January 01, 2022 A Glutton's New Year Feast By Marina Pustilnik The pirog is quite capable of holding the flag as the most important dish in Russian cuisine. It is a filling, generous, and hearty meal, containing all the major food groups (vegetables, animal protein, grains, and bread) rolled up in one. Food & Drink Holidays Regions
November 01, 2021 A Perfect Holiday Centerpiece By Marina Pustilnik It’s that time of the year again, when afternoons are short, the colors are subdued, and the appetite for rich spicy foods is at its highest. What a perfect occasion to cook a hearty Central Asia pilaf with mutton, lots of cumin, and (if you can find them) barberries (also known as berberis or “northern lemon”). Customs Food & Drink Regions
September 01, 2021 A Crumble for All Seasons By Marina Pustilnik A crumble cake in Russia is something like banana bread in the US – the varieties are endless, and every avid baker has her “grandmother’s recipe” in their repertoire. Culture Food & Drink
July 01, 2021 Raspberry Yumminess By Marina Pustilnik Raspberries and cream – a wonderful summer treat. Food & Drink
May 01, 2021 A Taste of Early Summer By Marina Pustilnik Nothing says Russia and summer better than tvorog with greens! Food & Drink Rural Life
March 01, 2021 The Taste of Childhood By Marina Pustilnik Digging back through memories, and unearthing a cream puff. Food & Drink
January 01, 2021 A Time for Pirogi By Marina Pustilnik January – and the winter months in general – are a great time to master the hearty Russian recipes for all kinds of pirogi. Customs Food & Drink
November 01, 2020 Taste of the Holidays By Marina Pustilnik For several generations of Russians, few things signal Christmas and New Year’s better than tangerines. So we offer a delicious holiday cake built around this fruit. Food & Drink Regions
September 01, 2020 How to Start a Fall Day By Marina Pustilnik A perfect recipe for fall, apple fritters, is offered with two variants. Family Food & Drink
July 01, 2020 A Cold Soup to Beet Summer By Marina Pustilnik A beet-based cold soup to spice up your summer soirees... Food & Drink Language
May 01, 2020 A Celebratory Cake By Marina Pustilnik А фestive Napoleon Cake that is plenty complex to offer lots of stress baking relief. Food & Drink History
March 01, 2020 Cooking with Nettle By Marina Pustilnik Ah, spring, when nature wakes from its winter slumber, and the farmers markets come alive with fresh greens like spinach, sorrel, and green onions. Food & Drink
October 15, 2021 to April 03, 2022 Icons for Our Time: Orthodox Art from Around the World Museum of Russian Icons | Clinton, MA Fifteen contemporary icons from fifteen countries explore iconography today. Presented in celebration of the museum's 15th Anniversary. Art Exhibit
The Spine of Russia This coffee table book is the photographic journal of an epic 6000-kilometer road trip. The book includes over 200 compelling images of Russians and Russian places met along the way, plus a dozen texts (in both English and Russian) on everything from business to education, from roads to fools.
Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction For over 100 years, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection changes that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.
At the Circus This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
301 Things Everyone Should Know About Russia How do you begin to get a handle on the world's largest country? This colorful, illustrated guide will get you started...
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Marooned in Moscow This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
White Magic The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Bears in the Caviar Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
July 01, 2013 The Russian Bees Will Save Us By Paul E. Richardson American bees are dying from mysterious causes, putting our agriculture at risk for lack of pollinators. Russian bees might be part of a solution. Agriculture Environment Science
September 01, 2019 Returning from Afar By Benson Bobrick An excerpt from Benson Bobrick’s new book, a memoir of his life and work as a writer. Memoir Travel
September 01, 2019 Bite Marks By Paul E. Richardson Is Russia somehow different from other nations, or is it just like any other? History Int'l Relations
May 09, 2020 Russian/Soviet War Movies You Can Stream By Yuliya Ballou Some of the best Russian and Soviet films about World War II that you can stream online. Film & TV Reference War Culture Through Film CVSG
September 14, 2019 Eight Russian Desserts To Make Your Mouth Water By Tiffany Zhu Forget vodka – dessert is the best part of Russian meals. Culture Food & Drink
March 01, 2019 Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevsky W.W. Norton has released a new translation, by Michael Katz, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel. We excerpt here the novel’s opening. Literature St. Petersburg
