Culture & Customs

Learn some proverbs and eat some blini as the Slavic world prepares to celebrate Butter Week.

This year marks the 235th anniversary of the birth of Antonin Carême, a French chef who left his mark on Russian cuisine in the form of the dessert known in Russia as sharlotka and everywhere else as charlotte Russe.

Belarusian Alexei Usikov has invented a new vehicle – a horsemobile, with the mighty horsepower of one horse.

An uptick in fox domestications leads us to consider a landmark experiment in Novosibirsk that upended assumptions about evolution.

No matter how many times I watch Diamond Arm («Бриллиантовая рука»), I never cease to wonder at the fact that this film managed to make it to screens all across the Soviet Union in April 1969.

Views of Sochi, five years after the close of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in that southern city.

Nikita Khrushchev’s great granddaughter, Nina Khrushcheva, and an expat living and reporting on Russia and the Soviet Union since 1993, Jeffrey Tayler, offer a poignant exploration of the largest country on earth.

As Russia celebrates men on Defenders of the Fatherland Day, it encourages them to have more sex, for the sake of growing the population of the Fatherland. Just not at work. 

Authorities in Krasnoyarsk want to put the Siberian city's best face forward for March's Universiade sporting event, while covering up local pollution and snow-deficit issues. Residents are having none of it.

Graphic designer, traveler, instagram explorer, Katya Kotlyar knows her home city inside out, and sees it as an artist would, as a beautiful backdrop for living.

Two bears (Bers) meet very different fates. Meanwhile, black ice gets a whole new meaning.

Russia’s full of crazy (but lovable) animal stories this week: polar bears, camels, and fathers, oh my!