WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
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Resurrection, colonising space and 'mystical Stalinism' – the strange world of Aleksandr Prokhanov
An illuminating study of one of modern Russia's most influential thinkers is an invaluable aid to understanding the country's politics, finds BEN CHACKO
Prokhanov with Aleksey Mozgovoy, the Lugansk militia leader in August 2014
[Pic: DenTVinform Official Stream/CC]
RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
PETER MASON is tickled by a new book and exhibition that mine the rotten anachronism of the monarchy for laughs
A Nazi zeppelin whodunnit, death amidst detoxification, a twistaholic’s delight, and noir fiction for criminals
STEVE JOHNSON salutes the mellifluous tones and clear-minded political message of a uniquely relevant Birmingham-born singer-songwriter
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
Aleksandr Prokhanov and Post-Soviet Esotericism
by Edmund Griffiths
Ibidem, £32
DON’T be put off by the title. Edmund Griffiths’s new study Aleksandr Prokhanov and Post-Soviet Esotericism sounds niche – but it is one of the most informative books you could read on modern Russian nationalism.
In Britain he’s unheard of. But Prokhanov is one of Russia’s best-selling novelists and longtime editor of the influential newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow). He was also the reputed author of 1991’s A Word to the People – signed, among others, by the later Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov – the manifesto for that August’s failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, a last-ditch attempt to stop the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The “nightingale of the General Staff,” as he was known even in Soviet times for his devotion to the military, has been a formative influence on what was termed in the 1990s the “patriotic opposition” — a shifting alliance of everyone opposed to the politics of the Yeltsin years, ranging from orthodox communists to Orthodox priests.
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