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

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.
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.
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
At the Circus

At the Circus

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

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.
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.
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. 
Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

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. 
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.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

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.

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