Russia celebrated the lift of Leningrad’s blockade on January 27th, while elsewhere in the world they celebrated the liberation of the prisoners of Auschwitz camp. There is not a single family t...
With the Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi approaching, we get readier and readier for the main sportive event. I hope there are no arrests on the grounds of a sexual orientation. In the meantime, specially...
Every year 25th of January marks the Day of St. Tatiana, acknowledged throughout Russia as a Students’ Day. On this day in 1755 the Moscow State University was founded, the date being symbolical...
There is no right or wrong way to photograph anything anymore. Even the technically worst photo may become a hit just because it’s struck a chord with the audience. Yet still it pays to try and ...
I was recently near Otradnoe metro station in Moscow’s North when a shopping centre caught my eye. And it did for no other reason than its name. It is called in Russian “торговый центр ВВС...
Until recently Russia celebrated the victory in the Patriotic War against Napoleon in 1812 and in the Great Patriotic War against Hitler in 1945. I spent 7 years in the country that faithfully celebra...
The legend has it that Igor Stravinsky received an idea for his famous ballet in his sleep. Whether or not this is true, the potency of his imagination and the ability to bring it to the material worl...
I don’t remember much of the early 1980s TV, but when Gorbachev came to power in 1985 he was rather quickly drawn into the global political arena, and we began to regularly hear the names of Hel...
A renowned Russian design studio run by Artemy Lebedev revisited the famous 1931 painting by Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory. Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory (1931) Dali’s work...
The very first matryoshka doll was made and painted to the sketches of the painter S. Malyutin by V. Zvezdochkin, a remarkable craftsman of the late 19th c. It consisted of an eight-piece nest and dep...