January/February 2006

Forcing our heads down the rabbit hole of history, we gawk in disbelief at Stalin’s phantasmagorical world of denunciations, mass imprisonments and terror.

Readers comment and correct.

On Sunday, December 4, elections were held for the Moscow City Duma. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, but that did not rein in anyone’s political passions.

All the news that fits from all across Russia.

The latest from the travel front.

Double agent or simply agent provocateur? Yevno Azef was one of the first instigators of terrorism and had a life as mysterious as it was despicable.

The Union of Salvation was the predecessor of the Decembrist movement, doomed by the tsar it sought to serve.

The rise of Lefortovo estate as a center of power and activity under the tsars is hard to imagine, given the current state of the bleak park that now inhabits this Moscow region.

In honor of Valentine's Day, we consider different terms of endearment.

It would be hard to overestimate the cultural impact of film on Russian culture. We plumb the depths of this phenomenon in this year’s Study Russia section.

A piece of autobiographical fiction about childhood in the Soviet Union, on the day of Leonid Brezhnev’s death.

In an interview with the son of Anastas Mikoyan, one of the key players in the 20th Party Congress, we take a trip behind the curtain of Soviet Oz.

Yelena Ivanovna Molokhovets was the author of Russia's most famous cookbook, A Gift to Young Housewives, first published in 1861. Here is a warm duck soup from her book, plus a bit of history on this important tome.

A trip home for is a challenging start to a New Year and a new marriage.

A review of a collection of stories by Leonid Dobychin, a biography of Pasternak, and a cultural study of the Evenk people of the north.

An elegy to one of Russia's greatest modern thinkers, Mikhail Gasparov, who passed away in late 2005.