March 01, 2002 Rubbing Elbows With the Stars? Some Russian Life readers have suggested that we need to avoid the “glitterati” in our series on “100 Young Russians To Watch” – we should write less about ballerinas and cinema stars. I partially agree.
July 01, 2014 Cold War in Space As the New Cold War between the US and Russia heats up, joint space ventures, some 40 years in the making, are in the crosshairs.
May 01, 2008 The First Woman in Space Never "one of the boys," Valentina Tereshkova became an icon, a symbol for Soviet space achievements. But she only ever went into space once.
May 01, 2003 Valentina Tereshkova On June 16, 1963, 40 years ago, the first female cosmonaut in history, Valentina Tereshkova, launched into space aboard Vostok-6.
September 01, 2007 Kaluga's Rocket Scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the father of Russian space travel. A quirky, half-deaf teacher, he inspired generations with his idealistic views of the age to come.
September 01, 2003 Miracles on a Shoestring The Russian Space Program has enjoyed a remarkable string of successes and firsts over the past half-century. But, since the fall of the USSR, it has been forced to adapt to new, more commercial realities. We sent Nick Allen to Baikonur, the main Russian launch site, to report back on how the program is fairing.
March 01, 2011 50 Years in Space On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to orbit the earth. By all accounts, they could not have chosen a better man for the mission.
November 01, 2012 Where We First Touched Outer Space The world's largest and most active space port is situated in the middle of the Kazakh desert. Largely off-limits to outsiders, it is an unusual mix of hi-tech and low-key. And it was from here, just over 50 years ago, that humankind first reached out to touch the stars.
April 12, 2019 To the Kokosmos For Cosmonautics Day 2019, Anna Radchenko directs a surreal meditation on space. Watch the complete film on Russian Life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Resilience: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history.
East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia The very word Siberia evokes a history and reputation as awesome as it is enthralling. In this acclaimed book on Russia’s conquest of its eastern realms, Benson Bobrick offers a story that is both rich and subtle, broad and deep.
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.
Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction For over 100 years, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection changes that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Russian Rules From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
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.
