Lea Zeltserman

Hi guys, the April issue of the Soviet Samovar is now out. Highlights include an article on the lives of Russian Jewish immigrants twenty years on – it compares those who went to Israel, to the US, to Germany, and those who stayed put in the Former Soviet Union. Plus, lots on the Holocaust in »Read More

I forgot the word for helicopter the other day. For the rotor, actually. And I didn’t forget so much as remember it in the wrong language. My brain froze up and then offered me nothing but a very Russian “vyertolyot”. The end result is that I have a toddler who will never know what those »Read More

*Updated at bottom Excuse me all, while I continue to geek out on Soviet government memos… As I flip through, I’m continually amazed at the level of specificity in these memos, and to realize that “Big Brother” genuinely read all letters received from North American activists and government officials. (Paging Amnesty International.) We like to »Read More

I’ve been writing about a trip I took to Rome with my parents a few years ago. We tried to find the apartment we’d lived in while we were waiting for our Canadian paperwork, but then didn’t. We did eat a lot of gelato and drink a lot of wine. But one of the things »Read More

I recently got my hands on a research collection of Soviet government documents on Jewish immigration, dating from 1957 to 1989. The book was published in 1998, just as the post-collapse euphoria came to a close and Russian archives began to fold back in on themselves, so these documents are no longer as accessible. It’s »Read More

The February issue of the Soviet Samovar – my monthly round-up of things Soviet, Russian and Jewish, is now out. Highlights this issue include lessons for Iranian Americans from the Soviet Jewry movement, a Jewish-themed restaurant in Lviv, Regina Spektor concert to benefit HIAS, and Russian-Israelis scrambling to prove their Jewish identity in Israel. Oh, »Read More

Every year, on September 1, Russian children start their first day of school. All of them, en masse. And before them, it was Soviet children. My mother went to school in pinafored uniform, braids and bows in her hair, flowers in her arms. Twenty years later, a carbon copy photo of my cousin doing and »Read More

*Updated – Check out the first issue of Soviet Samovar here. I spend a lot of my online time doing what most of us do – reading stuff, looking at stuff and sending stuff around. Savvy internet types have even wholescale co-opted the term curating from the dry, dusty bowels of museums to give all »Read More

It took the Kremlin until 1959 to realize how starved for things the nation was. In July of that year, Moscow’s Sokolniki Park hosted the American National Exhibition. …In just two week two million Russians had had their faces mashed into a perfect tableau of Yankee wealth. The Cadillacs, the TV dinners, the cosmetics, the »Read More