Forgive me, Ms. McCook, for using this place as a way to share with you a comment that I could not, as a non-paying (for now) subscriber to the Russian Dissent substack, make there. You mentioned there that you had recently reread 'the Russian novels'. If the novels you reread did not include Vassily Grossman's 'Stalingrad' and 'Life and Fate', I recommend them to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_and_Fate
Thank you! I have those books on my shelf, but have not gotten there (in true librarian fashion I have been reading chronologically) because I have detoured to the history. I'm reading Stalin's biography now to take me to 1952 then am going back to Bunin and Grossman. I had to do this with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky because I really didn't have all the details of the Crimean War or even the Russian Civil War. Thank you for the encouragement. I never thought all this would help me understand the Ukraine today. Also (reading Stalin) it is so bizarre that in WW2 everyone ws on different sides.
You're more than welcome! I read both novels in the last couple of years and was deeply impressed by them. More recently, I read too Grossman's last work, which in its most recent English translation is called 'Everything Flows'. I recommend it as well and it provides particular insight into the famine to which Stalin subjected 'the Ukraine', as it was then known.
I think I found missing part of this archive in a second hand store in NH in 2014. Each volume is inscribed 'Ex Libri AKoltchak Paris 1900'. I'm happy to show them to anyone interested in exchange for more information about them. here are some photos of them: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZY9iY7
If things were better between the U.S. and Russia I would contact the Russian Embassy and see if they could contact the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad about this--but the war would probably make this less a priority no.
Thank you for your prompt reply. What a shame the current situation is! Interestingly, I met Mr. Solzhenitsyn when i was a boy in the waiting room of a dentist office in Lebanon or Hanover, NH. We were both getting root canals. My mother had met him several times and even sat next to him in a dinner at a friend of her's place on Eastman Pond, NH. This is back in the 1970s. He occasionally attended the Russian Orthodox Church very close to the home we had when I was very young.
Forgive me, Ms. McCook, for using this place as a way to share with you a comment that I could not, as a non-paying (for now) subscriber to the Russian Dissent substack, make there. You mentioned there that you had recently reread 'the Russian novels'. If the novels you reread did not include Vassily Grossman's 'Stalingrad' and 'Life and Fate', I recommend them to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_and_Fate
Thank you! I have those books on my shelf, but have not gotten there (in true librarian fashion I have been reading chronologically) because I have detoured to the history. I'm reading Stalin's biography now to take me to 1952 then am going back to Bunin and Grossman. I had to do this with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky because I really didn't have all the details of the Crimean War or even the Russian Civil War. Thank you for the encouragement. I never thought all this would help me understand the Ukraine today. Also (reading Stalin) it is so bizarre that in WW2 everyone ws on different sides.
Also, if you are interested in film too, I recommend, given your current focus on Stalin, a film called 'Khrustalyov, My Car!'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrustalyov,_My_Car!
I subbed to Soviet Movies Online and will look.
I have it on DVD and cannot vouch for this, but it seems to be available to rent on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI8sp1qK2EI
I got this: Video unavailable
This video is not available
Do you think it's been pulled?
Too bad. I have no idea why it would be unavailable, but perhaps it was indeed pulled.
You're more than welcome! I read both novels in the last couple of years and was deeply impressed by them. More recently, I read too Grossman's last work, which in its most recent English translation is called 'Everything Flows'. I recommend it as well and it provides particular insight into the famine to which Stalin subjected 'the Ukraine', as it was then known.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/22/everything-flows-vasily-grossman-review
I think I found missing part of this archive in a second hand store in NH in 2014. Each volume is inscribed 'Ex Libri AKoltchak Paris 1900'. I'm happy to show them to anyone interested in exchange for more information about them. here are some photos of them: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZY9iY7
If things were better between the U.S. and Russia I would contact the Russian Embassy and see if they could contact the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad about this--but the war would probably make this less a priority no.
https://www.domrz.ru/en/about/review/
Thank you for your prompt reply. What a shame the current situation is! Interestingly, I met Mr. Solzhenitsyn when i was a boy in the waiting room of a dentist office in Lebanon or Hanover, NH. We were both getting root canals. My mother had met him several times and even sat next to him in a dinner at a friend of her's place on Eastman Pond, NH. This is back in the 1970s. He occasionally attended the Russian Orthodox Church very close to the home we had when I was very young.
You never fail to amaze and delight.
It seems like everything leads to libraries or archives.