Pick up a copy of The Talnikov Family from Columbia University Press!

Show Notes:

This week, Cameron gets into Avdotya Panaeva’s The Talnikov Family with its translator Fiona Bell. The novel, set in 1820s St. Petersburg, follows Natasha Talnikova’s life in an abusive household, setting readers into some of the lesser-read side of Imperial Russian life.

Bell is a writer and scholar from St. Petersburg, Florida. She has published English-language translations of the Russian filmmaker Nataliya Meshchaninova, the Belarusian writer Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, and other Russophone authors. She is completing a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, where studies the Russian racial imaginary as it was elaborated in the nineteenth-century literary canon, in works by writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Major themes: Defamiliarization, Russian racial imaginary, Purported universality

18:11 - Check out our episode on Nikolai Cherneshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?

30:04 - Some books on family abolition – Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M. E. O’Brien; Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation by Sophie Lewis

33:35 - As I’m editing this, I think it’s worthwhile to point to contemporary examples: the term “parent’s rights,” which so often really means “a parent’s unabridged sovereignty over a child,” has been deployed extensively throughout the U.S. (as well as other places) to justify cutting off a minor’s ability to choose what books they can read (if they’re legally allowed to go into a library at all), what music they can listen to, what friends they can or cannot have.

This is a complicated subject because adults have more experience — frankly, because they probably got to make those mistakes themselves — which they can and do use to guide children well.

Yet this belief is also deployed in service of forcing children into a mold. Going back to the wave of restrictions on what books minors are allowed to read, you see parental (or non-parent activist) opposition to topics relating to sexuality, race, class, etc. because, well, they perceive it as an outside influence which will “turn” their child into something else. This perspective makes children into little more than objects to be shaped, not humans to be respectfully guided as they grow into the person they become.

01:07:21 - The First Russian by Jennifer Wilson;

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:

Our Christmas gift to you is a non-clickbait title. Unusual for December, huh?

TL;DR:

Matt is going to be stepping back from the podcast for the time being.

Cameron will be continuing to produce episodes going forward, shifting the focus toward interviewing translators and authors about their work.

Will the boys ride again? It's an open question. Listen to the podcast for the full story.

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron dive into the short story “The Performance,” from Sergei Dovlatov’s book The Zone. Get ready to dive into the most underrepresented point-of-view in the Soviet camp system: the guards. Well, kind of. Get ready to get stagnant and talk a bit about the state of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, but mostly about a play in a prison camp where all the old Bolsheviks are played by prisoners. Ideological confusion abounds.

Major themes: The real no-termers, dirty reality & brilliant falsehood, theater of absurdity

06:29 - The Russians by Hedgewick Smith

06:39 - Antiheroes in a Post-Heroic Age: Sergei Dovlatov, Vladimir Makanin, and Cold War Malaise by Angela Brintlinger

08:12 - Part 1 of our two-part series on Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina (I won’t link the second part here, because Part 2 has more listens than Part 1. Who are you people listening to just Part 2? Show yourselves. Explain.)

8:15 - Our episode on Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales.

27:43 - Unfortunately it’s only available in Russian, but check out the Prep Guide for the episode on our website for a relevant except

32:50 - Philosophy experts please don’t come for my neck. Also, for laypeople: you should be aware that this idea was not specifically applied to the progression of history, but was rather applied to gaining knowledge. The idea, however, later came to be applied more broadly by others.

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.

Check out the work of Shae McMullin, who did our wonderful podcast art.

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠

Socials: Instagram⁠ | Twitter⁠ | Facebook | Threads

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