Communist Albania is often portrayed as a backwater, paranoid state with an eccentric dictator, Enver Hoxha. Basically, it was a joke, signified by the 750,000 bunkers littering the country. Of course, everyday life in Albania didn’t fit the stereotypes. Like many communist regimes, the...

 A lot of interesting people pass through the University of Pittsburgh. And though I can’t catch them all, there are a few that I won’t to let go. The infamous Russian poet Dmitrii Bykov is one. Bykov visited Pittsburgh recently, and I didn’t hesitate to finagle a way to pull him into the...

Baku is an oil town. In the early 20th century, it attracted workers, foreign investors, criminals, and revolutionaries. Some key Bolsheviks cut their revolutionary teeth in Baku, Stalin among them. And after the Revolution, Soviet control of the South Caucasus came with a special prize: oil. In...