Tag: Russia

‘I longed for the moment you would write’: The Gulag penpals whose love lasted 60 years

Kasia Delgado First posted September 7, 2019 Vladimir was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour. Ivanna was Prisoner 108, and his secret correspondent. She looks back on a love affair with a man she never met In 1953, a young Ivanna Maszczak trudged through the Siberian labour camp in which she was serving a 10-year… Read More ‘I longed for the moment you would write’: The Gulag penpals whose love lasted 60 years

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Mikhail Gorbachev obituary

Jonathan Steele NB: Mikhail Gorbachev was a historic figure, for his courage in steering the USSR toward democracy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts within and without its borders. It is another matter that the political forces at work in a decrepit state structure were too divisive and corrupt for him to forestall disintegration. Foremost… Read More Mikhail Gorbachev obituary

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Ukraine war shows it’s time to do away with the racist ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory

By Katherine Bullock “The clash of civilizations,” wrote the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington in a famous 1993 article, “will dominate global politics.” He predicted: “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” Picked apart by critics for conceptual and empirical errors, the tragedy of 9/11 breathed new life… Read More Ukraine war shows it’s time to do away with the racist ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory

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Hari Vasudevan and the Soviet Archives : A Personal Remembrance. By Sobhanlal Datta Gupta

NB: Hari Vasudevan passed away on May 10, 2020, aged 68. A great scholar and wonderful man, he was widely respected and loved. He will be mourned and missed by friends and students. RIP, Hari Hari Vasudevan and the Soviet Archives : A Personal RemembranceIt was May, 1995, exactly 25 years ago. Hari Vasudevan (Calcutta University), Purabi… Read More Hari Vasudevan and the Soviet Archives : A Personal Remembrance. By Sobhanlal Datta Gupta

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Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

I thought about the terrible uselessness of suffering. Love leaves behind its creation-the next generation coming into the world; the continuation of humanity. But suffering? Such a great part of human experience, the most difficult and painful, passes leaving no trace. If one were to collect the energy of suffering emitted by the millions of… Read More Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

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Ivan Turgenev on Hamlet and Don Quixote / The madness in Hamlet and Don Quixote

Speech delivered by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, (1818-1883) on January 10, I860, at a public reading for the benefit of the Society for the Aid of Indigent Writers and Scientists: The first edition of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet and the first part of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote appeared in the same year, at the very beginning of the seventeenth… Read More Ivan Turgenev on Hamlet and Don Quixote / The madness in Hamlet and Don Quixote

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Slavoj Zizek and the Terminal Collapse of the Anti-War Left. By Jonathan Cook

The US has 800 military bases around the world. The rest of the world has 30 outside of its own borders.   Washington learned a hard lesson from the unpopularity of its 2003 attack on Iraq aimed at controlling more of the Middle East’s oil reserves. Ordinary people do not like seeing the public coffers ransacked… Read More Slavoj Zizek and the Terminal Collapse of the Anti-War Left. By Jonathan Cook

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