Yearly Archive: 2020

September must be allegory month, and fittingly one of the films now the talk of the Venice Film Festival is an offering from the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky entitled “Dear Comrades.”  Its subject is the massacre of striking workers at Novocherkassk, a city near Rostov-on-Don, in 1962, and in fairness it ought to be said that a 2012 TV miniseries, entitled “Once Upon a Time in Rostov,” had done that subject ample justice, notwithstanding that it was made in the first year of what will enter history books as Putin’s Terror.  But Konchalovsky regards himself as an artist, and hence...

“No matter how totalitarian is Putin,” one of our readers has asked in response to last week’s post, “is there any other way to keep Russia from falling into the hegemonic abyss represented by our deracinated Western leaders?”  The question, to me, is hardly new, at least when raised rhetorically.

The gentle reader did not comment on last week’s post, so I follow the famous orchestra conductor’s advice to slow down if the audience finds your tempo sluggish.  With regard to old icons – the “figure” of my metaphor, as a literary critic would say, current news being its “ground” – my meaning was clear enough, I think.