I you’d like to find out what’s going on in American prisons you have two choices: commit a small crime or read the best-selling Prisons For Dummies series. It’s a lot harder (but not entirely impossible) to get yourself locked up in a Russian correctional institution, so for the only other practical choice I recommend [...]

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I think I know a thing or two about the circus. When I was growing up© my parents took me to the circus 4-5 times a year and it wasn’t a traveling circus or a tent. My city had a permanent circus building and every few months a new program would come to town to [...]

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Sometimes I share interesting links and clips I find on the Russian-speaking internet. There are few websites that do it all the time and do it much better than I ever will, but that’s not what I do. While translating the text is easy, reposting it correctly, with pictures and attributing the sources is not. [...]

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When I was growing up© every able-bodied male over 18 years old was drafted to serve 2 years in the Army or 3 years in the Navy. Very few people were able to escape the draft based on health and other reasons. Going to college resulted in getting the lowest officer rank but even then [...]

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For a little musical interlude I present the video that has Gorbachev, zombies and plenty of hammers and sickles operated by pretty women. Last 20 years of the post-Soviet era replay right in front of your eyes. Enjoy!

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.
You can watch this video in [...]

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Not that long ago a person’s love for technology required substantial physical strength. Nowadays anyone can show up on a date carrying a laptop or an iPod. Here is what it would have looked like about 25 years ago.

It was so long ago that this guy

still looked like this:

More old cutting edge technology can be [...]

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Memory is a strange thing. One minute I am reading a story about outpatient surgery in prison and the next minute it takes me back about 20 years when I was sitting in a small army hospital room and another soldier, who was supposed to be a nurse, was poking a scalpel at the infected [...]

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In the USSR May 19th was celebrated as the “Pioneer Day”. Pioneers were the members of the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union, which was a second step in the official Soviet brainwashing pyramid. After a general but unorganized brainwashing from ages 0 to 7,a child entered the first stage of the pyramid [...]

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Couple of weekends ago I was sitting at the Harvey House Diner inside the almost empty Union Station, drinking a strawberry milkshake and reminiscing. Not that long ago this place was crowded with thousands of people as the second largest train station in the country, filled with sounds, voices and emotions. Today it spends [...]

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Long time ago (and I mean long,long time) I was traveling in what was then a beautiful and welcoming Republic of Georgia, still a part of soon to be defunct Soviet Union. Georgia is known for its beauty, Caucasus mountains and warm beaches on the Black Sea, ancient cultural relics, great food and some of [...]

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