For lovers of Russian literature, Marina Mniszech is more literary figment than historical figure. Yet her life was truly interesting, from any angle.

The idea of a Holy Alliance was dear to Alexander’s religious heart. He believed that God would protect legitimate rulers. The Holy Alliance did not quite work out that way.

For the people of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation, it has always been exceptionally important who among their fellow citizens was awarded a Nobel Prize and who was not. We look back at 100 years of awards.

Alexei Stakhanov mined 102 tons of coal in under 6 hours, sparking the Stakhanovite movement. But did he really do it all by himself, by his own initiative? The son of a miner from Blagoveshchensk recalls evidence of unnamed assistants and fishy bureaucratic orders.
 

Andrei Platonov spawned many an incongruous image and incomprehensible sentence. Compared by some scholars to James Joyce, he was critiqued by Stalin himself, yet he avoided prosecution. We dig into his challenging literary style.

After just 22 years of independence, in 1940 Estonia was overrun by Soviet troops. The Estonian Socialist Republic was set up in the wake of th Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in violation of nearly all existing legislation. And Stalinism's evils had the Estonians, just a year later, greeting German invaders with open arms. But trading one totalitarian dictator for another didn't solve the problem.
 

July 13 is the anniversary of Isaac Babel's birth. Now celebrated as one of teh great writers of the twentieth century, he had a very difficult time gaining acceptance during his lifetime, and repeatedly suffered from antisemitism, official and otherwise.

How many characters are in Tolstoy's War and Peace? Could it have been any shorter? Did Tolstoy himself love it or hate it? Find out the answers to these – and more! – questions in this quick list of little-known War and Peace facts.

Seventy-five years ago this August, Leon Trotsky was brutally murdered while living in exile in Mexico. Levi Bridges visited the scene of the crime, now a veritable shrine to the Bolshevik leader.

The rise of Yaroslav the Wise as ruler of Kiev. It may not be all we think it was.

During the tsarist era, Russians’ perceptions of themselves were powerfully shaped by travelogues about the world that lay beyond the empire’s borders.

How a Russian deals with the hostility from Baltic residents about the events of 1940, even when one does not agree with or condone them.