June 25, 2024

An Everyday Emergency


An Everyday Emergency
Firefighters extinguish a house damaged by shelling in the Belgorod Oblast.
  Telegram channel of the governor of Belgorod Oblast.

Warnings about the threat of shelling or drone strikes have become daily occurrences since May 2024 in Russia's regions that border Ukraine, according to an analysis by the independent news publication Agentstvo.

In the Belgorod, Kursk, Rostov, and Voronezh regions, the number of air raid warnings has been on the rise. In April, there were just 49 warnings; but in May, there were 160. By mid-June, there have already been 103. Most of these warnings were accompanied by sirens.

The number of days per month on which the alarm was sounded in at least one border region has also increased. There were eight and seven quiet days in April and March, respectively. In May and June, there was only one quiet day each month.

According to Agentstvo's research, the Belgorod region was the most targetted, with the governor warning of shelling 252 times in 3.5 months.

Other statistics also highlight Belgorod Oblast as a Russian region most affected by Russia's War on Ukraine. According to the local publication Fonar ("The Lantern"), more than 1,000 inhabitants of the region have been wounded by the war. In July 2023, Fonar reported that about 1,750 properties in the region had been destroyed beyond repair.

In 2023, the number of people leaving the region was 27 percent higher than in 2021. The war has also significantly impacted crime statistics in the region. In the first nine months of 2023, the number of crimes involving weapons increased 17-fold. Additionally, the number of crimes related to illegal weapons trafficking also rose significantly in 2023, with residents often finding weapons in the forest or purchasing them from the Russian military.

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This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
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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.
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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.
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

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May 01, 2011

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.

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Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.

Jews in Service to the Tsar
October 09, 2011

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.

Frogs Who Begged...
November 01, 2010

Frogs Who Begged...

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.

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