Pushkin is a great writer, and an interesting fellow. His great grandfather was an African slave, who was given to the Ottoman Sultan, and in turn to Peter the Great. He ended up a Russian nobleman and a general. Read Queen of Spades.
Posted on 06/28/2017 10:10:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A comment by a prominent campaigner has touched off a fevered debate over Russian influence in a former Soviet republic.
It's not so often that Romantic poets set social media alight. But that's exactly what happened when the subject of Alexander Pushkin came up on a Russian TV programme.
The interviewee, Alexei Navalny, is an anti-corruption campaigner who has long been one of the leading figures opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a conversation on the independent Russian Dozhd TV channel, Navalny and presenter Ksenia Sobchak suggested that Pushkin - one of Russia's great cultural figures - was largely unknown outside his native country. In particular, they said, people in Uzbekistan were ignorant of the great poet.
The comments triggered a huge debate within Uzbekistan, with many angrily denouncing the Russians.
In one Uzbek Facebook group, videos of children reading Pushkin's poems went viral. Many pointed out that not only are his works widely read in Uzbekistan, but the poet has a metro station, squares and parks named after him.
One angry Facebook user called Navalny and the TV host "animals" and defended his country's cultural knowledge "We speak Russian better than people in some Russian-speaking regions!"
Other Uzbeks, however, lashed out at their compatriots for expecting validation from Russians and argued that instead of showing off knowledge of a foreign culture, they should appreciate things closer to home. One user denounced what he called "stylish Uzbeks".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Pushkin is a great writer, and an interesting fellow. His great grandfather was an African slave, who was given to the Ottoman Sultan, and in turn to Peter the Great. He ended up a Russian nobleman and a general. Read Queen of Spades.
I remember having to read Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in college. It wasn’t bad. Although, I have to admit, I found Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose” much more amusing.
Good to know.
more BBC PR for anti-Putin guy Alexei Navalny.
if u think US MSM is bad with the RussiaRussiaRussia rubbish, u haven’t been keeping watch on the Beeb. getting rid of Putin has been their obsession for years.
Too Much Free Time
My area was musicology so I think of Onegin as a Tchaikovsky opera, the only opera AFAIK with a birthday aria.
bookmark
bmp
> The interviewee, Alexei Navalny, is an anti-corruption campaigner
Navalny is as obvious a CIA asset as they come.
Of course the BBC is also a Deep State asset so they don’t tell you that.
I hope Nalvalny has a food taster. I see a generous application of dioxin in his future dinners.
(Veliki Russki poet, Aleksander Pushkin, do cemi let ne govoril po-Russki, potomu chto roditeli c nim govorili tolko po-Frantsuzhki.)
“Yes, Gogol is even better. The Nose is great, but The Overcoat is the most influential story in all of Russian literature. Dead Souls may be funniest book you will ever read.”
Yes, to all three! I grow sad when I think that Gogol burned the manuscript of volume 2 of Dead Souls when he was dying. What a tragedy. He was great at showing the absurdity of bureaucracy.
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