The Louisville Courier-Journal has a nice feature this morning on Anne Fisher, the translator and driving force behind our new translation of The Little Golden Calf. It talks about how the book went in and out of favor with the Soviet regime, and how Anne was inspired to bring the work out in English because it had been so instrumental in forging her own understanding of all things Russian.

A response to another publisher's blog post about our comparative analysis of two competing translations of Ilf and Petrov's Zolotoy Telyonok...

Our annual consideration of some great gift ideas for Russophiles. Now available online as well!

I will forever associate the fall of the Berlin Wall with french fries. In 1989, my wife and I were living and working in Moscow. Our friend Bob was apartment-sitting in the American embassy complex; and on November 9 he invited us over for dinner...

Neil Charnoff of Vermont Public Radio just did a long interview with publisher Paul Richardson about Life Stories. You can listen to it here.

When it comes to bogeymen, China, Cuba, even North Korea can't hold a candle to old Mother Russia. This week, as tempers flared and theatrical protests abounded around health care, a woman offered this irrational take on proposed reforms at a town hall meeting ...

Verbatim text of an online interview with Rashit Yahin. Mr. Yahin was born in 1936, was educated in Moscow as an engineer and worked from 1978 to 1990 on construction of BAM. From 1990 to 1994 he worked as head of the tourism department in the Severobaikalsk Railway Department of BAM. In December 1994, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He now is largely confined to a wheelchair, but that has not stopped him working. He actively works to promote tourism to the Baikal region and arranges private and independent travel there (see end of article for contact info). The interview is presented in its entirely, without any redactions or corrections.

Four years ago, in August 2005, then Senator Barack Obama was detained for three hours at a Siberian airport. Obama, with Senator Dick Lugar, was on a US delegation touring nuclear warhead storage and disposal sites. Russian border guards insisted on searching the delegation's plane. The senators refused...

Background information and text of the 1988 treaty between the U.S. and Soviet Union regarding ICBM and SLBM launches.

President Obama gave a nice tribute to Russian culture in his speech to Moscow college students.

A guide, with links, to adventure travel in Karelia and beyond.

In our 100th issue, we have a long feature, "100 Things Everyone Should Know About Russia," with loads of factoids, notes, lists and essays. We figured our list of the "must read" fiction and "must see" movies would be a bit contentious (and certainly foreshortened). So we are posting the lists here for reader comment and supplementation...