Culture & Customs

Some off-the-cuff dacha recipes for you (summer seems like too relaxed a time for exacting recipes).

If it’s hard to gracefully say “no” in English, how much harder is it in Russian, where dissembling requires linguistic gifts that you might not have yet developed?

A few images from 1919.

It was Nikolayev’s birthday, which in ordinary years would always start bright and early... but this was no ordinary year...

The exceptional life story of the father of the first Romanov tsar, the reluctant Patriarch, Filaret.

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.

News and brief items from around Russia.

Russians have a sense of time that can often leave foreigners puzzling. So we decided to look at some colloquial expressions about time.

Snakes, shashlik, secret Soviet structures, students: just a few things you can find on Russky Island. 
 

An interview with St. Petersburg photographer Viktor Mogilat, about his thought provoking art.

Predators, prey, and performance artists take the spotlight in this week’s TWERF.

Throughout his long life, Leo Tolstoy had many strange hobbies. One of them was bicycling, which he learned at the ripe age of 67, and which he loved. But that's not to say there weren't some humorous incidents...