March 29, 2021

Who's Not Done With Quarantine?


Who's Not Done With Quarantine?
Lavrov in his Covid finest. Screenshot from the Tiktok account of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov traveled to China this week for a working visit and was caught with his mask up.

Lavrov was filmed in Guilin County wearing a mask he had received from a group of journalists the day before. The inscription on the mask reads “FCKNG QRNTN.” We'll let you fill in the rest.

Russian journalists have vocalized appreciation for the Minister’s sense of fashion. Journalist Dmitry Kiselev wrote on Telegram: “Sergei Lavrov is just a handsome man!”

He also reminded readers that Lavrov is the “minister of the country that is certainly controlling Covid better than the West,” sent greetings to those who thought they knew better than Russia, praised Sputnik V, and recommended that no one “suffer because of the police, who stroke you with clubs and water cannons.”

The video of Lavrov was posted to the Tiktok account of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the video, Lavrov is standing on the deck of a boat gliding past mountains and tall willowy trees.

There might be worse ways to spend this FCKNG QRNTN.

 

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The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

Moscow and Muscovites
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Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

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Steppe
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The Moscow Eccentric
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