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Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

theatlantic.com

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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#21

Post by thejackgoode »

vlyubin wrote: post #13

A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books. Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its ow…

As a fellow Ukrainian: "Ukrainian question" is a colonial narrative term that deprives Ukraine of subjectivity, it should not be reinforced

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#22

Post by dynamic_sausage »

ikeserbestian wrote: post #7

Right, blame Gogol: “We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/513055-we-all-come-out-from...

Gogol is an interesting one though.

There being no Ukrainian state at the time, he was appropriated by the Russian literature as a quintessential Russian writer, but his sympathetic sentiment towards the Cossack tradition is well-known (and obvious in his texts), and one can make a good argument that in his early stuff he is more subversive about the entire Russian empire thing than a naive reader may think. (Ok, his late stuff is also subtle, but in a different way.) One has to realize that in an empire, with official censorship etc, one cannot be openly anti-czarist.

Here is a nice paper highlighting some of the subtleties in Taras Bulba: https://cius-archives.ca/items/show/1514

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#23

Post by darepublic »

nathell wrote: post #18

Well, I can live with not blaming Dostoyevsky. But when I read Pushkin's "To the Slanderers of Russia", or Brodsky's "On the Independence of Ukraine", I can't help noticing the same mindset of entitlement that perpetuates and fuels the present war. It beats me how Brodsky, the same person who penned "Bosnia Tune", could have succumbed to that thinking.

Dostoyevsky was also a nationalist, right? He had a lot of bad things to say about Germans and Polish. I am comfortable just reading his work and taking what I appreciate from it and disregarding the dated or problematic parts. Would have no issue applying the same logic to Pushkin

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#25

Post by azangru »

vlyubin wrote: post #13

A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books. Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its ow…

> Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised.

Solzhenitsin is one of the best literary chroniclers of repressions in the Soviet Russia (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, In the First Circle), with the degree of earnestness and realism that approaches Tolstoy's. How does his compassion to Ukranians, or lack thereof, change that? Why do people want writers of fiction to be impeccable moral leaders?

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#27

Post by tlear »

nathell wrote: post #18

Well, I can live with not blaming Dostoyevsky. But when I read Pushkin's "To the Slanderers of Russia", or Brodsky's "On the Independence of Ukraine", I can't help noticing the same mindset of entitlement that perpetuates and fuels the present war. It beats me how Brodsky, the same person who penned "Bosnia Tune", could have succumbed to that thinking.

Russian intelligentsia ends where Ukraine begins. Always been the case

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#28

Post by giraffe_lady »

biohax2015 wrote: post #14
mihaic wrote: post #11

Living in Eastern Europe, I have to say that I've always felt that there was something brutal and thuggish about both Russian and Ukrainian culture (they are more similar than Ukrainians want to admit). The article merely hints at this while talking of the "illiterate peasants" that create the foundational popular culture. The Russian people's spectrum is incredibly wide though, and have also produced some of the dee…

The greater the suffering of a people, the deeper the art they produce. (This is not a justification for violence of course.) Russia has been a nation of serfs for millennia now.

No post body was provided.

Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

#30

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

mmmpop wrote: post #6
lordleft wrote: post #2

Apart from the abstract conviction that we should not indict the cultural output of a country that is under the thrall of an oligarch, I'm a bit baffled at the notion of decrying Tolstoy of people -- a Christian anarchist who radically challenged all of the assumptions of Tsarist Russia. Basically all of the great Russian writers lived in opposition to the various incarnations of the Russian State (Tsarist Russia, US…

> I don't blame some Ukrainians for feeling the way that they do I can certainly see why they're upset but it's a problem with Russia's leader at the time, and not the culture right? If it's a long-standing cultural issue then I'd imagine some introspection would also be required, which seems like it may undermine the whole notion.

Frankly, we have been having problems with Russian leaders for the last couple centuries or three.
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