CULTURE

‘Will the Slavic streams flow into the Russian sea? Or will it dry out? This is the question,’ wrote Alexander Pushkin in 1831. The line is from ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’, a triumphal ‘ode’ to Russia’s crushing of the...

In the far reaches of our solar system, over 10 billion miles from the small blue dot we call home, the Pioneer probes are soaring into the oblivion of deep space. However, these cosmic messages in a bottle carry with...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fakzGYy9Y The memory of reading the very first book as a child remains vivid, unlocking worlds far beyond the limits of everyday reality. There was a powerful sense of inspiration and courage drawn from tales of strong, fearless girls like...

We are many Severinosand our destiny’s the same:to soften up these stonesby sweating over them,trying to bring to lifea dead and deader land,to try to wrest a farmout of burnt-over land.But, so that Your Excellenciescan recognise me betterand be able...

In June 2024, after European elections that were a clear rejection of his party Renaissance, French president Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly in an act that only cemented his defeat. The centrist coalition Ensemble, in which Renaissance is the...

Blätter observes the eightieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an article by Hans Joas entitled ‘Peace or Freedom?’. In it the social philosopher discusses the ethical and political implications of the age...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Jhe_0A2ZQ According to Eurostat, as of 2023, the European Union had more than 8,556 kilometers of dedicated high-speed rail lines. However, the overall size of the European railway network has contracted by 1.3% between 2013 and 2023. This is hardly...

Growing up as a naive schoolboy in the 1990s, I was surrounded by the Belarusian language and Belarusian culture. My generation had been saturated by a wave of hasty Belarusification, and like many I saw this as something quite normal....

A murmuration of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of starlings, flying in such perfect synchrony that they look like a single, billowing, pulsing organism against the night sky: this is one of nature’s most striking sights. The biggest...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXG7bZwYKTw Let’s start with the basics: What is secularism? Well, according to the Enycolpedia Britannica, even scholars have a hard time defining it to the fullest, but we will do our best! In Andrew Copsons book, “What is secularism?” He...