The rises and falls of the esteem in which Russians have held Mikhail Gorbachev over the years have been dizzying.

In an odd way, it was only after watching the HBO miniseries Chernobyl that I fully appreciated just how great a catastrophe threatened mankind on that April day in 1986.

In the Soviet era, NEP had always been regarded as a strange, only vaguely understood, and not very sensible chapter in Soviet history: a pause between the heroic Civil War and the no less heroic Five-Year Plans.

Mikhail Romm is remembered by everyone who ever worked with him with tenderness and affection. Yet it is hard not to wonder how differently his life and work might have turned out had it not been for the exigencies of Russian and Soviet history.

On the life and mysteries of one of history's most famous sleeper spies, Konon Molody.

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov holds a somewhat odd place in Russian literature. He is at once a famous writer, a recognized classic, yet he has not won the same honors granted to the “first tier” writers.

The extraordinary life and times of one of Russia's most important doctors.

War Communism was on the ropes in the fall of 1920. What's a dictator to do?

Looking back at the life and work of the legendary filmmaker, and how views of him have changed over time.

How a progressive regiment was crushed by a single, petty man.

The Great Stand on the Ugra River, a confrontation in the autumn of 1480, has come to be known as an emblematic moment in Russian history. Yet things are not always what they seem.

On the founding of the Russian Geographical Society 175 years ago.