Publications
The February Revolution began on this week 95 years ago. And many welcome its coming. The Bolsheviks, as a sign of things to come. The liberals, as the dawn of liberty, to which they consider themselves heirs. Those who welcome it are confident that the revolution is inevitable, as Russia was losing the war, its economy was in shambles, its army was falling apart, its human resources had been exhausted, famine was threatening and an incompetent autocratic government was leading the country blindly. All of this, or course, was far from the truth. But even those who were skeptical about the revolution saw objective reasons for its emergence....
The website rememberrussia.ru published an interview with Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relation and a member of the board of trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. Metropolitan Hilarion spoke about the church’s work to cooperate with and support expatriates and about dialogue with international organizations concerning the persecution of Christians in various parts of the world.
– His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, speaking during the celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the Department for External Church Relations,...
The world is changing, and the transformations underway could hide various risks, often unpredictable risks. In a world of economic and other upheaval, there is always the temptation to resolve one’s problems at another’s expense, through pressure and force. It is no surprise that some are calling for resources of global significance to be freed from the exclusive sovereignty of a single nation, and that this issue will soon be raised as a “matter-of-course.”
There will be no possibility of this, even a hypothetical one, with respect to Russia. In other words, we should not tempt anyone by allowing ourselves to be...
Ludmila Verbitskaya, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation and President of St. Petersburg State University, does not consider herself an expert in literature, but she always makes a caveat that as a philologist she cannot but have her own opinion in this subject. – Once upon a time everyone argued that the USSR is the most-read nation on the planet. This was indeed so, for wherever you might go, everywhere you could see people with books in their hands – in the subway, streetcars or buses. Not only was almost everyone reading something; most people read serious books at that. Now I see people who either...
The recently released film “Vysotsky: Thanks for Being Alive” (that’s a literal translation; I’d rather render it as “Thank God He’s Alive”) has produced at least one positive effect: it has started a fresh wave of the Vysotsky craze, even if with obvious commercial consequences. The film is a big box-office hit. Collections of Vysotsky’s songs are swept off the shelves of bookshops as soon as new print-runs come out; ditto for albums of his songs, pirated or not. TV and radio naturally add their strident voices to the hullabaloo.(1)
The most noticeable positive feature of this commercial...
The Two Emperors exhibition devoted to the 200th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812 will be held from February 15 to March 15 in the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied & Folk Art (ARMDA&FA). This exposition is the first in a number of jubilee events to be hosted by Russia in 2012, which has been proclaimed the Year of Russian History. An uncommon perspective was chosen for this “overture”: the relationship between two emperors – Alexander I and Napoleon I. Thematically, the show is split between historic periods and represented by exhibits from a large personal collection of art hunter Alexander...
