Say what you will about the various gay bars in North America that are boycotting Stolichnaya vodka and (horror of horrors), pouring it into the gutter. But the fact is, as reported elsewhere, they didn't do their research. These days, Stolichnaya vodka is about as Russian as Edward Snowden...

We're holding a fiction contest, asking for short stories based on the intriguing cover of our July/August issue. Click thru for full contest rules and instructions.

In my capacity as a journalist, I usually tell unhappy stories about people’s lives that are almost inevitably destroyed by the government. Happy endings and happy people, on the contrary, are usually discovered by chance. The story I am about to tell you was brought to me by just one such chance.

The Americans, on FX, is a brilliant episodic drama that recreates the 1980s with only minimal anachronisms but plenty of tension, plot twists, double-dealing and moral relativism.

Has your postmaster chased you down the street with a broom lately? Clearly you don't live in Russia... The Russian Post continues to stoke the fury of millions. But Russian videographers are striking back, documenting abuses by RP workers.

In a move that has taken even seasoned Kremlin watchers by surprise, Russia today agreed to purchase Cyprus in a bold stroke to save the troubled archipelagic country and the Eurozone.

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?