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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.

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.

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 

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.

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. 

A bilingual presentation of one of the great classics of Russian literature.

33 original stories about modern (and not so modern) life in rural Russia.

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.

This edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.

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.

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.

How it was that in the eighteenth century Russian mythology was trumped-up in the Western manner? Who wanted it? And where did we get Lel, Yarilo and Zimtserla? We explain everything you'd want to know about Russian fakelore.

June 22, 2020, marks the 79th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia that changed the course of WWII and, perhaps, history itself.

Why is Georgian food so popular in Russia? Turns out there's more to it than deliciousness.

Russian literature has an answer for everything. In the times of coronovirus, this is your guide.

On this, the occasion of the great writer's 200th birthday, we offer some links to stories we have published about him over the years, as well as some cool videos. Happy reading and viewing!

Some of the best Russian and Soviet films about World War II that you can stream online.

What do radio, television, the periodic table, and helicopters have in common? Russians were involved in developing all of them – and more!

Think you know your vodka? Take this True/False quiz (just 12 items) about Russians and their vodka and see if you are right about that...

Soviet leader Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev would have been 110 on December 19. There are plenty of fun facts and surprising jokes behind the eyebrows.

Kefir is the most popular fermented milk in Russia. But it did not get there overnight. Kefir and Russia have a long history...

Peace! Land! Bread! This was the battle cry of the 1917 October Revolution (old calendar) that changed the history of Russia and indeed the entire world. Since the time of Ivan the Terrible, the tsars concentrated on centralization of their power and control. The most common way of doing this was to take power away from the nobility, appeasing them by giving them dominion over their land and workers. This soon developed into the oppressive, slave-style condition known as serfdom.

Russia’s Ministry of Health discussed ways vodka can affect the coronavirus (spoiler alert: not much).