Russian

WHEN I was kid, the only Russia I knew existed in books or the movies. It was a 19th-century landscape woven by Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky, populated by aristocrats and serfs who had no clue that communism was coming. Or it was the cold headquarters of diabolical spies like the intelligence chief in "From Russia with Love" who stabbed James Bond with a knife in her shoe; the home of that boxer in "Rocky IV" whose soulless ambition and artificial muscles embodied everything we imagined the Soviet Union to be. Since the end of the Cold War, I have missed Russia, which seemed...

Becky Hammon hopes that the Olympics will be a little less stressful for her. Hammon will once again play for the Russian women's basketball team at the games this summer in London. She created a stir in 2008 when she first played for Russia in the Beijing Olympics. She helped guide that team to a bronze medal. "It's old news," Hammon about her decision to play for Russia. "I played with them in the world championship, European championship, hopefully I'll enjoy it a lot more.

Ivan Bunin, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, is known among English-speaking readers mainly for one short story, "The Gentleman From San Francisco. " Years of critical neglect and the difficulties of translation have restricted interest in his work to scholars of Russian literature. Now Graham Hettlinger's vibrant translations in "Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin" promise to remedy that situation. For readers new to Bunin (1870-1953), the most salient facts of his life are that he grew up part of the Russian rural gentry during the years of its decline; he began his career...

Two prominent Russian opposition leaders have been released from prison after spending 15 days in a Moscow jail for disobeying police. Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov were arrested on May 9 as they protested President Vladimir Putin's inauguration. Navalny told supporters Thursday that he would continue to fight against the regime even if that entails more jail time. Russia's lower house of parliament on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a bill increasing fines for those taking part in unsanctioned protests 200-fold.

Some Russian emigres, like Stravinsky, prided themselves on their cosmopolitanism, as if they could somehow erase or transcend their Russian roots. The late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Despite having been stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled for harboring Solzhenitsyn, he remained proudly Russian - deep in his bones - until his death in April of last year at the age of 80. Does it follow that a Russian filmmaker would be best suited to capturing the essence of this great 20th-century musician, and his almost equally legendary wife, the...

MOSCOW - Thousands of far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis marched through Moscow yesterday calling on ethnic Russians to "take back" their country as resentment grows over dark-complexioned Muslim migrants from Russia's Caucasus and the money the Kremlin sends to the restive region. Some 5,000 people, mostly young men wearing medical masks and balaclavas, marched through a working-class neighborhood of gloomy apartment buildings on the outskirts of the capital. They chanted "Russia for Russians" and "Migrants today, occupiers tomorrow," along with anti-Muslim and...

BEIJING -- Chinese and Russian troops completed their first joint military exercises yesterday with a mock paratrooper invasion on China's east coast. The eight days of maneuvers, with 7,000 Chinese and 1,800 Russian troops, underscored military ties between the Cold War adversaries; the ties have been motivated by unease with US dominance in world affairs. Yesterday, Chinese and Russian paratroopers simulated an airfield seizure; planes dropped combat vehicles by parachute on the Shandong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea. Propaganda leaflets were dropped...

By Julian Benbow, Globe staff Celtics center Nenad Krstic has agreed to a two-year deal with the Russian team CSKA Moscow, Celtics general manager Danny Ainge confirmed today. The Russian International News Agency reported earlier today that Krstic has agreed to a deal worth $8.8 million over the two years. Krstic, who averaged 9.1 points and 5.3 rebounds during his time in Boston, made $5.5 million playing for the Celtics and for Oklahoma City last season.

MOSCOW - A Russian tycoon punched a fellow billionaire on a television panel show after a discussion on the financial crisis degenerated into petty name-calling. Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB operative and owner of two major newspapers in Britain, wrote on his blog that property developer Sergei Polonsky had earned the clobbering by behaving abusively throughout the recording of the program. In a preview clip posted on the NTV channel's website before the show aired yesterday evening, Polonsky is seen saying that he sometimes felt like "bashing [Lebedev]

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- Two bombs exploded yesterday on a roadside in Ingushetia, wounding the southern Russian republic's prime minister in an apparent assassination attempt, officials said -- the latest sign of growing violence across the heavily Muslim North Caucasus region. Ingushetia Prime Minister Ibragim Malsagov was hospitalized after the attack in Nazran, but he is expected to survive, said Fyodor Shcherbakov, an aide to the Kremlin envoy to the region. Malsagov's driver was killed and two other people were wounded, said Nikolai Ivashkevich, a spokesman for the...

Russia's prime minister paid a visit Wednesday to a farm that has imported cattle from the United States and also some American cowboys to help the Russians develop their struggling meat industry. Dmitry Medvedev chatted with a couple of the cowboys, including one in a broad-brimmed black hat from the U.S. state of Idaho, who introduced the prime minister to his wife and young son. Medvedev, the former president, asked the American in English whether he had managed to learn to speak any Russian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin named a new Cabinet on Monday that retained some of the outgoing government's key figures but added a few fresh faces, cementing his grip on power as he begins his third presidential term. Putin, who has ruled Russia for more 12 years, kept the foreign, defense and finance ministers, but replaced some of the most unpopular Cabinet members. The dismissals, however, do not necessarily mean that they have been completely purged from officialdom. Russian media are speculating that some could get other senior jobs.

A Russian defense company worker was convicted Friday of passing missile secrets to foreign intelligence in the latest espionage case amid a cold spell in Moscow's relations with Washington. The Sverdlov Regional Court in the city of Yekaterinburg handed an eight-year prison sentence to Alexander Gniteyev, a worker at a defense company dealing with automatic systems. Court spokesman Yelena Maryina said Gniteyev also has been ordered to pay a 100,000 ruble ($3,200) fine. Anna Lastovitskaya, a spokeswoman for the regional branch of the Russian...

The Russians are coming — in fact, they're already here — but it may not be what you think. Twenty-two Russian army paratroopers are in Colorado for two weeks of training with the 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, a post outside Colorado Springs. The two nations' militaries have been conducting joint exercises for years, but this is believed to be the first time Russian soldiers have trained on U.S. soil, Lt. Col. Steven Osterholzer said. The Russians and Americans are training together on basic soldier skills ranging from firing weapons to making...

A teacher went on trial Wednesday after publicly claiming that she was pressured to help rig Russia's parliamentary election to boost the results for Vladimir Putin's party. Like many teachers and principals in Russia, Tatyana Ivanova was in charge of a polling station set up in the school where she worked. She accused Natalya Nazarova, an education department official in St. Petersburg, of pressuring her and other poll workers to falsify the vote and instructing them on how to do it. Ivanova now faces charges of damaging the education official's...

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is reconsidering its plan to send a Russian arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death to a high-security prison in Colorado. Viktor Bout was relieved to learn he wouldn't be transferred as planned from New York to the so-called Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., on Wednesday, his attorney Albert Y. Dayan said. Dayan, who represented Bout when he was convicted of conspiracy relating to his support of a Colombian terrorist organization, said he was notified on Tuesday that the Bureau of Prisons was delaying the transfer...

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War , By Chris Bellamy, Knopf , 813 pp., illustrated, map, $40 On Aug. 11, 1941, as massed German armies were advancing on Moscow, Colonel-General Franz Halder, chief of the Nazi general staff, wrote in his diary that "we have underestimated the Soviet colossus. " Since the German invasion had begun, some seven weeks before, the unprepared Soviets had been steadily pushed back toward Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, and had already suffered more than two million casualties.

Making an impact Russians who have called Newton home include: Tamara Smirnova, associate concert master, Boston Symphony Orchestra Tatyana Dudochkin, pianist, New England Conservatory Andrei Shleifer Harvard University economist Tatiana Yankelevich, daughter of human rights advocate Elena Bonner Russian cuisine: Café St. Petersburg Inna's Kitchen Russian grocers: Baza Food Market Waban...

A lawyer for an exiled Russian oligarch has disclosed that his client gave financial assistance to a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II over several years. Lawyer Mark Hastings said in a statement that Boris Berezovsky is a longstanding friend of the prince and never sought or obtained any benefit from the friendship. The prince's spokesman, Simon Astaire, stressed that the payments were "conducted properly" and that all relevant tax was paid. The statement was issued after The Sunday Times reported that the Russian tycoon sent Prince Michael a total of 320,000 pounds (US$514,320)