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.

After almost ten years, the Alexander Palace, the final home of the Romanovs, is back and open for visitors.

An often-overlooked high-seas tale of swashbuckling adventure, empire, and exchange between Russia and Japan.

Thirty years ago this week, Russia became an independent country... again.

Remnants of the Imperial Russian past are all over Alaska – and California, too.

The bravery with which the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment defended the Soviet Union from Nazi invasion earned them a legendary nickname.

Some new historical treasures have been pulled from the sea near Kamchatka.

The legend of Russia's heroic defender passed into Stalinist myth with some help from one of the 20th century's most famous filmmakers.

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.

On August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok, died in St. Petersburg. Widely considered the greatest poet of the Silver Age of Russian poetry.