January 11, 2022

Slavify Your Instagram Feed


Slavify Your Instagram Feed
Unfortunately, you can't follow Kandinsky himself on Instagram.  Photo by Kate Torline via Unsplash

Russian language news site Meduza recently published a list of eight of the best and most interesting contemporary Russian artists to follow on social media.

While many are familiar with some of the great works of classic Russian art, less know about the thriving 21st-century art scene. Plus, while you don’t need to know Russian to appreciate great art when you see it, seeing Russian text on your social media feed is a great way to brush up on your language skills and learn new vocabulary.

Tatiana Efrussi makes unique paintings on different mediums to reflect the theme she is working with (for example, when painting about the Coronavirus pandemic, she created a long depiction of the monotony of lockdown on a strip of wallpaper). Alina Glazoun creates really charming pieces of visual art by taking ordinary objects and images and attaching words and phrases to them.

Nadya Likhogrud’s work is much more traditional, as she creates delicate and incredibly small ceramic figurines of children and people. Artists like Ivan Simonov do the opposite and create large paintings as public art installations on the street, often as a form of social protest. 

Other artists featured in Meduza’s article are Gleb Baranov, Fedora Akimova, Dimitri Shabalin, and Elizaveta Nesterova, each providing their own artistic contributions to the internet.

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Steppe
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Steppe

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.

White Magic
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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
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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. 

Survival Russian
February 01, 2009

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.

Jews in Service to the Tsar
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.

The Moscow Eccentric
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At the Circus
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At the Circus

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

93 Untranslatable Russian Words
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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.

Faith & Humor
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Faith & Humor

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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.

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