Late Summer Russian Talks

Gainsborough's House

Forthcoming Lecture Series

Russia: Church, Landscape, Country Life and Revolution

13th, 20th, 27th September and 4th October

10.30 a.m. to 12.30 a.m.

Coffee and Pastries included for £12 per session or £44 for all four
Scroll down for suggested reading.

Grigory Soroka.  View of Spasskoe Estate c. 1840's

In this series of illustrated talks I will be exploring four aspects of Russian life using examples from Russian art, literature and theatre.

Between Heaven and Earth will survey the art and history of the Russian Church from its foundation in the 10th Century.

Russian Roads will explore artistic responses to the vast Russian Lancscape and in particular the Road to Siberia.

A Month in the Country will examine life on the Russian country estate at at the dacha.

Resistance, Art against Autocracy 1825 to 1957 will consider the reaction of Russian writers, artists and poets to the power of the state that culminated in the artistic contradictions that followed the Revolution of 2017.

Participants in the series will meet revolutionaries and reactionaries, saints and holy princes, aristocrats and serfs, and will develop a greater understanding of this most enigmatic of countries 

Portrait of Ekaterina Ivanova Novosiltsova and her Children, c. 1830, Artist unknown

READING SUGGESTIONS

The editions mentioned below are in print and available on Amazon or online.  You may be able to find  out of copyright works online in other versions, but the translations may be unreliable.

Russian Culture and History generally

Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance.  A cultural history of Russia.  2003

Hosking, Geoffrey.  Russian History, A very short introduction 2012

Between Heaven and Earth.

 Nikolai Leskov. The Sealed Angel (short story 1873) in Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) 2015

Anton Chekhov.  Easter Eve (1886)

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1159/
"Westernization," and Youth in the "Closed City" of Soviet Ukraine, 1964-84 Author(s): Sergei I. Zhuk Source: Russian Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Oct., 2008), pp. 661-679 

Russian Roads

Nikolai Leskov.  Lady Macbeth of Mtensk  (short story, 1864) in Lady Macbeth of Mtesk and other Stories (Penguin Classics 2015)

Anton Chekhov, The Steppe (1888)

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1249/

A month in the country.

Anton Chekhov tr. Carson  The Cherry Orchard (1903) in Plays (Penguin Classics) 2002

Maxim Gorky, tr. Hunter Blair and Brooks,  Summerfolk (1905) In Plays 1 (1988)

Ivan Turgenev  tr. Freeborn.  Home of the Gentry (1859)(Penguin Classics)  2007

Ivan Turgenev tr. Freeborn.  Sketches from a Hunter’s Album(1852), Penguin Classics, 1999

Ivan Turgenev. Tr. Freeborn.  First Love (1860) in First Love and other stories (Oxford World Classics) 2008

The Art of Resistance

Isaiah Berlin.  Russian Thinkers (1978),  Penguin Classics 2008

Mikail Bulgakov. Tr. Michael Glennie.  The Master and Margarita (c. 1939. Published 1967) ( 2017)

E. H Carr.  The Romantic Exiles. (1933) republished 2007

Alexander Herzen.  My Past and Thoughts.( 1852 – 1870)

Boris Pasternak.  Doctor Zhivago (1957)

Andrey Platonov.Tr. Chandler.  The Foundation Pit  (Completed 1930. Published in the Soviet Union in 1987) Latest UK edition 2010

Andrei Platonov. Tr. Chandler.  Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays(1930’s). (Russian Library) 2017
Tom Stoppard.  The Coast of Utopia Faber and Faber. 2002. (paperback 2008)

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons. (1862)(Penguin Classics)  2009

Jenny Antill has a First Class Degree in Russian Studies from the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College, London (UCL)  She has travelled widely in Russian and has given talks on Russian cultural topics at a number of venues, including Pushkin House in London, The Cambridge Russian Society, Essex University and Gainsborough's House

An Englishman in Moscow, Kasimir Malevich, 1914