Recently released secret documents reveal the chilling extent of Cold War planning for a nuclear holocaust.
French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand presents Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (centre) with the highest decoration in France, Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour, in 2011.
Wikimedia Commons
Employing a unique literary method that blurred the genres of oral history and documentary prose, the Nobel Prize for Literature winner told the stories of a traumatized people.
A selection of spacesuits and the TM Soyuz descent module are among the objects at the Cosmonauts exhibition.
The Science Museum
Ivan Maisky’s account of his life in London provides a detailed and personal account of life at the epicentre of the dramatic events leading to World War II.
British foreign secretary Anthony Eden having a confidential chat with Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky.
The Scheffer-Voskressenski family.
Ivan Maisky was Russia’s ambassador to the Court of St James from 1932 to 1943. By charming his way into Britain’s inner circles he arguably passed on more secrets than the infamous Cambridge Five.
Will Russian science return to the bad old days of Stalin?
Reuters photographer
Loren Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Some Russians are looking back admiringly to a tyrannical scientist from Stalinist times – and using the new field of epigenetics to bolster their case.
Who is the audience for the commencement address?
Penn State
American Presidents tend to use the commencement address to address the audience outside than within the graduation hall. This changes though if they go on to a second term.
Tensions are high along the Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan border in the South Caucasus. But despite longstanding ethnic tensions, examples of cultural cooperation show a capacity for peace.
Once upon a time it was an eternal indestructible friendship
Keizers
The remnants of the Cuba-Soviet relationship are still very much part of Cuban culture – a fact on display at this month’s Miami International Film Festival
On thin ice: Russia’s economy and its satellite states.
Pavel Kazachkov/flickr
Plummeting oil prices, conflict over Ukraine and the West’s imposition of sanctions have contrived to send the Russian economy into a tailspin. But it is not just Russia that is suffering – the economic…
Red Army tells the story of the Russian hockey dynasty of the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on the story of defenseman Slava Fetisov (pictured top right).
Variety
Gabe Polsky’s documentary Red Army opens with the film’s main subject – former NHL and Soviet hockey great Viacheslav (Slava) Fetisov – giving the finger to Polsky while checking his phone. At the film’s…
Remembering the Red Army soldier.
Jonathan Noden-Wilkinson/Shutterstock
The documentary Night will Fall tells the story of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a film made by the Allied forces who filmed the scenes of the Nazi concentration camps as they liberated them…
The release of a documentary film in the Czech Republic earlier this year caused much controversy. It is about a dissident named Pavel Wonka who fought against the totalitarian regime in Communist Czechoslovakia…
Fidel Castro during a visit to Washington in 1959.
U.S. Department of State
The action by President Obama to move toward the normalization of US-Cuba relations is long overdue. The US ruptured ties with Cuba in early January 1961, under President Eisenhower, not only in the context…
Gently overthrowing an oppressive regime in 1989.
Irmojohnny
At the top of Wencelas Square on the front of the Czech National Museum in Prague hangs a giant poster depicting the playwright dissident and former president Vaclav Havel. The poster has been hung, in…
Urgent business: the UN Security Council discusses Gaza and the downing of flight MH17.
EPA/Jason Szenes
On Thursday July 17, 298 people lost their lives when Flight MH17 was downed in eastern Ukraine. Almost immediately accusations were made that the aircraft had been shot down by pro-Russian separatists…
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Mikhail Metzel/Ria Novosti/EPA/Kremlin Pool
Since Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held Ukraine, there has been much finger-pointing between Russia, pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government. While the UK and US…
In Warsaw, a newly unveiled memorial puts freedom of speech at the heart of Poland’s liberation from communism.
Aleksandra Hadzelek
“It all started with a word,” said Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski at the opening of a memorial to freedom of speech, “and the word was ‘freedom’”. The event completed three days of commemorations…
Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies, University of South Florida