June 13, 2019

Diving and Driving into Summer Holidays


Diving and Driving into Summer Holidays
Best low-budget suspense thriller of the year. Lilu Dallas

Throwback Thursday

Mikhail Alexandrovich, last tsar of Russia
Mikhail Alexandrovich, last tsar of Russia. / Wikimedia Commons

One hundred and one years ago, the real last tsar of Russia — not Nicholas II — was assassinated by the Bolsheviks. He had only been tsar for one day and never wanted the job. Learn more about Mikhail Alexandrovich, last Emperor of All the Russias, on Russian Life {digital subscription required}.

A Holiday for Patriots, A Game for Anti-Patriots

1. An odd Russia Day. On Tuesday, Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov, who was arrested last week on trumped-up charges, was freed after public backlash. The next day was Russia Day, and things proceeded weirdly normally. Cities all around Russia put on historical exhibits, parades, outdoor concerts, and festivals celebrating indigenous traditions. In St. Petersburg, 500 military brass band players got together to put on the world’s largest ever performance of “Flight of the Bumblebee.” The only sign of the previous week’s unrest was the arrest of over 500 protestors in Moscow. On the one hand, you want to say “С Днем России”…but on the other hand, you really can’t.

World's largest performance of "Flight of the Bumblebee"
A giant brass band honors a tiny bee. / Elena Kalinina

2. Driving under the sea. On Sakhalin Island, a truck driver needed to get across a strip of beach, but he missed the low tide. So what did he do? Simple: he drove into the sea (the action starts 30 seconds in). At various times it looked like the truck was going to get drawn in, but slowly but surely, the driver navigated his way out. Once he drove onshore, he opened the door to let the water out, wiped the inside of the windshield, and calmly drove away. So the next time you feel all at sea, take a cue from this guy and just ride the wave.

3. Fifty shades of Stalin? This October sees the debut of a video game self-explanatorily entitled “Sex with Stalin.” If that sounds outrageous, check out some of the reactions: One Communist Party official demanded a police investigation, but stopped short of calling for a ban, because “If we reacted to the breath of every idiot…” But maybe there’s a deeper meaning behind this. One researcher on Soviet culture sees the game as “evidence of how post-Soviet masculinity fantasizes about the overthrow of the symbolic father while still being inside the original phallic structure.” We think the developers are just trolling… but we are glad someone is trying to sort through the fray.

Screencap from forthcoming "Sex with Stalin" game
Our reaction exactly. / Steam

Blog Spotlight

Scoot on over and read Katrina Keegan’s story on scooters in Russia.

In Odder News

Bear strolling into Kamchatka airport
He doesn’t need security because he is the security. / Kamchatka Info
  • Welcome to Kamchatka Bearport! A bear strolled through a security gate onto the tarmac of a Kamchatka airport. (Pun credits to the Siberian Times.)
  • Ahead of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, workers painted the grass along a highway green. Now the grass will always be greener on the other side.
  • How many words does Russian have for drunkenness? A Soviet-born sports writer reveals all in this epic thread of 25 tweets.

Quote of the Week

“Yay, it’s summer!”

— A Norilsk resident running out into the snow in short sleeves and shorts

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

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Some of Our Books

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

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