Video

Classic Soviet Cartoons to Help You Learn Russian

For language learners, classic cartoons offer an engaging and accessible way to absorb vocabulary, pronunciation, and cultural context. When it comes to Russian, few resources are as rich and entertaining as the animated films produced by Soyuzmultfilm, which was the Soviet Union’s and is now Russia’s premier animation studio. Founded in 1936, Soyuzmultfilm has to […]

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15 Soviet Cartoons to Put You in the Holiday Spirit

7 Films About Being Latvian

Music

Poets with Guitars: The Semi-Underground World of Soviet Bards

The Soviet-era bards were singer-songwriters who combined poetic lyricism with simple, guitar-accompanied melodies. The artform emerged in the 1950s shortly after the death of Stalin. Although it remained underground for nearly all of the Soviet period, it became a soundtrack for the lives of many Soviet citizens throughout the 1960s and 70s and beyond. Bardic […]

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Russian Programmatic Symphonic Works: From Glinka to Tchaikovsky

Four Examples of Russian Music in American Popular Culture