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Don't Look Back: a review of the film My Joy
While lacking the leather-clad explosivity of Road Warrior and the melancholic drone of Red Lights, Sergei Loznitsa puts Russia on the map with his new on-the-road flick, My Joy. Where...
The Khachaturyan Sisters and Russia’s History of Fighting Terror at Home
The case of the Khachaturyan sisters reads like one of Liudmila Petrushevskaya’s darkest tales. On August 2, 2018, Maria (age 17), Angelina (18), and Krestina (19) were arrested on charges...
Cultural Despair and the Soviet Seventies
In today’s United States, the '70s seem close at hand. After Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, Foreign Policy asked if the country was once again facing “the geopolitical malaise...
Orgasmic Communism?
Did women have better sex under communism?
Spies in the House of Rock
We end up with a CIA whose power and effectiveness would bring joy to Dick Cheney’s latest heart and prompt him to shoot another friend in the face in celebration.
The Boldino Dream and Its Discontents: Quarantine Stories of Russian Writers
The debate on productivity and isolation from the commitments of daily life revives an old question. Does quarantine boost or rather stifle inspiration? In pondering this question, it helps to...
Excerpt from Emil Draitser's "In the Jaws of the Crocodile: A Soviet Memoir," Part IV
On the eve of my emigration, I was convinced I should say farewell to my writing life once and for all. I was sure that leaving the country where my...
All the "Pravda" about International Women’s Day
Examining March-8th dispatches in Pravda between 1920 and 1991 reveals a gradual shift in the official feminine ideal: at first, women were glorified as fellow workers and builders of socialism;...
Gender Trouble in The Double: Masculinity in Dostoevsky’s Novella and Ayoade’s Film
Right from the outset, Ayoade’s film establishes the presence of a masculine hierarchy.
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales,” Part V
Before long Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk sank deep into poverty.
Dispatch from Moscow: Observing the World Cup
Just steps from the Mausoleum, fans could participate in a mock World Cup soccer match, buy refreshments, or try their luck kicking a ball against the "highly skilled" Robokeeper —...
Spring Reading Series: Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's "Beyond Tula," Part II
Railroad engineers used to refer to tracks in the feminine: “get up on her,” they’d say about the fifth track, or “she’s a tough one, the eleventh.”
Watching the Defectives (Russia's Alien Nations)
Znak kachestva is a freak show from outer space.
Conversation in the Kitchen: Sasha Dugdale’s Voiced Translation of Maria Stepanova
Some may argue that there is a conflict of interest in translating a friend, but Sasha Dugdale’s deft translations of Maria Stepanova, with whom she is close, suggest that friendship...
Distorting Russia: How the US Media Misrepresent Sochi, Putin, and Ukraine
American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.
The Paralympic Games’ Cinderella Story: Ukraine
It is critical that the disability rights movement in Ukraine find ways to ride the Paralympic wave of success.
Candid about the Camera: Tolstoy Scholars on Adapting Anna Karenina
Tolstoy can be so unforgiving with his ladies.
Talking with Geoff Cebula, Author of "Adjunct"
I knew from the beginning that I didn't want her to be a Slavist.
Canada, Hockey, and the Cold War
What had begun as score-settling with upstart pretenders to Canada’s pre-eminence acquired its epic qualities because the victory came over the Soviet Union, the hegemon of the Communist bloc.
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part I
"This book—this collection of sentimental tales—was written at the very height of NEP and revolution. And so the reader is, of course, entitled to demand certain things of its author:...