Deep-Sixing Boredom

Meet Morskoi Boi, the Soviet Union’s first successful experiment in fun simulation

High Note

Former Russian Intelligence operative builds $150,000 stereo systems out of his basement.

The Many Lives of LOMO

This issue’s icon: the people’s camera

In 1978, Bulgarian dissident and playwright Georgi Markov was leaving the BBC London office where he worked and heading home. Waiting at a crowded bus stop, Markov felt a sudden sharp pain in his thigh and turned to see a large man bending down to pick up a black umbrella. The man apologized in a thick foreign accent and hopped into a taxi. Markov found a growing red pimple where he had felt the sting, and came down with a fever that night. Four days later, he was dead, the victim of one of the most diabolical assassinations in modern history — the Umbrella Incident.

With all the anticipatory hoopla on Tim Burton's Alice about, here's a perfectly-timed glimpse back into the devious, delirious animated Wonderland, Soviet style. READ ME!

Could this have been some perverse joke of the Soviet educational system on its unassuming young women? One cannot help but notice the unmistakable resemblance of the Soviet schoolgirl uniform, developed in the 1920s, to the iconic French maid costume. Observe: a brown wool dress, accessorized with a lacy white pinafore over the chest, white tights and a cartoonishly large chiffon bow. And we thought Catholic schoolgirls had it rough.