The Slavic Literature Pod

Shownotes:This week, Matt and Cameron discuss the imminent future of the podcast and spend some time reflecting on two years of Tipsy Tolstoy.03:41 - Our Linktree. Find the link to our Discord there.05:51 - Third Space Theory 20:53 - Find our TikTok here, now with content!21:35 - I’ve been informed by some TikTok users that this is simply called an “audio.” Fascinating.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron sit down with Robert Chandler, a prolific translator of many authors including our own beloved Grossman. Robert Chandler’s translations from Russian, mostly for NYRB Classics and Vintage Classics, include works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolay Leskov; collections of stories and memoirs by Teffi; and novels and stories by Vasily Grossman, Andrey Platonov and Hamid Ismailov. He is the main translator of three anthologies of Russian literature for Penguin Classics: of short stories, magic tales and poetry. His most recent publications are Pushkin’s Peter the Great’s African and Vasily Grossman’s The People Immortal, both co-translated with his wife Elizabeth. His next publication will be Platonov’s long novel Chevengur. The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron bring you a shorter one (finally)! They’ll be covering - at long, long last - “The Shot” by Aleksandr Pushkin. Tune in to hear stories of officer intrigue, duels fought and left unfought, and the existential terror of being cornered at a party by the a dude whose main hobby is shooting handguns into his own wall. Switch out the beer for a kvass or water for this one because - say it with me - alcohol and firearms don’t mix. Enjoy!Major themes: Psychological Duels, Byronic Subversions, and Cherry Pits02:03 - Oculus Founder Says He’s Working on an Exploding VR Headset that Actually Kills Players if They Lose06:00 - While the whole Russian Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters, only 32 of them are technically letters.08:00 - FaroThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:Matt and Cameron have finished reading Stalingrad, but they aren’t yet done with Grossman. This week, they tackle his short story “The Sistine Madonna.” Written before the publication of Stalingrad and after he began to write Life and Fate, “The Sistine Madonna” is a piece about beauty, desperation, and hope for the future. Oh, and thermonuclear war. It covers a lot of ground. Grab your Bibles to track the religious analogies and tune in!Major themes: Non-religious Christianity, Aesthetic anti-Sovietism, Eternal Beauty03:49 - Okay, I was close, but the beer is actually called “St. Pauli”06:03 - Nicaragua, I mean8:09 - Check out The Sistine Madonna here08:56 - “The Sistine Madonna” by Vasily Grossman10:19 - I have once again switched Stalin and JFK’s death date, as I am want to do. Stalin died in 1953.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron finish up Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad as we close the story of Rodimtsev’s embattled Guards Regiment in the city of Stalingrad and close out (for now!) the stories of the people we’ve been following for months now. We’ll be talking about Feminist perspectives on the work, de-mythologization of warfare, and spending some time drinking our feelings out about our favorite character, Pyotr Vavilov. Grab your copy of Stalingrad, your preferred celebratory drink, and tune in!Major themes: Motherhood, the soldier as adolescent, the spirit of the worker at war04:30 - Sorry about the bells, those are my housemate’s kittens.05:50 - The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich05:52 - Love of Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai07:20 - Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman47:49 - Slight correction, the Wehrmacht was not the organization that implemented the Final Solution proper, although their units were involved in the “shoah by bullet.”50:49 - Nestor Makhno51:39 - “Ukraine without Jews” by Vasily Grossman01:02:14 - It’s the Old Testament prophet Elijah that is taken to heaven in a whirlwind.01:15:36 - “The Myth of Stalingrad in Soviet Literature, 1942 - 1963” by Ian Garner01:15:36 - “Stalingrad in Popular Memory - The Battle Remembered” - WW2TV w/ Ian Garner01:15:39 - Stalingrad Lives! by Ian GarnerThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron close in on the end of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad and talk about the actual battle in the city. We jump around from the Soviet reinforcements crossing the Volga to Wehrmacht soldiers celebrating their victory a little too early. As always, the story of war is really the story of the humans there and Grossman will never let us forget that. Find some looted booze and tune in!Major themes: Byzantium Marxism and Postmodernism Oh My!, Political alienation, The Gros-Cast05:38 - The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin by Adam Hochschild06:39 - Tipsy Tolstoy takes on Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma TalesThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron continue on to the Third and Final part of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad! After 800 pages, we finally approach…the Battle of Stalingrad. Well, the best things come to those who wait. Grab your wartime moonshine of preference, get a move on toward the city, and don’t forget to tune in!Major themes: Labyrinth of plots but make it depressing, Defamiliarization in art, The Origin of Tomatoes00:51 - Check out Puppet Combo’s Night Shit! Since it’s now October (if, indeed, you’re reading this in October), I’m ready to start shilling for indie developers I love. If you really want to get scared, check out more of Puppet Combo or my personal favorite dev, Kitty Horror Show.01:35 - Check out this article about the event06:06 - Ooh! The name of the book is “Rising Up and Rising Down,” but I was close.08:31 - We’re all gonna go ahead and ignore the mic change here.01:00:56 - Luckily for Matt, we still can’t afford to have all our episodes edited so this one was only heard in-house.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron finish out Part 7 of Stalingrad, learning more about the emotional aftermath of the Shaposhnikov family and friends’ losses - and, naturally, are introduced to an entirely new character. It’s time to learn about coal mining, babey. Grab your helmet-mounted flashlight, a boring tool, and get ready to get deep into some soot.Major themes: Tank Corps time babey, Legendary pettiness, Grossman’s Cement,06:24 *sister for being bad at art10:45 - Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra PopoffThe music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron finally arrive to the subject of the book Stalingrad - which is, of course, the actual battle of Stalingrad. It only took us a breezy 500 pages to get here. Oh! But I forgot - we have about 50 more pages of the war from the German perspective first. Grossman doesn’t let you have anything easily. Get your drink, find shelter from the bombs, and tune in!Major themes: Sponsored by water, Perspectives on Nazi-era Germany,08:57 - Some examples from our much maligned friend (by which I mean, website we malign a lot), Reddit. 20:26 - For any German-speakers out there, I apologize for my pronunciation.38:29 - If you have the time, you should give Hunter S. Thompson’s eulogy for Richard Nixon a read.39:47 - The work is called “Discourse on Colonialism” by Aime Cesaire, linked here. Although I have my quibbles with some particulars, on the whole I think the work is an important read for those who study history.40:35 - Adam Hochschild as a whole is worth reading, but one of his most notable works is King Leopold’s Ghost. This book covers the events I mention. By the way - the number of dead Congolese people I gave is extremely low. Hochchild’s book estimates the number to be around 10 million dead. Grossman’s point about Hitler should perhaps be extended to the colonialist powers that have trod tens of millions of people in the Global South underfoot.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Matt and Cameron get a little over halfway into Grossman’s Stalingrad, covering more themes from the homefront - spending more time with Pavel Andreyev the factory worker and Marusya Shaposhnikova, organizational investigator. Learn a little more about the place of art in the USSR and how every unhappy family is unlike in their own way in Part 5 of our series on Stalingrad. Grab your thoughts on the two truths, sit down, and tune in!Major themes: Cement 2: Grossman Boogaloo, Soviet HR, Zhenya’s Untrue ArtSee our book list here!01:09 - I forgot the funniest part of this story which was when we turned on the local radio station and the announcer said, “We have a great diversity of music on this station, just like the great diversity of….Grateful Dead fans out here,” before launching into a Grateful Dead song. Truly iconic.01:28 - The town name is actually Whiskeytown, my mistake.01:30 - Also Coffee Creek.The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠FacebookAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands