May 14, 2020 Coping with Coronavirus, One Odder Item at a Time This week: Putin cracks down on smartphones, some things go online that probably shouldn't, and new coronavirus advice seeks to preserve the peace (and health). Family Health Internet Military Moscow Transportation Odder News
May 13, 2020 A New Role for Kioski? Moscow's metro stations rise to the occasion of coronavirus. Cities & Towns Health Moscow Transportation Urban Life Russia File
April 11, 2020 Less Than Cat-Like Reflexes In which cats prove to be dangerous creatures (as if we didn't know that). Animals Moscow Transportation Urban Life Russia File
March 11, 2020 Cheerleaders, Croquet, and Persistent Coronavirus In this week's Odder News, cheerleaders and lawmakers band together, croquet culture spreads to Russia, and youthful exuberance leads to a joyride. Health Moscow Music Transportation Odder News
March 04, 2020 Batman Rides Again Cruising the streets of Moscow is better in a stylish car you made yourself. Cities & Towns News Transportation Russia File
March 01, 2020 Victory Train: Coming Soon to a Hero-City Near You Russia's "Echelon of Victory" train-borne museum prepares to educate this spring. History Military Transportation War Russia File
February 27, 2020 Public Transit Complaints, Ethnic Villages, and Namibia In this week's Odder News, regions work on ethnic villages, presidents get songs written about them, and coronavirus countermeasures take a surprising twist. Health Moscow Music Transportation Odder News
February 09, 2020 Hell on Wheels Russian priests in Sverdlovsk Oblast are upset that they could start seeing local license plates numbered 666, a number often associated with Satan. Religion Transportation Russia File
January 15, 2020 Jogs Good, Like Camel Should A camel in southern Russia, out for a jog, caused severe rail delays. Animals Humor Transportation Russia File
January 07, 2020 A Very Russian Christmas For a few Muscovites, Christmas came early, in the form of free Metro rides. Holidays Transportation Russia File
December 16, 2019 Beginner's Guide to Getting Off the Beaten Path in Eurasia Eight tips to make your travels throughout the former Soviet Union easy, fun, and low-budget! Transportation Travel Russia File
Sponsored Post August 28, 2019 Off the Rails Readers send us their stories of interesting train journeys and interactions. Literature Transportation Travel Russia File
June 15, 2024 Roma Rhapsody Capital One Hall | Tysons, Virginia The Washington Balalaika Society Orchestra's Spring Concert, Roma Rhapsody, will be at 7:30 pm on Saturday June 15, 2024. Music
June 09, 2024 Songs of Faith, Love and Delight! June 9 Star of the Sea Church | San Francisco, California San Francisco's Slavyanka Chorus invites you to a concert featuring a colorful tapestry of folk songs and sacred hymns by renowned women composers. Music
June 08, 2024 Songs of Faith, Love and Delight! June 8 First Congregational Church | Palo Alto, California San Francisco's Slavyanka Chorus invites you to a concert featuring a colorful tapestry of folk songs and sacred hymns by renowned women composers. Music
February 28, 2022 to December 31, 2024 Free Russian Language Guided Tours Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York, NY Russian-speaking guides conduct tours of the museum's highlights every Monday at 11 am. Art Exhibit
June 07, 2024 Songs of Faith, Love and Delight! June 7 St. Mark's Episcopal Church | Berkeley, California San Francisco's Slavyanka Chorus invites you to a concert featuring a colorful tapestry of folk songs and sacred hymns by renowned women composers. Music
November 11, 2023 to September 15, 2024 Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West Wende Museum | Culver City, CA This exhibit highlights the resilience and creative power of people deprived of their freedom or their own place to live. Art Exhibit
The Little Golden Calf Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
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.
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.
Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction For over 100 years, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection changes that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.
East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia The very word Siberia evokes a history and reputation as awesome as it is enthralling. In this acclaimed book on Russia’s conquest of its eastern realms, Benson Bobrick offers a story that is both rich and subtle, broad and deep.
Steppe / Степь 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.
At the Circus 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.
Bears in the Caviar 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.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar 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.
White Magic 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.
Marooned in Moscow This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
September 14, 2019 Eight Russian Desserts To Make Your Mouth Water Forget vodka – dessert is the best part of Russian meals. Culture Food & Drink Russia File
January 28, 2020 Meet Russia's favorite sable Siberian sable fur was once Russia's biggest luxury export, but now we can't get enough of Instagram star Umora, the sable inspiring Russians to never look at fur coats again. Animals Internet Interview Russia File
June 22, 2020 Why Invading Russia was Hitler's Downfall 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. History Social Issues War Russia File
October 14, 2016 Five Wild Facts about St. Basil's Cathedral On October 14, 1991, St. Basil’s Cathedral was reopened after six decades. Here are five fun facts in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Cathedral’s rebirth. Culture History Religion Russia File
March 14, 2020 Coronavirus Coping: Russian Lit has the Answers Russian literature has an answer for everything. In the times of coronovirus, this is your guide. Art Literature CVSG Russia File
November 18, 2016 Famous Americans with Russian Roots America is a land built by immigrants. We researched famous Americans with Russian roots and offer this compilation. History Reference Russians Abroad Russia File