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?

Sarah Welch/wikipedia.org Here’s a toast to the explorers and archaeologists who discovered the plant used to produce the drink of the ancient Indians. One of the most mysterious drinks in the history ...

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 ...

This architectural utopia of the Soviet authorities became one of the most outstanding examples of engineering and architectural thought. Albeit, only on paper. The Palace of the Soviets is the most ...

The great poet’s death has taken on an almost mythical status in Russian culture. Here are five interesting facts about this seminal event in Russian literary history. Most Russians will tell you that ...

To describe the Soviet penal system, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, wrote a massive book titled ‘Archipelago Gulag’ after collecting hundreds of memoirs of ...

Lines were a sign of the times - most goods were in short supply and their rare appearance on shelves in shops sometimes caused actual stampedes. In every Soviet food store one could almost always buy ...

When everyone thought they were seeing the elderly “leader of the peoples”, they were actually seeing a 24-year-old Degaestani! By the time young Feliks Dadaev, who hailed from a Dagestani village, ...

Ancient chronicles called Kiev the “mother of Russian cities” highlighting its pre-eminence over other population centers in ancient Rus’. In contemporary Ukraine, however, the adjective “Russian” is ...

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 ...

Cross a burning stream, fight a dragon, find the city of Russian Atlantis – Slavs had it all in their ancient mythology. Now, all we have left are the names of the sacred places. This sacred town ...

This summer palace was designed in the Italian style and ended up being the last residence built for the Russian imperial family, the Romanovs. It was the site of many significant events, such as the ...