Russia
Ian Buruma’s notebook: Teenagers discover Montaigne the blogger
Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…
Putin: ‘Oi, Europe, you’re a bunch of poofs’
Sochi 2014 is the least wintry Winter Olympics ever. Yes, there’s a bit of downhill shimmying going on in the…
Why doesn't Stephen Fry boycott the Saudis as well as the Russians?
Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in…
'She's the most important Jewish writer since Kafka!'
Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector
Why doesn't Russia have a Yad Vashem for the gulag?
Why is there no gulag museum to compare with Yad Vashem?
Secrets of the Kremlin
A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…
Why do we pounce on Wagner's anti-Semitism, and ignore that of the Russian composers?
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikötter - review
The historian of China Frank Dikötter has taken a sledgehammer to demolish perhaps the last remaining shibboleth of modern Chinese…
