This troupe of young dancers in classic Caucasian attire are doing shows at old Soviet style sanatoriums in the traditional Russian spa towns of Piatigorsk and Kislovdsk in the Russian Caucasus. Both were favourites with the Russian tsars, aristocracy and artists like Tolstoi, Lermontov and Tchaikovsky. Later the Soviets opened…
Month: Friday March 29th, 2019
Hamzat and Khambek are both Chechen anti-terrorist fighters at the rapid reaction taskforce GBR. I met them at a wedding in Gudermes, where they are based. They said that they are “always ready to fight bandits”. Indeed there are still occasional attacks of rebels, such as one on an Orthodox…
Nikita is from Ulyanovsk, the birth city of Lenin. Here he is standing in front of the memorial complex dedicated to the communist leader and founder of the Soviet Union. The place used to be the destination for communist pilgrims from around the world. There is a Mary and Christ…
Barzani is a Kurd living in Saratov, where he is working as a waiter in one of the city’s finest Uzbek restaurants. His parents were born in Soviet Kyrgyzstan and his ancestors had moved from Syria to the USSR “due to political problems”. Indeed, starting in the 19th century, many…