March 01, 2002 Rubbing Elbows With the Stars? Some Russian Life readers have suggested that we need to avoid the “glitterati” in our series on “100 Young Russians To Watch” – we should write less about ballerinas and cinema stars. I partially agree.
July 01, 2014 Cold War in Space As the New Cold War between the US and Russia heats up, joint space ventures, some 40 years in the making, are in the crosshairs.
May 01, 2008 The First Woman in Space Never "one of the boys," Valentina Tereshkova became an icon, a symbol for Soviet space achievements. But she only ever went into space once.
May 01, 2003 Valentina Tereshkova On June 16, 1963, 40 years ago, the first female cosmonaut in history, Valentina Tereshkova, launched into space aboard Vostok-6.
September 01, 2007 Kaluga's Rocket Scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the father of Russian space travel. A quirky, half-deaf teacher, he inspired generations with his idealistic views of the age to come.
September 01, 2003 Miracles on a Shoestring The Russian Space Program has enjoyed a remarkable string of successes and firsts over the past half-century. But, since the fall of the USSR, it has been forced to adapt to new, more commercial realities. We sent Nick Allen to Baikonur, the main Russian launch site, to report back on how the program is fairing.
March 01, 2011 50 Years in Space On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to orbit the earth. By all accounts, they could not have chosen a better man for the mission.
November 01, 2012 Where We First Touched Outer Space The world's largest and most active space port is situated in the middle of the Kazakh desert. Largely off-limits to outsiders, it is an unusual mix of hi-tech and low-key. And it was from here, just over 50 years ago, that humankind first reached out to touch the stars.
April 12, 2019 To the Kokosmos For Cosmonautics Day 2019, Anna Radchenko directs a surreal meditation on space. Watch the complete film on Russian Life.
December 01, 2016 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. Fiction
March 05, 2018 Resilience: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history. Nonfiction
October 31, 2024 Far & Away ~ Tales from Rural Russia 33 original stories about modern (and not so modern) life in rural Russia. Fiction
November 01, 2012 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. Nonfiction
November 03, 2014 The Little Humpbacked Horse A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry. Bilingual Books Fiction
December 01, 2011 Faith & Humor A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life. Religion Fiction
May 01, 2015 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. Nonfiction
May 01, 2013 Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery. Fiction
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. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
September 20, 2025 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. Nonfiction
Okudzhava Bilingual Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
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. History Nonfiction
