Expats develop oddly obsessive attitudes towards food. After a few months in a foreign country, spot something that screams “I’m from your home country!” on the shelves of a cash-and-carry and chances are you’ll scoop it up and carry it home regardless of whether you need it or even like it. In my Moscow flat,…
New coronavirus restrictions As Moscow experiences another surge in cases, the city has implemented a series of restrictions. Outdoor theaters, playgrounds, food courts, children’s playrooms in malls, and zoos will remain closed through June 29. Restaurants and bars must close from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Theaters, movie theaters, museums and other cultural venues will…
While reporters and pundits were analyzing the Biden-Putin summit to glean meaning from their body language and words, I was checking out their clothes. As a fashion editor and style consultant — sometimes for politicians — I wanted to know what the suits were saying to each other. As it turned out: they said a…
Altering an old shirt or putting a patch on your favorite jeans means not only saving on buying a new thing but also saving your house from clutter — and maybe even saving the environment. Four years ago Valeria Tsvirko founded the “ANTYPlyushkin” project in a St. Petersburg library communication center. She originally set it…
When Americans finally grasped that COVID-19 was actually a thing, a particular subset of the population emerged from the bowels of the internet, crowing the equivalent of “Toldja So!” on YouTube. These were the Preppers, who believe that the destruction of life as we know it is just around the corner. Be it from a…
Russians across the country were treated to the rare “ring of fire” solar eclipse that swept across the earth’s northern skies Thursday. Called an annular solar eclipse, the “ring of fire” was most visible in Canada and parts of the Arctic. This type of eclipse happens when the moon partially blocks out the sun, leaving…
Russia Day A holiday since 1992, Russia Day marks the day in 1990 that Russia ratified the Declaration of State Sovereignty, which provided certain freedoms to Russia within the Soviet Union. In recent years it is usually celebrated most vibrantly at the city’s historical museums, where key moments in the country’s past are acted out…
Creative industries, culture and the arts found themselves in the spotlight of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) this year. For the first time in the history of the forum, the event incorporated a special Creative Business Forum, featuring more than 200 speakers representing leading museums, galleries, arts fairs, cultural foundations from Russia and…
The seemingly endless stretches of concrete Soviet-era apartment blocks that cover much of the former Soviet Union have been a wellspring of artistic inspiration for decades. From the Soviet romantic comedy “The Irony of Fate” — which imagines a Moscow man stumbling into a St. Petersburg apartment with an identical address, appearance and even keyhole…
This year Russia will be represented by six films at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, “the first time in a long while that Russia is so widely represented,” said Yevgenia Markova, CEO of Roskino. Juries will see two Russian films in the main competition and two in the category called “Un Certain Regard.” Two other…
Rezo Gabriadze, a writer, screenwriter, artist, sculptor and puppet master, died in Tbilisi, Georgia at the age of 84. Gabriadze was one of the most beloved cultural figures of the Soviet and post-Soviet era. He was the author of more than 35 screenplays for such movies as “Don’t Grieve” (1969); “Mimino” (1977); and “Kin-dza-dza” (1986).…
It is impossible to imagine Russia or her history without the Volga, Russia’s — and Europe’s — longest river along whose shores so many of the country’s more pivotal political, economic, and cultural events have taken place. Known as “Mother Volga,” the river has always played an outsized role in the national consciousness. The complex…
And just like that — it’s summer. It caught me unawares. I haven’t put my winter clothes away and I still reach for socks in the morning. Until the hot weather began in earnest this week, I was still firmly in hot soup mode, so much so that I lugged home from the market a…
Music among the stars On Friday night on the 90th floor of one of the Moscow City towers, Ian Maksin will perform a concert on his cello accompanied by his group Zaria. The Russian-American musician sings and plays a fusion of music inspired by the Balkans, South America, the Middle East, Mongolia and other places…
This year’s winner of the prestigious Russian National Bestseller Award was announced in St. Petersburg on May 29. The award went to writer and journalist Alexander Pelevin for his novel “Pokrov-17.” Fusing Russian reality circa 1993 with mysticism, it tells the story of Moscow journalist Andrei Tikhonov, who is sent on a mission to the…
Children’s Day, like several other Soviet holidays, actually began in the U.S. In 1857, Reverend Dr. Charles Leonard held a special service dedicated to children in his Chelsea, Massachusetts church. He first called it Rose Day, and later Flower Sunday, and finally Children’s Day. In 1925, the World Conference of Child Welfare in Geneva founded…
Netflix, the world’s largest streaming platform, has bought the rights to Russia’s “Brother” (“Brat”) films and will make them available from June 1. The “Brother” series are Russian neo-noir crime dramas written and directed by Alexei Balabanov in 1997 and 2000. The series tells a story of Danila Bogrov, who has just returned from fighting…
Even if you don’t know the name, you know who Victoria Ivleva is. She is the only photographer to go inside the destroyed reactor at Chernobyl and the winner of the World Press Photo Golden Eye award for those haunting images. Ivleva is matter of fact about her feat of courage in the destroyed nuclear…
Want to see a grim and dour Russian soften and become dewy-eyed? Serve him (or her) a vatrushka and watch the magic happen. These soft buns, filled with sweet, creamy tvorog instantly transport the most cynical Slav back to a halcyon era, half obscured by the mists of time, where a kindly babushka (or kindergarten…
Season premiere in the Green Theater This Saturday night the outdoor Green Theater at VDNH Park opens their summer season with a unique program of music for harps. The program will be performed by the much celebrated musician Alexander Boldachev accompanied by the Russian Ministry of Defense Orchestra. It will be conducted by Fabio Mastrangelo,…
Two rare portraits done from life of Grigory Rasputin are going to be sold by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers in Copenhagen on June 2. The portraits were done by Theodora Krarup, a Danish artist, in St. Petersburg. Karaup did a total of 16 portraits of Rasputin, most of which have been lost or destroyed. Krarup sold…
In the half-light of the stage, the first chords are played as a video appears behind musicians. As Angela Manukyan begins to sing, her voice and the music send the audience into a state close to trance. This is a performance by the group “Volga” that mixes ancient songs with modern instruments. At the heart…
The exhibition at VDNH Park follows the history of this mythic Soviet car. May 26, 2021 – 12:15 The Moscow Transport Museum has just opened a new exhibition at VDNH Park that celebrates the history of the Soviet Moskvitch car. Production of this sturdy little private car began in 1929 with 24,000 vehicles a year.…
The Kostomarov Forum began its work this morning in a former Moscow city manor house that was filled with lilacs and some of the finest speakers and writers of Russian in the capital. The Forum is a five-day online event dedicated to the Russian language, this year focusing on the language and how it functions…
At the end of May each year high school seniors across Russia end the last day of classes with the ringing of the “Last Bell.” The soon-to-be graduates dance in traditional school uniforms, exchange flowers and presents and hug their classmates goodbye. Here’s a look at this year’s celebrations:
When the culinary blahs plague me (an occasional hazard in my line of work) one fail-safe method of banishing them is a visit to the smoked/cured fish section of the market or grocery store. In Russia, this is both expansive and extensive, with its own distinctly potent smells. It took me several years to work…
Andrei Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921. After a career developing Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs, he began to speak out for nuclear proliferation as early as the 1950s. In 1968 he published in samizdat his ground-breaking essay “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.” After publication he was banned from military research…
A walk in a lilac park This weekend is the first peak of lilac season in Moscow’s most famous park for lovers of these sweet-smelling and beautiful bushes. Founded in 1954 by Leonid Kolesnikov, the country’s most accomplished lilac breeder, the Lilac Garden began with 2,000 bushes of 32 sorts of lilacs. Today you can…
After living through an unusually cold winter, Moscow’s millions of residents were in for another unexpected weather surprise this week: record-breaking warm temperatures. The mercury in the Russian capital rose to 29.2 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating the previous record set in 1897 and forcing Muscovites to flock to the city’s parks and fountains to…
This month Sinara Art Gallery, founded by Dmitry Pumpyansky’s Sinara Group in 2004, changed the art scene in Yekaterinburg. The show marked the emergence of the largest Russian collection of fine contemporary art outside of Moscow. “This Is All You” displays 112 works of art, including works by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Timur Novikov, Oleg…
Russia is one step closer to bringing home its second ever Eurovision song contest trophy after Tajik-born singer-songwriter Manizha Sangin qualified for the finals late Tuesday. Manizha’s feminist anthem “Russian Woman” was among the 10 semi-final qualifiers, which also included Ukrainian folk-dance act Go_A, who have secured their place in this weekend’s final. Ten more…
Though warm summer temperatures are just taking hold of Moscow, the capital’s many grandiose fountains have already reclaimed their status as the favorite hangout spots for Muscovites and tourists alike. More than 600 fountains across Moscow have reopened for the season and will remain in operation until early October. Take a look at the capital’s…
This past weekend in Moscow thousands of music fans cheered at a concert by Kino — a group that was disbanded 30 years ago after its leader, Viktor Tsoi, was killed in a car crash. The almost 3-hour concert was performed by the original band members, additional musicians, and the voice of Viktor Tsoi, which…
Smetana, or Russian sour cream, never loomed large in my life until that life was transplanted into Russia. I knew smetana existed, of course, and I knew it had a far more glamorous European cousin called crème fraîche. And I knew that sour cream was an essential ingredient in everything from baked potatoes to cheesecake,…
Night in the Museum Moscow began to celebrate a Night in the Museum not long ago, but the event quickly became a favorite of Muscovites of all ages. There is something delightfully transgressive about being in a public place after hours, when the lights are usually off and the doors shut tight. Last year it…
Far to the east of Moscow, a group of young people are hard at work in a cemetery. The Tekutyevsky Cemetery is in the very center of old Tyumen, the first settlement in Siberia that was founded in 1586 as part of the Russian Empire’s expansion eastward. Burials there were conducted from 1885 to 1962.…
Muslims across Russia celebrated Eid al-Fitr on Thursday, bringing the holy month of Ramadan to a close and marking the end of the traditional fasting that goes along with it. With over 10 million believers across the country, or about 10% of its overall population, Russia’s Muslim population is the largest in Europe. Eid al-Fitr,…
Every year audiences in Wiesbaden, Germany come together to watch films from their neighbors to the East. The GoEast Film Festival shows about 100 films from almost 40 countries in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. This year the festival audiences on- and offline saw an enormous variety of films in every…
“Do you have a decent recipe for solyanka?” “Yikes,” I thought. The request came from a friend who is firmly in the “I need recipes to be precise” camp. Tell her to use a bell pepper, and a barrage of texts from the supermarket invariably ensues demanding to know how much the individual pepper should…
The NIKA Awards The Russian film community holds their big awards ceremony every spring, except in 2020 when Moscow was on lockdown during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, this year’s ceremony gave out awards for two years: 2019 and 2020. The best film of 2019 was “The Frenchman,” the story…
Russians across the country on Sunday celebrated the most important and sacred holiday in the Russian Orthodox Church’s calendar: Easter. At home, most Russians took part in beloved traditions like dyeing and decorating eggs, as well as eating Easter delicacies like kulich bread and paskha cake. Worshippers also flocked to church to attend Easter services,…
This Translation by Robert Chandler Teffi is difficult to translate. I have said a little in the foreword about her Pushkinian grace and deft use of repetition. She also makes the most of two freedoms—the freedom to omit words and an extreme freedom of word order—that are available only in a highly inflected language like…
One of life’s great indulgences is a mid-afternoon tea break. At 4:00 each afternoon, my phone trills the high-pitched, reedy “Tea” melody from “The Nutcracker,” signaling that it is time for a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of something sweet. During lockdown, my family members have folded this habit into the rhythms of…
Easter The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Easter this year on May 2, which means that there will be lines outside churches on Saturday as people bring baskets of kulich (sweet bread), paskha (a sweet cheese spread), colored eggs and other treats to be blessed. The main Easter service, with the glorious procession around the church,…
On April 21 the Museum of Russian Impressionism has mounted another exhibition filled with revelations. Called “Seekers of Art,” the show continues the museum’s innovative approach to uncovering the hidden aspects of Soviet life. It tells about a phenomenon that before perestroika was not publicized and in fact was harshly punished: private collections of art,…
Rodion Chepel’s documentary film “Durov” that premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival over the weekend tried to lift the veil of mystery surrounding one of the most talked-about IT entrepreneurs — Pavel Durov. Durov, 36, has been dubbed by the media as “Russian Mark Zuckerberg” for founding the social networking platform VKontakte, the Russian…
In 1871 a very elegant bath house was opened on Fonarny Pereulok in St. Petersburg. Called the Voroninskiye Bani for the merchant who owned the building, Mikhail Voronin — or Fonarskiye Bani or just plain Fonari for the street it was on — in the Soviet period it became simply Bathhouse #43, with much of…
Ilya Repin is best known as a realist painter, whose portraits of writer Leo Tolstoy and canvases such as “Barge Haulers on the Volga” and “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” represented Russia to the world. But the show “Ilya Repin: Known and Unknown” at the State Tretyakov Gallery invites you to forget all that —…
Nowhere Near Angel (right) and Gaia are school friends from Livorno, Italy. Both are of Nigerian origin. Angel was born in Italy, shortly after her parents moved there, as her father was setting up a wine business; Gaia came with her parents two years ago, as they wanted her to go to an Italian school.…
We are entering what I think of as “sprint season,” and very welcome it is too. I’m not referring to any kind of physical exertion — unless of course you consider bounding across the market to snap up the last bunch of ramps — but, rather, that happy season of the year when some of…
“The Cherry Orchard” at Mossoviet Film and theater director Andrei Konchalovsky has put on a trilogy of plays by Anton Chekhov at Mossoviet Theater, starting with “Uncle Vanya” in 2009, “Three Sisters” in 2012, and ending with “The Cherry Orchard” this year. “The Cherry Orchard” is something of a family affair, starring Konchalovsky’s wife, Yulia…
Film director Vitaly Mansky is usually behind the camera, but in recent weeks he found himself on the other side of the lens. The founder and president of Artdocfest, the largest independent documentary film festival in Russia, was in the news throughout the festival in Moscow and St. Petersburg as he was closed down by…
All through April, indigenous nomadic communities across Russia’s Far North are celebrating one of the most important festivities of the year: the Reindeer Herders’ Festival. Observed annually for nearly 70 years, the festival gives nomadic herders a chance to see their extended family and friends, compete in traditional indigenous games and showcase centuries-old traditions to…
At the end of March, residents in an apartment house in St. Petersburg suddenly saw that the bulky gray and green ceramic lump in their entryway was actually a majolica heating stove made by Peter Vaulin with a panel based on a drawing by Mikhail Vrubel. They could see it because a group called the…
I am an inveterate hoarder of dark leafy greens. I consume baby spinach nearly every day, and the hardier winter spinach invariably finds itself in some cooking project or other, be it soup, smoothie, or spanakopita. I am helpless to resist the vibrant jewel tones of rainbow chard, kale, and my beloved beet greens. But…
The success of HBO’s 2019 miniseries “Chernobyl” left Russian filmmakers inspired to shoot their own version of the tragic events that took place in Soviet Ukraine in 1986. But Russian director Danila Koslovsky’s “Chernobyl,” which premiered Thursday, has so far failed to generate the same critical acclaim as Craig Mazin’s miniseries. Instead of offering a…
Just when it seemed like Hollywood was close to running out of beloved properties to remake, they’ve broadened their horizons by dipping into the rich pool of Soviet films. The quintessential Russian New Year film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” (Ironiya sudby, ili S lyogkim parom!) is now set to receive the…
Prince Phillip, the late husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died last Friday at 99. The Duke of Edinburgh became the first member of the Royal Family to visit the U.S.S.R. when he flew to Kiev, Ukraine as president of the International Equestrian Federation in September 1973. The visit took place just years after he infamously…
On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted off onboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, becoming the first human to journey into outer space. A major milestone for humanity and a triumph for Moscow in the U.S.-Soviet space race, the event’s anniversary is celebrated annually as Cosmonautics Day in Russia. Special events are being held…
At the beginning of Maria Kuznetsova’s second novel, Natasha, a young mother in New York, chats with her grandmother Larissa in Ukraine via Skype. Larissa has the following advice for her granddaughter who is struggling to adapt to her new parental responsibilities: If you train that girl to sleep in your arms, she will become…