Lobsters, crabs, crawfish… what could be further from Russian cuisine? Actually, that’s not right, if only because all kinds of European seafood have been part of Russian culinary tradition for more than 250 years. In 1766 Catherine gathered together the most prominent scientists of the time and gave them a difficult task. She demanded that…
A joke in Russian goes like this: some people eat meat, some people eat cabbage, but on average people eat cabbage rolls. Today everyone in Russia knows what cabbage rolls are. But 200 years ago this was a culinary novelty for Russians. The traditional territory of cabbage rolls is Eastern Europe and Scandinavia — although…
Nobody can accuse Adam Curtis of lacking ambition in his new BBC series “Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone.” In a harrowing seven-hour viewing experience made up entirely of archival footage, the British filmmaker attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the Soviet Union’s final years and Russia’s brief experiment with democracy. While not as broad in scope as…
Nobody can accuse Adam Curtis of lacking ambition in his new BBC series “Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone.” In a harrowing seven-hour viewing experience made up entirely of archival footage, the British filmmaker attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the Soviet Union’s final years and Russia’s brief experiment with democracy. While not as broad in scope as…
The last partial solar eclipse of 2022 was visible in the skies over much of Europe on Tuesday, including Russia. The moon’s shadow reached its peak in the southern Urals city of Chelyabinsk, where residents could see 79% coverage at around 4 p.m. Russians across the country stepped outside to catch a glimpse of the…
One of the rites of culinary passage for foreigners in Russia is the first time they are introduced to a “chocolate potato,” one of the iconic dishes of Soviet cuisine. It was served in restaurants and student cafeterias, and often made at home. Made of crushed dry cookies or breadcrumbs mixed with butter, condensed milk…
Вышла ошибочка: whoops I’m not sure there’s an art to making mistakes, but there is an art to deciding which verb or phrase you want to use in Russian to describe your particular screw-up. Was it a misunderstanding? A lapse of judgment? Did you get something wrong? Was it an honest mistake or did you…
The exhibition was dedicated to “soldiers and officers of the Red Army who liberated Ukraine in 1943-1944, and modern heroes participating in the special military operation,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. Sergei Kiselev / Moskva News Agency
Pelmeni are a paradoxical dish. Although Siberian pelmeni most likely came from China originally — from famous New Year’s dumplings called jiaozi — their name — pelmeni — is from the group of Finno-Ugric languages. They are considered a “national Russian dish,” although up to the mid-19th century or even later pelmeni were a truly…
@: собака (dog) Today I have a very exciting topic: Russian punctuation and typographical marks. No, really! Don’t you want to know why @ is a собака (dog) in Russian and what you call those claw-like Russian quotation marks? Haven’t you asked yourself if дефис the same thing as тире? And surely you have pondered…
Viewers in Latvia’s capital of Riga came out last week to see a screening of “F@ck This Job,” a documentary about independent Russian broadcaster TV Rain (Dozhd) and its struggle to survive Vladimir Putin’s war on the independent media. It was directed and narrated by Vera Krichevskaya, a co-founder of TV Rain with Sindeeva, who…
“Prisoners of conscience in the hands of bandits and thieves / Order will be disturbed in reality, not in dreams / The force of pressure will push the spring of freedom,” ring out the lyrics to “Right Now,” a new song by Russian rockers Mirolyubivnoye Morye (“Peaceful Sea”). “Peace to all, not war / In…
“Prisoners of conscience in the hands of bandits and thieves / Order will be disturbed in reality, not in dreams / The force of pressure will push the spring of freedom,” ring out the lyrics to “Right Now,” a new song by Russian rockers Mirolyubivnoye Morye (“Peaceful Sea”). “Peace to all, not war / In…
Today if you said a woman looked like chicken, she’d be deeply offended. But in the olden days in central Russia, a chicken was good omen at a wedding. Comparing a bride to a hen was considered a kind thing to say and a blessing for the upcoming marriage. Chickens were a traditional part of…
Гойда: let’s go (maim and kill) Last Friday there was a big event on Red Square in Moscow to celebrate (sic) the new Russian regions (sic), i.e., Ukrainian land annexed (on paper) by Russia. One of the headliners was Ivan Okhlobystin, an actor-cum-Orthodox-priest-cum-political-rabblerouser, who got the crowd worked up shouting what he described as старорусское…
Ten top dancers at the Bolshoi Theater have been suspended for a month after performing at a gala in Uzbekistan, Russian media reported this week. The dancers, including stars such as Vladislav Lantratov and Yevgenia Obraztsova, were flown to Tashkent by the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art of Uzbekistan. Dancers regularly perform…
The Venice Film Festival has always favored Russian cinema. The films of directors Andrei Konchalovsky and Alexander Sokurov were given awards here, and it’s where Andrei Tarkovsky began his international career. So the absence of Russian filmmakers at the festival this year was noticeable. But their absence probably was not due to a boycott of…
On Sunday Dmitry Ozerkov, a top curator at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, announced in an Instagram post that he had resigned from the museum and left Russia. “I left because I don’t intend to have anything in common with today’s Russia.” Ozerkov worked at the Hermitage for 22 years, first as curator of…
Where’s the Cheese in Russian Cheese Pancakes? – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account Signout…
Набор слов: word salad In my continuing quest to read Russian media sources and understand what on earth they mean, I’ve made some progress with military matters but am still having trouble with the Russian economy. Actually, everyone is having trouble with the Russian economy, which is why they have developed their own sub-set of…
2022 Pushkin House Book Prize Awarded to Mary E. Sarotte – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU…
2022 Pushkin House Book Prize Awarded to Mary Sarotte – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My…
The Word’s Worth Newspeak for the Russian New Economic Policy Набор слов: word salad In my continuing quest to read Russian media sources and understand what on earth they mean, I’ve made some progress…
Cold War Spies at the Venice Film Festival – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account…
Russia Shuns Oscars as Ukraine Standoff Hits Arts – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account…
Maria Stepanova’s ‘In Memory of Memory’ – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account Signout Support…
How Russian Solyanka Was Born From Polish Bigos – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account…
Новояз: Newspeak In 1949 George Orwell published his last novel, “1984,” and it was translated into Russian and published in 1957 — but not in the Soviet Union. More than 30 years would pass before it was published officially in Moscow. Both the самиздат (self-published work) and bound book version were instant hits — after…
Pop Diva Alla Pugacheva Comes Out Against the War – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My…
Elizabeth Wilson Chronicles the Miraculous Life of Maria Yudina – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My…
Apple Aspic: Down With Stereotypes! – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account Signout Support The…
Poland Seeks Return of ‘Stolen’ Art From Russia’s Pushkin Museum – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU…
Explainer: Is King Charles III a Romanov? – The Moscow Times Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today My account Signout × Sections Home Ukraine War News Opinion Business Arts and Life Podcasts Galleries Newsletters Multimedia projects Mothers & Daughters Generation P News Ukraine War Business Opinion Arts and Life Podcasts Newsletters RU My account Signout…
Mary E. Sarotte’s book “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate” is the history of negotiations on arms control, security issues and NATO conducted by the leaders of the U.S., the Soviet Union and Russia, and the broader Western community from the beginning of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika up through the…
Today if you asked Russians, most of them would tell you that forshmak is part of Jewish cuisine. But 150 years ago it was absolutely considered a Russian dish. In the 19th century forshmak was as familiar to the Russian people as sausages are today. Somehow this dish managed to assimilate the traditions of German,…
Макбет: Macbeth If you can believe it, I had been been working on a continuation of my serious, scholarly study of traditional Russian pet names — such an important, under-researched topic — when I got sidetracked by the extraordinary news that “По словам премьер-министра Лиз Трасс, 73-летний принц Уэльский Чарльз возьмет имя Карл III” (In…
Russia has put Vitaly Mansky, one of the country’s leading documentary filmmakers and a critic of the invasion of Ukraine, on a wanted list, Russian media reported Tuesday. Mansky, 58, was recently implicated in a defamation case brought by prominent film director and Kremlin supporter Nikita Mikhalkov. In a recent Youtube interview, Mansky said “at…
Douglas Smith is an historian and translator, author of seven books on Russia. In the 1980s, he was a Russian-speaking guide on the U.S. State Department’s exhibition “Information USA” that traveled around the Soviet Union and served as an interpreter for late President Reagan. In 2016 he found an extraordinary cache of color photographs and…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is often called “Putin’s war,” based on the assumption that Russia’s authoritarian leader has a firm grip on power and virtually single-handedly influences Russian politics. And as the only country to wage a war in Europe in the 21st century, Russia is viewed as an exceptional state that operates by its…
“What do you mean, jam from Kyiv? From where?” a patron of a Moscow restaurant shouted aggressively at the waiter. “Yes, it’s from the time of Catherine the Great,” the waiter said calmly. “Well, if that’s the case, all right then…” the diner muttered, mollified. That scene really happened about five years ago. Even then,…
Тузик: Ace (classic dog name) When I moved to Riga, the first morning I was woken up by the unmistakable pitter patter of little dog paws in the apartment above me. Later that day when I was walking my dog, we met the pitter-patterer: a very friendly, sweet-natured dog of mixed, rather confused origins –…
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, presided over period of artistic freedom in the U.S.S.R. that had not been seen since the post-Revolutionary era. Russian culture flourished under his leadership, particularly in the theater, in which he took an active interest. But unlike other Soviet leaders, Gorbachev did…
On Aug. 30, Manana Aslamazyan, the former head of the organization Internews in Russia and one of the key figures in the development of television news in Russia and the CIS, died after being struck by a car in Yerevan, Armenia. She was 70 years old. Aslamazyan came to Internews in 1991 after a career…
In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously labeled the collapse of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Years later, analysts, pundits and casual observers have repeatedly returned to the phrase to find a possible explanation for the Kremlin’s geopolitical moves from the 2008 war in Georgia to the ongoing invasion of…
We tend to complain about Russian cuisine, insisting that it hasn’t changed since the first household manual, the “Domostroi,” was written centuries ago. It’s all cabbage soups, blinis, and little pastries. How can it catch up to modern times! No wonder people forget about Russian cuisine — it’s hopelessly behind the times. There is, of…
Купить билет: to buy a ticket It’s a hot Friday in August, which is the perfect time for a pop quiz. What’s a small Russian word that means on, in, for, take, at and with? A) да B) м–да C) не D) на E) и F) бля. If you chose (F) you’re a native Russian…
Six months into the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s political and economic life has changed significantly. New repressive laws forbid Russians from calling the war in Ukraine a “war,” the government blocks websites and social media and large companies have left the country. Protests are impossible. With little space to speak out freely, Russians have turned…
IMAX has banned Russian cinemas from screening Russian movies within Russia after leaving the country over its invasion of Ukraine, the head of a major cinema chain said Tuesday. IMAX Corporation, a Canadian company that provides proprietary high-resolution technology for a large-format movie experience, left Russia on June 1 after 19 years on the market,…
Anyone who has strolled along the banks of the Moscow River in the center of Russia’s capital will likely be familiar with the stolid and rather intimidating Soviet edifice sitting on the western tip of Bolotny island across a stretch of river from the Kremlin. This is the House on the Embankment — Dom na Naberezhnoi…
Today in Russian restaurant menus you might come across “Leningrad style” preceding the word rassolnik. But this St. Petersburg soup is just the Soviet version of a Moscow dish. It was created after the 1917 Revolution and reflected food shortages. It was made with pickled cucumbers, potatoes and pearl barley. What’s to be proud of?…
Как дела?: How’s it going? Years ago whenever I would ask an acquaintance “Как дела?” (How are things?), he’d answer: “В Кремле дела, у нас делишки”. Since дела can mean matters, affairs, or work and делишки can mean minor tasks or errands, I understood it as a joke that meant something like “The Kremlin is…
A court in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan on Tuesday fined a veteran rock star over an anti-war speech he made onstage at a concert earlier this year. Yury Shevchuk, the legendary frontman of rock band DDT, spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during the band’s concert in his native city of Ufa in May. …
Dmitry Vrubel, the Russian painter who shot to fame with a work on the Berlin Wall depicting Soviet and East German communist leaders kissing, has died in the German capital at age 62. One of the best known Berlin Wall graffiti pieces, Vrubel’s 1990 work titled “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”…
Forest fires so massive they dwarf European countries. Oil spills that turn Arctic rivers red. Snow that turns black from coal soot. Russia, the world’s fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and a country whose territory is warming 2.5 times faster than the planet as a whole, is already acutely feeling the impacts of climate change.…
Karl Nesselrode (1780-1862) was a staunch conservative and monarchist. In the mid-19th century, he had successfuly transformed Russia into what would later be called “the gendarme of Europe.” And thanks to popular support for the “Russian world” in the Balkans at the time, he achieved the predictable result of Russia’s complete diplomatic isolation on the…
Лихач: reckless person; skilled person Friday pop quiz: Name a Russian word that is a noun, an adverb and a short-form adjective all in one and means evil, clever, wicked, smart, rakish, daring, reckless, cool, or wild. I think it could even mean swashbuckling, if anyone is buckling their swashes these days. Any guesses? Лихо.…
What’s the difference between vareniki and pelmeni? Both are dumplings. Is it a question of who invented them? Even that is hard to decide. It’s amazing that passions are not raging over vareniki the way they are over borscht. Almost every nation has its own kind of dumplings: Italian ravioli, Japanese gyoza, Georgian khinkali, Asian…
Асап: (ASAP, aka as soon as possible) Languages change. We know this. Of course, we do. We are reminded of it every time we pick up a Jane Austen novel and marvel at the quaint phrases. And certainly when we see a Shakespeare play and chuckle over every “forsooth.” And definitely when we pick up…
Crimean Tatar art has a long and rich history dating back to ancient times, and it is a pride and glory of the indigenous people of the Crimean peninsula. While much of Crimean Tatar art and culture was lost following the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland, traditional art has entered a hopeful…
Moscow’s largest and most famous cathedral will bring guests back to the U.S.S.R. this fall when it plays host to a concert of popular Soviet songs. The “Hit Parade of the U.S.S.R.” concert at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral appeared on top ticketing services Afisha, Yandex.Afisha, Redkassa and Ticketland, the independent Meduza news website reported…