Recently, as I was listening to an audiobook of Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom, I was disturbed by a scene of martyrdom. …
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Is Patriotism the Same as Nationalism?
Recently, in a lamentable [unspecified amount] of time lost while scrolling my Facebook feed, I ran across a post from a person …
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Renaissance Man: Seven Inventions of the Russian Leonardo da Vinci
When you think about the great inventors of history, a few names come up: Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Thomas Edison. …
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A Russian Cinderella Story: How the Tsar Chose His Bride
Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction. Take the story of Cinderella, the quintessential rags to riches story, the …
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Olga, the Viking Queen of the Rus
It seems that Vikings, and everything Viking-related, is internationally popular right now. Take the multi-season History Channel …
A Hero for Our Time: Prince Dimitry Pozharsky
Does the news cycle depress you? Have you lost any hope in the emergence of a hero for our time who might direct our political …
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Anna Dostoyevskaya: the Heart and Soul of Russia’s Greatest Author, Part 3
This week, we conclude the amazing story of Anna Dostoyevskaya, the woman without whom Dostoyevsky would never have written his …
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Anna Dostoyevsky: the Heart of Soul of Russia’s Greatest Author, Part 2
Last week, you were introduced to one of the most fascinating and fruitful romances of literary history. Feodor and Anna …
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Anna Dostoyevskaya: the Heart and Soul of Russia’s Greatest Author, Part 1
This week is my third novel’s birthday. It’s been a long process to get it into print, and the many rewrites and adjustments are …
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Why Do Some Icons Have Battle Scenes?
It's a short post today, about as much as a toddler-induced headache can muster. But I found an interesting article about a …
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Theophany Eve: Where Christianity and Slavic Mythology Meet
A few days ago, I checked the weather for the week. Today in Jordanville it was supposed to be in the forties and raining. But …
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6 Surprising Stereotypes of Russian Cities
Stereotypes are a funny thing. On the one hand, they’re often no more than caricatures. On the other hand, there’s a surprising …
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Constantine the Great: Russia’s Secret Tsar
The problem of power and personality is one that has fascinated people from the beginning of history. We are going to through our …
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The Rosetta Stone for Old Rus Was… a Piece of Birch Bark?
Have you read Evgenii Vodolazkin’s excellent novel Laurus? If you haven’t, you’ve deprived yourselves of a rare experience of …
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Mikhail Nesterov: Torn between Two Passions, Part II
Last week, we delved into the early life and work of Mikhail Nesterov , an artist who was, in many ways, a bridge. He bridged …
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Mikhail Nesterov: A Modern Artist with an Old Soul, Part I
The end of the 19th and turn of the 20th century was a period of rich cultural growth for Russia. As the empire expanded, the …
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The strange tale of how Napoleon’s soldiers became Cossacks
You know that scene in Godfather II where young Vito is given the last name “Corleone” by the American border guard, only because …
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Don’t blame the Byzantines: Why does Russia have such problems?
One of the early readers of my first novel complained that I had too many adjectives in my writing. He was absolutely right; I was …
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