The United States comes up constantly when you talk to Russians about their country’s place in the world. But the conversations tend to go a lot differently than many Americans might expect.
Pavel Durov, founder of the Russian social network VKontakte, was home alone in his apartment in St. Petersburg on a weekend when a contingent of men in camouflage uniforms knocked violently on his door.
I squatted down in the dirt and took stock of my inadequate tools. Over my left shoulder a massive John Deere tractor loomed. I came here to fix that tractor. So far, things weren’t going as planned. I’m a computer programmer by training, and a repairman by trade.
In the mid-nineteen-seventies, when Christopher Doyon was a child in rural Maine, he spent hours chatting with strangers on CB radio. His handle was Big Red, for his hair.