Featured
Try a Little Tenderness: An Immigrant Story
All I have left from the first 14 years of my life is an envelope of old photographs.
Catherine the Little and Crimean Puppets: From Vandalism to Voodoo in Ukrainian Popular Culture, Part II
Whereas vandalism is programmatically collective and anonymous, voodoo performance requires a priest: an authorial actor and director of the ritual.
Catherine the Little and Crimean Puppets: From Vandalism to Voodoo in Ukrainian Popular Culture, Part I
In the dismemberment and decapitation of monuments, the anthropomorphism of the destroyed object itself can be just as important as the act of destruction. In the process, the emphasis shifts...
Russian Riddles Unsolved by Americans
Russians don’t encounter many who speak Russian imperfectly, as a second language.
The New Cold War is Cold-Blooded: Mass Hysteria and Sex Lizards in Space
We are on the verge of a new era. The world’s first Earth-orbiting sex lizard satellite has been launched by the Russians – and they’ve already lost all contact with...
Candid about the Camera: Tolstoy Scholars on Adapting Anna Karenina
Tolstoy can be so unforgiving with his ladies.
Enchanting Chaos
Today, an unsettling story by Alexander Grin. "To this day, an old courier stands at the corner of Miscue-Miscreance and Herbivory, having destroyed his youth and the beautiful home life...
Spring Reading Series: Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's "Beyond Tula," Part III
Darya Fyodorovna came in and asked whether to serve them dinner, but the co-op operator was loping dreamily around the room. A porcelain Easter egg was hanging in the corner...
“Dead Men Don’t Read Tolstoy. A Philip Marlowe Mystery”
“And the students? Didn’t they deserve a little Nabokov?”
Snowden in Moscow: The Interview
"I’ve been recognized every now and then. It’s always in computer stores. It’s something like brain associations, because I’ll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even...
The Imponderabilia of Immigrant Life: An Immigrant Story
I think of immigration in my subsequent, adult life, not as a determinant but something akin to the zodiac sign if one believes in astrology.
Inferiority Complex: Why the New Film Adaptation of Lady Macbeth is Too Subtle for its Own Good
Oh great, I thought, as she suffocated the little boy, now we’re getting to my favorite bit.
On Cumulative Ideology
This past June — a moment since blotted out by geopolitical horrors large and small — Vladimir Putin sat down with NBC’s Megyn Kelly for an interview subsequently lambasted as...
The Opposite of Pragmatism: Nazarbayev’s Astana 20 Years Later
Under Nursultan Nazarbayev's leadership, Astana celebrates its twentieth year as Kazakhstan's capital. Festivities for Astana Day on July 6 will attract hundreds of thousands of people to the capital. Elaborate...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part III
“Why does man exist? Is there a purpose to man’s life—and if there isn’t, then is life itself not, generally speaking, in part senseless?” Of course, some assistant or full...
Lady's Choice (Turkish Gambit 6)
Fandorin sounds less like Akunin and more like Yuliya Latynina
Fall Reading Series: Sergei Gandlevsky's "Illegible," Part III
Krivorotov tried to cause a jealous scene, but Anya would have none of it. “I have one jailer, my aunt, and that’s enough,” the young woman said to him. “If...
You Want Romanovs With That?
There has long been a reluctance to accept that the Bolsheviks could, in fact, wipe out the entire imperial family and for the next seventy-five years not feel bad about...
Russian Media Influence in Central Asia: Easy to Imagine, Difficult to Find
U.S. observers and policymakers have often seen Russian-origin media as responsible for influencing the opinions and worldviews of Russia's post-Soviet neighbors. However, our analysis of surveys in Central Asia found...
The Possessed Man
Diderot, Rousseau, and all the rest-eau.