Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia

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urn:lcp:natashasdancecul0000fige:epub:22f4ac5b-5eeb-41ea-a59b-d100d4b75414 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier natashasdancecul0000fige Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8gg3d50h Invoice 1652 Isbn 0805057838 Lccn 2002071881 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-beta-20210815 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200059 Openlibrary_edition Orlando Figes investido doctor honoris causa por la UIMP: 'Nos hemos equivocado con Rusia durante mucho tiempo' ". www.uimp.es (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 28 August 2023 . Retrieved 16 September 2023. On the whole, Stelling’s film is based on an interesting premise and on a captivating stylistic approach that needed some refinement. Nonetheless, the final result is rather uneven, and ultimately limits the potential of this fairytale-like love story. St Petersburg symbolised Russia's eighteenth-century aspiration to make the best of the high European tradition immediately its own, in bravura style, according to Figes: 'St Petersburg was more than a city. It was a vast, almost utopian, project of cultural engineering to reconstruct the Russian as a European man.

In the last section of Natasha's Dance - 'Russians Abroad' on p538 he says the émigrés in Berlin, Paris and New York 'created their own mythical versions of the good Russian life before 1917'. Figes says they began to go to Easter midnight Masses and 'now as exiles clung to native customs and beliefs'. Catholics have Mass Orthodox have Liturgy. Ask why did the Tsars build beautiful cathedrals in the 1800s in Jerusalem (and hostel for pilgrims), Paris, Cannes, Nice, Florence, Baden-Baden, Dresden, and other cities in Europe if church going Russians were not already travelling and living for long periods in these cities? Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. History is a statement of facts, that is those that have not been suppressed in the archives. Writing history is uncomplicated but writing about the culture of Russia without being Russian is infinitely more difficult. Figes facts are impressive but I felt a certain underlying antipathy for Russia. Kendall, Bridget (September 2022). "The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review – what Putin sees in the past". The Guardian.

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In spite of all the difficulties, and perhaps in part because of them, I had the time of my life during those two years at Moscow University. I met some wonderful people who became lasting friends. Now I travel to Russia at least once or twice a year, normally only for a week or ten days, but I still see those old friends. LINGUISTIC MISHAPSThis was the biggest issue I personally had with Figes’s book, although I recognise this is almost certainly a result of my own biases, having extensively studied languages and having more than a little interest in the Russian language. The younger generation of the Russian intelligentsia chooses to ignore this; to contemporary novelists and artists it seems mere romanticism to want to learn from "the people". But as Figes brilliantly shows, the 19th-century intellectuals developed a blend of affection and exasperation in their approach to the peasantry - and this helped them produce art of transcendent quality. Today, too, the traditional popular commitment to social justice and economic fairness needs to be appreciated and activated if ever Russia is to emerge from under the stone of her present-day discontents. Orlando Figes' enthralling, richly evocative history has been heralded as a literary masterpiece on Russia, the lives of those who have shaped its culture, and the enduring spirit of a people.

JEWISH ERASUREQuite frankly Figes’s apparent avoidance of Russian Jews and their place in Russian history and culture was baffling. He mentioned antisemitism and the pogroms only once, in the context of a paragraph on Marc Chagall, a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin; here, Figes essentially avers Russia as the sole Eastern European nation ‘potent’ enough to give the population a sense of Jewish nationalism, which is—pardon me—an absolutely bat-shit proclamation.INTERVIEWER: You describe one of the characters in your book - the writer Simonov - as a 'good Stalinist'. Is such a thing possible? Isn't the idea of a 'good Stalinist' a contradiction in terms? One day, Daantje’s mother tells him there will be a girl waiting for him, someone who dances beautifully. After being abandoned by both parents, Daantje grows up ( Willem Voogd) in an orphanage run by the Church, an experience which leaves him even more distraught and alienated. The turning point occurs when he meets Natasha ( Anastasia Weinmar), an older Russian ballerina, and in an attempt to protect her from one of her previous partners, accidentally kills him. The two go on the run together, and up until this point Jos Stelling’s bold aesthetic and narrative approach works, at least to some extent. This first part is gripping enough and while deeply tragic, the events unfolding on screen are also ‘softened’ by some pleasant light-hearted touches. Wheeler, Sara (3 September 2022). "How Putin manipulated history to help Russians feel good again". The Spectator (review) . Retrieved 6 September 2022.

Figes was given exclusive access to the letters and other parts of the archive, which is also based on interviews with the couple when they were in their nineties, and the archives of the labour camp itself. Figes raised the finance for the transcription of the letters, which are housed in the Memorial Society in Moscow and will become available to researchers in 2013. According to Figes, "Lev's letters are the only major real-time record of daily life in the Gulag that has ever come to light." [32]Figes, Orlando (16 December 2013). "Is There One Ukraine?". Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 24 July 2015. Guy Dammann (14 July 2008). "Interview: Guy Dammann talks to Orlando Figes". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 31 August 2011. Petro’nun başlattığı bu akım Petersburg’daki aristokrat kesimin özümsemesiyle birlikte bence oldukça ilginç boyutlara varmış. Şeremetevo gibi yüzyıllarca varlığını devam ettirmiş Rus klanları üzerinden somut örneklerle konuyu daha açıklayıcı bir şekilde aktarmış yazar. Bury, Liz (1 October 2013). "David Bowie's top 100 must-read books". Theguardian.com . Retrieved 8 October 2017. Kitap 8 ana bölümden oluşan bir kültürel tarih incelemesi. Salt bilgi içerikli olduğu için bir kurgu romandan beklenilen akıcılık bu eserden beklenmemeli ancak muadillerine göre kolay okunuşunun bu kitabı popüler yaptığını düşünüyorum. Dediğim gibi salt bilgi içerikli olmasından dolayı kitap hakkındaki düşüncelerimi bölümler halinde spoiler korkusu olmadan vermek istiyorum, bütününe yorum yapmak zor çünkü bölümden bölüme yazarın tutumunun değiştiğini fark ettim. Bu dengesizlik ve yer yer taraflı anlatım yüzünden de 5 yerine 4 yıldız verdim.