By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Pushkin House is the only London platform for anti-Russian propaganda which publishes an annual financial report revealing where its money comes from. The organisation calls itself a charity, according to UK law, whose “principal aim”, it claims in its regular filings to UK Companies House, “is to serve as an independent […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow “I consider myself a person from here” Yuri Slezkine, a US historian, told a Russian interviewer  in May.  “I feel at home in the elements of the Russian language and within the Russian cultural tradition. I live and work in America, but it is incredibly important to me that my local […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Since the 14th century it’s been said that if you take a pitcher to the well too often, it will eventually come back broken. When it comes to the market in Russian avant-garde art, taking the same picture to the well twice may be once too often. 

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Wednesday, June 28th, 2017
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Doctors in hospitals for the criminally insane have reported that the sharpest pain patients with superiority complexes suffer is the belief there are others who are more superior than they are. Unless they are stopped, they kill to cure. US exceptionalism is a disease of this type.  The American exceptionalists […]

Filed under: Books, Ukraine, US-Russia by Editor - Sunday, September 3rd, 2023
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is a tale about whales and Russians. In the telling, it has surprised even its author. A university professor from Oregon, he belongs to that seagoing pod which, like the North Pacific right whales,    is a seriously endangered species right now — that’s the American exceptionalists. Ryan Tucker Jones’s book, […]

Filed under: Books, Climate, Russian Culture by Editor - Wednesday, May 17th, 2023
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with “Not  One Inch” is the title of a new book by American historian Mary Sarotte after the notorious promise which US Secretary of State James Baker (lead image, 2nd from right) gave Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, and which now has come to its final test on the battlefields of […]

Filed under: Books, DwB, US-Russia by Editor - Tuesday, November 1st, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Maria Yudina (lead image) is one of the great Russian pianists. She was not, however, one who appealed to all tastes in her lifetime, 1899 to 1970. In a new biography of her by Elizabeth Wilson, Yudina’s belief that music represents Orthodox Christian faith is made out to be so heroic, the […]

Filed under: Russian Culture by Editor - Monday, September 5th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In the rest of the world it is known as the cultural cringe. In Russia the wish to be loved by Americans is known as liberal reform. In the very first paragraph of a new book called “Collapse: the Fall of the Soviet Union”, the author, Vladislav Zubok – the name […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Tuesday, June 21st, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Evgeny Dobrenko (lead image, left) is a letter-perfect demonstration of several things he appears, despite years of learning at universities from Odessa to Durham (North Carolina) and Sheffield (Yorkshire), not to have heard of.   In the academic world, like any other business, it’s the money which does the talking, pays […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Russia bunker-buster information bomb, Catherine Belton’s (lead image) Putin’s People, proved to be a dud at a London ceremony last week.  In its award for the best non-fiction book about Russia for 2020, Pushkin House announced the winner was a retiring Oxford don whose “long and distinguished career” had displayed […]

Filed under: DwB, Skripal by Editor - Monday, November 1st, 2021
No Comments »