Fyodor Dostoevsky's Meeting With Archbishop Nicholas Kasatkin the Missionary of Japan

By Michael K. Makrakis

Although Dostoevsky was born in Moscow (30 October 1821), he spent his life in St. Petersburg since May 1837 changing many times his place of abode. His last address was on Kuznechny Lane, near the Church of Vladimirskaya. This is where he received the invitation of the Society of the Friends of Russian Literature to attend the unveiling of the Pushkin bust in Moscow and give a speech. It was April-May of 1880. Dostoevsky was then writing his last book "The Brothers Karamazov". Although he did not want to interrupt his work, his huge love for Pushkin made him finally decide to travel to Moscow.

He left on 22 May. His wife, Anna Grigoryevna, who accompanied him to the station, begged him to write to her every day describing all the details. This is why he composed the letters covering the period he stayed in Moscow: from the next day of his arrival (23-24 May) until the 8th of June, 1880, the day he gave the speech for Pushkin. This speech caused so much upheaval that it was characterised as a true "historical fact". As he writes in one of his letters (13 June 1880) after his speech "the people started sobbing and embracing one another swearing to be better in the future."

"An Honest Thief" by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Photios Kontoglou

An Honest Thief is an 1848 short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The story recounts the tale of the tragic drunkard, Emelyan Ilyitch. This story is here accompanied by a little-known sketch drawn by Photios Kontoglou, who drew it specifically to depict the character in the story by Dostoevsky. On the back of the original drawing there is a handwritten note by his daughter, Despos Kontoglou-Martinou: "The Honest Thief" by Dostoevsky, 1924, watercolor and ink on paper, 11 X 9.5 cm., Eleni Voila.

Read the complete short story here.  

Nikolai Gogol as a Religious Personality

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol was born in 1809 in the Ukraine. His father was an amateur playwright who had a small estate with a number of serfs. From the ages of 12 to 19, young Gogol attended a boarding school where he became known for his sharp wit and ability to amuse his classmates. After school he worked as a government clerk.

He soon began writing memories of his childhood. His quaint depictions of the Ukrainian countryside marked his style and helped to make him famous. Gogol quickly gained fame and formed a friendship with the influential poet, Aleksandr Pushkin.

"Doctor Zhivago": An Orthodox Perspective

By Fr. Andrew Phillips

My first conscious exposure to Orthodox culture was through Doctor Zhivago, the novel by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), the Russian poet, writer and translator of Shakespeare. This was when I was aged nine. The story overwhelmed me with its sense of destiny. I felt deeply at home in the culture portrayed. It came to influence me deeply and in my teens I knew many of its wholly Orthodox Christian poems by heart, feeling completely at home in their ethos. Later I was able to speak of this to Pasternak’s sister, Lydia Slater, in Oxford.

The Sense of Death in Tolstoy and Kierkegaard

The Sense of Death in Tolstoy and Kierkegaard

By Michael K. Macrakis, M.A., Ph. D.

Introduction

Death is a subject which concerns mainly religion, the philosophy religion. «The oldest and most common definition is that religion is the link between man and God». According to this definition, religion derived from religare and originally meant «a bond». This bond, of course, is not between two men, «between the sexes», as Ludwig Feuerbach wishes, but between God and man because religion can not exist without God.

Anton Chekhov: Atheist, Agnostic or Struggling Orthodox Christian?

By Father Robert M. Arida

I

The question of Chekhov’s Christianity and his relationship with the Orthodox Church continues to be debated. Even those such as Father Alexander Schmemann, who lauded Chekhov’s deep insights into the complexities of the human person brought about by his religious and medical backgrounds, could not confidently state that he was a man of the Church.[1]

This paper does not pretend to provide the definitive answer regarding Chekhov’s faith and piety. However, it does attempt to draw attention to his passionate struggle for the meaning of human existence and how, through his characters, one encounters a doctor and writer who tenaciously wrestles with Christ, the Church and the Gospel.

A Russian Child's Clean Monday Remembered

Ivan Shmelyov or Shmelev (1873-1950) was a Russian émigré writer best known for his full-blooded idyllic recreations of the pre-revolutionary past spent in the merchant district of Moscow. His first published story appeared in 1895; in the same year he visited Valaam Monastery, a trip that had a deep spiritual influence on him and resulted in his first book, Na skalakh Valaama ['On the Cliffs of Valaam'] (1897).

In his beloved book Anno Domini ['The Year of the Lord'], Shmelyov reminisces about the vanished traditional Russia of his childhood. In the excerpt below is the author's child's eye view of Clean Monday and the beginning of Great Lent in pre-revolutionary Moscow.

Mikhail Shvydkoi: Russian Literature Has a Holy Attitude to the Word

Former Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi shares his thoughts on the relationship between art and reality and what it is that makes Russian literature so special.

Mikhail Shvydkoi

February 6, 2015

Rossiyskaya Gazeta

The Read Russia project, which has been very successful abroad, will now turn its focus inwards, and I am confident it will benefit everyone – no matter what literary preferences they have. People like to lament that modern Russia is devoid of good literature, but this is about as justified as claiming that we do not play football. Contemporary Russian literature – including what is written in the languages of the various ethnic groups that comprise our country – reflects the level of national self-examination. This idea that any given country is devoid of good literature has been around since time immemorial – I am sure it existed in Pushkin’s day too.

Leo Tolstoy's "Papa Panov's Special Christmas" (animation)

Papa Panov, an old shoemaker almost too blind to thread a needle, has a dream that Jesus will visit him on Christmas Day.

He anxiously and eagerly waits all day, but his only visitors are a tramp, a roadsweeper, and a pauper woman with her cold and hungry baby.

Despite his disappointment and fading hope, Papa Panov gives them his coat, his money, his soup, and even the tiny shoes he was saving as a present for Baby Jesus.

As night falls and his special visitor still hasn't arrived, Papa Panov thinks himself a silly, old fool.

But then he has another dream, a dream which convinces him his special visitor did come after all ....

This short story of Leo Tolstoy can be read here.

Below is a cartoon based on the original tale, titled "Red Boots For Christmas":

Nikolai Gogol's "The Night Before Christmas" (1951 - Animation)

It is the night before Christmas and devilry is afoot. The devil steals the moon and hides it in his pocket. He is thus free to run amok and inflicts all sorts of wicked mischief upon the village of Dikanka by unleashing a snowstorm. But the one he'd really like to torment is the town blacksmith, Vakula, who creates icons of the devil being vanquished. Vakula is in love with Oksana, but she will have nothing to do with him. Vakula, however, is determined to win her over, even if it means battling the devil.

Taken from Nikolai Gogol's first successful work, from the story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.

Dostoevsky and Spiritualism

By Thomas E. Berry, University of Maryland

From the reign of Catherine the Great to the Revolution of 1917, Russian society and literature were affected by the relationship between Western spiritualism with its seances and mediums and an ancient folk tradition with its superstitions and fancifulness. The common Russian belief in spirits, combined with the Western occult science, brought charlatans into the highest court circles throughout the last hundred and fifty years of the Romanov's rule. Cagliostro drew the attention of Catherine II; the Baroness Krudener instructed Alexander I; D.D. Home had the patronage of Alexander II; and Rasputin and Dr. Philippe had a close relationship with Nicholas II. The Czars were the inheritors of two strong social forces: a folk tradition based on the mystical and the miraculous dating back hundreds of years and a fervent search for historical and spiritual meaning among the Russian intelligentsia. Only Nicholas I failed to understand the popularity of spiritualism in Russia and his jack of interest separated him from the mainstream of Russian life. Most Russian monarchs were greatly influenced by the spread of spiritualistic forces. It was as if folk superstitions and Western spiritualism were destined to blend together and contribute to the fall of the Russian Empire.