Don’t cry for me, Dostoevsky

By Dilip -

By Konstantin Akinsha    In early March, the University of Milan-Bicocca reacted to the Russian war against Ukraine by cancelling a seminar on Dostoevsky. This peculiar stand against Russian imperialism provoked a heated discussion among academics and intellectuals. The seminar was taught by the writer Paolo Nori, who instantly became famous. For a few days, the Italian intelligentsia treated the scrapping of the seminar as an event of utmost importance – eclipsing even the actual war in Ukraine.

Those demanding the immediate reinstatement of the seminar had apparently forgotten their literary idol’s observation that ‘the happiness of the whole world is not worth the tear of a child’. Fortunately for everybody, Dostoevsky was quickly rehabilitated and the clumsy censors put to shame. As frivolous as the academic brouhaha may seem, it does raise an important question: what ought we to do now with Russian culture?...

https://www.eurozine.com/dont-cry-for-me-dostoevsky/


THE CANCELLATION OF RUSSIAN CULTURE. By Gary Saul Morson


Madhavan Palat lectures on Dostoevsky


Madhavan Palat: Utopia and Dystopia in Revolutionary Russia


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Historian of Decline and Prophet of Revival by Madhavan Palat


The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon


P.B. Mehta: Ukraine invasion has revealed a new world disorder


JUAN COLE: The US would be on firmer ground declaring Putin a War Criminal if George W. Bush had been Tried / Aditya Chakrabortty: Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today


Rohini Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine / Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War


10 Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats (1977)


Ukraine: India refuses to take a clear position on the Russian invasion


Simon Tisdall: Putin, a criminal and incompetent president, is an enemy of his own people


Jairus Banaji: A Hundred Years After October Revolution, Rethinking the Origins of Stalinism


Nikolai Berdyaev: The Religion of Communism (1931) // The Paradox of the Lie (1939)


Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions


Books reviewed: Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself



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