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 ...

Reuters During the eighties and nineties, Russians generally thought the true extent of Stalin’s Great Purge (1936-38) was never revealed, with many claiming far more people were killed than ...

This is the architectural complex inside the Kremlin walls, which includes the early 19th-century Palace, the Terem Palace (the Tsars residence in 17 th century), the Palace of Facets (the hall for ...

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 ...

Everything you wanted to know about the USSR’s notorious security apparatus. From its inception and until the end of the Soviet Union, the KGB was a prominent force in Soviet politics and society. Its ...

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 ...

Natalya Nosova Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1997. But for centuries prior to that, the state was busy killing criminals or those it proclaimed as such - often using rather ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

At various times during his reign, Uncle Joe trusted these guys almost as much as himself; he created a cult around them, naming streets, cities, and, in one case, even the Moscow Metro after them.

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?