The “state of siege” on which Lenin insisted with such energy requires “full powers”. The practice of organised distrust demands an iron hand. The system of Terror is crowned by a Robespierre. Comrade Lenin reviewed the members of the Party in his mind, and reached the conclusion that this iron hand could [...]
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In the introductory piece on Mayakovsky earlier in this series, we discovered that this chaotic and volatile Old Bolshevik became required reading for generations of Soviet schoolchildren after his death in 1930. We all know there’s no literary turn-off like the stuff you were forced to read at school. And Mayakovsky, or the [...]
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I am reviewing Restoring Grace - rather than one of Fforde’s more recent novels, or the brand new Wedding Season (which I am yet to get my sticky fox paws on) - partly out of necessity. The bulk of my own library and I have… geographical issues right now, and there’s no handy English [...]
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But we need to remind ourselves of the point of academic history. It is not to establish a mythic truth. Nor is it to point the moral tale. Nor is it to praise winners and condemn losers, or vice versa. Hard though it is and imperfect though the attempt must always [...]
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I am a Trotsky specialist. Well, this is not entirely true. Technically, I am also a Bronstein specialist. Trotsky only came into existence with Bronstein’s final name change in 1902, half way through my research project. But Trotsky’s presence in the action and historiography of the Russian revolution is such an [...]
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The premise of The Paradise Will is really a very charming one. A young lady is compelled by her eccentric uncle’s will to dine with a brusque, but ultimately fascinating nobleman once a week for six months; she has a rather cold-fish suitor, he has a scheming hussy of a would-be fiancee. It would make [...]
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Posted in Entries by Kirsty, Fiction in translation, Fiction: literary, Fiction: women's, Uncategorized, tagged bolshevism, feminism, kollontai, red love, vasilisa malygina on May 27, 2008 | 9 Comments »
There are so many myths and half-truths surrounding the name of Alexandra Kollontai that, rather than write a plain old biographical sketch, I’m going to give you a quiz instead. The first commenter to get all the answers right gets a special place in the VL Hall of Fame, which is surely worth more [...]
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Mayakovsky is closer to the dynamic quality of the Revolution and to its stern courage than to the mass character of its heroism, deeds and experiences. Just as the ancient Greek was an anthropomorphist and naively thought of the forces of nature as resembling himself, so our poet is a Mayako-morphist and fills the squares, [...]
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Posted in Entries by Kirsty, Fiction: 19th century, Fiction: historical, Fiction: literary, Poetry: lyric, tagged Pushkin, boris godunov, captain's daughter, queen of spades, onegin on April 29, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Half Milord, half middle class,
Half wise man and half jackass,
Half rogue, but it may come to pass
He’ll become a whole at last.
- Epigram on Governor-General Vorontsov, 1824
[the silly translation is mine]
A weird thing happened when I sat down to start writing about Pushkin. I got stuck. This is particularly weird, [...]
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No, I am not Byron, but another,
A chosen one as yet unknown,
Like him a wanderer, an outcast,
Only with a Russian soul.
I started soon, shall finish sooner,
My mind’s achievements will be few;
In my soul, like in the ocean,
A heap of broken hopes lie drowned.
Oh gloomy ocean, tell me who
Can know your secrets? Who can tell
The [...]
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