Художники существуют только потому, что мир несовершенен. An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the artist doesn't live…
On August 31, 1999, a handmade bomb exploded in a popular Moscow shopping mall. I was there, and watched rubble, dust, and screaming erupt around me. Read more about the event and my changing understanding of this experience in an essay over at Pacific Standard.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt argues that totalitarian rule is truly possible only in countries that are large enough to be able to…
A Facebook friend who’d moved to the U.S. from St. Petersburg in his thirties recently posted a frustrated status update in which he complained about…
"What country are we living in and in what year, when priests bless half-drunk nationalists that pelt people with rocks while the police look on…
Continue reading → “You’re not always prepared for so much feeling”
In 2012, I wrote an obituary over at The Millions for famed literary translator (and champion of literary translation) Michael Henry Heim. I just learned…
Just read a lovely experimental essay about immigrant identity and longing. It's a piece by Anna Prushinskaya up at The Millions. An excerpt: I set alarms to call…
Continue reading → Our Soviet Grandmothers and Our Love of Russian Words
Remember my profile of Pat Singer, a community leader in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach? She talked about the shock she experienced upon the arrival of all…
My translation of this wonderfully crazy short story by Andrei Krasnyashykh was just published at VICE magazine, as part of their ongoing VICE Reader…
Ack. I love Daniil Kharms, especially when he's translated by Matvei Yankelevich. There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn't…
Tanya Paperny 