Joy Neumeyer

According to “The Master and Margarita”, Mikhail Bulgakov’s celebrated novel about the devil’s visit to Stalinist Moscow, “manuscripts don’t burn”. This famous phrase became a shorthand for art’s supposed ability to triumph over repression. Today, Bulgakov’s formula is being put to the test once again in Russia, where a new film adaptation of the book has caused a scandal.

“The Master and Margarita” captured the surreal atmosphere of dark forces and mysterious disappearances in the 1930s Soviet Union. Firmly in the national canon, the book would seem to be safe for cinematic treatment. But the movie’s director is an American citizen who opposes the war in Ukraine, and its winking allusions to the cruelties of life under dictatorship resonate a little too uncannily among Russian audiences, who are flocking to see it.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russia’s current condition — militarized, isolated, corrupt, dominated by the security services and hemorrhaging talent as hundreds of thousands flee abroad to escape service in a horrific war — is bleak.

In hopes of an end to this grim reality, some wait expectantly for Vladimir Putin to leave office. To change the country, however, it is not enough for Mr. Putin to die or step down. Russia’s future leaders must dismantle and transform the structures over which he has presided for more than two decades. The challenge, to say the least, is daunting. But a group of politicians is devising a plan to meet it.…  Seguir leyendo »