They seemed like a big catch. Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin were a pair of KGB spies working out of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Recruited by the FBI in 1983, ""M&M,"" as they were called by the agents, were expected to tell all about Soviet spying in the United States. As it turned out, there wasn't much to tell.

Shortly after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Hermitage Museum in what was then Leningrad packed up more than 1.5 million artworks and sent the best of them 2,500 kilometers away to Sverdlovsk, in the Ural Mountains.

Director Peter Jackson's scrupulous devotion to the spirit of J. R. R. Tolkien's ""Lord of the Rings"" trilogy manifests itself in a gripping, intense fashion for the second of the film adaptations, ""The Two Towers.""

The great Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky was born 180 years ago, which is as good a reason to celebrate as any other. And celebrate is just what Moscow theaters will be doing this year -- productions of Ostrovsky will be in evidence everywhere.

Paul Gauguin was probably Tahiti's most unlikely cultural ambassador. The French painter had originally hoped for a trip to Indochina, but his plans fell through.

This recipe for almond cake has a similar flavor to the famous dense and spicy fruit-and-nut cakes of Siena, transporting me back to the scenic towns of Tuscany.

Frenchman David Desseaux makes a mean sauce, but his real claim to fame is that he is one of post-Soviet Moscow's very first celebrity chefs.

If you believe Italians live on spaghetti, meatballs and pizza, it may be time for an education. And if you are already a fan of fine Italian cuisine, get ready for a week of heaven.

Popular in Scotland since at least the 17th century, the sport of curling won't win any points for grace -- not least of all because the most basic requirement for play is a very large roc.

The truth is out there, at least according to U.S. television series ""The X-Files"" -- and Kiev artist Vasily Tsagolov.

Two years after Moscow began a program of razing its khrushchyovki -- decaying five-story apartment blocks generally despised for their homeliness and poor structural integrity -- a new exhibit at the Manezh Gallery is taking a sentimental look at the structures that were home to an entire generation of Soviet people.

Like novelists George Orwell and Arthur Koestler, vagabond writer and radical Victor Serge was a seminal witness to the catastrophes of totalitarianism.

To its credit, the management of the ever-expanding O.G.I. chain -- and its newest addition, P. i R. O.G.I. -- appears to realize that good food tastes that much better when it is served without the pretension or inflated prices that have become commonplace in the capital's dining rooms.

Once among the city's trendiest clubs, Circus is back on the scene this winter after having been closed for several months. And the club has an eye on regaining some of its former glory.