A Letter from the Editor




This issue has been brought to you by the letter Т—the utterly unexciting, same-as-in-English “T”—and it’s hard for me to explain why. I could and probably should say that it's here to highlight the similarities between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets (and, by extension, the Russian and Western cultures), but that would be a terrible lie. See, our previous Letters From the Editor, in the first two issues, were П and Я (our “P” and “Ya”), and now we'd like to gracefully phase out the whole damn conceit. Since each issue's mascot letter is also printed on the magazine's spine (go ahead, check), one way to save face is to pretend that we were doing this for a reason: to spell out a word.  

RUSSIA! is a quarterly, which means four issues a year, so we'd need a four-letter Russian word that starts with ПЯ. A word that would bind our first year's worth of issues into a cohesive little collection.

Well, it's just our luck that the Russian language only has two four-letter words that start with ПЯ. One is пята and means “heel.” The other is пять and means “five.” Thus, you'll have to pick up Issue Four for the conclusion of this thrilling drama. An advertiser-friendly cliffhanger! In the meantime, we’re examining Russia’s space-tourism industry, printing the year's most controversial art, judging rival translations of lit classics, and getting a horrible faux-Gypsy song stuck in our heads. Oh, and there’s Russian word starting with T at the top of each page.—Michael Idov