Category: Russia

Two Alyoshas

Dostoevsky’s—There was something in him that told one, that convinced one (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of men, that he would not take…

He Made an Impression

“God grant us more such Russian rogues,” Marya Dmitrievna suddenly mixed in vexedly. “He lived a week with us; we saw nothing but good from him,” she said. “Courteous, wise, just.”   –Leo Tolstoy, Hadji…

The Miracle of Being Awake

Suddenly some force shoved him in the chest, in the side, choked his breath still more, he fell through the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something lit up. What was done…

Blinded

I did not know the light and I thought there was no truth in life. But having become convinced that people could only live by this light, I began to seek its source and I…

Reckoning with Ourselves

I recently finished a course with my friends Dianne Lee and Martín Antonio Zaldívar-Barragán, “Reckoning with Russia, War, and Ourselves.” We read and discussed Tolstoy, Kuznetsov, Alexievich, and Politkovskaya. I invite you to check out…

Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky’s art is literally prophetic. He is not prophetic in the sense of predicting the future, but in a  truly biblical sense, for he untiringly denounces the fall of the people of God back into…

An Odious Comparison?

Norman Mailer once related a story he came across: Somewhere around the turn of the century, Chekhov visits Tolstoy. He takes the train to the nearest station. Let’s say it’s wintertime. He rents two horses…

Tolstoy Summer

✓ A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin) ✓ The Gospel in Brief: The Life of Jesus (Harper Perennial) ✓ Hadji Murat (translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky) ✓ The Kingdom of God Is within You…

So, Which Is It?

My friend Andrew Wimmer texted me the following two lines… [Paul] Street’s dementia: “the Kremlin [is] in the grip of a megalomaniacal neofascist…” Stephen F. Cohen on accusations of fascism leveled against Putin: “absurd.” Street…