Rocking out with Islam Karimovs’ Daughters

Here’s an amusing story out of the CIS today – it seems that Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s daughter, Lola, has made a big splash in the French tabloid world by paying Italian actress Monica Bellucci 180,000 euros to attend a party in Paris in order to “promote Uzbekistan.”
It seems to have definitely promoted UZbekistan, but [...]

Read Full Post »

Miliband in Moscow

Poor David Miliband. The Britich foreign secretary can’t seem to do a whole lot right…Especially as regards Britiain-Russia relations. A Ria Novosti Article stated that relations between Miliband and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, could not be worse. The problems all stem from the infamous Alexander Litvinenko poisoning case of 2006. The British Government have [...]

Read Full Post »

More on drug abuse

I actually found this article, written by a Dutch journalist/ photographer quite at random, but it links very closely back to a previous post I made, on heroin abuse in Russia. The author documents in short the lifestyles of a few sorry young addicts, as well as those involved in their treatment. One of the [...]

Read Full Post »

The Night Witches

The BBC has a fascinating audio slideshow up on the “Night Witches,” which was the German name for the all-women flying squadrons during WWII.  The slide show is complete with a little Soviet marching music.  The link is up here.

Read Full Post »

Language Hat

For anyone interested in the Russian language as well as linguistics in general, I can recommend a great blog called Language Hat. The bog is updated daily, and regularly carries interesting articles on Russian-related material, such as this post about Soviet pronunciation (!).  Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Heroin and AIDS in Russia

Heroin abuse in russia, and as a result AIDS, have shown a closesly linked and rapid rise in Russia in recent years. There does seem to be some very backwards policies which are not helping the problem, such as a lack of methodone substitution programs or needle exchange programs (both of which are common [...]

Read Full Post »

Nigaz (Nigeria Gas, not with attitude)

I thought I’d leave a link to an article who’s subject matter many of you might have heard about. I first heard about this over the summer from an English expat I met who was living in Nigeria. Nigaz (sic!) is a joint venture between the Nigerian and Russian governements which will see pipelines running [...]

Read Full Post »

Gypsies, continued…

here are the links for parts 2, 3 and 4

Read Full Post »

Gypsies

Pushkin’s “Цыганы”/”gypsies”, with the original Russian and a parallel English translation. A great way to read it…

Read Full Post »

Queen of Spades- Pushkin

Queen of Spades is on our reading list to be read in a couple of weeks. You can get it for free here in english,
и на русском языке здесь!

Read Full Post »