Soviet Russia was never more threatened than when the Czech Legion nearly turned the tide in the Civil War (1918-1922). We follow the story of one noble family, whose fate was wrapped up in this dramatic historical episode.

The Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was born in Moscow on March 25, 1812 (April 6, New Style). Thanks to a famous phrase from Lenin’s “In Memory of Herzen” – “The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen began the task of revolutionary agitation.” – everyone who grew up in the Soviet Union knew Herzen’s name, whether or not they had ever read a line of his work.

William Ryan’s second book featuring MVD Detective Alexei Korolev, The Darkening Field, was released on January 3, 2012. Russian Life Publisher Paul E. Richardson interviewed Ryan about the genesis for his character and the challenges of situating a novel in Soviet Russia.

English text of the 1972 Antilballistic Missile Treaty between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

How the introduction of Peter I's merit-based system of ranks changed Russian society after its introduction in 1722.

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

It is the great, cruel paradox of World War II in Russia that heinous, unanswered crimes coexisted with truly heroic, astonishing human achievement. That – be it out of fear or love of the Motherland or self-defense – Soviets fought so bravely to defend a system that treated them like cattle, confiscating from them the land, the bread and the peace that the Revolution had allegedly been all about, shipping them and their relatives off to Siberian labor camps, sentencing soldiers unfortunate enough to have been captured in war into “penal battalions.”

Praised in Russian folklore, Stepan Razin reigns as Russia’s most memorable and popular rebel. On the 340th anniversary of the Cossack-led uprising, a noted historian considers the lessons of Razin for the Russian state.

An obituary of Yelena Bonner by a fellow dissident.

The clock atop Moscow’s Spasskaya Tower is as central, geographically and metaphorically to Russian life as Big Ben is for the British. But that was not always the case.

Russia has a long history of fascination with and love for all things Georgian, be it wine, literature or landscape. But there has also been recurrent conflict and even war. In recent years, conflict has all but completely eclipsed collaboration. We explore why.

Just as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were preparing to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the deadly Chernobyl nuclear accident (April 26, 1986), the world faced a harrowing reminder of the possibility of nuclear catastrophe, as Japan’s Fukushima plant experienced multiple partial meltdowns, spewing radioactive material into the air and water.