NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

Welcome back for another episode of The Russians.

Today we talk about Paul Verhoeven’s latest movie, Benedetta, and what unites Verhoeven and Todd Solondz. We also get into Philip K. Dick and how starting a religious cult is the only answer to the problems plaguing society right now.

—Evgenia and Yasha

Listen to our previous episodes:

* Episode #17: Immigrant Deprogramming with Nika Dubrovsky

* Episode #16: Imaginary Futures with Richard Barbrook

* Episode #15: Behind the Silicon Curtain

* Episode #14: The Soviet Jew & good riddance Los Feliz

* Episode #13: Immigrant Deprogramming with Anna/Аня

* Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

* Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

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

For this installment of our ongoing Immigrant Deprogramming series, we talk with a truly special and impressive guest: Nika Dubrovsky — artist, author, and partner of the late David Graeber.

This is a preview. To listen to the entire episode, please subscribe.

Listen to our previous episodes:

* Episode #16: Imaginary Futures with Richard Barbrook

* Episode #15: Behind the Silicon Curtain

* Episode #14: The Soviet Jew & good riddance Los Feliz

* Episode #13: Immigrant Deprogramming with Anna/Аня

* Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

* Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

* Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* …and more.

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

On the last episode we talked about the Californian Ideology, for this ep we have on the man himself: Richard Barbrook, who co-coined the term and co-wrote the infamous essay back in 1995. He’s still alive and he’s still got all sorts of things to say — about the origins of the Internet, the Cold War Left, Bolshevism, cybernetic communism, YouTube documentaries, China, etc.

Check it out…and subscribe!

Listen to our previous episodes:

* Episode #15: Behind the Silicon Curtain

* Episode #14: The Soviet Jew & good riddance Los Feliz

* Episode #13: Immigrant Deprogramming with Anna/Аня

* Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

* Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

* Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* …and more.

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

We’re back! And we have a new episode from San Francisco, where it looks like we’ll be living for a while. Evgenia and I talk about the enduring power of The Californian Ideology, despite the obvious cracks in it. And I talk about about how it feels to back in here — the place where I spent my formative immigrant years — after moving away for twenty years.

We’ll be back on a regular schedule from now on.

—Yasha Levine

PS: This is a preview. Subscribe to listen to the whole episode.

Check out our previous episodes: 

* Episode #14: The Soviet Jew & good riddance Los Feliz

* Episode #13: Immigrant Deprogramming with Anna/Аня

* Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

* Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

* Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* Episode #9: The End

* Episode #8: Breeders

* Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

* Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

* Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

* Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

* Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa

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

Evgenia and I talk about my decision to serialize my new book — The Soviet Jew: A Weaponized Immigrant’s Tale — and the difficulty of writing and thinking about what is essentially a taboo topic in this country: a “saved” immigrant who is not content with the American way of life.

—Yasha Levine

PS: We briefly discuss a special agitprop Passover prayer booklet — a Haggadah — that I discovered while doing research for the book. It was created as part of the American movement to save Soviet Jews from communism. It has an interesting segment where it celebrates modern plagues that were unleashed by God on the Soviet Union because it would not let out its Jews — just like what happed with Egypt back in the day. But instead of blood and locusts, the USSR got hit with much less dramatic weapons — like the loss of scientific genius and international respect. Still, this Haggadah wasn’t wrong. Didn’t the godless commies at least take a little peek at the bible? Everyone knows our petty God gets angry when you don’t let us out!

Here are a couple of photos just so you can get a visual.

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

In this ep Evgenia and I interview Anna/Аня, a fellow member of California’s Soviet immigrant community. We talk about why her parents left Leningrad and Baku, what it was like to grow up immersed in schizoid Soviet immigrant culture, and why she ultimately turned against Zionism and much of the politics of that world.

Check it out, and follow Anna/Аня on Twitter at @bademjanbitch.

This is a preview. The full episode is only available to full subscribers. 

Check out our previous episodes: 

* Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

* Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

* Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* Episode #9: The End

* Episode #8: Breeders

* Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

* Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

* Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

* Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

* Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa

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

Listen now (86 min) | This ep is inspired by Evgenia’s recent essay on her youth and Russia’s deeply colonized culture. But we get into all sorts of related topics — like what else is out there and what’s worth living for, other than this cursed consumerism and materialism that has surrounded us our whole lives.

This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at yasha.substack.com/subscribe

This week Evgenia Kovda and I talk to my dad Boris about American movies he watched in Leningrad and the effect they had on him. What’s funny is that many of the films he remembers were clearly picked and shown for ideological reasons — they showed the dark underbelly of American capitalism: poverty, political corruption, criminal syndicates. But the Soviet propaganda managers in charge of picking them turned out to be inept and clueless. Because the films had the opposite effect: they made him like America, and ultimately contributed to his decision to get himself and his family out of the USSR.

It’s not surprising. To my dad — who spent the first years of his life living in a log cabin in a gulag settlement — even the poor and exploited Americans in these films looked like they were doing alright. I bet most people in the Soviet Union thought pretty much the same thing.

—Yasha Levine

This is a preview. To listen to the full episode, go here and subscribe!

Check out our previous episodes: 

* Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* Episode #9: The End

* Episode #8: Breeders

* Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

* Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

* Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

* Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

* Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa

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

Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of Stalker.

In this ep Evgenia and I talk about Jewish nationalism and other identities that started cropping up in the Soviet Union in 1960s and 1970s, when disillusionment began to set in with the boomer generation. While some discovered Zionism and Judaism, others got baptized — like Evgenia’s dad and uncle did.

—Yasha Levine

PS: Evgenia mentioned an essay on socialist realism by a Soviet writer named Andrei Sinyavsky, who went by the pen name Abram Tertz. You can read it in English, along with his novel — The Trial Begins.

Check out our previous episodes: 

* Episode #9: The End

* Episode #8: Breeders

* Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

* Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

* Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

* Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

* Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa

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

This is a low energy episode, befitting our new lowly status. We return to the topic of having a baby. We talk about ayahuasca trips, the anti-climactic nature of having a child, and America’s schizophrenic baby culture, where one of the first things Evgenia heard in the hospital after giving birth was: “Congratulations on your bundle of joy!!!! H’mmmm, just a few questions. Are you thinking of harming yourself or your baby?” — and much, much more.

This is a preview. The full episode is only available to full subscribers.

—Yasha Levine

Check out our previous episodes:

* Episode #8: Breeders

* Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

* Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

* Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

* Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

* Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa

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