Soviet

On the importance of curiosity… — An hour on the Q train may as well be a flight to Moscow or Kyiv. Stepping out at the Brighton Beach station the cacophony of Russian and Ukrainian fills your ears almost immediately. You walk by tables of piroshki vendors and smoked herring lined up outside grocery stores. Of…

And those nuances have only come into starker relief since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine — For years the word “Russian” served as a catch-all for Russian-speaking emigres in the U.S. In fact, many came from countries that were decidedly not “Russia,” but places like Ukraine and Moldova and Lithuania. Many were Jews fleeing antisemitism. They spoke Russian because the aforementioned countries were a part of…

Deep in the Karakum Desert, there’s a crater the size of two basketball courts that’s been burning for over 50 years. Smack bang in the middle of Turkmenistan’s desolate Karakum desert, one of the most sparsely populated areas in Central Asia, there’s a gargantuan crater some 70 metres wide that’s…

The Escape from The Soviets Some in the family escaped the Soviet invasion of Latvia. Decades later, an opera singer smuggled a symbol to indicate that they made it to freedom back to those who didn’t. That symbol was a postcard of Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio. Mara Jekabsons was a little girl when Russian…

Last week we had fun creating and sharing a fake campaign for the Soviet Bus Stops Federation, imagining they asked us to shed new light on the uniqueness and cultural value of its transit structure. Not only there is no federation, but above all we would never accept a commission…

The great aim of Europe, its own foundation, has always been to re-costitute, but none of the time the purpose has been the institution that fulfilled the original achievement. In the beginning, there was the post-war Europe of 1945, a Europe that had the vivid memory of horror and destruction…

“Do you believe that small things matter and bring a change in the more extensive ecosystem, or are we ruled by robust macro-systems that negate any small change” was a prompt for a written ability test for my selection process for an MBA. If I break it down, my interpretation…

How Russian Films of the 1960s Reflected Distress within The Soviet Union, through “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” By Jad Oubala (November 2021) Film is a medium that has, time and time again proven itself capable of far more than simply entertainment. Just as literature can enthrall through vivid imagery and eloquent…