Alexander Kashirin, 27.03.1963

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Blagoveschensk on Amur

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In my younger days, during the Soviet era, I would have been considered an asocial type, for I was not a member of either Octobrist, Pioneer, Komsomol, or the Communist Party organizations. I certainly belonged to what Vaclav Havel called a "parallel culture"--a culture of semi-clandestine intelligentsia and artistic circles and notorious kitchen debate clubs. It might be a carry-over from the Soviet era, but even today (in the United States) I am not particularly enthused about any appointment-type social posts and prefer a free association of friends and fellow intellectuals., Since I received a Fulbright grant to Ukraine for 2007-2008, I had to pack my suitcases and move East for the next ten months to do research work for my doctoral dissertation entitled "Protestant Minorities in the Soviet Ukraine, 1945-1991: A Social History." For ten months I worked in the two major archives in Kiev, studying the Soviet era documents. Upon return home in the United States, I continued teaching various courses in history and writing my dissertation. I successfully defended my enormously long dissertation (934 pages!!!) in May of 2010 and graduated with a PhD the next month. It's hard to believe, but I am finally a Doctor (something that should have happened 10 years ago). I am proud though that as a son of a semi-literate Russian WW II veteran I still managed to receive the highest academic degree... I wished this degree came with a million dollars or something, especially given the fact that the job market this year is very poor and the prospects of getting a decent job are very slim...

History in general and Russian/Soviet history in particular; literature, poetry (which I used to write myself before I got into a graduate school), art, especially iconography in which I dabble a little bit myself; religious and (how paradoxical!) existential philosophy; woodworking and general construction (that on so many occasions saved my butt); guns, target shooting and, occasionally, hunting

Presently, I enjoy most of classical music, jazz, and folk music from all over the world. I especially like flamenco, but, in moments of nostalgia, I still listen to "Deep Purple, " "Pink Floyd, " "Akvarium, " "Kino, " "DDT, " " Mashina Vremeni, " Vysotrkii, etc

Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" and "The Life of Brian"; The Russian TV series "Doctor Zhivago"; Stephen Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" and the series "The Band of Brothers"; "The Beast, " "The Lives of Others, " "The Devil Wears Prada, " "Enter the Dragon, " "Gladiator, " "Charlie Wilson's War, " "Atonement, " "Romance and Cigarettes, " etc

"Jay Leno, " "Mad TV, " "Saturday Night Live, " History Channel, Discovery, PBS, Travel Channel, The Animal Planet, any dog shows, "Seinfeld, " "Sopranos, " and some other shows that I often watch with my wife but cannot remember their names

All of Dostoevsky, especially "Notes from the Underground"; Astafiev's "Veselyi Soldat" and Tatiana Tolstaia's "Kys"; Pavel Florenskii's "The Pillar and the Foundation of Truth" and "The Iconostasis"; Miguel Unomuno's "The Tragic Sense of Life"; Omar Khayyam's poetry; Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus, " Sartre's play "No Exit, " Beckett's "Waiting for Godot, " and Lyotard's "The Inhuman"; most of Nietzsche's works; Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet"; most of Victor Pelevin and Victor Suvorov; most of Edgar Alan Poe and Mark Twain, and so forth. Oh, and did I mention Peter Chaadaev's "Philosophical Letters"--perhaps the post profound and the most underestimated piece of Russian literature and thought

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Консервативные

Existentialist/Agnostic

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