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From Folk Tales to the Big Screen: The Evolution of the Russian Fairy Tale
What place do Slavic mythology and folklore occupy in art and popular culture? How does the modern world “repackage” fairy tales? Who are the Swan Princess and Baba Yaga, really? Russkiy Mir.ru spoke with Fyodor Panfilov – a PhD in History and author of the book Fantastical Rus – about this and much more. Images…
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Tales to Terrify Europe: Sigismund Herberstein’s Russia
Foreigners have always viewed Russia through a fairy‑tale lens – and still do. They see our country either as a utopia, an ideal social order, or as a dystopia – a terrifying place, an anti‑world, an anti‑Europe. The beginning of this myth‑making was laid in the Renaissance, when European merchants, diplomats, and travellers flocked to…
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Odoevsky: The Russian Prophet
For those who have yet to read Odoevsky, one can only feel envy: they have before them an encounter with a writer who knows the weight and place of every word, a man preoccupied with questions that still look remarkably relevant today. The public’s interest in this remarkable man’s work was undermined by the revolution:…
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Past Meets Present: The Siberian Vechorka
On Saturday evenings, the young people of modern Omsk aren’t heading to a nightclub – they’re rushing off to a vechorka, a traditional Siberian evening gathering. They put away their gadgets and have fun, dance and play games – just like their peers did a hundred years ago in the villages of the Chaldons, the…
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Sevastopol: Where Heroes Stood Their Ground
The writer Gennady Cherkashin once put into words the very essence and spirit of the hero city of Sevastopol: “Here people performed feats worthy of myths, and the greatness of the human spirit became as integral to this land as the blue of the sea, the splash of the waves, the scent of seaside wormwood,…
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A man with a big heart
“I want to go to school,” a five‑year‑old boy declared to his parents. In reply, he was told that the school was far from home, there was no one to walk him there, and—most importantly—he was still too young to study. So the little boy decided to take matters into his own hands: he put…
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The Pilgrim of the Russian Land
The sun is at its zenith. Beneath its merciless rays, the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem appear white and deceptively fragile. The shadows, which never offered much relief from the heat even before, vanish entirely. Yet the heat cannot overcome the pilgrims — two human streams flow ceaselessly towards each other: one pouring…
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To Russia for a new life
Dimitri, sixteen, is the tallest and most serious. Anika, the eldest, is a smiling girl with kind brown eyes. Darik, the youngest, is lively and spontaneous. At first, all three were a little shy, but gradually they opened up. In talking with them, we found out why the Oosting family hurriedly left the Netherlands and…
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An argentine with a russian heart
What do Eva Perón and Joseph Stalin have in common? What should an ideal state look like? How can one fathom the mysterious Russian soul? These are among the questions that Russkiy Mir discussed with political scientist, writer, and ambassador of the Russian Znanie Society in Argentina, Cristian Lamesa. – Christian, you once mentioned in…
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For Algerians, Russia is a civilisation like no other
Algeria, in North Africa, is something of an enigma to Russians. Meanwhile, the number of Algerians wanting to learn Russian as a foreign language is growing year by year. We interviewed Fahima Haddouche, a lecturer at Algiers 2 University, to find out why Russian appeals so much to the people of this Arab country. –…
