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.

Throughout the filming of Come and See, real bullets were used. At times, they flew just above the heads of actors, making their terrified looks genuine. And the scene where machine gun fire takes ...

Starting in the 1960s, the USSR was a net grain importer. For example, in 1963, it bought 10.4 million tons of grain and 2.1 million tons of flour from the U.S. Furthermore, the amount of imports ...

1. ‘The Forties’ by David Samoilov (1920-1990) Samoilov (born Kaufman) is regarded as one of the leading Soviet poets of WWII. His poems depicted the horrors of war and the struggle for peace ...

Flour – 400 g Kefir – 320 ml Butter – 40 g Salt – ½ tsp Dry yeast - 4 g Sugar - 1 tbsp Stuffing: Potatoes – 200 - 250 g Cheese - 300 g Butter - 30 g Salt, pepper - to taste Preparation ...

Forests are what you'll see out of the train window for most of your journey on the Trans-Siberian. Sometimes this landscape of endless lines of trees outside the train window does not change for ...

The death of the Dyatlov group in the winter of 1959 was caused by an avalanche triggered by a sudden change of weather, deputy head of the Urals Federal District directorate of the Prosecutor ...

The Grand Duchess was one of the few Romanovs who managed both to escape abroad after the 1917 Revolution and also to take her jewelry with her. Some of the treasures were taken out of the country ...

According to the Soviet Sports Committee’s logs from 1979 “on the partnership with Adidas (FRG)”, the partnership with the German company was already ongoing for 20 years! Other Western ...

Internal politics, however, would come in the way of a promising career as a swimmer. He eventually turned to finswimming and started to gain worldwide attention in this non-Olympic sport. His ...

On the streets of the post-war USSR, it was often possible to meet disabled people on “gurneys”. They were simple boards on four wheels made of bearings. Legless invalids rode them, starting ...

The scion of big business Pavel Tretyakov came from an old merchant family. In the second half of the 18th century, his great grandfather had moved to Moscow from the town of Maloyaroslavets in ...