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 ...

According to one theory, ‘Russian roulette’ emerged in the Tsarist army as a relatively “safe” trick that easily impressed onlookers. Wulich […] invited us to sit around in a sign. [We] silently ...

The Soviet Union seemed formidable in the mid-1980s, so why did it collapse in just a few years? Due to the weak economy and internal ethnic tensions? Yes, and no. “It was a major turning point in ...

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 ...

Central Asia became the arena of the ‘Great Game’ between the Russian and British empires. It was the arrival of the British in the region that, to a large extent, pushed Russia into conquering it.

Historian and architecture expert William Brumfield discovers the connections between the Russian monarchy and this monument to the Orthodox faith. Moscow Kremlin. South view from Sophia Embankment ...

Soviet servicemen had no small part to play in what was to become the most bitter defeat in U.S. history. The Soviet Union could not stand by and watch indifferently as the Americans were carrying out ...

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 ...

Seryozha Aleshkov was awarded the medal ‘For Combat Merit’, received a Browning as a trophy pistol from an army general and was even “promoted” to the rank of junior lieutenant. World War II affected ...

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 ...

Soviet Union, the Congress of Soviets, Soviet of Federation – the word has been and is still widely used in Russia, but what does it exactly mean? During the Soviet times, the USSR was often called ...

Vladimir Grebnev/TASS Over four million Germans were imprisoned, captured and interned for labor in the USSR after WWII. Not all of them managed to find the road back home. “If I do survive, I will be ...