December 08, 2021

Free Villi


Free Villi
Russia has decided that beluga whales look more beautiful in the wild than in bathtubs. Wikimedia Commons user Rodrigo.Argenton

The Russian government has released a bunch of captured beluga whales from Srednyaya (Middle) Bay near the town of Nakhodka. The 77 whales have been parked there since 2018 amid international outcry.

They were captured for sale to aquaria and oceanaria, mostly to China.

Not only were the whales released, but their cages were also completely dismantled to prevent future use.

Sakhalin Environment Watch, an NGO, has fought for the return of the captured whales to the wild since 2018.

Since most of the belugas were captured as babies, they needed training not to rely completely on humans for their livelihoods. They were released into the Sea of Okhotsk adjacent to Nakhodka, near Vladivostok.

In other marine mammal news, Crimean border guards recently caught smugglers with an endangered Black Sea bottlenose dolphin worth R1.2 million ($16,200).

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Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

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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.

Life Stories
September 01, 2009

Life Stories

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.

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