The Russian state received a huge territory stretching to the upper Oka and Dnepr rivers with 19 border towns, including Chernihiv, Gomel, Novgorod-Siversky, and Bryansk. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

The disclosure of the files offered a unique insight into one of the most secretive organizations of the Cold War era. In the spring of 1992, a Russian man knocked on the doors of the UK Embassy in ...

Crowns were usually made individually for each emperor and then broken up afterwards. But some pieces of imperial regalia did survive and can now be seen in museums. Before Peter I, the Tsar's most ...

Vladimir Grebnev/TASS Over four million Germans were imprisoned, captured and interned for labor in the USSR after WWII. Not all of them managed to find the road back home. “If I do survive, I will be ...

Some sang odes to his “greatness and courage” for self-promotion. Others – out of fear for the lives of their loved ones. And there were those who thought they could be literally on the same page with ...

During the 70 years of the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the number of constituent parts changed, but most of the time there were 15 of them. Here is the list. In the beginning ...

Legion Media; Maria Sibiryakova/Sputnik The old town of Palekh is famous all over the world, thanks to its tradition of lacquer miniatures and unique icon painting. It attracts artists from all over ...

Adidas sneakers were a mainstay in the Soviet Olympic team. Then, the shoes were sold under a completely different name. Later, however, they were seen being worn by the Spetsnaz in Afghanistan.

Russia is famous for its extra cold winters, but in some places, summer temperatures are unbelievably high. People who live in these cities spend every summer in conditions of incredible heat. So, ...

On March 19, 2021, after a COVID-induced delay, the new historical thriller The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, had its world premiere. The film tells the story of Oleg Penkovsky, one of the ...

When everyone thought they were seeing the elderly “leader of the peoples”, they were actually seeing a 24-year-old Degaestani! By the time young Feliks Dadaev, who hailed from a Dagestani village, ...

To describe the Soviet penal system, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, wrote a massive book titled ‘Archipelago Gulag’ after collecting hundreds of memoirs of ...