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BBC’s Radio 4 is broadcasting a radio play based on Olga Grushin’s novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov. The novel is by a Russian writer in America who writes about the life in the late Soviet period. Yet, it is described by one critic as ‘breathing new life into American literary fiction’. Quite an accolade! [...]

Groundhog It’s Groundhog Day today, 2 February. Groundhog in Russian is сурок – surok.  The European species of marmots are widely spread throughout Russia, Belorussia, Poland and Ukraine and in folklore are associated with deep sleep. One of the well-known idioms is спать как сурок – to sleep like a groundhog, meaning to sleep deeply. When [...]

Knigochei I’d like to recommend to linguists and students of Russian a simple and fun resource  poiskslov.com  It does what is says – poisk slov – word search. It looks like it was originally developed for lovers of crossword puzzles and Scrabble. Yes, there is a Scrabble in Russian! Same grid, same rules, but the [...]

Russian version of this post is here. Auld Lang Syne is well known in Russia – and throughout Russophonia – both as a melody and in Samuil Marshak’s translation of Robert Burns’ poem, though not necessarily as a New Year celebratory song. The Russian version is called Zastolnaya – Drinking Song. Can’t limit this just [...]

Paul Robeson’s version is on Russian Tetradki. Silent Night was hardly known or ever performed until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. Now it is as much a part of Christmas and New Year celebrations in Russia as it is everywhere. Tetradki

An old clipping from the Daily Telegraph letters: “Turn the oven off, leaving the door ajar, and leave the turkey to rest for at least 15 minutes before carving.” Simon Hopkinson, whom chefs and fellow food writers decided had written the most useful cookery book of all time, may know how to cook perfect roast [...]

Mensch, click on photo to go to clip. Four men with sharpest minds – or rather tongues – in England ganged up and tore to pieces a woman Conservative MP, Louise Mensch, who suggested in a popular satirical programme ‘Have I Got News for You’ that ‘occupy’ protesters at the City of London were not [...]

Richard Sorge in 1940 Today is the 70th anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that brought America into the second world war*, which, in turn, meant that  – there was no way that Japan would attack Russia in the Far East;  – Britain was getting America as an ally against Hitler and [...]

The original Svetlana Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, died on 22 November 2011. She had a long and, at times, troubled life. A Kremlin princess until Stalin’s death in 1953, in 1967 she defected to the USA, an event that was a big propaganda coup for the West. (see video below, wiki about her here). There [...]

Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva died on 22 November in the USA. She had an amazing life, forever trying to escape from the shadow of the great dictator and never quite being able to. Without any connection to her at all, this beautiful song, Aderyn Llwyd (Sparrow) by Mary Hopkin sprang into my memory (she recorded [...]