On December thirty-first in Russia, the clock strikes midnight eleven times. Not consecutively, but an hour apart, and each time...
Grandma Nina is seventy today, and by 5 PM her apartment is packed to the brim with relatives. It smells of pies, there's a mountain of shoes in the hallway...
Tim is eleven, lives in Toronto, and talks to his grandmother from Petersburg every Saturday. One Saturday, his grandmother complained...
The plane from Helsinki lands at Sheremetyevo after dark, and the first Russian word Dan hears spoken live, not from an app,...
During the most terrible months, voices were rarely heard on Leningrad radio. Instead, a metronome ticked in the speakers, steady and soft,...
In the evening, somewhere far from Russia, Mom tucks Sonya into bed and opens a book of Russian fairy tales. On the pages, a familiar...
In the autumn of 1942, the front line in Stalingrad sometimes ran through a single house. The Germans occupied the first floor, and our soldiers the second,...
Cue up an old black and white recording from September 1972, and you'll see a strange sight. Canadian professionals, the best hockey players on the planet, looking around in confusion on their own...
Saturday morning somewhere far from Russia. On the screen, a figure skater in the spotlight approaches a jump, hanging in the air for an imperceptible moment...
Fly to Moscow, connect to the local internet, and peek at your bus neighbor's phone. Half of the familiar icons are gone. Not even...