A Nickel for Your Thoughts

There is a decidedly northern cast to this issue. We didn’t entirely plan it that way. But, as I have written several times in this space, there is a certain serendipity that presides over the publication of Russian Life, and often things just “come together” in ways we only faintly expected.

Over the past month, as the Leviathan buzz increased to a roar, we decided to add two smaller stories about the region to our long-planned features on the Murman coast (page 38) and Norilsk (page 44). As a result, in one issue we seem to have covered almost all of Russia’s nickel mining towns.

Yet it is a different metal that I wish to mention here.