The Slavic Literature Pod

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron take on the second half of Zuleika by Guzel Yakhina, wherein our eponymous heroine fully sheds her old identity as the “pitiful hen,” and—deep in the woods of Siberia—becomes a hunter, mother, cook, medical assistant, lover, and everything you might have imagined to be impossible in such exile. As with the first half, Zuleikha continues to be an absolute joy to read and talk about so get your 100-proof vodka and enjoy!Major themes: Call your mom, Bad man as interesting characters, Russian phonetics.07:23 - Much of the information in this section is pulled from Lynne Viola’s paper “The Campaign to Eliminate the Kulak as a Class, Winter 1929-1930: A Reevaluation of the Legislation”.10:40 - “The Soviet War Against ‘Fifth Columnists’: The Case Against Chechnya, 1942-4” by Jeffrey Burds. See especially the section “Germany and Japan: Intelligence and Sabotage Networks, 1935-41.”13:20 - Again pulled from Burds’s article, these are the characteristics of “bandit nations”:borderland elements, with close kinship or ethnic ties to foreign-based emigrationForeign use of those elements for espionage and other seditious acts within the USSRstrong religious traditionssustained by ‘heroic’ historical movement of insurrectionary elementsoperates on hostile terrain that facilitates concealmentThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron tackle the first half of Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, following the story of the so-called ‘Pitiful Hen,’ as her farm is collectivized, her husband is killed, and she is sent half-way across the USSR to build her own prison. With a great focus on the integration of pagan folklore and (then) modern Islam and a surprising number of action-filled setpieces, Zuleikha is an absolute joy to read and talk about. Sit back, crack open a home-made berry moonshine, and tune in!Major themes: Forest spirits, Vestigial pagan folklore, and Dekulakization.03:00 - Here’s a link to the article that I heavily cited in this episode: Fear and Belief in the USSR’s “Great Terror”: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron dive into several adaptations of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina alongside Ally Pitts of the Russophiles Unite! Movie podcast. Although a bit different than our usual fare, we had a ton of fun recording this with Ally. Mustache licking, French speaking, unfaithfulness ahoy!A huge thank you to Ally for coming on to this episode! It was incredibly fun to record. You can listen to Russophiles Unite! anywhere you get your podcasts and you can follow him and his podcast on Twitter.Major themes: Adultery, Kiera Knightly’s painful smile, Is Stiva the real villain of the book?26:17 - A reference to a famous line from a US/Russian “telemost” (lit. telebridge), where a Russian woman tried to say, “in the USSR, we don’t have sex in commercials, we are against it,” but got cut off by audience laughter at, “we don’t have sex.”The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Love of the Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai, a major figure of early Soviet Union Bolshevik politics. Though she would later fall out of favor due to her outspoken opposition to the changing Bolshevik party, Kollontai remained a USSR official, Marxist feminist theorist, and author until her death. I know, I know, more Soviet political theory—some day you will find this as interesting as we do. It’s just a matter of time.Major themes: Adultery, *Our* kid, New Economic Policy = Capitalism?33:40 - This is what they tell Vasilisa, to be clear, and is not a reflection of my personal views.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on Bookshop or ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron finish the “What Is To Be Done?” series with Vladimir Lenin’s take on the matter. Perhaps it is only fitting that we end the trilogy with the man who would very much put this question to rest by making it irrelevant (at least, for a time). Come listen to us fully devolve into a political theory podcast—it’s fun, we promise.Major themes: Constant references to recent articles in Iskra, Learning to write for the revolution, Trade Unionism.05:41 - Though I advocated against reading the Communist Manifesto previously, perhaps Brecht’s advocacy for vulgar politics should have influenced me more. Here are the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto in regard to this “simplification” of society:“In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on Bookshop or ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron continue their series on “What Is To Be Done,” with Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 response to the question, tackling matters of his experience with the poor in Moscow, his views on money, and the existence of an “idle class” in Russian society. Join us as we read what is ostensibly Tolstoy telling you a story about his experiences but then very suddenly becomes 100 pages of straight political theory—it’s fun, we promise.Major themes: Idiosyncratic Religious Beliefs, Rage Against the Landed Gentry, and Fiji.33:40 - “Not a neutral,” I meant to say.37:14 - It goes without saying that this explanation is an incredibly bare-bones version of what Anderson also argued. I also want to note that Anderson himself does not think that the outlined shared features of religion and nationalism means that nationalism is any sort of derivative of religious thinking.41:00 - Here’s a good article from the Washington Post covering many of the details of the British complicity and exploitation of the potato famine in Ireland. Here are more particulars about food exports from Ireland in the period.41:19 Here is an article about the usage of Malthusian logics related to the famine. If you’re looking for something a bit more technical, here’s an analysis of Malthusian logics (and whether they’re actually applicable to the real world) in relation to the famine.42:24 - The peak of this the so-called “frontier thesis” or “Turner thesis,” which posited that the American “organism” was unique because of its westward expansionism. Assuming that things like cities are in an inevitable state of decay, Turner asserted that the US was continually revitalized by its west-ward expansions, thus creating a stronger civilization. He gets technical about how that happens, but the particulars matter not a whit because it’s pseudo-scientific drivel which exists only to justify expansionist behaviors.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron kick off a three-week series in an attempt to figure out just what, exactly, is to be done. This week, they’re reading What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, perhaps one of the influential books (in the Russian context) that you’ve never read. Sit down, strap in, and prepare yourself for political theory disguised as a horribly written novel!Major themes: Rakhmetov Being an Absolute Unit, Sewing Collectives, Subtext is for Cowards.Our links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠All links⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠PATREON⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠Socials: ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron finish reading We by Evgeny Zamyatin where they finally uncover I-330’s secret plans, the truth of the Benefactor, and the dark secret of voting: that before The One State, it was done in private—as if it were an occult ritual. Get your pink slip, drop the blinds, and tune in!Major themes: The False Neutrality of Logic, Math, The Final Number.10:37 - If you’re wondering why I left this in, it’s because I didn’t properly restart my sentence so there was no good way to edit out the mistake without the “re-mount” sounding incredibly out of place. If you’ve ever wondered about the behind-the-scenes stuff, there’s an exciting reality of it.29:28 - bro whatThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron releases some pent-up stress by yelling about 1984 for...a bit. Then Matt gets personal in a 20 Questions Gauntlet—time to find out what his most embarrassing sartorial decisions have been. Tangentially, you’ll also find out how long it takes him to google ‘sartorial.’Also...apologies to Edith Wharton. You deserve better.Major themes: POUM, Ranting about 1984, Converting NPCs to Russian Orthodoxy in D&D.The music used in this episode was “Bella Ciao,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron tackle the first half of Evgeny’s Zamyatin’s We. Perhaps the first novel of sci-fi dystopia as we would recognize it today, We portends a dark future where Ciphers rise uni-millionly, work uni-millionly, and have sheepishly (I like to imagine) register for sex day uni-millionly. Come along as we follow the journey of D-503 as we read the novel that launched a thousand rip-offs.Major themes: Pink Slips, 1984, and Mathematical Socialism.08:46 - “Enclave” is what I meant to say, instead of “conclave.”21:17 - In fact, it was a 1931 speech where Stalin proclaimed that the USSR had ten years to industrialize, “or be crushed.”29:45 - Terms and Conditions Matt meant to say and EULA I meant to say.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Amazon⁠! Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands