Stephen Boykewich

Richard G. Stern, with whom I had the privilege to study at the University of Chicago, died Jan. 24, 2013. He’s quoted well in the lovely New York Times obituary: “It’s important at the University of Chicago, where the Great Works loom monumentally, to free students from the paralysis of intimidation by them,” he wrote. [...]

Whitman’s War: Essay

Whitman’s War: On Whitman’s Civil War Notebooks By Stephen Boykewich Meridian THE CIVIL WAR THREATENED TO GIVE THE LIE to every claim Walt Whitman made about America. In the preface to his 1855 Leaves of Grass, he set forth a vision of a “teeming nation of nations,” unified, for all its variety, by the spirit of openness [...]

The Man With the Plan for Russia, Inc.

The Man With the Plan for Russia Inc. By Stephen Boykewich The Moscow Times ST. PETERSBURG – Using natural resources for geopolitical gain may upset the West, but for the man who was helping shape President Vladimir Putin’s energy strategy years before he took office, it’s merely common sense. “There was a time when salt was [...]

“Devilish Forces” – On Putin’s Russia

Devilish Forces Stephen Boykewich On Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia, by Steve LeVine. Random House, June 2008. $26 In early October 2007, almost three years to the day after I began my career as a journalist in Russia, a conversation with a former CIA agent brought it to an [...]

Tales from the Kremlin’s Shadow

Tales, Old and New, From a Legendary Dom By Stephen Boykewich Staff Writer When the windows sparkled through the night at the monumental apartment block across the river from the Kremlin, it once meant that the Great Terror had struck another member of the Communist Party elite. Now it may mean that a party of [...]

Review: Four Short Plays by Samuel Beckett

Buckets O’Beckett – Four Short Plays by Samuel Beckett Irish Repertory of Chicago Directed by Matt O’Brien In 1976 the American composer Morton Feldman met Samuel Beckett in Berlin and took him to lunch. Over a beer Feldman showed the hesitant Beckett the score of a piece he had written, inspired by Beckett’s Film. Something in [...]