Russian

Russia-born U.S. journalist Masha Gessen (center) in a 2013 protest in Moscow against a proposed new law that would ban gay rights rallies.

From one generation to the next, Russians pass down the trauma of state terror

Books

Author and activist Masha Gessen follows the experiences of half-dozen Russians whose lives have been changed by Putin’s retro-totalitarian state.

A protester holds up a sign at an anti-Trump demonstration in Washington DC.

The Putinization of Donald Trump

Global Politics
White Helmet volunteers search for survivors at a site reportedly hit with a barrel bomb in the Al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on September 17, 2015.

With Aleppo under siege, the city’s ‘White Helmet’ volunteers pull bodies from rubble day after day

Conflict
The Russian film "Da i Da" ("Yes and Yes") directed by Valeria Gai Germanika

Russian curses are inventive, widely-used — and banned

Culture
Anti-government protesters sleep in Kiev's Mikhailovsky Monastery last week.

How a monastery became a symbol of Ukraine’s uprising

Conflict & Justice
A copy of Argumenty i Fakty, a weekly newspaper from Moskow, is on sale at a Brighton Beach shop.

In the Russian-American community of Brighton Beach, the Sochi Olympics are big

Sports

To get a taste of Sochi, without the hassle of traveling to Russia, step into New York’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. The Russian enclave in Brooklyn is where you’ll find the Olympic games on every available TV.

Here’s your handy pronunciation guide to the Sochi Olympics

Arts, Culture & Media

Sochi, the venue for the Winter Olympics, is usually anglicised as SOTCH-i (-o as in not, -tch as in catch, -i as the “y” in happy)

Gary Shteyngart

The world according to Gary Shteyngart in four languages

Arts, Culture & Media

Gary Shteyngart writes in English, but his memoir draws on the Russian and Yiddish of his Leningrad childhood, and the Hebrew of his schooling in New York.

Singer Alina Simone in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Russia

When Alina Simone (not her real name) met Alina Simone (not her real name either…)

Arts, Culture & Media

Writer and musician Alina Simone loved the comforting anonymity of her adopted name — until she met another woman with the same name.

How Russians Read McCain’s Pravda Op-Ed on Putin

While Americans were incensed at being lectured by a foreign politician whom many regard as either an idiot or a hypocrite, many Russians, it turns out, reacted no differently.