The history of Russia Day is both complicated and controversial, with its origins in the dusk of the Soviet Union. Even its name causes confusion, with only about half the Russian population correctly identifying the holiday observed on June 12. We dig in to ferret out the facts.

A brief history of the Russian bakery, from imperial times to the Internet age.

Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk among the stars, gets an unusual birthday greeting from space.

Russia remembers the War and recovers from an air tragedy. 

Today, now that the huge dome of St. Isaac’s towers over the center of the city, not far from the granite embankment, the sumptuous Senate and Synod Building, and the iconic Bronze Horseman statue, it is hard to imagine that in its first incarnation this church was much smaller and located on the Admiralty Meadow.

Paul Robeson, the American singer and actor and a political activist, had a cake named after him in Russia.

There was a time when literary journals ruled Russian intellectual life. That time has passed.

In early May, everyone is feeling exhausted after a long, vitamin-deprived winter: schoolchildren are dragging themselves to the June 1 school-year finish line, and their parents are just starting to recover from the cold, dark winter. That’s when the holidays hit.

In the spring of 1989, elections were held: “alternative elections.” This redundant phrase, which today provokes smirks, back then had everyone in a state of euphoria. We had a choice!

“Pushkin is our everything,” Russians like to say. And sometimes it seems like he was everywhere.

Nestled up against the US border with Canada there is an unusually high concentration of Russian-
Americans. This requires some investigation...

An excerpt from the fine new novel Zuleikha, by Guzel Yakhina, about a woman's survival in Siberia exile, inspired by childhood memories of the author's grandmother.