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Alexander Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit, at the Crimean Academic Russian Drama Theater, three days before Crimeans voted to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.

The Theater Tsar

By Dimiter Kenarov, Photography by Boryana Katsarova

Winter 2015

Gogol’s play sounds strangely familiar, as if art and life were indistinguishable from each other. Two performances seem to be taking place in parallel: one inside the theater and another one in the streets outside, where soldiers in green balaclavas and no recognizable insignia—incognito, so to speak—have just arrived.

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Tanya, in her summer dress, plays with one of her favorite stray dogs, June 2012.

The Colors of Tiksi

By Paul Reyes, Photography by Evgenia Arbugaeva

Winter 2014

When it thrived—​if such can be said about a village in the Arctic Circle—​Tiksi was home to 12,000 people, many of whom worked at the seaport, the handful of scientific-​research stations, and military bases nearby.

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New Letters of Dostoevsky

By Fiodor Dostoevsky, S. S. Koteliansky

Summer 1926

Translated from the Russian and Edited by S.S. Koteliansky

The whole year of 1878 Dostoevsky spent in writing "The Brothers Karamasov." The serial publication of the novel and continuous work on it took him another two years, 1879 and 1880.

"The Brothers Karamasov" was published in the Russky Vestnik (NN. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of 1879; NN. 1, 4, 7, 9,10 and 11 of 1880). These hitherto unpublished letters were written during the years 1879-1881 to N. A. Lin-bimov, the associate editor of the Russky Vestnik.

Staraia Roussa, May 10, 1879.

 . . . This book, "Pro and Contra," is in my view the culminating point of the novel, and it must be finished with particular care. Its idea, as you will see from the text I have sent you, is the presentation of extreme blasphemy and of the seeds of the idea of destruction at present in Russia among the young generation that has torn itself away from reality. 

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More Letters of Dostoevsky

By Fiodor Dostoevsky, S. S. Koteliansky

Autumn 1926

Translated from the Russian and Edited by S.S. Koteliansky

I

One of Dostoevsky's early letters has recently been published in Russia. It gives quite a clear picture of his state of mind during the first years of his literary activity.

With his "Poor Folk," completed by him in the spring of 1845 (when he was 24), and published in January, 1846, in Nekrasov's Peterburgsky Sbornik, Dostoevsky all at once became a literary celebrity. The manuscript of "Poor Folk" was taken by a friend of his to Belinsky, the leading critic, who was so enthusiastic over it that he declared that a new genius had arisen in Russian literature, and prophesied a brilliant future for Dostoevsky. Belinsky also published an article in the Otechestvennya Zapiski in 1845 praising Dostoevsky to the skies.

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<i>Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia</i>, by Steve LeVine. Random House, June 2008. $26

Devilish Forces

By Stephen Boykewich

Winter 2009

In early October 2007, almost three years to the day after I began my career as a journalist in Russia, a conversation with a former CIA agent brought it to an end. 

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Will the Real Mr. Putin Please Stand Up?

By Hugh Ragsdale

Winter 2005

The four authors under review here lead us, through a variety of perspectives, from obscure confusion to plausible conclusions. Appropriately, they tell us that to understand the nature of Putin's politics, we must understand the nature of the challenges that face him, and those challenges consist most immediately of the legacy of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin's legacy is made up largely of four defining moments: (1) the robber-baron style of voucher privatization of 1992, when the apparatchiki/nomenklatura of the doomed Communist Party exploited their threatened positions in the old regime to seize the most advantageous economic assets of the new one; (2) the October 1993 attack on the Duma/parliament, the West's indifference (approval?), and the subsequent design and ratification of the superpresidential constitution; (3) the so-called "loans for shares" compact of 1995–96, whereby the oligarchs/plutocrats/new Russian capitalists financed Yeltsin's reelection campaign with large loans secured by the collateral of still more state property; and finally, (4) the apparently disastrous financial meltdown, default, and currency devaluation of August 1998, which actually served as the bottoming-out base of a lively economic rebound. 

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Russia after Beslan

By Stephen Boykewich

Winter 2005

American coverage of the monstrous hostage-taking at Beslan’s School No. 1 in the Russian republic of North Ossetia and the ensuing controversy over President Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power in ostensible response to the terrorist threat was hampered by many factors, not the least of which has been our election-season anxiety about the health of our own democracy. The superficial correspondences are everywhere: between what many consider to be Putin’s reckless and unwinnable war of choice in Chechnya and President Bush’s reckless war of choice and thus-far-unwinnable peace in Iraq; between Putin’s claims that his war is a vital part of the fight against international terrorism, while it has in fact spurred radical Islamism and been the occasion for a wave of horrific terrorist acts, and Bush’s identical claims about the war in Iraq, while jihadists from throughout the Arab world pour over Iraqi borders and the death toll mounts more steeply every month; between Putin’s use of undemocratic and arguably anticonstitutional measures in the name of making Russia safer and the Bush administration’s use of the same while obvious and easily implemented antiterrorist measures have yet to be taken; the list goes on.

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