Recurrent Events

Abstract From the perspective of the West, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 reopened the Cold War. For Russian émigrés and exiles, the history and philosophy behind the present war goes back much further. In Marina Bykova's edition of essays At the Vanishing Point of History (2025), fifteen anguished, eminent expatriates, most of them historians and philosophers, provide political, geographical, psychological, and literary backstories to the disaster—and some speculative futures. This guest column considers their discussions of the war under two headings: Russian exceptionalism and literary precedent. Recent shifts in American policy under its new administration could not have been anticipated by the contributors but supply an erratic and even more frightening frame to their entries.