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First and foremost, Happy Maslenitsa! Hopefully those of you who know of this Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian tradition are enjoying the annual...

As I write this, it’s the day after boxing day according to the Julian calendar. Russians were banned from celebrating religious festivals under...

It must have been around 3:30am Moscow time when I called a mobile number in Petrozavodsk. I wouldn’t recommend giving someone a buzz in the...

This was going to be a simple season’s greetings post, but then a bomb exploded in a St.Petersburg supermarket on Wednesday the 27th December,...

With just 1.7 people per km², Mongolia has the lowest population density of all the independent countries on the planet. However, its inhabitants...

You may not have heard much about “celebrations” set to mark the centenary of the Russian revolution (the 1917 October Revolution, that is), and...

This isn’t about the football itself, I know next to nothing about it, rather some of the circumstances surrounding next year’s main...

“In the pre-Revolutionary (pre-1917) days, Пасха had rich holiday traditions. Most were suppressed and forgotten during the 70 years of Soviet...

We set the scene last week with a glance over the origins of Christian Orthodoxy in Russia; to establish a context into which we can frame the...

I’m sure that most of us subconsciously regard the year’s traditional festivals as wholly “ours” – well those that have morphed in...