Search Results

Soviet leader Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev would have been 110 on December 19. There are plenty of fun facts and surprising jokes behind the eyebrows.

Fighting falsified Russian history, righting incorrect Bulgakovian history, and piecing together just what – and how unified – is the Russian nation. 

The body of Joseph Stalin was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square on October 31, 1961. It may not be as spooky as Halloween, but the former leader still haunts Russia today.

Dmitry Shostakovich created classical music that spoke to modern times. Read up on his life story and listen along to some of finest works along the way. 

What does it look like when a whole town empties out and there’s nothing but a few decaying buildings to prove anyone lived there at all?

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.

On Valentine's Day 65 years ago, the USSR and China signed their Treaty of Friendship. But their budding romance was not to last: just six years later the relationship went south, and nothing has been as rosy since.

The assassination of Sergei Kirov on December 1, 1934, set off one of the bloodiest periods in Russian history. Was it a conspiracy involving the highest ranks of leadership? Or was it all planned and carried out by one "lone gunman"? We may never know.