The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevskii
Man is a wolf to man, according to The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevskii’s The Brothers Karamazov. He has no inclination to be good, but is weak and rebellious. He cannot escape from the compulsion of logic. He is doomed to self-destruct through the assertion of his will. His quest for harmony is futile, unless he submits to a strictly ordered paradise on earth. The necessary forces of “miracle, mystery and authority” must be enforced in this “spiritual kingdom,” in the words of The...
Read MorePutin, a modern day Stalin
Masha Gessen, the Russian journalist, wrote a very important book last year, published by Granta in the UK. The Man Without a Face is a devastating portrait of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a man who, when he took power of Russia in 2000, swiftly dismantled the young mechanisms of democracy put in place by his drunken predecessor Yeltsin and ruthlessly silenced all critics, be this through repressive legislation, forced exile or murder. The former KGB man was not interested, despite...
Read MoreWhy I wrote The Distinguished Assassin
As a postgraduate student of Russian literature at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies in 1995, I will never forget my first encounter with Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, a staggering work that powerfully, and methodically, documents the vast network of forced labour camps that existed throughout the former Soviet Union. What is most striking about this work, as much as the quality and scope of its historical record, however, is its searing honesty,...
Read MoreThe “Evil” of Daniel Bartlam
To label the teenager Daniel Bartlam “evil”, as the Daily Mirror does this morning, is a gross oversimplification, not least because implicit in this label is the idea that he is somehow not human, something other, an abomination. He is none of these. Rather he is all too human – an isolated, troubled and destructive young man – who, lost in a violent and nihilistic virtual world of soap operas, video games and the internet, was driven to commit an evil act. We would do...
Read MoreThe Tragedy and Delusion of KONY 2012′s Jason Russell
Jason Russell’s KONY 2012 film is indeed very powerful, playing perfectly to an idealistic youth with its simplistic, gung-ho Hollywood sentiment: that human evil can be eradicated and the world finally made good if only Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord, is at last captured and punished. And this youth, by virtue of their youth – believing that humanity can be transformed – have responded in their millions, the film mobilising them to rise up and demand global action. The...
Read MoreThe Ugly and Awkward Truth of “Occupy London”
One of the protester’s banners at Occupy London declares, “The 99% needs a safety net more than the 1% needs a security blanket.” Many mainstream commentators argue that the protesters are nothing but a bunch of demented anarchists and hateful Marxists in search of either chaos or utopia, presenting no viable alternative to the Capitalism system which they so despise. Yet there is nothing mad or contemptuous in the above statement, nor in the one below, which states,...
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