Alexander Blok was born into a noble family in 1880 in St Petersburg, where he lived all his life. That said, he spent his summers at his grandfather’s Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow, where one of the ...

From the Arctic Circle to Kazakhstan, from the western borders to the Far East — the Gulag system in Stalin's time encompassed the entire USSR. “Gulag” is often used to describe any Soviet prison or ...

Even Queen Elizabeth II has some old pieces of jewelry that once belonged to the Russian royal family. The diamond, emerald and sapphire tiaras of the Romanov dynasty were remarkable for their beauty ...

Deportations are one of the most tragic pages in Soviet history, and continue to be a sensitive issue for many members of the repressed ethnic and social groups. So what was the goal of that policy?

According to one theory, ‘Russian roulette’ emerged in the Tsarist army as a relatively “safe” trick that easily impressed onlookers. Wulich […] invited us to sit around in a sign. [We] silently ...

Russia is famous for its extra cold winters, but in some places, summer temperatures are unbelievably high. People who live in these cities spend every summer in conditions of incredible heat. So, ...

The Russian merchant arrived in India in 1469 and lived in the country for three years, travelling all the way to Deccan Plateau. His time in India coincided with the decline of the Bahmani Sultanate.

While Russia and the United States border each other in the North Pacific, the two countries often seem to be very far apart. Nevertheless, the U.S. has many towns and cities that still bear traces of ...

Alamy/Legion Media After more than a century of speculation, an international group of geneticists has conclusively proven that the Aztecs, Incas, and Iroquois are closely related to the peoples of ...

After World War I, the German army, once the strongest in Europe, presented a pitiful sight. Under the Treaty of Versailles, it could not number more than 100,000 soldiers. The Germans were forbidden ...

To describe the Soviet penal system, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, wrote a massive book titled ‘Archipelago Gulag’ after collecting hundreds of memoirs of ...

There are no true members of the Skoptsy sect left in contemporary Russia. But in the 19th century, according to some sources, this organization that believed in the absolution of sins through ...