Why Did the Berlin Wall Fall?

By |2023-11-09T19:19:47-06:00November 8th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Barbara J. Elliott, Communism, Europe, Poland, Russia, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain seemed to be permanent fixtures of the political landscape of Europe after 1961. But to everyone’s surprise, the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. This stunning event triggered a chain reaction throughout Eastern Europe, accelerating a process that had begun a decade earlier. Using a little poetic [...]

The Kornilov Affair

By |2023-07-04T17:24:41-05:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, Mark Malvasi, Russia, Senior Contributors, Ukraine|

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, the the head of the Wagner Group, advanced on Moscow when the government refused to address his criticisms of the war effort in Ukraine. There is an obscure episode in Russian history that provides a revealing, albeit imperfect, analogue to this recent event: the so-called Kornilov Affair of 1917. For twenty-four [...]

Russia: Friend or Foe?

By |2022-03-21T14:19:07-05:00February 24th, 2022|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, National Security, Politics, Russia|

Russia’s leaders are flawed, inclined toward violence, and covetous of power—but this doesn’t make them much different from the leaders of every other nation-state. On March 10, 2014, American ambassadors from across the globe descended on Washington for our annual conference: a few days to forget about the day-to-day hassles of running embassies and coping [...]

The Voice of a Prophet: Solzhenitsyn on the Ukraine Crisis

By |2022-03-31T21:02:55-05:00February 23rd, 2022|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Foreign Affairs, Joseph Pearce, Russia, Ukraine|

Though Solzhenitsyn feared the consequences of an independent Ukraine, he respected the right of the Ukrainian people to secede, a right which they duly exercised as the former Soviet Union unraveled. Reiterating his subsidiarist principles he insisted once again that “only the local population can decide the fate of their locality, of their region.” Alexander [...]

The Liberation of Auschwitz: Playing the Blame Game

By |2021-03-24T08:08:06-05:00March 25th, 2021|Categories: History, Joseph Pearce, Russia, Senior Contributors, War, World War II|

It is necessary for President Vladimir Putin to restore his previous and proper focus on what it means to be Russian in the twenty-first century. At the heart of this healthy focus is the absolute necessity of Russia separating herself psychologically from the Soviet Union. On January 27, 1945, advancing Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz concentration [...]

“Promenade on the Nevsky Prospekt”

By |2020-12-20T12:40:36-06:00December 20th, 2020|Categories: Poetry, Russia|

This gentleman evidently belonged to the category of those people who wish the Government to interfere in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives. —”The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol Braving the blust’ring blizzarding snow, lo, I am the poet Zhivago buffeted by this fierce maelstrom sent by grim Russian wintry discontent. [...]

Russia, China, & the U.S.: Three Actors, One in Search of a Role

By |2020-10-29T14:22:46-05:00October 29th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Foreign Affairs, Modernity, Politics, Russia|

Even if we cannot fully grasp the shape of the near-future international order, either because it has yet to crystalize fully or because we lack the historical distance to see it clearly, we can know some things about it: While Russia and China have settled into their roles, the U.S. remains an actor in search [...]

Demonizing Russia: Fake News Goes Viral

By |2020-04-14T15:42:26-05:00April 14th, 2020|Categories: Conservatism, Europe, Foreign Affairs, Government, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Russia, Senior Contributors|

A journal is claiming that the Russian government was using the Covid-19 outbreak to strengthen anti-EU feelings, make propaganda gains, and gather intelligence at the heart of NATO. Although this report has gained traction, what is this statement really saying and who is saying it? According to a recent news report, Russia is using the [...]

Poland, Russia, Globalism, and the Legacy of World War II

By |2022-08-31T18:50:59-05:00March 1st, 2020|Categories: Communism, Conservatism, Joseph Pearce, Poland, Politics, Russia, Senior Contributors, World War II|

Though they should be on the same side in their opposition to globalism, Russia and Poland have recently entered into an unholy spat over the history of World War II. The Russian Ambassador to Poland stated recently in an interview with the Russian news site rbc.ru that relations between Russia and Poland are “the worst [...]

A Reflection on the Resurrection of the Superfluous Man

By |2022-07-20T14:09:38-05:00December 6th, 2019|Categories: Character, Fiction, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Imagination, Literature, Russia|

Russia’s nineteenth-century literary luminaries all found themselves wrestling with a particularly Romantic archetype: the Superfluous Man. Bored, confused, dissolute, yet noble and aristocratic, the Superfluous Man experiences tragedy in his reckless pursuit of passion. And I can’t help but wonder whether there is any hope for these characters—both the Russians in the novels, and the [...]

The Ambiguity of Stalin

By |2019-04-25T23:43:12-05:00April 25th, 2019|Categories: Books, Communism, History, Russia|

Somehow Joseph Stalin cannot be reduced merely to just another Russian autocrat or just another communist dictator. Not for him the “banality of evil.”… Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 By Stephen Kotkin (Penguin Press, 2014) Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator By Oleg Khlevniuk, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov (Yale University Press, 2015) The Last [...]

“Stalker”: The Search for Faith Amidst Desolation

By |2023-08-17T18:59:20-05:00February 28th, 2019|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Film, Russia, St. John Paul II, StAR|

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker is about a man who leads others, however obliquely, and despite obstacles, both external and internal, to faith. Faith is faith. Without it, man is deprived of any spiritual roots. He is like a blind man. Just more than thirty years ago, on 26 April 1986, a nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear [...]

The Dangers of Russophobia

By |2022-02-15T00:11:31-06:00February 24th, 2019|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Character, Communism, Government, Joseph Pearce, Political Philosophy, Politics, Russia, Senior Contributors|

We should not confuse or conflate Russian President Vladimir Putin with Soviet leaders, such as Josef Stalin. They are as different as the proverbial chalk and cheese. Nowhere is this more evident than the way in which Mr. Putin has shown himself to be a great admirer of the anti-Soviet dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Special [...]

Russia: Is it Time to Give Peace a Chance?

By |2019-05-09T12:12:54-05:00July 22nd, 2018|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Donald Trump, Foreign Affairs, History, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Russia|

Russia is resurrected from the dead, rising from the tomb in which communism had placed it. It is emerging as a Christian country at a time when other erstwhile Christian countries seem intent on abandoning their faith in order to embrace the suicidal culture of death... Patrick Buchanan’s succinct and penetrating essay on President Trump’s [...]

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