The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries is a nonfiction book written by two Russian journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. The authors examine the history of surveillance technologies in Russia, from the very early years of the telecommunication industry to the era of social media. The book
This is the third part of the series of articles about international students in Russia. Twelve people who went to study in Russia responded to my call and shared their experience with the readers of this blog. In the first article, they spoke about the language barrier and how they picked up the language by
This is the second part of the article about international students who chose to study in Russia. In the first part, my respondents talked about the language barrier and shared their thoughts about learning Russian in Russia. Language is just one aspect of being a stranger in a strange land. Language is a part of
According to the official Russian statistics, in the academic year 2019-2020, the number of international students in Russia was slightly short of 300,000 people. This is almost twice as many as in 2010. The most recent statistic is unavailable, because of “damn ‘rona”, but, most likely, the trend will persist for the next few years.
When people learn that I am originally from Siberia, they often ask me, “How is it even possible to survive the weather that cold? How do you guys live there? How can anybody live in that climate?” In this article, I’ll answer these and many other related questions. But first, let me explain what “cold”
It was a hot Siberian summer, about +30C/ 86F. My friend and I visited my grandmother in a rural locality in the Altai region, near the Kazakhstan border. My grandmother and three other grannies, her besties, took us to pick wild strawberries. We marched a few kilometres on foot, away from the village, and reached
Throughout 2020, when I talked with my family in Russia over the phone, I couldn’t understand what was going on there. Like many other countries affected by the novel virus, Russia set a lot of restrictions in response to the pandemic. The news from my hometown looked grim. The numbers of cases were frightening. Yet
Each language has proverbs, those simple, concrete sayings that crystalize common sense. Proverbs are a genre of folklore. They were created by people and passed from one generation to another as an oral tradition. They reflect the values and unique experience of the nation, and being the accumulated wisdom of many, they are a big
Would You Watch a Russian Horror Movie On Halloween? It’s Halloween, and many people are looking for new horror movies to kill time during the night after filling their stomachs full with the traditional mini-sweets (have you noticed that those Halloween candies are getting smaller and smaller?). Supermarkets all across North America have been displaying
Привет! Вы слушаете двадцать пятый эпизод подкаста “Пять минут”. Это подкаст для тех, кто учит русский язык. Меня зовут Евгения Власова. Я лингвист, я веду блог ProperRussian.com и преподаю русский язык. Сегодня мы поговорим о снеге. А снег идет, а cнег идет, И все мерцает и плывет, За то что ты в моей судьбе, Спасибо,
