Cultureteca 19.04.20
The new phase of life under coronavirus no longer sees rapid societal shifts and exponential spread, but rather stolid perseverance under creeping restrictions as deaths and rates of infection stabilise while exacting...
Cultureteca 15.12.19
In November 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency released a highly anticipated report into allegations of misconduct within Russian athletics. Finding that the Russian authorities had engaged in a widespread pattern of doping,...
Pyotr F. Sokolov: Watercolour Portraits in the Age of Pushkin
Beyond the Cyrillic curve and the printed page, if the Golden Age of Russian poetry has a visual representative it may lie in the works of Pyotr F. Sokolov. From the early...
An International Record of Women’s Suffrage
Celebrated on 8 March through diverse themes and corporate branding, the history of International Women’s Day is inseparable from the rise of socialism and the suffrage movement. Women’s suffrage followed a tangled...
A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple
The etymology of the word ‘apple’ takes us back to the Early Middle Ages, when it appeared in various related forms across the Germanic languages: as ‘apful’/’aphul’ or ‘apfel’/’aphel’ in Old High...
The Crimean Referendum: What Comes Next?
The referendum in Crimea which took place yesterday resulted – according to Mikhail Malyshev, the head of the Crimean referendum commission – in 96.77% of voters opting for Crimea’s integration with Russia....
Crimea: A Literary Perspective
The situation in Crimea continues to develop agallop. Following events in Kiev, unidentified Russian troops have taken control of Crimea’s airports, public buildings, military installations, and ports. Amid claim and counterclaim –...
The Scythians and The Rite of Spring: Documents
Here are a selection of documents and sources – videos, images, and text – relating to and referred to in the piece I just published, on the influence of Nicholas Roerich and...
The Scythians and The Rite of Spring
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (in French, Le Sacre du printemps) – the third ballet which Stravinsky composed for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, after The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911) – was written...