Russia
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Bringing Tolstoy to the West
More people were reading Tolstoy than any other author in translation at the beginning of the 20th century, but as late as the 1880s, few non-Russians had even heard of him. Translators were deterred partly because of the length of…
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Typewriters Are Latest High Tech Spy Tool
In the wake of American spies tapping into every form of electronic communication, Germany is considering typewriters for highly sensitive documents. The Russians have already instituted such measures. Typewriters aren’t foolproof though. In 1984, the Soviets listened to the keystrokes…
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Emily Parker
“If you are a critic of the Chinese government, it’s not easy to organize a physical gathering. Beijing cracks down hard on that kind of thing. But online, critics find they are not alone.”
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Riding On Trains With Pushkin
A city in Siberia is reportedly offering free rides on the underground to people who can recite at least two verses from any poem by Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s greatest poets.
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George Carlin versus Vladimir Putin
The New Yorker pulled this from Pushkin’s “The Wagon of Life;” it contains swearing: At dawn we jump inside the wagon. Happy to break our necks like glass, We scorn life’s hedonistic languor, And yell “Man, fuck it! Just haul…
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The Rumpus Interview with Joseph Huff-Hannon
Writer and activist Joseph Huff-Hannon discusses Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories, an oral history collaboration with journalist Masha Gessen and a look at the human rights crisis currently affecting Russia’s LGBT population.
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Pussy Riot Members Freed from Prison and Pussy Riot
Here’s some news out of Russia that isn’t related the Olympics: Nadia Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, who were recently released from prison, are no longer members of Pussy Riot, and it doesn’t look like the split was 100 percent amicable.
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“Give Me Your Little Paw”
In a luminous essay for the Morning News, Julia Phillips describes tagging along with the mushers of the Beringia, a Russian dogsled race that’s like the Iditarod but even more intense. It’s a definite must-read in which Phillips deftly chronicles…
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The Cutest Librarian
If you ask Kuzya, an assistant librarian at the State Hermitage Library in Novorossiysk, Russia, for a book recommendation, you might go home with A Tale of Two Kitties or The Brothers Kara-meow-zov. Because he is a cat. And he wears a bow-tie…
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“Kholden Kolfeeld’s” Russian Fans
Amid the flood of J. D. Salinger articles related to the upcoming biography and documentary about him, this New Yorker essay by Reed Johnson stands out. It has nothing to do with the biography, actually. It’s about Russian translations of The Catcher in…
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“The Czar and the Poet”
When the people followed the Communists at the beginning of the twentieth century, they gave up Christ, but they found it impossible, as the revolutionary poets exhorted them, “to throw Pushkin overboard the steamboat of modernity.” Prominent Russian writer Mikhail…
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The Rumpus Interview with Elliott Holt
Writer and Rumpus contributor Elliott Holt sits down to discuss her debut novel, You Are One of Them, her preoccupation with secrets, and working in 1990s Moscow during Russia’s economic transition.