January 18, 2021

The Family Panties


The Family Panties
Airing the dirty laundry. / Настоящее Время. Настоящее Время, Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFoUB27mdIY

Quarantine might have gotten many of us used to hanging around in our underwear, but Russian film director Vitaliy Mansky has taken his to the streets of Moscow.

Last month, Mansky stood outside the office of the FSB in a one-man protest in support of Alexei Navalny, who plans to return to Russia on January 17 after an alleged assassination attempt.

Mansky was holding a pair of light blue boxer shorts.

When two police officers who arrived at the scene approached the director to ask why he was holding the boxers, Mansky reportedly answered that they stood for his civic position – “I think that everything should be clean – clean conscience, clean underwear.”

The day before Mansky stood in protest, Navalny published a recording where he claims to have duped an FSB operative who was involved in his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok. The officer admitted, on the phone, that the chemical was applied to Navalny’s underpants.

Russian officials have rejected the claims. In top form, Press Secretary Dmitriy Peskov has stated that Navalny suffers not only from mania, but also a fixation on “the codpiece zone.”

The Russian prison service has announced orders to detain Navalny upon his arrival in Moscow. Officials have justified his arrest with assertions that Navalny missed parole hearings for a 2014 conviction for embezzlement and money laundering.

It seems that at least a few Russian officials might have to deal with more dirty laundry than they bargained for.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
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.
How Russia Got That Way

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
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.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
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.
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.

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.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955