A Year in Moscow

Happy endings are not popular here, as a cursory acquaintance with Russian literature will tell you. Seriously, try it - any Russian novel. No one yet has been able to name me a single book...   Read more

Russia, Gogol may have said, has two misfortunes: fools and roads. If Gogol didn't say it, Pushkin did, or possibly Karamzin (a 19th century historian) - the point is, somehow or other...   Read more

I have an unfortunate tendency, when very upset, to want to lapse into nineteenth-century English. I am not sure how people nowadays are expected to react when their sister runs off with...   Read more

Generally speaking, Russian policeman (or militiamen, or whatever) are supposed to be scary. The first time I came to Russia, for work, the head of the office in Moscow told me that if I...   Read more