Anatolii Lunacharskii: Socialism, religion, and enlightenment

“Lunacharskii writes in Kievskaia Mysl about ‘scientific mysticism.’ Get hold of it and give him a public fatherly trouncing.″ — Lenin to Kamenev, 1912 Continue reading

Ivan Leonidov: Artist, dreamer, poet

Since he first emerged on the architectural scene in the twenties, the name of Ivan Leonidov has acquired legendary status. Continue reading

The Graveyard of Utopia: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde

Table of Contents I. Introduction: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde II. A Structural Overview of the Proceeding Work: The Sociohistoric Phenomenon of the International Avant-Garde and Soviet Urbanism as Its Decisive Moment III. The Dialectic of … Continue reading

Moisei Ginzburg’s “The international front of modern architecture”

The installation of socialist construction, of a new society with different industrial and everyday relations, a society which is gathering momentum amidst our conditions — that is our trump card, the value of which is infinitely large. Continue reading

Dawn and decline: Two eschatological visions in turn-of-the-century Russia

Both eschatologies, it will be seen, predict a coming catastrophe. The religio-philosophical saw the utter destruction of the old world and perhaps some sort of spiritual rebirth rising from the ashes. The Marxist materialists saw the collapse of the capitalist mode of production, but not some sort of reversion to a prior mode of production, but rather the overcoming of capitalism in building a more perfect society. Continue reading

Thomas Jeffrey’s 1762 Map of “Russia, or Muscovy in Europe”

A comparison of Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe and Richard Wortman’s Scenarios of Power

Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment and Richard Wortman’s Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II can be seen as approaching the same problem from two different angles. Continue reading

Demonology of the working class

After the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871, Bakunin described the proletariat as “the modern Satan, the great rebel — vanquished, but not pacified.” Continue reading

Marxism and legal theory

“Law and right are inherited like an eternal disease” — Goethe [Es erben sich, Gesetz und Recht wie eine ewige Krankheit fort] Continue reading