March 11, 2018

Another Birthday


Another Birthday

On this day, 28 years ago, two naive young Americans sat down and agreed to found a publishing company together. This publishing company.

I was living and working in Moscow, helping to run one of the first Soviet-Western joint-venture businesses. David Kelley was doing the same. Our company was publishing books and running a printshop and a chain of bookstores. Kelley was running a screen-printing business, idealistically hoping to turn Young Communists into responsible capitalists (spoiler alert: it didn't work). Together we hatched the idea of writing and publishing books for people doing business in Russia, then seen by many to be on the verge of a capitalist boom. We'd be selling picks and shovels to prospectors, we told ourselves and others. And we convinced a couple of Norwegians to join us in our grand scheme. 

The rest is history.

Now, nearly three decades and hundreds of thousands of books and magazines and calendars later, the world is a far different place from the one that, back in 1990, we imagined. The Russian Boom came and went, then it came again (this time fueled by oil and gas) and really took off, and the Cold War was won and lost, and then resumed again with a fury worse than any time since at least the 1980s.

We have lived through coups and rumors of coups, weathered countless business cycles, lost and gained partners, and made countless trips to and from Mother Russia.

Whenever I pause to look back, I am amazed at what we have traversed, at the very fact that we have survived.

And in a week like this one I feel particularly lucky to have been on this journey for 28 years. 

Because this week, after nearly two years of planning, fundraising, research, journalism, photography, writing, translating, editing, layout, design and printing, we released what I feel is the most important book in our company's 28-year history, Resilience: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution.

The book collects some of the life stories of 22 remarkable individuals, most all of them Russian, most all of them women, and most all of them blue-eyed. Their stories are by turns profound and heartbreaking, awe-inspiring and endearing. We were lucky to be allowed to hear them first hand, to record them in print and on video, and even more lucky to be allowed to share them with the world.

At a time when all we hear out of Russia is news that is either bad or worse, it could not be more important to share stories of humanity and community, of hope and persistence. Of resilience.

So thank you to all our customers and partners, and to our contributors and collaborators all over the world. Without you, we could never have come this far. 

Just two more years and we'll be "over the hill"...

Paul E. Richardson
Publisher

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Some of Our Books

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.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Fearful Majesty

Fearful Majesty

This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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