Russian literature

Don Quixote, the beloved itinerant knight.

(4) Social distrust due to rampant secrecy and snitching during the Spanish Inquisition: Into a hellish world of doubt and suspicion

What we will see in this article is the process by which what was thought to be simply a system for judging heresy has become a disease of society as a whole.

At first, we only punished those we suspected.

However, this escalates and turns into a world of doubt and suspicion, where one can no longer be sure who is being tipped off by whom. In such a world, how can there be warm human interaction? Will there ever be the joyful connections we used to take for granted?

Once surveillance and snitching have become so entrenched, trust between people is broken.

Once this happened, there was little each individual citizen could do. Spain gradually lost its vitality...
Don Quixote, the beloved itinerant knight.

Toby Green, "The Inquisition: The Reign of Terror that Undermined the Great Spanish Nation" - Terrifying similarities with the Soviet Union and totalitarianism - and the Karamazov connection.

この本で見ていくのはまさしくスペイン・ポルトガルで行われた異端審問です。

この異端審問で特徴的なのは、宗教的なものが背景というより、政治的なものの影響が極めて強く出ているという点です。

この点こそ後のスターリンの大粛清とつながる決定的に重要なポイントです。
Stalin and Hitler's genocide and holocaust

(7) Genshin's "Ojo-Yoshu" and the modern tour of hell - why we must learn about war, oppression, and genocide.

I started writing about Dostoevsky on this blog in 2020, and many of you may have wondered why I, a monk, am blogging about Dostoevsky.

But after a long time, I'm sure many of you have gotten used to it (laughs).

But what does it mean to write about Dostoevsky and world literature, but a recent blog about Soviet history and the Russo-German war?

In fact, recently I have been getting a lot of "It's getting hard to read about the war and all the mass killings. Why do you have to go that far?

In this article I will discuss my own answer to that question.
Stalin and Hitler's genocide and holocaust

(6) Arendt's Theory of Totalitarianism and the Novels of Grossman, the Red Army Reporter: On his masterpiece discussing the Russo-German War and totalitarianism.

Arendt is famous for her talk about the Holocaust in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" and "Eichmann in Yerusalem - A Report on the Banality of Evil". Hannah Arendt's name is still known all over the world when it comes to the Nazi Holocaust.

And the author Timothy Snyder counterpoints this Arendt with the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. It was after reading Snyder's eulogy that I decided to read Grossman's work. Grossman is not well known in Japan, but here is a man who is an extraordinary figure in the history of the world. I highly recommend this author.
Stalin and Hitler's genocide and holocaust

Vasily Grossman, "The Hell of Treblinka" - Red Army Jewish reporter denounces the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps.

Treblinka, as depicted by Grossman, is a camp known as an extermination camp. This place was originally designed to kill large numbers of people. Few of those who were transported there survived. Those who are transported are deceived, coerced, and evicted, and gradually come to realize their fate. They are then murdered helplessly in the face of overwhelming violence. This is exactly the kind of hell Frankl describes. Grossman's overwhelming brush strokes recreate the hell that Frankl did not describe. When read in conjunction with "Night and Fog," the horror of the Holocaust becomes even more palpable.

I truly believe that this book could use more focus in learning about the Holocaust.
German-Soviet War: The Soviet Union and the Nazis' War of Extermination

Vasily Grossman, "All Things Flow" Synopsis and Commentary - A masterful novel about the suffering of the Soviet repression era that continued after Stalin's death.

The translator hopes that "many people, especially young people, will read Grossman's work," and that "the problem of totalitarianism is still a major issue today, and the question of power and the individual has always been one that no one can avoid. The question of totalitarianism is still a big one today, and the question of power and the individual is still a question that no one can avoid in any age. He goes on to say, "The question of power and the individual is a big question today.

Like "Life and Destiny," this novel was hard to read. However, the shock was also tremendous. I can only sigh and wonder how he could write something so gruesome. I froze many times while reading it because of the severity of the story. I could not help but moan, "Then what the hell am I supposed to do?

I shudder to think what people were actually put in such a situation back then.
German-Soviet War: The Soviet Union and the Nazis' War of Extermination

Vasily Grossman's "Life and Destiny" Synopsis and Comments - A masterpiece of Russian literature about the fate of those who lived through the war between Germany and the Soviet Union!

Life and Destiny is Grossman's deadly indictment.

In the Soviet Union, criticism of the regime is the most taboo of taboos. One must be prepared to be sent to a concentration camp or even executed. Grossman wrote this work, but it was raided by the KGB and confiscated. The authorities then declared it a dangerous book and decreed that it could not be published for the next two to three hundred years.

The sentence of "no publication for the next two to three hundred years" was tremendous. This shows how dangerous the novel was to the Soviet authorities. Conversely, it may be said that the novel reflected a truth that was inconvenient for the Soviet Union.

Wassily Grossman is not well known in Japan, which I believe is unfortunate. One of the greatest writers to convey the horrors of war and totalitarian oppression is this Wassily Grossman.
German-Soviet War: The Soviet Union and the Nazis' War of Extermination

Red Army Reporter Grothman: Notes on the Battle of Germany and the Soviet Union 1941-45" - The reality of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union as seen by a Jewish military reporter in the Soviet Union.

What struck me most about this book is the part that covers the site of the Nazi Holocaust. When we think of the Holocaust, we think of Auschwitz, but the book describes an extermination camp called Treblinka. More than 800,000 people were murdered there. The gruesome manner of the killings is chilling to read about. It is hard to imagine how shocked Grossman must have been when he was there.

His front line coverage of the unprecedented war of extermination in the history of the world, the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, is a must-see record. I highly recommend this book.
German-Soviet War: The Soviet Union and the Nazis' War of Extermination

Alexievich, "War has no woman's face" - Listening to the voices of women who experienced the war between Germany and the Soviet Union - a famous book that is now being made into a manga in Japan.

This book is the result of Alexievich's interviews with women who served in or suffered the ravages of the Russo-German War, and is a written record of those interviews. In the huge history of the Russo-German War, individual voices were drowned out, especially those of women. This was especially true for women. War belongs to men, so women should not speak out. Such an atmosphere existed in the country.

Alexievich breaks the unspoken taboo and rises to the occasion. Alexievich interviews each person about his or her life at that time, and extracts memories from the darkness of history.
Dostoevskyism

Ziid's "Dostoevsky" - A stimulating and recommended discussion of Dostoevsky by the Nobel Prize-winning French author.

The Shinchosha edition of Ziid's complete works, like "Soweto Travels," is written in an old-fashioned style, which was a bit disconcerting for a moment, but once I started reading it, I found it to be very easy to read, thanks to Ziid's excellent writing.

Above all, there were several interesting perspectives on Dostoevsky that were eye-opening, or I should say, I made several discoveries that I couldn't help but shout out. They explain very clearly what I had been wondering about and the subtleties that I had been itching to get to but couldn't.

As a French writer, it was also very gratifying to hear him talk about Dostoevsky in contrast to Balzac and other French literature.

This book is truly amazing. Published in 1923, the book is famous as a classic of Dostoevsky's theory, but its content has not aged at all.