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I visited the Central Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, just slightly less than a year after its consecration. It is quite rare that reality exceeds visual media. But the Fortress-Monastery does so, in spades, and that despite its already superlative neo-Byzantine steampunk aesthetics on screen, which are like something out of a Maxim Bedulenko... Read More
I was in Saint-Petersburg this November 18-25, and I thought I would round off the trip by stopping by the historic towns of Tver and Torzhok on the way. Thanks to the new High-Speed Rail infrastructure, this is pretty easy, and this along with the urban beautification campaign launched by its new, HSE-educator mayor Alexander... Read More
I have long wanted to make a "pilgrimage" to Borovsk, home to the museum-apartment of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, one of the three major thinkers - along with Nikolay Fyodorov and Vladimir Vernadsky - who could be said to be the fathers of Russian Cosmism, which is the precursor to modern transhumanism. Fortunately, to reach Borovsk, the... Read More
You may remember me writing about my visit to Volokolamsk in 2017, which did not leave the best impression. However, even these out of the way towns are steadily getting better, as my subsequent visit this summer would demonstrate. *** Some typical views driving about Volokolamsk. This is a monument to the Bus Driver. The... Read More
Sergiev Posad is a city of slightly more than 100,000 people that is 75 km to the north-east of Moscow. Unlike the other cities on my list, I am not going to say much about Sergiev Posad's socioeconomic status. I was there for a day, and it was filled up with purely "touristic" things. As... Read More
The city of Novgorod has played a central role in the emergence of the Russian state since its founding in 862, as per the Primary Chronicle. That was the approximate date of the appearance of the first settlement at Rurikovo Gorodishche, around 2 km south of the present day city: "And so Rurik acquired sole... Read More
I am not exaggerating when I say that the Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance might just be the single best museum that I have ever visited. This isn't because I identify with Jewishness, consider myself an outstanding philo-Semite, or am particularly moved by its spiritual gravitas. I admire it because it does absolutely everything... Read More
Bryansk was founded in 1146, just a year before Moscow - at least, that was when it was first cited in a chronicle, which is the standard way of dating Russian cities. Its name, which was originally "Debryansk", approximates to "wooded hillside" in Old Russian. That is an accurate description of its physical geography, as... Read More
My latest trip to London was to visit the infamous "psychology conference"... and, ofc, to debrief with my MI6 handler. I also used the opportunity to tick off many of the last big museums in London that I had yet to visit, as well as Brighton and St. Albans. Previous posts: England 2016 (London, Oxford,... Read More
In my autistic drive for completion - at any rate from the end 2016, when I shared my impressions of London (Portsmouth, Oxford) in this blog's first ever Open Thread before repatriating to Russia - the next couple of posts will be about my two visits to Blighty since. Why London? Well, I need to... Read More
Kolomna is a small city about 120 km to the south-east of Moscow. Our dacha is in that general area, so I pass through it a few times a year. Just like Moscow and Volokolamsk, Kolomna was founded in the 12th century, and could almost be considered to have been an informal second capital during... Read More
Volokolamsk is a small, medieval Russian town about 120 km west of Moscow, where I spent about a couple of years before being taken to the West. As a strategic portage point on the River Lama - the name Volokolamsk literally means "portage on the Lama" (волок на Ламе) - it figured in numerous battles,... Read More
The past weekend saw the ninth Geek Picnic. This is an annual Russian science/sci-fi festival where technologists and futurists come together to hear lectures presentations, see tech exhibits, and do other futuristic things. I decided to come to this one to see what's it's all about. Some of you may have followed my Twitter thread... Read More
A reader (and generous contributor) asks: Real life example of a trend I reported on a few months ago. I'll offer some of my own thoughts, but since there are plenty of East Europeans here, I am also opening it up for wider discussion. *** First, I assume this is obvious and that you have... Read More
VDNKh is best known for its eponymous Soviet-era exhibitions center (which features the famous worker and kolkhoz woman statue) and the Museum of Cosmonautics. While I recommend visiting both, I was more amused by the concentrated SWPL in the VDNKh, which is the area where I'll be working from October. As in the rest of... Read More
Central Bucharest, from my Airbnb apartment. *** Long awaited RO-POAST is finally here! As many of you know, I was in Romania early this June. Why Romania? It was nowhere near the top of my to-go list. As with Portugal, the adventure fell into my lap - one of my friends was getting married there.... Read More
One of the quainter, more obscure attractions in Moscow is the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines. The post-Stalinist USSR aimed to provide a good material living standard to its people, and technologies were bought from the West towards that end (e.g. the classic Lada was a copy of an Italian Fiat car). Ergo for arcade... Read More
In late March/early April of this year, I visited Portugal. Now I have finally to come round to writing about it, as I have been promising to. First obvious question: Why Portugal? No reason in particular. Well, apart from it being cheap and convenient - as it happened, I only had to pay for the... Read More
On May 6, there was a big free speech march through Central London jointly organized by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance and Veterans Against Terrorism. Many of the big names in the British Alt Lite were attending, so I decided to show up myself. (I appear in the sidelines a few times in this video... Read More
Domodedovo is a great airport. Rationally organized. A surprisingly good Indian restaurant (Paprika). Giant portraits of Great Leader Zhirik. What more do you need? Here's what you don't need: Belgians and 2 cm of snow. Brussels Airlines was too cheap to even shill out for separate room, instead packing all the stranded passengers in a... Read More
As some of you are aware, last week I was traveling in Saint-Petersburg. I went upon the invitation of a local politics club, but decided I stay several days to explore the city. I haven't been to SPB since 2002, so this doubled as an opportunity to see how the northern capital has changed in... Read More
I was privileged to meet one of the columnists at The Unz Review. Feel free to guess who. Ironically, we met up at Jean-Jacques cafe on Nikitsky Boulevard, the favorite watering hole of the rukopozhatnaya kreakl crowd (handshake-worthy/"respectable" "creative" hipsters). It's a solid enough place, though - slightly pretentious French style lunch with wine for... Read More
Not even a week in Moscow, and I get contacted by a Zvezda TV journalist requesting an interview about life in America and why I returned to Russia. In a deserted billiards room, I began talking about my theory that there is a civility-friendliness spectrum, with Britain on one end of it, Russia on the... Read More
Rapidly becoming who I am. So I have fulfilled the demands of some of my most committed detractors and self-deported myself back to Russia. My first sociological observation on landing in Domodedova this Tuesday, and perhaps the one most germane to Unz.com readers, was that about 100% of the airport cleaning stuff were Uzbeks and... Read More
I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow (today?). There is a surfeit of excellent people in London, and I have met some of the very best during my time here, including the Russia analyst Alexander Mercouris, the psychometrist James Thompson (who recently moved to this website), the futurist Anders Sandberg, and a few others who would... Read More
The SF Bay Area. As I am leaving the United States for an indeterminate period of time, now would likely not be a bad time to share some of my impressions of what is still, when all is said and done, an extraordinarily effective, dynamic, and successful nation. It would be redundant to compare to... Read More
This October, I will be following the "advice" of some of my most ardent critics and literally "going back to Russia." I'm joking, of course. I don't care for those trolls. That argument was always self-refuting because I had left in Russia in the early 1990s as a dependent. My parents had left because the... Read More
I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.
One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.
Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.
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