As the world marks the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, RBTH remembers the dramatic and heroic story of the Arctic Convoys, a period of unique collaboration between Russia and 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 ...

Fedor Jeftichew had a rare disease — hypertrichosis. He earned fame in the 19th century as a circus freak, displaying his unusual condition to the public. The producer of the show even made the poor ...

In ancient times in Russia, separate jailhouses weren’t in immediate demand – to detain prisoners, dens were simply dug in the ground. Also, underground passages under fortress walls served to detain ...

What could you buy with 100 rubles in different periods of Russia’s history? Russia Beyond has compiled a retrospective of the ruble’s development, revealing the story of its ups and downs through ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.