March 15, 2016 Socialist Realism and Potatoes: The Dmitry Furmanov Story Writer and commissar Dmitry Furmanov died 90 years ago. If you don’t recognize his name, it may be because he’s better known for his character Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev, a Red Army commander who achieved victory via potatoes. Film & TV History Literature Russia File
February 26, 2016 The Force is Strong There There are some fascinating hidden connections between Star Wars (the movie) and Russia. Let's explore them, shall we? Film & TV Humor Russia File
January 15, 2016 War, Peace and Cable On Monday, January 18, a new BBC six-part miniseries of Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace comes to American television. Here's your crib sheet. Film & TV Literature Russia File
February 23, 2015 Decoding Leviathan Leviathan is not, as virtually every mainstream critic has presumed, “anti-Russian.” I watched the movie resolutely prepared to intensely dislike it. I fully believed it would shamelessly pander to an American public eager to see a film that demonized Putin and made the country seem like a hellish landscape of unsalvageable bleakness. But that was not at all the case. Culture Film & TV Russia File
September 17, 2014 Returning to Putorana We asked Ivan Kobilyakov, whose story on filming wild wolves in Putorana appeared in the Sep/Oct 2014 issue of Russian Life, to give us an update on the project and how filming has gone this summer. He also supplied new photos. Environment Film & TV Regions Russia File
January 07, 2014 The Many Homelands of Sergei Parajanov Start with an Armenian base, drop in some Tbilisi, some Moscow, some Kiev, stir in amazing cinematography and strong political convictions, season with a Siberian labor camp – and voila! You're getting close to the legendary filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. Film & TV Russia File
April 17, 2013 Spies Like Us The Americans, on FX, is a brilliant episodic drama that recreates the 1980s with only minimal anachronisms but plenty of tension, plot twists, double-dealing and moral relativism. Culture Film & TV Int'l Relations Russia File
November 19, 2012 Anna Karenina: The Puppet Version The movie is almost too silly to discuss, as if Saturday Night Live decided to do a parody, but nobody but the costume-director and scene-making crew were ready. A puppet resembling Keira Knightley plays Anna; although thin, even scrawny, the animators make her look almost human. Culture Film & TV Literature Russia File
November 09, 2012 Anna Karenina The First Time In this, the second of two posts on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the author recounts his discovery of the greatest novel of all time: "I had never lived a book as I lived Anna Karenina." Film & TV Literature Russia File
November 08, 2012 Anna Karenina Every Day Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina has been called the greatest novel of all time. But can one really appreciate it as much in English translation versus the Russian original? Film & TV Literature Russia File
January 03, 2012 Lyubov Orlova Lyubov Petrova Orlova was born January 29, 1902 and became the first Soviet movie star and sex symbol. She was also Stalin’s favorite film actress and a highly gifted singer. This is an extended biography of the artist (an abridged version ran in the JanFeb 2012 issue of Russian Life). Culture Film & TV Russia File
July 01, 2011 Chtenia 15 and Summer Movies In her introduction to the next issue of Chtenia (coming in July to a mailbox near you!), Tamara Edelman writes several Russian films set in summer, including a Mosfilm classic I Step through Moscow. "Summer," she writes, "is a time for growing up, a time for educating the senses, for better understanding one's self. It is a time for transformation." Film & TV Russia File
February 28, 2022 to December 31, 2024 Free Russian Language Guided Tours Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York, NY Russian-speaking guides conduct tours of the museum's highlights every Monday at 11 am. Art Exhibit
November 11, 2023 to September 15, 2024 Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West Wende Museum | Culver City, CA This exhibit highlights the resilience and creative power of people deprived of their freedom or their own place to live. Art Exhibit
East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia The very word Siberia evokes a history and reputation as awesome as it is enthralling. In this acclaimed book on Russia’s conquest of its eastern realms, Benson Bobrick offers a story that is both rich and subtle, broad and deep.
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.
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.
Jews in Service to the Tsar Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
The Moscow Eccentric Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
The Little Humpbacked Horse A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
Survival Russian Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.
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...
22 Russian Crosswords Test your knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and society with these 22 challenging puzzles taken from the pages of Russian Life magazine. Most all the clues are in English, but you must fill in the answers in Russian. If you get stumped, of course all the puzzles have answers printed at the back of the book.
Steppe / Степь This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
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.
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.
February 20, 2014 Russian Genealogy A comprehensive listing of resources, online and off, for researching your Russian roots, courtesy of Ginny Audet. History Reference Russia File
August 22, 2016 Magical Kefir Kefir is the most popular fermented milk in Russia. But it did not get there overnight. Kefir and Russia have a long history... Food & Drink History Russia File
February 03, 2018 12 Myths/Truths About Russians and Vodka Think you know your vodka? Take this True/False quiz (just 12 items) about Russians and their vodka and see if you are right about that... Food & Drink Russia File
September 14, 2019 Eight Russian Desserts To Make Your Mouth Water Forget vodka – dessert is the best part of Russian meals. Culture Food & Drink Russia File
August 22, 2020 Sad Smiles and Kremlin Corruption Recounting a 2008 meeting with activist Alexei Navalny, before he rose to prominence. Government Politics Russia File
March 17, 2019 When Russian Cuisine Turns Georgian Why is Georgian food so popular in Russia? Turns out there's more to it than deliciousness. Culture Food & Drink History Russia File
