Publications

In 2004 during Vladimir Putin’s visit to France and the city of Cannes he met with one of the oldest Russian immigrants from the first wave, the last subject of Imperial Russia 82-year-old Andrei Shmeman, and the President of Russia presented him with a new Russian passport.  “For many years I lived with the dissonance in my soul of feeling myself to be absolutely Russian while at the same time remaining without citizenship, a stateless person.  And now I am happy that I have finally found a motherland,” Andrei Shmeman said then. For his entire life Andrei Shmeman lived with a so-called Nansen’s passport...

For the last four years, Russia has not regarded November 7 as a holiday. This is only natural given that the current Russian government can hardly relate to these Revolutionary and Communist traditions. The most important evidence of this, strangely enough, is that for nearly 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, November 7 remained a holiday. Initially, it was something that was marked quietly, although it eventually became a vague celebration of national reconciliation. The festivities were forgotten, but the day nevertheless remained a non-working day, if only to placate the Communists who, in the early 1990s at least, were a...

Have you asked yourself how a person gets to know literature? The answer can be found in childhood. Mothers and grandmothers read us books, and sometimes even fathers. Then we read them ourselves, getting up on our tiptoes and reaching for books from the shelves of our home libraries. Then we go to school and, beginning in the first grade, we enter the world of Russian literature. We start with Pushkin and work our way up to the contemporary era. As for foreign literature, it’s generally more an elective than something required and it’s often limited to two or three authors who receive marginal attention by Russian literature...

For the full-fledged development of national culture, all of Russia’s peoples need Russian. The Russian language is much more significant than its status as the language of the Russian people and a role of developing their culture.  A strange prejudice holds that the Russian language is exclusively a means of spreading an Orthodox Russian culture. What the West generally perceives to be “Russian culture” – the rich legacy of the imperial period – is only a part of our culture. Throughout history, Russia has extended its authority over many peoples, and by virtue of this fact, their cultural heritage is part...

The next tragic story concerning the presence of Russians in Greece is linked to the events of the First World War, the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Civil War in Russia. In the summer of 1916, under pressure from its allies, Russia sent an expeditionary corps to the Balkans. Two special infantry brigades totaling nearly 20,000 men arrived in Greek Thessaloniki. They immediately entered fighting on the Macedonian front, which produced the first victims of the campaign. In the winter of 1916-1917, many Russian soldiers had already died as a result of various epidemics and renewed fighting. The remains of 400 Russian soldiers were buried...

In 2008, Russia and Greece marked the 180th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This modest number could lead to confusion, however, as the historical, cultural and political fates of Russia (as the heir of Kievan Rus, Muscovy, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union) and Greece (in the broader sense – Byzantium) go deep into the centuries. They are so closely intertwined that a similar example in world history is unlikely to be found. It is common knowledge that Orthodoxy came to Russia from Byzantium. Greek sources gave rise to Russian religious art, as well as philosophical and...