MOTHERLAND:
A Philosophical History of Russia
Lesley Chamberlain (Rookery, $35)
If one wanted to understand the fundamental difference in Russian and American worldviews which lies at the root of the current cooling in relations, the following passage from Lesley Chamberlain’s new book on Russia’s philosophical legacy would be a good place to start:
The Russian moral antipathy to Utilitarianism has been remarkably consistent... [Russia was] less prosperous, technologically less advanced, admittedly, but Russian culture was morally of a higher type because it was interested in something other than crude statements of ‘I want’ and ‘this is mine’... As early as Odoevsky [1840s] the country’s desire not to be Western turned into a vision of itself as a mystical world economy running on selflessness.
Idealism, uniqueness and separateness have long been central elements of the “Russian Soul,” and this superb volume brings a bit of order and understanding to the eclectic and elusive topic that is Russian philosophy, making it approachable for the general reader.
Russian Architecture and the West
Dmitry Shvidkovsky (Yale, $75)
Just as Russian philosophy developed in an indigenous hothouse, occasionally pollinated with outside, Western ideas, so did the development of Russian architecture proceed in this organic style, periodically injected with bits of Romanticism, the Baroque and Modernism.
Shvidkovsky, one of Russia’s leading architectural experts, traces foreign influences in Russian construction back over a thousand years, sys-tem-atizing Russian styles and schools into an understandable, convincing progression.
The photography by Yekaterina Shorban, however, combines with the text to make this a museum piece in its own right, preserving in several hundred pages the wealth and beauty of ten centuries of Russian architecture.
Briefly noted
Limited space in this issue does not allow lengthy discussion of the many other titles that came over our transom this spring. Yet two titles are of note for the different ways they look back at Russia’s gulag history. Cannibal Island, by Nicolas Werth (Princeton, $24.95) is a grim tale of ten thousand “anti-social elements” deposited on an empty Siberian island in the Ob river n the 1930s. But, more than that, it is a story of how the brutal purge machinery was oiled and run at its lowest levels.
Meanwhile, we also received a slim, 56-page book on another island made infamous by its participation in the purges, Solovki Garden ($13, IBLK Solovki Garden Project). Taking a longer view, this beautifully illustrated monograph considers the architectural and botanical history of the island, in the context of its position as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Today, the monastery is once again active on Solovki. And there are gardens flourishing on the site of this former gulag.
TRANSLATION PRIZEWINNERS
Academia Rossica and the Foundation of the First President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin in May announced the winner of the 2007 Rossica Translation Prize. First prize went to Joanne Turnbull, for her translation of 7 Stories by Sigizmund Krzhizhan-ovsky, and to the book’s publisher, GLAS, Moscow.
A Special Commen-dation was awarded to Robert Chandler for his translation of The Railway by Hamid Ismailov (Harvill Secker), and in recognition of his work to bring Russian literature to English readers.
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