Book Review: Howard Bloom – The Lucifer Principle

This , about History, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on July 15, 2010 .20 Comments

Depressingly fatalist, morbidly truthful, irresistibly Nietzschean. That’s Howard Bloom’s “The Lucifer Principle” in a nutshell: a meandering trawl through disciplines such as genetics, psychology and culture that culminates in a theory of evil, purporting to explain its historical necessity, its creative potential and the possibility of it ever being vanquished. The odds do not appear to […]

Reconciling Stalin with Victory

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for on May 9, 2010 .32 Comments

За нас за вас и за десант и за спецназ! I would like to start off by expressing my deepest respects to the Red Army veterans who fought and died so that (literally) hundreds of millions of their Slavic brethren could live. Вечная слава героям! Last year I discussed four myths about the Eastern Front, […]

Prophets of the Great War: Friedrich Engels, Ivan Bloch, and Pyotr Durnovo

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for on May 5, 2010 .7 Comments

Though there are plenty of caveats and exceptions, it is safe to generalize that predictions of what the “next war” was going to be like before 1914 were completely inaccurate. The Great War would not be the quick, clean affair typical of the wars of German unification in the 1860’s-70’s or the sensationalist literature of the […]

Book Review: Peter Turchin – War and Peace and War

This about History, tagged , , , , , , was written by for , on April 8, 2010 .21 Comments

Then you might get something like Peter Turchin’s War and Peace and War, which I’ve finally read on the recommendations of Kolya and TG. Ranging from Ermak’s subjugation of the Sibir Khanate to the rise of Rome, Turchin makes the case that the rise and fall of empires is reducible to three basic concepts: 1) […]

Translation: Russia’s Sex Traditions

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for on December 9, 2009 .6 Comments

Sean recently suggested Russianists study the history of smell in Russia. I have an even better idea: a history of sex in Russia, or rather my translation of the tabloid article Сексуальные традиции на Руси (Russian Sexual Traditions). It’s historically and culturally inaccurate in more than a few places, but will hopefully make for a light […]

Documentary Review: Lessons from Byzantium

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for , on December 5, 2009 .4 Comments

I finally watched the film Гибель Империи. Византийский урок (Death of an Empire: the Byzantine Lesson), narrated by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, the father-confessor of Vladimir Putin. This film takes a stylized interpretation of the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire – the root cause of which is attributed to mystical factors such as loss of faith […]

Cliodynamics: Mathematizing History

This , about History, tagged , , , , , , , was written by for on December 4, 2009 .5 Comments

One of the most interesting emerging sciences today, in my opinion, is cliodynamics. Their practitioners attempt to come to with mathematical models of history to explain “big history” – things like the rise of empires, social discontent, civil wars, and state collapse. To the casual observer history may appear to be chaotic and fathomless, devoid […]

Book Review: Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for , on December 3, 2009 .2 Comments

While trawling through my computer archives, I stumbled across this book review of Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” from five years ago. Overall, it’s a great book, better than his follow-up “Collapse”, which is also interesting – especially in the psychological aspects of “collapse”, like creeping normalcy and “landscape amnesia” – but far from […]

Book Review: Alexander Werth – Moscow War Diary

This about History, tagged , , was written by for , on October 16, 2009 .3 Comments

Review of “Moscow War Diary” (A. Werth) Werth, Alexander – Moscow War Diary (1942) Category: history, Soviet Union, WW2; Rating: 4/5 Soviet Resilience under Fire On 22nd June 1941, the armed columns of Nazi Germany began rolling into Russia, heralding the start of the Great Patriotic War. For Alexander Werth, a correspondent for the British Sunday […]

Violence is Reality

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for on October 11, 2009 .15 Comments

Realism has been falling out of favor since the end of the Cold War, condemned by the Kumbaya crowd, avoided by the liberal, PC-gone-wild intelligentsia, and denigrated by “end of history” ideologues (many of whom all too cynically remain realists while cloaking it under the mantle of “liberal interventionism”). What they all have in common is […]

The Genesis of Total War

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for on September 8, 2009 .No Comments

In the summer of 1914, the world was integrated as never before. Despite its simmering tensions and conscript armies, the European continent had open borders, a shared respect for private property and rule of law, and dynastic ties that bound its monarchs together – most poignantly represented by the pageantry surrounding the funeral of Edward […]

Book Review: John Scott – Behind the Urals

This about History, tagged , , was written by for , on September 3, 2009 .8 Comments

Scott, John – Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel (1941) Category: history, Soviet Union, Stalin; Rating: 5/5 Fear and Fervor under Stalinist Industrialization The Great Depression of the 1930’s, with its iconic images of well-dressed bourgeoisie in soup lines and gaunt figures with hopeless eyes from the Dust Bowl, challenged the […]