What might it mean to engage in an educative struggle with death? Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" helps us to answer that question. Tolstoy's story depicts the life of a man who, when suddenly faced with the prospect of his own death, is at first unable to comprehend the reality of his situation. He is angry, fearful, and…

Nothing was more important to Tolstoy than character development. For him, the purpose of life is to grow morally. The purpose of literature -- as all art -- is to aid that growth. Abstract philosophy and pedantic scholarship are therefore redundant. Indeed, even the psychological novel is a distraction. Moral truths are self-evident. They are…

The purpose of this article is to interrogate ways that curriculum can respond critically to already existing global emergencies (including pandemics) while also becoming more proactive toward the prevention of world risks. To do this, it calls for the fortification of the traditional course of study that introduces students to the analysis of…

Fyodor Dostoevsky's final novel, "The Brothers Karamazov," is one of the most influential works of the nineteenth century. To date, however, the potential value of the book for educationists has been largely ignored. This article addresses a key pedagogical theme in "The Brothers Karamazov," namely, the notion that 'love is a…

A new model of society in post-Soviet Russia introduced novel family patterns to everyday life as well as to children's literature, with traditional parent and children's functions becoming subject to rethinking. The tendency to reconsider parental functions can be observed in texts from different genres, but it appears most overtly in modern…

The article deals with a complicated archetypal tree complex in Russian literature. The object chosen here is "white willow" (vetla) as one of the species of willow in its different variations--daphne willow (verba) and goat willow (rakita), and willow itself. In the 19th century Russian literature we can find the image of white willow…

Fyodor Dostoevsky ranks among the most accomplished and respected figures in the history of literature. Almost a century and a half after his death, the major works for which he has become known--"The Brothers Karamazov," "Crime and Punishment," Demons", and "The Idiot" (Dostoevsky 1991, 1993, 1994, 2001,…

There is much of value for educationists in the work of the great Russian novelist and thinker, Fyodor Dostoevsky. This paper explores a key theme in Dostoevsky's later writings: the notion of a "Golden Age". It compares the ideal depicted in Dostoevsky's story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" with the implied utopia of the…

In this commentary, the author stresses that reading habits in Russia have changed since the Soviet era, and the more intellectual journals and magazines in particular have lost their importance. Audiences for books and magazines have fragmented, and there are fewer sources of commonly shared information and ideas than was true a few decades ago.…

In its fourth year, the computer-Focused Russian Bilingual Instructional Program provided instructional and support activities to 276 Russian-speaking students, most of whom are limited English proficient, at 4 public and 2 private high schools in Brooklyn. Instructional activities varied by site. Public school students took English as a Second…