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 ...

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 ...

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 -- ...