is a great honor to welcome uh Gary Saul Morrison onto this program he is the professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University he recently published a book titled Wonder confronts certainty Russian writers on the Timeless questions and why their answers better thank you for joining the show Gary how are you doing thank you for having me it's a real pleasure so my first question is um having gone through one year of the Russian Ukraine war um can you compare and contrast the Russian historiography in regards to Ukraine and vice versa Ukraine's historiography when it comes to Russia I'm not sure what you're asking can I give you the different points of view of the two conferences yeah how how Russia viewed Ukraine historically and how Ukraine viewed Russia historically wow um well this is not a question that that's touched on in my book in my book at all um uh which is you know about Timeless issues rather than the timely ones but um I'll do the best I can um uh Russians um Russia's very and ukrainians are like everybody else but um the policy reflect the current policy reflects an idea that um Russia includes all the lands that go back to what was called ancient ruse which was before there was a separate Ukraine Belarus and Russia when there was just one people they hadn't divided yet uh and one language um and the Russians think of themselves as the heir to that ancient which was in Kiev actually which was in the ancient capital and they think of themselves as the air you know to all of us so it's one people and it should be you know one country naturally dominated from Moscow because it's the biggest right um of course the ukrainians you know don't like to refer to that country as of the ancient times as old ruse although that's what they did then because it suggests it's part of Russia today and they think of themselves since you know the time that they developed an identity which are several sentences later as you know as separate um of course not all ukrainians think that way some you know do identify as part of um you know as Russians that's why the Russians are able to exploit that division um but you know the dominant view is that you know they became a separate country with a separate literature and us you know they view their language as you know a completely separate language where Russians tend to see it as a dialect of you know of of Russia um uh and you know Ukraine has never for except for very short periods of time been an independent country um they tried to set up an independent country during the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution but um key of change stands I don't know 30 or 40 times I don't know the exact number between the whites and the Reds and various Ukrainian nationalist groups and various Anarchist groups there's a one the novel by an availablegak of um white guard describes this in great in very interesting detail um and you know now what they have have an independent country since the collapse of the USSR and of course of course the Russians think of that as a you know historical accident and they want to restore what they think of as the proper Russian Kingdom you know and you know places in Ukraine figures so prominently in Russian history for example you know in fighting the Nazis and um the expansion of the Empire and Catherine they're great you know a lot of that territory particularly in Crimea was ruled by Muslim kingdoms who would raid Russia and take you know tens of thousands of slaves which they would sell in the Middle East um and you know eventually the Russians conquered it and so that that naturally plays a role to think that they are this is Russian territory they've conquered um so you can see it and you can see it from both you know both points of view I I suppose um natural ukrainians their nationalism is particularly fed by the fact of what happened to them under Soviet cool um when they and the kazakhs were the principal victims of the campaign to um collectivized Agriculture and you know one of the ways in which um the Soviet government uh broke resistance was to have an enforced starvation campaign on peasants taking the lives by starvation that is of troops were sent there to prevent any food from getting in for different people from from fishing in the rivers taking the lives of a litter of millions the whole collective decision campaign took many many millions of lives um ukrainians view this you know as a genocide depends on how you define genocide obviously wasn't an attempt to wipe out all ukrainians well probably not all of them but certainly they were very profligated with the life of them and there was certainly an attempt to wipe out an independent Ukrainian culture that is they were arresting you know professors of Ukrainian language um uh say would have in Kazakhstan even even a higher percentage of people or lower absolute number were were killed by that by that method but if you've gone through something like that um um you realize that well the people from Moscow um can do things to you beyond simply occupy the territory I mean they can do things beyond our imagination what is possible um so from the Ukrainian point of view it becomes potentially at least an existential threat you know to their very lives not just who's you know gonna accept the tax rates right so um whereas again if it's from a Russian point of view um again nothing none of this is in my book which is not about that um uh if you switch from a Russian point of view you know one day uh claim that their opponents are are Nazis they're not using the term Nazi in the way you and I would think Nazi for them simply becomes the Nazis are sort of the prototypical enemy of Russia because they did actually want to wipe out all Russians it was an existential threat you know to the Russians you know the siege of Leningrad was not supposed to capture underground we're supposed to raise it they view you know all wars against Russia as in those terms and therefore you know for them um the West support of Ukraine is like the Germans you know invasion in you know do they really believe this I I don't know what to say I don't know I honestly don't know but that's that's what the um that's what the propaganda is obviously some people believe I mean um so it's very hard to imagine compromise uh when a war is defined not as a battle for territory or for controlling political control but your very existence which is how both sides um both sides see it and both sides justified by it that way um does that could I help at all I mean I mean you know um uh and but you know and then you get once you realize that then you understand not only the position of the ukrainians and the Russians let's say the polls who know you know they would be next so you know very strong support if Ukraine comes from they've been under stoppedient and Russian rule before that and so so it's really clear why they are in the Forefront of helping ukrainians because they know they'd be next right um so um the great Russian novelist and dissident um Alexander solzhou Nissan um says that he absolutely um is a Russian Nationalist and Patriot even though he is vehemently against communism so I wonder uh how would what are some of the key elements that uh sojournitzen believes that are unique to the Russian nation and is Soviet communism a deviation of Russian history and civilization or a continuation of it wow those are complicated questions with no easy answers um um what was a very is a very odd figure if he's a nationalist he's a very odd nationalist because if you go back to the Soviet period when of course they controlled you know all 15 Republics Soldier nitson wanted the Soviet government to let these republics go as he wanted to he thought imperialism was very bad for the Russian character now it's a very peculiar to call somebody who thinks you should get rid of your Empire or nationalist is a very peculiar use of the term nationalist okay so what we think of as Nationals is not what he was he did however believe deeply in you know on the welfare of the Russian people which he thought was um a matter of its spiritual health and he viewed um communism with its definition of morality as um well this was the Communist definition morality whatever works is moral and if you're immoral if you don't do it that is you know the the more cruel you are to your enemy the better you are cruelty was actually a virtue compassion advice and so 80 you know 74 years of this um he thought had damaged severely the Russian soul and The crucial thing for Russia was nothing else would matter not economics nothing was to restore the spirituality of the Russian people um uh so you know a fighting a war for territory he thought was a really bad idea and holding on to terrigal now he did think that it being you know from Ukraine himself and Russian that it would be better if Ukrainian you know Bella Russia were part of the same country not Kazakhstan and the rest but he vehemently opposed the use of any Force to do it you know he thought well you know we hope that they would choose to be part of us but that's up to them you know what this is yeah he did not want by any circumstances places like Lithuania or Kazakhstan to be you know except you know maybe the areas of Kazakhstan that are overwhelmingly Russia uh but he didn't think perilism was a good idea uh because well look what it did to Russia it changes your morality you know in in a really bad way and um you know you understand souls and it's invest if you see him as a person who thinks this is not like westerners right the the what makes country well off is not primarily its economic or political power but it's spiritual health this is what he really believes this is not some propaganda that he's using this is his deepest conviction right um and so here call that a nationalist well in the sense of which is an Asian nationalist but not in the sense we usually use the term I guess um after the Soviet Union fell fell down um sojour Nissen was kind of a fan of Putin if I'm not mistaken in that yeah he likes what Putin represents and if he was alive today social knitson would likely be more supportive to Putin's this war in Ukraine than not I don't agree with that at all war in Ukraine would have been it's an imperialistic that's how he would have viewed it and um it when Putin took over it was not clear that he was you know an autocrat undemocratic he came in as yeltsin's Choice people thought okay this is the guy who was going to have democracy but without the chaos and you know um poverty and Corruption of the Yeltsin period a lot of people thought that would be the case a lot of people who changed their minds soon afterwards but it did look that way for a short time I never thought so but um uh then I have a generally pessimistic view of Russian history um uh but a lot of you know well-intentioned people did things so and it didn't mean they would have liked what Putin became it meant that it wasn't clear what he was going to became when he first took over um I think it should have been clear but it wasn't I mean you know and to a lot of people who were um Russian experts in the west there were a handful who saw what was going to happen like you know the journalist David Saturn um who has was not only expelled from the Soviet Union but as was the first journalist to be expelled from Putin's Russian Western journalist right um and he was very clear from day one what we represented but you know people I know who are you know very good at understanding Russia and Russian culture for example you know um stroke halder who was um President Clinton's Russian advice did not did not see it quite it did not see the Yeltsin or initially Putin that way right um we had hope um I think the Hope was misplaced and it turned out that way but well um so when I was introduced to you and your work by uh the um April issue of commentary magazine which you have an article that served as the cover piece um the question is do Russians worship War um I suppose upon reading Upon finishing the article I I don't see a clear answer of yes or no but I do recognize that unlike Americans who have never been conquered by any other population historically that is a constant reality in the history of Russia and that's why the abused on war are much more tragic and pessimistic but nevertheless they put a premium on sacrifices would that be correct yes I think that's right I mean you know the title The Russian war you know when you write these articles you the one thing you cannot control is what they put on it that's the magazine puts that right um I've sometimes been very surprised at the titles that you know it's getting put to my articles uh yeah I don't know if they worship War but the thing to be the most understand is that you know that Americans are very difficult is that there are people in the world who do not see Life The Living Americans do Americans have the same well we all value the same thing we all think that you know you know and they just can't you know visualize someone radically different people of course they're like us what else would you be like right um our questions are not at all like that and there are some reason to do it in their history on their history of their culture but for Russians unlike Americans an attitude to war a feeling about war is essential to their identity as Russians Young Americans what makes them Americans well to begin with they would find a question in many cases peculiar but if they didn't you know I don't know they might say you know our form of government um you know various ideals they might have um you know I I don't know exactly what they would say but um they would not say it's a radical to war um you know the biggest holiday in Russia is May 9th which is the day that they finally defeated the Germans and it's the death you know this is now the I've asked Americans well so what do you think about you know the date May 9th almost nobody who's not as special it's either in World War II or Russia hasn't any idea what happened right well what about what we used to call ve victory in Europe today unless you're at least my age you've never heard these terms right you know World War II doesn't figure as part of the you know American identity Nazis figure is a symbol of evil but not World War II specifically right I mean and they it's in the past what different you know doesn't make you don't think of yourself that way um but Russians you know nobody quite knows how many people they lost or how many you know they lost because of you know the way Stalin fought the War but it certainly is well over 20 million people um which means you know Soviet population then was about 200 million that's one in ten people everybody lost um and maybe more than 20 million people um everybody and by the way in Ukraine too it suffered particularly you know it's part of their experience too it was part of the Soviet Union um uh you know it becomes essential to who you are and then the Russians tend to read this existential conflict back then they've been invaded many times you know from the East and the West right um the Mongols world Russia for 240 years right um uh of course they were not you know trying to wipe Russians out you know the fact that their rule was comparatively gentle all they were interested in was extracting Tribune right I mean for 240 years um and you know the Russian Church flourished in that period as never before wrote since right um they didn't care about wiping out Russian religion but the Russians read the history back you know and forwards that all wars are like the wars against the Nazis and so you know if you are not pro-military let's say you know I don't know I I all I could think of is it's like if you're not pro-military for a Russian it would be like an American thinking you know that slavery was a good thing it's just morally impossible okay um Americans for for Americans War no war plays that role then you gave part of the reason that Americans have been invaded but even Invasion would not be sufficient you know a Nazi invasion was something rather um different from I don't know the Germans taking slice with Holstein from the Danes you know I mean that's you know that's a sort of a whole different kind of War right right I mean um okay so with that in mind do Russians truly believe that uh what the Americans are doing what NATO is doing is tantamount to an invasion by a foreign population [Music] that's and I don't know the answer so the regime is trying to persuade people that and all right I'm thinking of it now an American analogy do Americans really think that Donald Trump was a Russian agent I don't know the answer it's so it was so ridiculous on the surface and it was never any evidence do they really but they'll say it because don't break the party line okay right you don't break the party line no matter what the evidence is you can bring that's kind of how I imagine Russians are are reacting to you know is NATO fighting this War to destroy us but I don't really know but that's my guess I mean that's how they how they look at it I mean you know you just you don't say you don't give Aiden Comfort to the Enemy by saying it's not true you know do you really believe it you see you don't even ask if you believe it you know what you're supposed to say and you don't dig any deeper that's my guess the psychology I think if Trump truly is a Russian agent then Russia is stupider than we thought well you know this is really interesting you know what that shows in a matter is that the word Russia has gone back is when I grow up to Russian meant evil when I was growing up because it was communism not you know um we're back to that only now it's the left and that tends to use that rather than the right but it's the same kind I never thought I'd see that right you know um but you know it's really Russia that can play that role in many Western countries you know kind of a symbol of evil um and it's not entirely groundless of course right but it becomes irrational you know in some he says uh and kind of mirrors the Russian Zone you know attitude that doesn't mean they're not dangerous but it means you got to be careful when somebody says someone's a Russian agent but this is a Russian plot or something like that well look there were Russian plots but you know you need more evidence than that you know right um so um in the commentary article you wrote um quote far from fighting a war against Russian culture we should be encouraging Russians to Define it differently in the Russian imagination only one thing competes in importance with war and that is Russian literature as I explained in my forthcoming book being Wonder confront certainty no country in the world has valued literature more than Russia and Russians consider this fact essential to who they are and um oh and more in a review of toast choices Anna Karenina Dostoyevsky himself suggested that at last the existence of the Russian people had been justified by his publication so tell me about tell me more about what Dostoevsky meant by that remark yeah you know it's the thing about the the existence of the Russian people has at least been Justified you imagine a Frenchman or a German or an Englishman thinking the existence of France or Germany or Russia require justification right you know of course not it was not a question but Russians you know did have that view and then if if you know if they did ask that question in France or England would they pick literature as the reason why they're I can imagine American picking you know the internet or Coca-Cola or something like that you know um I don't know maybe in England they could pick them they might pick the Magna compartment right um but the literature I mean but in Russia's that is that is really really true um you know well I have a whole chapter devoted you know to how the extraordinary women hopes they put into the words of the faith they put in literature um Americans might think um well you know if I said to my students well literature exists to reflect life they would all not oh yes literature just to reflect Russians are more likely to think life exists to be made into literature that is the world exists to create great art and the art that matters most is literature so you know writer well you know the writer um late night Century writers English writer Carolina was once asked well you're half Ukrainian because you're creating a name and half Russian um how do you identify and he replied and this was the way that you know very characteristic my homeland is Russian literature not Russia Russia and reason you know the recent Nobel Prize winner Sri Lana alexevich right um whose work is wonderful I think um you know she was that similar except she's part yellow Russian and part Ukrainian what writes in Russia and again she gave the same answer I identified with Russian literature right I mean that's a you know the importance of literature if you in the 19th century if you wanted to talk about a philosophical question a political question the meaning of life um the nature of knowledge you could write A Treatise of course but more likely you would write either a novel or literary criticism so all the big questions are talked about you know even scientists are like um in the 1860s there was this wonderful scientist named um Yvonne sechimov who developed that we would Now call the neurological theory of the mind it's not it's Lauren's firing right 1862 he's already has this idea because Russians take things to an extreme he tries to publish the this Theory originally in a journal for literary criticism why because that's then people would take it seriously as something more than obscure scientific discovery it you know this is what we have to talk about and he did get it you know broadcast you know in industry's Brothers karamazov one of the characters quotes him in his theory doesn't quote his name but quotes for Theory Gene maybe I don't have a soul maybe I just have neurons firing here you know that's his theory right now you know and the novels deal with these ultimate questions um and that's their you know that's what life is about in the Soviet period it became even more the case both for the regime um you know with its socialist Real Islam and you know for the for the dissidents who published some amazing literature which they thought of as continuing the great Humane tradition of Tolstoy and just you know and it did right um but the strange is even the regime viewed literature with an intense importance you know as they try to create this awful socialist realism um so there's this wonderful story um I give some more details about when the novelist Michael was um having trouble publishing one of his novels he wrote the stuff you know about the difficulty of it and to his surprise some weeks later he got summoned to the Kremlin and there was not so Stalin but the head of the army and the person directing the whole Soviet economy and I forget who else um top officials and they Stalin had read the novel and offered a detailed critique and basically told and he had his top officials there to hear what he had to say and he told us that you can publish a novel but you have to change the title I can't imagine the most educated American president John Kennedy Barack Obama spending their time reading a novel and having official power no why would they do that no one would think it's important this is Stalin we're talking about we think of Stalin as a you know as an illiterate Thug he was nothing of the sort I mean he had a library of something like 10 000 books which he selected himself and developed his own catalogs system for right himself I mean he really I mean I think he did Terrible Things to Russian literature but he thought he did that with its importance in a way that you know shocks because when I tell them that you know this was the case because they think you know Stalin valuing literature sounds like you know you know Donald Trump's spending his time reading romantic poetry doesn't fit right but it's true right um so that's one of the great things about Russian culture right revalue the other Arts you know as well ballet is very important and you know music and but literature is in a class by itself and that's one of the great things about Russian culture um and of course what I was trying to say is all around the world there was this reaction to the invasion by saying let's cancel all our Tchaikovsky concerts let's cancel Russian art exhibits let's you know um Columbia University press in New York suspended it's a series of translations of Russian literature this one this is mad this is simply crazy right I mean um first of all you know the idea that Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or pushed in order to blame for what's happening now if that's the case what are we to blame for for what's gonna happen to 200 years ago an hour two years from now in our country we don't know it's just nonsense right um but what's more important is that you want the Russians to pick that part of their tradition and not you know we are the victims of Nazis as their defining characteristic so you don't on a contrary you want to encourage them and that's in in the Cold War Americans were smarter than that right I mean you know in the cold Wars when Americans first started establishing the study of Russian language and Russian culture right I mean that's how I wound up doing it right you know um it wouldn't have been possible 20 years you know before didn't he said that's when this became important because you want to understand other another people that's a much more intelligent review than you know well if it's Russian it's evil let's let's cancel that cancel that pianist but I guess it's a carryover from the general American attitude of you know cancel culture just with another canceling another thing um but you it's counterproductive because what you you really want the Russians to think of themselves as you know the people of chechwood not not the people of right you know well um I once heard that um the simplest way to compare The Shakespearean tragedy with the chekovian tragedy is that in the Shakespearean tragic Vision um everyone guessed what they want but everyone dies horribly the Jacobian tragic Vision no one guessed what they want everyone ends up disappointed unhappy but they still live at the end of the play so with that in mind what if the Jacobian tragic Vision or what it was it what does it how does it reflect upon the Russians in general view tragedy or be such events as tragic that's really another interesting point I mean if you ask Chuck of that question he was saying no my plays are not Transit he's their comedies um and the way you can tell that a director understands if he brings out the humor if he does if he does it the way you describe Dennis he's not doing shackle but what he thinks of is his view of chapter I'm sorry um um you know Checker was one of those people who thought that when people look at think of life in terms of grand tragedy you know Grand Epic they are misunderstanding life life is about the ordinary thing the small things that you know epics and tragedies pay no attention to it's about basic decency and kindness to others it's about you know avoiding self-deception the things that don't make great dramas that's why the check of plays don't have much of a clogging you know someone was played the three sisters the only thing that happens with resources is that three sisters do not go to Moscow right and that you know most plays what plays with dramas were supposed to be dramatic right and you know there's always supposed to be action uh checkup for his plays where the characters act dramatically they want there to be active they act like actors in their in a play except they're not in a in a normal play they're in a world in the real world something like the real world where they're wanting to act dramatically is is fake it's histrionics you know it's building themselves up and so what would be a serious action and a tragedy becomes ridiculous right in um I don't know if you have a Shakespeare tragedy um and how Russia is viewed it it's really in the 20th century you can't let's say comments like Souls units or theorist cellular Bactine is a similar comment that Shakespeare did not understand his view of evil was hopelessly like the worst Shakespearean villain you know Macbeth they're not they never are responsible more than a few deaths whereas you know Lenin and Stalin killed millions and millions right what made that that's when we're really the sort of evil you get you know that Soldier this industry you know it it seems childish and Shakespeare also you know Shakespearean evildoers are the ones like Yaga who think oh I just love doing evil that's nonsense the real evil doers think they're doing good that's what makes it possible for them to torture people and go home and you know and and sleep because they think they're doing it for a higher purpose like you know a Triumph of Marxism or something like that you don't understand evil if you think they sit around like you know like evil people and Spider-Man or Superman comic you know rubbing their hands and doing you and that's how Shakespeare presents it and so although many wonderful things in Shakespeare is understanding of evil is shallow um so I I came across an essay which you wrote for first things um and it's it's titled what pilate learns um pilot being Pontius Pilate and it's a summary and review of The Master and Margarita by Macau bogakov and you focus a lot on what what pilot Pontius Pilots are going through or what mukakov describes what pilot has been going through when he sentence Christ to death um and in some sense he he makes um pilot a less ambiguous character than what scriptures make of him in that he you know he's he's a reluctant character who was forced by these Pharisees to do what he did but mugakov says that pilate had a choice and he chose to do evil is that correct you know the novel is one of the great comic novels of you know of the world it's I've never read a person who didn't love it um make sure if you read it you know you read it in the right translation the Oregon O'Connor translation others don't bring out the humor very well but um you know it's got three stories in it one of which is um you know the devil visits Moscow and plays a lot of philosophical practical jokes going on the citizens there who think you know with Marxism they understand everything they don't really understand anything um there's a novel within the novel which is the story the gospel story except told not about Jesus but with the central character being the science and the author of that story is called the master and his love Margaritas that and then have their their own story which is told um so you know the story of pilot is one of the three stories and you know whereas the Moscow story is All fantastic this is told realistically so it's as if a realist Anonymous degree were telling this story which is not how the gospel tells it at all right so that you get real psychology you if you get political machinations of the sort that you know would not have interested in the gospel authors right um pilate is you know s what he should do but you know he doesn't want to risk his career he doesn't want to get into trouble he's oh and because guys just mad anyway his sin is a lack of Courage right to do the right thing now you can imagine you know in the Soviet period about how important you know that was everyone was lacking lacking courage um and you know he's going to regret it for all eternity in the other world right um but it's a perfectly understandable why he does that perfectly understandable it's not entirely clear that any of us would have done any different right that's what makes it so so wonderfully done um but you know the author breaks in his head of his secret least comes to him and said that Jesus's last words on the cross were that coward is one of the worst of sins and then bulgakov interrupts later to say I disagree it is the worst sense right and that that's Pilot's problem there right in many other respects very admirable character but it focuses on the value of of Courage right I think how you know how it's absolutely brilliant and subtle moment you know um and that's one of the important things you know about the um here's a regime that whose first principle was atheism and wiping out religion and the evil of religion and you know three of its greatest arguably these three greatest you know literary works that are produced and we're all Christians right explicitly Christian you know this book um Dr Zhivago um and you know if those units in school log where it describes his own conversion it's something right um maybe that's not an accident Maybe seeing the conclusions you know Russia's take things to an extreme so they really pursued to the end what it means to think that the world is nothing but material you know natural causes which means human beings are nothing no different from rocks ultimately we're Governors what does that do to morality the Soviets actually are willing to actually take that to its logical extreme atheists children don't anywhere right but they did um and maybe that's the reason why seeing what it produced is what produced you know and if you want to take a fourth you know great novel on Grossman's life and family growthman not a Christian he's Jewish but he affirms um the existence of moral absolutes that cannot be reduced to Nazareth laws so it's a similar kind of conclusion right even if it's not explicitly Christian um and that's you know absolutely fascinating you know I think how that would work out that way we don't take things to the extreme you know you know there's a passage in my favorite English novel Middle March where you know the author says you know about the character with radical beliefs but you know the nice thing about English Society is that people don't actually they may profess radical beliefs but they live the same way as anyone else and don't actually you know do anything so that people around them would would detect you know no scorching as she puts it right Russians are the exact opposite they take everything to the radical extreme right which is why philosophical and moral questions can be you can see their ultimate conclusion because they actually take into their ultimate conclusions you know um so that's one of the things and then Russian writers react to that and that's one of the reasons that Russian literacy is so good at dealing with ultimate questions in a way that no other literature is I mean that's this great characteristic you know yeah you did open the pilot Essay with no Doctrine was more fundamental to the Bolsheviks than atheism they profess absolute certainty that nothing exists beyond the chain of cause and effect described by these Sciences I think you can see that in both the uh in both Russian literature in the 19th century uh Toy Story Dostoyevsky and the like and after the Bolsheviks uh takeover um passonek um the influence of um Christianity especially Orthodox Christianity Loops large in the literary imagination and I suppose in a general Russian imagination too so how how is um how is the Christian Orthodox Faith Like Place itself into I guess Russian and Russian literary tradition system conception of itself Russians will very often say oh you know the Orthodox Faith but they have in mind English I'm supposed to talk about the great writers something more generally Christian you know they're Orthodox they call it Orthodoxy but you know the Orthodox Church was as you know today is in the past highly corrupt right I mean it was simply a tool of you know the government right um you know amazingly enough um you know in the 19th century uh if a priest heard of something from the confession that was of interest to the government you got to pass it on that is violating the Seal of no that couldn't happen in a Catholic confession was sick right um and of course in the Soviet period you know all the leaders of the church were secret police agents right and so far as it existed at all right um so when you know people like Pastor are thinking of Christianity they're thinking of what we would really think of as Christianity you know the gospel of Matthew and things like that they call it Orthodoxy because that's what they are they may even find some reason to think find some doctrinal point in which the Eastern Church is preferable to the western church um but you know it's a Christianity that strikes were not by specific Orthodox he would buy its deep spirituality you know it's has the the Saint Francis had become a novelist I mean that's kind of the field and all right um so when social Nixon came to America and he made that speech at Harvard College um they triggered a massive uproar because um I believe people were expecting him to be more praise for the American government and democracy and Society but instead he was highly critical of it so um what is it that wasn't that the great sojournist and see in American society that displeases him yeah and it wasn't just you know criticism of American society it was criticism of the American intelligence okay this is at Harvard he's talking um and there are two things that he really finds um difficult environment one thing they really do not understand what's wrong with socialism and Marxism because it's still very fashionable you know and he has one of classes you know you're this is going to disable you from actually confronting and then preventing it from happening in your own country I hope the time doesn't happen when people you're gonna have to you know be arrested and raise your hands but the way you are going you will okay he wants to shake American to really believe in their values okay and see how contrary they were to everything that Marxism let's say represented I'm watching so fast still is right um and the second thing is uh and this would be characteristic of Russians for 200 years um he was repelled by the American tendency to Define life in material terms in terms of prosperity and wealth and you know what you have you know that kind of completely unspirational growth right and you know how that devalues life and that it doesn't get what life is all about and those are the two things he's really criticism you know criticizing here um and of course you know imagine all these Harvard professors it was the agitation of you know American intellectuals and Europeans intellectuals that have got him out so he has gotten him free and now he's criticizing them want to betrayal you can imagine their point of view easily enough but his answer to that was you have to stop thinking of yourself the way American intellectuals do as the center of existence that your values are the only true value right and that nobody dares to it because you're the superior people in the world the people don't agree with you then they have to learn some you have to stop thinking of yourself and he particularly in one of his you know essays he quotes you know some Canadian journalist who says well you don't really under you come from a strange place that is you know doesn't have the essence of what's going on you know you know just on just those gulags and all this and souls units and reply and yes and you think you really understand why because you are in a place where your newspapers are about the stock market and you know this kind of thing right but in fact you are the ones who are shallow here we who have seen evil you have something to learn from us as well as we from you it goes both ways right um you know I thought you know it's very odd even now I know my you know Americans who profess to be Multicultural expect by Multicultural I mean other people should accept American multiculturalism not their multi not their own cultures but Americans it's the same kind of you know egocentric cultural Legal Center you know that's what Souls illness is talking about the sense that if we believe it you know then it's just something you know you know of existence um and places like Yale and Harvard it's even you know more you know I'm a Yale graduate myself so it's like I can tell you that I've been struck you know since I got my degree and came back that if you go back and mention some ideal or philosopher they're not talking about at Yale they think that can't be very important we'd be talking about it yes those people out there in the midwest they can talk about these things but we you know what matters is what we talk about here in New Haven or Cambridge or maybe Princeton right it's that same kind of narrowness that thinks it's Superior that's what's so it's infuriating and at the time and are you understandably so right that is very prevention so um you know I'm not sure it's Unique to American universities but but it's there so um Dostoyevsky writes a lot about Atheism in that they are prominent atheist characters in his novels and Russ konikov and Ivan Ivan karamazov um they are both depicted at highly highly intellectual persons who believed that the who believes in a supremacy of Reason over faith and they both met with tragic tragic endings and I'm not sure if um Dostoyevsky was aware of uh Frederick Nietzsche at the time they may have lived in the same period of time dostoevski does because a little he had written but yeah the The Atheist characters of Dostoyevsky are very much Nietzsche in in their philosophy and I think if if we place the Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in the same room they would likely agree or understand the other except for one thing um Dostoevsky believes that Christianity is necessary while nature believes that it's just awkward and yeah uh that stops the strong from exercising their strength and all that so um yeah tell us more about Atheism in the view of Dostoevsky so what's really interesting about let's say Ivan karamazoo is that I just asking prevention at the beginning he actually Israel is more complex than just atheism atheism is a part of it but he's torn you can see between two opposing beliefs he knows they're contradictory and he accepts them both and he can't reconcile them one belief is the world is nothing but you know natural laws and you studied science but if that's true there's no such thing as good and evil I mean you know if I drop a stone it falls at 9.8 meters per second squared is that moral or immoral question makes no sense but if all we are are the same complex Stone covered by the same natural laws then moral questions are simply absurd I mean they're culturally relative they're done for certain firm but they have no Essence right and yeah that's one set of police Islands but the other set of Believers he has seen as as we discover the suffering and torture of children he describes it in a way that has never been described before right um and he knows Symphony knows it's evil we can't reconcile those people nor can he give up either one and that's the self-division that propels him you know through the plot and something similar is already that in ruskolnikov too he has a moral side even though he professes complete amorality right um you know which we see when he said you know his moments of compassion and then he laughs at his moments of compassion why did I do that I don't believe in it in karamazov it's developed even more and indeed you know when I talk to what my students read this even if I ask them well do you believe completely and you know the world going by NASA law and they'll say yes and do you believe there's something that's just plain evil not just culturally relative they'll say yes how do you reconcile the two and they sit there and I think you know you're right there's a problem there but they've never thought of it they've held these two beliefs separate parts of their mind but when they read Russian literature they realize they have to think more deeply about both yeah well um okay so final question um the Russian literary imagination when it comes to death and mortality is especially interesting to me um I have not I have yet had the opportunity to read those devices very long novels um era perendina and one piece but I got the fortune of reading um The Death of Ivan Ilitch and the story follows a very unremarkable man who died an unremarkable death but moments before his death he really realized that oh my god I've been living in unremarkable life all my life and there's another checkups short story I believe the English title is the man in the case which also which also follows a man who lives a rather unremarkable life who believes that he himself lived much more remarkable life than everybody else and then he died an unremarkable debt so this is also a difference between them Shakespeare's Shakespeare's tragedy and then death is somewhat glorified and it you know Romeo and Julius is dead changes to everything the um the field between the Montague and the Capulet star suddenly uh dispersed and they become strange now but in the minds of Tolstoy and Chekhov that is just a fact and nothing really happens uh to you or not the war is not made better or worse after he died well you know what's really interesting about um ifani Lich is that you know we all know abstractly we're going to die right but that's an abstract knowledge it's very different when suddenly you become illness not people in general are dying that people are mortal I I I'm and the whole story is about and nobody everyone else around him of course does US thinking third well they're not dying they're that's just an abstraction right and so he's incredibly alone when he realizes he really is and dying right and the difference between really understanding the implications of your own mortality you know all this culture and the way the story describes a series of curtains prevent us from understanding most of us will have to face it at some time unless you know unless we you know our shot suddenly and die before we even think about it right we're going to face it um and if you don't face it you're lying to yourself about the essential quality of life and therefore you cannot really understand life's being that that's that's the core idea right um he has another wonderful story Leighton is like a non-realist story um uh called what people live by or sometimes translated manually by um and it deals with you know an angel who um is supposed to take the soul of a woman who's dying but what takes pity on her because she has these newborn babies and lets her live and God decides to teach him a lesson and the lesson is he has to go down and live on earth as a human being until he learns what people live and I won't give the whole story away but what he learns is that you do not understand the most fundamental things about life unless you understand what makes people not like angels because angles are more apical time because people and that changes every people suffer in way angels Don't so their compassion for each other has a meaning that it wouldn't if they were Immortal right and he understood Council has to understand more you know morality charity you know kindness and by the end of the story you know he does right um but it's all premise on the that you cannot understand the essence of life unless you understand mortality is essential not just oh we happen to die right yeah we're gonna have this nice life and that's its meaning then we're gonna die no no it's the dying is essential to it and unless you get how that works your life will be superficial and you'll you may realize it at the very last moment when you're actually dying or you may not but it will be superficial that's you know sometimes referred to as the poet of death because he thought about his problem he's obsessed with them you know uh you know maybe the great death in world literature is the death of the hero warranty it's Andre it takes like 80 or 90 pages and with long discussions of what's going on in his mind when he can no longer communicate even and you know it's absolutely amazing um so I could do that in a way nobody else did because he was obsessed with the question so why I mean and his his own Terror of mortality shaped that I believe he died tragically too Tolstoy he took his own life I guess I needed him to take his own life um he you know he for 30 years he had been he had a conversion experience in roughly 1880 and he renounced all his you know one piece underground all those great works and developed a very peculiar kind of Christianity that he believed in um you know he was a passive a complete pacifist to complete Anarchist you know thought or sex simply ought to stop I mean all sorts of odd you know things he's a rushing taken to an extreme but he didn't live accordingly right and he knew it he knew it and regretted it right right um with his son he was going to live with him and he went off you know disguised to sort of a simple peasant he ever walked through the country so give her all his property and you're going along the way while doing that he was 82. he died um but he was escaping from the life that he himself didn't think he should be living you know it's really fascinating you know to read the his story here during these years you know the story of story's life and of Destiny issues like make fabulous reading they're like novels themselves and things this couldn't really be true but it really was you know so the some of the biographies of these writers are absolutely gripping like a novel yeah so uh one more question if I may um we've discussed nature before um would the great minds of Russian literature view the decline and fall of pre-work Nietzsche a tragedy or an absurdity different you know in the late 90s early 20th century they were constantly reading each and they were constantly quoting he was a major major figure you know they had every possible you know opinion about him they they were big Russians but their version of Niche was not necessarily what you and I would recognize and some some there were so foreign but it's really interesting that he was he became so important and you identified the reason why because he's asking some of those same questions but giving a spin on them he wouldn't give right you know but he is you know what's reputable is Christian morale Dostoevsky sees that that's the implication of a certain way of thinking and wants to say that's why we shouldn't do it and nature we should do it um so that's the argument you know that you wind up again and you get all every combination including strangers of Christian nietzschiness which sounds like impossible but this is Russia with Toyota you get everything um uh on that note thank you very much Professor Gary Morrison of Northwestern University for joining the show thank you so much for having me this has been so much fun um thanks for asking us great questions of course uh everyone should check out his new book Wonder confront certainty about uh how Russian literatures and their questions and how they answer them thank you again and take care yeah