Lea Zeltserman

The Potemkin effect: Colour photos from the black-and-white days

Lea Zeltserman — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:16:18 +0000

There is a fantastic photo collection of Tsarist Russia taken between 1902 and 1912 on the Boston Globe site. Strictly speaking, they’re not colour photos – the photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) – shot each image three times, using a red, green and then blue filter. He later combined them to get an approximation of reality. (For »Read More

The Soviet Samovar – February issue is out!

Lea Zeltserman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:34:09 +0000

The February issue of the Soviet Samovar – my monthly round-up of things Soviet, Russian and Jewish, is now out. Highlights this issue include lessons for Iranian Americans from the Soviet Jewry movement, a Jewish-themed restaurant in Lviv, Regina Spektor concert to benefit HIAS, and Russian-Israelis scrambling to prove their Jewish identity in Israel. Oh, »Read More

Soviet Jewry reading assignment

Lea Zeltserman — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:09:30 +0000

I made a reading list! Or “curated” if you want to be fancy about it. You all should go read it. It’s for the Jewish Book Council and covers what I consider some of the best reading on Soviet Jewish history. Please take a moment to check it out. If I’ve missed something, leave a »Read More

Not my perestroika: Shades of might have beens

Lea Zeltserman — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:32:27 +0000

Every year, on September 1, Russian children start their first day of school. All of them, en masse. And before them, it was Soviet children. My mother went to school in pinafored uniform, braids and bows in her hair, flowers in her arms. Twenty years later, a carbon copy photo of my cousin doing and »Read More

The Soviet Samovar! First issue! Wednesday!

Lea Zeltserman — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:43:24 +0000

*Updated – Check out the first issue of Soviet Samovar here. I spend a lot of my online time doing what most of us do – reading stuff, looking at stuff and sending stuff around. Savvy internet types have even wholescale co-opted the term curating from the dry, dusty bowels of museums to give all »Read More

Live, in the kitchen, from Moscow

Lea Zeltserman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:57:00 +0000

It took the Kremlin until 1959 to realize how starved for things the nation was. In July of that year, Moscow’s Sokolniki Park hosted the American National Exhibition. …In just two week two million Russians had had their faces mashed into a perfect tableau of Yankee wealth. The Cadillacs, the TV dinners, the cosmetics, the »Read More

Hiding out in the ‘burbs

Lea Zeltserman — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:14:13 +0000

Surprisingly to some, many of the people living in places like Peel or Scarborough do so voluntarily—almost as if they like it or something. Moreover, a very significant chunk of those suburbanites aren’t white and weren’t born in Canada, a fact that raises some rather sticky questions. To wit, as downtown scenesters badmouth the suburbs »Read More

When all is fleeting anyway, food becomes everything (Immigrant Decor Part 5)

Lea Zeltserman — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:28:05 +0000

If I had a Russian food blog, it would be something like The Gastronomical Me, by Katrina K., a transplanted Russian who lives in London. And, if I loved in London, I would be crashing her monthly Soviet brunch club. As it is, I may have to start my own version in Toronto. In the »Read More

The weight of an English chesterfield (Immigrant Decor Part 4)

Lea Zeltserman — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:49:32 +0000

This next post is from Navneet Alang, a tech-culture writer and PhD student. You can catch his always thoughtful commentary in This Magazine and the Toronto Standard, among others. Nav’s memorable item is slightly bigger than your average tchotchke, but what I really appreciate is how neatly it upends expectations of what, or where, home »Read More

Hindu gods, the Alberta way (Immigrant Decor Part 3)

Lea Zeltserman — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:04:17 +0000

Our next submission on the things we take with us growing up in immigrant homes is from writer Scaachi Koul, who writes about her distance from her Indian background. Scaachi is currently interning over at Huffington Post Canada. She also keeps a personal blog, Big Fists, where she’s recently started an advice column featuring her »Read More