Akhmatova's Acolytes

There was a time, only decades ago, when American scholarship on Russia was widespread and serious. After the USSR fell, however, interest in the former communist power dried up. Serious scholarship was gradually squeezed out and replaced by predictable cliches.

It is against this background that Matthew Cooper's Akhmatova's Acolytes represents such a welcome and valuable gift. Cooper's erudite investigation of contemporary Russian thought surveys everything from theology and poetry, to economics, philosophy and sociology. To be sure, this is not a survey of the whole landscape; Cooper hones in on specific, sometimes little-known (in the West) Russian thinkers. This apparently narrow series of focal points, however, then expands out again as Cooper helpfully situates each writer within a rich landscape populated, firstly, by Russia's own storied intellectual heritage, and secondly, by Russia's engagement with Western thought. The result is a sometimes dizzying and challenging but always rewarding volume which in style and substance evokes, depending on the paragraph, Max Horkheimer, Hunter S. Thompson or Augusto Del Noce. - Paul R. Grenier President, Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy