May 01, 2020 Visions of War On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II this May, we look back at how Soviet and Russian cinema has depicted the war.
May 01, 2019 The May Holidays In early May, everyone is feeling exhausted after a long, vitamin-deprived winter: schoolchildren are dragging themselves to the June 1 school-year finish line, and their parents are just starting to recover from the cold, dark winter. That’s when the holidays hit.
May 01, 2015 Old and New Holidays of Spring There are known and lesser known holidays celebrated each spring. Let's review.
May 01, 2015 Signatures of War What better way to remember veterans of World War II than through portraits? Arthur Bondar’s project takes us there.
May 11, 2017 Victory Day and cheeky chess pieces Victory Day meant full streets but empty skies. A hollow chess piece hides more than its next move. And a day in the life of an Arctic doctor.
December 09, 2020 Rospotrebnadzor, Explained What’s the deal with this governmental agency with the weird name?
May 18, 2020 "Victory Day" Sung from Balconies Despite a quarantine, Russians still managed to join together to celebrate Victory Day (from their balconies).
March 01, 2020 Victory Train: Coming Soon to a Hero-City Near You Russia's "Echelon of Victory" train-borne museum prepares to educate this spring.
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.
301 Things Everyone Should Know About Russia How do you begin to get a handle on the world's largest country? This colorful, illustrated guide will get you started...
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.
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.
Fearful Majesty This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Little Golden Calf Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Far & Away ~ Tales from Rural Russia 33 original stories about modern (and not so modern) life in rural Russia.