Four short links: intergalactic zombie agriculture!
… or Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Task. One comes across many extraordinary figures and ideas in Russian literature and intellectual history, but Fedorov stands out even in...
View ArticleLectures on Russian Thought: Introduction
Over the next two terms I will be publishing fortnightly lectures from my undergraduate course on Russian thought. I’ve been teaching the course for a few years solely as seminars, but am changing it...
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Russian Thought Lecture 1: Petr Chaadaev and the Russian Question
Readings: Petr Chaadaev, “First Philosophical Letter” and “Apologia of a Madman” Before we get on to Chaadaev, the first question we must address is why he acts as the starting point for our...
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Russian thought lecture 4: Nihilism and the birth of Russian radicalism: from...
Readings: Nikolai Chernyshevsky, extracts from “The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy” (1860); Dmitry Pisarev, “The Realists” (1864) and “The Thinking Proletariat” (1865) We’re now moving away...
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Russian Thought lecture 7: Tolstoy: from Christian love to Christian anarchism
Readings: L. N. Tolstoy, “A Confession” (1879), “The Law of Violence and the Law of Love” (1908), “Postface to The Kreutzer Sonata” (1889) Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910 We now move onto Lev...
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Russian thought lecture 8: Vladimir Solov’ev: Godmanhood, Sophia, and erotic...
Readings: Solov’ev, “The Meaning of Love” Vladimir Solov’ev (1853-1900) Vladimir Solov’ev (1853-1900) is a very significant figure in the history of Russian thought as well as being a very prominent...
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Russian thought lecture 9: Nikolai Fedorov and the utopia of the resurrected
Reading: “The Question of Brotherhood or Relatedness, and the Reasons for the Unbrotherly, Dis-Related, or Unpeaceful State of the World, and of the Means for the Restoration of Relatedness” (from...
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Top ten undead in Russian literature
“The dead are people too.” Andrei Platonov, The Foundation Pit Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the influence on nineteenth-century Russian literature of romantic and gothic sensibilities, and of...
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From Herzen to Leskov, and back again
Nikolai Leskov (1831-1895) I’ve been re-reading Nikolai Leskov’s Cathedral Clergy (Soboriane) in the excellent recent translation by Margaret Winchell (Slavica, 2010) for a new undergraduate course I’m...
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Convicts and serfs: two books on Russian penal reform
I’m currently reading and re-reading material for a chapter of my book on narratives of prison, exile and hard labour, and have a few thoughts to put in order in relation to two books on Russian penal...
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