My head just exploded! What island(s) would you recommend for our Napoleons? They need to be separate IMO, and far from any mainland, so as to preempt any collusion!
BTW, I have this old people's flirtation with memory. I remind myself the Thursday before to watch Five/8 early Saturday morning (circa 2:00 a.m.) Before I realize it, it's Sunday morning and I've yet to watch. I will go there now to listen to the lovely Zarina Zabrisky...a particular shero of mine.
Thanks so much, Lynell. As long as it's not Manhattan Island or Palm Beach Island, I'm fine with whatever. I believe there is a small island in NYC called Rat Island. That feels appropriate.
Huzzah Greg, this is amazing! I’ve ventured my way into War and Peace, on a couple of occasions, goes with the Russian authors kick I found myself on, and off in my days of youth. Finding The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina after massive dosages of Dostoevsky was fascinating.
I’ll have to revisit War and Peace, it’s on a bookshelf somewhere here, right after I watch you, LB and of course Zarina.
Thanks for yet another reminder of what I’ve failed to accomplish Greg, you’ve successfully challenged the Brodmann area again!!
My daughter, who knows much more about literature than I ever will, pointed out that the choice of translator of a tome is key to understanding it. I understood this! Wow! Thank you Greg.
Thank you for another wonderful Sunday Pages, Greg.
I feel your pain re War and Peace. I finally *read* it at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I went down a “Russian thinker” rabbit hole trying to wrap my head around what was happening. So, I read Tolstoy, Sakharov, Bonner and Solzhenitsyn. And then read Marsha Gessen, Fiona Hill and Glasser/Baker to get a handle on Putin’s ”thinking”.
I think one of the more profound books I read was “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, An Oral History” by Svetlana Alexievich. Along with Peter Pomerantsev’s “Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible:The Surreal Heart of the New Russia”, they provide some major insights into the Russian “psyche”.
This Anonymously penned (written by “V.H.”) open letter” from the November 21, 1985 issue of The New York Review of Books sums the Russian people up pretty perfectly. Because if there is one thing that never seems to change, it’s the relationship of the Russian people to their government. Whether tsarist, Soviet or Putinism.
“The peace movement in the West has a real impact on the dealings of parliaments and governments, without risk of jail. Here the risk of prison is real and, at least at this point, the impact on the government’s decision making is zero.
I do not claim that all action here is pointless. I want only to explain why so few people choose to act. I do not believe that, as a nation, we are significantly more cowardly. If the same conditions prevailed in the West, I doubt that significantly more people there would choose to act than do so here….
Here a citizen knows that “they” can do anything they want—take away his passport, have him fired from his job, order him to move, send him to collect signatures against Pershings, bar him from higher education, take away his driver’s license, build a factory producing mostly acid emanations right under his windows, pollute his milk with chemicals, arrest him simply because he attends a rock concert, raise prices arbitrarily whenever they wish and on whatever pretext, turn down any of his humble petitions without reason, prescribe to him what he must read, what he must demonstrate for, what he must sign, how many square feet his apartment may have, whom he may meet, and whom he must avoid. The citizen picks his way through life in constant fear of “them,” knowing full well that even the possibility of working clearly for the public good is a privilege “they” have bestowed upon him, on condition.
The average citizen living in this stifling atmosphere of universal bad temper, servility, being constantly on guard, backbiting, nervousness, and the ever-smoldering compensatory aggressiveness, knows perfectly well, without having to read any dissident literature, that “they” can do anything and he can do nothing….
And now try to imagine, my dear Western peace activist, that you confront this half-exhausted citizen with the question of what he is willing to do for world peace. Are you surprised to have him staring at you uncomprehending, wondering to himself just what trap it is this time?”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Happy Sunday! Tomorrow will be worse.
PS. If you’re struggling with War and Peace and want a more accessible version, if you’re an Audible subscriber, there is a wonderful translation/narration in the freebies catalog.
Thanks for this wonderful comment. And yes, wow, the passage is so true and so sad. Someone, I can't recall who, said that Russia doesn't need a new government as much as it needs therapy. Centuries of the worst abuse, starting with the well-named Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar, and never really letting up. The one time they had an actual, reformist tsar -- Alexander II -- they assassinated him. It's all a sad mess.
I always love your Sunday Pages but this week is so potent, so personal. Thank you.
I studied Russian Language, Literature, History and Political Science. I was so fascinated by the difference between the American character and the Russian character. I loved the "big baggy monsters" of Russian Literature. I loved Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. My love for the Russian character was cultivated during the end of the cold war and the things I saw happening there are definitely being mirrored here. My hope is that we as a people will remember that again and again we have stood for Freedom. That we come from people who stood against authoritarian rule...
This really got me thinking about the entanglement of "chance" and "choice", and then wondering about "who" it is that "chooses". You and Tolstoy have me thinking about whether there is such a thing as a purely "individual" choice. Maybe we are really making choices as groups, and chance is how they play out.
I'm not sure. I'm not even sure he's 100% right. Because there ARE individuals who rise to the occasion, who seem eerily well suited for the historical roles they play. Lincoln, for example. Those individuals, their will and purpose, has more than an negligible effect. All of THEM are the product of chance, but then, so are well. Thanks for the comment, Rick!
"A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges—by what seem the strangest chances—from among all the seething French parties, and without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.
"The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of the army."
Had Tolstoy written instead about the history of Russia's military movements, he might have called it "War and Death." Russia's history seems to be all about war and death. It's pretty much always been a militarized country, with its citizens fulfilling the roles of so much cannon fodder. From Mongols in the 13th century to Napoleon to Hitler to Ukraine now, Russia is all about the death of its military and civilians to guarantee the survival of the state. 14 million in World War II and approaching 200,000 in Ukraine is not a record to crow about. I've seen this called "defensive expansion." Putin, like others before him, sees a neighboring country as somehow "threatening" to the Russian state, so the "defense" is to start a war and try to absorb the neighboring country, which then suppresses the "threat." Ivan the Terrible justified his invasion of Kazan by saying that Orthodox Christians there were being persecuted and he was "defending our brethren from essentially a genocidal threat." Sound familiar? This time it was Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine, and all the supposed Nazis controlling the country that posed the threat. I'd guess that Russia is the most paranoid country on the planet. And what good has it done them? For all their wars and death, they have very little to show for it. The people are in a bad way, the infrastructure is worse than ours, and their current leader may be insane. History continues to repeat. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Well said, Steve, as usual. Most of their wars, almost all, were wars of aggression. What they are doing in Ukraine is nothing new. They have been expanding their territory since the days of the Muscovy princes. But: Eastasia must be stopped!
Much to digest..Anna Karenina one of my favorites..War and Peace was a bit intimidating..I must admit..His prose is so beautifully written. Napoleon and the French Military,and what was left of the Aristocrats..had no history to look back on...BUT WE DO...but then again..WE DON'T.. because evidently we don't learn from the mistakes..Our discernment is poor,and causes endless catastrophes.😟 Churchill and FDR..as well as Teddy,were great students of history.And in my opinion why we won..most wars we went into. Modern politicians, especially the GOOPers are desolate.I will slowly digest your wonderful piece..Thank you💙
Thanks, Katie. We had a nice run until 1945, in terms of war. The proxy wars tend not to work out so well. They are expensive, kill a lot of innocent people, and disillusion the American people. On the peace front, we've done a lot better.
Trump did not start any wars. That's the only good thing we can say about him.
As a descendant of Napoleon, terribly grateful I did not inherit his psychotic ego or his ability to sidestep every atrocity committed. But so many Americans are also related to Napoleon’s DNA who do believe in their absolute power and are willing to use ego instead of logic to install a dictator authoritarian who for fun and profit loves bloodsport to gain wealth and control.
A descendent of Bonaparte! Very cool. He is a fascinating figure. For better or worse (mostly worse), he disrupted a lot of what was happening in Europe. Old, moribund monarchies and etc died off.
Thanks...sadly we do not get to choose who we are related to. But we do get to read and understand such ancestors devastating decisions through excellent writing like this. I never had time, money or lux to read many books so this condensed history helps me immensely. Thank you.
He..RESTARTED ..The American Civil War... Americans truly Hating each other again..And those of us watching from the bleachers,can't do much..I'm hoping.. Democrats can Deliver.mthe Knock out punch..we Sorely need.. Failure is not an Option 😱
My head just exploded! What island(s) would you recommend for our Napoleons? They need to be separate IMO, and far from any mainland, so as to preempt any collusion!
BTW, I have this old people's flirtation with memory. I remind myself the Thursday before to watch Five/8 early Saturday morning (circa 2:00 a.m.) Before I realize it, it's Sunday morning and I've yet to watch. I will go there now to listen to the lovely Zarina Zabrisky...a particular shero of mine.
As always, many thanks, Greg Olear.
Thanks so much, Lynell. As long as it's not Manhattan Island or Palm Beach Island, I'm fine with whatever. I believe there is a small island in NYC called Rat Island. That feels appropriate.
Huzzah Greg, this is amazing! I’ve ventured my way into War and Peace, on a couple of occasions, goes with the Russian authors kick I found myself on, and off in my days of youth. Finding The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina after massive dosages of Dostoevsky was fascinating.
I’ll have to revisit War and Peace, it’s on a bookshelf somewhere here, right after I watch you, LB and of course Zarina.
Thanks for yet another reminder of what I’ve failed to accomplish Greg, you’ve successfully challenged the Brodmann area again!!
My daughter, who knows much more about literature than I ever will, pointed out that the choice of translator of a tome is key to understanding it. I understood this! Wow! Thank you Greg.
https://tolstoytherapy.com/best-translation-war-and-peace/#:~:text=For%20a%20Tolstoy%2Dapproved%20War,and%20Volokhonsky%20(Vintage%20Classics).
Oh, most definitely. A good translator is the best thing.
Thanks, Patrick. I know, there's so much to read and not enough time. I could never get through Dostoyevsky. Just a big yawn for me.
Anna K, on the other hand, is good stuff, even the bits about agriculture reform.
Thank you for another wonderful Sunday Pages, Greg.
I feel your pain re War and Peace. I finally *read* it at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I went down a “Russian thinker” rabbit hole trying to wrap my head around what was happening. So, I read Tolstoy, Sakharov, Bonner and Solzhenitsyn. And then read Marsha Gessen, Fiona Hill and Glasser/Baker to get a handle on Putin’s ”thinking”.
I think one of the more profound books I read was “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, An Oral History” by Svetlana Alexievich. Along with Peter Pomerantsev’s “Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible:The Surreal Heart of the New Russia”, they provide some major insights into the Russian “psyche”.
This Anonymously penned (written by “V.H.”) open letter” from the November 21, 1985 issue of The New York Review of Books sums the Russian people up pretty perfectly. Because if there is one thing that never seems to change, it’s the relationship of the Russian people to their government. Whether tsarist, Soviet or Putinism.
“The peace movement in the West has a real impact on the dealings of parliaments and governments, without risk of jail. Here the risk of prison is real and, at least at this point, the impact on the government’s decision making is zero.
I do not claim that all action here is pointless. I want only to explain why so few people choose to act. I do not believe that, as a nation, we are significantly more cowardly. If the same conditions prevailed in the West, I doubt that significantly more people there would choose to act than do so here….
Here a citizen knows that “they” can do anything they want—take away his passport, have him fired from his job, order him to move, send him to collect signatures against Pershings, bar him from higher education, take away his driver’s license, build a factory producing mostly acid emanations right under his windows, pollute his milk with chemicals, arrest him simply because he attends a rock concert, raise prices arbitrarily whenever they wish and on whatever pretext, turn down any of his humble petitions without reason, prescribe to him what he must read, what he must demonstrate for, what he must sign, how many square feet his apartment may have, whom he may meet, and whom he must avoid. The citizen picks his way through life in constant fear of “them,” knowing full well that even the possibility of working clearly for the public good is a privilege “they” have bestowed upon him, on condition.
The average citizen living in this stifling atmosphere of universal bad temper, servility, being constantly on guard, backbiting, nervousness, and the ever-smoldering compensatory aggressiveness, knows perfectly well, without having to read any dissident literature, that “they” can do anything and he can do nothing….
And now try to imagine, my dear Western peace activist, that you confront this half-exhausted citizen with the question of what he is willing to do for world peace. Are you surprised to have him staring at you uncomprehending, wondering to himself just what trap it is this time?”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Happy Sunday! Tomorrow will be worse.
PS. If you’re struggling with War and Peace and want a more accessible version, if you’re an Audible subscriber, there is a wonderful translation/narration in the freebies catalog.
Thanks for this wonderful comment. And yes, wow, the passage is so true and so sad. Someone, I can't recall who, said that Russia doesn't need a new government as much as it needs therapy. Centuries of the worst abuse, starting with the well-named Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar, and never really letting up. The one time they had an actual, reformist tsar -- Alexander II -- they assassinated him. It's all a sad mess.
I always love your Sunday Pages but this week is so potent, so personal. Thank you.
I studied Russian Language, Literature, History and Political Science. I was so fascinated by the difference between the American character and the Russian character. I loved the "big baggy monsters" of Russian Literature. I loved Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. My love for the Russian character was cultivated during the end of the cold war and the things I saw happening there are definitely being mirrored here. My hope is that we as a people will remember that again and again we have stood for Freedom. That we come from people who stood against authoritarian rule...
May we remember to be free we all must be free
Thank you.
That's the sad irony, that the country that has endured so much hardship has produced so much excellent literature, art, music, film, dance, etc.
This really got me thinking about the entanglement of "chance" and "choice", and then wondering about "who" it is that "chooses". You and Tolstoy have me thinking about whether there is such a thing as a purely "individual" choice. Maybe we are really making choices as groups, and chance is how they play out.
I'm not sure. I'm not even sure he's 100% right. Because there ARE individuals who rise to the occasion, who seem eerily well suited for the historical roles they play. Lincoln, for example. Those individuals, their will and purpose, has more than an negligible effect. All of THEM are the product of chance, but then, so are well. Thanks for the comment, Rick!
I'm thinking maybe individual will, just not so much individual choice.
"A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges—by what seem the strangest chances—from among all the seething French parties, and without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.
"The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of the army."
Yup.
Eerie. Uncanny.
Had Tolstoy written instead about the history of Russia's military movements, he might have called it "War and Death." Russia's history seems to be all about war and death. It's pretty much always been a militarized country, with its citizens fulfilling the roles of so much cannon fodder. From Mongols in the 13th century to Napoleon to Hitler to Ukraine now, Russia is all about the death of its military and civilians to guarantee the survival of the state. 14 million in World War II and approaching 200,000 in Ukraine is not a record to crow about. I've seen this called "defensive expansion." Putin, like others before him, sees a neighboring country as somehow "threatening" to the Russian state, so the "defense" is to start a war and try to absorb the neighboring country, which then suppresses the "threat." Ivan the Terrible justified his invasion of Kazan by saying that Orthodox Christians there were being persecuted and he was "defending our brethren from essentially a genocidal threat." Sound familiar? This time it was Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine, and all the supposed Nazis controlling the country that posed the threat. I'd guess that Russia is the most paranoid country on the planet. And what good has it done them? For all their wars and death, they have very little to show for it. The people are in a bad way, the infrastructure is worse than ours, and their current leader may be insane. History continues to repeat. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Well said, Steve, as usual. Most of their wars, almost all, were wars of aggression. What they are doing in Ukraine is nothing new. They have been expanding their territory since the days of the Muscovy princes. But: Eastasia must be stopped!
Much to digest..Anna Karenina one of my favorites..War and Peace was a bit intimidating..I must admit..His prose is so beautifully written. Napoleon and the French Military,and what was left of the Aristocrats..had no history to look back on...BUT WE DO...but then again..WE DON'T.. because evidently we don't learn from the mistakes..Our discernment is poor,and causes endless catastrophes.😟 Churchill and FDR..as well as Teddy,were great students of history.And in my opinion why we won..most wars we went into. Modern politicians, especially the GOOPers are desolate.I will slowly digest your wonderful piece..Thank you💙
Thanks, Katie. We had a nice run until 1945, in terms of war. The proxy wars tend not to work out so well. They are expensive, kill a lot of innocent people, and disillusion the American people. On the peace front, we've done a lot better.
Trump did not start any wars. That's the only good thing we can say about him.
As a descendant of Napoleon, terribly grateful I did not inherit his psychotic ego or his ability to sidestep every atrocity committed. But so many Americans are also related to Napoleon’s DNA who do believe in their absolute power and are willing to use ego instead of logic to install a dictator authoritarian who for fun and profit loves bloodsport to gain wealth and control.
Pray they never make it off the planet.
A descendent of Bonaparte! Very cool. He is a fascinating figure. For better or worse (mostly worse), he disrupted a lot of what was happening in Europe. Old, moribund monarchies and etc died off.
Thanks...sadly we do not get to choose who we are related to. But we do get to read and understand such ancestors devastating decisions through excellent writing like this. I never had time, money or lux to read many books so this condensed history helps me immensely. Thank you.
He..RESTARTED ..The American Civil War... Americans truly Hating each other again..And those of us watching from the bleachers,can't do much..I'm hoping.. Democrats can Deliver.mthe Knock out punch..we Sorely need.. Failure is not an Option 😱