When Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was performed from besieged Leningrad on August 9, 1942, music suspended the horrors of war.

It was with mixed feelings of bitter guilt and disgust, overcome with shameful and cowardly thoughts, that I joined the Children of 1917 project.

Our producer, Misha, wanted us to row across the Volga River to visit 100-year-old Tatyana Semyonovna. He felt it would be epic and symbolic. We disagreed...

In which we look at the revolutionary year through the eyes of the people living through it. In this issue, the politicians, the tsar, and Alexander Blok.

On where we want and don't want walls.

As told in two letters, two certificates and the autobiography of one centenarian, who turned 100 on June 16 and is the oldest person in her village of 100.

On June 28, 1762, Catherine (born Sofia Frederika Augusta), the German wife of a weakened tsar, seized Russian throne. She soon earned the appellation "the Great."

The Children of 1917 Expedition is underway. We began in the most logical place: in St. Petersburg...

Thirty years ago today, US President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Two years later, the wall came down after a German bureaucrat misspoke.

Where we discuss seven outstanding Soviet movies from the 1960s dealing with rural Russia, humaneness, and the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution that, instead of contributing to the revolution’s legacy, gathered dust for decades.

In cooperation with the “Lived” Project, Arzamas selected personal diary entries written immediately before their authors were arrested during the Great Terror. Almost all of these diaries were kept in the FSB Archive – the principal source of information for historians working on the events of 1937 – 1938.

This is a short extract from a satirical book published in 1837, from which we learn: what sorts of bribes there are; why it is better to take a bribe during lunch; why gaudy is better than a bullfinch; the language in which one should speak of bribes; and how to avoid punishment for receiving bribes.