January 01, 2019

Four Million Words


Four Million Words

We have had a website since 1993. It began as an ecommerce site, to sell all our books and maps. (For the record, Amazon did not get started until 1994. Just sayin'.)

When we took over Russian Life magazine in 1995, the site added information about issue contents, online-only articles, and of course we also sold subscriptions online.

There have been several redesigns, reboots, and enhancements over the years, and databases have always been an important part of the Russian Life website (to make it more dynamic and useful) – from a catalog of all our magazine's articles, to historical dates, to companies, to schools where Russian is being taught.

Views of Websites Past

 

Last July we decided to kick things up several notches. Our New Russian Life crowdfunding campaign raised funds to (1) rationalize and unify all of our databases and digital content, and (2) put all of the back issue content of Russian Life online – saving it for posterity, while making it accessible to readers and researchers anywhere in the world.

We have been thinking for many years about how we would do all this, what tools we would use, and how it would all look. Executing on those ideas over the past six months has been a huge undertaking (and we're not done yet). Nothing we have done with our website over the previous 25 years can even begin to compare. A huge shout out goes to our web engineer and full stack developer Scott Widmer. He has helped make this process smooth and rational.

The website is built on the very powerful, open-source CMS system called Mura. We have been using Mura for over a decade to manage the website, but never have we used it to its full potential until now. Mura will allow us to scale the site up immeasurably, to manage and edit articles from contributors from all over the world, and to have it all perform at high speed and efficiency. Together with a Slatwall ecommerce solution, it will also allow us to sell online subscriptions, manage print subscriptions, and unify our content-focused website with our commerce-focused website for the first time into one seamless whole.

When complete, the online archive of 24 years of Russian Life will include over 8,000 articles, and over 4,000,000 words, all indexed and searchable.

And it will only grow from there!

Thank you to all our readers, supporters, backers and partners in this upgrade. We encourage you to bookmark and return to the site weekly. Our audacious goal is to make russianlife.com the most useful, influential online resource for Russophiles the world over. And we can only do that with your help.

You Might Also Like

Olga's Amazing Work of Art
  • November 14, 2018

Olga's Amazing Work of Art

Olga Ezova-Denisova explains in words and pictures the complex process behind making her special bear linocut prints for our New Russian Life project.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Turgenev Bilingual

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.
The Samovar Murders

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.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

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.
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955