Chukotka

Name: Timur Akhmetov

Age: 34

Profession: Ecologist

City/Region: Chukotka

How long have you been doing photography? What style or genre most interests you? I started doing photography in school, as part of a "tourists circle." Since now I work more in sport tourism, than in ethnographic tourism, that is the genre I photograph now. I would like to get more involved in documentary photography, but so far nothing has come of it.

Can you give us a short description of your city and where your photos are from? I have contributed photos from three locations: the Kupol gold mine – the largest such mine in Chukotka; the winter road; and in Anadyr, the capital of the Chukotka Autonomous Republic.

What is something about your city that only locals would know? Chukotka is where the world's day begins. Chukotka has the places where the 180 degree [longitudial] meridian meets the Arctic Circle – a rather unique geographic point. Chukotka is home to the easternmost point in Russia – Cape Dezhnev.

Which places or sites are a must for someone to see if they visit your city? We don't really have sites, per se. Basically, all our cultural monuments are connected to local populations, nature and culture, borne out of these three things' connectedness. But it is totally worth traveling here to see the way of life of a native population which has been preserved to the present day, one that lives off reindeer herding and harpoon hunting of sea mammals.

Website: timurakhmetov.com

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.

Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.