Red Square – The Editors’ Corner

Greatest Hits

Pros and Kons of the Kommunalka

The 1970s in the Soviet Union are often known as the time of stagnation. The economy was doing rather poorly, and the new leader, Leonid Brezhnev, backpedaled many of the reforms that had been made under Khrushchev. However, one positive that many Soviet people found was life in communal apartments. While there were definitely some […]

From Most Well-Read to Most Educated

Russian education has long been criticized throughout the world as too structured, too easy to obtain, and backward- looking. While this may be true in many regards, it has also made Russia the most educated country in the world, in terms of people with college degrees. This focus on education began after Vladimir Lenin realized […]

Catching the Last Trolley out of the Stalin Era

With Stalin’s death on March 5th, 1953, the Soviet Union found itself at a crossroads unable to look back on the past, but also uncertain about the future. Gone was the man who had industrialized the nation, won the Great Patriotic War, and turned the Soviet Union into a legitimate world power. After the death […]

The Fall of the Traditional Thief

With Nikita Khrushchev coming to power after the death of Stalin in 1953, the days of the traditional thief, also known as the Vory neared the end of their power reign. The Vory are a group of professional thieves(thief in law) mostly located in the Gulag system. They are known for their complex tattoos, their … Continue reading →

Dance off the Fear

Jazz. Fear. Those two words are never seen together. Jazz; a great up beat tune that has impacted musical history as well as American history. Fear; an emotion of uneasiness when the thought of danger is present. The feelings of the two are practically polar opposites. But the post-WWII USSR found these two words floating […]

Great Patriotic Anthem for a Great Patriotic War

  The second world war was one of the most defining if not the single most defining event for the Russian people perhaps of all time. The Soviet Union was brutally attacked after the formation of a non-aggression pact with their invaders, the Germans. Hitler’s campaign was one aimed at annihilation and extermination rather than at […]

A New Russian Israel

Russia and the Soviet union is of course a large state and within its borders falls many different ethnic groups. following the mas culture Push by the party regional and ethnic cultures still remained. among these groups there was a special case, that of the Jewish people. The Jews have historically been a prosecuted people […]

Who is Katerina Lvovna Izmailova?

“The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, written by Nikolai Leskov, features a merchants wife–Katerina Lvovna Izmailova–who is unhappy with the life she lives with her unappreciative husband.  She falls in love with a house hand by the name of Sergei, who has a history of having affairs with his masters’ wives.  Seeking to be together, Katerina and… More Who is Katerina Lvovna Izmailova?

A Dniepr Night from an Expert of Light

When one thinks of history’s great painters, names such as Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, and Picasso come to mind. All of these artists brought a unique feature to their specific period in art, thus achieving greatness through differentiation. However, many phenomenal artists who succeeded in a specific trait have unfortunately been relegated to the obscurity […]

Iconoclasts & Conservatives

Andrei Sakharov

The Dissident Movement in the Soviet Union took place in the 1960s and 1970s and was created by opposition of the citizens to Soviet government policies.  Although participation wasn’t quantitatively huge, the protests made by a few leaders made great impacts for human rights and peace. (Andrei Sakharov speaking for human rights and against the nuclear bomb […]