Soviet Union

Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa on Oct. 6, 2021. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

A young Chrystia Freeland impressed Soviet Russia’s KGB

Politics Insider for Oct. 12, 2021: The finance minister’s notable past; Premier François Legault’s power; and a Canadian Nobel prize winner

Russia is a mess, but it’s still playing the West

Scott Gilmore: It’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and its military is nothing next to the U.S., yet it’s winning at one thing: upending the world order

How Stalin starved four million Ukrainians to death

Author Anne Applebaum, an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe, says Russia still denies that Holodomor ever happened

The Russian spies who raised us

The Vavilov brothers were born in Canada to deep-cover Soviet agents, so Ottawa stripped them of their citizenship. Inside their fight to finally come home.

The torture and sadness of Russia’s most famous conjoined twins

Juliet Butler on the suffering and resilience of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, two mismatched souls bound up in the same body

A dream-like critique of post-Soviet Russia

Sergei Lebedev’s debut novel deploys surrealism and poetry as he ventures into the Gulag, seeking answers

Correcting a simplistic view of the Soviets

The Maisky Diaries provides a rare glimpse into Stalin’s Soviet Union

The sad, strange life of Joseph Stalin’s daughter

Svetlana Alliluyeva spent a lifetime trying to escape the shadow of her father. Patricia Treble speaks to her biographer, Rosemary Sullivan

Separatism is rising in other eastern European states

Ukraine isn’t the only place Russia has its eye on. Soviet nostalgia is gripping Europe’s ‘de facto states.’

Winning the new Cold War

Russia’s power is re-emerging everywhere

Julia Child by way of Stalin

‘Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking’ requires mayonnaise. Lots of it.

Saying nyet to a Soviet emblem

Saying nyet to a Soviet emblem

Europe’s highest court bans the hammer and sickle from being trademarked