The Slavic Literature Pod

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron travel from light love affair to life after marriage (and pseudo-divorce) with Levin and Kitty’s life, paralleled with Anna and Vronsky’s. Of course—we are reading Tolstoy after all—this is not merely their story, but also that of Sergei and Varenka and Vasenka and so many other interesting characters that we run into in this part. Grab your gun, get up ear...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron get their teeth into the incredibly action-packed Part 5 of Anna Karenina! Seriously. Even if we weren’t comparing this to two straight parts full of farming and legal procedure, it would still stand out. Throw away your farming equipment, grab your finest wedding attire, and get ready for marriages and domestic unrest and familial drama, oh my! Major theme...

Show Notes : (Apologies about the confusing intro, this was originally slated to release alongside our Friday episode where we also announce the format change.) In order to better accommodate our increasingly busy lives combined with the amount of work we try to put into each podcast episode (reading, researching, recording, editing, promoting, etc.) Tipsy Tolstoy will be switching over to a biwee...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron examine One Soldier’s War by Arkady Babchenko, the biography of a Russian soldier who served in the first and second Russo-Chechen Wars. This is, in all honesty, a pretty tough read; but there is an unfortunately dearth of English-language focus on Russia’s first military conflicts as a post-Soviet state. Don’t worry if you’re not all that familiar with Che...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron keep it rolling with part 4 of Anna Karenina. This section might be alternately titled: Oh, you were tired of farming were you? Let me show you something much less interesting and good for humanity. That is the long way of saying that this section is mostly about Karenin’s committees. Saying that, however, sells this part a little short because it also cont...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron (finally) respond to the request of a Patron and tackle Matryona’s House by Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. In this loosely autobiographical story, we follow our unnamed narrator’s time living with the eponymous Matryona in the very interesting town of Peat-Produce as he better understands the dynamic of living in this small town. Ah, and also there are cockroaches...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron keep the summer of Anna Karenina rolling with part 3 of Tolstoy’s legendary novel. After a little over 250 pages of simmering desire and clashing wills, we slow it down with a lengthy inspection of Levin’s life on the farm—a topic which may at first seem to be an overlong digression from the main plot, but may just set up some of the most important themes o...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron pull out their soap boxes and get maudlin drunk as they cover The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. The Unwomanly Face of War is an oral history of the disparate experiences of Soviet women in World War Two, told in fragmented tales revolving around various themes. Get out your Soviet Union-centered history textbooks, find the appropriate wartim...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue the Summer of Anna Karenina with Part 2 of Leo Tolstoy’s canon-defining work Anna Karenina . Come join us as Anna reveals her affair to her husband, Kitty finds (and then quickly loses) religion, and Levin...thinks about farming. He also chastises his peasants for farming not the way he wants them to. Scintillating stuff. Also, Sativa’s still on th...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron attempt to unravel Andrei Sinyavsky’s short story Pkhentz , which stars a man in the late USSR who is fundamentally uncomfortable with everything from the concept of food to the idea of sexual attraction. Come to figure out if this is a political allegory, stay for Andrei Kazimirovich’s evaluation of sausage-making. Major themes: Cacti, Water Water Everywhe...

Show Notes :  This week, Matt and Cameron kick off the Summer of Anna Karenina with Part 1 of Count Tolstoy’s famous novel! Join us as we delve into a tale of “the beauty of light and shadow,” as Matt absolutely does not want you to describe it, and explore one of the most intriguing characters ever put to the page. Oh, and Konstantin Levin is there, too. Sit back, find a partner for the Mazurka,...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron take on Anton Chekhov’s famous fanfiction of Anna Karenina, “The Lady with the Dog.” Filled with adultery, complex emotions, and so much gray , Chekhov’s tale is a 15-page story with an 800-page amount of needed analysis. Oh, and Cameron finally gets to mention “A Doll’s House”. At least it’s not The Lord of the Flies this time. Major themes: Anna Anna Ever...

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron take on the second half of Zuleika by Guzel Yakhina, wherein our eponymous heroine fully sheds her old identity as the “pitiful hen,” and—deep in the woods of Siberia—becomes a hunter, mother, cook, medical assistant, lover, and everything you might have imagined to be impossible in such exile. As with the first half, Zuleikha continues to be an absolute joy...

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron tackle the first half of Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, following the story of the so-called ‘Pitiful Hen,’ as her farm is collectivized, her husband is killed, and she is sent half-way across the USSR to build her own prison. With a great focus on the integration of pagan folklore and (then) modern Islam and a surprising number of action-filled setpieces, Zulei...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into several adaptations of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina alongside Ally Pitts of the Russophiles Unite! Movie podcast. Although a bit different than our usual fare, we had a ton of fun recording this with Ally. Mustache licking, French speaking, unfaithfulness ahoy! A huge thank you to Ally for coming on to this episode! It was incredibly fun to record....

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Love of the Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai, a major figure of early Soviet Union Bolshevik politics. Though she would later fall out of favor due to her outspoken opposition to the changing Bolshevik party, Kollontai remained a USSR official, Marxist feminist theorist, and author until her death. I know, I know, more Soviet political theory—so...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron finish the “What Is To Be Done?” series with Vladimir Lenin’s take on the matter. Perhaps it is only fitting that we end the trilogy with the man who would very much put this question to rest by making it irrelevant (at least, for a time). Come listen to us fully devolve into a political theory podcast—it’s fun, we promise. Major themes: Constant references...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue their series on “What Is To Be Done,” with Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 response to the question, tackling matters of his experience with the poor in Moscow, his views on money, and the existence of an “idle class” in Russian society. Join us as we read what is ostensibly Tolstoy telling you a story about his experiences but then very suddenly becomes 100 pa...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron kick off a three-week series in an attempt to figure out just what, exactly, is to be done. This week, they’re reading What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, perhaps one of the influential books (in the Russian context) that you’ve never read. Sit down, strap in, and prepare yourself for political theory disguised as a horribly written novel! Major t...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron finish reading We by Evgeny Zamyatin where they finally uncover I-330’s secret plans, the truth of the Benefactor, and the dark secret of voting: that before The One State, it was done in private—as if it were an occult ritual. Get your pink slip, drop the blinds, and tune in! Major themes: The False Neutrality of Logic, Math, The Final Number. 10:37 - If y...

Show Notes: This week, Cameron releases some pent-up stress by yelling about 1984 for...a bit. Then Matt gets personal in a 20 Questions Gauntlet—time to find out what his most embarrassing sartorial decisions have been. Tangentially, you’ll also find out how long it takes him to google ‘sartorial.’ Also...apologies to Edith Wharton. You deserve better. Major themes: POUM, Ranting about 1984, Conv...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron tackle the first half of Evgeny’s Zamyatin’s We . Perhaps the first novel of sci-fi dystopia as we would recognize it today, We portends a dark future where Ciphers rise uni-millionly, work uni-millionly, and have sheepishly (I like to imagine) register for sex day uni-millionly. Come along as we follow the journey of D-503 as we read the novel that launche...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, reading “Song of the Final Meeting,” “Lot’s Wife” and Requiem. Each of these selections comes out of a very different place in her life, so join us as we examine her development as a writer! Also, the development of a life under Stalinism. That’s the less fun way of putting it. Major themes: The Great Terror, Translat...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into metaphors for communism and explorations of grief in “The Cow” and “The Third Son” by Andrei Platonov. Coming of age during the Russian Civil War, Platonov became an official member of the Communist Party in 1920—though he quickly became critical of the party, especially as it began to unveil its plans for industrialization in the New Economic Pol...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron will learn not to specifically challenge the devil in “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” by Leo Tolstoy. Hailed as “the greatest story that the literature of the world knows,” by James Joyce (honestly, it might be more notable if someone hasn’t lauded a work by Tolstoy as such), How Much Land makes use of the skaz storytelling style in order to convey a moral...