As authoritarian control and renewed superpower tension dominate headlines, telling stories of Russia’s everyday heroes can reveal lost alternatives.
The background of the Tsarnaev family must provide some clues to the Boston bombing.
Police corruption has reached epic levels in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The men in charge with tackling the issue felt they had no option but to go public, but their actions have been met with a deafening silence from Moscow, says Susan Richards
Against the backdrop of Soviet disintegration, a grassroots campaign was launched from Britain to send hundreds of thousands of books to libraries across Russia and its ex-colonies. As Bookaid celebrates its twentieth anniversary, two of its organisers, Susan Richards and Ekaterina Genieva, consid
Next week marks the twentieth anniversary of the August 1991 coup attempt. While this proved a dramatic final nail in the Soviet coffin, many more fundamental changes — the breaking down of information walls and the dissipation of fear — occurred in the months and years leading up to then. Susan R
Russia’s security apparatus is back in charge — as powerful, and with less holding it back than ever before. Susan Richards reflects on Wikileaks and reviews a fascinating account of Russia's unofficial second state
What else could possibly be written about Tolstoy? Before reading Rosamund Bartlett’s new biography, Susan Richards did wonder. But the fall of Soviet power has revealed material which allows us to appreciate how vividly his legacy has lived on and how relevant it remains today
Russia’s greatest poet Alexander Pushkin is notoriously hard for non-Russian speakers to appreciate. So Susan Richards welcomes a concise new biography of the poet by his translator Robert Chandler which strips the varnish off
Why is Russia resisting international help with its spiralling drugs problem, asks Susan Richards? While the Kremlin's rhetoric reveals a profound insecurity, its policies are failing to deal effectively with the situation
2004 Crimea, Sevastopol.
Over the years I had sent letters and messages to Novosibirsk, but there had been no response. They had vanished without trace. I found them through Anna.
1997 Novosibirsk, Siberia
Ed: Before the fall of communism, Natasha and Igor were drawn to the Volga town of Marx by the expectation that once Russia's Germans were
