February 15, 2018

Stories of Sorrow and Uplift


Stories of Sorrow and Uplift
Russian Plane Crash Kills 71

1. A Russian plane crashed near Moscow on Sunday, killing all 71 people on board. The plane, owned by Saratov Airlines, crashed several minutes after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Its destination was Orsk, a Russian city near Kazakhstan. The cause for the crash is still unknown, though early indications point to faulty speed indicators.

2. One Russian grandmother isn’t waiting for the cows to come home: she’s skating across the deepest lake in the world to get them herself. Lyubov Morekhodova, a 76-year-old woman who lives next to Lake Baikal, skates up to six miles to check on her cows when they’ve strayed too far from her home. Very poetically, her first name means “Love” and her last name literally means “the one who walks on the sea.” Even Gogol couldn’t have given her a more appropriate name.

Photo: Alexey Vaskov

3. As the World Cup approaches, Alfa-Bank is trying to score a publicity goal: Lionel Messi just became Alfa-Bank’s newest ambassador. Messi, an Argentine soccer player who plays for FC Barcelona, has signed a one-year contract to be the face of Russia’s largest private bank. Alfa-Bank isn’t Messi-ng around when it comes to choosing its celebrities: Messi is the third-highest paid athlete in the world.

In Odder News

Photo:  Центральный район за комфортную среду обитания

  • A decades-long project to become the coolest bikers in the galaxy: here’s a summary of the Russian project to make the world’s first space motorcycle.

  • A side hustle is all good and well, but employees of a top-secret nuclear lab may have overstepped their boundaries when they tried to use facility computers to mine cryptocurrency.

  • Stick it to the (snow-clearing) man: Small children used nonviolent protest to stop a truck from demolishing their snow slide.

Quote of the Week

“Just what do these people want from me? I am minding my business and not touching theirs. I’ve got no spare time at all, and they are inviting me to Moscow!”

—Lyubov Morekhodova, the skating grandmother, on why she won’t go to Moscow

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Fish: A History of One Migration

Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.
Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

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The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

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