Summer was extraordinary this year. It was scorching hot yet calm. I spent some days sleeping in the afternoon for it was absolutely impossible to do any work. And much work I did! Alas, I didn’t do a...
Yesterday, on March 22, more than 6000 people were under a terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, a Moscow Region venue famous for tremendous concerts. By night, 40 people had been reported as killed a...
Following THE INTERVIEW of the century (Tucker Kalrson and Vladimir Putin), I want to point you to some posts on this blog that illustrate or analyze Russian history. Being an historian who spent 7 ye...
Three days or so before Christmas all markets and squares were like a great forest of fir-trees. And what fir-trees they were! Russia is very rich in them. The ones here are thin and brittle. The Russ...
Ivan Shmelyov (1873-1950) was a Russian writer and essayist who emigrated to France after the October Revolution. The Year of God (Лето Господне) is a book of his recollections of pre-revolutionary li...
Many of my friends with whom I exchanged the New Year and Christmas wishes expressed a special hope for Peace and Victory. Judging by dispatches from the Western media, the end of the Special Military...
It’s been a custom to write a “sochelnik” (Christmas Eve) post here on January 6th. I don’t normally do it in December because I don’t celebrate Western Christmas as a religious festival. However, I d...
Since Tuesday it’s been abnormally cold in Moscow. Last time the temperature was so low in 2016 when it fell down to -33. This year it hasn’t gone below -30 at night, but -27 in the day isn’t somethin...
Psychologists today talk a lot about our “resource”. You either need to build it, or to maintain it and, if worst comes to worst, to recover it. Resourcefulness, overall, is paramount to o...
Thinking about January wishes, I wish us, dear friends and readers, a good year. I won’t call it happy or prosperous, although I certainly want it to be such. But not all things can be foreseen,...