January 01, 2020 Not the End of the World By Yevgenia Volunkova After being made redundant as a lighthouse keeper on a remote White Sea island, Lyudmila has taken it upon herself to defend her dying village from government indifference. Economy Government Social Issues
December 26, 2019 Kazan Witnesses Transgender Marriage By Katrina Keegan The bride said that they encountered no problems because they had already changed their appearance to look like a traditional man and woman, and had received new documents that reflect their gender identity. Humor Social Issues Russia File
October 20, 2019 Adding Me, and You, and All of Us to AdMe.ru By Katrina Keegan In which we visit the weird world of the homegrown Russian Buzzfeed. Humor Internet Media Social Issues
July 01, 2019 Talking Trash By The Editors For several months, there has been a steady trickle of news reports from Shiyes, a nondescript railway station nestled amid forests and lakes not far from Syktyvkar, that sound as if they are coming from a war zone. Environment Regions Social Issues
July 01, 2019 Just a Second... By Yuliya Ballou Russians have a sense of time that can often leave foreigners puzzling. So we decided to look at some colloquial expressions about time. Culture Customs Social Issues
May 01, 2019 Russians on the Border By Christopher Sandford Nestled up against the US border with Canada there is an unusually high concentration of Russian- Americans. This requires some investigation... History Russians Abroad Social Issues
April 11, 2019 Come Out and Play By Katrina Keegan Defending gay rights, yoga, recycling, and a stress-free childhood. Yes, in Russia. Humor News Social Issues The Weekly Russia File
March 10, 2019 Not Such a Flowering Holiday By Katrina Keegan March 8 struggles with the duality of being the day of women and the day of “womanness.” Holidays Social Issues Women
March 01, 2019 A Soviet Fox for Post-Soviet Man By Natalya Beskhlebnaya An uptick in fox domestications leads us to consider a landmark experiment in Novosibirsk that upended assumptions about evolution. Agriculture Science Social Issues
January 01, 2019 Snapshot By The Editors Stats on HIV, salaries, doing business, death from bad eating habits, and more. Culture Economy Social Issues
December 13, 2018 Sex, Drugs, and Rockin' Rectors By Irina Bukharin This week is all about the places where Russians and new cultural phenomena meet, for better and for worse. Religion Social Issues
September 13, 2018 Life, Death, and Pizza By Irina Bukharin Climate change is destroying Russia and people still want to duel, but at least someone’s getting free pizza. Environment Food & Drink News Politics Religion Social Issues The Weekly Russia File
October 15, 2021 to April 03, 2022 Icons for Our Time: Orthodox Art from Around the World Museum of Russian Icons | Clinton, MA Fifteen contemporary icons from fifteen countries explore iconography today. Presented in celebration of the museum's 15th Anniversary. Art Exhibit
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Murder and the Muse KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
Driving Down Russia's Spine The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.
The Moscow Eccentric Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
The Best of Russian Life We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two-volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.
Marooned in Moscow This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
The Little Humpbacked Horse A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
White Magic The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Jews in Service to the Tsar Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
The Latchkey Murders Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
July 01, 2013 The Russian Bees Will Save Us By Paul E. Richardson American bees are dying from mysterious causes, putting our agriculture at risk for lack of pollinators. Russian bees might be part of a solution. Agriculture Environment Science
March 01, 2019 Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevsky W.W. Norton has released a new translation, by Michael Katz, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel. We excerpt here the novel’s opening. Literature St. Petersburg
October 30, 2021 Happy 200th, Dostoyevsky! By The Editors On this, the occasion of the great writer's 200th birthday, we offer some links to stories we have published about him over the years, as well as some cool videos. Happy reading and viewing! History Literature Russia File
May 07, 2015 The Most Useful Russian Inventions By Eugenia Sokolskaya What do radio, television, the periodic table, and helicopters have in common? Russians were involved in developing all of them – and more! Reference Science
September 01, 2019 Returning from Afar By Benson Bobrick An excerpt from Benson Bobrick’s new book, a memoir of his life and work as a writer. Memoir Travel
October 14, 2016 Five Wild Facts about St. Basil's Cathedral By Alice E.M. Underwood On October 14, 1991, St. Basil’s Cathedral was reopened after six decades. Here are five fun facts in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Cathedral’s rebirth. Culture History Religion
