Pushkin, Russia News

Isaac Sheps, CEO of Russia's largest brewer Baltika, says that his job is 'selling fun.' The fun materializes when a waiter brings over several pints of an amber-colored liquid.

Hans Poldoja / flickr The Cathedral of the Nativity in central Chisinau, designed by Abram Melnikov, was built in 1830 and is the main cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in Chisinau, Moldova.

The Alley of Russian Poets is the brainchild of Uli Zislin, a Russian-born poetry collector and songwriter whose idea fell on receptive ears in 2003.

Many of Russia's writers could also paint and draw so well that when words failed them - though they rarely did - these authors worked in another art form instead.

The name may sound a bit stilted today, but when ground broke on Moscow's Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, it was meant to be a gleaming, sprawling brochure advertising the Soviet Union's glories and technological prowess.

Few writers have enjoyed such an auspicious debut as 28-year-old Anthony Marra, whose first novel is being published this week in an edition of 60,000 copies amid a blaze of publicity and a flood of fulsome blurbs.

Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com One of the enduring mysteries of literary history is the appearance in 19th-century Russia, ... (more)

One of the enduring mysteries of literary history is the appearance in 19th-century Russia, that vast and barbarous country, of the greatest writers of fiction in all of literature.

Anthony Marra's debut, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, comes out this week. It's set during the Chechen wars, and author Marra, who had long been interested in the region, was inspired to write it when he realized there was no English language literary novel about the conflict.

RUSSIA'S two greatest art museums are engaged in an unsightly public feud over an idea to revive a Moscow museum of Western art that was shut down by Stalin in the late 1940s.

Tsarskoye Selo was the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 24 kilometers south from the center of Saint Petersburg.