“He didn’t want carpets, he preferred to hear footsteps of people as they approached on the wooden parquet flooring,” says Anna Hovantseva, the tour guide, as she explains another interior-design ...

SOCHI, Russia — He was only about 5-5 — give or take an inch, since the historical accounts vary — and if you think a detail like that doesn't matter in understanding the mentality of a tyrant, Joseph ...

SOCHI, Russia – We are walking through the gates of the impressive stone building, painted entirely green to camouflage it from potential enemy ships in the Black Sea below, when our tour guide makes ...

SOCHI, Russia – Before it was an Olympic city, Sochi was a Black Sea resort town favored by Russians trying to escape the cold up north. And its most famous visitor was Joseph Stalin, the dictatorial ...

I had not heard that word often here. While the Russian facilities weren’t completely ready for the Olympics — a concrete sidewalk was still being poured at my hotel this week — the Russian people ...

I had not heard that word often here. While the Russian facilities weren't completely ready for the Olympics — a concrete sidewalk was still being poured at my hotel this week — the Russian people ...

For Boris Pasternak, a dacha was a place to dig potatoes and write. For Joseph Stalin, a home for his final years as dictator. But while the famous and the infamous had their country retreats, so did ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... SOCHI, Russia — “Nyet.” I had not heard that word often here. While the Russian facilities weren’t completely ready for the Olympics — a concrete sidewalk ...

You could call it poetic justice. Thrown out of his own boyhood home in Abkhazia on the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Valery Mizadei now is responsible for maintaining all five of the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Before it was an Olympic city, Sochi was a Black Sea resort town favored by Russians trying to escape the ...