NEW YORK -- What does it say about a culture when one of its most honored rituals involves thrashing the body? Can we read it as a symbol of harsh Russian life, or does it speak more to a mentality -- ...

My first piece of advice about the Russian banya, or bathhouse, is that the cold dip pool is for cooling off. It is not for swimming. That’s a lesson I learned as a 16-year-old doing laps at a tiny ...

On the day Michael Uspenski and I met, we slapped each other with brooms of oak branches. The practice, called platza, is a therapeutic treatment traditionally performed in a Russian sauna known as a ...

Banya Bistro specializes in offering what other restaurants don’t, not the least of which is the occasional peek at men in robes. They’re not out of place; you are. Banya Bistro is tucked into a ...

The Russian communal bathhouse, or banya, where people are steamed at extreme heat, beat each other with birch branches, and then jump into cold water or snow, has struck many observers as a foretaste ...