On October 9th, 1927, already after the tragic death of Duncan herself, and again in the Sunday supplement to Hearst’s newspapers, there appeared yet another article, undoubtedly from the same author, entitled “Isadora Duncan Haunted by Her Crazy Husband’s Dying Command. How Death Beckoned to the Noted Dancer Ever Since the Inscription, ‘Isadora, I Wait for Thee!’ Was Set Upon the Urn That Holds Poet Essenin’s Ashes in Russia.”

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In this article, I’d like to turn away from heated debates over Esenin’s alleged “killers,” or unprofessional falsifiers of literary history, toward an apparently calmer place. I will focus on one of the most extravagant (if not the most extravagant and absurd) versions of the poet’s death, and the posthumous fate of his deathbed poem.

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From the beginning of the pandemic, the Russian government instituted very tight control over all information related to the spread of the coronavirus in Russia. It highlighted Russia’s lower mortality rate and focused on advances in developing and registering the first COVID-19 vaccine. The label of “Sputnik-V” hearkened back to the Cold War-era space race and Soviet achievements in this sphere. Meanwhile, the truth about the spread of the virus in Russia was kept secret. Medical authorities, responding to executive pressure, controlled reporting about the infection, diagnosing many cases of the virus as pneumonia and attributing the causes of death to other, more proximate reasons like cardiovascular or renal failure — even when these causes were spurred by the virus. At the same time, alternative means of getting to the truth about coronavirus spread in Russia demonstrate that, contrary to official reports, the death toll from the pandemic is still rising as localized pockets of infection affect different regions, cities, and localities across the country. As hundreds of thousands of Russians sicken, they inevitably come into contact with the failing healthcare system and must come to terms with the fact that the Russian state does not have social safety mechanisms capable of alleviating the new economic problems the pandemic is causing. The public response to news about the Russian vaccine offers a snapshot of these new trends.

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I first noticed the 7” hand-cast polymer Putin statue on Etsy.com in November 2017. The listing was delightfully playful in nature but also showed a solid engagement with contemporary politics. It read, “He’s coming to invade your neighbors’ gardens and he might even decide to turn up to the G8 summit in his armored car…yes, by popular request, and with no fear of poisoned umbrellas, I present….Vladimir Putin, the garden gnome.”

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The views on Marxism of philosopher and legal theoretician Leszek Nowak were shared by a number of other important political thinkers of the Polish interwar period, including Roman Dmowski, Józef Piłsudski, Jan Kucharzewski, and Adam Ciołkosz. Most of these men had first-hand knowledge of Russia and were not — other than Ciołkosz — sympathetic to Marxism.

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The introduction of communism in Russia was supposed to lead to a modernized economy and a just society. Yet the new social system did not make the economy competitive, nor did it do away with social inequalities.

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He was a marvelous colleague, helpful to the Russian Department, to the Jordan Center, and to his colleagues. I can’t recall a time when he turned us down. I want this to be known and appreciated.

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It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our friend and colleague, Stephen F. Cohen.

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I argue that Russians’ worldview in the Putin era derives, at least in part, from the lived experience of the years just before and after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The late 1980s and early 1990s ushered in massive changes in the rules governing social organization and, for many Russians, life took a dramatic turn for the worse. That their circumstances during those extraordinary times shaped enduring beliefs as to the building blocks of a good society appears to be reflected in the survey data discussed here and is consistent with research on the lasting effects of economic hardships in other contexts.

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The poisoning of Aleksei Navalny is a grim reminder that Russian politics seems to operate by its own set of rules.

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