World War two was fought on its soil. There was the blockade. Every single person was touched by the war in some way. Everybody had a lot of people in their family that fought that died. It’s very different having war on your soil rather than sending troops to some remote place where the people don’t really feel it. There are people walking around with an arm missing a leg missing. It was just real visible wounds and stories of survival, stories of heroism, stories of destruction – that all the kids grew up with it all the time.

— Regina Spektor, On Growing Up in Russia, Feeling Like WWII Just Happened

Our audience is not Putin. Our audience is everybody else and largely it’s the police and the military, who will eventually – maybe it will happen March 5th – maybe it will happen later, but eventually when Putin feels threatened enough, he will consider using force. And my greatest hope is that by that time, neither the police nor the military will be willing to use force against people who are protesting this regime.

— Masha Gessen, a journalist and organizer of the protests sweeping across Russia.

Putin has created a system in which people who run afoul of the government and know that they are living with a constant threat to their lives. At this point we are living in a situation where physical attacks on critics of the government and even murders are expected.

— Over the years, Putin has created an image of himself as a “street thug” and has made systematic efforts to dismantle the country’s democracy and independent media, says journalist Masha Gessen. 

khodorkovsky:

Vladimir Putin speaks at his presidential inauguration in May 2000, watched by the man he replaced, Boris Yeltsin.

Media suppression, corruption and the murder of critics and political rivals have marked the regime of Vladimir Putin, who is running for his third term as President in Russia’s election next week. Despite mass demonstrations, he’s expected to win. On today’s Fresh Air, Russian journalist Masha Gessen explains how Putin systemically stifled independent journalism — and his critics — over the past 12 years.

nprradiopictures:

Tamara Ostrovskaya (right) and her sister-in-law, Albina Ostrosvskaya, stand on the platform at Yaroslavsky Station. Tamara is embarking on a three day trip to Krasnoyarsk, in central Siberia. (David Gilkey/NPR)

NPR journalists, including photographer, David Gilkey, traveled the full length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad through seven time zones and across thousands of miles from Russia’s capital, Moscow, to the port city of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

Check out Part 1 of the three part series. 

-Becky 

A fascinating story about a Russian cosmonaut up in space, crying because he knew he was never coming home (photo of the speech prepared just-in-case something happened to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had they been marooned or killed.)

Maybe They Could Hold the Next Season of Jersey Shore Here: While a team of Russian scientists were drilling ice core samples from their Vostok base in Antarctica, new satellite imagery revealed the outline of a lake the size of New Jersey buried two miles underneath the ice. Scientists have been drilling through the ice and are now just 100 feet away from breaking into the third largest lake on the planet.