Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. —from [...]
The year 1989 may well be seen by future historians as one of those rare pivotal years of this past millennium—like 1066, 1492, 1793, and 1914—that profoundly altered the direction of Western Civilization. It is, of course, still too early to say for certain that we as a society set ourselves on a dangerous collision [...]
I live in Russia. Yes, still. And I’m a natural-born American with no Russian heritage. I even have a pretty great life here. But every year in October—or on the first day of September, if I’m being honest—something’s missing. That is the Perfect American Pumpkin. Like Linus anticipating the Great Pumpkin, I sincerely hope for [...]
To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. More than half a century ago, while I [...]
Like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, conservatives must come up from politics and recognize that the roots of a truer just order are watered with the permanent ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. The insights of the arts of life are vital to make life worth living. Readers of The Imaginative Conservative know well the phrase “beauty [...]
The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain seemed to be permanent fixtures of the political landscape of Europe after 1961. But to everyone’s surprise, the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. This stunning event triggered a chain reaction throughout Eastern Europe, accelerating a process that had begun a decade earlier. Using a little poetic [...]
Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, the the head of the Wagner Group, advanced on Moscow when the government refused to address his criticisms of the war effort in Ukraine. There is an obscure episode in Russian history that provides a revealing, albeit imperfect, analogue to this recent event: the so-called Kornilov Affair of 1917. For twenty-four [...]
Russia’s leaders are flawed, inclined toward violence, and covetous of power—but this doesn’t make them much different from the leaders of every other nation-state. On March 10, 2014, American ambassadors from across the globe descended on Washington for our annual conference: a few days to forget about the day-to-day hassles of running embassies and coping [...]
Though Solzhenitsyn feared the consequences of an independent Ukraine, he respected the right of the Ukrainian people to secede, a right which they duly exercised as the former Soviet Union unraveled. Reiterating his subsidiarist principles he insisted once again that “only the local population can decide the fate of their locality, of their region.” Alexander [...]
It is necessary for President Vladimir Putin to restore his previous and proper focus on what it means to be Russian in the twenty-first century. At the heart of this healthy focus is the absolute necessity of Russia separating herself psychologically from the Soviet Union. On January 27, 1945, advancing Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz concentration [...]
This gentleman evidently belonged to the category of those people who wish the Government to interfere in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives. —”The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol Braving the blust’ring blizzarding snow, lo, I am the poet Zhivago buffeted by this fierce maelstrom sent by grim Russian wintry discontent. [...]
Even if we cannot fully grasp the shape of the near-future international order, either because it has yet to crystalize fully or because we lack the historical distance to see it clearly, we can know some things about it: While Russia and China have settled into their roles, the U.S. remains an actor in search [...]
A journal is claiming that the Russian government was using the Covid-19 outbreak to strengthen anti-EU feelings, make propaganda gains, and gather intelligence at the heart of NATO. Although this report has gained traction, what is this statement really saying and who is saying it? According to a recent news report, Russia is using the [...]
Though they should be on the same side in their opposition to globalism, Russia and Poland have recently entered into an unholy spat over the history of World War II. The Russian Ambassador to Poland stated recently in an interview with the Russian news site rbc.ru that relations between Russia and Poland are “the worst [...]