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 ...

This is one of the most terrifying pages in Soviet history, devoted to the forced industrialization and remote lands’ development at the expense of human lives. R504 Kolyma Highway isn’t a popular ...

Yulia Mulino Making bliny or crepes is not rocket science. This dish is world famous, but have you ever tried to make tiny meat wraps with them? Have a look at how we do it in Russia. Bliny are known ...

The Russian state received a huge territory stretching to the upper Oka and Dnepr rivers with 19 border towns, including Chernihiv, Gomel, Novgorod-Siversky, and Bryansk. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

The most famous fictitious last name Vladimir Ulyanov ever used is, undoubtedly, Lenin. But it was one of about 150 monikers. Let’s take a closer look at the possible origins of the iconic pseudonym.

The Soviet computer industry underwent rapid development until the beginning of the 1970s, when the government effectively curtailed innovation in this area. Some of this knowledge is still so ...

Collectivization, or the consolidation of individual peasant farms into collective ones, was an assault on the ancient traditions of the Russian peasantry. However, on the bright side, it accelerated ...

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?

In the Russian Empire, blacks were neither enslaved nor suffered discrimination. Furthermore, the costume of the Moors of the Imperial Court was the most sumptuous of all the court uniforms under the ...

The square in Moscow has been associated with executions, violence and torture in the 20th century. It however has a dark past that goes back all the way to the 18th century. For Russians, the word ...

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 ...