Lea Zeltserman

There is a fantastic photo collection of Tsarist Russia taken between 1902 and 1912 on the Boston Globe site. Strictly speaking, they’re not colour photos – the photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) – shot each image three times, using a red, green and then blue filter. He later combined them to get an approximation of reality. (For »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

I’m going through my Instapaper links, catching up on reading about many things, including Chernobyl. These two quotes so perfectly describe the tensions underlying Soviet society: the complete and utter indignity of daily existence, with its arbitrary cruelties and humiliations. But then there’s this strangely unquestioning loyalty, or perhaps just a sense of duty that »Read More

This week’s links round-up starts with a snicker before getting into the heavy stuff. “And then, the Russians called…” – Global Post The creator of Everyone Loves Raymond is invited to make a Russian version of the show. Of course he makes a video about it. Of course you should watch it. Muscovite Lives, Entangled »Read More

After 65 years, BBC Russia shut down its radio service this week, with all the attendant “end of an era” sighing. That era ended 20 years ago, but hey, who doesn’t appreciate an opportunity to wax nostalgic. If you read anything at all about dissidence in the Soviet days, tuning into illegal radio broadcasts is »Read More

Hanging out on Twitter makes for an odd perspective on world events. Like Revolution 2011 World Tour. There’s an expectation to comment on these major upheavals. And at the same time, an expectation that seeing lunch tweets interspersed with desperate pleas from protesters is meant to make us uncomfortable. It does. (But then, we’re also »Read More

This week’s link round-up…

As one dictator fell this weekend, I was reading about another, very different one. A friend recently recommended Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which I started and finished in two days. Yes, it’s that good. I didn’t realize until now just how little we know about North Korea. The book »Read More

I sometimes forget why I’m doing this Soviet Jewry thing. Or, not so much forget, as get distracted. The present is just so very busy. It has heft, carries more weight. Egypt. Wikileaks. Obama’s State of the Union. Women in Magazines. CRTC Rulings. Mayoral Elections. G20. In other words, shouldn’t I be talking about something »Read More