On the Media Menu: Russia, Russia, Russia

Diving back into my favorite Russian literature with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy; plus, finding comfort in Final Fantasy XIV

For us GenXers, who grew up with the low background hum of a potential nuclear war, Russia has been a constant companion. Bushy eyebrowed Soviet leaders were nightly news regulars on our big floor-model console TVs (which also terrorized us with nightmare nuclear apocalypse movies like The Day After). Then came Mikhail Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika, when we started thinking maybe we wouldn’t all die in radioactive fire. And as we graduated college and embarked on careers, poof, the Soviet Union just up and disintegrated.

It was a very jolly and optimistic time. What we forgot was that while the Soviet Union may be gone, Russia still very much remained. And Russia has a long history of heralded reforms curdling into tragedy.

So, yeah, Russia reverted to being, well, Russia, and we’re back where we started: a nation with a rich cultural and artistic history that repeatedly cycles into bloody autocracies and terrifying political systems.

When I hit college, my initial plans for study…