February 24, 2023

Russia's Year of Horror


Russia's Year of Horror
Taras Shevchenko memorial in Borodianko, Ukraine, damaged with a bullet.
Alex Fedorenko (cc)

There is little we can say that we have not already said since the war began one year ago today. Our stance has been clear: Russia’s War on Ukraine was and is an appalling, illegal act. And Russia lost this war on day one.

We can, however, add these summary observations:

  • over the course of the past year, Russian civilian and military leaders, as well as troops on the ground, have clearly been implicated in war crimes;
  • authoritarianism and fascism in Russia have ratcheted up to Soviet-era levels;
  • free speech is now impossible in Russia, both in the media and in private life;
  • hundreds of thousands of the country’s best and brightest young minds have fled the country;
  • the Russian economy is gradually being hobbled by sanctions and a lack of foreign trade and travel;
  • Russia has become a pariah state.

In short, the Russia we knew and loved has been murdered by this horrendous war, and a hideous Soviet vampire replicant has arisen in its place.

Given that, why does a magazine like Russian Life continue? Why not simply wash our hands of it and walk away?

One simple reason: life.

For decades, we published this magazine as a place for Russophiles to share their love of Russian culture, history, and society. With the onset of the war, this was no longer appropriate, because every aspect of Russian life has de facto been implicated in the country’s criminal war.

So we shifted gears. Our job now is to see our magazine’s title as no longer descriptive, but aspirational – to focus on how Russia gets back to life after plunging Europe into a cataclysm of death.

We firmly believe that there are many Russians who abhor the war, who want to make a stand against death and for life, but the costs of resistance are too high. What is more, there are few western media outlets reporting in English about what is really going on inside the country. So we must use our connections, experience, and technology to bring out the stories that need to be told. Thus, our focus both online and in print will be on stories about human rights, democracy, resistance to oppression, and those struggling to preserve what is left of a civil society.

We will be fueled by hope until life returns.

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22 Russian Crosswords

Test your knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and society with these 22 challenging puzzles taken from the pages of Russian Life magazine. Most all the clues are in English, but you must fill in the answers in Russian. If you get stumped, of course all the puzzles have answers printed at the back of the book.
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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.
Marooned in Moscow

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.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

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.
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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. 
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93 Untranslatable Russian Words

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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.

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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