January 01, 2006 Lefortovo The rise of Lefortovo estate as a center of power and activity under the tsars is hard to imagine, given the current state of the bleak park that now inhabits this Moscow region.
January 01, 2006 The Union of Salvation The Union of Salvation was the predecessor of the Decembrist movement, doomed by the tsar it sought to serve.
January 01, 2006 A Soup for the New Year Yelena Ivanovna Molokhovets was the author of Russia's most famous cookbook, A Gift to Young Housewives, first published in 1861. Here is a warm duck soup from her book, plus a bit of history on this important tome.
January 01, 2006 Difficult to be a Writer Forcing our heads down the rabbit hole of history, we gawk in disbelief at Stalin’s phantasmagorical world of denunciations, mass imprisonments and terror.
January 01, 2006 Half of the Sky A piece of autobiographical fiction about childhood in the Soviet Union, on the day of Leonid Brezhnev’s death. Fiction
January 01, 2006 Ballet Map of Russia Everyone has heard of the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky. But what about the great Perm company? Or those of Buryatia or Kazan? Climb aboard, the tour begins now.
January 01, 2006 Never Anyone's Contemporary Osip Mandelstam is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the 20th century, not just in Russia, but in the world.
January 01, 2006 Spycraft Through Film It would be hard to overestimate the cultural impact of film on Russian culture. We plumb the depths of this phenomenon in this year’s Study Russia section.
January 01, 2006 Khrushchev's Secret Speech In an interview with the son of Anastas Mikoyan, one of the key players in the 20th Party Congress, we take a trip behind the curtain of Soviet Oz. Interview
January 01, 2006 Electoral Passions On Sunday, December 4, elections were held for the Moscow City Duma. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, but that did not rein in anyone’s political passions.
