Getting ready....

I've been studying some Russian history to get ready for this trip. I'm on page 80 of a total of 862 pages of Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert Massie. My sil assures me that I will be at many of the places mentioned in this book, so it is required reading before the trip. I need to get busy working on this. However, since it's easier for me to listen through my iPod while I'm doing other work, I've been much more successful at listening to lectures about Russia. Although I had listened to the Teaching Company lectures on Russia several months ago, I decided to listen again. The first of these is The History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev by Mark Steinberg. Steinberg is very interesting and seems to present a balanced view for the most part although I don't have a good enough grasp of Russian history to evaluate it properly. Steinberg presents this series from the point of view of an impartial historian, stating that he sees the job of a historian to present the evidence but not to judge it. One of his main themes for most rulers is that they appeared contradictory because they tried to be both groznyi meaning 'awesome and mighty' and tishaishii meaning 'gentle, pious, and saintly'. Although he no longer uses those words when he gets to the Soviet leaders, he seems to be following a similar theme of showing the ruler's brutal side as well as his more gentle side. He doesn't actually say anything positive about Stalin; at the same time his mantle of impartial historian seems to prevent a complete understanding of the brutality of his regime at an emotional level.
The other set of lectures I have been listening to are Classics of Russian Literature by Irwin Weil. Weil has a great sense of humor as well as an obvious love of the Russian language and its literature. He also does a nice job of presenting in a sensitive way the many adult themes in these works. He does not see himself as a cold historian and does not spare the emotions. I've only read a few of the authors he has talked about, but he has inspired me to read more. Here are some of the works he mentions:

Robert Mann, trans.,

• The Song of Prince Igor.

Serge A. Zenkovsky, ed.,

• Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (I believe that I own this but haven't read it yet)

Alexander Pushkin (I have a couple of these out from the library.)

• Eugene Onegin
• Boris Godunov
• Egyptian Nights.
• Mozart and Salieri. (The idea for the movie Amadeus originated with Pushkin)
• The Complete Prose Fiction, translation and commentary by Paul Debreczeny.
• The Poems, Prose, and Plays of Alexander Pushkin, edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky

Nikolai Gogol’ (I've read the first and last lately. They're both wildly funny.)

• The Inspector General
• The Nose, The Overcoat, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, translated and with an introduction by Ronald Wilks.
• Dead Souls

Fedor Dostoevsky (I haven't read any Dostoevsky since I was in high school.)

• Poor Folk.
• Notes from the Underground
• Crime and Punishment,
• The Brothers Karamazov.

Lev Tolstoy, (The only Tolstoi I've read recently is The Death of Ivan Ilych)

• War and Peace.
• Anna Karenina,

Ivan Turgenev

• Fathers and Sons

Anton Chekhov

• The Seagull, in Plays, translated and edited by Eugene Bristow, Norton Critical Edition

Mikhail Zoshchenko,

• Nervous People and Other Stories, translated by Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean, with a critical introduction by McLean. (Skip the early part and read the title story.)

Boris Pasternak (I just picked this one up from the library sale)

• Doctor Zhivago

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (This I read for a discussion group last year)

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich