NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

In this ep of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to anthropologist Jeremy Morris about the internal Russian reaction to the war and how the war’s affecting Russian domestic politics.

A couple of notes.

I mention Jeremy’s pre-war prediction for what will happen in Russia if war does break out. For more of his work, check out his blog and his book, Everyday Post-Socialism. The intro music is sampled from the latest hit by a group called Assorti — an example of a new wave of Z patriotism being pumped out by Russia’s cultural producers. “We’re Russians / And that means God is with us” is how the song goes. What’s funny, though, is that the guy who created the band is a Russian Jew with an Israeli passport. Russkii mir!

—Yasha Levine

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“For Kadyrov’s second Lamborghini!” (Courtesy of Jeremy Morris.)

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In this episode Evgenia and I talk to Anya Bernstein about Nikolai Fyodorov, Cosmism, and Russian/Soviet anti-death utopias of the industrial age.

Me, personally, I’m very much pro-death. But these guys had other ideas. Some wanted to become self-directed gods, under the flag of the Russian Empire and the Russian Orthodox Church. Others first wanted to defeat capitalism and then move on to the next big boss: death itself!

Anya is a Professor of Anthropology at Harvard and the author of The Future of Immortality, a book about cosmism and transhumuanist movements in Russia. Check out her work.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians.

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In this episode of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk about the recent work I’ve done on recovering my Ukrainian family’s lost history of pogroms. We also talk a bit about the speech that Putin gave at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum yesterday. And at the very end of the ep, as a bonus, we offer some practical advice on how to make Russia a monarchy again.

A few notes. You can read the family history I’ve been writing about here and here. Putin’s speech at the forum is posted on the Kremlin’s website. And the great big hope for the Russian monarchy we discuss at the end? Here’s the guy: Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians.

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Evgenia and I sit down for a late night talk about David Cronenberg’s newest film: Crimes of the Future.

A couple of notes.

1. We throw around some spoolers. 2. I mention Evgenia’s great essay on Cronenberg and “procreation horror” — about how much his films borrow from the ultimate parasite: a baby. Check it out.

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—Yasha Levine

Having a bit of lunch.

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Evgenia and I recorded a late night episode on the May 9th Victory Day celebration and parade that took place last week in Russia. Unfortunately, not much to celebrate this year.

—Yasha Levine

A few notes.

* Evgenia wrote a great essay on the degraded political culture of Putin’s Russia that talks about Putin’s parasitic weaponization of WWII memory. Last week, I wrote about how Victory Day is being used to shore up support for the war in Ukraine.

* We mention Victor Suvorov’s revisionist history that blames WWII on Stalin — a ridiculous theory that’s very popular with Russian liberals and Soviet immigrants, but also very popular in America and Europe. There’s a great book-length rebuttal by Gabriel Gorodetsky. Suvorov’s revisionist history is thematically connected to the idea of a “Double Genocide” that’s been pushed for years and which is the law of the land in many Eastern European countries now: the idea the Soviets were as bad as the Nazis, if not worse. Double Genocide is basically a new kind of Holocaust denial and popular historians like Timothy Snyder basically push the idea on their unsuspecting readers.

* We mention Aleksei Balabanov’s Brat film series. Here’s a link — it has both films cut up into a few episodes and has passible English subtitles.

* And here’s a link to a video of the full parade.

* Credit to Andreu Movtxan for making me think of “red-washing” as a label for what’s happening here.

Want to hear more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians.

PS: Here’s a nice slideshow of the parade for you. Gotta say the woman to Putin’s right — a survivor of the Great Patriotic War — does not look very happy to be there.

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Michelle Yeoh going into paranoid multiple personality immigrant mode.

On this episode of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk about Everything Everywhere All at Once — an impressive new film that just came out by “the Daniels.” It’s been a big indie hit. And yet most reviewers have missed the central thing about it: at its core it is a film about being an immigrant in America — and about being unhappy with the choice you made. That’s why the film’s schizoid “multiverse” premise works so well here. It’s all about other possible worlds and “what if’s.”

Our only problem with Everything Everywhere is that it’s too happy and sappy for our tastes. It resolves too sweetly with a nice happy ending. But then there aren’t many films that are dark and genuinely skeptical about the American immigrant experience.

We didn’t mention it on the pod but writing this ep description reminded me of what I think is the best (and mostly unkown) novel about the Soviet immigrant experience here in America: Hotel California by Natalya Medvedeva, a singer and a model who was married for a long time to Eduard Limonov. During the Covid lockdown, Evgenia wrote a great script adapting the novel, which is set in Los Angeles, and tried to get a movie project off the ground when we were still back in LA. No luck yet. But I do hope she makes the film one day. It’s a great story and Natalya is a very impressive person.

We discussed Natalya Medvedeva and her novel in a couple of previous episodes: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit and Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac. Check them out.

—Yasha Levine

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Capitalism — save us and forgive us! Russia, 1991

For this ep of The Russians Evgenia and I talk to Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov about his thoughts on the war and what led to it. We wanted to talk to Andrei because of a great essay he wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union, “The Long Shadow of the Anti-communist Russian Revolution.”

Andrei identifies with being a Russian liberal, while being very critical of them. He explains their mindset during the late Soviet Union and in today’s Russia really well.

As he told us:

“We were not a precariat…we had the minimum without realizing it and we were safe and able to entertain our fantasies about being White Guard officers, about all this conservative paraphernalia…and it did have very long lasting political consequences. Aesthetics of it merged into political conservatism in 1991 and uncritical support of neoliberalism, and that was tragic. We were bombarding the speechless people who were very confused that not only is theft of collective  property ok, but it is moral. It’s democracy, guys. And now comes the revenge. History itself and, ironically, the west helps ordinary Russians punish the liberals.” 

Listen to the interview and be sure check out Andrei’s great films, including his doc Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case and The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes. His last film caused a huge scandal in America and Europe and was the focus of a long and sleazy and largely successful attempt by Bill Browder to smear Andrei and to censor the film. Watch it online here.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Listen to previous episodes of The Russians.

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Today on The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to Alexei Yurchak about his work on Lenin and the history and politics of the ongoing preservation of Lenin’s body and the secretive lab that carries out the job. He is currently finishing a book about the topic, which he expects to be out in time for the 100-year anniversary of Lenin’s embalmment.

Alexei is a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley. He is probably best known for coining the term “hypernormalization” — a concept that Adam Curtis built a whole documentary around a few years ago and even called the film “HyperNormalisation.”

A couple of notes.

Alexei Yurchak’s book on Lenin’s body is not out yet, but you can get a preview by reading a paper he published on the topic a few years ago: “Bodies of Lenin: The Hidden Science of Communist Sovereignty.”

Towards the end of the episode, we discuss Sergey Kuryokhin’s infamous 1991 stunt on Leningrad TV about Lenin being a mushroom…

This is a preview of a full episode that is only available to subscribers. To read the full episode notes and hear the rest, sign up.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Listen to our episode on Adam Curtis: “Adam Curtis, get out of my head.” And check out previous episodes of The Russians.

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Today on The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to Alexei Yurchak about his work on Lenin and the history and politics of the ongoing preservation of Lenin’s body and the secretive lab that carries out the job. He is currently finishing a book about the topic, which he expects to be out in time for the 100-year anniversary of Lenin’s embalmment.

Alexei is a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley. He is probably best known for coining the term “hypernormalization” — a concept that Adam Curtis built a whole documentary around a few years ago and even called the film “HyperNormalisation.”

A couple of notes.

Alexei Yurchak’s book on Lenin’s body is not out yet, but you can get a preview by reading a paper he published on the topic a few years ago: “Bodies of Lenin: The Hidden Science of Communist Sovereignty.”

Towards the end of the episode, we discuss Sergey Kuryokhin’s infamous 1991 stunt on Leningrad TV about Lenin being a mushroom. Here is the paper Alexei referenced: “A Parasite From Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin proved that Lenin was a mushroom.”

Alexei mentioned a book on Lenin he liked. Here it is: Lenin's Last Struggle. There’s also another book rec he gave, one about parasites.

And of course he’s a link to Alexei’s book — Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Listen to our episode on Adam Curtis: “Adam Curtis, get out of my head.” And check out previous episodes of The Russians.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

Today on The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to Masha Surazhsky who has been going through hell for the past month trying to get her elderly aunt and a family friend who is a minor — both of whom fled Ukraine amidst Russia’s invasion — out of Poland and to America.

After a month, her Ukrainian aunt is still stuck in Warsaw with little help from anyone, except her family in America — all while the cost of housing has doubled or even tripled there, with some locals taking advantage of the desperate situation to make money from all the refugees streaming into their country. In the meantime, Liza, the 17-year-old family friend from Ukraine that Masha was chaperoning and was planning to sponsor in America, has been separated from her at the border earlier this week and treated like a prisoner, not a young woman war refugee — kept in horrible conditions, her phone and belongings taken away, aggressively interrogated, not allowed to speak Russian to Masha over the phone. At the time that we’re publishing this, she is still in detention and is being sent to a privatized ICE facility somewhere in New York State. Her future in America remains uncertain.

Masha gives us a sense of what the Ukrainian refugee situation and process looks like — both in Ukraine, in Poland, and at the border with Tijuana, the only border where the Biden Administration will process Ukrainian war refuges. As Masha explains to us, it quickly became clear to her in Europe and now here in America that despite all the pro-Ukrainian flag waving and slogans from American politicians, America is doing very little to help Ukrainian refugees displaced by this war. Congress and the Biden Administration approved sending billions in weapons and military aid to Ukraine in record time. Helping refugees — mostly women, children, and the elderly? Other publishing press releases, it’s doing pretty much nothing at all.

—Yasha Levine

UPDATE TWO: We talked with Masha a few months later to get an update and see how everything went.

UPDATE: Here is Masha’s GoFundMe page to help her cover expenses of relocating and supporting her aunt and three other women refugees. Please give if you can!

“I am now faced with the daunting task of relocating Liza to reunite with her and resettle her into a new life in America within the comfort of my home as quickly as possible. This is against the backdrop of an infamously cruel immigration system here in the United States. In addition to this, I must pay for the housing expenses of Natali, my aunt, and Liza's best friend who remain stuck in Warsaw, Poland, where they have yet to receive any support and do not have any funds after fleeing the war in Ukraine. This process will continue until we are all able to reunite, hopefully.”

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