June 19, 2017

Meet the Team


Meet the Team

The goal of the Children of 1917 Project is to create a book and film from the interviews, footage, photos, and stories gathered during our team’s journalistic travels. It will involve extensive time on the road and require all its members to perform a variety of roles, drawing on expertise and experience they did not know they had. In the end, our goal is to gather and share the stories of up to two-dozen Russian centenarians.

Since we will be asking lots of questions of our interview subjects, we thought it only fair to start off by answering some questions about ourselves, so that readers can get to know us all a bit better.

The team in Ostrovki. From left: Zhenya Mashchenko, Nadya Grebennikova, Mikhail Mordasov. Not pictured: Paul Richardson.

NADEZHDA (NADYA) GREBENNIKOVA (journalist, translator, photographer-whisperer) takes great pride in the fact that she was born above the Arctic Circle, in Murmansk Oblast. She studied journalism in Veliky Novgorod, where she met and married Mikhail Mordasov. For the past several years the couple has made Sochi their home. She works as a journalist for print and online publications, writing on a wide range of subjects, from society and history, to culture, travel and the environment.

What is your favorite food? Fish of any sort. Except Surströmming (fermented Baltic Sea herring, a traditional northern Swedish dish).

What would you be doing now if you were not doing this project? I would be writing an article about my recent travels to Marrakesh, studying Swedish, and taking morning swims in the pool. And jealously following the exploits of the Children of 1917 expedition.

What is something interesting no one normally knows about you? I plan to live to 115. I am now actively investigating the secrets of long life.

Where is one place in the world you have not been but would like to go? Scotland. Because “my heart's in the highlands.”

YEVGENY (ZHENYA) MASHCHENKO (filmographer, resident expert on all things Asian) is the newest (and youngest) member of our production team. Born in the city of Yurga, Keremovo oblast, his family moved to Chita when he was eight. After he finished school, he moved to Krasnodar, where he studied to be a documentary filmmaker. He has worked on a variety of film projects, from Khafiz in Chechnya to a blind student music school, from punk rockers in Burma to the Rohingya people of Burma. Most recently he survived work on a documentary about a retired hitman. He is looking forward to working on this more “sedate” subject.

What is your favorite food? Pad See Ew (Thai Stir Fried Noodles).

What would you be doing now if you were not doing this project? Working on a film project in Krasnodar or Rostov-on-Don.

What is something interesting no one normally knows about you? I am a Siberian.

Where is one place in the world you have not been but would like to go? Iceland. Japan.

MIKHAIL (MISHA) MORDASOV (photographer, producer, fixer extraordinaire) was born in Novgorod and educated as a lawyer. Thankfully, however, he did not follow the law, having gotten hooked on photography while doing his compulsory military service. He now does freelance photography throughout Russia and Europe for a wide variety of top Western and Russian publications, and has received numerous awards and accolades. He considers surviving a 6000km road trip with Richardson to be one of his greatest achievements in life, yet still not as difficult as teaching photography courses to newbies.   

What is your favorite food? Wild trout or salmon, cooked over an open fire on the banks of the White Sea. Truthfully, I have only had this dish once in my life.

What would you be doing now if you were not doing this project? Most likely I would be in Sochi, swimming in the sea in the morning, and spending the rest of the day thinking about my next project or shooting a project about lost homelands.

What is something interesting no one normally knows about you? I have a new hobby: jumping rope. I even brought along a rope on the trip and had the idea of doing it in every city we visit. But at the end of the day I only have the energy to gather a few photos for the blog.

Where is one place in the world you have not been but would like to go? Japan, because I love fish, rice, mountains and the ocean.

PAUL (PASHA) RICHARDSON (journalist, photographer, coffee-addict) was born in California, went to school in the Midwest, and now calls Vermont home. Bit by the Russian bug while in college, he helped run a Moscow-based Canadian-Soviet joint venture in the 1980s, then returned to the US to create a publishing company focused on Russia. When not writing, translating or doing Russia-related things, he can usually be found running or photographing Vermont’s back roads, but never mowing the lawn. He finds one of life’s most difficult challenges to be choosing between a single-malt scotch and a double IPA.

What is your favorite food? It’s a three-way-tie: rib eye steak, tacos, and cherry pie.

What would you be doing now if you were not doing this project? Scheming about another, similar sort of project, or maybe translating some Chekhov.

What is something interesting no one normally knows about you? Before being seduced by journalism and Russia, I wanted to be a chef. As a result, I still have amazing knife skills (for cutting up vegetables, that is).

Where is one place in the world you have not been but would like to go? Scotland.


Map of our travels so far

(Also follow the link in the right column next to any blog post.)

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
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.
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. 
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

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.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

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.
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
Fish: A History of One Migration

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.
Marooned in Moscow

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.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

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