Russians take positions to the extreme. As a result, Russian intellectual history shows us where ideas may lead—and in Russia’s case, really did. The English prided themselves on moderation and suspicion of radical abstractions, but Russians regarded anything short of ultimate positions as . . . . Continue Reading »
Patriarch Kirill uses his position in the Russian Orthodox Church to support evil. Continue Reading »
Stanley Rother was completely apolitical; he died in odium fidei, “in hatred of the faith.” Alexei Navalny, a political leader of the noblest kind, died in odium libertatis, “in hatred of freedom.” Continue Reading »
Down a deeply rutted dirt road, far from Russia’s centers of power and wealth, sits a small compound behind twelve-foot-high brick walls. People in the nearest village, several miles away, have heard rumors that an odd man lives there, a monk perhaps. But no one has seen him or knows anything . . . . Continue Reading »
I very much enjoyed Armin Rosen’s essay about the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (“Tarkovksy’s Sublime Terror,” October 2023), but I’m afraid he has made an error of fact about Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia. Rosen says the protagonist, Andrei Gorchakov, “swallows poison and then . . . . Continue Reading »
On Saturday, October 7, a band of Hamas terrorists breached an internationally recognized border and crossed into Israel. Over the next twelve hours, they committed unspeakable horrors against a defenseless civilian population. They beheaded babies and burned entire families alive. They raped women . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1909 the academic economist and former Marxist Sergei Bulgakov, a priest’s son who had recently and very publicly returned to Christian faith, published a long essay on the crisis of Russian culture and the mentality of the Russian intelligentsia. It is important to recognize that this . . . . Continue Reading »
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has more than earned the solidarity it has a right to expect from Rome. Continue Reading »
It's useful to imagine different, more helpful things Pope Francis might have said about Russian history while addressing Catholic young people in Putin’s land. Continue Reading »
Major Archbishop Shevchuk has confronted a horrific situation with a resolve born of deep faith. Continue Reading »
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