In 1865, vodka joined bears and matryoshkas as an eternal symbol of Russia. Here's how it happened, plus nine trivia tidbits on Russia's most beloved, harmful, and historical libation. 

Photographer Anton Karliner explains why trains, a metro bridge, and World War II have a place in Novosibirsk history.

Today marks the 185th birthday of the artist Ivan Shishkin, whose paintings evoke Russia's beauty and vastness. With a nickname like "Forest Tsar," his trees must be good.

We mined our website's log to see which blog posts were most popular with visitors last year. Here's the list.

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.

A tour of ten distinctive Moscow monuments that goes a long way to summarizing the state of the art in Russia today.

In which we relive the events of 1917 through the words, memories and actions of some of the main players: politicians, artists, and entrepreneurs.

Denis Karagodin solved the case of the murder of his great grandfather.

Where we take you back in time to the collapse of the Soviet Union, through press and reportage as it unfolded at the time.

Soviet leader Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev would have been 110 on December 19. There are plenty of fun facts and surprising jokes behind the eyebrows.

Who was Rasputin? Why has his name become synonymous with the idea that the Russian monarchy was doomed? That is a mystery worth exploring today, on the 100th anniversary of his murder.

Yulia Sulzhenko takes us to her hometown, Tyumen, Siberia's western capital, and the oil and gas capital of Russia.