Perhaps, some may yearn to regain Russia’s former greatness when many more ethnic peoples were incorporated into first the Czarist Empire and later the Soviet Union. At St. Petersburg’s Ethnographic Museum, visitors may gaze at models of different ethnicities.
In Russia, religion has rushed in to the fill the gap in people’s lives after the fall of Communism. Meanwhile, Moscow’s Museum of Religious Icons has a well-funded exhibit space.
Despite the presence of art nouveau, what really predominates in St. Petersburg is over the top baroque architecture, suggesting more of an imperial flair reminiscent of Vienna. Take, for example, the Belosselsky Palace. Flamboyantly, many such buildings are painted pink.
Is St. Petersburg a great “Window to the West” as commonly thought? Architectural details within the city center underscore St. Petersburg’s fascination with the West, including several art nouveau buildings. Though such buildings tend to be scarce, they evoke a French or Parisian cosmopolitan mood. In Moscow too, one may […]
If you had asked me three years ago to assess Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region, I would have argued that the conflict had triggered a right-wing shift in the nation’s politics. If anything, military hostilities seemed to have eclipsed or overshadowed radical social change as called […]
Could Ukraine’s secessionist war actually encourage more gender equality? Following my first trip to Kyiv almost three years ago, I would have been skeptical of such views. During interviews, political activists on Ukraine’s independent left circuit expressed dismay over sexism during the Maidan revolution which toppled the unpopular, pro-Kremlin government […]
Nearly three years ago, the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa looked as if it might succumb to a downward spiral of ethnic hatred and violent strife. The trouble all started when pro-Ukrainian demonstrators and local soccer fans were attacked by armed separatists. It’s unclear who was behind the attack […]
I have always had a romantic fixation on the Black Sea port of Odessa, home to swashbuckling thieves, miscreants and all manner of shady and colorful characters. In the early twentieth century, iconic native son Isaac Babel memorialized the city’s Jewish ghetto, known as Moldavanka or the “Moldovan girl.” In […]
Aghast at the rise of Donald Trump and the slow disintegration of the European Union, many Ukrainians may certainly wonder about the legacy of Maidan. Foremost in the minds of many revolutionaries who sought to topple the unpopular government of Viktor Yanukovych was the overarching need to bring Ukraine into […]
On the third year anniversary of the Maidan revolution, I’m holed up in Kyiv’s decidedly retro, Soviet-era Ukraina hotel. Located just a stone’s throw away from Maidan square itself, Ukraina is linked to the revolt against former president Viktor Yanukovych, for it was here that snipers may have shot at […]
