self-interest… When he turns to reason for salvation, it fails him, and he…
I should have posted this two days ago, on March 5. Better late than never: March 5 is the day Stalin died in 1953, the so-called Cheyne-Stokes Day. In 2016, I wrote two more posts about that day of deliverance:…
Sergei Dovlatov once remarked: “In Soviet newspapers, only misprints are truthful.” His first example was gavnokomanduyushchiy instead of glavnokomanduyushchiy — “Commander-in-Shit” for “Commander-in-Chief,” roughly speaking. Dovlatov did not live to witness the spread of spell checkers and autocorrectors. We’re all…
When Trump visited Moscow in 1987, he did some preliminary probing for a possible real estate deal but came back disappointed: the USSR had no private ownership of land at all and the dispute resolution procedure his Soviet counterparts proposed…
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,…
A nurse in South Dakota says some of her patients refuse to believe they are infected with Covid-19 until their dying breath – literally. Some would rather be told they had the flu, pneumonia, even lung cancer (!) – anything…
Up until recently, Putin’s regime committed fraud at every important election. It wasn’t that easy, even though the perpetrators were told they would never face prosecution. In fact, having independent or opposition party observers at polling stations all but closed…
Four and a half years ago, there was a brief outbreak of fighting in Nagorny Karabakh. It had been waiting to happen, I said then, as Azerbaijan had been investing its oil revenues in rearmament and was ready to strike.…
An American (apparently) freelance writer writes of his experience working for what turned out a Russian operation posing as a “progressive global news outlet.” PeaceData, seemingly a leftwing news outlet, offered me a column. I should have known it was…
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…