December 29, 2019

The Year's Most Popular on Russian Life


The Year's Most Popular on Russian Life
Looking back on the best of 2019 Elena Bobrova

This year, Russian Life expanded online to include the full archive of all 25 years of the magazine, all while continuing to add lots of new and fresh online-only content. A few days ago, we highlighted our favorite Weekly Russia File stories from this year. And here, in case you missed them, are the online articles we published in 2019 that readers liked best.

In 2019, readers salivated over articles about food. Life is short, eat dessert first: our third most popular article of the year was all about Russian sweets. (A couple of them you might literally eat first, for breakfast!) Getting back to the basics, also on our Top 10 list were articles about soup and porridge, with all the information you could ever need to understand your “first course” or learn about the illustrious history of kasha. Of course, all three articles are linked up to dozens of our recipes, so you can taste Russia at home. But wait, there’s more than Russia: ever wondered why Georgian food is nearly as common in Russia as Chipotle in America? We have answers to all your burning questions about foods that start with kh: khachapuri and khinkali

Readers also loved articles about history gone wrong – from someone’s perspective, at least. Invading Russia, it seems, was a bad idea for Hitler. A “docuseries” about the unfortunate last Czars (Plural? Did Netflix think there was more than one of them?) was history gone wrong on television. Chernobyl, on the other hand, was a historical incident that went very, very wrong – but at least they got it right this time on the silver screen. 

In articles about Russian historical memorials, we also learned where history had gone big and where it had gone... weird. We know at least our readers weren’t planning on going home: they were reading up on tips for travelling the Russian rails, and stories about what they might encounter on their journeys. (Those who did stay a little closer to home made the trip to New York City’s Russian enclave, Brighton Beach). 

We also highlighted some wonderful individuals. Our birthday message to Dostoyevsky was suitably dark, and we reported on a “с днëм рождения” to cosmonaut Alexei Leonov that was literally out of this world. For those who prefer their blog subjects to be modern and female, we also had some popular articles in the Piter’s People series: food journalist Natalia Kapiturova and artist Ekaterina Khozatskaya

We celebrated Maslenitsa with proverbs and wondered whether we should celebrate Russia’s birthday at all. We rocked out to Russian music, and learned what grammatical choices are music to a persnickety language teacher’s ears. 

And… we opened our digital archives to so, so much more life in Russia. This was the year our print magazine came online, and, if you have a subscription, you can read the articles that revealed the hidden lives of women at the top of the world and the hidden contents of women’s purses; that explored the holy labyrinths of Altai and the spread of distinctly not-holy hogweed; that turned Russia’s most well-known poet into a meme and a poet you didn’t know that you know into, well, a poet you now know. And that just scratches the surface.

Thank you, dear readers, for a fun, far-out, tasty, critical, celebratory 2019. We look forward to finding you in your inboxes, Facebook feeds, and phone screens in 2020. 

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Some of Our Books

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.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

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.
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...
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

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.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

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.
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.
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
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.
A Taste of Chekhov

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.

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