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Dostoevsky and the [Russian Orthodox] Church
This is a translation, from the Russian, of a 3-part article by Vladimir Malyagin, an author and dramatist who serves on the publishing council of the Russian Orthodox Church. The reader is invited to engage in a critical review of the author’s commentary, remembering that it is the viewpoint of an apologist of Russian Orthodoxy,…
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Book Review: Russia in Search of Itself by James Billington
An American scholar with a deep interest in Russian culture, particularly as it relates to the country’s Christian heritage as expressed through Russian Orthodoxy, James Billington was perhaps the foremost chronicler of Russia and its history for over 40 years. Billington first appeared on my radar in the mid-1970s while I was studying Russian Language…
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When is ‘Dog’ not ‘Dog’?
In 2 Samuel, chapters 7 & 9, there are two Hebrew words that appear to be from the same root with the meaning ‘dog’ (כלב/keleb). In the second passage, Mephibosheth, upon being showered with King David’s mercy, asks, “What is your servant, that you have turned [your attention] to the dead dog that I am?”…
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Turkish Internet News Site Reports U.S. Senators’ Intention To Link F-16 Sale to Ankara to Approval of Finland’s, Sweden’s NATO Accession Applications; February 3, 2023
Turkish internet news site Medyascope‘s Foreign News Service on February 3, 2023, issued the following report based on a partial translation of a letter Congress sent to U.S. President Joe Biden requesting that he, along with U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake, urge Türkiye to act quickly regarding Ankara’s decision to approve Sweden’s and Finland’s…
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The “Greatest Generation” and its Legacy: A Perspective
Just the other day, January 20, 2023, to be exact, I turned 75, i.e., the day that marked ¾ of a century of existence on Planet Earth. If you’ve done your math, you’ve figured out that I was born approximately four weeks into the new year of 1948, just 2 ½ years after the end…
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Book Review: Autopsy of an Empire – The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Jack Matlock, Jr.
Jack Matlock served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the final years of the Reagan administration and the first year of the Bush I administration, from 1987 to 1991. During that time, according to his account, despite the many duties falling to him to perform in Moscow, he managed to visit each of the union…
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Russian President Putin Delivers New Year’s Eve War-Time Footing Message to Country, December 31, 2022
Couched in a message that at times teetered on the edge of extreme sentamentality and at other times wreaked of Soviet-era communist jargon and its rationalizing propagandistic worldview, Putin was profuse in expressing his gratitude to all those who have been ‘participants’ in fighting [to reclaim] Russia’s historic lands, while protecting the lives of their…
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Israel Sends Highly Credentialed Diplomat To Germany as Ambassador, late December 2022
The German daily newspaper, Tagesspiegel, on December 21, 2022, posted to its internet site an interview it had conducted with Israel’s new ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor. The interview addresses Israel’s relations not only with Germany but rather, by his replies to the questions, Prosor, as one of the country’s most experienced diplomats, provides a…
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Turkish-German MP Tweets Condolences in Response to Attack at Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris, December 23, 2022
Cem Özdemir, a member of the Alliance 90/Greens who represents the city of Stuttgart in the German Bundestag, and who holds the position of Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture, responded via a tweet on December 23, 2022, to a shooting that day at the Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris, France. As a first-generation German…
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Dutch Court Finds Pro-Russian Separatists Guilty in Downing of MH17, Gives Life Sentences; Free Europe Bulgarian Service, mid-November 2022
What was so compelling about this article was not so much that justice is finally being served, although its proverbial long arm cannot extend so far as to actualize it by plucking the guilty parties out of their haven in Russia, or that a verdict has been forthcoming after so many intervening years; rather, that…