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.

Being patriotic in the Soviet Union was a duty, a challenge, and a potential pitfall, all rolled into one. The story of one Soviet singer, Joseph Kobzon, shows how one cultural idol walked that dangerous line.

Ever wonder why Soviet houses looked so drab, colorless, and interchangeable? It all started with Nikita Khrushchev's battle against architectural excess, and continues to plague Russia to this day.

Sergei Merkurov created some of the Soviet Union’s most iconic sculptures. But he also had a shadow profession: casting death masks of the elite.

Catherine II's desire for legitimacy and her gratitude for the healing of her heir (the future Paul I), led to the founding of Moscow's Pavlov Hospital for the poor.

A look back at the spat between the USSR and China over liberalization and reform, with a poetic interlude offered by Vladimir Vysotsky.

Today I stumbled across an interesting article online. At first I thought it should be filed in the "someone is trying to stir the Cold War pot again" but then I read on...

A look back at the first person ever to perform an aerial loop in an airplane, Pyotr Nesterov.

In October 1867, with the stroke of a pen, Russian America became Alaska. But what happened to the Russian colonists and children of Russian colonists for whom this land was home?

In 2005 Anton Orlov stumbled across a collection of photographs that had barely seen the light of day for 80 years. For the next seven years, he was consumed by a quest to reveal the life story of the man who built the collection.