Yuri Slezkine

Investing in the Wrong Securities

“The less coherent and self-confident ‘the West’ is, the more it needs an outside threat.”

Why ‘The West’?

The idea of the West survived a once-shared civilization as a code for its fractious heirs. A new book suggests its enduring constants have been a fear of Russia and of internal decay.

The Return of Trump—VI

On rage, fluoride, the task of the journalist, the Garden of American Heroes, and the Buffs and the Blues. 

A Sacred Scripture of Doubt

A new book by Gary Saul Morson tells how Russian realist fiction foretold, frustrated, and outlived the Bolshevik quest for certainty.

‘He Loved Handing Out Decorations’

The admiring biographer of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s most memorably inconspicuous leader, finds him an affable heartthrob who longed for peace “with every fibre of his body.”

Virtuoso Signaling

Arias in the Archive

Maria Stepanova wants to memorialize the dead in her family but is conflicted about the very possibility—and morality—of the quest.

Speak, Memory?