You are reading
a Letter from Editor
This issue has been brought to you by the letter “Т”—the utterly unexciting, same-
as-in-English “T”—and it’s hard for me to explain why. I could and probably
should say that it’s here to highlight the similarities between the Cyrillic and Latin
alphabets (and, by extension, the Russian and Western cultures), but that would be
a terrible lie. See, our previous Letters From the Editor, in the first two issues, were
“П” and “Я” (our “P” and “Ya”), and now we’d like to gracefully phase out the whole
damn conceit. Since each issue’s mascot letter is also printed on the magazine’s
spine (go ahead, check), one way to save face is to pretend that we were doing this for
a reason: to spell out a word.
RUSSIA! is a quarterly, which means four issues a year, so we’d need a four-letter
Russian word that starts with “ПЯ,” one that would bind our first year’s worth of
issues into a cohesive little collection.
Well, it’s just our luck that the Russian language only has two four-letter words
that start with “ПЯ.” One is “пята” and means “heel.” The other is пять and means
“five.” Thus, you’ll have to pick up Issue Four for the conclusion of this thrilling dra-
ma. An advertiser-friendly cliffhanger! In the meantime, we’re examining the space-
tourism industry, printing the year’s most controversial art, judging rival transla-
tions of lit classics, and getting a horrible faux-Gypsy song stuck in our heads.Oh,
and there’s Russian word starting with “T” at the top of each page. т
Michael Idov
readrussia.com/2007/WiNTer/ 12
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