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Finally got around to finishing "Demons" by Dostoevsky. I resumed reading it looking for insights on the terrorist mindset. And my search was worth the time in several ways. To take just one example, see the connection he makes between a liberal generation and its "radical" offspring, as described so well by Rowan Williams (Philip Pullman's favorite archbishop): http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2003/the-archbishop-on-dostoevskys-devils . Looking for more info on the originally-suppressed chapter "At Tikhon's," I saw several mentions (and postings) of Freud's analysis of the chapter, and of it having been co-translated by Virginia Woolf. Searching for more on that I had the pleasure of stumbling on a 1922 version of the chapter, published by the Woolf's, which bears an introduction by the then-Commissar of Education of the Soviet Union, A. Lunacharsky and his Deputy, which lovingly explains the genius of Dostoevsky and describes the painstaking care given by his Commissariat to ensure the complete and accurate saving and transmission of every scrap of paper Dostoevsky wrote on: http://dbanach.com/Woolf-Stavrogin.pdf All this would be an object lesson on its own about a proper Bolshevik attitude toward culture, but it takes on even more significance when one thinks of the diametrically opposite attitude toward culture displayed 50 years ago by Mao's barbaric campaign against literature, music, painting, etc., etc. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
