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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 Cold War may have officially ended 21 years ago, yet lately it seems hotter than ever.

Book reviews of "The Last Man in Russia," by Oliver Bullough; "Stalin's Barber," by Paul Levitt; "St. Petersburg City Pack," by Oxygen Books; "Happy Moscow," by Andrei Platonov (Robert Chandler, trans.); and "The Lying Year," by Andrei Gelasimov (Marian Schwartz, trans.).

Zakuski have a well-deserved position of honor in the realm of Russian cuisine. In this issue we look at a tasty appetizer with connections to the Pacific: Canapes of Smoked Salmon.

From politics and sports to stats and quotable quotes.

At the furthest edge of the Russian Far East, in a quiet bay near the very top of the Kamchatka Peninsula, a tiny community of Koryaks struggles with the loss of its traditional culture.

Few know that, in 1983, the world came closer to the nuclear brink than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, thanks to a combination of ideological entrenchment, fear, and computer glitches.