During the 70 years of the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the number of constituent parts changed, but most of the time there were 15 of them. Here is the list. In the beginning ...

Russians couldn’t even make proper bricks before they hired Italians to work for them. The Italian engineers were proficient in war and architecture, and for lavish salaries, helped build the ...

Roscosmos Life as a cosmonaut is not as romantic as it seems. Anyone who has been in orbit will tell you that it’s very difficult work, leaves you with little free time, and is enormously stressful ...

The expression ‘Potemkin villages’ means anything made for the sole purpose of concealing the truth. The legend goes that during Catherine the Great’s journey to Crimea in 1787, Grigoriy Potemkin, the ...

Russia sells more wheat than any other country in the world. At the same time, its domestic grain consumption is growing, too. So how did Russia manage to achieve this breakthrough in wheat exports?

From chaos and crime to freedom and opportunity - this period in Russian history was sort of a roller coaster ride - one we commonly refer to as the “wild 90s”. Do you remember a time before iPhones ...

Some of them not only followed their owners into exile but also lost their lives on the same tragic night in July 1918 when the Romanovs were killed. Interestingly, though, one dog managed to survive ...

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 ...

According to Lenin’s plan, the future USSR could have had members all around the globe. But eventually, Stalin’s plan prevailed. So, how was the Union prepared? “What? Did the Bolsheviks just start ...

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 ...

Lyudmila Pavlichenko is considered the deadliest woman sniper of the Great Patriotic War, with 309 kills to her name, all of them enemy soldiers and officers. Nicknamed “Lady Death” by foreign war ...