I only read 6. Well, 5.5 really, as I didn't finish Life and Fate.
What 5 did you read, Torqi? Your Fave?
I only finished two myself, A Day in Life... and Fathers and Sons. Got half way through Zhivago and half way through Brothers. The Russian names kill me. They are like obstacles when reading.
how quickly did Poland roll over and submit to the Nazis?
About as quickly as France, who had the largest land army in Europe, British Expeditionary Corps to help, and didn't have Soviet Union invading from the other side. We were the first to fight and face the new blitzkrieg way of conducting wars, for which our outdated army wasn't ready. Also, our forces were stretched along all the borders because it was a political decision to defend every inch of land, in case Germans only took Silesia, Pomerania and Poznań and just stopped. An impossible task, taking into account that Germans invaded from the West, North and South, turning the September Campaign into a one, huge encirclement battle.
Besides, comparing a total, all-out war, in which about 150,000 Polish civilians died in one month of September 1939, to a limited military operation that claimed 15,000 Ukrainian civilian lives in four years is nonsensical. We lost ten times as many civilians in a month in September 1939 as Ukrainians did in four years. Do your maths.
And now many of them spent the war shining SS shoes?
This is where I lost all the sympathy for you, which I had after you initially stood up to defend the Ukrainians who indeed fight bravely like tigers for their country.
As for shining SS shoes, there were never Polish SS units, and it is not Poles who organize marches to commemorate an SS division - the most recent one a week ago...
Anyways, this is the last time that I reply to a coward, who obviously is a long-time member but doesn't have the courage to post under his usual username. I would consider not allowing unregistered "guest" posts on PF, as in 99% of cases they are used only for trolling.
From the list that Cms posted I didn't read Eugene Onegin, A Hero of Our Time, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Funeral Party. In my defense I can say that I read many other Russian books which are not on the list (some of them from Bobko's recommendation :)). It's difficult to choose one favourite but if I was forced to do it, I'd choose Erofeev's Moskva-Petushki for the poetic language, Slavic soul, wit, and for personal reasons that I don't want to mention in this online vipers' nest.
No kidding? I thought for sure that would've been one.
I've had Onegin on my list for a decade. Someday I'll read that bad boy...that freaking Pushkin can write some poetry.
Erofeev, never even heard of him. Might need to look into it.
for personal reasons that I don't want to mention in this online vipers' nest
Helluva good reason.
who obviously is a long-time member but doesn't have the courage to post under his usual..
You have to admit dude's ranting is epic-esque; not mention he nailed that all of us Americans are lard a$$es--I barely fit through a doorway with my girth.
In my defense I can say that I read many other Russian books which are not..
I have not read Moscow Pietushki but I can go one better. Once in early 90s I was sharing a crowded apartment and one of my roommates was into avant garde theatre. A North Nigerian actor came and stayed with us for a few weeks while he was on a run of performances at a local festival. So I went to see it and it was pretty weird but enjoyable.
I have no problem with NN culture, have visited many times and done business there. However support for this illegal war and Putler is genuinely high, especially outside the main cities. So I wouldn't say my problem is just with the regime, I think that the society needs a fundamental rebuild, just as Poland did in 1989 or Germany did in 1945. If they had started in the 90s they would be prosperous and free by now, but the Yeltsin era chaos opened them up to theft and the creation of the oligarchy
I think that the society needs a fundamental rebuild
Which society doesn't these days?
Still, I don't get the need for all the "drunk rapists", "orcs", "north nigerians" etc. You would be way more convincing in your advocating for social reform in Russia if you gave up all the hate speech.
I'll give a list with a short description, so you can figure out if you wanna read it or not:
1) "Moscow-Petushki" by Yerofeev. Here we follow a day in the life of a Muscovite alcoholic intellectual, as he wanders around Moscow and then takes a train to visit his family in the suburbs.
2) "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov. The Devil visits the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
3) "The Geographer Drank His Globe Away" by Ivanov. A trained biologist moves to a smaller Russian city and takes a job as a geography teacher. Drinks heavily, struggles with his marriage, and constantly clashes with colleagues and students.
4) "Day of the Oprichnik" by Sorokin. In 2028 an absolute monarchy is restored in Russia, and the country is walled off from the outside world by a Great Wall of Russia. We follow a day in the life of a sadistic state security worker, including an episode where he swallows a fish that lays hallucinogenic eggs in his brain.
5) "Heart of a Dog" by Bulgakov. A professor turns a stray dog into a Soviet citizen. The dog (named Sharikov after his transformation), proceeds to make the professor's life hell. Tries to evict the professor from his own apartment, sexually assaults the maid, and gets a job with the Soviet government as a catcher of stray cats.
6) "Generation P" by Pelevin. A man in 1990s Russia becomes a high powered advertising executive, and then participates in the rigging of elections and other dark dealings. Feels he sold his soul to the devil, and tries to fix this.
7) "Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Student borrows money. Student kills lender. Student decides he is God. Student becomes nervous wreck.
8) "The Idiot" by Dostoyevsky. Extremely earnest epileptic man accidentally causes emotional mass casualties among Petersburg high society.
9) "What is to be done?" by Lenin. Author writes a surprisingly useful manual for how a tiny, illegal revolutionary movement can seize power inside the world's largest empire.
10) "Monday Begins on Saturday" by the Strugatsky Brothers. A satire of Soviet academic life, disguised as a fantasy/sci-fi novel.
For Polish-speaking members: if you prefer audiobooks, then I recommend the Polish Radio adaptation, read by the unforgettable Roman Wilhelmi, from Mistrzowie Słowa series...
from the same place as your "double-browns" and "bunch of retards" when writing about MAGA :)
Fair enough. :)
You think such reform is even possible?
I believe it is. Maybe I'm an idiot but I have faith in Russians. A nation that isn't basically good deep inside wouldn't be able to produce Yerofeev, Sorokin or Dostoyevsky, wouldn't fly into space and build atomic icebreakers, wouldn't have created a retarded economic system that ruined them but also lifted hundreds of millions worldwide out of abject poverty. Yes, I am an incorrigible Russophile. Sue me. ;)
A quick question, which would you prefer the Soviet Union or Russia. Putin has said that th3 collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe, not just for most of its constituent parts but for the world. I tend to agree because for the brief time that the unipolar world existed the dominant forces wielded power unopposed and made a complete mess.
Russia has transformed dramatically in the past 100 years.
I mean... in some ways it's the same Russia as 1,000 years ago, but indeed many things have changed.
Russians are traveling more than ever (statistics show that Russia is one of the most "touristic" nations, despite moderate income). They see how other people live, and how other governments function. This cannot but have an effect back home.
Despite everything the current government is doing, Russians are also a super connected nation. At some point in the 2010s, the Russian Internet was the second "largest" after English language content. Despite Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi having much larger populations.
Russians love talking to foreigners (witness this forum). This also serves to widen horizons.
Obviously, Russians also closely observe what is happening in Georgia and in Ukraine - very similar societies, but with much more freedom in almost every aspect.
It's a big country - so change is slow - but it's happening.
-//-
That being said, many people also fear what may happen if freedom gets "out of control".
My American friends understand this almost immediately, after I ask them just a few questions (which I borrowed from Mikhail Khodorkovsky).
I ask them, "Imagine a country that spans 11 time zones, and includes 200 different ethnic groups. It is controlled by a powerful center - Moscow. In order not to implode, the center has to strip the lion's share of resources from the regions, and then redistribute it. How do you 'sell' this to the people?"
All my super democratic American friends immediately propose - "You need a foreign enemy!", "You have to control the press!", "You have to stamp out even the slightest sign of separatism!", "You need to sell people on why it's important for Russia to stay intact and great!".
Not for ideological reasons, btw - the Soviet Union was simply more totalitarian.
I tend to agree
I guess it's nice to be born at the other end of Europe. You can allow yourself to hold such callous views then.
As you can imagine, I, as a Pole - strongly disagree.
This also serves to widen horizons.
Can't say I've noticed this in case of RuSSians. In case of Russians with wider horizons - they often leave RuSSia and never come back... Which doesn't help, obviously (I can't blame them though).
All my super democratic American friends immediately propose
There's something wrong with your friends then o_O'
Nobody argued that reading a specific novel would trigger a wholesale reevaluation of all you hold dear.
-----
I actually made my list, with an eye for comedy. All the books I proposed are super funny.
Now, not everyone will agree that "Crime and Punishment" or "The Idiot" are funny - but I think they are very funny. Especially the Idiot.
Just want to make your life a little more interesting, not reorder it entirely.
-//-
If you want books that are supposed to change your life, probably you have to read Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy. But even Russians struggle with getting through that material - so I didn't want to burden foreigners with it.
Reading "War and Peace" is equivalent to living a whole alternate life. You see a whole world, through somebody else's eyes, and at the end are just left stupified. I think this is not for everyone.
Some Russian authors like to stick their fist down your throat, and then pull your heart out. I didn't suggest anything like that, because I love you guys.
Done it, I felt sorry for that duke,( but he had issues, I mean mental issues) but then I remembered hey you are Polish you are on the other side. My take, no matter how 'liberal' a Russian is, he will always chose his tsar and mother Russia. I think that is what the author was trying to convey.
I guess it's nice to be born at the other end of Europe.
You are very gentle.
I was born in a place where people thought they could burn my parents house with no danger of retaliation. I remember queuing at a school with my mother to try and get a room for my uncle and family who had their house burnt. I have lots of other personal stories but you understand the picture and definitely understand colonialism.
The crazy Soviet political system collapsed leaving another crazy political system to dominate the world and has made a mess
no matter how 'liberal' a Russian is, he will always chose his tsar and mother Russia
Ukrainian liberals say, that the "limits" of a Russian liberal are exposed when you ask him - "To whom does Crimea belong?".
Even Navalny had to give a rather absurd answer - "Crimea is not a ham sandwich."
-//-
Russian love for Russia, is one of the strengths of this country. Same as in America, where people are convinced that nothing better than America has ever existed.
They may be wrong. Maybe they haven't travelled enough, or read enough books. But they believe it wholeheartedly.
I think in this regard, most other peoples harbor some kind of secret doubt. Not so in Russia, or America, or probably China (never lived there).
In order not to implode, the center has to strip the lion's share of resources from..
That's a 19th century approach... russia craves international respect but still keeps going about it in the most bassackwards ways possible.
cold truth: russia will never be a true superpower because it's too invested in coercive control.
Zeihan had an interesting video on why the dollar can't be replaced as world reserve currency. One of the big ones was that the issuer of the world reserve currency has to be mostly indifferent to exchange rate fluctuations on a daily (or weekly or monthly) basis. It has to relinquish a certain kind of control
It's also like that with culture: It's my understanding that a very high percentage of 'classic' culture comes from short periods of reform and/or loosening of censorship.
A government that turns off the internet for citizens.... is not going to achieve anything worthwhile.
And the inability to distinguish freedom from chaos is telling.... as many say, the demand for repression in russia is a bottom up phenomenon. If russians didn't want to be abused the government wouldn't be abusing them so much.
Definitely not a total collapse. There's Vodolazkin ("Laurus"), Elizarov ("The Librarian"), and Yakhina ("Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes").
The two most important ones, probably, remain Sorokin and Pelevin - but I already mentioned them, and they've been famous since the 1990s - so they don't count.
produced world renowned writers who normally thrive on adversity?
This is like THE FAVORITE TOPIC of Russia's creative classes to discuss. Constant moaning about the dearth of creative talents.
Having watched a billion and one variations of this discussion, here's what the rebuttals usually distill into:
1) "Greatness" is usually only realized in retrospect - unless you are some kinda freakish talent a-la Pushkin or Tolstoy. If you look at a Bulgakov or a Solzhenitsyn - the "canonization" took decades.
2) Art has massively diversified. In Dostoyevsky's time, there were no cinemas, no radios, no televisions, no podcasts, etc. The novel had to carry on its shoulders all of moral philosophy, politics, religion, psychology, and fate. Modern society is "specialized", and does not allow anybody like Tolstoy to appear, who can be a one man orchestra - simultaneously a theologian and a public intellectual and a novelist.
3) Modern conflict is more "numbing" than anything else. Drone videos on Telegram, endless footage of gore from the ground, constant barrages of information warfare from both sides... It's all psychologically disorienting, and writers are struggling to make sense of any of it. Endless footage is not the same as art, and so there is less synthesis and more documentation.
4) Soviet writers benefited from "fighting" against a monolithic ideological structure. Contemporary Russian writers deal instead with a very fluid landscape - where cynicism, irony, and just simple exhaustion dominate. It's hard to make an enduring moral footprint in this kind of nihilistic environment.
5) This is the one I subscribe to - Russia has already produced great writers, it's just that the world still has to "metabolize" them. Maybe they are not on the scale of the folks in the 19th and 20th centuries, but that's an impossible standard.
The other large nations of Europe continue to churn out thought provoking art.
First question - what do you know about Russian art right now? Outside of books, that is. Russian music, Russian painting, Russian fashion?
I'm no fan - but Russia has produced a ton of various "punk performance artists". Pussy Riot and the guy that nailed his scrotum to the cobblestone of Red Square. There's the guy that pretends he's a dog, and walks around naked on all fours, barking at people and pissing on lampposts. There's Voina, and AES+F.
We have crazy graphic artists too. They make less paintings now, and do instead things like spray painting a giant cock on a drawbridge facing the FSB building.
Somehow the Kremlin cares much less about performance artists and painters and fashion designers. There's a lot going on there now.
So second question for you - what's something being done in Europe right now that is especially thought provoking/high stakes?
-//-
Would Putler lock up or murder dissident authors or just do the more sensible thing and..
Putin doesn't give a single sh*t about the "creative classes". He knows that 90%+ of Russians share in his views and find them to be demented freaks.
Putin cares only about babushkas and 40+ year old taxi drivers and security guards - his electorate.
What "sexual deviants" (his words) do to entertain themselves in Moscow and St Petersburg doesn't bother him one iota, "so long as they don't propagandize the kids".
Putin's understanding of art is the Russian band "Lube" (Любэ) and Orthodox icons painted by Tajik masters.
I mean that what the author wanted reader to believe. In reality it is not that simple. ---
Russian love for Russia, is one of the strengths of this country
It is exercise in futility and I think on some level intelligent Russians understand it, hecne all that talk about Russian soul and other nonsense. It is rationality and IQ versus dogmas about Russia that are needed to support Russian Mir.
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