The New Year is, without doubt, the most important holiday on the Russian calendar. It equates if not outstrips the importance of Christmas in America, if to compare the two holidays in the two cultures. New Year in Russia is a time to be together with family and friends, for gift giving, major consumer spending, […]

Dacha – a summer house with rich cultural and economic history – is an integral part of Russian life. To help students get familiar with its peculiarities, regular visits are organised by SRAS to dachas outside of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Irkutsk. Here, we asked our students from all of those locations to share their […]

Dacha – a summer house with rich cultural and economic history – is an integral part of Russian life. To help students get familiar with its peculiarities, regular visits are organised by SRAS to dachas outside of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Irkutsk. Here, we asked our students from all of those locations to share their […]

The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation. To understand a culture’s folklore is to understand its roots. Folklore gives a glimpse into how the early participants of a culture saw the world around them […]

Wianki (or, in English, Wreaths) is a Polish holiday event that takes its roots in the pre-Christian tradition of celebrating summer solstice as a day of fire, water, fertility, love and joy. Wianki is celebrated each year in June and is a Midsummer festival marking the summer solstice. While it has analogues throughout Europe, in […]

The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. День Ивана Купала (Ivan Kupala Day) or Иванов день is a народный праздник языческого происхождения (folk holiday with pagan origins) celebrated in connection with летнее солнцестояние, although not necessarily on the same day. It is today primarily […]

The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation.   It’s in Russia. Dachas have existed for centuries, surviving revolutions, purges, and economic and political collapses. Dachas remain an integral, if at times hard-to-define part of […]

Quarantine Diaries is a series of free language lessons from SRAS. Each lesson can take a variety of forms but all focus on building intermediate and advanced vocabulary and listening skills. Read the text and familiarize yourself with the new vocabulary (you can hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation). Then, watch […]

Quarantine Diaries is a series of free language lessons from SRAS. Each lesson can take a variety of forms but all focus on building intermediate and advanced vocabulary and listening skills. Read the text and familiarize yourself with the new vocabulary (you can hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation). Then, watch […]

Constitution Day in Ukraine is celebrated on June 28th. Celebrated since 1996, this day commemorates the anniversary of the approval by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) of the Constitution of Ukraine. Before 2014 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the holiday’s importance and observance were minimal and around 10% of Ukrainians believed it should […]

From Folkways Editor-in-Chief Josh Wilson: With Internet access and apps now saturating even most of the post-Soviet space, books are becoming somewhat archaic in learning Russian, even for those studying abroad. I remember my new pocket dictionary and copy of 501 Russian Verbs becoming softened and gently stained fairly quickly on my first time abroad. […]

Quarantine Diaries is a series of free language lessons from SRAS. Each lesson can take a variety of forms but all focus on building intermediate and advanced vocabulary and listening skills.  Read the text and familiarize yourself with the new vocabulary (you can hover over the bold Russian to reveal its English translation). Then, watch […]