Few trips anywhere in the world rival the Trans-Siberian Railway. A six-day, seven-night, 9250 kilometer-long trip across the girth of the world’s largest country, it is also, as novelist Peter Aleshkovsky found, a trip into Russia’s past.
Baron Peter Shafirov was a little-known hero of Russian diplomacy who also happened to be a Jew converted to Orthodoxy. He helped guide statecraft under Peter the Great, was richly rewarded and, later, soundly vilified, his in-and-out-of-favor career reflecting the tumultuous times in which he lived.
The mountainous, remote region of Tuva tends to be known for just two things:?postage stamps and throat singing. We take up the latter in our visit with four internationally renowned throat singers from Tuva, to find out what makes them tick... and sing.
Readers comment and correct.
Where we look at the impact and impressions of Vice President Joe Biden's speech dissing Russia and its place in the world, just days after President Obama left Moscow and the "feel-good summit" with President Medvedev.
All the news that fits from all across Russia.
The latest from the travel front.
Where we follow along on Nikita Khrushchev's magical mystery tour of the US in 1959...
Peter I and Sophia (his elder step sister) should not have been at odds. They both carried out some of the same sorts of reforms. But you can only have one tsar...
Andrei Platonov was born to be a Bolshevik. And also one of the 20th century's greatest writers. He soon broke with the Party and had a tortured relationship with his art. He died in poverty.
Fallen in the milk lately? Everyone does. Apparently some more than others. Like Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for example.
In which we explode yet another myth. The Washington-Moscow Hotline does not employ glowing red telephones and is actually very rarely used. Yet it is still a fascinating institution, one apparently designed to sidestep common human shortcomings.
Boris Kustodiev's "Merchant's Wife at Tea" is the takeoff point for a discourse on revolution, nobility and fine food, in this case Rogaliki - Walnut Crescents.
Reviews of the film Gagarin's Grandson, the PBS series Keeping Score, as well as the books The Lost Spy, Spymaster, Everything Flows, A Hero of Our Time and Trotsky.
August 2 is Paratroopers' Day. Which means lots of striped-shirted guys bathing in Moscow fountains...
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