Maria Plotkina and Arina Nuriahmetova were stressed young computer science teachers battling an entrenched system of learning when they decided to set up Geek Teachers to equip school teachers across Russia with the IT skills to bring the latest education technologies to the classroom. Four years later, their platform, which has over 13,000 online followers,…
Has this ever happened to you? You see something unusual at the market—you may have no clue what it is — but you pounce on it anyway, only to get it home and wonder, “now what?” These are the inciting incidents of my culinary life in Russia. I fill my pantry with oddities that intrigue…
Soviet rock icon Viktor Tsoi’s legacy has experienced a renaissance in 2020, with his band Kino’s Perestroika-era song “Khochu Peremen!” (I Want Changes!) becoming an anthem of the mass opposition protests in Belarus. But don’t expect the charismatic Kino frontman to appear onscreen in a new biopic that opened in theaters across Russia on Thursday.…
Netflix is launching a pilot project that will provide films dubbed into Russian, Interfax has reported. The new service, in partnership with Russian media holding company National Media Group (NMG), will offer more Russian content including the series “To The Lake,” which Netflix is showing on worldwide platforms. Although Netflix has been available in Russia…
A bombshell exploded in the Russian media recently: Stephen King praised a Russian TV series that was based on a Russian book no less, and that Netflix had picked up for the largest sum ever paid for a Russian series. I’m certain that King himself has no idea of the sensation he caused. He was…
It has been a dog of a week! First: the American election. Next: appliances then went on what was clearly a coordinated sympathy strike: the stand mixture, the icemaker, and the stove’s pilot light all stopped working. And then my dog got sick. The vets sent us home with medication and instructions to keep our…
Beloved Soviet-era satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky has died from an unknown cause at age 86, Russian media reported Friday. “I can only confirm that he has died,” Zhvanetsky’s spokesman Oleg Stashkevich told the state-run TASS news agency without disclosing the cause of death. Born in the Soviet Ukrainian city of Odessa on March 6, 1934, Zhvanetsky…
On Wednesday, Russians celebrated the country’s newest holiday, National Unity Day. Originally established to commemorate Moscow’s liberation from the Polish-Lithuanian occupation in 1612, it now also aims to promote ethnic and religious tolerance among the country’s diverse population. Though 15 years have passed since Nov. 4 was first marked as a public holiday, the date…
Можно? How do you approach a stranger on the streets? How do you ask to take a photograph without speaking the language? What seem to be barriers at first make it easier in the end. You just ask. It’s easier to speak a few words, but it works just as well without. You show the…
For millions of people around the world who dabble in the occult, Halloween is one of the most important — and fun — holidays of the year. But while younger Russians might wear costumes and go to Halloween parties today, it’s not a traditional or widespread holiday for much of the country. Despite the lack…
Halloween as we think of it — jack-o’-lanterns, children dressed up trick-or-treating, scary decor — is a relatively recent import to Russia. Apart from the expatriate enclaves where they take trick-or-treating very seriously indeed, the holiday has found its most fertile soil in the grown-up playgrounds of nightclubs and bars. And this makes sense, since…
Our friends and neighbors at the Hyatt Regency Petrovsky Park have brought back the gastronomic stay-at-home travel experiences that kept many of us happy and well-fed during the spring lockdown. Now they’ve doubled their culinary geography. Instead of one, now there are two sets of delicious food available for order every weekend. The new offerings,…
On Thursday evening Pushkin House announced that Sergei Medvedev is this year’s winner of the 2020 Pushkin House Book Prize for his collection of essays called in English “The Return of the Russian Leviathan.” The book was translated by Stephen Dalziel. The prize, which carries a monetary award of £10,000, is given every year for…
A former German language professor, Olga Shirnina is best known worldwide by her online alias, klimbim, with which she signs her unique artwork. Shirnina colors historical photographs using Photoshop, offering a new take on history and the figures that shaped her world. Behind this seemingly straightforward coloring exercise are hours of meticulous research — after…
Like virtually every other international symposium, congress or conference this year, the 10th Anniversary Symposium of Traditional Polyphony that was to be held in Tibilisi, Georgia, could not welcome singers in person. So the Yale Russian Chorus gave up their travel plans but joined with their Alumni Association and the Kartuli Ensemble to sing for…
Filmmaker Roman Liberov, renowned for his whimsical and moving literary-cinematic works, is releasing a new film on November 5. “The Innermost Man” is inspired by the life and prose of Andrei Platonov, one of Russia’s most paradoxical writers. It is a captivating new addition to Liberov’s series about 20th century Russian writers, who each found…
Filmmaker Roma Liberov, renowned for his whimsical and moving literary-cinematic works, is releasing a new film on November 5. “The Innermost Man” is inspired by the life and prose of Andrei Platonov, one of Russia’s most paradoxical writers. It is a captivating new addition to Liberov’s series about 20th century Russian writers, who each found…
With the baby carriage I can go to the store but not to the pharmacy, because there is no ramp. That was part of my daily planning when I became a mother. Life with a baby carriage was sometimes complicated, but the lives of many disabled people, especially in smaller Russian cities and towns, often shrinks…
Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, one of Moscow’s oldest and largest venues for contemporary art, has joined with the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art to hold a series of educational programs. The public online discussions, online “diaries,” and master classes have just begun and will run until early December. The discussions are on…
Mushroom season continues its stately autumnal progress. Having stocked the freezer with mushroom soup, mushroom lasagna, and mushroom pâté, I suddenly remembered that most quintessentially mushroom-y dish of them all; one I’m guessing none of us has enjoyed in quite some time: Mushroom Julien. This fixture of glitzy Soviet-era restaurants and theater buffets is another…
HOLLYWOOD—The historic 1986 Reykjavik summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan will be the backdrop for a new satirical film. The working title of the movie is “Tear Down This Wall,” Reagan’s famous entreaty to Gorbachev. Based on the book “An Impossible Dream: Reagan, Gorbachev and a World Without the Bomb”…
The Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery is hosting an exhibition that is a must-see for anyone interested in early 20th-century Soviet art. It is a show of works by Sarra Lebedeva, one of the ‘Amazons of the Avant-Garde’ that included the better known Vera Mukhina, Anna Golubkina, and Yekaterina Belashova. The exhibition is the…
Wednesday, Oct. 21 marked 10 years since Sergei Sobyanin was first voted into office by the Moscow City Duma. Born in a remote Siberian village, Sobyanin rose through the ranks to the highest echelons of the Russian political elite throughout his career. His mayorship of Moscow has been marked by a number of ambitious projects,…
The St. Petersburg exhibition “Consciousness Without Borders” showcases the work of two young contemporary artists, Yulia Virko and Anthony Gelfand. This show is an expanded version of a previous joint show held at Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod in Moscow earlier this autumn. Both Virko and Gelfand create their own realities based on what they…
Independent journalism isn’t dead. You can help keep it alive. The Moscow Times’ team of journalists has been first with the big stories on the coronavirus crisis in Russia since day one. Our exclusives and on-the-ground reporting are being read and shared by many high-profile journalists. We wouldn’t be able to produce this crucial journalism…
Sunday marked three weeks since the start of the latest escalation in fighting between longtime foes Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. A Moscow-brokered ceasefire has proven to be unreliable as military and civilian casualties continue to rise on both sides. Over the weekend, members of the Armenian and Azerbaijani diasporas in…
HOLLYWOOD—Former FBI director James Comey was in the news continuously for nearly four years. In 2018 he wrote a book about his experiences, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership” that focused, in part, on his last tumultuous months before and after the 2016 election. In late September his story was told in a new…
Ilbrus, 59 years old I was born in Azerbaijan and I studied in Baku. During the Soviet period I went to study in Nizhny Novgorod at the Institute of Water Transportation. And I’ve lived here since then. Today I am driving a taxi, but in the 1990s and 2000s, I had my own business and…
I love soup season, and where I live, this lasts about nine months of the year. As you may imagine, borshch is in heavy rotation in our household, but as I’ve written before, no two pots of borshch are ever the same. There is no hard and fast recipe for borshch; it varies depending on…
In the era of Covid-19 Kinotavr, aka the Open Russian Film Festival, was postponed from June until September. It took place at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, and despite social distancing and other precautions, several directors, actors and film critics still got infected with the coronavirus. It’s just as well that we are watching…
Soviet film lovers rejoice! None other than the iconic Cheburashka will return to the big screen in 2022. Produced by the famous Soyuzmultfilm, the new movie will be a collaboration between Russian independent studio YBA and Disney, with production set to begin in 2021. Cheburashka made his on-screen debut in a 1969 film by Soviet…
As a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hits Russia, Moscow is once again eyeing new restrictions to prevent the virus’ spread among the city’s 12.7 million people. As of Tuesday, Moscow has confirmed 339,431 cases of Covid-19, with 264,500 patients recovered. Here’s a look at life in Russia’s capital amid the second wave:
Yekaterinburg Pregnant woman, 37 years old Today is my last day of freedom; I have a C-section appointment for tomorrow. And that’s it. I will have to breastfeed a baby, no more breakfasts at a café for me. (Editor’s Note: Mesto47 team met the woman in a coffee shop) I can’t say that I dislike children, it’s…
Each year, the panel of judges of Pushkin House’s annual Book Prize considers 80-100 non-fiction books about Russia published in the previous year. Their daunting task is to choose from this list just six finalists for the Pushkin House’s coveted Book Prize, which will be awarded for the eighth year this autumn. This year’s shortlisted…
Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born on Oct. 22, 1870 [Oct. 10 O.S.] in a noble family in Voronezh, he studied at the Yelets men’s gymnasium in the Lipetsk region but left before finishing. He lived in Yefremov, Oryol, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and many other…
It takes just four hours to get to St. Petersburg from Moscow by high-speed train, a couple more hours by car, but what about 16 days by bike? Twelve volunteers, mainly Muscovites, finished their 1,100-kilometer expedition at the Hermitage museum last Sunday. This trip wasn’t the first one in Russia’s cycling movement, but has a…
More than 200 runners and their four-legged friends put their best feet — and paws — forward this weekend for the Fast Dog Cross Country charity run in Moscow’s Bitsevsky Forest Park. The annual race raises money to help support animal shelter and rescue efforts. Take a look at the fast-paced race in action:
Dima, Yekaterinburg I grew up in Yekaterinburg, I’m transgender. It all started because I thought I liked to dress like a boy. Then I started thinking about it more, and at first I decided that I was agender, something in the middle of both sexes. Then, about a year ago, I realized that I wasn’t…
The time has come to speak about Russia’s true national sport. Forget football, disregard hockey, and abandon judo; the season of “tikhaya okhota” or silent hunt is upon us, when stalkers armed with long sticks and bark and twig “lukoshki” baskets set out through misty mornings to run their quarry to ground in the damp…
Staggered seating, social distancing, masks and gloves – so begins the 42nd Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF). The organizers couldn’t invite Hollywood and international celebrities to the opening ceremony, but this didn’t stop MIFF from coming up with a new and extremely rich movie program. Many of the films presented at the festival, unfortunately, will…
The Moscow International Film Festival will not screen an Armenian drama set in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in order to avoid provoking violence between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Russian capital, Interfax reported Wednesday. Organizers made the decision as clashes between arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh entered their fourth day and the number…
The Second Triennial of Contemporary Russian Art at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art that opened this month is a very unusual exhibition. Called “A Beautiful Night For All the People,” the show consists of works chosen not by curators — professional art experts — but by the participants in the last Triennial. To…
Over the weekend, bikers from across the country gathered in Moscow to mark the end of the 2020 motorcycling season and enjoy the last moments of the Indian summer before cold temperatures take over the capital. The MosMotoFest participants rode along Sakharov Avenue and made their way along the Garden Ring before arriving at Gorky…
From childhood on it’s just been me and my mom: my dad died in a motorcycle crash before I was even born. When I was in school, my mother was getting her education, and from the fifth grade on I was already completely independent. In my upbringing my grandpa played the biggest role. From the…
This summer the 13-year-old Elisabeth Anisimow spent her summer vacation at the dacha — painting an image of the Transfiguration of Christ on a village chapel. Born to Russian parents in Los Angeles, Elisabeth (Lisa) Anisimow showed an interest in art at an early age. When she was still a toddler, her mother would take…
A new American film that turns the executions of Russia’s last tsar and his family into a fantasy-tinged teen comedy has caused an uproar among Russians, who say the film mocks their history. At first, the plot of “Anastasia: Once Upon a Time” sounds outrageous enough to rank among other so-bad-they’re-good classics: As Vladimir Lenin…
The best of both worlds: Lady Gaga released the music video for her new single “911” — and it’s filled with references to the classic Soviet Armenian film “The Color of Pomegranates.” The 1969 film by acclaimed director Sergei Parajanov depicts the life of an 18th-century Armenian poet, focusing on visually intricate and symbolic scenes rather…
All throughout the quarantine period, our friends and neighbors at the Hyatt Regency Petrovsky Park kept us well-fed with weekend deliveries of delicious foreign cuisine. They are continuing the tradition of enticing international food and drink. Only now, we can get out of the house and go to them. Singaporean Cuisine Festival The first special…
Whether you prefer running the trails or surfing the waves, this past weekend had plenty of outdoor activities for Muscovites looking to enjoy the last of the late summer weather. Around 25,000 runners participated in the eighth annual Moscow Marathon on Sunday. The 2014 Toulouse Marathon winner Sardana Trofimova beat her own previous Moscow marathon…
The first thing we see is a portrait of Stalin, a huge stack of freshly printed newspapers and a bunch of flags, rolled up and put in the corner. The man at the reception desk asks us what we want. We ask for a brochure, but he instead he suggests to talk to Ivan, who…
Trucks piled high with cabbages backing up to supermarkets and markets and the gaping holes on the salt shelves announce autumn in Russia as much as do the muted yellow beauty of the damp leaves and the wispy fog on the river before the morning sun burns it off. Russians roll up their sleeves and…
Andrei Kureichik, a celebrated Belarusian playwright and a member of the Coordination Council of Belarus, has written a play about the month of protests and events in Belarus since the contested presidential election on August 9. The play, “Insulted. Belarus,” was written during and right after the events and translated into English by prominent translator…
Can a prodigal son be trusted? What lies behind the remorse? And what really made this tormented soul return? These are the questions raised by a multimedia installation created by award-winning filmmaker Alexander Sokurov and inspired by Rembrandt’s painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” which is held in the collection of the Hermitage. The…
On Saturday the Russian motorcycle racer Danila Krasniuk entered motorsports history. He became the first ever Russian to compete in an Irish motorcycle race, the Cookstown 100. The Cookstown 100 has been held on public roads in Northern Ireland since 1922 and traditionally opens the Irish road racing season in late April. However, this year…
This weekend, Muscovites got the chance to witness the best of the Soviet Union’s automobile legacy as 100 Zhiguli sedans raced in the annual GUM AutoRally on Saturday. This year’s event marked 50 years since the release of Zhiguli’s first model, VAZ-2101, commonly known as ‘Kopeyka’ (named after the smallest ruble coin, the kopek). Here’s…
Vladivostok, Far East Sergei, 28 years old I was born on Sakhalin. I’m a drag racer. The culture of drag racing came to us from the USA. It’s simple: two cars line up, then race for a quarter mile (402 meters). The faster car wins. A time under 10 seconds is considered to be fast,…
Tens of thousands of nameless older women inhabit St. Petersburg, picking their way amongst the pockmarked sidewalks and treacherous cobblestones, dressed in clean but shabby clothes, their shoulders stooped with decades of carrying heavy burdens. They are as integral to the city as the elaborate facades and the noonday gun from Peter and Paul Fortress,…
The North River Terminal in Moscow was begun in 1933 and opened in 1937. Designed by architects Alexei Rukhlyadev and Valdimr Krinsky, the terminal was on a waterway leading to the Moscow-Volga Canal. It was the 12th river terminal to appear in the city but by far the most impressive, with an enormous terminal building…
On Thursday Oct. 10 at 5 p.m. MSK (3 p.m. in London, 10 a.m. in New York) the Russian Jewish Congress together with the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow and the British Holocaust Educational Trust are holding an online event dedicated to British citizens who have been given the title Righteous Among the…
In 1989 a group of artists led by Nikolai Polissky began to move to this beautiful land not far from Kaluga to the southeast of Moscow. The idea was to build an land art park: art objects made of various materials that would be set in the natural surroundings to show off art and nature…