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A subscription to Russian Life is far more than the bound magazine you pull from your mailbox or the articles you read on our website. When you subscribe to Russian […]

"Nikolai Avenirovich Shabunin was a quiet, unassuming person, likable in the truest sense of the word, Russian through and through. He was a serious worker, an excellent painter, endowed with […]

Clean drinking water is a basic life necessity. Yet a shortage of this vital resource threatens to become the main ecological problem of our time, in urgency and significance even […]

Sometimes you meet a person and immediately know that you are headed in the same direction. And if that meeting takes place in one of the most beautiful places on […]

VICTOR PLAYED THE ACCORDION IN THE HOUSE OF CULTURE. He loved the stage and smart clothing. And so, when he was sent into early retirement because of a disability, he […]

Just over a decade ago in Moscow, I interviewed Alexei Navalny, who was then only beginning to carve out his profile as a blogger, activist, and politician. It was May […]

Tatiana Copeland is the daughter of Russian emigrants. Her mother was of the ancient Russian noble family Satin, through which she is related (grandniece) to the composer Sergei Rachmaninov. And […]

GALINA VALERYANOVNA GREBNEVA MOSCOW 19 AUGUST 1917 Galina Grebneva (born Kortova) is a diminutive woman with straight hair cut just below her chin line. Completely blind and with slightly diminished […]

PUTIN'S RUSSIA: THE RISE OF A DICTATOR By Darryl Cunningham (Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95) How graphic novels and graphic nonfiction work is something like the way documentaries do, but slower. […]

We are inching through an October snowstorm along an icy, narrow portion of the Georgian Military Highway, navigating hairpin turns and keeping maximum distance between our rented Rav4 and the […]

2016 is the fortieth anniversary of the release of Hedrick Smith's path breaking book, The Russians. The first book to truly take readers behind the Iron Curtain and into the […]

In May, the Karelian village of Kinerma was selected as Russia's most beautiful village. As it turns out, the Spine of Russia travelers stayed overnight in Kinerma during their 6,000-kilometer […]

TO SAY NIKEL IS DIRTY OR UGLY would be an insult to the words. We could also insult grubby, dilapidated, run-down and sad. Nikel is not a pleasant place. On […]

Duncan White (Custom House) "In Russia," Yevgeny Yevtushenko said in the 1960s, "a poet is more than a poet." In a similar fashion, during the Cold War, writers were far […]

THE MAJOR & THE FOOL Two movies, written and directed by Yury Bykov olivefilms.com Winter. A phone rings. A light turns on in a tall apartment block on the city's […]

IT IS A CHILLY SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON and I am sitting in a smoky Italian restaurant at the dismal southern end of a St. Petersburg metro line with Yevgeny Kurov. Buzz-cut, [...]

Each September, honey makers from around Russia gather in the capitol's picturesque Kolomenskoye Park, high above the banks of the Moscow River, for the annual Yarmarka Myoda (Honey Market). About [...]

Thirty ears ago the world came uncomfortably close to Armageddon. Some believe that at no time since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we perched so precariously close to the nuclear [...]

UNTRACEABLE By Sergei Lebedev (New Vessel Press, $22.95) Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Unfairly to both Lebedev and his prospective readers, early reviewers compared this novel to works by Le […]

TARANTAS By Vladimir Sollogub Translated by Michael Katz (*) (Univ. of Pittsburgh, 180 pages, $23) This is an utterly delightful book to discover during a time of plague. First, because […]

In the Soviet era, science fiction often served as a thinly-veiled vehicle for criticizing the failures of communism: writers like Ivan Yefremov or the Strugatsky brothers could send a protagonist […]

The Russian-American Company's move southward from Alaska along the California coastline was driven by a search for stable food supplies and highly-valued sea otter pelts. Fort Ross, the southernmost outpost […]

The pitch-black polar night loosens its grip for only a few hours a day, between one and three in the afternoon. The city glows with thousands of lights, like a […]

One hundred and eighty five years ago, on November 11, 1861 (October 30, old style), the novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow. One of the most influential writers […]

Time and again over the past 10 years, the Moscow city government has made bold promises about hotel expansion plans for the capital. Yet actions speak louder than words, indicating […]

Slotted between Belgium and Switzerland, Russia currently ranks as America's 24th largest trading partner. It is hardly a significant ranking. In 2004, the U.S. imported just under $12 billion in […]

In a year filled with death and mourning, I pause here to remember an individual who was for me, and for this magazine, profoundly influential and truly remarkable. Malcolm Martin […]

There are so many things wrong in the case of historian Yuri Dmitriev, it is hard to know where to start. His case should cause as much outrage in the […]

A travel essay chronicling a 6000-kilometer trip from Russia's North to its South. Intertwines fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. A […]

We didn't realize how connected we were until we had to disconnect. We took in-person human interaction for granted, and now we have lost it for heaven only knows how […]

'Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.' --Joan Didion In January, time and opportunity conspired to offer me a chance to visit my 87-year-old mentor […]

It begins with a spark. For Diana Imperatore, it was a love of ballet. For David Swafford, it was the Olympics (and the mystery of 'CCCP'). Claudia Ricci was fascinated […]

WHILE RUSSIANS ARGUED OVER WHAT THEIR COUNTRY SHOULD DO IN REACTION TO THE NATO BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA, AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THEM AGREE OVER WHAT NATO SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE […]

CHEKHOV: STORIES FOR OUR TIME Anton Chekhov (Restless Books: $22.99) You have to love any collection of Chekhov stories that begins with an introduction (by Boris Fishman) that says, "Everything […]

MIKHAIL AND MARGARITA Julie Lekstrom Himes (Europa Editions, $18) "I have no use for satirists." So says Stalin in an early chapter of Mikhail and Margarita, this love-quadrangle novel set […]

There cannot be not enough snacks, There can only be not enough vodka. There can be no silly jokes, There can only be not enough vodka. There can be no […]

On February 2, 1946, a banquet was held at Moscow's House of Film, honoring Stalin Prize laureates. The preeminent Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein, who had just turned 48, was […]

Come to Moscow!!! I am hopelessly in love with Moscow. Whoever gets used to her Will never leave her. I will love Moscow forever. - Anton Chekhov The merciless July […]

It is common in the mythologies and rites of many cultures to associate winter with death and a descent into darkness. Many of our most cherished holidays derive from the […]

The features in this issue have something in common. In one story (Hogweed, page 54), we explore the pernicious effects of a Soviet agricultural experiment to use a Caucasian plant […]

Sometimes a White Russian is just a cocktail. There is never a shortage of political-cultural land mines on which to trod when one's brief is to cover all things Russian. […]

ORDERS TO KILL By Amy Knight (Thomas Dunne, $27.99) There seem to be two main, competing views of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Kremlin in Western circulation. The first sees […]

THE STATE COUNSELLOR Boris Akunin (The Mysterious Press, $25, July) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In our time of the unbroken news cycle and relentless social media, it is […]

LENIN ON THE TRAIN Catherine Merridale ($30, Henry Holt) When the February Revolution broke out in Russia, Vladimir Lenin was trapped like a caged wolf in Switzerland. Unable to get […]

MOTHER TONGUE Julie Mayhew (Hot Key, 7.99 [pounds sterling]) It is not long into Mother Tongue before sufficient hints are laid down that a tragedy is coming--one which we wish […]

DON'T LET MY BABY DO RODEO Boris Fishman (Harper, $9.95) As the novel opens, an adopted child has run off from his doting parents--a mismatched pair of post-Soviet Jewish expats […]

'Dear Comrades,' the letter began. It was a dead giveaway. The 1965 missive was yet another laudatory letter to the editors of USSR, heralding the magazine's contributions to 'producing peace […]

Nikolai Vassiliyevich Gogol was born, appropriately for a satirist, on April 1, 1809, in the Poltava Gubernia of Maloros ('Little Russia' later officially named Ukraine). His parents were mid-level landowners [...]

I WAS DRAWN into the "Russia Game" 37 years ago, impelled by the ominous cloud of Mutually Assured Destruction that then hung over the world. My first trip to Russia […]

ONE WEEK BEFORE our 33-day crowdfunding campaign was set to end on July 31, things were not looking good. We had only reached about 50 percent of our funding target […]