Category: Moscow

Nicknamed the “Venice of the North” for its canals, rivers and bridges, St. Petersburg has had a close bond with Italy since it was first built on the Neva River. Peter the Great, envisioning a capital for his empire that could compare to the great capitals of Europe, invited the Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini to…

Born in Konstantinovo, Ryazan, to a peasant family, Sergei Yesenin was at an early age sent to live with his grandparents, who were better off and played a major role in raising him. With his three grown-up uncles, a young Yesenin was taught how to swim, hunt and ride horses. His grandmother, a religious woman,…

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli died Wednesday at age 85. He had been gravely ill and was being treated abroad prior to his death.  Kancheli is best known for composing the soundtrack for the 1977 comedy “Mimino” and the 1986 science fiction film “Kin-dza-dza!.” He also had a distinguished career writing music for theater, opera and…

Russia has placed 19th-century gates in St. Petersburg, a house from a Turgenev novel and other significant historical buildings on the market to save them from destruction. The cost to rent them? One ruble. Several “house for a ruble” programs have popped up across the country in an effort to save historic buildings that have…

Nothing says “Russia” quite like a festival dedicated to Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel “War and Peace.” Held at the Ostafyevo Estate south of Moscow — where Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Vasily Zhukovsky have all visited — the festival paid tribute to Russian literature and history over the weekend. Costumes not required, but encouraged. Here’s…

Tigers and tigers and tigers, oh my! The streets of Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East roared to life as residents young and old dressed up to celebrate their very own Tiger Day, an annual parade to raise awareness of the plight of the Amur tiger.  The Amur tiger is one of the world’s most endangered…

Every year thousands of performers and visitors descend upon Scotland in late summer to attend the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s biggest festival of performance arts, from stand-up comedy to opera. This year among the nearly 4,000 shows were several from Russia including “Forest,” a work of physical theater directed by Dmitry Melkin and performed…

On Saturday morning film and theater director, screenwriter and writer Mark Zakharov died of complications from pneumonia. He was 85 years old. Mark Zakharov was the artistic director of the Lenkom Theater in Moscow since 1973 and defined not only the theater’s repertory but the style and spirit of the late-Soviet era. He gathered a…

Soaring high above Moscow on the top of Europe’s tallest skyscraper OKO but grounded by its most ancient culinary roots is Ruski, the very successful joint venture of two Moscow restaurant giants, Chaikhonka and GINZA. On the tower’s 85th floor, Chef Alexander Volkov-Medvedev is reinventing Russia’s oldest methods and recipes with the help of the…

The Mother and Child (Mat i Ditya) group was founded in 2006 as one of the first private medical practices in Russia to provide exemplary, state-of-the-art services in gynecology, childbirth, neo-natal care and pediatrics. It was the “love child” of Dr. Mark Kurtser, a medical doctor and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and…

Former French President Jacques Chirac, who led France from 1995 to 2007, died Thursday at age 86. Chirac’s political career spanned decades and he had dealings with every Russian and Soviet leader since Brezhnev. In a message of condolence Thursday, President Vladimir Putin said that he admired Chirac’s “intellect and deep knowledge as well as…

Lee Jinju: Tilted Tilted is a rare exhibition of a South Korean artist in Moscow, all the more special because she made this series of works especially for the exhibition at the Triumph Gallery. Her works can be defined as subjective realism or psycholandscapes, they are like painted streams of consciousness. In her works Jinju employs…

St. Petersburg is kicking off the fall art and culture season with something for everyone, from Chinese lanterns to a retrospective of one of Russia’s greatest artists. Art Weekend: Oct. 5 and 6 Explore the best of St. Petersburg’s galleries and exhibitions in a weekend entirely devoted to contemporary art. Art Weekend will involve more…

This week in 1968, “Those Were the Days” by folk singer Mary Hopkin started its six-week run at the top of the British charts.  The song was originally a Russian song called “Dorogoi Dlinnoyu,” meaning “By the Long Road,” written in 1925 by Konstantin Podrevsky and Boris Fomin. Western pop songs influenced the musical tastes…

Russia has submitted “Dylda” (“Beanpole”), a film directed by 27-year-old Kantemir Balagov, for consideration in this year’s Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards.  The film, Balagov’s second, is based on an interview from Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s book “The Unwomanly Face of War.” The book was one of the first to expose…

Russian composer and pianist Dmitry Shostakovich was born on Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg as the second of three children from a Polish Roman Catholic family with roots in Siberia.  He would become known as one of Russia’s greatest 20th-century composers and a tenaciously resilient figure amid the Soviet Union’s crackdown on artists. Shostakovich’s…

Hundreds of people queued in St. Petersburg over the weekend to visit the newly opened “Memory Speaks” panorama exhibition at Sevcabel Port. The immersive exhibition recreates the path of an unnamed schoolteacher who goes to the front, taking visitors through a dozen scenes — from his wooden cabin in Belarus to trenches outside Leningrad, street…

It often happens that when giving directions or setting up a meeting point in Moscow, I seem to stumble. Then I pause for a second before remembering the correct name of the street so that my interlocutor understands which venue I have in mind. There are several streets that trigger this confusion, but the main…

Many people believe that Russian cuisine is very heavy and calorific. Chef Alexander Volkov-Medvedev likes to challenge this stereotype and showcase the diversity of Russian dishes. This salmon is his favorite dish because it goes through so many stages of preparation.  A typical Russian dish can be light on the stomach, but it still takes a…

At Ruski, the chef likes to mix things up a bit, sometimes preparing traditional recipes authentically, sometimes recreating them with modern flair. Sugudai is a traditional northern dish made of fresh, uncooked fish such as salmon, dressed with oil, vinegar or other acidic ingredient, green onions, fresh herbs and salt and pepper. Here it is…

Russia is now home to the tallest Buddha statue in Europe. The 30-ton golden monument to the Maitreya — a bodhisattva who will appear in the future — was unveiled in Russia’s Buddhist stronghold of Kalmykia on Sunday. Sitting at 12.5 meters tall, the Russian Buddha in the Kalmyk city of Lagan overtakes the 10-meter…

From Sept. 20 – 24, Moscow’s annual “Circle of Light” festival lights up the capital with dazzling displays of art, history, playful projections and more. Light designers and multimedia artists from around the world had the chance to reimagine the Russian capital’s iconic architecture for the festival, incorporating not just light, but also flame, lasers…

HOLLYWOOD — Writer, creator and producer Craig Mazin’s HBO hit “Chernobyl” won the American television academy’s Emmy award for best limited series on Sunday. Mazin was also awarded the best writing Emmy for his script. In a short acceptance speech, Mazin thanked the “hundreds of people around the area dedicating themselves to telling this story.”…

On this day in 1900 Sergei Ozhegov, the writer of one of the first Russian dictionaries, was born. Born in Kamennoe village in the Tver region, Ozhegov is celebrated for his “Dictionary of the Russian Language,” which remains the most widely used reference for the Russian language today, especially for writers, journalists and interpreters. The…

An estimated 14,000 Indians currently live in Russia — most in Moscow — and an ever-increasing number of Indian tourists visit the capital every year. Consequently, while perhaps not a staple of the native Russian diet just yet, Muscovites are familiar with Indian cooking, and there is an array of restaurants available to satisfy a…

When Ponnuchamy Jeevanantham first came to Moscow from Tamil Nadu in southern India in 1987 to study agriculture at the Peoples’ Friendship University he was dismayed by how mild Russian food was compared to Indian cuisine.  “You couldn’t find any spices,” he said. “There were bay leaves, black pepper and maybe some chilli powder —…

Moscow is full of Soviet-era institutions built on once-sacred ground. While passers-by might have little reason to notice these buildings, the Russian Orthodox Church is, in many cases, fighting legal battles to evict long-time tenants and claim valuable, centrally located real estate that was once appropriated by Soviet authorities. Just this year, the Church has…

The start of fall turning Moscow’s trees into colorful pieces of art also marks the start of the cultural season, with the city’s theaters, museums and conservatories inviting people to enjoy the artworks inside. This is Russia’s Year of Theater, and events will be held across the country, including a Theatrical Olympiad, an All-Russian Theater…

Now that summer is over, Moscow’s concert halls are opening their doors to the new season. Zaryadye Concert Hall, Moscow’s shiny newcomer to a crowded field, opened its doors last year to much fanfare, with performers gushing over its state-of-the-art acoustics and edgy design. To keep up the momentum, this year the Zaryadye directors said…

It’s a warm Moscow evening under the floodlights of a baseball stadium. The hitter sends the ball flying off the bat into a cloudless sky. A fielder 80 yards downfield sprints to get under it, glove raised. He’s made it in time, but can he take the catch? No! He fumbled. The hitter makes second…

St. Petersburg’s main thoroughfares were shut down Thursday for a grand Russian Orthodox procession. The occasion: celebrating the day in 1724 when Peter the Great transferred St. Alexander Nevsky’s saintly relics to St. Petersburg. Priests donned their finest golden robes for their walk down Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main boulevard, and were reportedly joined by…

Alexander Rosenbaum was born into a medical family in Leningrad on Sept. 13, 1951. He qualified as a doctor, but became one of Russia’s most famous bards, or singing poets, best known for his so-called blatnaya pesnya songs about criminal subculture.  His most popular songs are “Gop-Stop,” about two gangsters executing an unfaithful lover, and…

Every fall, Russia’s reading public is offered a new dose of esoteric musings and funny word play from the novelist Viktor Pelevin. While it may be a nuisance for those who have never been hooked on his work, it is now a notable annual literary event for those expecting his latest release. This year’s work…

On Sept. 6, 100 years after its first premiere, Dziga Vertov’s first film, “Anniversary of the Revolution,” had its second Moscow premiere at the Oktyabr Theater. The film had been thought to be lost, but film historian Nikolai Izvolov found it in pieces in the state film archives and painstakingly restored it and put it…

Lev Tolstoy was born into a family of Russian nobility in Tula in 1828. The fourth of five children, Tolstoy’s mother died when he was two and his father when he was nine. He and his siblings were then raised by relatives.  At 16, he enrolled in Kazan University and began studying law and languages.…

Each year, Muscovites celebrate the founding of Moscow in 1147 with a huge citywide bash during the first weekend of September. From free entry to museums to special performances and parades through the city center, there was no shortage of ways to wish the Russian capital a happy birthday. Here are a few of our…

Award-winning journalist Sam Sokol is the author of “Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews,” a book covering the tragic fate of the Jewish communities in Ukraine since the 2013 Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbass. As a reporter for the Jerusalem Post covering European diasporas, Sokol was ideally placed to…

The lights go off, and a soft gasp washes over the crowd of about 250 people standing in a theater as we’re plunged into pitch-black darkness.  A voice over the loudspeaker issues instructions, and so I put my left hand on the left shoulder of the girl in front of me, and she puts hers…

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday referred to relations between Russia and Mongolia as “brotherly” during his visit to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. And just as brothers do, Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga welcomed his Russian counterpart with an elaborate ceremony before negotiations began. The country’s State Honor Guard and an orchestra lined up to welcome Putin at…

More than 300 young inventors and innovators from across Russia put their ideas on display at the Rukami (“By hands”) Festival in Moscow this weekend. From smart lighting and parks for future cities to automatic systems for municipal solid waste, this event, centered around the theme of digital evolution, was full of new ideas for…

On Sept. 1 fifteen years ago, all across Russia families were beginning to celebrate the First Bell — the start of the new school year: children lined up in their school best, parents and grandparents beamed and took photographs, and school principals gave speeches to welcome the students. The scene was repeated in every city…

The Soviet miner Alexei Stakhanov was born in the Oryol province on Jan. 3, 1906. After taking courses in mining and learning to operate a jackhammer, on Aug. 31, 1935, he reportedly mined a record 102 tons of coal in 5 hours and 45 minutes, which was 14 times his required quota. The Soviet government…

A little boy in a bright yellow jacket stares at a picture of an abandoned kindergarten in Pripyat, Ukraine, a series of rusted cribs covered by dust and chunks of plaster filling a room that has been left untouched since a few days after the nuclear plant explosion in 1986. “Why have they left all…

On Aug. 27, 1958, the Soviet Union launched the dogs Pyostrya and Belyanka into space. The craft, a R-5A rocket, set a new record in terms of weight-to-height ratio, as it reached 453 kilometers above the earth’s surface at a weight of over 1,500 kilograms. The dogs safely returned to earth following the flight. Between…

Russia is the largest country on earth — and as a result, its regions and cities are incredibly diverse and unique. There’s no better place to see this diversity than on their flags. Many are beautiful, some are weird, and others just ridiculous. Over the weekend, Moscow marked its national Flag Day festivities by unfurling…

Every summer, Red Square plays host to the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival. The event features military orchestras and marching bands from across the world. This year, 30 orchestras from 12 countries will take part in the festival. The winner will be chosen not by a panel of judges, but by the audience’s vote.…

Ivan Vasilevich, more commonly known as Ivan the Terrible or Ivan IV, was born on Aug. 25, 1530 in Kolomenskoye, Moscow. The grandson of Ivan the Great, he acquired huge amounts of land during his reign, transforming a Grand Duchy into a Tsardom. Through this, however, he imposed a reign of terror and exhibited uncontrollable…

On Aug. 20 collector and art patron Mikhail Abramov was killed in an accident near Peloponnes, Greece on his way to the international airport and a flight to Moscow. The helicopter he was in crashed into the sea, killing Abramov, another passenger and the pilot. Abramov was a businessman and collector of ancient Christian art…

As part of Russia’s Urban Morphogenesis Street Art Festival, spectacular displays of graffiti will be put on display in the Moscow region district of Odintsovo. The murals will be painted over 35,000 square meters in 30 days. Here are some of our favorites:

Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein in 1879, Leon Trotsky was the fifth child in a Ukrainian-Jewish family. His family had a successful farm in what is now Bereslavka, Ukraine, which was home to a large Jewish community.  At home, Trotsky spoke a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, though he was also fluent in French, English and…

Flags flutter above linen tents, musicians play ancient melodies on old musical instruments, craftsmen peddle their wares… This might look like the film set for the latest television series, but it’s actually a historical reenactment festival called Ladeinoye Pole that has been held every year since 2007 in the Lipetsk region, about 500 kilometers to…

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On Aug. 19, 1991 the Soviet Union woke up to “Swan Lake” being broadcast on television interspersed with newscasters reading an announcement. The “State Emergency Committee” (Russian acronym GKChP) had taken control in the country from a supposedly ailing Mikhail Gorbachev, who was at a state residence in Crimea. The country would be headed by…

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated and prolific composers, whose symphonies, concerti, string quartets and dozens of other works became the musical backdrop for several generations of Soviet citizens. A slim man in thick glasses, Shostakovich was fastidious, diffident, and orderly, the very image of an intellectual composer. But Dmitri Shostakovich…

Despite concerns over censorship, the film and performing arts in Russia remain largely free of government interference. While the government can certainly impact the film industry and theater through funding and sometimes, with film, by withholding screening permits, there are many independent companies that can produce whatever they want. Now that the awards season for…

Viktor Robertovich Tsoi was born and raised in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. The Russian rock legend and frontman of the group Kino was the only child of Valentina Tsoi, a Russian school teacher, and Robert Tsoi, a Soviet-Korean engineer. Tsoi’s roots go back to Songjin, or what today is known as Kimchaek, North Korea, where…

Dmitry Merezhkovsky was born in St. Petersburg in 1866 in a family of a government official. In his teen years, and with his mother’s support, he was already writing poetry and contemplating the religious questions that would come to occupy him throughout his life. From 1884 to 1889, he studied philology and history at the…

In late July, the internationally acclaimed art group AES + F launched a new exhibition, “Predictions and Revelations,” featuring eight of their biggest projects from the last two decades. The eye needs time to adjust before it can take in the enormous digital collage installation that greets the visitor to the exhibition “Predictions and Revelations”…

On Aug. 12, 2000, the nuclear submarine Kursk sank, killing all on board: 118 crew members.  President Vladimir Putin, then in his first term as president, was faced with intense criticism over his handling of his first national disaster.  The catastrophe took place in the Barents Sea on the first Russian naval annual exercise that…