About

The Soul of the East is Mark Hackard’s online project to ensure that valuable aspects of Russian political and religious thought are made available to English speakers. While Russia has an extraordinary treasury of statesmen, philosophers, theologians and other authors, many of their writings have not been translated. Fyodor Dostoevsky, for example, may be well-known enough in Europe and America, but vital analysis of his worldview by Russian thinkers is generally not. There are also numerous historical, religious, philosophical and geopolitical texts in Russian that would be of great service to readers in the West, including essays and books by such figures as Ivan Ilyin, Konstantin Leontiev, Lev Tikhomirov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Walter Schubart and Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Soul of the East seeks to highlight important themes in these works so that they may be, in the words of Vladimir Soloviev, a light from the East.

Mark Hackard is an independent foreign policy analyst. He earned a BA in Russian Language from Georgetown University and an MA in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University. He studies the intersection of political culture, religion and strategic issues, which he approaches from a traditionalist-conservative position. Some of his major influences are Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortes, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rene Guenon and Fr. Seraphim Rose.

Daniel Spaulding earned a BA in English literature from Bridgewater State University. He currently works and lives in Seoul, South Korea. He enjoys reading philosophy, history, politics, and science fiction. Among the writers he enjoys are included Josef Pieper, Fr. Seraphim Rose, Oswald Spengler, C. S. Lewis, Vladimir Soloviev, and Nicholas Berdyaev.