Tag Archives: Nikolai Erdman

Russia’s new/old cultural war

In The Moscow Times, John Freedman illuminates a striking parallel between the hysterical, xenophobic cultural attacks being directed against cultural figures in Russia and those carried out at the height of Stalinism: “I’ve seen this before. Not in my lifetime, no. I saw it unfold before my astonished eyes in crumbling, yellowing newspaper clippings from the late 1920s […]

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‘Cynics’ by Anatoly Mariengof

It’s a novel about the early days of the Russian Revolution, the civil war and the famine that ravaged the Soviet Union. The extremes of hunger and poverty are set off against the high living and obscene wealth of those taking advantage of the Soviet government’s New Economic Policy. A story of love and betrayal […]

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Literary roundup: Russian literature in marked and unmarked museums

The literary history of Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odessa is the focus of British novelist and journalist A.D. Miller’s article on the Odessa State Literary Museum “The Odessaphiles” at The Economist’s Intelligent Life. It’s a nice introduction to the city’s mythical place in Russian history, literary and otherwise, especially in regard to Isaak […]

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