Russians are very superstitious and are attentive to various omens. The majority of these omens emerged in the pre-Christian era, and neither the traditional religions that arrived in Russia more than ...

Russia sells more wheat than any other country in the world. At the same time, its domestic grain consumption is growing, too. So how did Russia manage to achieve this breakthrough in wheat exports?

Russians couldn’t even make proper bricks before they hired Italians to work for them. The Italian engineers were proficient in war and architecture, and for lavish salaries, helped build the ...

The cause of death of a group of hikers on an expedition in the Northern Urals in 1959 has remained a mystery for more than 60 years. There have been close to a hundred theories of what may have ...

Deportations are one of the most tragic pages in Soviet history, and continue to be a sensitive issue for many members of the repressed ethnic and social groups. So what was the goal of that policy?

"How is vodka..?" "Why does Putin..?" RBTH has chosen some of the most popular search queries related to Russia and will answer each question in detail in a series of articles titled "Why does Russia.

The Russian bear became a symbol of Russia through a strange set of circumstances, and the whole story goes to show that fake news has been around for hundreds of years. To begin with, the bear is not ...

During the 70 years of the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the number of constituent parts changed, but most of the time there were 15 of them. Here is the list. In the beginning ...

The expression ‘Potemkin villages’ means anything made for the sole purpose of concealing the truth. The legend goes that during Catherine the Great’s journey to Crimea in 1787, Grigoriy Potemkin, the ...

Since 2007, the Kalashnikov assault rifle has formed part of the coat of arms of East Timor, following more than 30 years of this small state’s struggle for independence from Indonesia. In 1999, after ...

The square in Moscow has been associated with executions, violence and torture in the 20th century. It however has a dark past that goes back all the way to the 18th century. For Russians, the word ...

According to Lenin’s plan, the future USSR could have had members all around the globe. But eventually, Stalin’s plan prevailed. So, how was the Union prepared? “What? Did the Bolsheviks just start ...