Happy birthday, Russian Constitution! Let's take a quick look at where you came from: the political struggles, reform efforts, and occasional street fighting of a newborn country.

When the music you sing is banned, when the entire genre is identified with the enemy, how do you find the courage to keep singing? Just ask Boris Grebenshikov!

The first-ever English version of Uncle Gilya’s masterpiece, Moscow and Muscovites, translated by Brendan Kiernan and published by Russian Life Books, debuts today. It’s our way of saying “Happy Birthday” to Uncle Gilya (today is his 158th!). English-language readers around the globe win as well – this translation is at least 90 years overdue!

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.