Oliver Stone wanted a hit—and the chance to put America’s most iconic dissident onscreen. The subject wanted veto power. The Russian lawyer wanted someone to option the novel he’d written. The American lawyer just wanted the whole insane project to go away. Somehow a film got made.

In 2009, Condé Nast allowed this story to appear in print but refused to publish it online or distribute it in Russia for fear of retribution. The story, which details the intrigue behind the Moscow apartment bombings that allowed Vladimir Putin’s rapid ascension to power, is reprinted on Longform courtesy of the author.

A dispatch from a Russian town under siege by hungry bears.

How artist Petr Pavlensky uses his body and the Russian legal system as canvases.

A pro-Ukraine activist goes silent in separatist-held Donetsk. A foreign correspondent goes looking for him.

Their entire lives, Alex and Tim Foley thought their mom and dad were typical, boring American parents. Then the FBI showed up.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy working for British intelligence, was poisoned. As he lay dying, he worked with detectives to find his killer.

“In this scene, set at a government dacha, they are joined by their American counterparts at the State Department for a daylong picnic that grows increasingly informal, involving drinks, flirtation, a guitar jam and (spoiler) contact between two spies. At times in my new job, I feel like a spy myself, and one with a shaky cover. I don’t have a good answer for how I got here.”

Putin's daughter Katerina has been attending college under the surname Tikhonova and is one of the top "acrobatic rock'n'roll dance" competitors in the world.

She is the also the rumored spouse of the son of one of Russia's richest bankers. While Putin reported only $119,000 on last year's tax return, his daughter's fortune could now stretch into the billions.

An oral history of the disaster:

Someone said to me, or maybe I read it, that the problem of Chernobyl presents itself first of all as a problem of self understanding. That seemed right. I keep waiting for someone intelligent to explain it to me.

The Chinese want to steal our genetically-engineered grain secrets. Why?

The life of Adolf Tolkachev, Soviet dissident and CIA spy.

On Finland, the country most afraid of Russia.

When Elon Musk went to Russia to buy some rockets.

An investigation into a Russian “troll farm.”

The Houthi coup in Yemen.

“Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.”

Fake news stories. Doctored photographs. Staged TV clips. Armies of paid trolls.

In 1936, Karp Lykov whisked his family into the Siberian wilderness to escape Bolshevik persecution. They remained there, alone, until discovered by a helicopter crew in 1978.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you think is the percentage chance that I’m right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Five percent?”

In Russia’s Far East, an orphaned female tiger is the test case in an experimental effort to save one of the most endangered animals on earth.

A Russian soldier vanishes in Ukraine.

On the intrigue surrounding Dr. Zhivago’s publication.

Visiting the site of the Chernobyl meltdown.

A 15-year-old Russian has a shorter life expectancy than a peer in Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Yemen.