Last week, I came across this tweet, and I knew that I had to share it with non-Russian speakers.

*спор о памятнике Сталину*

Историк:
- Сталин единственный, кто смог в то время собрать всю страну в кулак.

Ученик:
- В гулаг.
- дарикс (@sinforamoment) September 9, 2017

So I translated it as:

*An argument about a monument to Stalin*

Historian: Stain was ( Read more... )

A Russian artist from Moscow who goes by "Candra" on DeviantArt and elsewhere is best known for drawing stereotypically sexy girls (and sexy guys). But a more careful perusal of her gallery shows that she has more range than that. So when this piece came across my DeviantWatch list, my reaction was less "wait - Candra is drawing landscapes" and ( Read more... )

Back in Monday (very early Tuesday morning Moscow time), SUP, a company that owns Livejournal gave its users one hell of an unpleasant surprise ( Read more... )

When I woke up, I saw a bit of news on my Twitter feed about an explosive device that was found at Ploschad' Vostaniya station, one of the busiest stations in St. Petersburg subway. It was afternoon rush hour in my home city, and I remember thinking that I was glad it ended well ( Read more... )

A while back, I was looking way back into my LJ archive, and I wound up reading Lore's old posts about our visit to Russia back in March 2006. And there was one post in particular that I kind of wanted to share - where Lore gives her impression of what driving is like in St. Petersburg. The post is friends-locked, but, with her permission, I copy- ( Read more... )

When I was a little kid, I used to play with this large bear toy with dark brown fur. He wore overalls and a light blue shirt, his arms, legs and led could move, and his mouth was always open. Like most Russian bear toys, he was called Misha (a play off of "Mishka," the diminutive form of Russian word for bear). A lot of the times, I cast him as a ( Read more... )

As the news of President Trump’s executive order temporary banning all citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries and indefinitely suspending the admission of Syrian refugees, alliancesjr (who is Jewish) went on long tangents on Twitter drawing parallels between the executive order and United States turning away Jewish refugees in the 1930s. As someone ( Read more... )

Over at spb_ru, petras_pirt recently posted an image of what appeared to be a St. Petersburg municipal government poster in a subway train car, warning residents to be careful what they say, lest they run afoul of the Russian "anti-extremism" law.


( Read more... )

I was cleaning out my Firefox tabs when I realized that I never got around to writing about the September 28 "Heart of the Hood" column about something that seemed tailor-made to piss hettie_lz off ( Read more... )

A surprising bit of news from my home town of St. Petersburg came across my Twitter feed this afternoon.

According to the Fontanka online newspaper, the Krasnogvardeyskiy neighborhood court convicted married couple Ilya Vasil'yev and Yulia Semkina of robbery. Which in on itself wouldn't be big of a deal. But these two didn't just rob anyone. They ( Read more... )