January 29, 2021

Think Before You Post


Think Before You Post
In space, no one can hear you post angry things on the Internet. The RussianLife Files

We've all been there: succumbing to the temptation to comment angrily on a friend's, family member's, or total stranger's political Facebook post. But most of us don't lead one of the largest space agencies on earth.

Dmitri Rogozin, the crooning leader of Roscosmos, found himself banned from Facebook for a day after responding to a Tweet by former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

McFaul had posted a series of messages on Twitter expressing support for Alexey Navalny, whose recent activities have spurred anti-corruption protests throughout Russia. Rogozin's Facebook post, which included screenshots of the original tweet, railed against McFaul's support, saying that "Previously, the Anglo-Saxons wanted to turn us into a banana republic" and that "we will sort out the affairs of our country ourselves."

"So much for American "free speech," he's quoted as saying after the ban had taken effect.

Hopefully, though, this doesn't impact his ability to distribute his latest hits.

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Some of Our Books

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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. 
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Murder and the Muse

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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.

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