Double-header on The Eurasian Knot, which is a Soviet Union history podcast, from a liberal perspective.
The first episode is a recording of a lecture that Prof. Mark Steinberg gave years ago, titled The Russian Revolution as Utopian Leap in the Open Air of History. The episode description says "Mark Steinberg on the symbolism of angels, wings, and flight in the Russian Revolution." I would add that the talk starts with Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus to set the motif and then goes into Nieztche, Trotsky, Lenin, Maiakovskii, Ernst Blöch (remember the Utopia guy from a post a few months ago?) and last but not least, Alexandra Kollontaï. It feels a bit rushed and I was listening with one ear while doing laundry but there were too many things in it not share it for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sabotabby. :)
The second episode is episode is Intimate Lives of International Communism. Historian Maurice J. Casey wrote a book on the inhabitants of Hotel Lux, which was taken over by the Soviets and turned into apartments for many important though not top-level early Bolsheviks in the early years of the Revolution in Moscow. What I found particularly interesting is that Casey regards Bolshevism as a millenarian cult. The interview doesn't dwell that much on it but that's the part I would love to read the book for. Very interesting beyond that part anyway.
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You might have noticed that I'm sharing 2017 and 2024 episodes of the podcast at the same time. You might wonder, how do you manage it,frandroid? In the case of very long, non-sequential podcasts, I'll pick amongst the most recent episodes, but when I've covered the ones I want to listen to, I switch to the start of the podcast and make a selection there, instead of just going a little further back. I find that the dead zone of podcasts is 2 to 9 months ago, where you might think an episode would be interesting but you realize your knowledge to the future of the episode renders it mostly irrelevant or uninteresting.
Of course that's 99% irrelevant for a Russian history podcast, though you would think it would, judging by the war in progress. But this guy is limiting his coverage before 2005 or so...
The first episode is a recording of a lecture that Prof. Mark Steinberg gave years ago, titled The Russian Revolution as Utopian Leap in the Open Air of History. The episode description says "Mark Steinberg on the symbolism of angels, wings, and flight in the Russian Revolution." I would add that the talk starts with Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus to set the motif and then goes into Nieztche, Trotsky, Lenin, Maiakovskii, Ernst Blöch (remember the Utopia guy from a post a few months ago?) and last but not least, Alexandra Kollontaï. It feels a bit rushed and I was listening with one ear while doing laundry but there were too many things in it not share it for
sabotabby. :)The second episode is episode is Intimate Lives of International Communism. Historian Maurice J. Casey wrote a book on the inhabitants of Hotel Lux, which was taken over by the Soviets and turned into apartments for many important though not top-level early Bolsheviks in the early years of the Revolution in Moscow. What I found particularly interesting is that Casey regards Bolshevism as a millenarian cult. The interview doesn't dwell that much on it but that's the part I would love to read the book for. Very interesting beyond that part anyway.
--
You might have noticed that I'm sharing 2017 and 2024 episodes of the podcast at the same time. You might wonder, how do you manage it,
frandroid? In the case of very long, non-sequential podcasts, I'll pick amongst the most recent episodes, but when I've covered the ones I want to listen to, I switch to the start of the podcast and make a selection there, instead of just going a little further back. I find that the dead zone of podcasts is 2 to 9 months ago, where you might think an episode would be interesting but you realize your knowledge to the future of the episode renders it mostly irrelevant or uninteresting. Of course that's 99% irrelevant for a Russian history podcast, though you would think it would, judging by the war in progress. But this guy is limiting his coverage before 2005 or so...
