This ethnography of everyday life in contemporary Russia is also an examination of discourses and practices of "soul" or dusha. Russian soul has historically appeared as a myth, a consoling fiction, and a trope of national and individual self-definition that drew romantic foreigners to Russia. Dale Pesmen shows that in the 1990s this "soul" was scorned, worshipped, and used to create, manipulate, and exploit cultural capital. Pesmen focuses on "soul" in part as what people chose to do and how they did it, especially practices considered "definitive" of Russians, such as hospitality, the use of alcoholic beverages, steam baths, Russian language, music, and suffering. Attempting to avoid narrow definitions of soul as a thing, Pesmen developed a new way of structuring ethnographic interviews.During her stay in a formerly "closed" military industrial city and surrounding villages, Pesmen spent time on public transportation and in kitchens, steam baths, vegetable gardens, shops, and workplaces. She uses stories from her fieldwork along with examples from the media and literature to introduce a phenomenology of russkaia dusha and of related American and other non-Russian metaphysical notions, exploring diverse elements in their makeup, examining and questioning the world created when people believe in the existence of such "deep," "vast," "enigmatic," "internal" centers. Among theoretical issues she addresses are those of power, community, self, exchange, coherence, and morality. Pesmen's attention to dusha gives her a multifaceted perspective on Russian culture and society and informs her rich portrayal of life in a Russian city at a historically critical moment.
This compelling and often traumatic book is the memoir of one of the most important figures in modern Russian history, Dmitry S. Likhachev, revered as ‘a guardian of national culture’. Reflections on the Russian Soul is an incredible account of an intellectual’s turbulent journey through twentieth century Russia. Likhachev re-counts the fortunes of people with whom he came into contact and reproduces the air of passed years in Russia. Likhachev vividly portrays his childhood years in St. Petersburg and continues into his student life at Leningrad University that led to an agonizing period of imprisonment and near death. He describes how a harmless prank caught the attention of the Secret Police, resulting in his exile and confinement within the infamous prison island of Solovki. He describes his first-hand experience of brutality in prison during the early Stalin years and the incident that not only saved him but also haunted him for the rest of his life. He reflects on the years after his release from prison and the events leading up to the Second World War. His powerful recollection of the blockade of Leningrad provides the reader with a horrific insight into the harsh effects of war, hunger and survival. Lichachev goes on to describe post-war Russia and how his own livelihood developed from literary editor to a return to Leningrad University as Professor of History. This compelling autobiography finishes with Likhachev’s poignant return to Solovki as a free man.
Why, asks Daniel Rancour-Laferriere in this controversial book, has Russia been a country of suffering? Russian history, religion, folklore, and literature are rife with suffering. The plight of Anna Karenina, the submissiveness of serfs in the 16th and 17th centuries, ancient religious tracts emphasizing humility as the mother of virtues, the trauma of the Bolshevik revolution, the current economic upheavals wracking the country-- these are only a few of the symptoms of what The Slave Soul of Russia identifies as a veritable cult of suffering that has been centuries in the making. Bringing to light dozens of examples of self-defeating activities and behaviors that have become an integral component of the Russian psyche, Rancour-Laferriere convincingly illustrates how masochism has become a fact of everyday life in Russia. Until now, much attention has been paid to the psychology of Russia's leaders and their impact on the country's condition. Here, for the first time, is a compelling portrait of the Russian people's psychology.
What if you could find all the answers to the problems of modern life in the wisdom of the past? We live in a strange time. Perpetually distracted and increasingly over-medicated, we still think we are in the most progressed people in history. But scratch the surface, and you’ll see that our world is like a house built on sand. We put much of our faith in science, even as more and more of the truths we equate with “scientific fact” come under scrutiny. The lack of repeatability of many experiments is a modern science’s dirty little secret. And much of what can be verified, it turns out, often merely confirms what history, literature, and religion have already taught us. And so, many people are turning to the past for comforting wisdom to inform the future. This book is an exploration of the rich folk culture of Russia’s past. From songs of lamentation at funerals to the rules for naming a prince, you’ll find a fascinating glimpse into a world that is alien on the surface, but familiar at its heart. Reading it in light of modern life, you can’t help but be astounded at how much wisdom the Russian folk gathered through centuries and millennia of passed time and experience. Who knows? Maybe the answers to some of your life’s pressing issues are found in the age-long traditions explored in A Window to the Russian Soul. Find out by buying A Window to the Russian Soul today!
It is between the ages of nine and ten that children begin to experience themselves as "I" for the first time--as separate individuals, different from their parents and peers and essentially alone. This inner experience is sometimes precipitated by the child's first encounter with death and the first notion that earthly life is fragile and temporary. In this insightful book, Koepke offers the reader a lucid, accessible description of the outer signs and symptoms of this significant turning point in every child's life.
“Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. https://vidjambov.blogspot.com/2023/01/book-inventory-vladimir-djambov-talmach.html We perceive every thing The sharp mind of France, And the somber genius of the Germans. [The Scythians] This gift of being a sonorous and universal echo is, all in all, fatal and ambiguous, since sensitiveness and lively reactions make the concentration of the spirit very difficult. By roaming freely through ages and cultures, man runs the risk of not finding himself. The soul is unsettled and becomes lost under wave after wave of impressions and historical experiences. The soul seems to have lost the capacity for returning into itself, attracted and distracted as it is by too many things, which detain it elsewhere. Thus it acquires nomadic habits, it gets used to living in ruins or in encampments. The Russian soul is oblivious of its ancestry. It is customary to quote its propensity for dreaming, its feminine suppleness. Now this is not false. But the trouble does not derive from the fact that the fundamental element, plastic and highly fusible, of the Russian people, was not reinforced nor armored with "logoi," that it did not crystallize into cultural action. There is no way of measuring or exhaustively explaining the Russian temptation merely by naturalistically contrasting "nature" with "culture." This temptation arises from within the culture itself. Generally speaking, the "popular soul" is less a biological quantity than a historical, created value. It is made and it grows through history. The Russian "element" is by no means an "innate reaction to its being," the natural, inborn "original chaos," which does not bear any fruit yet, which the light of the spirit has not yet brightened and enlightened. It is rather the new secondary chaos, that of sin and disintegration, of the fall, the revolt, the hardening of a darkened and blinded soul. The Russian soul is not stricken by original sin only, it is not poisoned only by an inherent Dionysiac strain. More than that, it bears the burden of its historic sins, whether conscious or unconscious: "A dismal swamp of shameful thoughts wells up within us. . ." The true cause of this evil lies not in the fluidity of the primordial element of the people, but rather in the infidelity and the fickleness of its love. Only love is the true fora for synthesis and unity, and the Russian soul has not been steady and devoted in this ultimate love. Too often was it swayed through mystical unstableness. Russians have become far too much used to suffer at fatal crossroads or at the parting of ways, "not daring to carry the scepter of the Beast nor the light burden of Christ. . ." The Russian soul feels even passionately drawn toward such crossings. It does not have the steadfastness necessary for choice, nor the willpower for taking responsibilities. It appears, in some undefinable way, too "artistic," too loose-jointed. It expands, it extends, it languishes, lets itself be overcome as ensnared by a charm. But being under a spell is net synonymous with being in love, not any more than amorous friendship or infatuation are synonymous with love. Only sacrificial love, voluntary love, makes one strong, not the fits of passion, or the mediumnistic attraction of a secret affinity. Now the Russian soul lacked precisely that spirit of sacrifice and self-denial in the presence of Truth, of the ultimate humility in loving. It divides itself and meanders through its attachments. Logical conscience, being sincerity and responsibility in the act of knowing, wakes up late in the Russian soul.
Yelena Khanga tells the compelling story of growing up black in Russia and journeying through cultures to learn about her forebears and meet relatives she had never known. From the days of slavery in the cotton fields of Mississippi to the Moscow of Stalin and Brezhnev, from Jewish New York and Harlem in the twenties to modern-day Los Angeles, Long Island, and Zanzibar, Soul to Soul is a four-generation family memoir.
In post-1917 Russian and Yiddish literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds a new cultural figure: the Soviet Jew. Suddenly mobile after more than a century of restrictions under the tsars, Jewish authors created characters who traversed space and history, carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost world.
Why is the name of this composite book “Mystifying Russian soul”? Let’s apply to Wikipedia: “The concept arouse in the second part of the 19th century due to a philosophy of the leading Russian writers such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. In their popular in Europe books not ethic, but aesthetic principles as well as not entertaining, but moral needs are playing the dominant role. “Spirit” of such writings turned into “Soul” and lead to a concept “Mystifying Russian soul” popular abroad. Except Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy almost all the writers who became classics of Russian and world literature took part in this process. The composite book “Mystifying Russian soul” contains more than twenty their novels, tales, plays and poems. Contents: Nikolai Gogol Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol Taras Bulba Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot Leo Tolstoy War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina Alexander Pushkin Eugene Onegin Alexander Pushkin The Daughter Of The Commandant Alexander Pushkin The Bakchesarian Fountain Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Children Ivan Goncharov Oblomov Anton Chekhov The Witch and Other Stories Anton Chekhov The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov The Three Sisters Mikhail Lermontov A Hero of Our Time Aleksandr Ostrovsky The Storm Mikhail Saltykov A Family of Noblemen Aleksandr Kuprin The Duel Maxim Gorky Mother
