An excerpt from the fine new novel Zuleikha, by Guzel Yakhina, about a woman's survival in Siberia exile, inspired by childhood memories of the author's grandmother.

"A classical authoritarian power... does not pay that much attention to what the population thinks, and when it does, this attention is usually limited to a bunch of platitudes loudly proclaimed as the official ideology..."

Peace! Land! Bread! This was the battle cry of the 1917 October Revolution (old calendar) that changed the history of Russia and indeed the entire world. Since the time of Ivan the Terrible, the tsars concentrated on centralization of their power and control. The most common way of doing this was to take power away from the nobility, appeasing them by giving them dominion over their land and workers. This soon developed into the oppressive, slave-style condition known as serfdom.

A comprehensive listing of resources, online and off, for researching your Russian roots, courtesy of Ginny Audet.

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...

In this new novel, set in the final year of the Soviet Union, young Sonya is reunited with her once-dissident mother, and they are on their way to navigating a new life together.

From the Eastern Bloc to the Bronx tells the fascinating story of how the Grosvenor Gallery in London promoted artists from Eastern Bloc countries and came to play a central role in shaping the Hebrew Home Art Collection.

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.

The Virgin of Vladimir, also known as Virgin of Tenderness, a micro mosaic icon by Oksana Prokopenko is now on view at the Chapel of the Sheen Center.

Enjoy free admission all day, courtesy of the Nypro Foundation. Explore the exhibition Wrestling with Angels and head downstairs to the auditorium to make your own angel-inspired craft.

This presentation focuses on depictions of God the Father, the fountainhead and source of the Holy Trinity, in Orthodox Christian iconography.

Museum Day is an annual celebration of boundless curiosity hosted by Smithsonian magazine. The Museum of Russian Icons, participating museums, and cultural institutions across the country provide free entry to anyone presenting a Museum Day ticket.

Mastering the challenging medium of egg tempera, as well as the learning the "grammar" of iconography, is like the old joke about how one gets to Carnegie Hall: it takes practice, practice, practice!

Wrestling with Angels explores how God relates to man and how man wrestles with God in order to understand life's meaning. In this curator's talk, discover the unspoken assumptions behind the icons, how the iconographer communicates these assumptions artistically and why they matter.

Irina Nakhova: Museum on the Edge is the artist’s first museum retrospective in the United States. Nakhova stands apart both from the first generation of Moscow conceptualists and from her younger peers. Unlike many of her colleagues, in whose works the narrative or textual component plays a prominent role, Nakhova draws on the visual and cultural dimensions of her dialogue with art history for the conceptual content of her work.

Join a Museum Guide for a free Russian-language tour of the special exhibition Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper.

Inspired by Russian fairytales, the artwork in this exhibtion is a collaboration between Oksana Prokopenko and Anthony Santella.

A new mini-exhibition of trays and boxes painted in the traditional Zhostovo-style will be on view in the lobby at the Museum of Russian Icons through October 20.  These treasures are created by American decorative painter and teacher Tricia Joiner, and Zhostovo Master Painter Vyacheslav (Slava) Letkov.