Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

How do you get from pie-seller to tsar’s favorite? Mostly by being a brilliant strategist – but having a tsar willing to turn a blind eye to your corruption helps, too.

A short poem by Anna Akhmatova believed to be to Mikhail Lozinsky, who supported her through thick and thin.

How Nikolai Karamzin transformed himself from a noted poet into Russia's premier historian.

It's 1612. There's no tsar on the throne and the Poles have entered Moscow. Some may have despaired – but one man took the opportunity to save the country and earn his place in history books.

The Russian Civil War was a messy affair, as civil wars so often are. Think you can identify all the colors? (Hint: Black is the color of anarchism.)

Soviet sources praise the Bolsheviks for simplifying Russian spelling in 1918. Who was the real author of the spelling reform, and what was the Bolsheviks' actual role in making it work?

You think planting a flag on a piece of land makes you own it? Think again! With Sakhalin, it was just one step in the long back-and-forth between Russia and Japan.

This editorial, by author (of The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas) Dmitry Chen, appeared last month on Bloomberg.com, and considers how the current crisis in Syria has its roots 13 centuries ago.

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.

Nikolai Bukharin, the Moscow revolutionary, was on the rise throughout the early twentieth century – but as we all know, what goes up must come down. Turns out you come down especially fast if you meet Stalin at the top.

Remember the days when a superpower could shoot down a plane full of civilians just for wandering into its airspace? We called those days the Cold War – and the plane was KAL Flight 007, shot down by a Soviet fighter pilot on September 1st, 1983.