Monthly Archives: November 2025

Averell Harriman, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, said Tolstoy once told him that to understand Stalin’s Kremlin you had to understand Ivan’s reign. Harriman clarified that Tolstoy did not mean Stalin was like … Continue reading →

Hanging above the counter was a black tee shirt with a portrait of Che Guevara and the inscription: ‘Rage Against the Machine’. On the piece of cardboard under the tee shirt it said: ‘Bestseller of the month!’ There was nothing … Continue reading →

Marta Kubišová, November 1989

Eternity was contingent: if, say, Stalin had not killed Trotsky, but the other way round, then it would have been populated by entirely different individuals. … Tatarsky, of course, hated most of the manifestations of Soviet power, but he still … Continue reading →

Spyros Kontomaris, Diomedes Komnenos, Sokratis Michail, Toril Margrethe Engeland, Vasilis Famellos, Yiorgos Samouris, Dimitris Kyriakopoulos, Spyros Marinos, Nikos Markoulis, Katerina Argyropoulou, Stelios Karayiorgis, Markos Karamanis, Alexandros Spartidis, Dimitris Papaioannou, Yiorgos Yeritsidis, Vasiliki Bekiari, Dimitris Theodoras, Basri (Alexandros Vasilis) Karakas, Alexandros Papathanasiou, … Continue reading →

What makes a democracy strong, and how can we engage with the past and present in a video game? 🤔

Last Friday, I’d got as far as Indira Gandhi, Moshe Dayan, and Dubček. I mean, there’s nowhere left to go. –Venedikt Yerofeev, Moscow Stations, (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1997), 87.

Guardian: In a public statement on Thursday, the state department said it would designate Antifa Ost in Germany, the Italy-based International Revolutionary Front, and two organisations in Greece – Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defense – as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists … … Continue reading →

Berliner Zeitung: Satire oder Straftat? Schüler wegen Meme über Bundeswehr-Offizier angeklagt