Tag: Russia

The Bolsheviks & workers’ control: State & counter-revolution, by Maurice Brinton

The Russian Revolution in is entirety from 1905 to 1917 continues to be one of the great periods of history for the struggle for freedom by the working class against the capitalist class.  Maurice Brinton: The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control A remarkable pamphlet by Maurice Brinton exposing the struggle that took place over the running… Read More The Bolsheviks & workers’ control: State & counter-revolution, by Maurice Brinton

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Reading Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Life and Fate’

War heightens the kaleidoscope of temporality. That you might say is the premise of Grossman’s entire book. It is an effect of combat and of the proximity of death. There would be other such moments in World War II – Bagration, Normandy, and the Battle for Berlin come to mind. But perhaps never again, indeed… Read More Reading Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Life and Fate’

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Manifestations of the Devil: The writings of Maximilian Rudwin (1885-1946)

From the 1910s through the 1930s, Maximilian J. Rudwin produced some excellent pioneering scholarship on the European traditions of the fantastic in literature, especially as related to various manifestations of the devil.  Rudwin was an unusually peripatetic scholar, and virtually nothing has been written about him or his oeuvre. His trail has not been easy to… Read More Manifestations of the Devil: The writings of Maximilian Rudwin (1885-1946)

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‘He had no idea he was being sent to a war zone’: the Indian and Nepalese men on frontlines in Ukraine

Signing up for jobs in Russia, Germany or Dubai, young men have been ‘made to join the Russian military’, their families say When Hemil Mangukiya left his small village in the Indian state of Gujarat last December, he told his family he was off to Russia to make a better living than was possible at home in… Read More ‘He had no idea he was being sent to a war zone’: the Indian and Nepalese men on frontlines in Ukraine

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A Critic, His Life, His Age: A Tribute to Joseph Frank (1918-2013)

By Gregory Freidin Great musicians, it is said, do not choose their calling—music chooses them. Reading and rereading Joseph Frank’s writings after his passing, it seems that the spirit of modernity itself chose him to be its voice among literary critics—in the age when brute force remaking the world was matched and animated by a… Read More A Critic, His Life, His Age: A Tribute to Joseph Frank (1918-2013)

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