Can samogon predict recessions? Can a balloon seduce Elon Musk? And can Putin grow babies in labs? Find out this and more in this week’s TWERF.

Some off-the-cuff dacha recipes for you (summer seems like too relaxed a time for exacting recipes).

The features in this issue have something in common. And it's not necessarily what you might expect.

Other assorted items from around the Russian world.

"A classical authoritarian power... does not pay that much attention to what the population thinks, and when it does, this attention is usually limited to a bunch of platitudes loudly proclaimed as the official ideology..."

Russian officials participating in the subbotnik spring cleaning take a page from Lenin's book (the one about propaganda).

Russia's Central Bank believes people's financial illiteracy and economic troubles stem from bad messaging in Russian folk tales. Could it be true?

How salt riots and a young tsar led to a Zemsky Sobor and a new body of laws, The Council Code.

Stats on HIV, salaries, doing business, death from bad eating habits, and more.

The Panama Papers shocked the world this week with tales of corruption among the cream of the world's political crop. Here's what the allegations mean for Russian politics, economics, and society.

What does it look like when a whole town empties out and there’s nothing but a few decaying buildings to prove anyone lived there at all?

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