July 01, 2019 Talking Trash For several months, there has been a steady trickle of news reports from Shiyes, a nondescript railway station nestled amid forests and lakes not far from Syktyvkar, that sound as if they are coming from a war zone.
September 01, 2004 Saving Baikal You would think it would be easy being the deepest, cleanest, most ecologically diverse lake in the world. But Baikal has had a rough go of it this past century. We report on how a handful of non-profits is working to reverse civilization's assault.
January 01, 2021 Restoring the Future A determined artist, photographer, and activist takes on the restoration of some wooden homes in a village just outside of Samara. In the process, she learns much about angle grinders, her fellow Russians, and, of course, herself.
January 01, 1990 Publishing Green RIS Publications, the publisher of Russian Life magazine, was founded in 1990 on the principle that paying attention to international issues matters. While U.S.-Russian relations and the history and society of the world’s largest country are important, there is no larger international issue than the health of this planet.
January 24, 2019 Mud-slinging and Money-making This week got a little shifty, with trash sent in packages, a possible tax evasion scheme, and a game retelling a contentious moment in recent Russian history.
April 27, 2019 Lights, camera, shovels! Russian officials participating in the subbotnik spring cleaning take a page from Lenin's book (the one about propaganda).
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
Tolstoy Bilingual This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
Chekhov Bilingual Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
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
November 01, 2012 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. Nonfiction
Okudzhava Bilingual Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
March 05, 2018 Resilience: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history. Nonfiction
November 01, 2019 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. Fiction
December 24, 2022 Kashtanka – A Bilingual Reader A bilingual presentation of one of the great classics of Russian literature. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
May 01, 2013 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. Fiction
July 15, 2022 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. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
May 01, 2024 Dostoyevsky Bilingual Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. Bilingual Books Language Learning
