Tatyana Voltskaya is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Russian Service.
The move to list a small U.S. college running an active exchange program with St. Petersburg State University as an "undesirable" foreign organization has left Russians wondering what the government is thinking -- and worrying about what's next.
Sergei Mokhnatkin died one year ago of complications from injuries sustained while he was in the Russian prison system. Nonetheless, he is still on trial in Arkhangelsk, accused of "disrupting prison routine" with his demands for humane treatment.
Workers at several research and educational institutions in St. Petersburg have reported that the Federal Security Service has assigned resident agents to monitor their work. "They are monitoring our loyalty," a former instructor at the world-famous Vaganova Ballet Academy said.
Earlier this month, St. Petersburg artist Kirill Gorodetsky went public with his yearslong struggle to find out what happened to his great-grandfather, who disappeared without a trace in September 1941.
Nurse’s aide Maria Tyshko dreamed for years of becoming a nurse, and contracted COVID-19 while working in St. Petersburg. Then she died of the disease -- and hospital officials refused to recognize her as a medical worker or offer her family compensation.
Activists say the case typifies the perilous situation of Russia's transgender people, particularly those who have fled even more daunting intolerance in Central Asia.
For more than three years, Igor Suvorov has been struggling to have his status as a conscientious objector to military service reinstated after his local military district commissar unilaterally annulled it. After the Russian Supreme Court denied his appeal, he turned to the European Court of Human Rights.
For more than 30 years, St. Petersburg resident Anton Kolomitsyn has spent much of his spare time scouring the country for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during World War II. But now he has fled the country and is seeking asylum in Europe after Russian security agents charged him with acquiring "state secrets" for purchasing 50-year-old military maps.
Russians who bought new apartments in complexes in St. Petersburg before construction began were promised schools, medical clinics and other services would be built as well. However, reality in many cases has fallen far short.
Young Russians are looking for new ways to get their opposition political message out to wider audiences.
St. Petersburg's museum of writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky is planning to add a modernist wing to mark the novelist's 2021 bicentennial. But some locals worry the stark project will further erode the city's 19th-century charm.
Eighty years ago this month, investigators of dictator Josef Stalin's secret police claimed to have uncovered a "fascist terrorist gang" of deaf people in Leningrad. By the time they finished extracting confessions and denunciations, 35 people had been executed and 20 more sent to Stalin's labor camps.
The Russian government is pushing ahead with plans to fuel a prototype floating nuclear reactor just 2 kilometers from the historical center of St. Petersburg. Activists accuse the authorities of pushing ahead in silence over the objections of locals.
St. Petersburg's decision to turn over control of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church has spurred locals to protest what they see as the church's growing influence over cultural matters.
Activists claim Stalin-era bunkers in northwestern Russia that once served to keep the locals safe now present a serious danger -- radiation.
Just weeks after St. Petersburg authorities defied public opinion to name a bridge after Chechnya's former president, Akhmed Kadyrov, they are now angering locals with a plan to erect an 80-meter-high statue of Jesus Christ.
Samiya Khalikova survived the siege of Leningrad and the Soviet-era repressions that decimated her family. But when she recently collapsed in her flat, it took authorities two days to open the door.
A citizen activist plans to open a museum in St. Petersburg devoted to the Russian view of the war in eastern Ukraine. But some culture specialists fear such initiatives echo Soviet-era efforts to rewrite history to match current politics.
A recent event at a St. Petersburg kindergarten that allowed students as young as 5 years old to hold automatic rifles and grenade launchers has set off a firestorm of criticism on Russian social media. But school administrators and military activists defend the project as a hands-on lesson in history and patriotism.
Anatoly Sobchak, the man credited with launching Vladimir Putin’s political career, died 15 years ago of a reported heart attack. Some have speculated that Putin was involved in his death -- conjecture that is likely to be stoked by a new book.
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