At least four Western scholars in Russia have been deported, fined, or threatened with these penalties over the past year due to alleged visa violations, unnerving many U.S. and European academic...

A report by the UK Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee has concluded a lack of Russian speakers in the Foreign Office left Britain's diplomats ill-equipped to anticipate the events in Ukraine.

According to the report, an absence of Slavonic know-how meant Britain had been unprepared for the most serious East-West tensions since the end of the Cold War.

The consequence: a drive to recruit Russian experts.

Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's classic, The Master and Margarita, ridiculed Soviet leaders and bureaucracy. It wasn't published until 27 years after his death, but it still resonates with Russians.

Sarah Mendelson reviews "No Illusions: The Voices of Russia’s Future Leaders" BY ELLEN MICKIEWICZ. Oxford University Press, 2014, 264 pp.

By Kristen Ghodsee

Elena Lagadinova ranks among the most fascinating women in Bulgaria’s contemporary history. I first met her in the summer of 2010 when she was already eighty-years-old.  I was researching a book on state socialist women’s international activism at the United Nations, and I sought her out because she had led the Bulgarian delegation to the first UN World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975.  I had hoped to do one extended interview with her on Bulgaria’s role during the United Nations Decade for Women.  Instead, that one interview grew into hundreds of hours of conversation over the last five years.

How do you prepare for a first-round interview? By: (a) carefully reading the job announcement, (b) carefully reading the website, and (c) engaging in mock interviews. Don’t skip any of those steps.

By Rick Noack

Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Obama and politicians in both countries have been trading barbs for months as the countries' relations have plunged ever southward.

But what about the countries' citizens? Are they as at odds as their leaders' rhetoric suggests?

WorldViews delved into recent opinion polls conducted by the Pew Research Center and Gallup. Together, the data provide interesting insights into what Russians and Americans think about each other and themselves, how they differ in certain ways, and how they are similar when it comes to other aspects.

Translated from the Ukranian by Boris Dralyuk

By Rachel Toor

What are the personality traits and habits that help people crank out the pages? Here are a few that occur to me:

They reject the notion of "writer’s block" the way others shun gluten.

They don’t overtalk their projects.

They believe in themselves and their work.

They know that a lot of important stuff happens when they’re not "working."

They’re passionate about their projects. 

They know what they’re good at. 

They read a lot, and widely. 

They know how to finish a draft. 

They work on more than one thing at once. 

They leave off at a point where it will be easy to start again. 

They don’t let themselves off the hook.

They know there are no shortcuts, magic bullets, special exercises, or incantations.

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By Lev Golinkin

“Where are you from?” Americans ask when they hear me speak, and I never know what to say. “New Jersey” never works, probably because people from New Jersey don’t have Slavic accents and are not named Lev. “Russia” is good for about two seconds, until the inevitable “Which part of Russia?” follow-up. “Ukraine,” I sigh. “So aren’t you Ukrainian?”

Well, technically I’m from the Russian-speaking region of a Soviet Socialist republic that used to be part of a country that isn’t there anymore. It was called the Soviet Union, and you can still find it on old maps. “It’s complicated.”

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By Peter Holquist

The murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was a reminder — if anyone needed it — that the transition to democracy in Russia has failed.

Unsure of where your language learning may lead? From choosing the right degree to making your CV stand out, experts at our recent live chat share advice

By Jennifer Keating

Shortly before I left on the research stint of my Ph.D., hoping to mine the treasures of Russia’s archives for visual representations of imperial Central Asia, I sought advice as to where I might begin to look for such sources. Colleagues’ opinions varied from encouraging suggestions to doom-laden predictions of fruitless months ahead, and I arrived in Russia already feeling a little discouraged and largely perplexed about which scenario would present itself. My research eventually took me to four main archives in Russia: the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA, St Petersburg); the Russian State Military-Historical Archive (RGVIA, Moscow); and the State Historical Museum (Moscow); the Central State Archive of Film, Photography and Sound Recordings (TsGAKFFD SPb, St Petersburg). What follows are my impressions from working in these institutions, with particular respect to using visual material.

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By Eliot Borenstein

Dear President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev,

I quit.

by Joshua A. Tucker, Megan Metzger, Duncan Penfold-Brown, Richard Bonneau, John Jost, Jonathan Nagler

...it is almost impossible to think of a major political protest or upheaval occurring without social media being part of both the incident and the ensuing narrative. The Euromaidan protests, which culminated in the flight of President Yanukovych from Ukraine in late February 2014, are a case in point. Indeed, the Ukrainian Euromaidan protest movement may go down in history as the first truly successful social media uprising. Earlier movements labeled social media revolutions subsequently have been criticized for not having had much important activity on social media (Moldova, Arab Spring) or for having had a large social media presence but ultimately failing to make much of a long-term impact as a protest movement (Spain’s Los Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, Gezi Park in Turkey). In Ukraine, a government fell, a region was annexed, a civilian plane was shot down, and what some are calling a civil war continues to this day in the eastern part of the country. Clearly, the movement was consequential and, as we will show, social media usage was widespread and significant.

By Kelli Marshall

If you don’t manage your online presence, you are allowing search engines to create it for you.

By Marta Szpala

Russia's withdrawal from the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline has changed the situation on the gas market and has encouraged new dynamics in diversification projects in the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe. 

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Teffi, Nicholas II’s favorite Russian author, will have a chance at a comeback with the publication in English of the anthology “Subtly Worded.”