The Slavic Literature Pod

Shownotes: This week, Matt and Cameron fiddle while Moscow burns. They finish Book 3 of War and Peace by finally engaging with the direct interaction of war and society. Unfortunately for the population of Moscow, that comes as their city burns. Why that is? Well - Tolstoy has some opinions. (Unsurprisingly, those opinions begin with the fact that Moscow is mostly built of wood, which may have som...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue Part 2, Book 3 of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace . Get your sabers ready, we’re about to head into one of the defining battles of 1812. Well - at least as Tolstoy would have you believe. And - for once - Marya appears in a scene without 2-3 pages of the narrator ragging on her looks. Who would have thought we’d come this far? Get your victory drink of...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue their slog through Book 3 of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, covering part 1. Get ready for more teen marriage plots, a little elucidation on Tolstoy’s thoughts on doctors, and the funniest section for Pierre so far. And trust us - that last bit jumped over a high bar. Grab your copies of the Book of Revelations and tune in! Major themes: More Teen M...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Parts 4 and 5 in Book 2 of War and Peace . If you read Anna Karenina and thought, I like these hunting scenes 500 pages in but I wish they were more brutal and had more undertones about the aristocracy - don’t worry, we’ve got you covered here. And Natasha’s upcoming marriage comes under pressure. Grab your finest elopement garments and strap in,...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Book 2, part 3 of War and Peace to find the answer to an important question: is life over once you turn 31? And it’s time to turn a little religious and a little conspiratorial with Princess Marya and Count Pierre. Nothing better than covering two years of life in around 100 pages. Grab your finest soiree attire, some champagne, and tune in! Major...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Book 2 of War and Peace and cover parts 1 & 2. In this part, we get the honor (you might say) of getting to compare child marriage plots, duels, and bullying of my! Grab your kvass of choice and get ready to get into War and Peace . Major themes: Child marriage, duels, battle plans 21:11 - National Treasure , truly the greatest American contri...

Show Notes :  This week, Matt and Cameron finish up the first section of War and Peace by covering Book 1, Part 3. They’ll be delving more into the Kuragin family and their shared habits (and even some shared facial expressions), and keeping up with the military boys as they meet their idols…and have very different reactions than expected. Grab your reluctant wedding champagne and tune in!  Major...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron turn to the war part of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Part II of Book 1. Grab your field rations and greatcoats as we follow Andrei, Nikolai, and company into battle with the French. And although this seems to be the opposite…perhaps the battles parallel the “peace” of Moscow society more than it first appears. You’ll have to tune in to find out. Intereste...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron kick off their longest series ever: Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This episode they’ll be reading Part 1 of Book 1 (don’t worry there are only four books and two epilogues) and get into the nitty gritty of peace. But at risk of engaging with too many clichés, the maneuvers of peace (and mostly the soiree) can be just as complex as war. Grab your koumiss and...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron sit down with author Bob Blaisdell to talk about his new book Chekov Becomes Chekov: The Emergence of a Literary Genius . Bob was a wonderful person to chat with and learn from - and we hope you all take as much away from the conversation as we did. Bob Blaisdell is Professor of English at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College and...

Shownotes: This week, Matt and Cameron discuss the imminent future of the podcast and spend some time reflecting on two years of Tipsy Tolstoy. 03:41 - Our Linktree . Find the link to our Discord there. 05:51 - Third Space Theory  20:53 - Find our TikTok here , now with content! 21:35 - I’ve been informed by some TikTok users that this is simply called an “audio.” Fascinating. The music used in th...

Show Notes :  This week, Matt and Cameron sit down with Robert Chandler, a prolific translator of many authors including our own beloved Grossman. Robert Chandler’s translations from Russian, mostly for NYRB Classics and Vintage Classics, include works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolay Leskov; collections of stories and memoirs by Teffi; and novels and stories by Vasily Grossman, Andrey Platonov an...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron bring you a shorter one (finally)! They’ll be covering - at long, long last - “The Shot” by Aleksandr Pushkin. Tune in to hear stories of officer intrigue, duels fought and left unfought, and the existential terror of being cornered at a party by the a dude whose main hobby is shooting handguns into his own wall. Switch out the beer for a kvass or water for...

Show Notes : Matt and Cameron have finished reading Stalingrad, but they aren’t yet done with Grossman. This week, they tackle his short story “The Sistine Madonna.” Written before the publication of Stalingrad and after he began to write Life and Fate , “The Sistine Madonna” is a piece about beauty, desperation, and hope for the future. Oh, and thermonuclear war. It covers a lot of ground. Grab y...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron finish up Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad as we close the story of Rodimtsev’s embattled Guards Regiment in the city of Stalingrad and close out (for now!) the stories of the people we’ve been following for months now. We’ll be talking about Feminist perspectives on the work, de-mythologization of warfare, and spending some time drinking our feelings out about...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron close in on the end of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad and talk about the actual battle in the city. We jump around from the Soviet reinforcements crossing the Volga to Wehrmacht soldiers celebrating their victory a little too early. As always, the story of war is really the story of the humans there and Grossman will never let us forget that. Find some looted...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue on to the Third and Final part of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad! After 800 pages, we finally approach…the Battle of Stalingrad. Well, the best things come to those who wait. Grab your wartime moonshine of preference, get a move on toward the city, and don’t forget to tune in! Major themes: Labyrinth of plots but make it depressing, Defamiliarization...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron finish out Part 7 of Stalingrad, learning more about the emotional aftermath of the Shaposhnikov family and friends’ losses - and, naturally, are introduced to an entirely new character. It’s time to learn about coal mining, babey. Grab your helmet-mounted flashlight, a boring tool, and get ready to get deep into some soot. Major themes: Tank Corps time bab...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron finally arrive to the subject of the book Stalingrad - which is, of course, the actual battle of Stalingrad. It only took us a breezy 500 pages to get here. Oh! But I forgot - we have about 50 more pages of the war from the German perspective first. Grossman doesn’t let you have anything easily. Get your drink, find shelter from the bombs, and tune in! Majo...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron get a little over halfway into Grossman’s Stalingrad , covering more themes from the homefront - spending more time with Pavel Andreyev the factory worker and Marusya Shaposhnikova, organizational investigator. Learn a little more about the place of art in the USSR and how every unhappy family is unlike in their own way in Part 5 of our series on Stalingrad...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive back into the family life of the Shaposhnikovs, so we’ll call this episode “Mothers and Daughters.” Also…well, Viktor meets someone on the side in Moscow. We’ll see how that goes. Grab your drink of choice when family dinner is getting contentious and tune in! Major themes: Cowboy movies and Soviet Literature, x, r/menwritingwomen 14:40 - It is in fact...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue on with the set-up to the siege of Stalingrad, following more of Viktor Shtrum as well as Commissar Nikolai Krymov in their respective adventures in Moscow and on the Eastern Front. We’ll be getting into the nitty-gritty on the idea of Grossman as a “soviet Tolstoy” so grab your finest wartime moonshine and tune in to hear our incendiary hot takes!...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue to dig their trench and get ready for the oncoming siege of Stalingrad in Part 2 of their 10 Part series on Stalingrad. We’ll be learning a little more about Grossman’s life and will follow Grossman’s masterful depiction of the first years of World War 2 on Soviet territory. Get the hidden moonshine out of the cellar, fry up the last of the Doktors...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron kick off their biggest podcast series ever with one of the most obscure choices possible for such a venture: Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman. Stalingrad is the first book in a dilogy, followed by the much more famous Life and Fate , which covers the siege of the city of Stalingrad by the German Wehrmacht in World War 2. We’re going to be dealing with a whole...

Show Notes : Follow Dr. Vegara’s twitter here , check out his website , and don’t forget to pick up a copy of his new book, All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature.  This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by Dr. José Vergara to talk about - drum roll please - two books: Envy by Yuri Olesha as well as All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature by Dr....