Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history. 

It is a common trope that Russians never smile. Which of course is interpreted to mean they are unfriendly, gloomy, sullen – positively Dostoyevskian. This, of course, is a complete misreading of body language and cultural norms.

What can we learn about Russia, now and throughout history, from its poetry? This month we try to find out, with help from The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, to be released later this month, as reviewed in the Nov/Dec issue of Russian Life.

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.

What do radio, television, the periodic table, and helicopters have in common? Russians were involved in developing all of them – and more!

Think you know your vodka? Take this True/False quiz (just 12 items) about Russians and their vodka and see if you are right about that...

Join Fitchburg Art Museum Curator Lisa Crossman for an engaging look at the art of Konstantin Simun in his latest exhibition, The Sacred in the Profane.

Yury Butusov's brilliant, award-winning staging of King Lear tells us a story in which the collapse of a family, the collapse of a country, and the collapse of an individual are all connected to each other.

Green Lion Gallery & From Russia With Art are presenting an exhibition of etchings and other prints by some of Moscow’s leading artists.

The Museum of Russian Art is honored to present Rachmaninov, Borodin & Shostakovich Piano Trios Featuring: Natalia Moiseeva, violin; Tanya Remenikova, cello; Denis Evstuhin, piano.

The University of Wisconsin Russian Folk Orchestra, now in its 22nd season, presents its annual Spring Concert.

Celebrating on of 20th-century most prolific composers with a rare performance of his 24 Cello Preludes along with Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition.

American Ballet Theatre's 2019 Spring Gala on Monday evening, May 20 will pay tribute to the 10th Anniversary year of Alexei Ratmansky as ABT Artist in Residence.

The Washington Balalaika Society will celebrate its 30th anniversary with three world-class domra virtuosi, a master of the balalaika, a brilliant and talented conductor and an orchestra of sixty musicians.

The Washington Balalaika Society will celebrate its 30th anniversary with three world-class domra virtuosi, a master of the balalaika, a brilliant and talented conductor and an orchestra of sixty musicians.

The Sacred in the Profane offers a survey of Simun’s unique capacity to find forms that appear in ancient art and Christian iconography in molded plastic and other consumer objects since his arrival to the United States from Russia in the early 1980s.

Jacques Hnizdovsky's art expressed his capacity for joy, humor, and hope, most often in of animals from the Bronx Zoo, and has been widely recognized and beloved for over half a century. This exhibition presents a single collection of Hnizdovsky prints (woodcuts, linocuts, and etchings), as well as one of his paintings, which are rarely seen.

The Body in Soviet Art examines the depictions of the human form in Soviet art, featuring more than fifty works created in the 1950s-1970s.  Representations of the human body have varied over time and across cultures.  Soviet art placed a unique emphasis on the working body as part of a Soviet collective.