A very nice blog posting by Anatoly Karlin on the facts versus the talking heads (including Obama advisor McFaul) when it comes to interpreting Russian politics and public opinion. The facts don't lie, right? Meanwhile, a film festival in San Francisco in August has a couple of nice documentaries on offer, one on growing up in Russia, another on

Life is always stranger than fiction, or, in this case, it may have been imitating [bad] fiction. Or at least so it seems from the transcripts of the case against Anna Chapman.

President Dmitry Medvedev says he likes the classics, but that,just recently he made a request for buying about 50 books authored by contemporary Russian writers over the past 5-7 years. "I have read some of them and I cannot say I have been excited," he said. "By and large I have to read all sorts of dull papers the presidents normally read. Draft documents, draft decrees, draft instructions, laws, reports...

Avatar has become the largest grossing movie in Russian history. But, more interestingly, a spin-off photo morfing site (which seemed to be connected to McDonald's Finland) allowed visitors to turn pictures of famous people into the blue Na'Vi. A Russian newspaper tried it with Medvedev and Putin. Here are the tinted results. First Putin:

The Louisville Courier-Journal has a nice feature this morning on Anne Fisher, the translator and driving force behind our new translation of The Little Golden Calf. It talks about how the book went in and out of favor with the Soviet regime, and how Anne was inspired to bring the work out in English because it had been so instrumental in forging her own understanding of all things Russian.

A response to another publisher's blog post about our comparative analysis of two competing translations of Ilf and Petrov's Zolotoy Telyonok...

Our annual consideration of some great gift ideas for Russophiles. Now available online as well!

I will forever associate the fall of the Berlin Wall with french fries. In 1989, my wife and I were living and working in Moscow. Our friend Bob was apartment-sitting in the American embassy complex; and on November 9 he invited us over for dinner...

Neil Charnoff of Vermont Public Radio just did a long interview with publisher Paul Richardson about Life Stories. You can listen to it here.

When it comes to bogeymen, China, Cuba, even North Korea can't hold a candle to old Mother Russia. This week, as tempers flared and theatrical protests abounded around health care, a woman offered this irrational take on proposed reforms at a town hall meeting ...

Verbatim text of an online interview with Rashit Yahin. Mr. Yahin was born in 1936, was educated in Moscow as an engineer and worked from 1978 to 1990 on construction of BAM. From 1990 to 1994 he worked as head of the tourism department in the Severobaikalsk Railway Department of BAM. In December 1994, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He now is largely confined to a wheelchair, but that has not stopped him working. He actively works to promote tourism to the Baikal region and arranges private and independent travel there (see end of article for contact info). The interview is presented in its entirely, without any redactions or corrections.