March 01, 2021 Tipping Point? Just over a decade ago in Moscow, I interviewed Alexey Navalny, who was then only beginning to carve out his profile as a blogger, activist, and politician. It was May of 2008.
March 01, 2009 Arrival of Russian Democracy In the spring of 1989, election fever swept through Russia - a country well experienced in elections, just not free and open ones...
March 07, 2008 Statistics and Damn Lies Robert Coalson (RFE/RL) has just published a superb summary of some of the brazen election abuses during last December's Duma elections in Russia. It would be funny if it were not so sad.
February 26, 2012 Becoming Observers I have slept very little the past two weeks, and I have done very little to prepare for my classes. My students have tired of asking when I will correct their papers, and piles of their notebooks are gradually filling up my room. There is nothing to eat in the house; I have no had any time to get to the store. I am completely overcome by my work in “Citizen Observer"...
November 09, 2020 What Happened in Khabarovsk? How one sparsely-populated region in Russia's Far East became a hotbed of protests in 2020.
June 02, 2021 Boiling Politics! “The political field lives and evolves, it boils during election campaigns.” – On Tuesday May 25, Press Secretary to the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov praises Russia’s political environment.
January 13, 2021 Why Didn't We Think Of That? “If you don't like the current president, only elections can solve the issue.” – President Alexander Lukashenko, of the former Soviet state Belarus, known for having rigged elections last year to continue his run since 1995, among other things.
September 25, 2020 Stumped Russia's election commission performed a "large-scale investigation" into tree stumps used as polling places. Only (?) three cases were found.
December 24, 2022 A Taste of Chekhov This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life. Fiction
July 01, 2015 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... Literature Fiction
November 16, 2011 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. Fiction
October 15, 2015 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. Fiction
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. Literature Fiction
December 01, 2016 The Moscow Eccentric Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century. Fiction
December 01, 2014 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. Nonfiction
December 01, 2008 93 Untranslatable Russian Words Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context. Language Reference Language Learning Nonfiction
October 09, 2011 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. History Nonfiction
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. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
December 12, 2016 Murder and the Muse KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead. Fiction
September 20, 2025 How Russia Got That Way A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends. Nonfiction
