In the history of Russians in London, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) in many ways acts as a transitional figure, because although most of his visits were quite short (except during the Franco-Prussian war, when he decamped to England for a year), they were frequent, and span a much longer period than those of his contemporaries. He […]
All posts tagged Dostoevsky
Russians in London: Turgenev
Posted by Sarah Young on December 26, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/26/russians-in-london-turgenev/
Russians in London: Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky left St Petersburg for his first trip to Europe on 7th June 1862. He spent most of his time in France and Italy, but also visited London for 8 days – his only trip to Britain – arriving on 9th July (Dryzhakov, p. 328). Like many other writers, one of his chief aims was […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 19, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/19/russians-in-london-dostoevsky/
Russians in London: Lev Tolstoy
There are two sources devoted solely to Tolstoy’s two-week stay in London in March 1861, Victor Lucas’s book Tolstoy in London (1979), and A. V. Knowles’s snappily titled article, ‘Some Aspects of L. N. Tolstoy’s Visit to London in 1861: An Examination of the Evidence’ (1978). They’re very different, but share a similar and telling fault: […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 5, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/05/russians-in-london-lev-tolstoy/
Russians in London: Alexander Herzen, with a note on Nikolai Ogarev
When researching the history of Russians in London, Alexander Herzen presents a considerable problem. He is without doubt the most significant of all the writers and activists who visited London in the nineteenth century, not only because he settled in the capital for some years (1852-64), but also because many of his compatriots — Turgenev, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on November 28, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/11/28/russians-in-london-alexander-herzen-with-a-note-on-nikolai-ogarev/
Russians in London: Introduction
Over the next few weeks, I will be publishing a series of posts entitled ‘Russians in London’. The project came to mind when I was researching Dostoevsky and the Crystal Palace earlier this year. I started thinking about his description of Whitechapel and the Haymarket in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, and imagined him haunting […]
Posted by Sarah Young on November 21, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/11/21/russians-in-london-introduction/
Forest palaces
I recently discovered a great website by a Russian photographer, Andrei Kuzman, or Qzmn. He specializes in travel photography, the Russian wilderness, and its architecture. It’s really worth exploring the site, whether you’ve ever been to Russia and long for the birch forests (I’m a city girl but the Russian countryside definitely speaks to me), […]
Posted by Sarah Young on November 2, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/11/02/forest-palaces/
Russkii vestnik: random volumes on archive.org
This is just a hotch-potch of five volumes ranging from 1871 to 1888 that are on archive.org. It includes a couple of instalments of Leskov’s At Daggers Drawn and Dostoevsky’s Demons and, tantalizingly, there’s a notice in volume 138 advertising Brothers Karamazov starting in the new year. Otherwise I’m mainly interested in a couple of […]
Posted by Sarah Young on October 24, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/10/24/russkii-vestnik-random-volumes-on-archive-org/
Chto delat? at the ICA
Chto delat? (What is to be Done?) is a collective of artists, theorists and political activists from Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod, formed in 2003. In general I’m more au fait with their political work, via their Russian blog, where I’ve been reading intermittently about the activities and persecution (both official and unofficial) of anti-fascist, ecological and […]
Posted by Sarah Young on October 5, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/10/05/chto-delat-at-the-ica/
The yellow card: a footnote
Earlier in the year, I wrote about the regulation of prostitution in Russia as part of my consideration of the representation of Sonia in Crime and Punishment. The subject has now come back to my attention as the result of some completely unrelated reading: the very fine East End Jewish Radicals, 1875-1914, by William J. […]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 27, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/09/27/the-yellow-card-a-footnote/
Vavilov and the Pavlovsk Experimental Station
My knowledge of science in Russia is pretty limited. Like most students of Russian literature, I know that Dmitry Mendeleev, of periodic table fame, was the father-in-law of the poet Alexander Blok. Shalamov, in his story Courses, tells the tale of having to pass an oral exam in Chemistry, his weakest subject, in order to […]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 20, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/09/20/vavilov-and-the-pavlovsk-experimental-station/