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Mikhail Lermontov Part I: The Original Hipster
If Russian literature is a history of Pushkin imitators, then Lermontov came first, and he’s still the best. Many have tried imitate Pushkin’s style, but few went as far to...
Mikhail Lermontov Part II: The Flesh Mop
Borrowed culture, without full cognizance of origin, is still pervasive in much of the hipster culture of Russia.
The Leviathan and the Gutter: Gefter.ru interviews NYU's Mikhail Iampolski (Part I)
There’s no law, Putin is absolutely impotent, he can’t do anything. That’s it. All that’s left is to sit there, like a medieval serf, and hope to God that you...
The Leviathan and the Gutter: Gefter.ru interviews NYU's Mikhail Iampolski (Part II)
It’s all very sad, I think. The capacity for thought has already disappeared, and now dignity is gradually being snuffed out, but I don’t see any solutions. People still depend...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part I
"This book—this collection of sentimental tales—was written at the very height of NEP and revolution. And so the reader is, of course, entitled to demand certain things of its author:...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part II
"In view of past misunderstandings, the writer notifies his critic that the person who narrates these tales, is, so to speak, an imaginary person."
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part III
“Why does man exist? Is there a purpose to man’s life—and if there isn’t, then is life itself not, generally speaking, in part senseless?” Of course, some assistant or full...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part IV
The author pledges to his dear readers that when he recalls certain sentimental scenes—say, the heroine crying over a portrait, or the same heroine mending Apollo Perepenchuk’s torn tunic, or,...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales,” Part V
Before long Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk sank deep into poverty.
The Orc-Song of Mikhail Y. Elizarov (Russia's Alien Nations)
The song is an implicit call for the renewal of Orc pride.
Vladimir Putin: Pauper or Princeling?
If Vladimir Putin did indeed come from a family with ties to the Soviet nomenklatura, that would illuminate the role of personal connections in an allegedly egalitarian and meritocratic society....
The Journey to Amerika: An Immigrant Story
No, we did not come from a war-torn country.
Reinventing the Soviet Past: Actor Pavel Derevyanko's "Positive Heroes"
In the series "Dark Side of the Moon" (2011-) and in the film "Salyut-7" (2017), historical and biographical truth take a backseat to the aesthetic and ideological needs of the...
Fictional Gays and Real Meteorites in Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk is about the last place in Russian you’d expect to find any kind of gay movement, and comedians have taken advantage of this.
Spring Reading Series: Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's "Beyond Tula," Part I
"Beyond Tula" has a transparently insignificant plot: a young writer from the city comes to visit his engineer friend in the country for a couple of days, and everything ends...
Cold Snap (Part II): Russian Film after Leviathan
An auteurist orientation, therefore, is neither good nor bad, but it is certainly mismatched to an industry—especially during periods of robust growth—in which so-called “spectators’ cinema” [zritel'skoe kino] is in...
Teaching The Master and Margarita: A Pedagogical Field Note
If I had to choose a book to bring on a desert island, I wouldn’t choose this one.
Russian Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Part II
In painting, Mikhail Vrubel’s engagement with the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood exemplifies a lifelong negotiation of Russia’s position on the map of European modernisms.
Bitter Taste: How Gorky Saved Pushkin’s Honor by Closing His Café, Part III
Immediately after Gorky's death, rumors began to spread that he had been poisoned by chocolate candies sent to him from the Kremlin. Whether this is true or not, nobody knows....
Gorbachev and Putin
In the outpouring of commentary following the death of Mikhail Gorbachev at age 91 there seems to be a broad consensus about his varying historical legacy, East and West: he...