Russia’s Capitalist Realism
Russia’s Capitalist Realism. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. Vadim Shneyder. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. Russia’s Capitalist Realism breaks new grounds in the studies of nineteenth-century Russian…
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In which four Russian give a master class on writing, reading, and life. George Saunders. New York: Random House,…
What Americans Today Can Learn from the Russian Past: Lessons from Turgenev and Dostoevsky for American Hillbillies
National identity has been a preoccupation in the tradition of Russian political thought since Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725), who led a cultural revolution in Russia that…
Notes on Stalinism as a Secular Religion
Introduction As with nearly any claim in scholarly discourse, the assertion that the communism espoused by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin constituted a secular religion is a controversial…
Notes on V. I. Lenin and the 1922 Moscow Trial of the Russian Orthodox Church
Introduction Like a shape-shifter, global communism and its intellectual ideals have shown a remarkable resiliency and an ability to adapt to various cultures. The fall of communism…
Solzhenitsyn’s Continuing Relevance to American Politics and Culture
Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West. David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson, eds., Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.…
An Annunciation on the Battlefield
On December 2, 1805, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte achieved his most spectacular victory at the Battle of Austerlitz against an allied army of Russians and Austrians.…
Between Two Millstones: Interview with Daniel J. Mahoney
The following is an interview with Daniel J. Mahoney, the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College, about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones: Book 1: Sketches…
Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Milestones: Sketches of Exile, 1974-1978
Between Two Milestones. Book I. Sketches of Exile, 1974-1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. “Away from home in a country far…
Solzhenitsyn at One Hundred
“Live not by lies,” was the advice that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born December 11, 1918) gave his compatriots when they asked him how to stand up to the…
The Problem of Theocracy in The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has rightly earned its place among the greatest books of all time. It warrants this stature in no small part because…
Ukraine and Russian Neo-Imperialism
Ukraine and Russian Neo-Imperialism: The Divergent Break. Ostap Kushnir. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Since the end of the Cold War, Ukraine has neither transition to…
Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party
Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party. A. James McAdams. Princeton University Press, 2017. James McAdams has provided a compendious but readable…
A Witness and Prophet for History: Solzhenitsyn’s March 1917
March 1917: The Red Wheel. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. Historians like Eric Hobsbawn had argued that the Russian Revolution was…
1917: Darkness Falls
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. The Bolshevik coup d’état of October 25…