During the Cold War, the CIA may have had as much success with books and magazines as with gun-running and spies.

This article appears in the August 2025 print edition with the headline “Damn You All to Hell!” When you buy a book using a ...

The voices of tens of thousands of choir singers rang out in the rain in Estonia this weekend, and a huge crowd of spectators ...

In one of the most remarkable non-violent revolutions in history, the people of Estonia used music as their greatest weapon.

The Estonian Song Celebration (Laulupidu) is a cultural phenomenon that, every five years, unites a vast choir for a single ...

You also had heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath, who were banned because of the strange satanic messages they included in their songs. What might surprise you, though, is that there was only one ...

Mikhail Brat was a celebrated violinist who came to the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in 1976 from what was then the Soviet Union. He played with the HPO until he retired in 2016.

Making music from medicine In the Soviet Union in the 1940s, some clever people realized that X-ray film was just soft enough to be etched by an electromechanical lathe, or sound recording device.

In the Soviet Union in the 1940s, some clever people realized that X-ray film was just soft enough to be etched by an electromechanical lathe, or sound recording device.