He was first in every sense: the first Soviet performer to refuse to return from an international tour; the first to become a superstar in the West; the first to come out as homosexual; and the first to talk about AIDS, of which he died at age 54.

With the help of social media and special websites, you can pray and repent your sins without getting off your sofa. But do these internet prayers and online penance bear any relation to the true values of the Orthodox Church? A Russia Beyond correspondent investigated.

Even during the atheism of the Soviet era nearly every Russian home enjoyed these dishes for Easter.

Never before, or since, have relations between the two superpowers been so cordial as during the meeting of the two armies on the Elbe River at the end of World War II.