February 15, 2018

Stories of Sorrow and Uplift


Stories of Sorrow and Uplift
Russian Plane Crash Kills 71

1. A Russian plane crashed near Moscow on Sunday, killing all 71 people on board. The plane, owned by Saratov Airlines, crashed several minutes after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Its destination was Orsk, a Russian city near Kazakhstan. The cause for the crash is still unknown, though early indications point to faulty speed indicators.

2. One Russian grandmother isn’t waiting for the cows to come home: she’s skating across the deepest lake in the world to get them herself. Lyubov Morekhodova, a 76-year-old woman who lives next to Lake Baikal, skates up to six miles to check on her cows when they’ve strayed too far from her home. Very poetically, her first name means “Love” and her last name literally means “the one who walks on the sea.” Even Gogol couldn’t have given her a more appropriate name.

Photo: Alexey Vaskov

3. As the World Cup approaches, Alfa-Bank is trying to score a publicity goal: Lionel Messi just became Alfa-Bank’s newest ambassador. Messi, an Argentine soccer player who plays for FC Barcelona, has signed a one-year contract to be the face of Russia’s largest private bank. Alfa-Bank isn’t Messi-ng around when it comes to choosing its celebrities: Messi is the third-highest paid athlete in the world.

In Odder News

Photo:  Центральный район за комфортную среду обитания

  • A decades-long project to become the coolest bikers in the galaxy: here’s a summary of the Russian project to make the world’s first space motorcycle.

  • A side hustle is all good and well, but employees of a top-secret nuclear lab may have overstepped their boundaries when they tried to use facility computers to mine cryptocurrency.

  • Stick it to the (snow-clearing) man: Small children used nonviolent protest to stop a truck from demolishing their snow slide.

Quote of the Week

“Just what do these people want from me? I am minding my business and not touching theirs. I’ve got no spare time at all, and they are inviting me to Moscow!”

—Lyubov Morekhodova, the skating grandmother, on why she won’t go to Moscow

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Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
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 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.
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.
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. 
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. 
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.
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 Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

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.

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