Oriental Review

The Russian Hawaii

By Vladimir ANSHUKOV (Ukraine)

The first European explorers reached these heavenly volcanic islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the end of the 18th century. One, the famous British voyager James Cook, also found his final resting place there. As a direct consequence of this “contact with civilization,” a local chieftain named Kamehameha (sometimes spelled Tamehameha) proclaimed […]

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A trip to the Promised Land

By Tate MCCLELLAN (USA)

Recent events such as a terrorist attack in the center of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu’s Moscow visit, his meeting with President Putin, and the opening of an exhibition, “Open A Door to Israel,” all led the author to book an immediate flight to Tel Aviv the following day. Having visited two of Israel’s neighbors, Jordan and […]

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The Russian World and European Civilization

By Anna ZHDANOVA (Russia)

In recent years, both the Western as well as the liberal Russian press have had a lot to say about Russian “barbarianism,” as if to contrast it with European “civilization.” But a closer inspection – through the prism of the heroic pages of Russian history – of the two groups’ moral ideals and actual lives […]

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Anti-Gagarin: Hollywood The Dream-Killer

By ORIENTAL REVIEW

“LET’S GO!” – Yuri Gagarin’s famous cry at the start of the first manned spaceflight (1961) “DON’T LET GO” – the official tagline for the movie Gravity (2013) Watching Academy Award-winning movies is often more thought-provoking than entertaining. In addition to their responsibility for much of the visual indoctrination of the human race, Hollywood bosses […]

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Of China, conservatism, constitutions and Communist revivals

By Matthew COOPER (USA)

As I have said before, the modern Chinese thinker I admire most – both on an ideological level and on a personal level – would probably be the late great Fei Xiaotong, who is not without reason sometimes considered the Alexis de Tocqueville of China. Not only was the good sociologist remarkably profound in his […]

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‘Primitive and irrational’ – autopsy of a social dogma

By Matthew COOPER (USA)

Romanian-British historian Dr. David Mitrany’s 1950 book, Marx Against the Peasant: a Study in Social Dogmatism, is a pleasant surprise in a number of ways. For one thing, it is prescient in ways one wouldn’t normally suspect. In 1950, Europe was struggling in the midst of political division, poverty and wrack. The Marshall Plan for […]

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Pobedonostsev – personalist, populist, perennialist, patriot, peacenik

By Matthew COOPER (USA)

If one studies late Romanov Russia, or the Golden Age of Russian thought, poetry and literature, there is one name in statesmanship and political philosophy that, alongside the literary giants Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky and Dostoevsky, you probably can’t get away from. Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, the éminence grise of Russian statecraft under Tsar Aleksandr III […]

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Culture wars and the non-West

By Matthew COOPER (USA)

In the United States we used to talk about the ‘culture wars’, as though the ‘culture’ was the battlefield, the undifferentiated contested space on which the wars were fought. Indeed, many of us still seem to think and speak this way. Our political and pundit classes will still often talk about a ‘war on Christmas’ […]

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Peter, Paul and Putin

By Matthew COOPER (USA)

Since having been back in the United States, I got to make a visit to the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York. It was an awesome experience – and I say this not in the colloquial way but in a heartfelt way. It was one of my first ever visits to a monastic community; […]

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