Publications

Elena Suvorova-Phillips heads the United Russian-American Association (URAA) in Houston, Texas. This past year the association has organized the rather impressive Captain Earth Festival, which was dedicated to Yuri Gagarin’s flight into outer space 50 years ago. URAA was one of the most active partners of the Russkiy Mir Foundation’s First in Space campaign, and Elena was recognized for her contribution to these efforts. We spoke with her about the importance of such event for the consolidation of Russian communities abroad and events planned for Russian Americans in the near future. – How many people participated in the...

April 26, 1986, was a watershed date. Few who were born after these events, which forced the entire world to learn the Slavic word Chernobyl, can fully understand the shock faced then by the planet. Chernobyl is a type of grass that grows almost unnoticed. It grows just south of Polesia, the forested zone of southern Belarus and northwestern Ukraine. The four block nuclear power state was set up on the boundary of this zone and named after a miniscule village in the area which took its name from the grass. By 1986 had already become apparent to all that there probably would not be any nuclear war. The number of zinc coffins from Afghanistan...

With all due respect, the last thing I want to write about today is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight… On April 12, 1242, Russian Prince Alexander Yaroslavovich known by the nickname Nevsky defeated the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights. Not alone, of course, but with allies. And this battle was dubbed the Battle on the Ice. But as with any event tied to manifestations of national valor, historians of the new wave are pouring their hearts into effort to dissect and rethink the battle on Lake Chud. The range of scenarios is enormous – from suggestions that the key role in achieving victory was played by...

There are certain days which everyone remembers down to the smallest details. I very well remember the toy I was playing with in the courtyard when my father swung open the window and shouted: “Slava, come home quickly! We’ve flown into space!” Across the screen of our black-and-white television set – a Temp 6 – scrolled the TASS announcement, and they were showing and telling the biography of the man who instantaneously became not only a hero but dear comrade. I remember how people ran through the streets past our house yelling “Hurrah!” on the way to Red Square toward the center of Moscow to meet...

On April 5 an exhibition of photographs and children’s drawings called First in Space opened at the Photocenter on Gogelevsky Boulevard in Moscow. The exhibition was organized as part of an eponymous campaign in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. One of the guests of the opening ceremony was cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, a recognized Hero of the Russian Federation and Deputy Head of Russia’s Cosmonaut Training Center. We spoke with him about his impressions of the exhibition, how difficult a cosmonaut’s job is, what language is spoken on the international space station and why do we bother to fly into...

We spoke with Vitaly Kostomarov, President of the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language, about why the influence of the English language on Russian is weakening, what are the “language tastes of the epoch”, and why Russian should be promoted in the CIS. – Do you share the opinion that one well-known linguist said – that the Russian language is on the verge of a nervous breakdown? – No. And I think that Maxim Kronguaz was probably speaking ironically. Russian, as we know well, is in the club of world languages. This club consists of English, German, French, Russian and Spanish. Clearly English occupies the top...