Russian history
Distrust and resentment have plagued Anglo-Russian relations for centuries
On a visit to England in 1556, Ivan the Terrible’s envoy alienated Londoners with his extreme suspicions – and lurid insults have been exchanged ever since
Worthless pieces of paper
The first banknotes were greeted with deep suspicion in 1769 – but it was nothing to the distrust that Soviet and post-Soviet issues aroused
Russia’s moral collapse
It’s not just Putin’s war, says Jade McGlynn. The mass of Telegram data shows how much the nation as a whole supports the offensive
The Russian enigma
Nothing is certain in a country where the past is constantly rewritten, says Owen Matthews
Autocrat and autodidact
The link between mass-murdering dictators and the gentle occupation of reading and writing books is a curious one, but it…
The Russian conundrum
Churchill was wrong: Russia is neither a riddle nor an enigma. Russians themselves concoct endless stories to glorify their country’s…
A river runs through it
‘Without this river the Russians could not live,’ remarked Robert Bremner in his work, Excursions in the Interior of Russia.…
Small but deadly: postcards that fuelled the Russian Revolution
In this handsomely illustrated book Tobie Mathew makes a case for the lowly postcard’s role in the politicisation of pre-revolutionary…
Micro-managing the terror
‘Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history… have given my research more than scholarly relevance,’ remarks Oleg Khlevniuk in…
Futurist at a dead end
Why increase the number of suicides? Better to increase the output of ink! wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1926 in response…
Crime and cover-up — a very Russian tale
The way to think about Russia, Bill Browder told me in Moscow in 2004, using a comparison he recycles in…
Into the badlands
Larger than Europe and the United States combined, Siberia is an enormous swathe of Russia, spanning seven time zones and…
