“Why read Russian literature?” It was the kind of question that a professor longs for, and the student asked it with genuine interest. In an age when we scan articles in minutes and read more tweets than books, the question is fair. Russian novels are…

In 2012, a writer for The Atlantic brought to readers’ attention the decline of virtues in our vocabulary. Over the last hundred years, people were writing less and less about sincerity, patience, or mercy. Researchers noticed a sharp decline in “virtue words”: “People simply do not think/talk/write about…