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 ...

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?

Why visit Tobolsk? Well, for one, to look at the ancient capital of Siberia, feel what the great exile Fyodor Dostoevsky and Romanovs royal family experienced here and also admire how the city has ...

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 ...

A.Kovtun, B. Korzin/TASS After colonial empires in Africa collapsed, Moscow did all it could to make “African comrades” embrace socialism – but the romance didn’t last long. “During yet another crisis ...

Global Look Press, Legion Media, Public domain The Bolsheviks oppressed the Orthodox Church after seizing power in Russia – but Stalin, despite all his ruthlessness, changed things for better in this ...

We at Russia Beyond cover this extremely fascinating time of history often, so we’ve put together your guide to the Soviet Union with our most noteworthy articles. Probably the first thing you ought ...

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 ...

These rebel artists broke the classical canons of the Imperial Academy of Arts and became the forerunners of Russian avant-garde. The Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions was registered in 1870 and ...

They are older than the Egyptians or Sumerians. Their women made tattoos resembling the Joker’s smile and their men had enormous beards. At the same time, they are one of the most persecuted people in ...

For some Russians of the 18th-19th centuries, French grammar was the first kind of grammar they learned; on the other hand, it was first often taught by fraudsters and former convicts. How did French ...

This is the story of how the mastermind behind MMM, Russia’s biggest financial pyramid scheme, managed to get elected to parliament while behind bars, how he declared war on the oligarchs and how he ...