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As the economy's crisis deepens, President Putin is increasingly focusing on intangibles.

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.

Birth was no easy thing in rural Russia in the nineteenth century, not for mother or child. All manner of bizarre and unsafe practices reigned, from being “corrected,” to getting popped in the oven, to being left alone all day while mom worked in the fields.

Some well know short idioms actually have longer context that helps illuminate their deeper meanings.

Born in 1865, Valentin Serov was one of Russia's greatest painters of the 19th and 20th centuries. His painting, 110 years ago, of Bloody Sunday, captured the tragedy and carnage of that pivotal event.

In December 1564, Ivan the Terrible abdicated the Russian throne. The consequences were dire and continue to affect Russian society, 450 years on.

Moscow is purging theaters, clubs and a media outlet that was at the forefront of covering protest actions.

When the Editors at Russian Life asked me to write about how my friends and I (“the younger generation”) view the current state of Russian-American relations, given the events of 2014, I honestly had to pause and think about it.

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. 

World oil prices are plummeting, the ruble is in free fall, the Russian economy is on the brink of a recession, inflation is climbing, and the Russian Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate has jumped to 17 percent. Meanwhile, President Putin still has popularity ratings in the 80 percent range and there is, seemingly, no panic in the streets of Moscow. What is going on? What is Putin’s game? 

The Soviet war with Finland in 1939-1940 tends to get overshadowed by its notable neighbor, World War II. But in fact, the Winter War was a disaster all its own.