Russian Language Blog

We are continuing our Autocomplete Questions series — these are questions that pop up in your search bar when you start typing. This time, I put in “Why is Russian…” and one of the questions read “Why is Russian life expectancy so low?” Let’s tackle this question in this post. Some Statistics First, how low…

You might have heard the news that the Thomas Cook travel agency has gone under. The company had purchased two Russian subsidiaries (доче́рние предприя́тия), Intourist (Интури́ст) and Biblio-Globus (Би́блио-Гло́бус), but their management has assured their customers that the Russian-based companies would not be affected. This may be a good opportunity to look at some vocabulary…

Last time, we looked at several Russian books that, for various reasons, never saw the light of day in the Soviet Union or sometimes in their author’s lifetime. Some of these books were initially snuck out and published abroad and only came out in Russia in the late 1980s or early 1990s. 4. Мастер и…

Some of the books that have entered the Russian literary canon were virtually unknown in Russia until the late 80s or the 90s. These books were either outright banned from publication or were only available as bootleg copies—famously as homemade samizdat (самизда́т) copies. Here are five books that are mainstream now but were out of…

One area where you might need Russian is dealing with the embassies and diplomatic missions of Russian-speaking countries abroad. (Remember that the Russian Federation, Росси́йская Федера́ция, is not the only country where Russian is an official language.) This post will feature some vocabulary you can use when contacting diplomatic missions that use Russian, loosely grouped…

Sometimes, to make sure my blog posts stay topical, I draw inspiration from popular search queries. Some of you might have seen the autocomplete interview series, where celebrities answer the most-searched questions about themselves. This time, I typed “Do Russians,” and “believe in God” was one of the suggestions. I will attempt to answer this…

Have you ever wondered what kind of outdoor activities Russian children engage in? The games (и́гры) in this post are not unique to Russia and are known in the entire post-Soviet area—and beyond. Кла́ссики This one’s a classic (pun intended)! Кла́ссики is the Russian name for hopscotch. I imagine most people are familiar with it…