August 27, 1698, was a day of historic importance for the grooming of the Russian male. It was then that Tsar Peter I (known to history as “the Great”), armed himself with scissors and undertook to mercilessly clip beards from the faces of summoned noblemen and boyars.

Late January 2022 marks 125 years since the first thorough count of the Russian Empire’s population was begun in 1897. What was the significance of this endeavor, how was it carried out, and what were its results?

Some thoughts on George Turberville, who served as secretary in the embassy of Queen Elizabeth I to Russia’s Ivan IV, and was one of the earliest observers (and reporters) of Russian mores.

On December 12, 1801, 23-year-old Tsar Alexander I issued an ukaz. This particular decree was not something historians have considered extremely significant in the scheme of Alexander’s reign, but it merits attention for a few reasons.

Empress Elizabeth Petrovna breathed her last in December of 1761, in her St. Petersburg palace. By any standard, Peter the Great’s second daughter had lived an unusual life.

People often ask me what lies ahead for Russia. This question always surprises me. It suggests that people think historians are part prophet, as if knowing a lot about the past means you can predict the future.

Listening to the intensely chromatic compositions of Sofia Gubaidulina can be challenging. You wouldn’t put her music on to relax or to be energized. As with any avant-garde work, taking it in can feel like work.

It is astonishing to think that as recently as the eighteenth century – not the Middle Ages, not the days of Marco Polo, but in the supposedly enlightened eighteenth century – people still had only the vaguest idea of where Asia ended and America began.

By mid-October of 1941, Moscow seemed on the verge of falling to the Nazis. German troops had reached the city’s edge, and there were rumors of fascist tanks closing in.

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was born in Poland, and helped rule Russia, for a time at least.

Why was so much manpower, money, and material expended on a project that flew in the face of the policy of “peaceful coexistence” that had been announced just five years earlier? It was classic Khrushchev.

In 1921, Russia was in a catastrophic state. Famine raged, and American aid proved crucial to the nation's survival.