May/June 2016

The best trips are those that are unpredictable, that defy expectations and surprise you.

The study of history in Russia has become increasingly dangerous for anyone who fails to stick to official narratives.

All the news that fits.

Everything noteworthy on the travel front.

There is a flourishing field that defies the current sour public mood and is attracting ever increasing crowds of young people: education.

Vasily Ivanovich Shuysky is generally treated as a minor figure in the history of the Time of Troubles, which is not just.

20 years ago this month, Soviets were first granted rights to unfettered foreign travel.

A short primer on some useful and not so acceptable bits of prison jargon.

A family's summer vacation in the country is disturbed by a mysterious letter.

This May is the 125th birthday of one of the greatest of Russian writers. Unfortunately, he saw little of his fame during his lifetime.

Last fall, Russian Life editor Paul Richardson and photojournalist Mikhail Mordasov set off on a Kickstarter-funded, month-long, 6,000-kilometer road trip between Russia’s northern and southern borders.

It can't be easy to make a mark in a sport where your grandfather long ago made your family name legendary, but Victor Tikhonov is giving it a snapshot.

Twenty years ago, scheduled flights halted at this distant, Siberian airfield. But that hasn't stopped Vladimir Prokopiyev and his wife Gerald from keeping the landing strip in working order.

The revolt of the Czech Legionnaires along the Trans-Siberian imperiled the young Bolshevik regime. And when they became successful, their actions helped precipitate the gruesome end to the Romanov dynasty.

In celebration of Tsar Alexander III’s coronation in May 1883, the renowned artist Viktor Vasnetsov designed menus for a series of festive dinners.

Reviews of Mikhail Elizarov's The Librarian, Oleg Kashin's Fardwor, Russia and Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar's Painter in America and Paris

Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, staged a poetry slam of sorts with writer Dmitry Bykov after he published a lyrical comment about the initiative announced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu: to launch a national soccer league. This poetic exchange, however, is more about Zakharova’s verbal style than the substance of the matter.