In another post, I claim that Russia before the Bolsheviks was much more European than we give it credit for. Its continued isolation in the 21st century, much of it self-inflicted, impoverishes us all. Nothing spells out Russia’s culture more starkly than the long litany of its famous dead. In St Petersburg you find buried […]
In the steps of Raskolnikoff: Crime and Punishment Locations
“On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.” Thus starts Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the rather sterile, but faithful, Constance Garnett translation. The names of the streets […]
The Nabokov Museum in St Petersburg
Vladimir Nabokov, the writer best known for the controversial novel Lolita, was born in a wealthy family in St Petersburg on 22 April 1899. He lived at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Street until he was 18 when he and his family fled after the Communist Revolution. He considered it his only home and never bought another, […]