September 30, 2015 Translator's Note: Bulat Okudzhava It's one thing to become famous as a writer or poet in your own country. But what does it take to earn yourself a spot in world literature? By describing the promise of Soviet poet, songwriter, and classic Bulat Okudzhava, translators offer us some insight. Literature Russia File
August 28, 2015 Why Stalin Called Andrei Platonov "Scum" – with 8 Quirky Quotes Andrei Platonov spawned many an incongruous image and incomprehensible sentence. Compared by some scholars to James Joyce, he was critiqued by Stalin himself, yet he avoided prosecution. We dig into his challenging literary style. History Literature Russia File
July 13, 2015 The Tower of (Isaac) Babel July 13 is the anniversary of Isaac Babel's birth. Now celebrated as one of teh great writers of the twentieth century, he had a very difficult time gaining acceptance during his lifetime, and repeatedly suffered from antisemitism, official and otherwise. History Literature
July 01, 2015 War and Peace: 7 Fun Facts How many characters are in Tolstoy's War and Peace? Could it have been any shorter? Did Tolstoy himself love it or hate it? Find out the answers to these – and more! – questions in this quick list of little-known War and Peace facts. History Literature Russia File
July 01, 2015 The Latchkey Murders Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow... Literature Fiction
March 01, 2015 The Stray Dog Cabaret A look back at the end of St. Petersburg's avant garde hangout for poets and bohemians. Literature
March 01, 2015 Yuri Nagibin The writer Yuri Nagibin led an incredibly hard life, although, by Soviet standards, from the outside his life may have looked charmed. Literature
January 31, 2015 An Amazing Ride! We have just finished our 45-day Kickstarter project for the book Red Star Tales, and we are speechless. Almost. Literature Russia File
January 01, 2015 Pushkin and Derzhavin On January 8, 1815 was the monumental "meeting" of Alexander Pushkin and Gavrila Derzhavin, the greatest poets of their respective generations. History Literature
January 01, 2015 A Deluge of Images and Feelings Boris Pasternak was born 125 years ago. We look back at how he has been remembered. Literature
December 23, 2014 Yolka As a special gift, we share a somewhat untypical holiday story, reprinted from the pages of Chtenia, by the master humorist and short story writer Mikhail Zoshchenko. Holidays Humor Literature Russia File
September 30, 2014 Pasternak: A Great Translator Reflects on Translation In honor of the International Day of the Translator, a few words from Boris Pasternak, the Russian voice of Shakespeare, on translating and the power of English. Literature Russia File
