September/October 2015

All of the feature stories in this issue in some way or another focus on travel.

Everything of note on the travel front.

For the people of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation, it has always been exceptionally important who among their fellow citizens was awarded a Nobel Prize and who was not. We look back at 100 years of awards.

The idea of a Holy Alliance was dear to Alexander’s religious heart. He believed that God would protect legitimate rulers. The Holy Alliance did not quite work out that way.

For lovers of Russian literature, Marina Mniszech is more literary figment than historical figure. Yet her life was truly interesting, from any angle.

On September 17, 1715, in Moscow’s Sukharev Tower, home to the School of Mathematics and Navigation, an unusual book was put on public display: a calendar.

Every once in a while someone asks me how to translate a particular phrase, and my answer is not that it can’t be translated or that it is hard to translate, but that there’s no point in translating it: We just don’t say it that way.

When he was a child, the author often overheard the hushed conversations of adults alluding to concentration camps in Yakutia. When he grew up, he went in search of them.

Why are there so many Russian expats in India? Why do they come here and why, more importantly, do they stay?

Photographer Christopher Herwig traveled the length and breadth of the Soviet empire, and brought back stunning images of bus stops.

Russia is seeing a boom in tourism from China. Why is that, and what does it mean?

A section of three excerpts from the Central European Press' new translation of the works of Aleksandre Qazbegi, which vividly bring back the spirit and feel of the Caucasus of the 19th century.

The nineteenth-century St. Petersburg aristocrat Petr Pavlovich Durnovo regularly entertained at his mansion on the city’s fashionable English Embankment. Thanks to a trove of his dinner menus from 1857-1858, we can get a good sense of the foods that the mid-century aristocracy enjoyed.

Books we liked, including Dominc Lieven's "The End of Tsarist Russia," Anthony Marra's "The Tsar of Love and Techno," Denise Youngblood's "Bondarchuk's War and Peace," and Jose Alaniz's "Komiks: Comic Art in Russia."

You really have to be careful who you pose for a selfie with. Unless, of course that's what you meant to do.