July 13 is the anniversary of Isaac Babel's birth. Now celebrated as one of teh great writers of the twentieth century, he had a very difficult time gaining acceptance during his lifetime, and repeatedly suffered from antisemitism, official and otherwise.

How many characters are in Tolstoy's War and Peace? Could it have been any shorter? Did Tolstoy himself love it or hate it? Find out the answers to these – and more! – questions in this quick list of little-known War and Peace facts.

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...

A look back at the end of St. Petersburg's avant garde hangout for poets and bohemians.

The writer Yuri Nagibin led an incredibly hard life, although, by Soviet standards, from the outside his life may have looked charmed.

We have just finished our 45-day Kickstarter project for the book Red Star Tales, and we are speechless. Almost.

On January 8, 1815 was the monumental "meeting" of Alexander Pushkin and Gavrila Derzhavin, the greatest poets of their respective generations.

Boris Pasternak was born 125 years ago. We look back at how he has been remembered.

As a special gift, we share a somewhat untypical holiday story, reprinted from the pages of Chtenia, by the master humorist and short story writer Mikhail Zoshchenko. 

In honor of the International Day of the Translator, a few words from Boris Pasternak, the Russian voice of Shakespeare, on translating and the power of English.

Mikhail Lermontov, whom many consider Russia‘s second greatest poet, was born 200 years ago. We consider the enduring mysteries of his philosophy and work.

A second sample from Alexei Bayer's mystery novel Murder at the Dacha. Here, inspector Pavel Matushkin redeems a favor to get some information from a gangster.