Word: gogol
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Most Leningraders volunteered not for love of Stalin. It was their city they were defending -- the cultural center of traditional Russia, home of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Anna Akhmatova. The ordeal, however, required more than pride, certainly more than courage. The supply of food was erratic, and plummeted during the darkest moments of the war. On Dec. 23, 1941, for example, the whole city had just two days' supply of flour. At one point, rations were 1,087 calories for workers who had to man the city's strategic munitions plants, 581 calories for office workers, 684 calories for children...
...bootlegging facts in the diplomatic pouch of fiction, Sinyavsky demonstrates the range of his virtuosity and literary cunning by echoing some Russian masters: Gogol of the satiric Dead Souls, Dostoyevsky of the subversive Notes from Underground, Turgenev of the pastoral Fathers and Sons, Nabokov of the evocative Speak, Memory. It is a special tradition, one in which publish or perish could have just as easily meant publish and perish...
...departing Old Guard, dubbed the "dead souls" in a reference to Nikolai Gogol's 19th century novel, read like a Who's Who from the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Included were a former President, a former Prime Minister, five marshals, six generals and a portfolio of onetime Politburo members. What's more, they had "requested" to resign in an extraordinary statement that expressed "unanimous support for the political course of our dear party." As Gorbachev explained to the plenum, "One generation of party members has naturally to replace another...
...sense that the artist has a prophetic mission in society has haunted Russian culture since the 19th century. That heavy burden crushed novelist Nikolai Gogol, who was never able to equal his masterpiece Dead Souls. It ultimately led other writers, like Leo Tolstoy, away from art and into dogmatic polemics. The weight can be felt today on the Soviet artistic community. But the essential paradox of glasnost is that when cultural leaders raise their voices, they can no longer be heard above the excited babble of an entire nation learning to speak for the first time...
...enough things for the next three years." Gorbachev's letter writer therefore invites him to return in three years and adds, "But even if you can't come, tell our leaders that you are coming. Then they will do something again for the people." The spirit of Gogol is alive after...