During the Cold War, Soviet Russia was a very restrictive place. The media was heavily censored, foreign radio and television station waves were jammed, books that criticized the Soviet regime were banned, and playing western music that was deemed mor…
Tag: Russia
Sergei Krikalev: The Man Who Went Up a Soviet And Came Down a Russian
Late in the spring of 1991, Soviet cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Anatoli Artsebarski, along with Britain’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, blasted off into space towards Mir, the Soviet space station. Sergei Krikalev’s and Anatoli Artsebarski’s mission was to relieve the existing crew of the space station, while Helen Sharman was onboard as part of the British Juno program to conduct experiments on life sciences. Sharman returned back to earth together with the crew of the previous mission eight days later, leaving Krikalev and Artsebarski circling around the earth conducting repairs on the ailing space station. Five months later, Anatoli Artsebarski went home too, but Krikalev didn’t mind—he was trained for long-duration flights. Two years earlier, Krikalev had spent 152 days aboard Mir. He did not know then, that this mission was going to be his longest.
© Amusing Planet, 2019.
What a 7-Year-Old Russian Boy Doodled in The 13th Century
Fifty years ago, a trove of manuscripts written on birch bark was discovered in the Russian city of Novgorod, situated some 200 kilometers south of Saint Petersburg. Birch bark was frequently used in the old days as a replacement for paper, which was—…
Photographs of Dr. Zhivago’s Lost Russia that Could Have been taken Yesterday
Can you believe these photographs are over one hundred years old? I go through a lot of historical archives– I think I’ve lost count– but I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a photograph from the past and felt its subjects come alive so vividly, as if they’ve almost just blinked at me, as if…
Chain Reaction: How a Soviet A-Bomb Test Led the U.S. Into Climate Science
In 1971, the USSR tried to use nuclear blasts to change the course of rivers. The scheme failed. But it had another consequence, all but forgotten until now: It set in motion the first U.S. government research on climate change — a far-reaching project…
Meet the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe
For those whose taste in fairytales favours a darker touch, we’re traveling to the far reaches of Eastern Europe, and into the enchanting world of animator Jiří Trnka. The late Czech animator (whose name is pronounced “Yershy Trinka”) created nearly two-dozen films over his lifetime, from folksy gems like Grandfather Planted a Beet (1945) to the…
Akademgorodok: Siberia’s Silicon Valley
Tucked away in a remote forest of birch and pine in the heart of Siberia, 3,000 km away from Moscow, at a place where winters are six months long with temperatures dropping to minus 40 degree Celsius and summers are swaddled with mosquitos, is a city b…
Russia’s Quest to Build a Space Empire—or Go Broke Trying
Roscosmos is helping upstart space programs achieve lift off, partly because they want to turn them into customers. The post Russia’s Quest to Build a Space Empire—or Go Broke Trying appeared first on WIRED.
Russia’s hack of US State Department was “hand-to-hand” combat
State-sponsored hackers are going increasingly brazen and confrontational.
A Russian Volcano Just Erupted for the First Time in Centuries
Kambalny, the southernmost volcano in Kamchatka, erupted unexpectedly over the weekend, sending ash up over the Pacific Ocean. The post A Russian Volcano Just Erupted for the First Time in Centuries appeared first on WIRED.