(Updated 15 June 2024.)
This long-lived blog about Russian culture entered an entirely new world on 24 February 2022. If you have been sleeping the last few years, that is the day Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the fantastically paradoxical intent of wiping out the “non-existent Ukrainian culture” and replacing it with “the only true, Russian culture.” These are paraphrases of declarations made by Russian president Vladimir Putin to justify his war.
In fact, Putin, like no one else ever before him, cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of his own culture. Like never before Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and hundreds, even thousands of other artists that in the past we routinely agreed to call “great,” were now placed in a new light – that of being representatives of a forced, alien and hostile imperial culture. It is not my intent to provide a serious discussion of this notion here. Suffice it to say that the evil that Russia unleashed on Ukraine, and the astonishing support – demonstrative or subtle – that many contemporary Russian cultural figures offered Putin and his brutal efforts, made it impossible for me to continue my usually light-hearted romp through Russian cultural history. Accordingly, I provide a new photo on this page – the Ukrainian-born, Russian-language writer Nikolai Gogol, or, as he is known in his homeland, Mykola Hohol. Get used to it, folks.
My connection to this blog and the culture that it promoted had been under attack for a long time. I would even say that the blog arose as my then-attempt to place Russian culture in opposition to contemporary Russia’s political ambitions. In February and March 2014, Putin annexed Crimea and sent mercenaries into eastern Ukraine, thus setting in motion the events that would lead to the full-scale invasion in 2022. You can see here that I began my blog almost at that very time – my first post was on 1 May 2014. It was as if I was trying to say, “No! Russian culture is not that! Let me show you another angle, another picture, another attitude.” I never attempted to do that covering over difficult pages in history – on the contrary, I threw myself into many of the most heinous and evil days of Russian cultural history. But something in me continued to believe that I could conduct a narrative other than the one being pushed by Putin and his sycophants (many of them – major Russian cultural figures). True, by the late ‘teens, I was posting more and more about graveyards and gravesites because the aura of death was hovering over my topic more and more.
When conceived many years ago, this blog was intended to combine a mixture of personal whim and historical fact. It was supposed to be fun – for me and for readers. It was not intended to be encyclopedic, although I always strove to provide more than a little that you would not find in encyclopedias. It had an affinity for the pointless and obscure while often ignoring the obvious and the important. Here you could find photos and odd information – or read personal asides – about buildings, statues, monuments, streets, memorial plaques and other physical objects that were connected in some way to art, literature, theater and music originating in Russia. I was often more interested in sharing images than words, so sometimes I let the pictures do most of the talking.
All of that came to a crashing halt in February 2022. I just quit this blog. Walked away from it and, frankly, didn’t think of it again until I recently learned that it continues to attract a fairly large number of readers. That surprised me no end. And since I am not interested in denying what I wrote in the past, or worse, in deleting it, I am adding this new preface.
As my work on this blog began tailing off and then stopped entirely, I refocused my gaze on writers from Belarus and Ukraine. With Belarusian playwright Andrei Kureichik, I co-founded, and continue to curate, the Insulted. Belarus Worldwide Reading Project. In March 2022 I hurriedly initiated the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings, which have done tremendous work bringing the story of Ukrainian culture to the world, even as Putin continues to try to destroy it. In this short time period I have edited and translated several books of which I am deeply proud. They include: A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights (Laertes Press, 2023), Two Plays of Revolution: Insulted. Belarus and Voices of the New Belarus by Andrei Kureichik (Laertes Press, 2023), and Ghost Land by Andriy Bondarenko (Laertes Press, 2023). Many more are on the way.
For the record, in my previous life I wrote or edited/translated several books on Russian theater. Most are available through my author’s page on amazon.com, including Provoking Theater, which I wrote with Kama Ginkas, and of which I am particularly fond. I maintain a website that chronicles my writings about Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish drama, theater and literature. Perhaps the last book I will ever create on the topic of Russian culture (see below) was an anthology of contemporary Russian drama put out by New Academia Publishing. For what it is worth, it is available at amazon.com and on the New Academia website. Ebooks (and regular hard copies) are available at amazon.com and barnes&noble.com.
Russian Culture in Landmarks 
Hello matte nice blog
Wonderful blog! Did you know that Maria Rasputin lived and later died in Hollywood?
RE George Shdanoff – I knew George, when he was an older man. He was very straightforward, very much missed his wife and was pretty open about his life, as if he knew time was limited and there was no reason for secrets and games. If there was a son left behind in Europe, it would have been his wife’s from a previous relationship because George was only 18 and still in Russia in 1923. And, undoubtedly , George would have welcomed him into his life at some point if there was an actual connection and there was never any son around, in photos at the house or mentioned in George’s later years.
Thanks for your interesting blog! I have taken the liberty of using one of your pictures of the Griboyedov monument in Moscow for the YouTube thumbnail of a video I have done of two waltzes by him, with appropriate credit to you – hope that’s OK! (video link: https://youtu.be/X-oHtt-DxZo ).
Of course that’s okay! Share the wealth! Very nice video, by the way!
Thank you!
Dear Mr. Freedman, thank you for your excellent writing and for your love of Russian theater. If you’re interested, I have a 1994 amateur photo of George Zhdanov (Shdanoff). I wish I could attach here, but I don’t think I can. If interested, I’ll be happy to forward it to you. Thanks again and best wishes!
Thanks for the blog. I’ve written a play about the June 1941 meeting between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva (still looking for a playhouse willing to perform it!).
Your blog, both words and pictures, have been a great help in making the lives of these two great poets more tangible for me.
That is wonderful, Alan! Good luck with getting readings of your play set up and then, hopefully, a production. I’m very pleased to have provided some inspiration, no matter how small. Congratulations, once again.
Is there a chance I get to see the play? We could schedule in our play reading plans for the new year.
Thanks
Oh this is awesome! I’m the co-author on https://davidsway.blog , a free health/wellness support blog, and we are active around the world but have not made a contact in Russia. I have been looking for a Russian culture blog that is devoted to the art, food and music rather than the politics. Thank you for creating this site. I will follow you if I can and I’m sure that David will also. Please follow us. I love your site!
Thank you, Brenda Sue! Appreciate it!
I read about Lefty way back in 1997. The story of the cross eyed lefty fascinated me. I was deeply drawn to the character. I left the topic as such. Today I happened to go through your site. Thanks for great posting. A big nosed lefty from vizianagaram.
Thanks for stopping by! It’s fascinating to know how and why Russian literature touches those of us from other cultures. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you sir for an immediate reply
Very interesting blog! Live in Beverly Hills passed by all those houses so many times and had no idea!
Yes, it has been a revelation to me, too. Fortunately, many of the old Hollywood homes are still standing. I’ll be adding more. Thanks for coming by.
October 12th will be the 50th anniversary of the death of the composer Arthur Lourié (1892-1966). The St. Petersburg-born composer lived in the USA from 1941, mostly in New York, but he died in Princeton, where his grave is. The charming house in Princeton, where Lourié and his wife Ella lived from 1961, belonged to the philosopher Jacques Maritain. And it is still there…as (probably) the only remaining landmark of Arthur Lourié’s life in the States.
Thank you for this information. I did not know it. The next time I pass through Princeton you can rest assured I will find the place and photograph it. Thank you again!
This is driving me crazy, and you’re the only person I can think of who might be able to help, so forgive me for pestering you with it. I’m compiling a Chronology of Russian Prose Literature in which items are listed by year of publication; this is often hard to determine for plays (dates given in parenthesis in published sources might refer to year of composition or first performance, rarely of actual publication), and I’m finding it completely impossible for Galin’s famous “Ретро,” which was apparently written in 1979, had its premiere in 1981, and was wildly popular in the early ’80s. Do you happen to know where and when it was first published? My eternal gratitude if so!
I don’t know this off-hand, of course. A quick look on the net, just in case, turned up the same things that you have seen, surely. I won’t really be in a position to learn more about this until the end of August. If that’s not too late, let me know, and I’ll try to find out what I can…
It’s never too late, and thank you for being willing to try. My e-mail is languagehat AT gmail, if’s easier to correspond that way than via your comment box.
Cool blog!!
Thank you! Appreciate it!
Softer than concrete, stronger than the time on this “Laika”…
http://idiotibidem.blogspot.fi/