HARPER’S MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2024: This issue features ‘Behind the Iron Curtain’ – Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn; A Life in Psychedelics; Sex and Grue in Ancient Rome, and more…
Behind the New Iron Curtain
Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn
by Marzio G. Mian,Translated by Elettra Pauletto
Russia has become, to observers in the West, a distant, mysterious, and hostile land once again. It seems implausible, in the age of social media, that so little should be known about the country that has shattered the international order, but the shadows surrounding Russia have only grown since the days of the Soviet Union. Of course, it is one thing to observe the country from the outside; it is another to try to understand how Russians experience the war and react to sanctions from within, and what they hope the future holds. If Russia seems to have become…
The Museum of Broken G.I. Joes
When soldiers come home
by Matt Farwell