January 01, 2019

Four Million Words


Four Million Words

We have had a website since 1993. It began as an ecommerce site, to sell all our books and maps. (For the record, Amazon did not get started until 1994. Just sayin'.)

When we took over Russian Life magazine in 1995, the site added information about issue contents, online-only articles, and of course we also sold subscriptions online.

There have been several redesigns, reboots, and enhancements over the years, and databases have always been an important part of the Russian Life website (to make it more dynamic and useful) – from a catalog of all our magazine's articles, to historical dates, to companies, to schools where Russian is being taught.

Views of Websites Past

 

Last July we decided to kick things up several notches. Our New Russian Life crowdfunding campaign raised funds to (1) rationalize and unify all of our databases and digital content, and (2) put all of the back issue content of Russian Life online – saving it for posterity, while making it accessible to readers and researchers anywhere in the world.

We have been thinking for many years about how we would do all this, what tools we would use, and how it would all look. Executing on those ideas over the past six months has been a huge undertaking (and we're not done yet). Nothing we have done with our website over the previous 25 years can even begin to compare. A huge shout out goes to our web engineer and full stack developer Scott Widmer. He has helped make this process smooth and rational.

The website is built on the very powerful, open-source CMS system called Mura. We have been using Mura for over a decade to manage the website, but never have we used it to its full potential until now. Mura will allow us to scale the site up immeasurably, to manage and edit articles from contributors from all over the world, and to have it all perform at high speed and efficiency. Together with a Slatwall ecommerce solution, it will also allow us to sell online subscriptions, manage print subscriptions, and unify our content-focused website with our commerce-focused website for the first time into one seamless whole.

When complete, the online archive of 24 years of Russian Life will include over 8,000 articles, and over 4,000,000 words, all indexed and searchable.

And it will only grow from there!

Thank you to all our readers, supporters, backers and partners in this upgrade. We encourage you to bookmark and return to the site weekly. Our audacious goal is to make russianlife.com the most useful, influential online resource for Russophiles the world over. And we can only do that with your help.

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Some of Our Books

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. 
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. 
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.
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. 
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Russian Rules

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
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.

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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Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955