Articles by Jo Durden-Smith



Farewell to Fate From Afar

Dacha Life Goes to the Dogs

See Britain, Intourist-Style

Russian Mafia Moves West

Resurrecting a Guitar-Poet

A Surfeit of Deep Throats

A Cellist's Emotional Pitch

Honoring a Great Musician

Against a Rock of Gibraltar

We Sail in Similar Gondolas

Transcending Trends of Art

No Winners in a Visa War

300 Years of East Vs. West

Some Respect for the 'Savior'

Filming the Illogical Nation

The New Democratic Bribe

A Jeremiah Guilty of Truth

Gulag Skulls Went West?

Diaspora Is Draining Russia

Survivor, Historian, Fighter

Bring Poetry to the Metro

Let the Fox Guard the Roost

Scottish Expats and Deja Vu

The surname of my first landlady in the village of Nikolina Gora was Gordon -- which was also the name, I was later told, of a historian who had once lived there, only to be kicked out of his house in the 1930s (and either sent to the camps or executed) by a KGB general. The general was himself later removed by Stalin's evil prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, who had long fancied the house also -- but that's another story. Anyway, I wondered at the time what the origin of the name Gordon was. My wife thought it was Jewish. And though that didn't sound right, I still never thought to ask. Now, years later, I've finally found out. And -- I'm delighted to say -- it's almost certainly Scottish. The early connections between Scotland and Russia are well enough known. Architect and landscape designer Charles Cameron built Tsarskoye Selo for the Empress Catherine; and young Russians were sent to study in Glasgow and Edinburgh during the period of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment.

Where Is Our Renaissance?

The New Russian Dialectic

Case for a Gusinsky Fund

On Philosophy and Hope

A Question of Mass Hatred

Pick a Movie, Any Movie

Where's All the Weird News?



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