The Russians of today show no sign of pulling down the great statue of Peter the Great that overlooks the Neva. Nor do they show any signs of cancelling Pushkin.
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Pushkin and the Trauma of the Flood
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Strange Freedom
From this traumatised, divided old Russian Soviet poet, we learn about our own strange freedom.
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The Seminar and the Last Night
Shvarts has become for me an important poet.
Today I have recorded, edited and released the latest episode of The Burning Archive podcast – The Medici in Games and in History
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Experiments with Morning Routines
So today I experimented with restoring my morning routine, but with a twist. So today the plan is….
Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day speech tells stories of how Russia has responded to threats by embracing multi-ethnic, multi-national traditions.
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What if Russia Wins?
So, it seems reasonable at least to ask: what will happen in the West if Russia wins the war in Ukraine?
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The Irony of Chekhov
Something tells me Chekhov and the innovations in drama he bequeathed to us may appear in my podcast series on the gifts of Russian culture.
Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train (2016), which I finished reading last night, is a very fine book. It is a gem, and perhaps ought to be recommended as among the very best introductions to the history of the Russian Revolution.
Discovering Zettelkasten and Ahrens’ guide to smart note-taking has been a blessing. But so too is re-discovering Luhmann…
Last night I saw The Northman, the new film set in the world of the Norse/Vikings and directed by Richard Eggers.
This morning I released the latest Burning Archive podcast. In games, we see a different pre-modern world of work – of artisans, craft skills and guilds. Was this world ever real, and what does this fantasy world of work tell us of our collective memory of work and collective organisation? Join me on this fascinating tour of the history of work, guilds and unions, and the global transformations of ideas of work in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
The Burning Archive 