Dima Bilan was born in Karachay-Cherkessia, a republic in Russia’s Caucasus region. He entered a specialty musical school in the fifth grade, where he studied primarily the accordion. He also took part in several youth contests in Karachay-Cherkessia and in Moscow. He entered the prestigious Gnessin Musical Academy in 2000. He met his future producer, […]
Traveling throughout Poland now is a group of musicians who come from a rather unusual background. The band, Paragraf 64, is comprised entirely of current prison inmates that combine metal with hip-hop. They are part of a service program aimed to rehabilitate prisoners through community service. I had the opportunity to see this band perform […]
Russia, 1917, WWI. This is the story of the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, formed by the Russian Provisional Government in late May of 1917. When the revolution takes place in Russia during the third year of WWI, the country faces a political crisis leading to the collapse of the Russian army. The Provisional […]
Born into a family of musicians, Yulia Savicheva performed her first solo at age five. In 1994, her father’s band was invited to perform in Moscow, and she moved there from her native Kurgan, a city of about 350,000 in south-west Siberia. In Moscow, she studied ballet and theater for many years, helping her to […]
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation. is a popular genre of humor in Russia. It usually consists of a list of “one-liners,” which rely on words with double-meanings, illogically juxtaposed sentences, misused words […]
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation. Russian has many phrases that describe disagreeable situations. For example, “сесть в лужу/галошу” literally means “to sit in a puddle/galoshes” and most often describes a situation where one […]
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation. Russian has several words related to “девушка” which can all mean “girl” with varying connotations. For example, “девочка”, a diminutive form, would indicate a very young girl. […]
