March/April 2015

On Russia's nickel mining and our silver anniversary.

Readers share their opinions.

On new regulations restricting foreigners' travel and what it takes to get a work permit in the federation.

All the news that fits.

Everything of note on the travel front.

This issue's Trends section looks at the impact of inflation and the dustup over Leviathan.

The writer Yuri Nagibin led an incredibly hard life, although, by Soviet standards, from the outside his life may have looked charmed.

Today it is hard to imagine the revolutionary atmosphere that pervaded the Soviet Union in March and April of 1985.

On April 26, 1715, Peter I published his Military Statute, which remained in effect until the mid-nineteenth century.

A look back at the end of St. Petersburg's avant garde hangout for poets and bohemians.

There has been a proliferation of professional holidays in Russia, and those falling in the spring have a peculiar "bent" toward the military and law enforcement bodies...

The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by an often incomprehensible war of words. We investigate.

This issue's language insert looks at the work of Yuri Nagibin, featured in the Calendar section.

Photojournalist Mikhail Mordasov traveled to Russia’s furthest northwestern outpost to see the town where the acclaimed movie Leviathan was filmed.

There is another Teriberka story that predates the current Leviathan dust-up. It involves a willful captain, fishing rights and, oh yes, the Norwegian navy.

The remote Russian-Norwegian-Finnish borderlands offer some of the starkest contrasts between cultures and history you will find anywhere on Earth.

Norilsk is home to Eurasia’s deepest mine and richest nickel and copper ores. We tag along with a mine inspector and rescuer, descending over 200 meters below ground.

The Caucasus is a region rich in tradition and often impenetrable to outside understanding. The modernized ritual of “bride kidnapping” is a case in point; we asked a local journalist to guide us.

No time like Lent for some Shchi! We offer both lenten and non-lenten options for making this hearty and tasty dish.

Reviews of a book by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, "My Fellow Prisoners," "Alexis in America, by Lee Farrow, "Midnight in Siberia," by by NPR host David Greene, "Trepanation of the Skull," by Sergei Gandlevsky, and "An American Diplomat in Bolshevik Russia," by DeWitt Clinton Poole.

Author and journalist Alexei Bayer ruminates on chess champion and political activist Garry Kasparov, who appeared recently in New York.