Memories & Conversations

Robert Reich10.04.2026

My Problem with Aging. Let me be very candid with you. I’ll be 80 in June. Eighty! When I was a boy, my grandmother had a friend named Jack who was 80. He was the oldest person I’d ever met. I was amazed he was still standing. And still able to walk and talk. I thought he […]

Pavel Chirkov24.03.2026

I was born a year after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Since my birthplace wasn’t very far from the site of the horrific accident, I think it had an impact on me and my family, but I didn’t begin to think about that until much later. Three months before I was due, my mother had an […]

Andrey Vedyaev04.11.2025

The name of Georgy Mikhailovich Bryantsev, an honorary Chekist, front-line soldier, and writer—a Man with a capital M—was known to everyone in the Soviet Union. In 1968, his story “The End of the Hornet’s Nest” was published in Volume 15 of the second series of the legendary “Adventure Library,” along with the story “It Happened […]

Vladimir Grigoryan22.10.2025

An interesting story happened to Yevgeny Gomberg. A millionaire and philanthropist, he is known in Latvia as a defender of the historical heritage of the Russian Empire. Among other things, he bought monuments to Peter the Great and Barclay de Tolly, which local authorities had decided to get rid of. The case concerns a lawsuit […]

Vladimir Golstein28.09.2025

This is too funny to miss. Dostoevsky complaining about lies and BS that western press publishes about Russia. Not much has changed since then. European and American media is as bigoted and as myopic now as it was 150 years ago. And probably even more mean-spirited. In 1868, while in France, Dostoevsky drafted a letter […]

Yuri Chekalin26.05.2025

In the soft, dappled light of a spring afternoon, the Tanaka family home buzzed with the vivid laughter of children playing in the backyard. Beneath the great cherry tree, its delicate blossoms dancing in the breeze, Akiko Tanaka admired the nuanced hues of pink and white that adorned her neighborhood. She loved this time of […]

Yuri Chekalin22.05.2025

Children dashed around in gleeful abandon, their tiny hands reaching for the showers of petals, rolling down the sidewalk or weaving through the legs of adults caught in nostalgic reveries. On this particular Saturday in late March, the sun cast a golden hue over Nikko Lane, illuminating the rows of houses adorned with vibrant azalea […]

Yuri Chekalin12.05.2020

Noam Chomsky, born December 7, 1928, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through his contributions to linguistics and related fields, including cognitive psychology and the philosophies of mind and language, Chomsky helped to initiate […]

How to Live Beyond 80

My Beautiful, Humble Life

The Tale of the Chekist Years

Spy Games

Dostoevsky About European Views on Russia

Threads of Community

The Silence Before the Storm

Interview with Noam Chomsky

The Michael Jackson Biopic is Missing its Most Controversial Story

Madama Butterfly and the Japan of the Western Imagination

The Spanish Civil War at 90: the Republic’s Response

Terminator Is about 80 Years Old