In The Weekly Russia File for March 31: some terrible chess puns, and how to stop traffic.

Alexander Solo is documenting "monotowns" in Russia. He shows us a couple in Leningrad Region, where he lives.

A look back at the heady Gorbachev era, a time of rationing and glasnost, perestroika and cooperatives, when everything seemed possible.

On the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.

It has been a year since Boris Nemtsov was shot as he walked along a bridge near the Kremlin, yet Russians continue to gather at his assassination site.

On February 24, 1956, Khrushchev delivered his now infamous secret speech. It would change everything... sort of...

The destruction of 97 kiosks around Moscow opens up the controversies of architectural preservation, the plight of small businesses, and the rebuilding of history itself. 

A few books we have received recently that we thought Russophiles should know about.

In honor of Evgeny Zamyatin's birthday, here are eight Russian sci-fi novels that reveal something about Russia and the world beyond.

Join with us in a celebration of 13 inspired displays of Putinalia (not as nasty as it sounds) that Russia has gifted to the world.

Under Stalin, a poem could mean life or death. For many poets, it was a one-way ticket to the Gulag. Today, poems can be a means to face cultural memories of arrests in the night, forced labor, and the silence demanded of people fearing those fates. 

With the temporary triumph of Russian workers in the 1905 revolution, every opposition party expects a piece of the pie. But not if it's the anarchist party! Just ten years after his own politically-motivated arrest and exile, Vladimir Lenin wrote a scathing critique of the anarchists' attempt to join the revolution and work toward a better society.