Manic Bookstore Cafe

YeBeZhe . Chekhov's "White Dacha" in Yalta About seven years ago I was at a conference in Yalta on the Crimean peninsula, on the shores of the Black Sea. Traditionally in April Chekhov scholars from all over the Soviet Union, and then from the former Soviet Union, would make a pilgrimage to the “White Dacha,” the house-museum of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, to share their scholarly work. Every year they greeted the spring in Chekhov’s garden, walked the promenade featured in his classic 1899 story “The Lady with the Little Dog,” drank Crimean wines and cognacs, and took quick dips in the cold waters of the Black Sea. My friend from Moscow, a Chekhov scholar, had been inviting me to join them at the conference for a number of years, and in 2008 for the first time I was able to make it.  Spring break in Yalta has to include a  walk on the seaside promenade. For years these scholars had been taking their week-long spring break in Yalta together, and had of co...

The NPR report   about Ukraine the other day focused on "Dr. Ironfist," the Ukrainian boxer Vitali Klitschko. This leader of the political party UDAR is inherently more trustworthy than most politicians, the journalist claimed, because the boxing champ made his money in sport, not business. I've been watching the events in Ukraine as closely as I can, and I am sending good wishes and energy in the direction of Euromaidan. (I wish I could send hot soup and blankets -- what a time of year to make a revolution!) If we really are watching the birth of a nation , I'll be the first to applaud. But what worries me is precisely the question of corruption, and this is where my experience of Ukraine becomes relevant. My Fulbright "minder" at the Studium Europy Wschodniej in Poland when I arrived January 30 was a young Ukrainian PhD student. In many ways Sasha made my transition to life in Poland easier than it might have been; there is a greater culture gap f...