Опубликовано в журнале Вестник Европы, номер 10, 2003
“Contemporary section. Life” re-discovers an old genre: home policy issues in V. Yaroshenko’s winter review “Before the elections and making choice”. This is a comparative blitz-analysis of the December elections and the outline of the previous elections of 1993, 1995, 1999, as well as discourse on democracy in our country. Egor Gaidar’s historical and economic essay “The wealthy and the poor” continues the series of publications, started in volume 9. Leon Aron’s report “Poor Democracies” is particularly topical in light of recent events in Russia. The “Contemporary archive” section points to special events in Europe and Russia, that happened in late 2003.
The systemic article by Rhemi Brag “Europe: the Roman way” speaks on the search for European self-identification, of properly common, and specifically “European”. The article is accompanied by an exquisite comment by its translator Alexei Rutkevich “Europe that we choose”.
In his article “Empire and nation” Vladimir Kantor discourses on history, empire and nation, pathos of Russian empire, national victories and collapses, the idea of common good and on the opposition “democracy— nationalism”.
The “Literature” section acquaints the readers with Gabriele Romanioli’s creative work. His stories were prepared for publication by translator E. Solonovich. There is also a wide selection of poetry: Sergey Mnatsakanyan, Alexander Baltin, Andrey Gritsman and their poems on Rome, the Roman, Imperial and … just poetry.
Vyacheslav Pietsuh addresses the theme of childhood and memories on Moscow of his youth. His elegant “Ballad on the prodigal son” is published in the pages of our journal. Poet, prose writer and publicist Michail Pozdnyaev is presented by his verse-prose “There and back”.
The European theme is continued by Ervin Chargraff’s prose “The singing of sirens”, translated into Russian by Eugeny Factorovich, the author of a note about one of the oldest publishing houses “Klett-Klotta”, that published E. Chargraff’s prose and that’s going to celebrate its 350th anniversary soon.
In 2003 was celebrated Bicentenary of Fyodor I. Tyutchev’s birthday. In the Xth volume, in the historic section, the “Herald of Europe” publishes the translations of Tyutchev’s poems, performed by Aron Lypovetskyi, as well as Tyutchev’s article “Papacy and the Roman question”, kindly let to us by the publishing house “Classics. The XXIst century” that earlier in 2003 published 3 of F. Tyutchev’s 6-volume set of works.
Another event of 2003 was reflected in pages of our journal. The publishers and editors of two volumes by His Holiness John Paul II found an opportunity to publish in the “Herald of Europe” Apostolic message “Light from the East” and an article by its publisher Elena Tverdislova “The light of verity”, dedicated to the artistic world of the Pope and to Russian orthodox view of the spiritual space.
In 2003 died the metropolitan Anthony of Surozh. The editors publish archbishop of Canterbury’s funeral oration, the memorial article by Grigory Pomerants “New non-grasping”, the conversation on Anthony of Surozh’s phenomenon with Ekaterina Genieva and some statements by Anthony of Surozh.
Cultural section is opened with an article by Irina Korobyina, who heads the Centre of modern architecture, and the conversation with the leading architects of the world. It holds an important stage of critical understanding of the situation in contemporary Russian and world architecture. Our permanent author Natalya Isaeva offers our readers a report on the most interesting events of Parisian “Autumn festival”. We continue to publish materials by our Italian correspondent Gleb Smirnov. Now he researches two problems of Roman metaphysics: baroque and Venetian cinema festival. Alexander Sergievsky, another correspondent of ours, acquaints with an essay “The Roman mosaic”, its title matching its contents.
We’ve also published an article “The Roman holidays” by Georgy Chistyakov and “A provincial’s diary-2” by our permanent author Samuil Lurie.
From our Paris correspondent Cyrill Privalov, we received a conversation with a well-known French politician Jean-Francois Denyo, hereunder published in “The European Club discussions”. As traditionally, the volume is completed with “The Mixture. Chronicle of cultural life”, book reviews and the section “The Herald of Europe’s library”.