Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: “A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.” She answered, “Indeed it is so. My husband an

In the West, a certain level of psychological awareness—and the language to go with it—is taken for granted now, but in Russia, with the exception of some in urban, educated circles, this is virtually nonexistent. Stoicism isn’t so much a virtue as it is a survival skill. Of the people in rural Primorye, a longtime expatriate said, “Those folks are

Snow has a muffling effect on all sounds, but in the case of a tiger, especially one making an effort to avoid detection, this effect is absolute. Meanwhile, Trush and Lazurenko announced themselves with every step; despite their best efforts, they might as well have been on radar. Their disadvantage was striking; it was as if the tiger had removed

By 1994, the operation had retreated to Verkhny Pereval, where it shut down altogether, leaving the residents of Sobolonye with two stark choices: they could abandon their homes and social network on the off chance they would find something better elsewhere (an unlikely prospect in mid-1990s Russia). Or they could stay and live off the land in defi

Arseniev’s account of his adventures with Dersu Uzala reflects a tendency among many Russian writers to use facts not as inflexible units of information, but as malleable elements that may be arranged, elaborated on, or added to as the author sees fit. Evidence of this can be found throughout the country’s nonfiction and journalism. On a practical

When Russians wax eloquent about their homeland, they will often invoke Mother Russia, but Mother Russia is not the nation, and She is certainly not the leadership; She is the Land. The deep Russian bond to the earth—specifically, the soil—transcends all other affiliations with the exception, perhaps, of family. Likewise, the forest and its creatur

On Yeltsin’s watch, the ignorance of many, combined with the cleverness of a few, allowed for the biggest, fastest, and most egregiously unjust reallocation of wealth and resources in the history of the world. It was klepto-capitalism on a monumental scale, but it wasn’t the first time. The Bolsheviks had done something similar under Lenin.

Though typically a forest dweller, Amur tigers may hunt on the beaches as well, using sea fog as a cover for stalking game, and driving animals into heavy surf before subduing them. One young male was observed subsisting exclusively on harbor seals, going so far as to stack their carcasses like logs for future use.

The one certainty in tiger tracks is: follow them long enough and you will eventually arrive at a tiger, unless the tiger arrives at you first.