The Russian Issue
Over The Counter Habits
The FSB (which is like the FBI but waaaay scarier) gassed the “Nord-Ost” hostages with it in October 2002 to prevent some Chechen mujahadeen from blowing the building up with 900 or so hostages inside. The women and children simply OD’d on the stuff...
Gross Jar
If you’re a guy in high school and completely surrounded by jocks and dogmatic straight-edgers, it’s fine to take a year or two off to dabble in acid and not be stressed out all the time.
Russians Yawn At Death
Few countries can boast a death count as high as Russia's in the 20th century. Twenty million were killed by Hitler and Stalin each, and millions more were lost in the Civil War, WW1, and the Famine.
Bible Bashers
Sometimes, you’ll know a British band by how they make something poetic out of their experience of living in the UK. You’ll usually notice that their songs find some way to romanticize what is essentially a small, rainy country where summer lasts ten...
Literary/I Want My DVDs
There was a time I was way over black-and-white photography. Now I seek it out and feel relieved when I am looking at it, like, “Ah, that’s nice.” Color photos were starting to burn my eyes.
Literary Gulag
Edward Limonov is the leader of the National-Bolsheviks Party, a radical left-wing movement that was outlawed by the Russian Supreme Court, but which has emerged as the leading opposition to President Putin. The NBP’s membership numbers in the...
Vice Fashion - Russian Guys Gone Wild
I eat out every night. The money in promotion over here is ridiculous but there’s no such thing in Russia. I love it here and I hate my own cooking.
Drunky Monkey
In Russia, it isn't just prison inmates who go without heat. One million homeless kids get in on the freezing-their-fucking-balls-off action too.
Vice Fashion - Homesick
In 2004 Chechens took siege of a Beslan school and killed and injured up to 1000 people. There are about 1 million street kids in Moscow, infant death in Armenia is 36 to every 1000 and procreating close to Chernobyl is risky for the next 3 million...
The VICE Guide To Russia
Russia is poisoned. It’s poisoned from shitty old cars running on leaded 76-octane fuel and it’s poisoned from decades of Soviet waste. Its capital is the largest city in Europe and the most polluted.