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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.

With American adoption of Russian children outlawed and the Duma hyping tragic stories of adoptees who have died in the US, we decided it was time to hear one of the "good" stories from the 60,000 American adoptees.

There is a common saying: "If you want to respect laws or sausages, don't watch them being made." Yet in this case (Alef Sausage, in Chicago IL), the more you watch, the hungrier you get.

Russia's ban on American adoptions focused attention on Putin and world politics, while the real issue is the plight of the children who live inside the vast orphan system.