The Slavic Literature Pod – Details, episodes & analysis

Show Notes:

This week, in For Your Consideration, Cameron dives into Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič’s Alindarka’s Children and Laguna-Pueblo-American writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Both novels explore people native to a land that is now, in different ways, hostile to them. 

Alindarka’s Children follows Avi and Sia’s fairy tale-like journey escaping a camp where they’re fed “vitamins” and taught to speak the correct Lingo, rejecting their own language. Their trip is beset by an unstable father, who insistantly passed their native Leid, a forest witch, a “corrected” hunter and other dangers. Written in both English and Scots to capture the Russian and Belarusian of the original, the novel challenges the reader’s understanding of linguistic and cultural preservation. 

Ceremony is downstream of Marmon Silko’s brief attempt to write a humorous story about the native WW2 veterans of her childhood, who often drank heavily to deal with their trauma. As the wrote, though, she found that it really wasn’t very funny at all. Her exploration of Tayo’s PTSD, and the struggle to find a way forward, is a profoundly empathetic approach to everyone involved. 

Alhierd Bacharevič: “Belarus is the place where literary subjects are just lying under our feet.”

Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” by Paula Gunn Allen

I have lost everything: The impact of homeless sweeps - Propublica

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.

Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The uniting theme this week: reflection and memory. Both novels cast a long shadow over his life, so it’s time to untangle exactly why that is. 

Can Europe Central be cleanly read as a series of parables? Is it appropriate to turn Hitler into a sort-of fairy tale? Is it a red flag that Cameron has read Norwegian Wood six times? Tune in to find your answers. 

“Shostakovich in Love: William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central” by Peter G. Christiansen

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.

Buy a copy of I Burned at the Feast here.

Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into the collection I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. You have almost certainly heard of virtuosic filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, but his father might be less familiar to you. Yet, you may still have heard his work — Tarkovsky the younger includes recordings of Arseny reading his own poetry in Mirror and Stalker. 

To get into the nitty-gritty of Arseny Tarkovsky’s ranging poetry about life, death, WWII, family, and his contemporaries, Cameron’s joined by Philip J. Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev, who collected and translated the poems within. 

Philip J. Metres is a poet, scholar, translator, essayist, and peacebuilder. He is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening, and Sand Opera. His work has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation. He has been awarded the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Hunt Prize. Philip has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is also Core Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  

Dmitri Psurtsev is a Russian poet and translator of British and American prose-writers and poets. He has written five books of poetry — Ex Roma Tertia, Tengiz Notebook, Between, Tired Happiness, and Murka and Other Poems — and translated numerous books from English. Dimitri teaches translation at Moscow State Linguistic University.

Major themes: Sort-of immortality, Evolving conceptions of death, Competitive poets

01:31:53 - Check out Dimitri’s most recent work here (poetry in Russian) 

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944

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 art

10:45 - Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

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 | ⁠Facebook

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 | ⁠Facebook

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 Art

See 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 | ⁠Facebook

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron dive back into the family life of the Shaposhnikovs, so we’ll call this episode “Mothers and Daughters.” Also…well, Viktor meets someone on the side in Moscow. We’ll see how that goes. Grab your drink of choice when family dinner is getting contentious and tune in!

Major themes: Cowboy movies and Soviet Literature, x, r/menwritingwomen

14:40 - It is in fact the largest tank battle of all time! All in all, there were 8,000 tanks involved, not counting troops, aircraft, other mechanized units, and artillery.

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 | ⁠Facebook

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron continue on with the set-up to the siege of Stalingrad, following more of Viktor Shtrum as well as Commissar Nikolai Krymov in their respective adventures in Moscow and on the Eastern Front. We’ll be getting into the nitty-gritty on the idea of Grossman as a “soviet Tolstoy” so grab your finest wartime moonshine and tune in to hear our incendiary hot takes!

Major themes: Soviet Tolstoy(?), Genuflecting Grossmans, What Makes the Soviet Union? 

Take a look at our World War 2 book list here! Have some ideas for other books to go on the list? Email them to tipsytolstoy@gmail.com.

31:32 - Vasily Grossman: A Writer at War, ed.s Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova

31:43 - The Road, ed. Robert Chandler

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 | ⁠Facebook

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron continue to dig their trench and get ready for the oncoming siege of Stalingrad in Part 2 of their 10 Part series on Stalingrad. We’ll be learning a little more about Grossman’s life and will follow Grossman’s masterful depiction of the first years of World War 2 on Soviet territory. Get the hidden moonshine out of the cellar, fry up the last of the Doktorskaya kalbasa, and tune in!

Major themes: Erasure of civilians in war, Call of Duty, Ideology and science

Like last time, the list is too long, but follow this link to see the book recommendations. 

22:49 - Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

42:52 - My mistake! Stepan Spiridonov is not Seryozha’s father - Seryozha’s father is Alexandra’s son Dmitri, who has so far not appeared in this book.

58:03 - The title is actually Novel with Cocaine, not Man with Cocaine

58:44 - “Brutal Games: Call of Duty and Cultural Narratives of World War 2” by Debra Ramsay

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 | ⁠Facebook

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron kick off their biggest podcast series ever with one of the most obscure choices possible for such a venture: Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman. Stalingrad is the first book in a dilogy, followed by the much more famous Life and Fate, which covers the siege of the city of Stalingrad by the German Wehrmacht in World War 2. We’re going to be dealing with a whole cast of characters here and their varied experiences of the war so get a pencil and paper, get ready to start diagramming family trees, and tune in!

Major themes: Getting off-topic, Ways of looking at truth, Polyphony

Quick note: this week, I had too many shownotes and the word count exceeded the maximum allowed in the description. To see the full shownotes as well as the recommended reading list, please check out this google document. 

03:17 - Not even five minutes in and my first blunder. Professor Rauchway also taught his course on WW2 alongside Professor Ari Kelman.

04:58 - I hate to come for Matt, but my brief reading seems to imply that they mean it in the latter sense.

11:38 - Mea culpa, I got the year wrong here. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor happened on December 7th, 1941, and the US would be involved in the war militarily from 1942 to 1945.

12:49 - Listen to “Politely and Calmly Discussing 1984” here or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts.

13:01 - Guernica

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 | ⁠Facebook