The Philosophy of Happiness in Selected Works of N. M. Karamzin: The Search for True Bliss

This paper deals with the philosophy of happiness as found in N.M. Karamzin's poetry, publicistic texts, and Letters of a Russian Traveller, and it also examines certain key stages in the formation of Karamzin's concept of happiness and its features as found in certain of his works. When Karamzin broke off relations with the Masons and returned from a journey abroad, in Letters of a Russian Traveller (1791–1792) he proposes to readers various points of view about happiness which are not reduced to a rigid system: the author creates a narration which is fundamentally open for the reader's comprehension and where deep philosophical views are balanced with the author's irony or everyday naive tales about happiness. In his philosophical and publicistic essay “On the Happiest Time in Life” (1803). Karamzin enters into an open dispute with the ancient world and its philosophers over the issue of happiness proving that it is not attainable on earth and catching these philosophers out in a deception. Karamzin's philosophy of happiness is based on a synthesis of the ancient world and European enlighteners' concepts of happiness and the key core of this takes ethics as its starting point; however, true happiness and bliss are again relegated to heaven.     

Scotland at the Russian Front in the First World War: Robert Scotland Liddell,War Correspondent and Photographer,Red Cross Worker and Russian Officer

ABSTRACT

It is unlikely that one would encounter the name of Robert Scotland Liddell (1885–1972) in the list of eminent foreign correspondents covering the First World War in Russia for British newspapers and journals, but he deserves to be much better known both for the quality of the reports and photographs he sent from the Russian front for publication in the magazine The Sphere and for the trilogy of books that appeared in 1916–1917. Liddell began as an orderly attached to the Russian Red Cross in Poland in 1916 and after a period spent with Oliver Locker-Lampson’s British Armed Car Division on the Romanian front, he became an officer in a Russian divisional transport unit and narrowly escaped execution by mutinous troops after the October coup before escaping from Russia at the end of 1917. The article, while concentrating on Liddell’s reporting, experiences and exploits in Russia, attempts to survey his career from his early days as a Fleet Street journalist to the post-First World decades, when he wrote books of travel and novels, before sliding into obscurity.     

1917 and All That: A History of Russian at Glasgow University

This article examines the history of Russian teaching at Glasgow University from the beginning of 1917 up to the present day, paying particular attention to the context in which the original lectureship was created and to the period from 1976 onwards. Consideration is also given to the questions of who studied Russian, what they were taught and what links have existed with the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.     

U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

The 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq had profound consequences for the people living in that nation. In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the dramatic changes that transpired in Iraq due to the war. I then move on to highlight the contributions U.S. sociologists have made in studies regarding the conflict, based on a review of articles published from 2003–2016 in ten generalist U.S.‐based journals. My review shows that while U.S. sociology has made significant contributions to further collective knowledge about American aspects of the Iraq War, U.S. sociologists have paid very little attention to the actual impacts of the invasion and occupation on Iraqi social organizations, Iraqi culture, and on the lives of individual Iraqis. I make the case that these historically significant events deserve more scholarly attention than they have been given so far. I further argue that U.S. sociologists have a special responsibility to document, study, and explain the consequences of their government's behavior when it causes extensive harm to people living in another land.     

Friedrich Nietzsche,Dmitrii Merezhkovskii,and the Russian Renaissance

The artistic, poetic, and literary movement in the years between 1890 and 1917 has long been known as the “Silver Age,” a name that does not convey the movement’s essence and one that was mostly used retrospectively. The artists, philosophers, and writers of the day gave their own name to this cultural flourishing, the “Russian Renaissance,” because they believed they were embarking on a rebirth of literature, culture, art, and religion similar to that of the European Renaissance. In their search for a new aesthetic vision, the Russian Renaissance turned to the classical world, especially ancient Greece. But their view of that culture was distinctly shaped by works of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. This article will highlight the particular, crucial role of Dmitrii Merezhkovskii in bringing a Nietzschean view of Greece into the Russian Renaissance. Merezhkovskii’s Nietzschean celebration of the classical world, and his belief that this world could reinvigorate Christianity and Russian culture, proved greatly influential for the artists, poets, and philosophers that followed him.