The first years of the war saw huge losses of human life and heroic attempts by outnumbered and outmaneuvered Soviet troops defending the USSR from the German blitzkrieg. Those awarded the medal, Hero of the Soviet Union, in these early days are considered even greater heroes. Among these, 68 tank-troops received the medal - many did not live to the end of the war, indeed, many received the...

In this issue: Vladimir Makanin ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’, Victor Pelevin ‘The Tambourine for the Upper World’, Vassily Aksyonov ‘Palmer's First Flight’, ‘Palmer's Second Flight’, Zinovy Zinik ‘The Moth’, Alexander Terekhov ‘The Rat Killer’, ‘Happiness’, Mark Shatunovsky ‘The Discrete Continuity of Love’. 1995 Booker winners: Georgy Vladimov ‘A General and His Army’, Oleg Pavlov ‘An...

In this issue: Maria Arbatova ‘Equation with Two Knowns’, ‘My Teachers’, Nina Gabrielyan ‘the Lilac Dressing Gown’, Dina Rubina ‘On Upper Maslovka’, Irina Muravyova ‘In Kroporkinskaya Street’, ‘The Forgotten Woman’, Irina Polianskaya ‘The Pure Zone’, Liudmila Petrushevskaya ‘Fairy Tales for Grownup Children’, Larissa Miller ‘Springrime in Vroad Daylight’, poems.

In this issue: Vladimir Sorokin A Business Proposition, Four Stout Hearts, Igor Iarkevich How I Shit My Pants, How I Did Get Raped, Viktor Erofeev De Profundis, Cheekbones, a Nose and a Gully, Daniil Kharms A Letter and Other Pieces, Yuri Miloslavski Urban Sketches, Alexander Terekhov Charon, Buddy. An Ironic Diary, Serfei Iask Per Somnia. The issue is concluded with autobiographical...

In this issue: Leonid Latynin ‘The Face-Maker and the Muse’. This 1978 Russian novel is about an artist who lives in ‘the city,’ a dystopian hell whose citizens are identified only by numbers - unless they happen to look like an idealized face called ‘the image’ - created by the eponymous Face-Maker - in which case they receive a name and certain privileges. Plastic surgery, of course, plays...

of several generations of an upper-class family during the First World War and the Civil War in Russia. Historical events, providing a background for the narrative, are depicted not directly but rather as seismic shock waves overturning and transforming the lives of ordinary people. Lala, Natasha, Toma - three heroines are close friends, all from formerly affluent families stripped of their...

In this issue: Alexander Genis Literary Nonfiction by A. Genis, The View from the Window, Red Bread, USA from A to Y, Brodsky in New York, Darkness and Silence: The Art of Subtraction. These literary pieces by one of Russia's foremost essayists reflect the author's bi-culturalism - Russian and American civilizations are compared in their various manifestations. Genis is a shrewd and observant...

In this issue: Larissa Miller HomoLudens, Childhood in Post-War Moscow, Papa Misha, St.Petersburg-Leningrad, Muzyka - Music, Flitting and Gliding, the Black Sea, Virgin Lands, My Romance with English, My Land and Home, In Lieu of Conclusion. Larissa Miller's memoir recounts her childhood in postwar Moscow, with reminiscences of her mother, a major journalist under Stalin, and of her father...

In this issue: Marina Filatova ‘If I Were a Man…’, Svetlana Vasilenko ‘Shamara’, Nina Sadur from ‘Witch's Tears’, Marina Palei ‘The Bloody Women's Ward’, Galina Scherbakova ‘The Three Loves of Masha Peredreeva’, Larissa Miller ‘A Childhood in Post-War Moscow’, Elena Glinka ‘Kolyma Streetcar’, Julia Latynina ‘Waiting for the Golden Age’. Poetry: Nina Iskrenko, Elena Schwartz. The issue is...

In this issue: Vassili Grossman The Commissar, Leonid Latynin Stavr and Sarah, Nina Sadur Irons and Diamonds, Ludmila Ulitskaia March 1953, Barely Soup, Igor Pomerantsev Sobs in Corners, A Little About You, Yosip, Victor Beilis Breakfast Alfresco. Stories united under subtitle What It Means To Be A Jew In Russia: Lev Anninsky The Wandering Jew, Osip Mandelstam Mikhoels, Larissa Miller Home...