What’s Good and What’s Bad

Peter Cheremushkin Firebird Conquers Washington

Tours of the Mariinsky Theater’s ballet troupe to the US capital always attract full houses at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

Anna Gamalova Gogol Was Once So Young…

Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka will forever remain a monument to happy adolescence, full of vigor and love, which has a whole life ahead of it.

Patriarch Kirill Aesthetics and Morality Are Concepts of the Same Kind

On February 22, the Patriarchal Council for Culture held its enlarged session under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia at the St. Sergius Hall of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Julia Semenova Bilingualism or Assimilation

Will the pupils of the Russian-language lyceums of Moldavia know the Moldavian language better if several general education subjects are taught in this language?

Ksenia Vavilova, Marina Minina, Marina Sipatova The Big World

Students from 32 countries gathered at the festival of national cultures called In This Big World, which took place at the Nizhniy Novgorod Linguistics University in early March.

Alla Berezovskaya Back to the Future

Each year former members of the Latvian Legion, the Waffen-SS of Latvia, march the streets of Riga, but this year the NGO World Wothout Nazism held an international conference in the city on the eve of the march.

Denis Terentiev Supremacy over Ice

Russia boasts the largest nuclear-powered fleet of icebreakers in the world: six icebreakers on duty, three which have been converted into floating museums and Rosatom plans to build six more in the near future.

Tatiana Vilinbakhova The World of Beauty and Harmony

Old icon painters and restorers, undertaking the cleansing of an icon’s background, say that they are “uncovering the light.”

Sergei Vinogradov The Tree of a Concerntration Camp

The author of The Kolyma Tales over the course of a quarter of a century has gone from samizdat to the big screen, websites in English and Russian, and a virtual museum. But has he become any closer and more accessible?

Oksana Prilepina The Battle of Borodino Online

At the Panorama Museum of the Battle of Borodino Moscow is plagued by fire and ash, armies are moving, explosions sounding off, hoofbeats thud and cries in various languages are heard – the Patriotic War of 1812 is on.

Mikhail Bykov Alexandria

In ancient Rus they knew of a novel that lauded the triumphs of Alexander of Macedonia – this Hellenistic work was called Alexandria.

Mikhail Bykov Light Is the Night

The strategist of city-states, the czars of Sparta and Macedonia, emperors of Rome and Byzantine, sultans of the Sublime Porte, the Junta and finally presidents… It seems Greece has seen all sorts of political power!

Dmitry Ivanov Tales of Plaster Mountain

The Nizhniy Novgorod village of Peshalan has long been famed as a source of plaster.

Alexei Makeev Merchant Prokhorov’s Sweet Invention

Near the end of the 19th century, a merchant from the city of Beleva thought up a sweet treat for his grandmother.

Evgeny Rezepov The Doctor from Overseas

For nearly 40 years Galina Kikot worked as the local doctor in the village of Cherkasskoe. Following her retirement she fell ill. While hospitalized, she thought of one thing: she had to find a good doctor to serve her district, where her daughter also worked as a nurse.

Daniil Litvintsev Waves of the Danube

A town with canals as streets and boats as transportation appeared in the delta of the Danube in the 17th century.

Vladimir Emelyanenko The Race to Get Ahead

Imitating the European Union, which since 1985 has been implementing the program Cultural Capitals of Europe, Russia is aiming to create cultural capitals of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Julia Semenova A Representative of Generation P

Nicoleta Esinencu can be said to be of Generation P, which was the focus of Viktor Pelevin’s novel on the generation which came of age in the wild 1990s at the breaking point of an era.

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