In the beginning there were four independent republics that signed the declaration of the creation of the USSR, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in 1922.

This is the only residence that officially belongs to Putin as a private individual. This 77-square-meter apartment is remarkably modest for Russia’s president.

Aleksey Kravchenko, the teenage actor who played Florya, really went through hell while filming. Director, Elem Klimov, shot Come and See in chronological order over a nine-month period. Comparing ...

1. ‘The Forties’ by David Samoilov (1920-1990) Samoilov (born Kaufman) is regarded as one of the leading Soviet poets of WWII. His poems depicted the horrors of war and the struggle for peace ...

The Khabarovsk Krai, which has about 789,000 square kilometers of territory, is one of the most sparsely populated places on the planet. These vast swathes of emptiness are visible when one drives ...

The Grand Duchess was one of the few Romanovs who managed both to escape abroad after the 1917 Revolution and also to take her jewelry with her.

People who grew up in the USSR do not remember any wheelchair ramps or specialized restrooms designed for the disabled in Soviet cities. Disabled people were actually destined, at best, to ...

Many other theories claim to reveal the real origin of the deadly game, however none of them have ever been proven with hard evidence. Some believe ‘Russian roulette’ emerged as a way for ...

When the Russians built a new U.S. embassy in Moscow in the late 1970s, the KGB stuffed it with bugs at the bricklaying stage. “The only way to make that building secure was to chop off the top ...

We have a full picture of Khodynka tragedy thanks to a famous Moscow reporter Vladimir Gilyarovskiy. He was fearless and had already given publicity to many fires and accidents, took part in Russo ...

The building was designed by architect Alexander Kaminsky, the son-in-law of Pavel Tretyakov, who founded the Tretyakov Gallery—which was also built in the Russian style.

The USSR was obviously not the "evil empire" it was made out to be by capitalist propaganda. But it would also be wrong to portray it as a land of universal justice and plenty.