Photography, food and spies comprise this week's Three Best Reads. We travel to Vilnius, Brooklyn, and Washington, DC, to consider wagging tongues, boiled tongues, and an overlooked photographer.

Select images from the Children of 1917 book and film project.

On borders, learning Polish, the influence of culture, and the importance of a sense of humor.

“On Saturdays, smoke drifts over the village. The banyas are being heated.” Let’s go!

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

Early morning police raids and the conundrum that Kirill Serebrennikov and his Gogol Theater are facing.

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 the eve of our visit, the ambulance came for Maria Nikolayevna Ryabtsova: there was something wrong with her neck. The doctor examined her, but found nothing serious. He did an EKG and was surprised: “if only everyone had a heart like yours,” he said.

Since we will be asking lots of questions of our interview subjects, we thought it only fair to answering some questions about ourselves, so that readers can get to know us all a bit better.

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.

Known as a female Chekhov and skilled at painting the human condition as hilarious and hideous in one stroke, Teffi is a little-known author you should get to know. 

Catherine I held the title of Empress 40 years before her more famous, “Great” namesake. As the first woman to rule Russia, she had great qualities of her own.