The recent controversy about a new film on the last tsar and the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya is stirring up controversy well in excess of what one might expect.

A good mystery begins unexpectedly in the unlikeliest of places. And then it takes you where you never imagined. This one took the author halfway around the world and more than a hundred years back in time.

Icons have been revered in Russia for centuries, and when it comes to miracle-working icons, pilgrims will travel thousands of kilometers to seek their divine assistance. 
We look at three you can find in Moscow.

Minsk is a city built for giants. And it is where we met a great soul, Maria Fyodorovna Rylik, who dedicated her life to teaching and her family.

In which a retired Polish butcher explains how to live to be 100 and serenades us on his trumpet.

On the importance of coffee, academicians, a museum, a rooster, the harvesting of turf, and collectivization.

In which we look at the events of 1917 through the words and works of the politicians, artists, and luminaries living through them.

Photographic proof that all we have done on this trip is work, work, work... and nap.

When Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was performed from besieged Leningrad on August 9, 1942, music suspended the horrors of war.

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

Our producer, Misha, wanted us to row across the Volga River to visit 100-year-old Tatyana Semyonovna. He felt it would be epic and symbolic. We disagreed...

In which we look at the revolutionary year through the eyes of the people living through it. In this issue, the politicians, the tsar, and Alexander Blok.