Inside Brighton Beach's Babushka Beauty Pageant A lovely short film on Brighton Beach's Your Highness Babushka Beauty Contest.
Short Film: Anya A touching, short, CGI animated film looks at 20 years in the life of a Russian orphan.
Saving Steelhead in Kamchatka This beautiful film from YETI on an enviro-tourism effort to save Steelhead in Kamchatka is our video of the week.
A Soviet Bake-Off and Blini Julia Frey's parents, Victor and Victoria, created beautiful feasts in the Soviet times. For Victor, it meant getting cake equipment tailor-made and becoming the best baker in town. For Victoria, it was cooking a Russian and Ukranian storm. Julia cooks, bakes and reminisces about her "great childhood" in London.
Siberia: Land of Pines, Exile, Cold... and Bird Cherry Cake. Siberia is surrounded by stereotypes, but there's more to it than exile and cold. It has amazing forests, pine nuts and delicious bird cherry cake.
Milk Foam Pancakes is Only the Beginning Traditional Yakut meals get a second chance thanks to local museum. Tuyara, museum employee and part of the program to bring back these recipes, shares her story.
Eggplant Caviar, on the Shelf and at the Dacha Brought to Russia in the seventeenth century, eggplant caviar became wildly popular after a Soviet comedy movie. A Russian blogger shares her story.
Piter's People – Natalia Kapiturova We begin a new project, in which readers meet regular St. Petersburgers, to learn about their lives and their favorite places in the Northern Palmyra. First up: coffee!
Piter's People – Nikolay Predtechensky St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 as a port on the Baltic Sea, and about 10% of its surface area is water. So we meet a boat rental company owner and find out the best place for pizza in the city.
Piter's People - Katya Kotlyar Graphic designer, traveler, instagram explorer, Katya Kotlyar knows her home city inside out, and sees it as an artist would, as a beautiful backdrop for living.
Rostov-on-Don Sveta Balashova-Kuzmina gives us a tour of her hometown, Rostov-on-Don, at the apex of five seas.
Tchaikovsky Maria Plotnikova acquaints us with Tchaikovsky. No, not the composer, the town named for him in Siberia's Perm Krai.
Countdown to Departure So, what exactly have we been doing in the two months since the successful closure of our crowdfunding for this project?
The Last Hero A train ride, a war hero, sunflower fields, and the Loch Ness monster - just another day on the road for the Children of 1917 team.
Live Long and Prosper In which we accompany one of our heroines for her annual check up at the hospital.
Sergei Troyanovsky Historian and deputy director of the Kremlin Museum, Veliky Novgorod This is a very difficult question. Because of “Country or Death,” as Fidel Castro said, when he conquered Cuba. To be a patriot does not mean to hate other nations, other peoples. To be a patriot means to love one’s own. I love my country a great deal. I am by birth half Belarusan and half Russian and have many relatives in Ukraine. And I cannot say that I am a patriot of the Russian Federation of today. I love people in general. That is what a patriot is, in my opinion.
Ksenia Tsukareva Deputy Director for Marketing and PR, Sochi Hockey Club I can call myself a patriot, because I am committed to my family, my business. I give my full 100 percent not because that is what is needed, but because that is what I want. Because I truly believe that if it comes from within, then it is much stronger than any affixed stamp of citizenship or responsibility. Patriotism is that which comes from within.
Larisa Safronova Editor of the newspaper Elektron-TV, Krymsk I can say that I love Russia. But patriot, non-patriot, there are so many definitions of this word, both as a curse and as praise. Therefore I love my motherland and divide it into rulers and people, into what I have loved since childhood: school, parents, the city where I was born and raised, and in which I now live. That is everything that I love. But to be a patriot, does that mean to defend the national interests of one’s country? If they are just, then yes, I will defend it to the last. IF not, then I will also defend it. Perhaps that’s simply how we are built. Mine, ours. That’s all.
Vadim Markelov Businessman, producer of barbells and weight machines, Petrozavodsk I am not ready to give some sort of high-falutin answer. Patriotism – what is it? Love for one’s country, we love it; the government, not so much, because we can distinguish between the two. We love the place we live, and all of those who surround us. This is a fact. But what patriotism is, I don’t know... I just don’t know what patriotism is, truly. That is all.
