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
Surprisingly to some, many of the people living in places like Peel or Scarborough do so voluntarily—almost as if they like it or something. Moreover, a very significant chunk of those suburbanites aren’t white and weren’t born in Canada, a fact that raises some rather sticky questions. To wit, as downtown scenesters badmouth the suburbs »Read More
Today’s peek into the immigrant home comes from Anna Tarkov, a journalist and blogger from Chicago. She’s been published in the Chicago Tribune, Time Out Chicago, and others, and her blog, THE OUTSIDER… and the rueful dilettante, is full of insights on the state of journalism today. Though she left the USSR much later than »Read More
I talked about Russian tchotchkes a few weeks ago. And then recently, I spotted this make-up collection from Anna Sui, and though it’s called “Dolly Girl” and references wind mills, it has an unmistakable waft of the Slavo-folksy to me. $27 worth, no less. I’m not a fan of the Russian “look”—tchotchkes, nostalgia, kitsch, call »Read More
"In Russia today, journalists are murdered like Anna Politkovskaya, beaten like Oleg Kashin and intimidated like me, but — as terrible as this will sound — that is not the real problem. The real problem is that journalists are ignored. The risks they take in challenging Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchy have ceased to have meaning. One is valued only for telling a harmless story, an amusing anecdote that can exist, side by side, with ad space."Valery Panyushkin
Russian journalist Valery Panyushkin writes in the New York Times about how the government makes its displeasure known to journalists—your licence plate is removed from your car, and after that, any number of fates may await—and wonders what may have been the trigger for him. But it’s the conclusion here, of the journey from typed »Read More
My first list! I’m incredibly flattered and honoured to be among some very fine (and much more deserving) company for this year’s Big Jewcy from Jewcy.com. The Big Jewcy: Lea Zeltserman – Blogging The Soviet Jewish Experience And make sure to take a look at the full list (which is still being updated daily) and »Read More
