Russian Studies Story Briefs

For about 70 years of its long history, Russia was part of the Soviet Union. Explore before-and-after stories about the country and its people, writers, artists, culture, rulers and worldwide influence.

From Imperial Russia to a Midwestern American town, the Third Imperial Easter Egg has an amazing history.

While he was head of Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky used Fanny Kaplan's attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin to justify the use of terror against perce...

When Napoleon and his Grand Army reached Moscow, on the 14th of September, 1812, nearly the whole city had been abandoned. Then it erupted in flames. ...

One year later, we remember ... As 298 people aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 are flying at 33,000 feet above a disputed area in Ukraine, a surfac...

Vorkuta, in Russia's northern climes, was once home to a Soviet-era forced labor camp.

This image depicts a scene from the investigation conducted by Nikolai Sokolov.

Although the Lockheed U-2 has the ability to self-destruct, Francis Gary Powers was unable to destroy his plane before bailing-out on May 1, 1960. He ...

Glienicke Bridge is known as the "Bridge of Spies" because it was the place, during the Cold War, where all spies exchanged between East and West were...

"Gulag" tells the story of Soviet forced-labor camps, and their prisoners, during the Stalinist age.

What happened in Ukraine, during 1932-33, which caused people to describe a famine in that country as Holodomor ("death by starvation)?

When Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union, he implemented an industrialization program which transformed the USSR.

In spite of censorship in her time, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) remains one of Russia's most-loved poets of the 20th century.

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