The Abiding Truths of Russian Literature

Albert Mohler ^ | April 2019

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Albert Mohler: Professor Morson, you have made the argument that the knowledge of Russian literature is really incredibly important for even modern Americans in 2018. Why is that so, and why is it particularly so related to Russian literature?

Gary Morson: Well, there are a number of reasons for this. Partly, they grow out of the facts of Russian history. Russian history tends to the extremes, and in the 20th century, that produced an entirely new form of society, to which we gave the name Totalitarian. That was the product of the thought and actions of a particular group of intellectuals. The Russians coined the term intelligentsia for that group, and they didn't mean what we would think of as intellectuals. They meant politically committed radical socialist-atheist intellectuals. Those people took over in 1917, but their opponents had been the great Russian writers — Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov — who kept warning that their way of thinking would lead to no good and formulated alternatives. You can see Russian history, from about 1860 on, as the argument between these two groups. Since the intelligentsia tended to the extreme, the opponents tended to come up with all sorts of interesting ideas, from which we could benefit, I think if we're going to avoid the outcome that was present in the Soviet Union and some other societies since...

[CondoleezzaProtege]

...Yes, the Russians writers were not shy about addressing what they called the accursed questions; the ultimate questions. You don't get too many English or French writers thinking they can address questions about the very meaning of life or the basis of morality directly, but the Russians take these questions by the throat. Their characters wonder about them and go through different alternatives to them. These are the same questions that students realize are going to shape their own lives at this point. Some of these questions concern things that they are thinking about every moment, like the nature of love, for instance, which is let's say the theme of Tolstoy's novel, Anna Karenina, and some of his other works. They understand the importance of that right away. I think the reason they take these classes, one reason is, they get to talk about things that really touch their lives, that you don't have to persuade them are important...

[Steely Tom]

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life
never make a pretty woman your wife

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[PGalt]

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

https://www.azquotes.com/author/13869-Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

[PGalt]

Jimmy had Soul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EqFVWzOfN8

[rfp1234]

A recent poll in Russia had Pushkin tied with Putin in 2nd place among the most-admired Russians in history. Stalin was first.

[Nateman]

Ayn Rand was a Refugee from the Soviet Union.

[exinnj]

Not true

[Buttons12]

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life never make a pretty woman your wife

Speaking of that, the story goes that the Empress Anna was irritated that one Prince Golitsyn married a lovely Italian lady; she had the marriage annulled and...I'll let wikipedia tell their version:

Anna was known for her cruelty and vulgar sense of humor. She forced Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn to become her court jester and had him married off to her unattractive Kalmyk maid Avdotya Buzheninova. To celebrate the wedding, the Empress had an ice palace measuring thirty-three feet high and eighty feet long built together with icy beds, steps, chairs, windows and even logs of ice in a fireplace of ice. Prince Golitsyn and his bride were placed in a cage atop an elephant and paraded through the streets to this structure, to spend their wedding night in the ice palace, despite it being an extremely cold night in the dead of winter. Empress Anna told the couple to make love and keep their bodies close if they did not wish to freeze to death.

They survived. It's said this marriage was a long and satisfying one.