September 01, 2021 The Heat By Darya Grebenshchikova There’s no doing without hay in the village. The cows eat it, and the sheep, and the hens need loads of it for their nests. And it comes in handy for people too, when they stuff their mattresses with it and lie on them forevermore, because the scent is just marvelous. Agriculture Rural Life
July 01, 2021 Kvass By Darya Grebenshchikova Our old gals in the village cast a wary eye on all food from the store, because who knows what they’ve got in there? Food & Drink Rural Life
September 01, 2020 Life is Just a Bowl of... Raspberries? By Darya Grebenshchikova When you are deep in the woods, enjoying a day of raspberry picking with friends, anything is possible. Humor Rural Life
July 01, 2020 The Thimble By Darya Grebenshchikova A woman returns to the village of her birth and an unlikely and fateful connection ensues. Culture Humor Rural Life
November 01, 2019 Grandpa Cuckoo By Darya Grebenshchikova What do you do with a thief and miscreant who just won’t stop thieving? Why, send him off to St. Petersburg of course.
July 01, 2019 Nikolayev's Birthday By Darya Grebenshchikova It was Nikolayev’s birthday, which in ordinary years would always start bright and early... but this was no ordinary year... Customs Humor Rural Life
January 01, 2019 A Winter's Tale (mostly about valenki) By Darya Grebenshchikova In Russia, valenki are as near as you can get to the country's number-one footwear after regular leather boots. Customs Humor Rural Life
November 01, 2018 People's Court By Darya Grebenshchikova In which the Rural Council takes up the case of “The Conduct of Nikolayev, N. N.” Law Rural Life
May 01, 2018 Avdotya and the District Medic By Darya Grebenshchikova When the district medic comes around, the stage is set for a skirmish between modern and traditional medicine. Rural Life
September 01, 2017 Bath Day in Sheshurino By Darya Grebenshchikova “On Saturdays, smoke drifts over the village. The banyas are being heated.” Let’s go! Culture Customs Rural Life
July 01, 2017 Raspberry Beetles By Darya Grebenshchikova It is surprisingly simple (in certain circumstances) to mix up homebrew with other, less harmful things. Humor Rural Life
March 01, 2017 Nikolayev and Lyuska By Darya Grebenshchikova “Nikolayev hated the cat, wet socks, and his mother-in-law.” Rural Life
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
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...
Murder and the Muse KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
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.
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.
Resilience: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history.
Fearful Majesty This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Best of Russian Life We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two-volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.
The Latchkey Murders Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
December 19, 2016 10 Things (And 5 Jokes) You Didn't Know About Brezhnev By Alice E.M. Underwood Soviet leader Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev would have been 110 on December 19. There are plenty of fun facts and surprising jokes behind the eyebrows. History Humor Politics
September 07, 2021 Using Laughter to Cope By Kate Skorodinskaya These eight outstanding Soviet comedies show some of what has made Russians laugh over the past century. Most are still watched today. (First in our new series on learning about Russia through its films.) Culture Through Film
January 28, 2020 Meet Russia's favorite sable By Maria Antonova Siberian sable fur was once Russia's biggest luxury export, but now we can't get enough of Instagram star Umora, the sable inspiring Russians to never look at fur coats again. Animals Internet Interview
May 31, 2020 Inside Brighton Beach's Babushka Beauty Pageant By The Editors A lovely short film on Brighton Beach's Your Highness Babushka Beauty Contest. Culture Pop Culture Russians Abroad Women Video of the Week Russia File
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
January 10, 2014 Why Don't Russians Smile? By The Editors It is a common trope that Russians never smile. Which of course is interpreted to mean they are unfriendly, gloomy, sullen – positively Dostoyevskian. This, of course, is a complete misreading of body language and cultural norms. Culture Humor Language
