For Catherine the Great, jewelry was about much more than adornment. The formidable Russian empress — who reigned from 1762 to 1796 after overthrowing her own husband, Peter III — understood that ...

Robert K. Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (New York: Random House, 2011), 656 pp., $35.00. THE SUBTITLE of Robert K. Massie’s biography announces the book’s keynote: it is to be a ...

An exploration of Catherine the Great’s dramatic rise to power and her transformation into one of Russia’s most influential rulers.

Part One: Extreme makeover. This heavy thing ; The brightest star of the North ; The ambrosia of Asia ; Collecting debut ; Building frenzy ; My falcon, my golden pheasant -- Part Two: Russia is a ...

Olivia Durand receives research funding from Freie Universität Berlin, where she is a postdoctoral visting fellow alongside her position at the University of Oxford. Pope Francis’s video speech to the ...

For over three centuries, Russia and the Ottoman Empire fought a dozen wars — and the results were almost always the same.

The Trump-Putin summit will take place in a former Russian colony that the United States bought for $7.2 million in 1867. Here’s how the deal came together and why its legacy matters. By Mike Ives In ...

Not so much The Hunt for Red October as a hunt for the nearest mechanic. Thus guffawed Nato secretary general Mark Rutte at ...