The Scientists Who Starved to Death Surrounded By Food
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 15, 2018
The 900-day Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War was perhaps one of the most gruesome sieges in modern history. Hitler’s diabolic ...
Showing posts with the label Soviet Union
What Mathematics Has to Do With The Seven Bridges of Königsberg
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 7, 2018
Wedged between Poland and Lithuania, along the Baltic Coast, is a piece of Russia located 200 miles away from the Russian border. The Kalini...
Transnistria, The Country That Doesn’t Exist
Kaushik Patowary
May 21, 2018
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, a thin sliver of land on Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine broke apart from its parent c...
Honoring Animals Used in Research And Testing
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2018
The United States’ National Academies of Sciences estimates that as many as 22 million vertebrate animals are used every year in the United...
Akademgorodok: Siberia’s Silicon Valley
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 3, 2018
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...
The Russian Woodpecker
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 29, 2017
Anyone who listened to shortwave radio or was a ham radio operator from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s will be familiar with a sharp, repet...
The Fortified Villages of Khevsureti
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 28, 2017
Tucked away in the Caucasus Mountains in the north of Georgia, is the historic province of Khevsureti. Its men were once renowned in martial...
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin’s Color Photographs of Pre-Revolution Russia
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 25, 2017
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in color photography during t...
The Forgotten Communist-Era Monuments of Bulgaria
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 15, 2017
From the end of the Second World War until the fall of communism in 1990, Bulgaria was a communist state ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Pa...
The Forgotten Soviet-Era Murals
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 25, 2017
Telling stories through mosaics and murals is a tradition that goes back to antique times. During the Soviet era, murals were used extensive...
Vozrozhdeniya, The Anthrax Island
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 24, 2017
In the 1920s, the Soviet government began searching for an isolated place where they could build a military complex to test biological weapo...
Inside The Strange World of Soviet Sanatoriums
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 11, 2017
In Soviet Russia, vacations were as purposeful as work. Many state workers of the era, instead of wasting time in idleness, used the holiday...
Moscow’s Bagel House
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 6, 2017
In the early 1970s, Russian architect Evgeny Stamo and engineer Alexander Markelov came up with plans for an unusual house in the capital ci...
Magnitogorsk: Russia’s Steel Heart
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 20, 2017
At the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains in Russia, about 140 km west of the border with Kazakhstan, there are some hills that a...
Saatse Boot: A Russia-Estonia Border Anomaly
Kaushik Patowary
May 5, 2017
In southeast Estonia, in the municipality of Värska Parish, lies a peculiar border irregularity. A small piece of Russian land called the “S...
The Abandoned Soviet Camp of Wünsdorf in Germany
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 19, 2017
About 25 miles south of Berlin lies the small town of Wunsdorf, home to about six thousand inhabitants. But less than thirty years ago it ha...
The Electronic Ears That Listen to Secret Nuclear Tests
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 29, 2016
Twenty years ago, the world's first Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, that prohibits nations from conducting any kin...
Mystery of The Lost Amber Room
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 31, 2016
In the grand palace of Catherine I, the second wife of Peter the Great and Empress of Russia, there once existed a magnificent golden room a...
Monument to The Conquerors of Space
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 23, 2016
In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union was way ahead of the United States in the space race. They launched the first artificial satellite of e...
Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 9, 2016
The Soviet Union’s nuclear program started soon after the end of the Second World War. Tests were conducted in many remote regions such as t...
