Olga here turns her attention to the modern Russian circus, describing what it is like to attend a contemporary performance, from the atmosphere inside the circus building to the acts that still draw enthusiastic audiences today. Written in simplified, modern Russian, her account offers a firsthand glimpse into how a traditional cultural institution continues to […]

Russians have typically gotten nearly three weeks off a year just for holidays. This has changed in recent years and especially since the start of the war in Ukraine, as Russia has pushed for greater effeciency in its economy. While the long New Year holidays remain, most others are now more modest, with often with […]

I originally titled this piece “Ghosts of Holidays Past,” way back in 2006. It was an early project I completed for SRAS, written after just three years with the company. Looking back nearly twenty years later, I can see the youthfulness in my writing. While the boundless optimism of that period has been tempered by […]

In Russian, New Year is the major celebration of the year. Picture it as Christmas, New Year, and the Fourth of July combined. There are presents, decorated trees, a mythical bearded gift-giver, fireworks, toasts, food, and the grand New Year countdown celebrated at midnight – all associated with this one holiday. Russians are even typically […]

Russia and Central Asia offer what can seem to be a bewildering selection of dairy products in their transnational food cultures. An area of special note, and often one of the strangest to Westerners, is the seemingly never-ending assortment of fermented milk drinks and products in the gastronomic repertoire. To cut down on the brow-furrowing […]

This extensive list of web resources to assist students learning the Russian language was developed by SRAS and is now hosted on Folkways, part of the SRAS Family of Sites! Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you […]

Kupala is an ancient Slavic holiday celebrating the summer solstice, or midsummer. Once part of a series of annual rituals, it marked and was believed to sustain agricultural cycles—essential to early human survival. Held as vitally important, these pagan traditions remained deeply rooted even after Christianization, technological change, and centuries of oppression tried to dislodge […]

Easter breads such as kulich, paska, choreg, and nazuki are delicious Easter traditions. Easter is by far the most important religious holiday for those practicing Eastern Christianity. In addition to church services and egg dying, the holiday is also marked across the cultures by ritual bread baking. Despite the wide geographic area covered by Eastern […]

Below, Tajik blogger Roxana Burkhanova describes, in Russian, the place of St. Petersburg in Russian culture. She discusses the city’s history as well as its literary heritage, its nightlife, and even how people from Petersburg speak their own, slightly different dialect of Russian. The text was originally written in 2015 and thus references times before […]

Rites of welcoming spring and saying goodbye to winter are some of the oldest holidays preserved across Slavic cultures. In the Baltics, the celebrations were nearly lost after being suppressed by Catholic and imperial dominance. Today, Russia’s Maslenitsa is by the far the best-known, but multiple versions exist across the diverse Slavic landscape. In the […]

Russia’s Olivier Salad (Салат «Оливье») and Latvia’s rasols are well-known staples of their respective cuisines and common additions to holiday tables. Today, the recipes for both are quite similar, with chopped vegetables, egg, and meat dressed with mayonnaise. Olivier is now eaten throughout the former USSR and has even become common as “Russian Salad” in […]

In this text, Tajik blogger Roxana Burkhanova describes, in Russian, the place of holidays in Russian culture. She focuses on the two major holiday seasons: the New Year’s holidays and the May Holidays. The text was originally written in 2015 and thus references times before the current war. However, the vocabulary and the general cultural […]