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 ...

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 ...

U.S. Colonel Boris Pash (1900 – 1995) was a typical 20th-century American ‘badass’ – he hated the communists’ guts, took German cities almost single handedly in WWII and captured the Nazis’ nuclear ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

Why is its color red? What does the ‘hammer and sickle’ emblem represent? And what about the five-pointed star? Red flags and banners have been used by rioters, protesters and insurgents since ancient ...

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.

One of the first to grasp the scale of the catastrophe, Valery Legasov was on hand to mitigate the consequences. His decisions helped save millions of lives, but he paid the ultimate price. A man in a ...

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 ...

In Russia, church bells were treated as persons: they had ears, tongues - and names. And, albeit not having their own volition, bells could be… executed and exiled for sounding at the wrong time or ...

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 ...