Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych’s The Moscoviad, a picaresque-cum-magical realist novel following the poet Otto von F. as he spends one day trying to accomplish a few chores around Moscow: a visit to a meeting, a reunion with a sort-of girlfriend, and a gift for his friend’s children.

This journey takes him to beer halls, into the sewers, into the attention of the KGB and beyond. Set in the very late Soviet Union, Andrukhovych tackles the place of colonized subject in imperial core, the uneasy “friendship of peoples,” and life in a failing empire.

Joining him to talk about the novel is Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky. A professor at the University of Kansas, Chernetsky is the author of the book Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization. In addition to The Moscoviad, he has translated into English Yuri Andrukovych’s Twelve Circles, Sophia Andrukovych’s Felix Austria, along with two poetry collections, scholarly articles and historical documents.

He is the president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and has previously served as the director of the University of Kansas’ Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the president of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies, and the president of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Major themes: Empire, beer vending machines, subverted machismo

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, Cameron dives into the poetry of Vsevolod Nekrasov, joined by Bela Shayevich and Ainsley Morse who collected and translated works spanning much of his life in I Live I See: Selected Poems.

Born in the USSR in 1934 and writing—mostly unofficially—through the end of his life in 2009 now in the Russian Federation, Vsevolod Nekrasov’s work is largely minimalist and deploys repetition like a musical motif. Some works span pages, while others are no more than a word reflecting itself. His work demands to be read aloud, to a crowd or even just one person.

Ainsley Morse is an associate professor in UC San Diego’s department of literature. She’s a scholar of 20th and 21st century literature and culture of the post-war Soviet period, particularly unofficial or “underground” poetry, as well as the avant-garde, children's literature and contemporary poetry. She also translates from Russian, Ukrainian, and Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian.

Bela Shayevich is a Soviet American writer and translator. She is best known for her translation of 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexi-ye-vich’s Secondhand Time, for which she was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. She has also translated Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Jewish Currents, and Harper’s Magazine. She teaches in the Department of Translation at the University of Iowa.

Major themes: Repetition, Making words mean something, visual poetry

1:36:40 - Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia

1:37:10 - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Art of Fiction No. 267

1:39:40 - Goat Song by Konstantin Vaginov

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, Cameron ascends into the towering heights of imperial politics in Yaroslav Barsukov’s Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov. The novel follows Shea Ashcroft, an imperial minister whose refusal to gas protesting citizenry has earned him a reassignment to a border region to oversee a fantastical military project. With no one truly on his side and managing strange technologies, Ashcrofts finds himself increasingly out of his depth.

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory includes and expands on Barsukov’s earlier novella Tower of Mud and Straw. It’s been nominated for a Nebula Award and received a Kirkus Reviews star.

Joining Cameron to talk about the novel is Yaroslav himself.

Born and raised in Moscow and now living in Austria for quite some time, Yaroslav’s background is in physics and software engineering. His writing career stems from game design, in a manner of speaking. He took up his pen around 2014 after quite enjoying the work of translating a game’s mythology for a pitch

Major themes: Suspicions of war, alien technologies, memory

10:18 - Barsukov’s interview with the podcast “From the Lighthouse”

26:54 - First correction I’ve had to issue in a while — I misremembered the name of the film, which is actually Protozanov’s “Aelita,” not “Anta Odeli Uta,” which is a phrase in the film.

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.