Culture
-
Do woke people hate the West?
It is not accurate to suggest that “woke” people hate the West as a whole. The term “woke” generally refers to a political and social awareness of issues of inequality, oppression, and systemic injustice. While some individuals who identify as “woke” may criticize certain aspects of Western culture or history, it is important to note… Continue reading
-
National identity: an artificial construct?
The concept of national identity has been a subject of debate and controversy for many years. Some argue that national identity is an artificial construct, while others assert that it is a natural product of shared history, culture, and language. In this essay, I will explore the arguments on both sides of this issue and… Continue reading
-
Women’s Day has become a day of rage and frustration
It feels like centuries away, but only a few years ago in some Western countries, Women’s Day was regarded as an occasion to celebrate. Today this celebration has become a day of anger and discontent, with many women loudly voicing their frustration (at men, of course) to protest inequality, sexism and other injustices. One would… Continue reading
-
Сериал “Псих” – Рецензия
В декабре уже прошлого 2020 г. вышел новый сериал Федора Бондарчука по сценарию Паулины Андреевой. В главной роли – Константин Богомолов, режиссер известных своей скандальностью спектаклей. Богомолов играет психотерапевта, который, как это иногда бывает, сам является психически не очень стабильной личностью. Год назад герой потерял красивую, добрую, молодую жену и уже как год не может… Continue reading
-
Why should it be ok if the left is so divisive?
We truly live in a strange world. I don’t know whether it’s because of postmodernism or postpostmodernism, because of the triumph political correctness or the oversimplification of any message in the age of social media and short attention spans. It’s clearly though that only a few years ago, even if it looks so far away… Continue reading
-
The true face of liberalism – Liberalism as anti-democracy
We used to be taught from childhood that public interests are higher than personal ones. All levels of social formation of a full member of society are saturated with this idea, starting from children’s fairy tales and cartoons, ending with history and religion. At each level of education of a spiritually healthy and highly moral… Continue reading
-
Eduard Limonov, Russian writer and politician with a penchant for provocation, dies at 77
The Russian writer and radical politician Eduard Limonov has died in Moscow yesterday. He was 77. Limonov, whose real name was Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko, gained celebrity as the author of provocative novels in the 1970s, after he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974. Born in Dzerzhinsk, an industrial town in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast… Continue reading
-
Coronavirus and utopian dreams
Only a few weeks ago the world still believed in liberal dreams. Now thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, this all may look so obsolete very soon. Financial markets are tumbling and may plunge the world in an economic crisis greater than the one provoked by the crash of the US real estate bubble in 2008.… Continue reading
-
Jordan Peterson in Russia: why a professor was turned into a bogeyman by the liberal establishment
The news was shoking and unexpected: Jordan Peterson, one of the most recognizeble public intellectuals of our era, nearly died because of a developed addiction to a tranquillizer and is now seeking treatment in Russia. He was prescribed the tranquillizer a couple of years ago after his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But some… Continue reading
-
The unforgiving ideal of progress and the future of humanity
Русская версия статьи здесь When the USSR collapsed, in 1991, some Western historians and political scientists began to speak confidently about the “end of history”. Now, only less than 30 years later, it is regarded as good, academic tone to consider all this nothing but nonsense, fantasies of some not all too serious intellectuals, very… Continue reading
-
Беспощадный идеал прогресса и будущее человечества
English version Когда СССР рухнул, в 1991 году, некоторые западные историки и политологи стали уверенно говорит «о конце истории». Сейчас уже, всего лишь менее чем 30 лет спустя, является хорошим, академическим, серьезным тоном считать все это – просто вздор, задумствыния интеллектуалов, очень далеко от жизни, найвные, сверхоптимистически выводы. Но тогда, немалое количество умных, начитанных людей… Continue reading
-
The golden era of humanity
Today we live in times of great uncertainty. And still there is a sense, particularly among those living in the West, that we have never had it so good. Conditioning this optimistic sense is a firm belief that the liberal world, order irrespective of the odd setback, will eventually fulfill an eschatological promise of universal… Continue reading
-
Book review: “The Age of Anger” by Pankaj Mishra
I will tell you straight away: for those like me who feel that the nineteenth century is unsurpassed Continue reading
-
Modern liberals have nothing to do with leftists
That the old concepts of left and right do not make sense anymore, has been said a thousand times. Still, especially among commentators from the United States, the category “the Left” Continue reading
-
Do we live in a mediacracy?
Power as generally understood is divided in the legislative, executive and judiciary branches. And then there is the press, which has been labeled the Fourth Estate Continue reading
-
Nietzsche and the rise of Germany
Nietzsche was born in 1844, the son of a Lutheran pastor, in a provincial town in Thuringia. In 1866 Prussia united the whole of Northern Germany and in 1871 Continue reading
-
Obama has literally gotten away with murder
Farewells are always a bit ceremonial and hypocritical but, really, I don’t get all this last minute outpouring of good feelings for the leaving President of the United States Continue reading
-
The liberal world – tales from utopia
It feels so good to be a liberal. I don’t doubt that most people, if they had a choice, would prefer to live in a liberal world. A liberal is, by definition, on the right side of history and has universal justice on his side. To tell it all, until recently I thought I was… Continue reading
-
Our “culture” has lost any cultural value
For most of my adult life I used to have education and high culture in general in the greatest of esteem. My respect for culture bordered on deference Continue reading
-
Globalism is just another word for colonialism
There was a time, not many years ago, when globalization was something that everybody loved to hate. Continue reading
EAST AND WEST 