Ambassador Jack Matlock had a front row seat for the final days of the US-Soviet Cold War and the collapse of the USSR. While working on his article, 1983: The Scariest Year (Mar/Apr 2013), Russian Life Publisher Paul Richardson conducted an email interview with Matlock, which is produced here in its entirety.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin offered a humorous critique of the state of Russian literature in the 1860s. He also wrote some parody "dreadful stories," one of which is translated and reproduced here.

The movie is almost too silly to discuss, as if Saturday Night Live decided to do a parody, but nobody but the costume-director and scene-making crew were ready. A puppet resembling Keira Knightley plays Anna; although thin, even scrawny, the animators make her look almost human.

Two stories out of Russia this weekend reinforced the stereotype that Russian entities (a) don't respect copyrights, yet (b) do value propaganda.

In this, the second of two posts on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the author recounts his discovery of the greatest novel of all time: "I had never lived a book as I lived Anna Karenina."

Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina has been called the greatest novel of all time. But can one really appreciate it as much in English translation versus the Russian original?

While the U.S. was being battered by Superstorm Sandy and the Election of Nattering Negativity this week, a steady stream of odd stories out of Russia caught my eye. Worried they might otherwise get overlooked, I decided to corral them here.

A recent letter that the editors of Russian Life received from one of its respected readers was directed at Mikhail Ivanov and one of his “Survival Russian” columns. We felt it deserved a longer response than space in the magazine allowed.

How should we understand current political dissent in Russia? Russian Life publisher Paul Richardson met with long-time Soviet/Russian political dissident Alexander Skobov to get his views on what is going on in Russia and where things are headed.

Culled from vodkaphiles.com: a listing of 20 things you can do with vodka you may have never considered (and may or may not want to try).

Moscow's last Great Fire was 200 years ago, on September 14, 1812, in the wake of the Russian army's abandonment of Moscow. Debate continues to rage if the fire was accidental or set intentionally by retreating troops. And a misunderstanding of the scope of the fire's destruction hampers preservation efforts to this day.

By launching the flabby Cold War trope that Russia is our "geopolitical adversary," Mitt Romney has exhibited yet another symptom of foot-in-mouth disease on foreign policy...