Anastasia Edel

A Taste of Home

Back in the USSR, pirozhki—the stuffed buns sold by street vendors all over Russia—were the quintessential comfort food in a world of paucity and mystery meat.

What the US Could Learn from the USSR

Getting into a good school is a baffling process riddled with inequity. For all its abuses, one thing about the Soviet system I grew up in was its broad access to higher education.

The Big Smoke

It is hard not to think of California’s wildfire plight as a metaphor for America’s decline, though hopelessness is not the Californian way.

Putin’s Constitutional Tsarism

In a serious departure from the previous constitutional projects, Yeltsin’s actually upheld the civil rights it promised: the last decade of the last century may have been the freest Russians ever experienced.

Pandemic Journal

Dispatches from around the world documenting the coronavirus outbreak

Pandemic Journal, March 17–22

Dispatches on the coronavirus outbreak from Madeleine Schwartz in Brooklyn, Anne Enright in Dublin, Joshua Hunt in Busan, Anna Badkhen in Lalibela, Lauren Groff in Gainesville, and more.

A Winter’s Night at the Bolshoi, 1985

By the time we reached the Bolshoi, Sverdlov Square was swathed in white. Even the granite Karl Marx facing the theater no longer looked as though he was trying to break out of the massive rock but was leaning into it. 

My Chernobyl Vacation Friend

They’d have looked like regular vacationers had it not been for a slightly startled expression they all shared, as though woken up in the middle of the night. They followed the waiters obediently. Suddenly, a whisper ran through the dining hall: “Chernobylskye.” People from Chernobyl. 

Shostakovich and the Chimes of Novorossiysk

Like Shostakovich’s native Leningrad, Novorossiysk had suffered terribly during World War II. As the news of the war memorial’s musical innovation spread through the city, more people came and stayed for hours. My grandfather’s voice must have grown hoarse as he recited the story of the Chimes’ creation.

The Pioneers’ Palace Performs in Moscow

On the last day of 1980, the announcement came: our Pioneers’ Palace had been invited to perform at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy in Moscow. My task was to announce the song numbers with “ringing optimism.”

The Romanovs’ Art of Survival

Imaginative, often humorous, and at times fantastical, these artifacts paint a different, more authentic portrait of a family whose life and legacy continue to pique our interest, one hundred years after the Romanovs were swept off the world’s political stage.

A Career in Soviet Culture

Like most Soviet labor establishments, the Institute of Culture paid poorly. A wolf is fed by its feet, a Russian proverb goes, and nowhere was it more true than in the sphere of provincial kultur drudgery.

On Being Russian-American

Among the 63 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump were many Soviet émigrés, something that confuses my Russian-American identity. It turns out that being able to spot an authoritarian doesn’t mean rejecting him.

A Soviet New Year

Once a year, the Soviet people had the right to be hopeful. And so we were. The mayonnaise helped.

Russia Without the Revolution

By promoting a little-known episode of the distant past as a national holiday in place of the October 1917 anniversary, the now perpetual President Putin has a clear purpose: to legitimize his rule.