The House on the Embankment
Seventy years after his death, the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin was unexpected. Yet however you analyse it, when a government spends decades glorifying a genocidal dictator and only later admits their crimes, we shouldn’t be surprised by a comeback.(...)
Russia in North Macedonia
The Russian government is awarding prizes to Macedonian writers.(...)
Russia 1985–1999, by Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis is a collagist who deals with ideas and their emotional impact.(...)
Germany, Year Zero, Today
It’s hard to watch Roberto Rossellini’s 1948 film Germany, Year Zero to its conclusion. The mood is relentlessly bleak and the landscape bleaker still.(...)
Russia After the Arab Spring
In 2015, I moved to Moscow to spend a year teaching human rights. I lasted five months. As my former students from that time are arrested for protesting the Ukrainian war, here are some reflections on what I learned about the evil of Putin and the kindness of Russians.(...)
Utopia by the Sea
The Russians have struck Odesa again, this time mere hours after reaching a deal with the Ukrainians. Though spared the worst of the war, an attack on Odesa is an attack on the best of Ukrainian and Russophone culture alike.(...)
Russia and the Ukraine War
Baron Ismay, who served as Secretary-General of NATO from 1952 to 1957, famously described its purpose as keeping “the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.(...)
Russia’s Populist Exception
Twenty years ago today, it would have been the stuff of conspiracy theory.(...)
Sounds of Survival: From Ukrainian Underground
Sounds of Survival: From Ukrainian Underground is so consistently good that its social function almost seems extraneous. We should have been listening to this music before we felt it was our democratic duty.(...)