Roots and Crowns. Where Russian Culture Comes From

Konstantin Kustanovich – a distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University with over 25 years of experience in teaching Russian language, literature, and culture, Ph.D., a specialist in 20th-century Russian literature and the history of Russian culture. He is the author of... the book "Artist and Tyrant: The Works of Vasily Aksyonov in the Brezhnev Era" and a number of articles on Russian literature, predominantly from the second half of the 20th century, and Russian culture. In his new book "Roots and Crowns. Where Russian Culture Comes From," Konstantin develops the idea that the basis of the multi-century opposition between Russia and the West lies in the unique history of Russia and Russian Orthodox culture, which has had a colossal impact on the formation of Russian national culture as a whole. It thoroughly demonstrates and explains the continuity of not all, but the main and extremely important aspects of Russian culture, from Kievan Rus to post-Soviet Russia. Among these aspects are: the peculiarities of religion, education, and secular culture, collectivism and work ethics, traditions of morality and law, peculiarities of the perception of foreign culture, and such aspects of cultural psychology as the formation of individual consciousness and the continuity of culture.