Memories & Conversations

Yuri Chekalin19.06.2026

Today we’re heading to the very heart of Tokyo — Shibuya. As you’ll see, it’s like Times Square multiplied by a hundred. There are endless crowds, entertainment venues, restaurants, izakayas, and countless little eateries. Tokyo truly never sleeps. You can pass the time until dawn by drinking, playing billiards, reading manga in cafés, or even […]

Robert Reich25.05.2026

Robbie was the kindest person I ever knew. I met him in our dormitory the day we entered college in 1964. He saw me struggling to carry my big luggage crates up the two flights of stairs to my dorm room and, without saying a word, grabbed one and hauled it to the second floor. […]

Vladimir Golstein15.05.2026

Obviously, politicians and other “communicators” of all epochs have appealed to bullshit in times of need, but rarely had the regime been running solely on BS as much as did the Brezhnevites. Nothing was left of Marxism and Leninism. Nothing was left even of Stalinism, cruel as it was, at least it had clear goals […]

Alexander Palladin12.05.2026

Ted Turner, founder of CNN, has died in the United States at the age of 87. While working in Washington, D. C. in 1980s as Bureau Chief of Izvestia I took part in half a dozen talk shows at CNN Crossfire program, debating Soviet-American relations with US politicians, journalists, and political scientists. Turner was one […]

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 […]

Notes from Japan: Hachikō

Remembering Robbie: An Appreciation on Memorial Day

Late Soviet Period Was the Time of the Official Bullshit

Ted Turner in Memoriam

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 Cat

Rasputin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Maria Rasputin

Priestesses of Love

August 17