With the 2014 Olympics underway and my semester more or less under control, I was poised to post a few comments about the characteristic Russian-ness of the unfolding spectacle in Sochi — only to find this afternoon that a friend and colleague, Dr. Bruce Berglund (Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Calvin College), has already taken aim at the topic from my favorite vantage point.

Writing in his department’s newly launched blog Historical Horizons, Berglund’s “Sochi and the Lessons of Russian History” contemplates Putin’s Olympian extravaganza as an act of “compensatory symbolism.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself…